by Ben Lerner
But if there were no sun and the proportioning was off, if there were either too many people around or if the park was empty, an abyss opened up inside me as I smoked. Now the afternoon was boundless in a terrifying way; it would never be tonight or the next day in room 58; silver and green drained from the landscape. I couldn’t bring myself to open the book. It was worse than having a sinking feeling; I was a sinking feeling, an unplayable adagio for strings; internal distances expanded and collapsed when I breathed. It was like failing to have awoken at the right point in a nightmare; now you had to live in it, make yourself at home. He, if I can put it that way, had felt this as a child when they sent him to camp; his heart seemed at once to race and stop. Then his breath caught, flattened, shattered; as though a window had broken at thirty thousand feet, there was a sudden vacuum. Some of the gray was sucked inside him, and he was at a loss; he became a symptom of himself. He summoned the strength to reach into his bag, open the childproof bottle, touch the yellow pill to his tongue, crush it between his index finger and his thumb, and return its moist remains to the floor of his mouth. Then he waited and waited and finally the edge of something dulled. He became aware that he was warm; no, aware he had been cold. He touched his hands to his face and found both alien; the former were still freezing, the latter getting hot. He thought of the pay phones beside El Estanque; he could use his calling card; he could have someone at home talk him down. But it was seven or eight hours earlier there, everyone was sleeping. And what kind of grown man, if that’s what he was, calls home in a panic for no definable reason, as he had called home from camp as a child, sobbing, please come pick me up. He became aware of a strange taste in his mouth; his saliva belonged to someone else; it made him sick to swallow. This, he said to himself with authority, is a sign of schizophrenia; this is the beginning of the rapid fragmentation of your so-called personality; you will have to be hospitalized. He could feel the paper gown against his skin. He crushed a second tranquilizer and stood up, legs barely his, and began walking toward the main gates. The other pedestrians on El Paseo del Prado regarded him strangely; he had the distinct sense that each person stopped as he passed and turned to watch; it was difficult not to run; his apartment receded at his approach; laughter issued from each passing car. Knowing none of it was real only made it that much worse.
He would rush up the six flights of stairs, find the key, drop the bag, and throw himself on the bed. He would cover himself entirely with the blanket. He would take my siesta then.
__________________________
Most days when I awoke from my siesta, I put on the stovetop espresso machine, rolling a spliff while I waited for the coffee. When it was ready I turned on the shower and when the water was hot I stepped into the shower and took my coffee there, letting the water dilute the espresso as I drank it, letting the steam and caffeine slowly clear my head.
During the first phase of my research, I thought all Madrid slept during the siesta, and I drifted off imagining I was joining the rest of the slumbering capital, although later I learned that, of all the people I knew in Madrid, I was the only person who actually used this time to sleep. Whether my translation had gone well in El Retiro or whether I had sucked the grayness into my chest, I almost always felt the same after the siesta, that is, I felt nothing, although I would sleep for an extra hour if I had taken the tranqs, and if I’d been particularly upset, there was something like a faint chemical sting in the back of my mouth. I had known this chemical sting since I was a child and had assumed everyone knew it, that it was at least as universal as the coppery taste of blood, and somehow related, although later I learned that nobody I knew was familiar with this taste, at least not as I described it, not as the particular aftertaste of panic. I had never napped at home and the siesta had a dramatic effect on my sense of time, either seeming to double the day, so that remembering the morning was like remembering something on the other side of night, or supplanting the first half of the day entirely.
When I had dried myself off and dressed, I lit the spliff, poured the rest of the espresso and, if I’d finished a translation in the park, typed it up on my laptop and e–mailed it to Cyrus. Although I had internet access in my apartment, I claimed in my e–mails to be writing from an internet café and that my time was very limited. I tried my best not to respond to most of the e–mails I received as I thought this would create the impression I was offline, busy accumulating experience, while in fact I spent a good amount of time online, especially in the late afternoon and early evening, looking at videos of terrible things. After writing Cyrus, I would attempt to read the Quixote in a bilingual edition, eat something, usually chorizo, hard cheese, olives, and white asparagus from a jar, open a bottle of wine, abandon the Quixote and read Tolstoy in English; his major novels had been remaindered at Casa del Libro.
