To Walk Alone in the Crowd

by Antonio Munoz Molina

  * * *

  THESE CREATURES COULD BE ANYWHERE IN REAL LIFE. Two or three nights later, the memory comes back to me on the balcony of our hotel room. It comes back because I see a man go by in a wheelchair. It can’t be the same man. This one is older and very thin, elderly. The other, the one I saw among a group of people waiting for passengers to emerge at the arrivals lounge, was fat. Tall, fat, and muscular. He was wearing a pair of wristbands and he kept his hands on the wheels of his chair. He had long hair that fell down his back, and he was wearing a baseball hat and a tight black T-shirt with gothic lettering and heavy-metal skulls over his disproportionately muscular chest. Strapped to the back of the chair was a plastic bag filled with ice cubes from which the neck of a champagne bottle was poking out. Someone was supposed to pick us up and take us to the hotel, but they were nowhere to be seen. After hours of travel and waiting in two different airports crammed with holiday crowds, this new delay had deepened our dazed feeling of fatigue nearly to the point of collapse.

  * * *

  PURE ADRENALINE. I felt dizzy staring at the luggage belt as we waited for our huge suitcase to appear. Up on a screen, Penélope Cruz drove a Mercedes sports car through the Paris night. The Eiffel Tower or the Arc de Triomphe glowed in the distance. When the automatic doors slid open we saw people waiting behind the barrier. We were so tired that we seemed blurry to each other in the general turmoil. None of the signs held up by drivers had our names on it. Life was suddenly an endless wait that began as soon as you felt relieved to be finally done with some prior delay. Standing near the man in the wheelchair there was a woman whose eyes were also fixed on the automatic doors that periodically opened and closed. Sometimes they opened and no one came out, or just one person, lost, belittled by the collective indifference of those who waited. Then a horde of people would come through. The reason I noticed the woman was that, along with the man in the wheelchair, she was the only person to be waiting alone, surrounded by a large group of noisy kids on a school trip and by families with signs, balloons, even costumes. The woman was pressed against the barrier, directly facing the doors. Because she was alone, and silent, the urgency of her waiting became more evident. She held a large handwritten sign that had no name on it, just a heart that she had drawn in red: THE LOVE OF MY LIFE.

  * * *

  THIS SUMMER, PLUNGE INTO A NEW REALITY. While I was looking at her face and at the sign, the man in the wheelchair had met the woman he was waiting for. She was a brunette, the kind of woman who would’ve once been called a bombshell. She had sat down on his lap, straddling him, and they were kissing and pressing up against each other, a pair of fleshy bodies stuffed into pants and shirts that could not really contain them, her thick thighs clad in tight, torn jeans. There was a tattoo of the Egyptian symbol for life on the nape of her neck. The crowd of arriving passengers flowed around the wheelchair on both sides while the two of them continued kissing and embracing, murmuring to each other without minding anyone else. Now she was holding a plastic champagne flute in each hand. He opened the bottle, struggling a bit to get it done since she was pressed so closely against him. The cork came off with a dry pop, eliciting some alarmed reactions that quickly subsided in the general hubbub. A jet of foam spurted from the bottle as from a fountain and got them both wet. She was laughing loudly now, shaking her head vigorously as if she was dancing or coming out of the water.

  * * *

  JUST LIKE YOU ALWAYS DREAMED. Passengers kept arriving and being met by people who clapped and shouted with joy, calling out their names, taking pictures with their phones, surrounding them with balloons. Small flags held aloft by tour guides fluttered over people’s heads. Whoever was coming to pick us up was now apparently on the way. So many people came to the island during the holidays that the roads were backed up, especially entering the airport. A hundred eyes would not have been enough for me to take it all in. The constant visual and aural stimulation turned fatigue into a kind of giddiness while at the same time sharpening my attention. I looked back, fearing I’d missed the moment when the woman who was standing alone had met the person she was waiting for. I wanted to know what he or she was like, this person whom she openly called the love of her life, even going so far as to draw a heart and color it red. She was blond, and she seemed German, perhaps Scandinavian, attractive though a little wan, with a beauty that was perhaps a bit austere. I couldn’t see her anymore. I thought she must have left, hurrying to meet her lover. Then a group of Chinese tourists followed its guide away from the barrier and I saw her standing where she’d been before. She was still holding the sign in her hands, though a little lower now because her arms were getting tired.

