I have often wondered whether I would have the courage to leave behind my home and my loved ones if I were to find myself in circumstances such as those of Pablo Gajardo or if on the contrary, terrified, I would opt for ruin and anguish rather than separating myself from everything that had been my life up to that moment. The story of Brandon Moy is even more exceptional; in his case there had been no clear threat or dangerous situation, just an indeterminate sadness. At forty, or at other less rocky ages, I had felt, as does almost everyone, a desire to completely change my life, to leave Madrid for a distant, faraway city, to find a new job where I could start to learn different things, or to separate myself from my circle of dependable friends, because although I loved them, they shackled me to tarnished, tiresome customs. I never did it, though. At the last minute, I lacked the courage or the determination. I stopped to reflect, as though it were a metaphysical question, on the fact that when we live in a certain way, we stop living in other, different ways, and when we choose a place, we are unable to imagine what might have happened to us in another place. I never knew whether the apprehension or the spinelessness that forced me to remain in Madrid every time an opportunity to leave presented itself would have melted away in circumstances like those that Pablo Gajardo or Brandon Moy experienced. Perhaps each one of us has a crossroads where it’s possible for us to peremptorily separate ourselves from everything we possess. Even our memories.
That day, Moy, just like Pablo Gajardo, walked away without stopping. He passed through the streets, trying to escape the clamor and turmoil, and left Manhattan, crossing the Williamsburg Bridge on foot. Without looking back, he marched through Brooklyn, across parks, avenues, and highways, and finally arrived at a secluded place from which, despite the darkness of the night, he could still see the seared New York sky in the distance. Sitting on a slope, he took stock of his belongings—four one-hundred-dollar bills, a laptop, a watch, and a fountain pen. He couldn’t use his credit cards, because the financial trail would give him away. He dug a hole with his hands and buried all his personal documentation right there—cards, driver’s license, and the membership cards for all the clubs and associations he belonged to. The only thing he kept from his past life was a small photo of his son, Brent.
Then he examined his clothes, which were stained with the dust of the Manhattan air and, on one side of his jacket, with blood. He blotted the blood with sandstone to make it disappear. Then he took off all his clothes and shook every item. He checked them meticulously, and when he was sure they had regained a reasonably elegant appearance, he got dressed again. He didn’t have a mirror to look at himself, but he thought that as he now appeared, he would not be taken for a tramp or a mugger.
He was very hungry and frozen to the bone, but he fell asleep in the shelter of a small cave. He recalls that he felt no remorse that night for what he had just done. His wife and his child would mourn and be brokenhearted with grief for a time, but they would soon end up finding other paths and recovering their spirits. In a few months, that hellish night would have been forgotten, and all that would remain of him would be a melancholy shadow. Moy closed his eyes and, aghast, could still see images of men with missing limbs and faces scorched by the fire. Adriana’s saturnine eyes, however, did not appear in his nightmares.
The following years of Brandon Moy’s life were passionate and intoxicating but would not deserve any literary mention if they had not begun with that feigned, theatrical death. On September 12, while the whole world remained dumbstruck with terror, Moy hitchhiked to Boston, climbing into truck trailers. His head was swarming with thoughts that intertwined and tangled together, thoughts about the disaster, sad memories of the family he had abandoned, and euphoria at the life that, for the first time in so long, lay ahead of him. Images of his son and of naked women mingled in his mind. He felt remorse, and then, an instant later, elation. At the corner of his mouth, a small sore began to develop, a fever blister, and at midmorning he suffered a dizzy spell that forced him to lie down on the shoulder of the highway, dearly hoping someone would pick him up.
One of the drivers who gave him a lift to Boston wanted to talk, affably, about the attacks, but Moy remained silent.
“Ten thousand dead. Or twenty thousand, who knows. Have you ever been to New York?”
“Yes,” replied Moy between his teeth, “I was there once a long time ago.”
“Did you go up to the top of the towers? They say you get an impressive view of the city.”
“I never went up. I don’t like heights, I get vertigo.”