My plan had been to teach myself Spanish by reading masterworks of Spanish literature and I had fantasized about the nature and effect of a Spanish thus learned, how its archaic flavor and formally heightened rhetoric would collide with the mundanities of daily life, giving the impression less of someone from a foreign country than someone from a foreign time; I imagined using a beautiful and rarefied turn of phrase around the campfire after Jorge had broken out the powerful weed and watching the faces of the others as they realized their failure to understand me was not the issue of my ignorance or accent but their own remove from the zenith of their language. I imagined myself from their perspective once I’d obtained fluency in this elevated idiom: auratic, my example coming to stand for some dormant power within their own language, so that henceforth even my silences would seem well wrought, eloquent. But I couldn’t bring myself to work at prose in Spanish, in part because I had to look up so many words that I was never able to experience the motion of a sentence; it remained so many particles, never a wave; I didn’t have the patience to reread the same passage again and again until the words ceased to be mere points and formed a line. I came to realize that far more important to me than any plot or conventional sense was the sheer directionality I felt while reading prose, the texture of time as it passed, life’s white machine. Even in the most dramatic scenes, when Natasha is suddenly beside him or whatever, what moved me most was less the pathos of the reunion and his passing than the action of prepositions, conjunctions, etc.; the sweep of predication was more compelling than the predicated.
Reading poetry, if reading is even the word, was something else entirely. Poetry actively repelled my attention, it was opaque and thingly and refused to absorb me; its articles and conjunctions and prepositions failed to dissolve into a feeling and a speed; you could fall into the spaces between words as you tried to link them up; and yet by refusing to absorb me the poem held out the possibility of a higher form of absorption of which I was unworthy, a profound experience unavailable from within the damaged life, and so the poem became a figure for its outside. It was much easier for me to read a poem in Spanish than Spanish prose because all the unknowing and hesitation and failure involved in the attempt to experience the poem was familiar, it was what invested any poem with a negative power, its failure to move me moved me, at least a little; my inability to grasp or be grasped by the poem in Spanish so resembled my inability to grasp or be grasped by the poem in English that I felt, in this respect, like a native speaker. So after I’d dismissed the Quixote, eaten, jacked off, read some Tolstoy, I carried what was left of the wine and an anthology of contemporary Spanish poetry onto the roof and read a few poems by what was left of the light.
__________________________
As night fell La Plaza Santa Ana began to fill with tourists, and one could also see some Madrileños meeting up, kisses on both cheeks, although the locals weren’t out in force until much later. You could hear several languages, American or Australian English to me the most grating, chairs scraping the pavement and cutlery scraping plates, glasses being collected from the metal tables or placed there, and usually a violinist, inoffensively unskilled. In
the distance airliners made their way to Barajas, lights flashing slowly on the wing, the contrails vaguely pink until it was completely dark. I imagined the passengers could see me, imagined I was a passenger that could see me looking up at myself looking down.
In the first phase of my research, I knew no one except Jorge and his friends and they never invited me to do anything on weeknights; I’m not sure how they would have invited me, since I saw Jorge only on Fridays at the language school. I didn’t have a phone, and they didn’t know exactly where I lived. Since I had failed to attend any of the social events the foundation arranged, there was no one whose company I could join if I wanted to do the things one was supposed to do while in Madrid: progressing from one bar to another while getting progressively fucked up, then arriving at a multistory discoteca and dancing, if that’s even the word, to horrible techno, making out for hours, hours, then having chocolate con churros and stumbling home near dawn. This was apparently routine for a remarkable range of ages; certainly people of several generations were out very late; kids were still playing in the plaza at midnight; the late middle-aged drank into the early morning. I was unaccustomed to such hours or so much public space. While I thought of myself as superior to all the carousal I was in fact desperate for some form of participation both because I was terribly bored at night and because I was undeniably attracted to the air’s vulgar libidinal charge. Of course I could not sit in the plaza alone, although I saw men do that, guidebooks beside their beers, and I could not approach one of the innumerable roving bands and just ask to join their company, but I came to realize that I could leave my apartment and enter the flow of the night unashamed so long as I walked purposefully, pretending I had somewhere to be.
