At the same time, I’m adamant that this Faulknerian epigraph will bear no relation to the plot of “I Had an Enemy”; I mustn’t forget that I’ve always longed to demystify the assumed significance of epigraphs, and to follow in the footsteps of Alberto Savinio, for instance, who began his book Maupassant e “l’altro” with a line by Nietzsche: “Maupassant, a true Roman.”
“Maupassant, a true Roman.” I repeat it to myself now for the sheer pleasure of saying it. The number of times I’ve returned to that line, and yet I have always read it in the same way, however often I repeat it. I see Nietzsche’s definition as illuminating the figure of Maupassant, but, as Savinio himself said in a footnote, he does so by bathing him in the light of the absurd; he illuminates him so much more clearly because we can’t be sure what Nietzsche meant by calling Maupassant a Roman, and perhaps, as is often the case with Nietzsche, he didn’t mean anything at all.
And so, if one day I decided to rewrite “I Had an Enemy,” Faulkner’s epigraph would bear no relation to the story itself, but instead would make its own way, would travel on alone, unconnected to anything, basking in a great unconnectedness, like a ghost plane in the skies over Chile.
As to how much I would preserve of Sánchez’s “I Had an Enemy,” one thing I know I would keep is the skeleton of the subplot in which the gratuitous antagonist heaps odium on the object of his hatred, that story so strangely comparable to Julio’s hatred of his uncle. I would also hold on to the part about how the owner of that voice — who in Sánchez’s story does a fairly good job of imitating John Cheever — is desperate to stop drinking. This would simultaneously preserve and modify Walter’s character, who would then have an additional enemy in himself and his boundless egoism. Indeed, his egoism was the main criticism leveled at him by his primary enemy — I’d call him Pedro, as he is in the original — that egoism which led him to talk constantly about himself and is the real reason behind his lack of different voices for his dummies. However, for this primary enemy, Pedro, I would take my inspiration from the tremendous egoism and vanity that I’ve observed in Julio, who, despite showing the occasional glimmer of genuine talent, is actually the classic raving lunatic who goes around accusing others of having what are, in fact, his own flaws.
If, some day, I were to rewrite “I Had an Enemy,” I would describe a night when the ventriloquist finally came up with an effective way of solving the problem of having only one voice: the realization that what constrained him were his antagonist’s constant attacks on him, thus forcing him to rely on his one voice, to cling steadfastly to what he did on stage and in his private life, and to dig in his heels still harder in that ongoing battle.
One night, all of this would come to a head. There would be a backstreet encounter, and, after some illegal shenanigans, Pedro would win a trip to the South Seas in an unofficial lottery run by the local church. And once Pedro had left, Walter would ease up on his tactic of defensive egocentrism. There would be less need to defend himself, and he would begin to relax, shake off his old self, his infuriatingly singular voice, “the voice that writers so yearn to find,” becoming, from that moment on, the various voices in which he would go on to tell the remaining nine stories.
And so I would give Walter what I imagined to be Sánchez’s personality, while Pedro the enemy would take on the difficult and ultimately mean-spirited character of Julio.
In the final lines of “I Had an Enemy,” Walter would feel very satisfied with his role as a full-time ventriloquist, and very happy at last to be so many other people, and not himself. Walter would be a mixture of Sánchez and Julio, with a touch of my own discreet, humble nature, plus he would have a few of the inflexible, tiresome characteristics of some of his dummies. Walter would wear jackets with padded shoulders, white shirts (for a quick getaway when the time came), and a bamboo cane concealing a Javan sunshade.
But the reader would only learn all this at the end of that first story, because at the beginning of the second one, “The Duel of Grimaces,” there would be no trace in Walter of the different traits that made up his identity.