“You’ve got to be a real son of a bitch to have done what they did,” the man said. “There could be up to thirty thousand dead.”
Moy was looking rudely out the car window, ignoring him. Despite the fact that the tragedy had occurred many miles away, there was a gray, leaden air on the sides of the highway, a devastated, arid landscape. The motel and road signs seemed discolored, like signs in places that have had their glory days and then fallen into decrepitude and ruin.
“My wife wanted us to go to New York,” continued the man as he drove. “She wanted to go to Tiffany’s and have a burger in Times Square. But now, after the massacre, she doesn’t feel like it anymore. I, on the other hand, wanna go more than ever. I’m not gonna give those sons of bitches the pleasure of my fear. You know what I think?” he asked, continuing to look straight ahead. “It’s time we all go to New York. Tomorrow, this week. All the Americans in New York, everyone at the top of the Empire State Building. So they get how great this country is.”
They stopped to have lunch at a roadside restaurant, and Moy let the man pay for him. His old car, unfashionable clothes, and lack of refinement revealed that he was a humble workingman, but Moy, despite his thousand-dollar suit and his manicured nails, no longer had the option of acting in a dignified manner. Two days earlier he would have been thoroughly ashamed at the situation, but at that moment he felt unperturbed.
“They stole everything,” he lied, to justify his poverty. “They took my money, my papers, and my cell phone.”
“They left you your briefcase,” the man said, pointing at Moy’s attaché. He blushed, thinking the man had worked out his lie. He carried on eating in silence, his gaze lost in the window. The man took out his wallet and looked inside it.
“I can lend you twenty dollars. I don’t have any more than that.”
Moy, with his mouth full, took the bill and stuffed it into the pocket of his pants. He did the math quickly—now he had four hundred and twenty dollars.
It’s difficult to imagine how it must feel for such a man to lose everything, even if it is of his own doing. A forty-year-old man who has been affluent his whole life, with a large house full of prized objects, a man who is used to having a glass of whisky before dinner and buying himself new shirts every six months, who has shared his daily life with the same woman for years, and who has devoted most of his free time to rearing his son. Those of you who try to put yourselves in that situation with your own lives will, with good reason, come to imagine that you would miss your books, your clothes, meeting up with friends, the comfort of your bed or sofa, those lazy moments in front of the television, the familiar city streets, and above all, the affection of those you love. Moy himself thought that. In the first few moments, when he was leaving New York with the intention never to return, he thought that he wouldn’t be able to live without Adriana’s company, without being able to embrace Brent every night when putting him to bed. He thought he wouldn’t get used to eating cheap food and drinking low-quality alcohol. He thought he would miss the swimming pool he went to every Monday and the fruit store on his street, where he would stop to talk about baseball with the clerk while picking out apples or strawberries. He thought he would even regret having given up his job, the meetings with clients, and others with the board of directors in which they dealt with the most tiresome matters. He remembered his old saxophone, the collection
of jazz records he used to listen to at night when he stayed up working alone, the hammock they hung up in summer on the porch of the Long Island house, and the hourglass he had on his office desk and would sometimes flip over to watch the grains run vertically through its neck. In his ruminations, he was aware of everything important in his life and all those things that were unimportant but had ended up becoming a very personal, categorical form of conduct. What disturbed him most, however, was not any of that but instead a revered social ritual—hygiene. He was less tempted to return to New York to kiss Adriana than to take a bubble bath and put on clean clothes. From the second day, he couldn’t stand the humid, sticky sensation of his skin, which adhered clammily to his clothes around his armpits, on his back, and on his feet. He often went into public restrooms, wetted a handkerchief in the sink, and locked himself in a stall in order to strip off his clothes and wash himself, slowly but surely. Even when he was able to take a shower, in the motel where he spent the second night, he continued experiencing the same unpleasant feeling of griminess; his clothes, impregnated with sweat and the filth of life on the street, immediately soiled him again. He took toothpicks from a bar to remove the dirt from under his nails and stole two pairs of socks from a department store, figuring he could squirrel them away without being seen. Often his thoughts wandered to the products in his bathroom in Manhattan: the syrupy gels, the moisturizers, the shampoos, the toothpaste, the colognes. In those moments—and he would later feel remorse as a result—he felt more nostalgia for the warm water faucet than for the affection of his son Brent.