  * * *

  THE POWER OF DREAMS. The doors remained closed now, opening infrequently. They were entirely covered by a large photograph of a family at Disneyland Paris. A young couple with their children, a boy and a girl, all four in harnesses and helmets, shooting down a water slide fearlessly, with ecstatic joy, in a kind of rocket piloted by Mickey and Minnie Mouse. Win a once-in-a-lifetime experience for the whole family. The woman must have gotten to know those faces in every intimate detail, the big smiles, the water spewing all around. The doors open and their whole span is suddenly filled by a new throng of travelers. The lovers on the wheelchair drink from one another’s glasses, in a tight knot of tangled arms and tattoos. Seeing more people emerge, the blond woman lifts her sign again. Did she just smile? I turn to look, but no one comes her way. She must think at every moment that she sees the face of the person she loves. The love of my life. The other woman kisses her man voluptuously on the mouth, leaving marks of lipstick on his face. Her mouth gleams with lipstick and champagne. He holds the empty bottle by the neck, letting it dangle alongside the chair.

  * * *

  SATE YOUR DESIRE. Our driver calls to say that he is at the arrivals lounge but cannot find us. Now I want to stay and see how it all turns out. The man in the wheelchair rolls himself vigorously with his big hands. His knuckles are tattooed and he wears black leather wristbands. His lover walks by his side, pulling a pink suitcase and caressing the back of his neck with her long fingernails. Our driver is here, flushed, embarrassed, dressed in a formal shirt and tie though his face is glistening and there are big sweat stains under his arms. He is one of those people who sweat profusely and smell strongly, and have a kind of soft, overripe skin. The lounge is nearly empty now and the doors remain closed. The happiness of the family in Disneyland Paris is as invulnerable as the perfect blue sky over Sleeping Beauty’s castle. The woman takes a few steps, holding her sign in one hand like a discredited banner. She looks at the doors, which no longer open, and then at the other set of doors leading outside. Our eyes meet for a moment, though I am sure she does not see me.

  SPEND AN EXTREME SUMMER WITH US. A prank played by five German teachers was mistaken for a terrorist attack and caused a man to go into cardiac arrest. The offending tourists had pretended to spot a celebrity on the promenade, yelling and waving selfie sticks and toy guns, which caused a stampede. The incident produced “horrible panic” among visitors spending their holidays at this Catalan seaside town. Eleven people had to receive medical attention for minor contusions and anxiety attacks. Emergency services received 178 calls reporting the alleged attack. Many claimed that guns were being fired. In seconds, panic seized hundreds of visitors walking on the promenade of Platja d’Aro.

  * * *

  SINISTER PRANKS SOW PANIC. Townspeople mistook the flash-mob performance for an attack involving firearms. Chairs and tables outside local bars were overturned during the panic. Some people were injured after falling to the ground as the crowd fled in all directions. People ran carrying children. Bags, cell phones, and all kinds of personal belongings were left behind in bars and restaurants. Police officers armed with assault rifles assumed strategic positions along the streets. It was shortly before ten o’clock and the streets were filled, as they usually are throughout August, with tourists looking to enjoy themse
lves in one of the Costa Brava’s foremost tourist destinations.

