To Walk Alone in the Crowd

by Antonio Munoz Molina

  * * *

  IT TAKES YOU TO AMAZING PLACES. He wrote hurriedly, with a fountain pen, on the sheets of paper that Gretel Karplus sent him or on anything else he could find. An uncertain and fugitive existence had taught him to write anywhere, in a crowded café, a subway car, the movies, using the armrest as a support before the lights went out. “Do not allow a single thought to escape you unawares, and keep your notes as strictly as the authorities keep their registry of foreigners.” The more progress he made, the farther he was from an ending, since each new step unveiled uncharted possibilities that had to be pursued. If a particular book added to his knowledge and strengthened what he had already said, it forced him at the same time to revise passages that he thought were settled, and pointed to yet other books that he should find. As he wrote and read, he saw the richness of the work that opened gradually before him, but he became aware as well of the magnitude of the task he had begun, and of the time, the energy, the peace and quiet he would require to see it through. He was hobbled by ceaseless distractions, an article he had to write to earn a little money, filing forms to renew his refugee card or apply for nationality, the frequent need to change his address. He was disheartened as much as he was inspired by the profusion of materials involved, a maelstrom of names, ideas, and arguments that the work itself stirred up inside him and that never grew still. He could leave behind the dusty smell of the Bibliothèque Nationale, the tightly printed volumes from which he gathered facts about the nineteenth century, but once he set foot on the street there was no rest and no respite, since then it was the modern city that demanded his attention, surrounding him in even richer layers of materials to consider. He would go through bound sets of old magazines, gazing at lithographic illustrations and at advertisements for long-forgotten products, then go out and look intently at the signs over the shops and the cafés or at a color poster glued to the side of a streetcar.

  * * *

  THE IMPORTANCE OF LIGHT. He realized that, more than writing a book, he was assembling a collage made up of hundreds of pages of citations, fragments, sketches, drafts he had no time to develop. The further he went, the harder it became to order the materials he had gathered into an intelligible shape. Using a series of colored pencils, he devised an alphabetical system to classify his various subjects, which he then copied in his diminutive, meticulous handwriting, perhaps unaware that this attempt at clerical tidiness would nourish chaos instead of bringing it under control. Fashion, the catacombs of Paris, boredom, eternal return, cast-iron buildings, advertisements, the practice of collecting, architectural interiors, exhibitions, Baudelaire, imaginary cities, imaginary houses, dreams of the future, Jung, the theory of emotions, the theory of progress, prostitution, games of chance, mirrors, trains, conspiracies, painting, lighting technology, photography, dolls, automata. Then, bleary eyed, pushing his glasses up to his forehead, he goes over the column he just wrote, the thin vertical thread of capital letters, sliding his pen down the page like a clerk going over a sum. As time goes on and disaster approaches, as it grows harder to keep up his spirits and even to maintain his personal dignity, the project becomes more and more a matter of survival. “In this work I see the main if not the only reason not to lose courage in the struggle for existence.” Quite near the end he begins to lose hope: “Whether the book will ever be written is more doubtful than ever before.”

  II.

  MR. NOBODY

  I’m Nobody! Who are you?

  Are you—Nobody—too?

  —EMILY DICKINSON

  I, WHO HAVE BEEN SO MANY MEN. Opening his eyes in the dark, and hearing nothing but silence, he has no way of telling what city he is in or of guessing the time of day, the day of the week, the year, the period of his life. He has no name, at present, no face, and no biography. There is no clear boundary in his mind between sleep and waking, just as there is none between his shadowy limbs and the dark shapes of objects in the room or the very darkness of the air. He could be in Madrid, London, Paris, Lisbon. He could be waking up from a drunken stupor or an opium dream in a hovel crammed with manuscripts, books, and old newspapers, somewhere in Edinburgh; or on a tavern floor in Baltimore, his mouth pressed against the filthy boards, a thread of blood or spittle at the corner of his lips. He could be opening his eyes in a room with whitewashed walls inside a boardinghouse in Ibiza or in Portbou. As it grows brighter, it will be possible to tell if the sky in the window is a flat gray, which could mean Paris in winter or perhaps Berlin. When the first morning sounds become audible they will provide him with further clues. The scrape of a shovel on the sidewalk will reveal that he is in New York, where it snowed all night and the doormen are busy opening paths outside their buildings. Or he may hear the bell on the watchtower, and then the one that rings the hours in the cathedral, and almost simultaneously the low tones of the Chancery clock. Then he would be in Granada, in an old house somewhere in the Albaicín.

