‘I think what makes me angriest is what happened to Bea.’
‘Who until yesterday you didn’t even know about.’ Anna breaks away from me and leaning back against the arm of the sofa she sits up with her legs folded under her. Then she takes both of my hands and holds them in her lap, and her gaze now is acute and insistent. ‘But then I showed you a couple of pictures, and you read your father’s letter with the drawing, and suddenly your history became completely different. And all in all it’s not a bad history. It gifts you a root in a different world and offers you an explanation for Mary and for your father, and best of all it gives you a mother to be proud of, so of course what makes you angriest is what happened to Bea, it must make everything else seem so trivial. But at the same time you shouldn’t forget that that’s what the reality of your life was – everything else. Beatriz can’t erase that, nor should she.’
Listlessness disperses through my muscles to prevent me from retrieving my hands, and I hear my voice crack from somewhere far.
‘And now you’re going to tell me that there was no Beatriz, that the woman in the pictures is someone else, that you somehow concocted the letter with the drawing and that you made up this new history for me just to give a better background to my story, because that’s all I’ve ever been to you, a story.’
Anna’s grip tightens. Her eyes become a blur, and I feel her breath caressing my face.
‘No,’ she says calmly, ‘I wasn’t going to tell you that at all, everything I’ve told you is true. When I said that what happened to Alonso has absolutely nothing to do with your story, I didn’t mean your story was false.’
The man who came back
Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock…
‘It’s my own fault,’ says Anna pre-emptively. ‘I’ve confused you with my own confusion.’
She’s let go of my hands and we sit side by side inertly.
‘But it’s my fault too,’ I say, ‘for being so easily confused.’
‘What I was trying to say is that I’ve brought with me the past, but I don’t want the past to become an impossible hurdle.’
I raise my head from the back of the sofa and I kiss just the tip of her nose, then I lie down with my knees bent and the side of my face in her lap. Anna’s fingers dance through my hair, caressing my scalp.
‘You brought with you the past, but without it you wouldn’t have come.’
‘All the same, the past is a minefield.’
‘This is a new history for both of us,’ I say, ‘and we’ve walked through the minefield already. What made me accuse you just now of inventing Beatriz for the sake of a story was the fear that if the past was swept away then so would we, that if I lost my new history I’d also lose you.’
‘This isn’t any more about writing a story,’ Anna says.
‘I think there are too many stories.’
‘And we can’t tell them all.’
‘Not even to each other.’
‘I don’t want to have secrets from you,’ Anna says.
‘Then you don’t have to,’ I say.
Gently, she turns my head around between her hands and makes me look up at her.
‘Perhaps I’m being selfish,’ she says, ‘but I want you to know what I know.’
‘I don’t think you’re being selfish.’
‘Your father was a good man and so was mine.’ As soon as Anna’s spoken the words she takes them back. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says, ‘this has nothing to do with your father, I’m just using him to justify mine, and I shouldn’t. What he did…’
‘Dead and finally forgiven,’ I say.
What I’m trying to do is prompt her to stop, but she looks at me vacantly as if she hasn’t heard what I’ve said.
‘There’s no easy way of saying this,’ she says, ‘so I might as well just say it.’ But this too is a preamble, and again she stalls.
‘Anna, really you don’t have to do this,’ I say, but her gaze flits away from me and nails itself firmly in the distance.
‘I want to, but please don’t ask me questions and please don’t make me stop.’
Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock…
‘When Ana and I left Santiago, a few days after Mary and your father and you, my father insisted on staying behind. He was needed at the hospital, he said, and he’d follow us in a fortnight or so. My mother begged him to come back with us, they both knew his life was in danger, especially if anyone talked, but he wouldn’t change his mind. One month later he joined us, but Ana said the man who came back wasn’t the same man we’d left behind in Santiago. Again my mother begged him, this time to get help, but every time she begged him he refused. All he seemed to want to do was work, day and night, and in the end they lived their lives apart. Ana knew what he’d seen at the hospital during those days, and she knew how it could easily have changed any man. But it wasn’t what had changed my father. Years later, not long before he died, one day he sat my mother down and he told her. “I don’t want to take this to the grave,” he said. “I’m telling you now and I’d like you to tell Anna when I’m gone. She has every right to know why I’ve been such a terrible father, just as you have every right to know why I’ve become such a terrible husband. Please, just hear me out. I’ve known about George since before your affair even started, and I’m sorry about what happened to him, I wish he was still here to make you happy.” He wouldn’t let Ana interrupt him. “I stayed behind in Santiago to look for Alonso,” he said. “I wanted to confront him and to hear him confess, to at least show some remorse for betraying his own sister, but when I found him he just told me to get lost or he’d have me arrested. Beatriz had it coming, he said, and so did I unless I left Santiago. If it wasn’t for my passport he’d kill me there and then, and nothing would give him more pleasure. He was waving a knife in my face when I punched him. One punch and he was down on the floor, almost unconscious. I could’ve walked away, but instead I took the knife from his hand and stuck it in his neck with all my strength, cutting deep across his throat from side to side. Then I sat down in a chair with a drink and watched him die. It wasn’t self-defence, it was cold-blooded murder.” Ana tried to tell him that it was self-defence, if he hadn’t killed Alonso, then Alonso… “Stop,” my father said. “It was murder.” It was murder and Alonso hadn’t even confessed.’