  * * *

  ACCORDING TO WITNESSES, EVERYTHING CHANGED IN A FEW SECONDS. Laura and Manolo, waiters at the Llevant restaurant, saw hundreds of people fleeing the promenade toward the main street of the town. Four hundred customers were dining at the restaurant, some inside and some at outdoor tables. In just a few seconds, they say, noises that sounded like gunshots and subsequent cries of “bomb, bomb” and “terrorist attack” unleashed a state of collective psychosis. Tables were overturned, dishes and drinking glasses shattered on the floor. Some customers fled down various streets, but most ran inside for cover. Some locked themselves in the bathroom, others went to the kitchen or to an inner courtyard. A young woman fainted and collapsed at the entrance of the Dino ice cream parlor. Large numbers of people came up from the beach yelling and crying. Women and children wept in a state of great anxiety. Similar scenes took place at the Sant Lluís pizza parlor. Its customers rushed out in a panic through doors and windows. The inside was littered with bags, phones, and other objects left behind by those who fled when they heard hundreds of people yelling, crying, and running through the streets. Ramón, a security guard, described the scene as follows: “I saw a frenzied father run out carrying three children in his arms; a woman in a wheelchair going so fast you wouldn’t believe it; a woman who snatched her child from the baby carriage and sprinted off.” Ramón adds: “Another woman fell down. She cut herself and started bleeding, but she kept running.” One of the waiters who lived through this bizarre incident says, “The best thing was how it ended, given how it might have turned out.”

  WHERE THE DAYS ARE NEVER THE SAME. I always bring with me my traveling office. My office of lost moments. Clippings, headlines, notebooks filled in pencil from the first page to the last, interleaved with old newspaper articles or brochures and glossy ads from fashion magazines: slogans, silhouettes, single words that I glue into the notebook like the illustrations in a book, sometimes on the cover, or wherever I can find a little space. Terrorist attack leaves eighty dead in Kabul. Scientists say humans and robots will one day fuse and become indistinguishable. I’ve set up my office in so many places that I can hardly keep track anymore, especially now, during this summer of borrowed rooms, hotels, keycards in my pocket. Child suicide bomber kills fifty at a Kurdish wedding in Turkey. Perhaps the act of wandering spurs the imagination. Without a home you live inside your notebook, attached only to the few objects you carry on your person. For a while my office was in an apartment in the neighborhood of Moratalaz, near El Retiro, where I could see from a window the tall buildings of the city center rising deceptively behind a thick expanse of trees, looking even more distant in the summer haze. Then for ten days the office moved without a hitch to a balcony in a hotel on a secluded bay in Mallorca. Everywhere it was the same office, succinctly deployed before me in the small space around my hands, enclosed in a circle of lamplight late into the night.

  * * *

  IF YOUR DREAMS HAVE NO LIMITS. Only the background changed, the view out the window, like a flickering movie still. An overcast sea with a string of lights tracing the contour of a bay in the distance. A view of locust trees seen from above, and of the cool canopy of shade they cast over a sidewalk in Madrid. An inner courtyard in Paris that was sunk all day in the same static gray light. At times the office has been quite minimal: a pencil, a notebook on my lap, the voice recorder on my cell phone as the number 20 bus climbed up and down on its way to the center of Madrid, toward a red evening sky that spread beyond the tall buildings on the Gran Vía and the Calle de Alcalá, with the terrace of the Círculo de Bellas Artes rising over the rooftops. Whenever the bus stopped I hurried to write down whatever words I overheard or could see through the window on an advertisement, knowing it would be impossible to write once we began to move again, to pick up speed and tumble up and down a hill. Are You a Nower? We Always Knew They’d Come Back. Collision Course, Now in 3D. Another time, I set up the office on a dining-room table facing a pair of sliding glass doors and an austere garden in Lisbon. The lamp stayed on till very late, through long, sleepless nights of silent work. Often it was lit at the very moment I reopened my eyes, still caught in an amphibious state between sleep and waking.