  * * *

  THE WAY YOU MOVE CAN SAY A LOT ABOUT YOU. Today he woke up before dawn because it is the day of the journey. He had set an alarm to be safe, but there was no need. Occasionally during the night he surfaced from sleep and glanced at the red numbers on the clock. Then he plunged back, never quite awake, sometimes picking up the thread of a dream that he will probably fail to remember later. He opened his eyes feeling very alert and saw gray strips of light between the shutters. Out on the street the day is breaking, but in the bedroom it is still night. He can tell how early it is primarily because of the silence: the same silence that lay all around him when he fell asleep, the same in which he now spends so much of his time. He lives surrounded by a portable booth of silence. He is enclosed in it when he goes out and he reenters it when he comes back to the apartment and draws the safety latch on the door. All the voices are left behind. The written voices, the ones he overhears in passing, even the ones that speak to him in dreams. The insidious voice that used to perch in his ear whispering a black virulence seems to have lost his scent, along with the circling shadow that was beginning to lurk around him again. Now he does know where he is, as well as the time and day, though he may only have the merest inkling yet of who he is. I, who have been so many men.

  * * *

  TRAVEL LIGHTER, GO FARTHER. He has fled into silence. He has taken refuge in silence and distance as in a monastery. He starts making breakfast, but he only turns on the radio when everything is on the table. The inner courtyard is still dark outside the kitchen window. On the building opposite, just two or three windows are lit on different floors. They have an intimate glow suggesting sheltered spaces, bedrooms tucked away in the back of apartments. One of them must be the one that casts the reddish glow he sees at night. He arranges everything as carefully as if he were sharing it with someone else. People who are alone but wish to preserve a certain decorum treat themselves with a kind of sleepwalking politeness. Before sitting down he tunes the radio to a local station and the hosts with their familiar voices seem to join him at the table like guests or companions. Their voices reach him with greater clarity because his mind is as quiet as the apartment itself: a clapping of hands in an empty room. He hears the British voices of the BBC presenters. He hears the voices of people speaking in English with various accents and varying degrees of difficulty as they give witness to disaster, telling in their native languages (while simultaneously translating) the torture or abuse or persecution they endured. In the early morning silence you can hear helicopter blades, the clamor of starving refugees in makeshift camps, the toxic slogans of the demagogues, and the drone of charlatans. The roar of a tempest, the cry of birds in a tropical swamp are broadcast on the BBC. When you’re alone you gain a strange intimacy with the voices on the radio, which are always the same, at the same time of day. It is as one-sided as an unrequited love, yet it is never painful, only melancholy.

  * * *

  ENJOY YOUR TRAVEL TIME. Today, aside from scrubbing and putting everything away after breakfast, he must make his preparations for the journey
. Over the past few days he has traced the route with great care. He has made sure as far ahead as possible that the weather will be favorable, or at least not adverse. This will be a genuine expedition, but there will be no taxicabs, no rush, no traffic jams, no documents to verify, no security lines, no bewilderment or distress. It will be a real, substantial journey, a voyage of discovery, but it will take place in the course of a few hours. De Quincey says that under the influence of opium he sometimes lived a thousand years in a single night. More modestly, and in complete sobriety, he hopes to traverse a handful of worlds. He knows that in the absence of artificial stimulants he can experience the lucid inebriation brought about by solitude and exercise.

  * * *

  EXPERIENCE THE SPELL. The weather forecast on the radio belies the glow of sunlight that begins to spread over the window. It will be colder than this sweet, deceitful light would promise, but there will be no wind, or at least not much. You have to look at the people down on the sidewalk, see how bundled up they are, the early risers taking a dog to the park or hurrying the other way toward the taxis and the subway stop. Provisions are just as important. According to the radio, the temperature at midday will allow him to sit outdoors on a bench somewhere and have a bite to eat. There are several rules to the trip, one of which is that he stop to rest only once, and neither at a restaurant nor a café, given that another rule forbids any purchase except in an emergency or on a sudden whim, abiding always by a principle of frugality. You are only allowed to eat what you bring, and if you procure anything it must be as a gift, in barter, or at most in passing, from a street stand, since all stops must be kept to a minimum. The food must be nourishing but easy to digest and carry. There can be frugality without meagerness, a delight in what is flavorful, nutritious, simple.

  * * *

  CONNECT WITH WHAT YOU REALLY LIKE. He prepares, for instance, two slices of rye toast with olive oil, tomatoes, a few slices of prosciutto from the deli, and a couple of scrambled eggs. Each egg, as he cracks the shell, reveals a yolk as yellow as a sun, the bright color of autumn pumpkins and of taxicabs. The smallest detail is deserving of the right attention. He is the traveler risen at dawn to get underway, turning on one of the first lights in a building that is otherwise in nearly complete darkness. A Zen master is asked, What is satori, the state of enlightenment?: “Chopping wood,” he says, “carrying water.” Pressing down on the sandwich, he wraps it in foil and places it inside his worn, supple satchel of dark leather, the one with all the buckles, along with a canteen, a bag of dried fruit, and a small bottle of wine. He wipes the table and the kitchen counter and he scrubs the dishes, putting everything back in its right place. Disorder will enter an empty house if it is given the merest crack of neglect. Setting out on the journey without first making the bed would be like carrying a dishonorable secret inside. He checks to make sure the laces of his boots are tight and that his feet are snug and comfortable. His phone is fully charged. He has his keys. In the right pocket of his coat there is a small spiral notebook and a pencil. He is wearing his round glasses and his bewildered face, and he has his satchel, with a pair of added shoulder straps to make it easier to carry on such a long journey.

