In just a few hours, Walter will leave to travel very far away, not just because of those pressing reasons, but because he has lost interest in everything since Francesca, his beautiful Italian assistant, betrayed him with the dastardly Scraper. That betrayal has unhinged him and led him, during that final hour, to think that it is perfectly normal to talk and even argue — out loud in the dressing room and later on the stage — with Sansón the puppet.
Dramatically, but also obliquely, Walter continues telling his devoted audience the tale of a love cut short. And this is where he must rely on the help of his “good friend” Sansón, who, amidst riotous laughter from the stalls, pedantically corrects his owner on stage, doing what he can to get him to stick to the true version of events, something which Walter absolutely cannot do if he wants to avoid making a suicidal blunder.
A good portion of the public — a full house — still hasn’t worked out what is really going on, but finally realizes what the other half of the stalls has: that the ventriloquist is acting out, live on stage, a highly dramatic and true fragment of his life — a fragment that is happening as it is being performed. At this point, this other half joins forces with the section of the audience that has already caught on to the unfolding drama, and the whole theater erupts in paroxysms of alternating, and even combined, laughter and tears.
“Your madness,” Sansón reminds him in a very theatrical voice, “began back when you were kind and loving toward Francesca, back when you spoke to her in my voice, do you hear me? In my voice, not yours. Because whenever you spoke to her as you, it was in an artificial language which sounded unbearably aggressive.”
“Aggressive? Me?” he replies in such a rage that the audience can’t hold back its laughter.
“It was hard for Francesca to be treated so well by me and, on the other hand, to be so despised by you. That’s why the relationship fell apart. Also, because you were constantly accusing her of neglecting the dressing room, your costumes, the boxes where you keep us, your puppets.”
“That’s not quite true, Sansón. You’re upsetting the audience. . . .”
“And then you blamed her for your own professional decline, which was totally unfair. That really was the limit. And she grew tired of it, Walter, she grew tired of it and she left you for another man. You lost her, which doesn’t surprise me in the least. You with your whip and your crazy talk, telling her that we puppets were sleeping badly because she didn’t look after us properly.”
“Francesca didn’t leave me, she didn’t walk out,” Walter tries to argue, ever more animated and desperate. “I sacked her! She was a lousy assistant. She realized it was better to go, go, GO! And in the end she slipped away among the spun-glass shadows of the dressing room.”
“There were no spun-glass shadows in the dressing room,” Sansón corrects him.
The whole theater laughs.
And in a desperate, foolish attempt to turn his public’s laughter into heartfelt sobs, Walter sings two verses of the song that he sang a few hours earlier to Francesca and the Scraper, having caught them in the middle of a performance in a cabaret in the south of Lisbon, and then learned that they were due to be married: “Don’t marry her, she’s already been kissed./Kissed by her lover, back when he loved her.”
As he sings the song, visibly strained and upset, his voice cracks again, and everyone in the audience roars with laughter. It’s neither a squeak nor quite a note, but rather a desperate, ridiculous warble, an anguished, deranged yelp, which sets part of the audience off again into uncontrollable fits of hysterics.
Not long afterward, and arguably motivated by his audience’s cruelty, Walter decides to delay no longer and to bid farewell to his “distinguished public,” on behalf of both himself and Sansón,
Sansón rebels, adding a few words of his own at the last minute, before he and his owner leave the stage:
“Pronounced murderous tendencies,” he says, as if wanting to denounce his lord and master.
Just then, as he retreats, Walter gets the feeling that the small dagger tied to a band worn around his ankle — which, until a moment ago, had been concealed in the tip of the Javan sunshade — is peeping out from the folds of his tunic. But he is comforted by the thought that nobody in the audience, not even the most overactive imagination in the stalls, could suspect that the dagger contains traces of lethal cyanide.
11
I’ve noticed lately that the things that happen to me seem far more narratable than before I started writing this diary, when I was merely submerged in the eternal monotony of the real and, more specifically, in the tedious maelstrom of the construction world, in the day-to-day of business, always glumly marooned on the gray plains of the quotidian.
Today, for example, something happened to me which I knew at once would end up in this diary. It had nothing to do with the theme of repetition, which is perhaps why it pleased me even more, because it allowed me to distance myself from that obsessive topic and, for a few moments, to step outside and breathe, although the mere fact of breathing, of course, meant that I was repeating myself.
It occurred next to the newsstand where I buy my daily paper, and whose shining star, with her charm and physical exuberance, is its delightful owner. Things were jogging along with reassuring normality, when I was astonished to see someone heading straight toward me, hand outstretched, an individual with very square features — a Cubist pedestrian, I thought at once — a gentleman with motley-colored skin on his arms, and as ugly as sin.
I felt a slight shiver of disgust when I shook the monster’s hand — his tattooed hand — but what else could I do; refusing to do so would have made things very awkward.
“I’m so pleased to meet you in the flesh at last,” the square-featured pedestrian went on. “And I was equally pleased to see you on television yesterday.”
As far as I know, I’ve never been on television, ever, and so it seemed to me that the man with the tattooed hand must be mistaken, or possibly crazy.