I would roll one or two spliffs and put them in a pack of cigarettes, drink a glass of water, brush my teeth, walk down the stairs and out of the apartment into the plaza. I felt as I crossed the plaza that I was observing myself from the roof of my apartment; from there I could see that I was walking too fast and I’d stop, light a spliff or cigarette, then resume walking at a less frantic pace toward Puerta del Sol, the literal center of the city, which I could reach in a few minutes. From Sol I would pause and decide where to pretend I needed to be.
Most often I walked down Gran Vía, where the prostitutes were out, smoking in front of the shuttered storefronts, dull glow of orange and purple lipstick, and eventually made my way into Chueca, a largely gay neighborhood known, so the guidebooks said, for its vibrant nightlife, but where there tended to be fewer Americans. The streets in Chueca were so narrow and its plaza so full in those months that it was easy to mill around in such a manner that people on your right assumed you were with the people on your left and vice versa. This was also true in its various overflowing bars; I could order a drink and stand looking bored in the middle of the bar and people would suppose I pertained to one of the adjacent parties; indeed, people in one large group or another often began to speak to me, assuming I was one of their number whom they hadn’t had the chance to meet. Over the general din I could hear next to nothing, but I smiled and nodded and sometimes slightly raised my glass, and henceforth turned a little more toward the group whose member had addressed me; slowly, I would be absorbed.
Which is how I met Arturo, a turning point in my project. I was at a very crowded bar in Chueca, a mixed bar with Moroccan decor and sequined pillows everywhere, drinking a cloying mojito when he arrived and began greeting the group I was orbiting. He embraced me warmly after he embraced the others and, since I was the closest to the bar, asked if I wanted a drink. While we waited to be served he asked me how I knew so and so, who I assumed had convened the gathering. I shrugged in a way that indicated everybody knew so and so. Then he asked where I was from and I lied: New York. He said either that he had recently been to New York or that he was going to New York soon. For what, I asked. He answered for a musical performance, or to perform music, or for some sort of performance art. What are you doing in Madrid, he said. Here I delivered a version of the answer I had memorized for my Spanish exam in Providence, a long answer composed by a fluent friend, regarding the significance of the Spanish Civil War, about which I knew nothing, for a generation of writers, few of whom I’d read; I intended to write, I explained, a long, research-driven poem exploring the war’s literary legacy. It was an answer of considerable grammatical complexity, describing the significance of my project in the conditional, the past subjunctive, and the future tense. To my surprise and discomfort Arturo’s interest was piqued and he peppered me with questions: have you met so and so, the scholar or poet; have you visited such and such museum or archive. It’s difficult to hear in this bar, I said. He ordered two beers and when they arrived he paid and motioned for me to follow him outside.
Outside we lit cigarettes and before he could repeat his questions I hurriedly said: my Spanish is not good. I read very well, I lied, but I don’t speak. He laughed and asked if I knew various people and when I said no, he would say, with excitement, that he had to introduce me. You’re very nice, I kept saying, which struck him as very funny. Fashionable people kept greeting him as they passed. He told me he owned or worked at a gallery in Salamanca, the ritziest neighborhood in the city, and that his brother or boyfriend was either a famous photographer, sold famous photographs, or was a famous cameraman. He said something about how his gallery was a place where poets gathered, held readings, and he spoke at length in terms I could barely follow about his own love for poetry, listing several Spanish poets of whom I’d never heard, plus the obligatory mention of Lorca. He gave me the gallery’s card, first writing a cell phone number on one side of it, then put his arm around me warmly and returned me to the group inside the bar. There everyone assumed I was a friend of Arturo’s and we exchanged names and, with the two women nearest me, Teresa and Ester, kisses on both cheeks. Arturo immediately entered into conversation and I slipped away to the bar to order another mojito, and every time thereafter I thought I might be called upon to speak, I absconded to the bar. I would ask, largely by indicating my glass or theirs and raising my eyebrows, if I could bring anyone anything; Ester disappeared after a while but I bought Teresa and Arturo several mojitos and it was when I found myself enthusiastically explaining my project to Teresa that I realized I had had too many.
