As Claire Halde had grown older, she had grown out of the habit of falling in with groups of fellow travellers. Or at least that’s what she tells herself as she stands in front of the oversized mirror in the bathroom adjoining her room, wiping the makeup off her eyes, bloodshot from the contact lenses scraping against her eyeballs—goddamned dry eye syndrome—the sun, and her flaking mascara.
In bed, she checks her Couchsurfing inbox, where she finds several replies to her couch request, mostly from men. Some just want to take her out for a drink, like Juan Carlos, or meet her for a short run. One offers to pick her up at the train station, another to put her up for a few nights at his seaside apartment in El Perelló, twenty-odd kilometres outside of Valencia. Manuel has attached pictures of the sunset and a table beautifully laid for breakfast on the patio—Italian coffee pot gleaming in the sun, orange juice in stemmed glasses, croissants and a glob of jam in a soup plate, white tablecloth—assuring her she’ll have her own room and that he’s very excited to meet her, that it’ll be an honour for him to have her in his home. She accepts his invitation because he’s the first to reply to her with so much enthusiasm and because, if the photos are to be believed, the horizon in El Perelló, with its blue sky and flat, waveless sea, promises to bring her some sense of peace.
KILOMETRE 21.1
… I can see the arch and the time clock signalling the half-marathon, one hour fifty-nine minutes, all good so far, I’m matching my breathing to my pace, with each step I take, I slowly exchange the air in my lungs with the air outside, no pain, just a perfect rhythm that evens out my movements, head straight and determined, focused on the action of running, lungs and heart in sync on my course across Valencia, I bear down on the port, the ships in their moorings stand out sharply against the sky, hulking metal monsters, I run toward the most hostile point on the horizon, the beauty of sea ports, departures, trips, they’ve always filled me with apprehension, before you were born, Laure, your mother would take off at every chance she got, she was always like that, we couldn’t get her to stay put…
… my father had loved her, among other reasons, for her urge to travel to the farthest reaches of the planet, and when I read Flaubert, in French class in college, I’d automatically replaced the him in Sentimental Education with a her, hoping she’d be back—she returned home—memorizing that passage like a supplication that might one day bring my mother back to me, it’s crazy, I still remember the quote word-for-word from my literature class:
She travelled a long time.
She experienced the melancholy associated with packet-boats, the chill feeling on waking up under tents, the dizzy effect of mountains and ruins, and the bitterness of broken sympathies.
She returned home.
… she did not return home, she still hasn’t come home, all that remains are the photos from her trips, shoeboxes filled with pictures of unidentified volcanoes, glaciers, beaches and cities, eventually supplanted by a jumbled mess of misnamed computer files, my mother was a disaster, completely disorganized, never wrote anything on the backs of printed photos, all the snapshots of my childhood, birthdays and Christmases, first days of school, vacation memories and Halloween costumes—me as a ladybug, a witch, a princess in a poufy dress, buried up to my chin under a layer of sand, skipping among the ruins of Angkor, me with my first pigtails, covered in ice cream, on horseback next to a volcano, nose buried in a tropical drink, naked in the bathtub, asleep on a train, cheek pressed up against my blankie, smiling gap-toothed over a chocolate cake topped with strawberries—all stored in a single folder on her computer labelled Pictures, I find one of my mother with short hair, there aren’t many pictures of her with long hair, there’s one I like a lot, you’re wearing a leather jacket, faded jeans, pretty red lipstick, you’re my age, twenty-three, tangled brown locks blowing in the breeze, you’re standing regally on the steps of the Trans-Siberian, at the station in Yekaterinburg, as though all the forests in Russia were your kingdom, a wide smile on your face, a happy young woman, cheeks rosy, eyes sparkling, a colourful wool shawl draped around your neck, I found it tucked away in a box, that floral-print shawl from Russia, moth-eaten and full of holes…
KILOMETRE 22
