Leaving the Atocha Station

by Ben Lerner

  CYRUS: or whatever it is. Very staticky. Or at least I’d been smoking it. Vaguely reminiscent, incidentally, of certain Topeka strains, but more powerful. Anyway we walked along the river and it eventually opened out and where it was wider we encountered some people swimming

  ME: americans?

  CYRUS: Locals. There are no tourists here in winter, it seems

  ME: right

  CYRUS: There were two men swimming, or one swimming and one more like wading. The current looked pretty strong. One of the men, his girlfriend was on the bank—in a swimsuit—and he was trying to convince her to get in, to swim

  ME: don’t like where this is going. she was scared of the current?

  CYRUS: Maybe. Maybe just the cold

  ME: what is the weather like there

  ME: madrid: cold and raining constantly

  CYRUS: Warm to hot. It was like 80. Which is unseasonably warm, I guess. The air is filthy. But the water still chilly. Anyway, Jane—we were on the opposite bank as the swimmer’s girlfriend—Jane wanted to swim

  ME: she had a swimsuit?

  CYRUS: and did get in the water, although I told her I didn’t think

  CYRUS: Yes, we both had swimsuits on under our clothes. It was not, I told her, a good idea, because of the current

  ME: knowing her, i’m sure that was a goad

  ME: might egg her on

  CYRUS: Yes. She got in and while the current was strong was fine. Then the other swimmers, they were saying to the girlfriend, see, this girl got in, no problem, and then Jane started telling me to come into the water. So there I was opposite the girlfriend on the bank, both of us being pressured by the swimmers to join them. The girlfriend and I kept looking at each other with nervous smiles

  ME: if one of you got in the other would have to

  CYRUS: I felt that

  ME: a game of chicken. you two should have left the others and gone off and had

  CYRUS: Or at least if she got in I would have to. But she probably could have remained on the bank

  ME: a wonderful life together!

  ME: right. she would not be emasculated

  CYRUS: but I was, I admit, feeling the pressure. Jane was there with these other men in the water, the current clearly manageable. I felt cowardly and American

  ME: you have to stay strong—cowardice of your convictions

  CYRUS: Yeah, well, I got in. The current was actually stronger than I imagined. There were pockets of strong current. Where the river narrowed a little farther down I could see what looked like serious rapids

  ME: and then the girlfriend jumped in

  CYRUS: Well

  CYRUS: not at first. But now everyone kind of turned to her. We’d all become one group, somehow. And her boyfriend had changed from teasing her to encouraging her, his arms open, lovingly—it’s fine, I promise, I’ll protect you, etc. We were

  ME: how bad is this going to get?

  CYRUS: also encouraging her, I think. And laughing and screaming at the cold she jumped in. She was fine at first

  ME:!

  CYRUS: but as she kind of splashed around—she didn’t really know how to swim, it didn’t seem. I don’t know, she moved somewhat downriver where the current became pretty strong, and she was getting upset

  ME: so someone went and helped her?

  CYRUS: Things

  CYRUS: things got very bad very fast. she went underwater for a second, and when she resurfaced, she was a little farther down and totally panicked

  ME: jesus

  CYRUS: She was screaming and water was

  ME: jesus

  CYRUS: getting in her mouth and she was struggling against the current in the wrong way

  ME: couldn’t somebody get her

  CYRUS: Her boyfriend was trying but there were enough stones and other shit that it was taking awhile. And he wasn’t much of a swimmer either, didn’t know, I don’t think, what to expect from or how to manage the rapids. Jane tried to go

  ME: tried to catch her?

  CYRUS: Yes. I held her back. As I was holding her back I saw the girlfriend go under again, then reemerge briefly another, I don’t know, ten feet down

  ME: fuck

  CYRUS: where the rapids were intense, and then she was really swept downriver. So

  CYRUS: so Jane and I ran back onto the bank and to the truck and then, yelling something about what we were doing to the other swimmers—the friend was holding the boyfriend back who was now screaming—screaming in a very primal way, you understand—not screaming words. So we drove downriver hoping to get in front of her, to fish her out of the river or something

  CYRUS: You there?

  ME: i’m here

  CYRUS: So we had to return to the main road and then floored it for a little while then jumped out of the truck and rushed back down to the water. We could still hear the boyfriend screaming

  ME: but you got in front of her

  CYRUS: The river had widened again and then there was some sort of dam, and she went over the dam before we could figure out what to do

  ME: she was conscious?