  * * *

  BREATHE NEW LIFE INTO YOUR SYSTEMS. What a relief it’s been to be unexpectedly without a home this summer. What a blessing in disguise. Not to have to sit each morning at the same old desk like a bureaucrat or a clerk, tired of my own work, of a vocation dangerously transformed into a lethargic routine. Not to be tied down to the ergonomic chair and the laptop screen, hemmed in by memories and books and photographs, everything I’ve collected, everything that simply gathered over the years out of sheer inertia, the thick sediments of a long employment. Now my office is just a notebook and a pencil, a pen, an inkstand, a sharpener, a pair of scissors and a glue stick, a folder with some clippings in it, a couple of pocketbooks. O livro do desassossego is bulkier than the rest, though the writing is so light, so clean in its precision and its fogginess that it seems devoid of weight. Now when I work I am no longer sitting motionless before a screen, dazed by its glare, the tips of my fingers gone numb from pressing on the keyboard. I work without working, moving from one place to the next. I work by dictating notes into my phone. I see a headline in a free newspaper that someone left behind on the counter of a bar and I tear out the page and put it in my pocket. The killer walked through the scene of the crime shooting people as in a violent video game. New sensors developed by scientists will one day allow humans to expand their senses. Goebbels’s secretary claims she was entirely ignorant of the Holocaust. Outside the door to the bar, a woman who stepped outside to smoke and to finish her beer begins to cough as she speaks into her phone in a cracked voice. “I asked you a question, and the fact you didn’t answer is an answer in itself.”

  * * *

  MY OFFICE IS ALWAYS WITH ME. This is not work, but a task. A task that I carry out wherever I go and whatever I do: sitting at a bar listening to other people’s conversations; hearing the rustle of palm trees from a hotel balcony in Mallorca; riding the Metro; carefully picking withered flowers off a thick jasmine bush in a garden in Lisbon. Late in the afternoon the stretch between Moratalaz and Cibeles on the number 20 bus feels like a grand journey. Work has a purpose, a direction, a beginning and an end. A task is fulfilled at every instant. It suffices unto itself and it seems to lack any particular direction, which is why it benefits from any chance accident that would have interfered with work. There is no setback that the task cannot turn into a fortuitous advantage. When you’re not there to perform it, the task continues on its own.

  WE HAVE EVERYTHING YOU NEED. For the last few days the office has been a table facing a garden. It might seem that I will be here forever, given how well suited the place is to my routines, but in fact I will probably never see it again after next Saturday. The house belongs to a stranger. I am an intruder or a guest in a place that has been shaped by someone else’s tastes for a life of which I am entirely ignorant. This doesn’t bother me at all. I feel fully at home and in a few days I’ll leave and there will be no trace that I was ever here. A dog, when it enters a room, examines various places, corners, cushions, before selecting with mysterious certainty the exact point where it will settle down and curl into itself. After a few different tries I finally decided to set up the office on this breakfast table facing the garden rather than in a more sheltered corner of the house where I found a desk with a lamp. It’s a big table, with a dark marble top as smooth and aseptic as a Mies van der Rohe. I can spread my notebooks, newspapers, clippings, and scissors on the surface and there is always room to spare. Each day it becomes less of a desk and more of a workbench. It stays pleasantly cool in the summer heat. The garden is small and can be seen in its entirety from where I sit. It’s graveled, with a few steps of dark wood that are as thick as roof beams. A heather screen divides it from the garden next door and there is fresh soil
along the perimeter as well as in the center, where a jasmine bush grows as thick as the crown of a tree. Stalks of bamboo rise higher than the walls. All you can see is the sky, as in a Japanese garden or in a walled courtyard in Granada’s Albaicín, places that are entirely closed off to the outside world, invisible, unknown to those who pass by on the street. The breeze makes a different sound in the jasmine bush than in the thicket of bamboo. Now and then the silence is broken by an airplane making its descent along the mouth of the Tagus. Other tiny planes glide in silence up above, at cruising altitude, leaving Europe to begin their journey over the Atlantic.

  * * *

  NOW IS THE MOMENT TO SEIZE THE MOMENT. The house is a recess of shade between two forms of brightness: the blinding glare of the windows facing the street—the Rua Nova de São Mamede, in Lisbon—and the soft inner light of the garden. Even the bedroom, which faces the street, is quiet and cool. Soundproof windows keep out all external noise when they’re closed and white shutters block the light of the sun except for a thin vertical stripe in the middle where the two panels meet; a bright, thin crack in the shade of the bedroom like a shaft of light coming into a chapel. In the morning the air in the darkened room is heavy with the warmth of sleeping bodies. In the quiet of the afternoon the eye gradually adjusts to a dim light that spreads through the room, casting its soft gleam on two embracing figures, shiny with sweat, intertwined simultaneously on the bed and deep inside the mirror that stands at its foot.