… we’re back at the port of Valencia, I glance at the boats, the yachts, the flowerpots in the median, the palm trees, a playground surrounded by a fence that looks a lot like a candy necklace, now we’re running through the misting station, like a lukewarm bath meant to bring down a fever, cooling off my neck and head, I’m braced from head to toe, my soul rinsed clean, bleached, a brief chill runs through my brain like I just chewed an ice cube, if only the same could be done with dark thoughts, wash them away…
KILOMETRE 23
… again with the dry mouth, I run my tongue over my lips, five minutes thirty-nine seconds, still okay, stay focused,
whenever her face pops into my mind, it’s always got that same sad, clouded look on it, the expression from those last few days, sometimes my mother would stop mid-sentence during bedtime stories, and I could tell by the look in her eyes, the shadow passing over her face, that her thoughts were miles away from the fairy tales, one day at the grocery store, she opened up the ice cream freezer and just stood there, unmoving, staring at the cartons of lemon sorbet, forehead pressed up against the frosty door, Léon had tugged on her sleeve and asked: Are you okay, Mama? and she hadn’t answered, we’d pushed past her to grab a tub of mint chocolate chip, then, without a word, she’d gone back to pushing the cart, and we’d trotted along behind her to the cash, my mother, already almost gone, hauling her grocery bags all the way home, serving us ice cream in deep bowls, then leaving us alone in front of the TV, Mama will be home in a hour, I need to go for a run…
KILOMETRE 24
… it feels like my body is turning to lead, everything wants to slow down, arms, legs aren’t swinging as freely as they did before, I need to stay sharp, on the flyleaf of your running journal you’d written “Beware of the middle miles,” a sentence from The Competitive Runner’s Handbook, a guide you’d considered your Bible, a worn, dog-eared volume that I devoured hungrily, lingering on the passages you’d underlined and annotated—it’s around the middle of the race, according to the author, that you tend to lose focus and fall off your pace—you’d taken a yellow highlighter to the pace charts, underlining the times you needed to pull off a 3:30 marathon, and converted the miles to kilometres, in your journal you’d also jotted down a list of mantras: “The worst is yet to come,” “Just flow,” the quote by Rilke again, “Just keep going. No feeling is final,” and my favourite, “Relax your shoulders,” I don’t know if you actually repeated them to yourself while running, I think it’s more like your head was filled with a bright light or a raging blizzard when you ran, or like a thick bank of fog rolled in and your brain became a fathomless ocean, a seabed untouched by doubt…
KILOMETRE 25
… I have this memory of my mother, a holiday in the islands, I must be nine or ten, I’m wearing an emerald-green bathing suit, my little brother is round and happy, collecting seashells and bits of broken crab shells, my mother takes me snorkelling, she adjusts my mask, it’s tugging on my hair, I’m scared, but I really want to go, she shows me how to breathe, points to the looming black formations beneath the turquoise water, explains that they’re coral reefs, we set out, the sun over our shoulders, I’m already a strong swimmer, my mother is holding my hand, I grasp her fingers tightly, I’ve never swum with so much water beneath me, we follow the schools of fish, we explore, my heart is pounding, my feet kicking, I swim in my mother’s wake, I feel incredibly alive and so tiny compared to the deepness of the water, the marine life, I stay close to her, my hand folded into hers, then my mother gives my arm a tug and points to something, I don’t see it at first, I look hard, there’s so much to see, then it’s right there in front of me, a giant sea turtle gliding along just a few metres away, I also remember seeing a stingray and feeling terri
fied as I watched it lurking in the sand, that moment alone with my mother is unlike any other during my childhood, beneath the surface of the water, in the oceanic silence, above the waving algae and the coral, transfixed by all the fish, enthralled by a second giant turtle drifting along the currents, we are suspended, tethered to one another, fingers intertwined, our breathing resonant and strange, majestic…
DAY 2 ITINERARY:
THE MAIN ATTRACTIONS
At breakfast, Claire sits across from an empty chair. She’s surrounded by couples and families buttering their bread and sweetening their coffee. She notices a plate go by piled high with churros and chocolate-filled pastries, and it reminds her that she still hasn’t sent postcards for the kids. Her hands are shaking; she pours her coffee, and her cup overflows, burning her fingers and leaving a huge, dark stain down the front of her white shirt. A tall German woman stares at her.