I’m imagining the following style for the opening of “I Had an Enemy” that I might one day rewrite:
“Picture a ventriloquist. His voice seems to come from someone else. But if we weren’t sitting in a theater, we would take no pleasure in his art. His appeal, therefore, consists in being both present and absent; in fact, he is far more himself when he is being, simultaneously, another. And, in fact, as soon the curtain comes down, he is neither. Let’s follow him now that he’s alone, walking along in the pitch-black night, now that he’s neither of those other two men he has left behind, and is, therefore, a third man we know nothing about, and yet we’d still like to know where he’s heading. But what with the beard, the Irish cap, the sunglasses, and the dim lighting, it’s hard to get a good look at the face of that broken creature. . . .”
[OSCOPE 26]
By pure coincidence — and we tend to say “pure coincidence” whenever we can’t fathom how something happened, but we suspect there might be an Adjustment Bureau lurking in the shadows, either that or some other, perfectly reasonable explanation that we’ll never find out about — while reading Antonio Di Benedetto’s Zama this evening, I came across a line that Roberto Bolaño might well have read and which perhaps accompanied him for some time and over long distances; it’s surprisingly similar to Faulkner’s line:
“It was the sky’s own secret hour, when it shines brightest because all mankind is sleeping and no one is watching.”
27
This morning, making the most of the overcast sky, I took a pleasant stroll around the neighborhood. I bought the daily papers, had a laugh with the woman at the newsstand (who was in a more cheerful mood than usual), waved to the tobacconist and the owner of the patisserie, purchased five apples at the organic store, and chatted to the group of retirees who congregate in Bar Tender. The triumph of the trivial, which suits this diary to perfection. That’s what I need, trivialities; at least the occasional one, because seemingly banal matters help keep at bay the novel lurking stubbornly in the dark forest I sometimes imagine lies right outside my apartment.
The sky, pale gray, the bottom of each cloud edged with blue. A bicycle with a slightly bent front wheel. The triumph of the trivial. Roland Barthes once said that the only possible success a personal diary can hope for is to have survived the battle, even if that means distancing oneself from the world. Alan Pauls said: “Any diary is, then, the literary incarnation of a zombie, the living dead, the person who has seen everything and lived to tell the tale.”
Most of the retired gentlemen at Bar Tender — there are usually between five and seven of them, depending on the day — are chainsmokers, which makes me think that this is probably their chosen route to death. Normally, the most talkative member of the group is Darío, a naval engineer, long since retired, who always has a cheap cigar clamped between his lips, but there’s not one there today. I’ve had more to do with him than with the others, and that relationship — plus a rather banal excuse — qualified me to join them this morning. Darío was complaining about his summer cold and saying that, even though it was nothing serious, it was nonetheless depressing, first, because people don’t get colds in July, and second, because the persistent slight fever and, in particular, the dreadful phlegm were affecting his mental balance. It occurred to me that perhaps he was craving his cigar, and I was about to say so, but decided not to risk making such an overly familiar remark. Nevertheless, in the ensuing silence, I took an even greater risk — I somehow couldn’t stop myself — and asked them all what they would wish for if they knew their wish would be granted. No one said a word, some pretended not to have heard me, and the others genuinely didn’t hear me — a combination of slight deafness and complete indifference to any comment made by an interloper. Only Darío answered, and after saying a few words which, this time, I had difficulty hearing, he said
that if he could do anything he wanted, he would journey to the center of the Earth and look for rubies and gold, then he would set off on an adventure in search of perfect monsters.
He spoke a little like the mysterious vagabond in that Hasidic tale, but also like a child, and it made me laugh to hear him say “perfect monsters,” because there was really no need to go looking for them in the center of the Earth. We were the monsters.
Ana Turner came racing past. She was walking a little dog or, rather, it was walking her, for it was dragging her along so violently that she seemed to be in permanent danger of stumbling and falling flat on her face. With a mischievous smile, she announced that she’d just been on a secret mission. I wasn’t expecting to see her there, and would have given anything at that moment to vanish, because I didn’t want her to think I belonged to that gang of boorish retirees.
Shortly afterward, as I was about to say goodbye to the gentlemen and was gazing distractedly over at the sunny horizon of Calle Londres, I experienced what can only be called an hallucination, when, for a few seconds, I thought I saw Sánchez and Carmen walking along together on the opposite sidewalk. They weren’t holding hands, but it looked as if they were. The sight so upset me, I instinctively looked away, but when I looked back two seconds later, there wasn’t a soul to be seen.