I need air, I said, and left the slowly spinning bar; I intended to walk home and pass out. While I was leaning against the wall of the bar collecting myself for the walk I was surprised to find Arturo and Teresa suddenly beside me, asking if I was all right. Yes, I said, and straightened myself abruptly, causing the spins to resume, redouble; I realized I would vomit. I walked across the street where there were fewer people and a public trash can and, just before I reached it, vomited indeed. When I finished being sick, I stood up and there they were just across the street, waiting for me, Teresa smoking and Arturo proffering a bottle of water, smiling. I crossed, washed out my mouth, drank some of the water, and thanked him. We’ll drive you home, he said, we’re going to another party anyway.
I was embarrassed to tell Arturo once we were in his car that I was a ten-minute walk from home, but, as it turned out, I didn’t have to tell him anything; the joint Teresa lit and passed back to me produced a cone of intense heat in my throat, which then migrated to my chest, where it unfurled against my rib cage. I realized my tongue was numb or at least tingling and I couldn’t summon the name of my street, a situation that struck me as horrifying and hilarious. I turned my head and watched the lights slide by and found it lovely and then I realized I was saying so in English, that several minutes had elapsed and I was enumerating everything I found beautiful as we passed; streetlights, fountains, plane trees, if that’s what those were. While in the first phase of my project I very rarely spoke Spanish, I had almost never had occasion to use my English, and the latter erupted as we left the city and merged onto a highway, Arturo and Teresa having decided to take me with them to the party; maybe I had asked. With what I thought was remarkable eloq
uence and rhythm I described Cyrus feeding bats at dusk in Providence and seeing myself from above; I elaborated something like a theory of poetry, deadest of all media, in cadences that rose and fell so movingly I imagined Arturo and Teresa would find themselves compelled to acknowledge my profundity, all the more compelled for not comprehending me, save for occasional cognates; they would experience the periodicity of my thinking without the distraction of particular thoughts. I was speaking grammar, pure and universal, but also suggesting a higher form of music: as I listened to myself I was amazed by the exquisite sonic patterning of my English, small changes rung on fricative and glide, and these subtle aural variations were little enactments of whatever the words denoted, language becoming the experience it described. At some point I passed out.
We were parked along with many other cars in a long circular driveway and Arturo and Teresa were discussing something, Teresa playing with Arturo’s hair, calling him Arturito. We sat in front of an aggressively modern house, low to the ground, expansive, white stone and acres of glass. I caught Teresa’s eyes in the rearview mirror and she asked how I was. Arturo opened his door and we all got out of the car; I asked where we were and Arturo said, my boyfriend’s. Teresa entered the house on my arm, whether out of irony because I was a drunken American idiot brought to the party as a joke, or because she felt a vague solicitude toward me after my strange performance in the car, I didn’t know, but I could hope. As we entered the party I reminded myself to breathe. There were a lot of handsome people in the sweeping white-carpeted living room with minimalist furniture and monumental paintings on the carefully lit walls. Various people greeted us and Teresa detached from me to kiss them and I was acutely aware of not being attractive enough for my surroundings; luckily I had a strategy for such situations, one I had developed over many visits to New York with the dim kids of the stars: I opened my eyes a little more widely than normal, opened them to a very specific point, raising my eyebrows and also allowing my mouth to curl up into the implication of a smile. I held this look steady once it had obtained, a look that communicated incredulity cut with familiarity, a boredom arrested only by a vaguely anthropological interest in my surroundings, a look that contained a dose of contempt I hoped could be read as political, as insinuating that, after a frivolous night, I would be returning to the front lines of some struggle that would render whatever I experienced in such company null. The goal of this look was to make my insufficiencies appear chosen, to give my unstylish hair and clothes the force of protest; I was a figure for the outside to this life, I had known it and rejected it and now was back as an ambassador from a reality more immediate and just.