The night before, as she was walking around the pool, then near the changing room, to all appearances out for a casual stroll around the rooftop terrace or snapping photos leisurely in the hushed hotel corridors, it had occurred to her that, this time, she was the one who looked like a strange, sinister woman.
This morning, she climbs past the fifteenth floor, in the narrow staircase with the sign on the wall that reads Acceso prohibido, but in front of the heavy emergency exit door, her courage falters, she turns on her heel and goes back to her room, clenching her teeth so hard she chips the enamel. A tiny shard of tooth flakes off one of her incisors and rolls around in her mouth.
Late morning, Claire goes to the City of Arts and Sciences but doesn’t buy a ticket for the Oceanogràfic, deterred by the lineup and the price of admission. Instead, she settles for a walk around the buildings.
In the pool near the Umbracle, children are having a grand time walking on water inside huge plastic bubbles—a contraption designed by NASA to help astronauts work on balance and resistance, which can be taken for a ten-minute test run in exchange for five euros. “Walking on water is similar to what astronauts feel when walking in zero gravity,” a laminated sign reads.
She’s reminded of that time when, on a beach in Thailand, to make Jean happy, she’d agreed to be harnessed to a giant kite and lifted into the sky at the end of a long rope attached to a speedboat. She hadn’t really wanted to do it, but nor had she wanted to seem like the spoilsport who wasn’t into thrill-seeking. Jean had gone first. She’d waved her arms back and forth at him, standing far below with the kids on the strip of wet sand. He’d come down after twenty minutes or so, eyes gleaming, grinning madly, insisting that she, too, be strapped in and given a turn to soar.
And so, she’d stood there with her arms raised out to her sides while a man adjusted the various straps and harnesses over her chest and between her legs. Her heart was beating faster than usual; she was nervous, a little pale. Once in the air, what had struck her most—more than the feeling of weightlessness or the magnificence of the view, which was indeed spectacular—was the absence of shouting and commotion. The wind and the flapping of the canvas were the only sounds. Silence was a measure of estrangement, of solitude. With one hand clenched over the carabiner, which would have been so easy to release, she’d let her eyes travel the length of the cable that was keeping her tethered to the packed beach like she no longer belonged to this world, far below, where her children waited for her next to their father.
THE CATHEDRAL
Claire takes a bus to the Plaza de la Virgen. She buys a ticket to climb to the top of the Miguelete, the cathedral tower. She can hear the people ahead of her on the steep stairs huffing and puffing. When she’s forced to move over for tourists on their way down, she’s unsettled by how close they come to her, like bodies pressed together in a crowded elevator. She detects the smell of sweat and perfume, the sighs and sways of bodies. Some people are less sure of themselves, clinging to the handrail, while others descend swiftly.
In the tower, the wind gets underneath her dress, exposing the tops of her thighs. She has to hold it down to keep her panties from showing. There’s a security guard and a large bell that people are taking pictures under. The sun is already ruthless and it’s not even noon yet. She takes in the panoramic view of the city. She searches in vain for the outline of the Valencia Palace. With the city spread out at her feet, she can’t help thinking what it would be like to slip and fall from this height.
Whenever she’s on a balcony, she sidles up to the edge and leans far out over the railing, ignoring the trembling in her legs and the feeling like the floor is caving in under her feet. When she runs over the Jacques Cartier Bridge, she can’t stop herself from peering down at the green water swirling more than a hundred feet below. When she opens a window to air out her son’s room, which faces the main street, when she washes the windows in her third-floor apartment, she’s struck by the distinct impression she’s putting her life in danger. Before Valencia, Claire Halde had never experienced vertigo.