Does one consult a doctor after having just one hallucination? I felt distinctly worried. Were Carmen and Sánchez simply midday ghosts? Perhaps it was merely a projection of my own fears, and I had imagined seeing them because of all the many emotions that have been boiling away in my head for days now, what with my suspicions about Carmen and being so immersed in the amorous intrigues described in the ventriloquist’s memoirs.
Seeing my look of distress, Darío asked if anything was wrong. No, it’s nothing, I said, I happened to see something over there which isn’t there anymore. I stood up and, despite my disquiet about what I thought I’d seen, I was amused to see how getting up to leave unleashed a minor duel of grimaces among the retirees. Was I considering including this battle in “The Duel of Grimaces,” the story I was thinking of rewriting one day? I immediately saw that this was a bad idea. One learns some lessons very quickly when it comes to concocting and planning writing projects, and this message came across to me loud and clear: the fact that the plot of “I Had an Enemy” resembled one I was experiencing in the real world — Sánchez being criticized by a nephew who loathed him utterly — didn’t mean that, from then on, one by one, the plots of the nine chapters — which I still hadn’t worked out quite how to rewrite — should bear any resemblance to what might happen to me in the next few days in the real world.
Thinking about this and that, and still unable to conceal my unease, I said goodbye to the old boors, crossed over to the other side of the street, then walked around the corner and, just in case I had really seen them, went looking for Carmen and her companion in Calle Urgell; but there was no one there, only an imposing sun blazing down on the asphalt. I continued on my way and, on the final corner, was approached by a very smartly dressed beggar — well, smartly dressed from the ankles up, for the total effect was ruined by his feet, which were shod in a pair of enormous, battered boots, like something straight out of a Charlie Chaplin movie; they were the only thing that indicated to me that he was, very politely, begging. He was clearly one of the new wave of beggars, of whom there were already quite a few in Barcelona. They wear expensive clothes and don’t care in the least if this proves off-putting. They tend to do their begging in a very studied, professional manner, and their style is certainly very different from that historically associated with people asking for help. The man in the monstrous boots began by saying that, to him, health means a certain capacity — one that had been beyond his reach for years — to live a full life. I gave him some change, even though he was wearing a floral shirt and didn’t seem in the least bit sad. And I didn’t for one moment regret having allowed myself to be taken in by his gestures, always assuming he was an impostor. Indeed, as I watched him walk away, I found myself admiring the way he walked, making sure no one could possibly fail to notice his boots: they were like a kind of theatrical prop and — along with his little spiel about health — were doubtless an essential part of his unique method for getting his hands on money intelligently and, equally important, with great aplomb and dignity.
Back home, with the air-conditioning on at an almost subzero temperature, I tried to forget that ghostly vision of Carmen and Sánchez on the opposite sidewalk, and, after racking my brains, I finally found a way — not very long-lasting but interesting nonetheless — of passing the time and blocking out my problems. I began to rummage around in my memories for the best of all the many periods of doubt into which I’ve slumped over the years.
My thoughts led me to Cyril Connolly’s book The Unquiet Grave, in which he very intelligently reflects upon states of uncertainty. I read it for the first time when I was working as a law clerk in the office of Señor Gavaldá, my first employer. Grim days spent opening the door to his colorful bunch of clients and years of traipsing up and down corridors taking coffee and sugar to my ghastly bosses. Fortunately, I always carried in my right pocket a copy of Connolly’s book of doubts, which I would secretly stroke, and which gave me the necessary strength to go on opening doors in my role as a poor young lawyer-cum-tea-boy. Never more so than during that period — I’d still never been in love, I was just a bartender — was the name “Mac” so appropriate.
Ah, the great Cyril Connolly: “We think we recognize someone we pass in the street. It turns out to be a complete stranger and yet, a moment later, we meet that very person. This pre-vision indicates the moment we entered into his wavelength, his magnetic orbit.”