“You were very good,” he insisted. “And I felt very proud. After all, we studied together with the Jesuits. The name’s Boluda.”
I was initially taken in by that surname, because I’ve been looking for a schoolfriend of mine by that name for the last forty years. Then I realized it was unlikely, not to say impossible, that this fellow — his physical appearance ruled him out — that he could possibly be the one I was looking for, although perhaps — there were a lot of Boludas at the school — he was his brother or his cousin.
The square-featured pedestrian began to list the more charismatic priests and teachers, which was proof that he really had studied alongside me and that his single — forgivable — error was to think that I had appeared on television.
I actually began to feel pleased to have bumped into him, realizing it was an opportunity — a rare one — to compare with someone else the real force of certain emotions from another time in my life.
Did I remember Father Corral? Boluda’s question allowed me to expand on my own memories of that misunderstood teacher who used to recite medieval poems to us in class. And when, shortly afterward, the name of Father Guevara was mentioned, I immediately associated it with the priest who used to molest us boys and who committed suicide one misty morning by hurling himself into the playground from the roof of that sordid building. . . . There was much to be said about that murky episode, but Boluda preferred to turn the page on it as soon as possible and, somewhat nervously, recalled Father Benítez, the most human of our priests. He was the only one who had been a ladies’ man before joining the staff, and was always very suntanned, as well as being a hard taskmaster in gym classes.
Of course I remembered him. I was becoming more and more animated, but Boluda didn’t share in my excitement, and I soon found out the sad reason behind this: Father Benítez had always tried to ridicule and feminize him in front of the other boys, saying in one gym class
that he looked like a boy straight out of a Murillo painting.
How odd, I said to myself, because it seemed to me that Boluda’s features could never have been delicate enough for anyone to think he resembled one of Murillo’s little angels.
Something wasn’t right, and things took a turn for the worse when I discovered that the Cubist pedestrian had been a whole five years below me, and I had, therefore, never seen him before in my life, because I never took any notice of the younger boys at school.
I became indignant, although, at first, I said nothing. If he had told me this to start with, I wouldn’t have wasted my time on him. I felt truly pissed off, furious, and, finally, could contain myself no longer — anything to do with my sacred memories of school has always been very close to my heart — and I reproached him with having been so ambiguous and allowing me to believe, falsely, that we had once been classmates. How dare he waste my time like that, especially when he was so ugly.
So what? he asked incredulously. So fat and so ugly, I said or repeated. Unperturbed, he asked if I considered myself to be exactly sylphlike — that’s the word he used — and if I really believed that no one noticed that I had half my brain missing.
Half my brain? Was he really so upset that I’d called him “ugly?” “Yes, half your brain,” he said, “it was blindingly obvious on television yesterday when you claimed that we had now emerged from the crisis.”
“What television, and what crisis and what kind of Boluda are you?” I felt obliged to ask.
Impassive, yet persistent, he then asked if it didn’t bother me to be caught lying on television. Because it seemed to him, he said, that he, too, had the right to introduce a few falsehoods into what he was telling me, which is why, for example, he had implied that I was fat when I wasn’t, although it was true that I could hardly describe myself as skinny either.
“Do you genuinely think,” he said, raising his voice, “that you are the only one who has the right to lie, you little rich kid?”
Little rich kid?
Had the class struggle finally reached Coyote?
“Do you remember,” I said, “how we used to call Father Corral ‘Chicken’?”
He was so enraged now, so angry, that he marched off, taking the rapid strides of a callow youth, leaving me with those words on my lips, feeling astonished, almost stunned, stranded somewhere beyond the newsstand and real life.
“Chicken!” I yelled after him, in a last-ditch attempt to wound and humiliate him.
But he had already turned the corner and left only a kind of trace in the air, the trace of a square-featured, I’d say Cubist man.
[Whoroscope 11]
“An opportunity to speed up matters favorable to the family and the home, doubtless thanks to improved communication.”
It’s as if Peggy Day were telling me: “Turn your eyes homeward, to home sweet home, and leave me in peace, Mac.”
Goddamned horoscope!
&
I discovered in La Súbita bookstore — or rather in the nightmare from which I’ve just awoken — that Peggy Day had published a personal diary of some seven thousand pages: philosophical notes, vivid descriptions of a day in the country, sketches of stories, descriptions of real people, details of her family circle, things that happened to her in the street, concerns about her health, growing anxieties about the future, the tormented prose of an insomniac, idle meanderings, all kinds of memories — none of which involved me — travel stories, even baseball commentaries (this last must have shocked me out of my slumbers).
12
“The Whole Theater Laughs” is a story I could read many times over without growing tired of it, because, apart from its obligatory “dizzy spell” — the one in this story, as dense as they come, is especially galling — it contains an appealing invitation to the reader to make a once-in-a-lifetime decision and run away.
Such escapes are always tempting and one never wants to give up on the idea entirely, even though, when it comes down to it, we always end up back where we started, having chosen the tranquility of the dull old city we’ve always called home. But if we can still find something to smile about, it’s because we know that, however late in the game it might be, we do still have the option to drop everything and leave it all behind.