  * * *

  FIND EVERYTHING YOU NEED. He must bring a book as well, since part of the trip will be on the subway. Choosing it will take a little time. It must be thin, not too large, and weighing almost nothing, pleasant to hold and to feel inside his coat pocket; a book that opens and closes like a fan, somewhat confidential or perhaps elusive, flowing like a piece of music or a long walk or resembling an object floating in midair; a book combining the factual nature of a guide or manual with the impudent secrecy of an intimate diary; full of blank spaces, some visible and some invisible; a book that seems posthumous even though its author is still alive, and whose voice is anonymous and at the same time unique, seeming as if freshly written although it was published a century or two ago; a book with a beginning and an end that nevertheless seems unfinished, resembling at the same time a hastily improvised draft and a concise inscription.

  * * *

  WIN AN ONLY-YOU EXPERIENCE. Before leaving the apartment he takes a last look around. He feels there should be a kind of consummate perfection or civility to one’s absence. A cautiousness as well: to leave, in a world of ceaseless, ubiquitous, invisible surveillance, as small a trace as possible. “He enters the woods without stirring a single leaf; he enters the water without causing the slightest ripple.” Perhaps at some point in the past he studied Taoism in some depth. He will aspire, perhaps simply out of indolence, to the exacting wisdom of doing-by-not-doing. The less of a mess you make, the less you or someone else will have to clean up. He will have taken care when showering to use the least possible amount of gel, shampoo, and water. He has swept the crumbs off the table. He has opened the window, which is quite bright already, to let the cold and slightly humid air of late winter into the room. Whenever he prepares to go out, he tries to see everything as others would if they came in during his absence; what they would see or find if he never returned. Whoever comes will find a few small signs and traces, but no trash. They will be able to settle in as nicely as those travelers in fairy tales who come to a house in the woods that’s perfectly arranged to receive them although no one is there. He wants to be conspicuous only in his absence.

  UNEXPECTED DREAMS. This morning you have to bundle up to be outside. A hooded coat, a wool cap with earflaps, a scarf, some gloves, a thick sweater, a good undershirt. Keeping the cold at bay when you plan to be outdoors for many hours requires a certain expertise, the taking of particular precautions. From the window, the new day glows with a treacherous light, a glare of early spring belied by people’s coats and hats, by their gestures as they walk down the street. He has wrapped in foil his hearty, juicy sandwich of olive oil, tomatoes, prosciutto, and freshly made scrambled eggs that give the bread a pleasant warmth. He has filled the canteen with water and a small plastic bottle halfway with red wine. He is also bringing some pistachios. Pistachios are an excellent way to replenish your strength as the hours pass and you start feeling weak. There is a sense of adventure to it all, a wealth of preparations, as at the start of an expedition.

  * * *

  SQUEEZE THE MOST OUT OF THE CITY. He believes that, whenever possible, it is better to go on foot to places that hold something precious that we wish to discover, something that cannot be found anywhere else and that is worthy of being honored by the effort of a walk. One need not go to extremes, like Catholic pilgrims crawling on their knees through stone and bramble to a miraculous shrine, or Buddhists lying prone, and getting up, and lying prone again for the entire length of their journey. Walking tones the body, oxygenates the brain, and predisposes the mind to a proper contemplation of the object one goes in search of. Thought and feeling are brought to order with every step. The body’s external motion propels as well the flow of words and of ideas. A friend of Baudelaire’s once said that he never saw him write a poem sitting down. He composed them as he walked, speaking quietly to himself. The rhythm of his verses was the rhythm of his steps. Montaigne paced back and forth in his round study, dictating to his secretary whatever came to mind, sometimes prompted by the spine of a random book on the shelves or by something he saw down in the courtyard or in a nearby field from the high casement of his tower.

  VENTURE INTO THE WORLD. It’s about eleven o’clock and he is walking up Broadway. Several hours remain to his journey. He wants to cover on foot the entire distance between the southern tip of the island and the house where Edgar Allan Poe once lived in the Bronx. He set off from South Ferry more than two hours ago, from the esplanade facing the mouth of the river at the southern end of the island. He pictured, as if it were an actual memory, Herman Melville as a boy, walking hand in hand with his father back when a forest of masts and rigging would have spread across the horizon. He saw the ocean crashing against poles where sailing ships once moored. He heard the horns of ferries coming over from Staten Isla
nd and of leisure boats packed with tourists heading out to the Statue of Liberty. Unnerving seagulls wailed and swung in the air above his head. Once, from this railing, he threw into the sea the core of an apple he had just eaten, and a seagull nearly grazed his head as it swept and plunged into the water to retrieve it, flapping and letting out shrill cries to ward off the other seagulls that wanted it too. He walked past the steps of the old Custom House that is now the National Museum of the American Indian. Herman Melville never knew this big, emphatic building with its marble and its statuary. He worked in a precarious shed-like structure by the river’s edge. He was taller and more serious than the other men around him, a kind of Boris Karloff with the beard of an Assyrian potentate.