Moy believed during that time, like the romantic poets, that through suffering one could also attain fulfillment. Or, worse still, that only that which is nurtured by torment can be experienced with passion. In truth, he had left New York looking for just that—the razor’s edge along which to walk, the unfathomable danger that would turn his life into an adventure. That’s why he spent those first few days happy, despite the hardship. In the cold that froze him during the nights as he walked the streets, or in his utter aloneness, without family or friends, he believed he found the essence of life, or at least one of its most poignant roots. And in fact there was some truth in that, because Moy, separated in one fell swoop from everything that had guided his existence until that moment, once again observed the world with the stupefaction and thirst of youth. Just as when we go to another city for a long vacation, we regain the vigor and passion that routine had been insidiously lulling to sleep and we rediscover tastes, pleasures, or predispositions we had forgotten and seem new to us, Moy found over the course of those days the scent of desires, ambitions, and curiosity that had disappeared from his thoughts long ago. He began speculating again, for example about the existence of God, which was a subject that had completely stopped concerning him at the age of sixteen, when he lost his religious faith after the death of one of his grandfathers. He rediscovered the enjoyment to be had in walking down the streets of a place, like Boston, that was new to him, and in staring shamelessly at women, aware that if they responded to the gesture, he could approach them and make a pass.
“In Boston, I learned that life is a contradiction of itself,” he told me years later in one of those brotherly conversations we used to have in the bars of Madrid. “I realized that nothing we do makes sense, and that despite that, we still wanna keep doing it. I realized that it’s the silliest things that make us the happiest.”
Brandon Moy had met the author Paul Auster one day in New York and knew from reading one of his books and from the biographical stories published about him in literary journals that as a young man he had worked as a sailor on an oil tanker and had then spent three years living in Paris, “in a tiny chambre de bonne on the sixth floor, barely large enough to hold a bed, a desk, and a chair,” as the author said in The Invention of Solitude. Despite belonging to a bourgeois family and the fact that he could therefore have had a pleasant life in his own city, had access to comfortable, well-paid jobs, or even asked his father for financial help to spend some time in Europe living the life of a bohemian but without privation, Auster decided to seek out physical asceticism and poverty, to go up against real life. Moy considered that this attitude had shaped not only his character but also his artistic genius. He was convinced that in order to arrive at an understanding of the depths of the human soul, one had to descend into hell, endure hardship, and have one’s illusions shattered. He therefore tackled his new situation with a certain sense of joy, as if instead of tolerating a punishment, he were receiving a reward.
In the first few days, while the country was still shuddering from the tragedy of the towers, Moy began to walk the streets of Boston in search of a job that would enable him to pay for food and rent a room until he could get his new life in order. He didn’t want to read the newspapers or watch the news on television, and he tried to avoid conversations in the street in which people talked about the catastrophe of the towers; his spirit was not yet ready to learn anything about his own death. At mid afternoon on the third day, he saw a sign in the window of a downtown coffee shop, advertizing a position for a waiter. He dusted off his clothes, ran his fingers through his hair, sniffed his armpits, which he had just washed in the restroom of another establishment, and went in to put himself forward for the job. The manager examined his appearance with suspicion; Moy was neither dressed in the way that candidates for the post usually were, nor was he of the usual age, and he asked him several questions about his experience. Moy lied with a naturalness that surprised even himself. He told a sad story—desertion by his wife and a mugging—and made up previous jobs in restaurants in Pittsburgh and New York. Then the manager spoke to him about the Twin Towers and the curse of Islamic fundamentalism. Moy went along with him, struck up a rapport, and got the job, in which his salary would consist only of the tips he collected.
“What’s your name?” the man asked.