Despite my best efforts, I can’t forget that, at midday, shortly after leaving the old boors and rounding the corner in pursuit of Carmen’s ghost, I bumped into the woman herself carrying her shopping along Calle Buenos Aires. It all happened in a few tenths of a second.
“Are you alone?” I asked her.
She stared at me in amazement.
“Are you stupid or what?”
28
Carmen went off to the movies, while I chose to stay at home, and almost instantly Sunday filled me with such anxiety that, quite soon, I was imagining myself in a white coat, transformed into the on-duty doctor of a provincial hospital. I emerged from that fit of anxiety feeling even more anxious, remembering a few verses written one Sunday by Luís Pimentel, the doctor and poet from Lugo, Galicia: “Here I sit,/alone and still,/in my white coat./The afternoon stretches blandly before me,/outside, the cold kiss of concrete/and, lying on the grass, a dead angel./A doctor passes./A nun passes./The operating room rises up, lit by cotton-wool lights.”
In that Sunday solitude, the operating room in the poem began to rise up in my imagination, and I had no choice but to go for a walk around Coyote, which was deserted at that hour.
The stillness and peace of the street was a blessing. Not a sound. Sunday, and everyone in their homes, snoozing, playing, fucking, dreaming, and, in truth, most of them feeling slightly nauseous, because Sundays create an unfailing sense of emptiness and ruin.
But I was thankful for those tranquil streets. I thought I would go to the cinema and wait for Carmen to come out. And I was on my way there when, suddenly, in a split second, everything was turned on its head. A Buick screeched to a halt just inches in front of me, and from the passenger side there emerged a young man, a prominently nosed fellow dressed in matching white shirt and pants. I say “emerged,” but, in fact, he literally leapt out of the car. He seemed very on edge, and then he asked why I was so on edge too, a question I didn’t answer, precisely because I was so on edge. What struck me most was how pale he was, and, for a fraction of a second, he looked like an unexpected replica of the white-coat-clad doctor from the poem. So much so, that I even asked myself why I’d bothered to come out for a stroll if, in some way, what I was
seeing was there back at home, in that Pimentel poem I’d been thinking about moments before leaving the apartment. But I soon saw that the man was nothing like the doctor in the poem; rather, he was a young guy walking in a strange way and moving his feet very oddly. A kind of black wallet was poking out next to the buckle of his showy but not inelegant belt, and he patted it, as if it were a holster, as if he wanted me to think he was carrying a gun. Then, suddenly, as clear as day, I saw that he was.
A fleeting metaphysical doubt crossed my mind. If that whole situation was merely the crazy consequence of a poem I’d remembered and that had suddenly taken on a most unpleasant life of its own, I had no reason to be afraid. If not, though, it was clear that this prominently nosed stranger had mistaken me for someone else, and that the best thing for me to do would be to get the hell out of there, perhaps taking refuge in one of the pool halls — which were always open on Sundays — the closest being next to Piera’s barbershop. Or, better still, I thought: I could run round the corner and race up the stairs to the second floor of the Chinese restaurant, where they’d surely be glad to take me in.
It’s very strange, but in a situation like this I’m quite capable of completely zoning out from the action and asking myself if, in my time as a lawyer, I’d made any enemies who might now be seeking revenge, and even asking myself what the hell had made me think of that poem about a white coat. But I’m also coolheaded enough to stop and ask myself why I left my apartment when everyone knows that calm and silence often turn into the exact opposite, into something noisy and terrible. . . . In any case, this moment of distraction lasted only a moment, because events were heating up and I saw that the youth in the white shirt was striding toward me. In my mind’s eye, I was already a dead man, when, at the very last minute, the killer changed course and ran straight past me. In fact, he ignored me completely, he couldn’t have cared less about me, and, deep down, I found this rather disappointing. Instead he chased after a very tall Colombian guy well known in the Coyote neighborhood because he sells Cuban cigars “fresh from Havana,” sometimes by means — in terms of his approach — of an almost intimidating sales method.
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