BLOCKING THE VIEW
Claire travels Valencia by metro, bus, tram. She walks around in the crippling heat, runs along the dry riverbed, seeks out shade in the sun-baked streets. She wishes Valencia would open up for her like for an ordinary traveller. It’s odd how she’s forgotten the city and its monuments. But it’s all coming back to her—the gargoyles on the Lonja de la Seda, the rose-tinted paving slabs in the Plaza de la Virgen, the bullfighting arena outside the train station. She writes almost nothing in her journal, barely takes any photos.
The ghost of the woman in Valencia looms large, but Claire delays her visit to the office of unclaimed bodies; she finds excuses, blames the time difference. The fog lingers. Instead of piecing together the woman in Valencia’s story, she finds herself stumbling over her own narrative, which is blocking the view. She’s become the main focus, everything here leading her right back to herself, her indifference, her fatigue. She thinks back to the Nicolas Bouvier quotation memorized from reading and rereading The Way of the World on all her travels; she’d inscribed it in red marker inside her very first backpack: “Travelling outgrows its motives. It soon proves sufficient in itself. You think you are making a trip, but soon it is making you—or unmaking you,” and she wonders what happened to that longing for far-off places that had once consumed her, before.
KILOMETRE 26
… what I’d like, now that I’ve caught my breath, is to go in search of what was broken and lost here, I know full well that this race, this trivial effort of running 42.2 km in under four hours, won’t save anything, won’t bring my mother back, won’t explain the inexplicable or console the inconsolable, yet I keep running, I run because, like my mother, I have a deep thirst, I don’t want to be held back, I’ve come here looking for the light that my mother never found, or that she lost, I feel the need to speed up, the urge to raise my arms, flip off the world, show how fast and how well I can run, it’s been a long time since I heard the concerned whispers—those kids, those poor kids—that no one dared utter in front of my brother and me, I’ll show them that nothing can stop me, not heartbreak or loss, I slice through the air without slowing down, fuelled by fire and light, I won’t falter, not me, I’ll defy the odds, I’ll fly in the face of tragedy, I’ll throw it in their face—my triumph, my sub-four-hour marathon…
KILOMETRE 27
Elegant, you were born at night
Sewn by soft hands
Oh the softest hands
Born in solitude
Born of painted eyes
Painted eyes
That always looked to the sky
Oh those eyes
Oh those eyes
They saw forever
… you always liked this song, were always playing it at home and in the car, I like it, too, I don’t know what there is about it, something funny about the rhythm that makes me feel light and bouncy, like I’m taking flight with each step, I find my fire again, I speed up, that kilometre flew by�
��
Oh those eyes
They saw forever
KILOMETRE 28
… as I’m running, I’m thinking about how you also ran in Valencia, not a marathon, but dozens of kilometres nonetheless, the day after that incident on the roof, you’d written in your journal: “I have to keep moving,” and when you eventually returned to the city, I have no idea where your steps took you, you were training for the Chicago marathon at the time, which you never ended up running, I wonder if you’re running still…
… I’m worried about my brother, you know, with all his manias and compulsions, he’s the one who suffered most when you left because he didn’t have the words, he also didn’t have the anger he would have needed to release the tension, he never accepted your disappearance, he’s still waiting for you, patiently, like the little boy who used to call out for a bedtime story from beneath the covers, do you remember that story about a civilization of tiny people who lived in a tree, the book we got for Christmas that I didn’t want to read because I thought it was boring, Toby who ends up on the run searching for his parents, that story that you read to him, and only him, one chapter at a time? I can picture you snuggled up next to my little brother, folded awkwardly on his narrow bed, your voice soft and gentle when really you must have already been falling apart, it was me who read him the second book after you left, Dad didn’t have the heart for it, after all the adventures and all the misfortune, everyone was reunited and lived happily ever after…
The Woman in Valencia Page 10