  CYRUS: She didn’t seem to be struggling. It was kind of hard to see, or at least it’s hard for me to remember. So we had to get back into the truck and drive farther down the river again—there was no other way

  ME: go on

  CYRUS: There was no other way

  CYRUS: so on the other side of the dam there was a kind of pool—no current. And her body was there. And we rushed into the water and dragged her to the shore

  ME: was she breathing

  CYRUS: No

  ME: so what did you

  CYRUS: We laid her on the bank and I gave her or tried to give her mouth to mouth. She didn’t seem, I can’t really say what I mean by this, given that she wasn’t breathing, but she didn’t seem dead. Her white

  ME: jesus, man

  ME: i don’t even know how to give cpr

  CYRUS: shirt, her undershirt, was pulled up over her head. I had to pull it back down over her breasts. Which was somehow embarrassing. She was cut up pretty bad

  CYRUS: Neither do I, really. I tried. She kind of, I don’t know, threw up in my mouth

  ME: you mean was revived—spit out water—so she was alive

  CYRUS: No. There was vomit in her mouth I guess. And then I threw up onto the bank. She was dead

  ME: jesus. i am so sorry you

  CYRUS: I tried again. I didn’t know what I was doing. Our teeth, I can’t get this out of my mind, I accidentally clicked my teeth against her teeth at some point, like

  CYRUS: like in a clumsy kiss or something. Prom. And I kept thinking of course that she had only got in the water because I had got in the water

  ME: no way to blame yourself for any of this

  CYRUS: And I was also worried that the cpr had killed her, I think I was pressing way too hard on her chest—or that

  ME: what is jane doing during all of this

  CYRUS: she would have been, at least, revived in better hands

  CYRUS: I don’t really know. Helping me I guess

  ME: so she was dead

  CYRUS: She was dead

  ME: fuck, man

  ME: what did you do then

  CYRUS: We could hear the boyfriend screaming again. Except now I think he was injured too. He was closer. He probably got in the water again and broke an arm or leg or whatever. But he was screaming “kill me” or something from the bank. He wasn’t screaming about his injuries. He knew she was dead

  ME: what did you do

  CYRUS: We took her body, Jane and I carried her body to the truck and raced toward the pueblo. We were maybe pretending a little to ourselves there was still something to be done, I mean, that fantasy was somewhere in our bodies—she was of course dead. But we, I mean, nobody had a phone

  ME: i thought you had a cell phone

  CYRUS: Broke a long time ago. So the first place we found that had people, phones, was a roadside restaurant a few minutes before the pueblo.
We got out and I managed to scream out what had happened as I pointed to the body and a couple of men from the restaurant rushed out and helped us lay the body there, on the ground. Her eyes were wide open, by the way, and her mouth

  ME: jesus

  CYRUS: Various people gathered around, and somebody mentioned calling the police, and I guess we managed to communicate that there were others by the river—the injured boyfriend, his friend. A couple of people from the restaurant got in a car and went for them. And an old woman, she brought us some limes

  ME: limes?

  CYRUS: She brought us two lime wedges and said something about shock and that we should suck them and we did. Someone covered her with a blanket. I saw the pay phones and I had a calling card in the truck and I went to one of the pay phones in a daze. I think I threw up again. But I called my dad, I was desperate to ask him about the cpr, to see if I had maybe killed her or at least missed an opportunity to save her. Something like that. I wasn’t

  ME: you did everything you could. i’m so sorry

  CYRUS: thinking clearly. And my teeth were chattering and each time they clicked I remembered her teeth

  CYRUS: I did get my dad on the phone. Who knows what I sounded like. I was very confused, certainly. Sobbing. Managed to ask about the cpr, if I had done it wrong. He reassured me, although I don’t remember what he said. That nothing was my fault. That she would have already choked on her vomit or something. Not that a psychiatrist knows anything about cpr. I also think he said something about my coming home

  ME: none of this is in any way

  CYRUS: I got off the phone and went back to the truck. One of the people who worked at the restaurant said we could go so we left

  ME: your fault

  ME: you didn’t wait for the police?

  CYRUS: Fuck no. We just left. We drove back to the apartment in total silence. We had put our clothes back over our swimsuits but were dried off from the heat by the time we got home. Like I said it was in the 80s. But my teeth were still chattering

  ME: you didn’t talk about what happened at all?

  CYRUS: We did later. Kind of. After we showered, we both realized we hadn’t eaten all day and although I felt sick I felt hungry, really hungry. We went to a little restaurant near our place we always go to. We started

  WHICH know I hate but which helped get this taste out of my mouth. We talked about it then

  ME: what did she say

  CYRUS: The taste is back, by the way

  CYRUS: She was shaken up in her way. She said she wished she’d never got in the water. But she also seemed excited. Like we had had a “real” experience

  ME: i guess you had

  CYRUS: Yeah but I had this sense—this sense that the whole point of the trip for her—to Mexico—was for something like this, something this “real” to happen. I don’t really believe that, but I felt it, and I said something about how she had got some good material for her novel

  ME: is she writing a novel

  CYRUS: Who knows

  ME: and she responded how

  CYRUS: She’s probably writing a novel now

  CYRUS: She was quiet. I’m sure she was angry/hurt. Then she said something about how this just is the world, that things like this happen, that one can be as cautious as one wants, can waste one’s life being cautious, but that there is no avoiding the reality of death. I remember laughing at the phrase “reality of death” to show I thought it was an embarrassing cliché

  ME: have you two made up

  CYRUS: No. Yesterday we were both in the apartment reading and smoking but barely talked. We haven’t really spoken to each other today

  ME: well, you both probably just need some time, right? i mean, this would shake anybody up

  ME: i am really sorry

  CYRUS: Yeah

  ME: about all of this

  CYRUS: Thanks

  CYRUS: How is Spain?