Moy turned pale. Although he was aware that in order to return to life he would have to completely change his identity, he had not planned anything in that regard. He stuttered and delved into his memory for a face to which he could tie his future.
“Albert,” he replied hastily. “Albert.”
“Albert what? I need to know who I’m hiring.”
Moy stuttered again. He knew he couldn’t call himself Albert Fergus, because that thread, in time, could easily become a rope.
“Tracy,” he said, in a flash of revelation. “Like Spencer Tracy.”
The manager treated him to a hot cup of coffee and a piece of cake, which Moy tried to eat while at the same time disguising his hunger. That day, when he left there, he had to steal. He needed to get a thorough wash and buy some casual clothes, some jeans, a T-shirt, and a warm sweater, in order to present himself the following day at the coffee shop. He walked until he reached a quiet neighborhood, and on one of those silent streets lined with gardens and low-rise houses one finds in Boston, he waited for a victim. He had never committed a crime in his life, other than traffic offences and the odd small-scale tax dodge, but he knew he had to do it. It was not only necessary in order to get his new life on track financially but also formed one more link in the chain of experience he wanted to possess. He was certain that Fergus had stolen something at some point, and it was even possible that he had been arrested and spent a while in prison. These thoughts, which appeared abruptly in his head, paralyzed him. The idea of being arrested and returning to New York in disgrace for having committed a crime, which would make him lose the esteem of his son as well as his own dignity, frightened him. He suddenly realized that what he was doing was absolute madness. He could be in his house in Manhattan, comfortably sharing dinner with Adriana and watching the news about the havoc caused by the terrorists, but instead he was on a dark street in Boston, lying in wait to mug an unsuspecting passerby. He felt a veil being lifted from his eyes and the entanglement of his existential theories waning. He started walking away, and when he reached a bus
ier area, he looked for a telephone booth from which he could call Adriana to tell her he was still alive and that he would go home immediately. He spent a few minutes concocting a plausible story to explain his disappearance to her. In the end he decided he would use the excuse of amnesia—he couldn’t remember anything, he didn’t know how he had survived the attack or how he had ended up in Boston. Until a few moments ago, he didn’t even remember who he was, his name, or where he lived; he had spent the last few days living like a beggar, but now, all of a sudden, his memories had come back. He would tell Adriana that he loved her and that he was longing to get back to her. In a faltering voice, he would ask about Brent and would then effortlessly burst into tears so that she would be in no doubt that what he was saying was true. Although, in reality, nobody would ever believe it wasn’t; who would ever think that Moy had faked his own death in order to walk away from his peaceful, comfortable life? Who would ever suspect that he would give up his son and his wealth in order to experience the ordeal of being a wayfarer? It was such nonsense and so irrational that no levelheaded person would be able to make any sense of it.
Moy remembers that he even got as far as taking a coin out of his pocket and walking up to the telephone booth. At that moment, everything could have come to an end, but as he picked up the receiver, he saw an older woman on the other side of the road, walking toward him very slowly, and limping. She carried a large bag awkwardly under her arm. Moy waited a few seconds until the woman’s position was even with his, and then, without further thought, his nerves suffocating him, he stepped out of the booth, grabbed one end of the bag, and ran, taking huge strides until he was out of sight. He didn’t hear the woman shout or sense people running after him, but he still did not stop. Only when he arrived at a deserted spot that must have been on the outskirts of Boston did he sit on the ground to rest, gasping for breath. He was no longer thinking about Adriana or Brent but rather about the euphoria he’d felt while escaping, about the feverish excitement that had coursed through his body when he’d snatched the bag from the woman’s arms. He could still feel the current of adrenaline in his muscles, a sort of tingling sensation. His legs were trembling, and his lips were stiff and dry. After a few moments he realized he still had the coin he had been going to use in the telephone booth to call Adriana, in his left hand, which was balled into a fist. He never got rid of it. Like millionaires who keep their first dollar, Moy saved that coin so that it would bring him luck, although for a long time he was unsure what his luck might entail.
The Same City Page 3