This doesn’t mean that I myself wouldn’t prefer an altogether less scandalous, very different kind of goodbye. I once read something about the tradition of the sans adieu, an expression which translates into eighteenth-century colloquial Spanish as “to take French leave” and which, to this day, is used to reproach someone who goes off without saying goodbye, without a word. It might seem that taking one’s leave in this way is poor form, but, in fact, leaving a gathering without saying goodbye to anyone is far more refined and proper. Perhaps I see it this way because I still remember the days when, having drunk rather more than I should, I would do the rounds of the other guests, trying to say goodbye to absolutely everyone, when really I would have done far better to slip away and not let so many people witness me in that terrible state.
The sans adieu was fashionable throughout the eighteenth century in French high society, when, at soirées, it became customary to leave without bidding the salon farewell, without even saying goodnight to one’s hosts. Indeed, this habit came to be so accepted that actually saying goodbye was deemed ill-mannered. It was perfectly acceptable if, for example, a fellow guest began making it clear that he was impatient to leave, but much frowned upon if that same guest said goodnight when he did finally leave.
To “exit stage left” seems to me the most elegant way of leaving — just as Walter did in Lisbon, for example — because leaving without going through all the usual motions only speaks of our immense pleasure at being with our present companions, whom we fully intend to see again. To put it another way, we leave without saying a word, because to say goodbye would be a sign of displeasure and estrangement. All of this has led me, inevitably, to think about my abrupt disappearance from Juanita Lopesbaño’s life. That was a very dirty trick to play on her. But there would be little point now, forty years after my sudden departure, in telling her that the reason I didn’t bother to say goodbye was so that she wouldn’t confuse my farewell with a sign of displeasure and estrangement. No, there wouldn’t be much point in that. And besides, I’m sure she wouldn’t believe me. Why would she when I scarcely believe it myself, fully aware as I am that, back then, I was completely oblivious to the subtleties of the sans adieu? I left with no idea why I was leaving, driven by a vague, impulsive instinct, perhaps by an overwhelming urge simply to leave.
“The Whole Theater Laughs” is, in effect, a story that I could read over and again without growing tired of it, because it also has the advantage of containing the whole of Lisbon. I love the tragic climate that Sánchez creates around Walter’s great goodbye. And I also love how the story’s climate of crime and fate is set in Lisbon, a city made for such things. I remember a friend saying that you had to see Lisbon in its entirety, at the first light of day, and then you would weep. And someone else, another friend, said the complete opposite: that you had to take in the whole of Lisbon in the time it takes for the faintest of smiles to fade, as you catch the sun’s final fleeting glow on Rua da Prata.
It happened to me, and I know it’s happened to others: the first time I went to Lisbon, I had the feeling that I’d lived there before; I didn’t know when, and it made no sense, but I felt that I’d been in that city before ever having been there.
“Lisbon is for living, and for killing,” the voice says.
I hardly need explain: it’s the voice of the dead man lodged in my head.
[Whoroscope 12]
A little early-evening prose: After a long stroll in and around the neighborhood — having gone beyond what you could reasonably call the Coyote district — I arrived home exhausted and, in keeping with an old habit, I mentally lit my pipe. In other words,
as my mother would say, I “lit the fire in my mind,” and I thought for a while about my old desire to leave one day and go somewhere far away, and also about my near-constant resolve to stop this diary from turning into a novel.
After this, I had a couple of drinks and began weighing the pros and cons of reading my horoscope. In the end, I decided to go and see what Juanita had written on that damn page of hers. But, just as I was about to do so, there appeared in my inbox a reply to my email of the other day. It goes without saying that I wasn’t expecting it. And what I found was a rather cheery, frivolous, perhaps mocking, and certainly disconcerting postcard-style text: “Weather divine. Everything perfect. An awful lot of far niente and hula-hooping. And a little surfing. Ciao, stupid.”
I understand it, but not entirely, why deny it? It upset me, offended me. I could have just laughed it off, but she caught me at a sensitive moment, and with a few drinks inside me.
Before collapsing onto the bed, I had just enough time to reply to Peggy and ask her, if she would be so kind, to tell me, in advance, what was going to happen to me tomorrow. My request was perfectly polite, but it’s also true that I’m not quite myself at the moment, so now I’m very much afraid that . . .
(Figurative collapse)
&
Sometimes I picture myself leaving.
When this happens, in my mind’s eye I become a seasoned traveler heading off to somewhere resembling the end of the world, a dapper sort in a well-cut jacket, the pockets of which, however, are wearing increasingly thin, perhaps because they hold his true identity: that of a vagabond.
This other I occasionally thinks about Sánchez’s intriguing nephew, whom he hasn’t seen since their last meeting, but who made a deep impression on him. And he comes to some unusual conclusions: it seems to him that if he were forced to choose between the resentful nephew and Sánchez himself, he would choose the former, because the former still hasn’t written anything. What’s more, of the two, the nephew — while hardly a paragon of virtue from a moral point of view — is clearly the only one who could, at this point, possibly reveal himself to be a literary genius, because his nonexistent career at least allows for this possibility, if only because he still hasn’t written anything, whereas his uncle, while showing some merit, has already racked up a fair number of missteps and some impressive own goals.
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