  3

  INSTEAD OF CONFESSING TO ISABEL THAT MY MOTHER, MY BRILLIANT and unwaveringly supportive mother, was well, that I was a liar of the most disgusting sort, I decided to imply more and more that my father, the gentlest and most generous man I knew, was a thug, a small–time fascist, El Caudillo of his household. Not only did this lie, in my view, draw Isabel’s attention away from whatever discomfort she had regarding the initial dishonesty about my mom, replacing that discomfort with sympathy, but it also served to decrease my guilt; I felt much better about blaspheming both my parents, about distributing my failure as a son between them. And because this lie about my father was comically absurd, because he was the man of all the men I knew most free from any will–to–domination, it felt more like a harmless joke than a morbid tempting of fate or karmic gambling with parental health. I also felt that, in order to avoid any future confusion, I needed to get my stories straight, and so decided to replay the confession I had made to Isabel and Rufina to Teresa, who would then tell Arturo and Rafa, all of whom believed I had, when we first met, recently suffered one of life’s profoundest losses. Surely some part of the mystery I liked to think I held for Teresa derived from the fact that, after my dramatic performance at the party, I made no subsequent reference to my suffering, although suffering could be read into my silences. That I was thousands of miles away from the rest of my family so soon after such a tragedy, although I never specified the timeframe, prepared the ground for my lie about my impossible father, and my new claim that I might not return to the U.S. after the completion of my fellowship furthered my image as exile. At any rate, when the rains and early dark began to give way to warmer, longer days and milder nights, and the accordion player was back in La Plaza Santa Ana and the streets were again alive, I began to see more of Teresa, who did not seem to have a job, although in theory she was employed at the gallery. I would walk to Salamanca after “working” in El Retiro and Teresa would leave the gallery in someone else’s hands and accompany me to movies, bookstores, cafés.

  Whenever I was with Teresa, whenever we were talking, I felt our faces engaged in a more substantial and sophisticated conversation than our voices. Her face was formidable; it seemed by turns very young and very old; when she opened her eyes wide, she looked like a child, and when she squinted in concentration, the tiny wrinkles at their outer corners made her seem worldly, wise. Because she could instantly look younger or older, more innocent or experienced than she was, she could parry whatever speech was addressed to her. If you were to accuse her, say, of reading too much into a particular scene in a movie, she would widen her eyes and look at you with an innocence that made you feel guilty of projection; if you accused her of some form of naiveté, her squint would bespeak such expanses of experience that the accusation was instantly turned back upon you. Her eyes could deflect or reflect or ironize, and then her smile, which was wide, would instantly restore a tabula rasa, benevolently forgiving any claim against her.

  I believed the dialectical movement of her face, however, was challenged by our particular circumstance; I never spoke English with Teresa, not since the first night of our meeting when my volubility had swelled. I told her that this was to promote my acquisition of Spanish, but it was, in fact, to preserve the possibility of misspeaking or being misunderstood, and to secure and amplify the mystery of that inaugural outburst. I believed my rant on the way to Rafa’s party had impressed her, and I was determined not to ruin it with banalities. With my performance in the car her sole sample of my English, I hoped she would always translate my fragmented Spanish in her head, transforming my halting and semicoherent utterances into the most eloquent English she could imagine. She would not, like Isabel, merely intuit depths, but would actually sound them in her painstakingly mastered second language. Of course she would never arrive at a satisfactory English formulation of whatever my Spanish negatively figured, but this would further preserve the mystique of my powers in my mother tongue. Such conversations would be the counterpoint to her ongoing work with Arturo of translating my poems, work she had almost entirely take
n over; there she tried to imagine every possible Spanish correlative to my English, such as it was; here, she tried to extract from my remedial Spanish the poet’s native eloquence.

  As a result of these interpretations and projections, Teresa, during our conversations, was often at a loss as to what to do with her face, or at least her facial machinations were delayed; the widening and squinting of her eyes was more in response to her own internal ruminations, to what she imagined I would have said, than it was to my actual speech. I was therefore able to raise an eyebrow and communicate that I was watching Teresa attempt to translate whatever I had said, or rather, failed to say, and thus my face reclaimed from her face the powers of metacommentary. And yet as we spent more and more time together, I found myself avoiding her eyes, because when I looked at or into them, I believed I saw she saw right through me. Or I saw her see herself reflected in my eyes, saw that she knew, or was coming to know, that what interest I held for her, all of it, was virtual, that my appeal for her had little to do with my actual writing or speech, and while she was happy to let me believe she believed in my profundity, on some level she was aware that she was merely encountering herself. This anxiety was characteristic of my project’s fourth phase.