‘I agree with your mother,’ I say. ‘It was self-defence. And so what that he hadn’t confessed, Alonso deserved to be dead just for saying that Bea had it coming.’
But Anna hasn’t heard me.
‘I never thought he was a terrible father.’ Her voice is soft again, sad but determined. ‘I always knew he loved me and I loved him back. But he shouldn’t have stayed in Santiago. I’m not going to judge what he did, or what anyone else did, because you’re right, I only know what Ana chose to tell me, and it’s time to let go of the past.’
Anna hasn’t heard me and now she has set a condition.
Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock…
‘Can’t I even ask you one question?’
‘No, because I don’t know the answer,’ says Anna. ‘I can’t tell you who betrayed Beatriz, or if I’m sure that whoever betrayed her is dead. And it doesn’t really matter.’
‘Because it’s time to let go of the past.’
‘Yes,’ Anna says. ‘I’ve never before been able to confide all this to anyone, but now I have I’d like to put it behind me. So come on, let’s have a shower and then let’s go to bed.’
‘There’s only the bed in this room, and it’s single.’
‘And that’s the only bed I want to sleep in,’ Anna says.
‘The shower’s upstairs,’ I say.
‘Show me,’ says Anna.
15
The Metamorphosis
Sleep
When I wake up from uneasy dreams, I find my human body reassuringly unchanged in my bed, but not next to Anna. We went to sleep some time in the late afternoon, with our legs - too many for a single bed – still impossibly in
tertwined, my arms clasped tightly around her and the side of my face pressed hard against the nape of her neck. I am not a deep sleeper, and it baffles me how Anna could have managed to escape from this meandering constriction so quietly and nimbly as to not wake me up. And I am troubled also by another conundrum. Even with me lying in it flat on my back, motionless, as though the weight of sleep is still bearing down on me heavily, the bed that has been more than just slept in feels like on the contrary it has hardly been touched. The crisp covers reach up to my nose, and when I lift my head a little to peer over them, the edge of the sheet, hard with starch, tickles me slightly, and it strikes me I may still be asleep. On the other hand I don’t find it unusual that the light in the room is still on. When we came back from the shower, naked and giggling like mischievous children, Anna insisted on leaving it on. We either left it on before we went to sleep or Anna switched it on when she got up.
Where is Anna? It even occurs to me I may have dreamt her, and this returns me uncomfortably to the thought that I may still be dreaming, and how can I decide inside a dream what may or may not have been real. I scan the room for signs of Anna’s presence that her absence may not have yet erased: her trainers, for example, or pieces of her clothing. Nothing hangs over the chair by the window. The sofa and the armchair are empty. Something may be lying on the floor at the foot of the bed, but even if I could lift my head any higher – I am lifting it so much already that my neck is beginning to hurt - the bed would still obstruct my vision to a certain extent.
Could I really have dreamt of Anna so completely if she didn’t exist? Anna the beautiful ghost who had brought with her my own past and hers, as well as the ghosts of a faraway city I knew of from a globe as a child. Anna who had shown me the moonlight, who had held my hand and kissed me and cried in my arms; Anna who with Jack, Leon, Angel had spent the night in Gregor Samsa’s bed; Anna whom I want with me today and tomorrow and for the rest of my life, and whom my dreams may have invented for no other purpose than that.
My room, an ordinary human room, a little on the small side and with ceilings that ought to have been higher, lies too quiet between its familiar four walls. On the table… And there, at last, I find an absence that proves Anna’s presence. All the stacks of manuscripts have gone. And above the table, a hook and a rectangle of vaguely fresher paint reveal a more significant absence that makes the proof conclusive: Woman in Fur (1906) has disappeared. But if Anna is not a thief, then that too may be part of a dream - is it possible that manuscripts and painting never actually existed? Is it possible I am dreaming this dream somewhere else? This room itself may have never existed, and in that case nor have Billy and the Chief, nor indeed the hapless electrician. Have I dreamt of myself as the neighbourhood freak?
Absences are not reliable proof after all. I must resume my search for something that is. Or perhaps I should just sleep for a few minutes more, so I can finally wake up from this nonsense. But which nonsense would I finally wake up from? From the nonsense of being able to paint Picasso paintings and write Kafka stories? In my present state I am unable to distinguish between different kinds of nonsense.
I have no idea what time it is, or how long I may have slept. I turn my head around to look at the clock, but the angle prevents me from reading the time, and when I try to change my position, something again pulls me back. When I attempt to at least stretch my legs, it feels as if I am bent in the middle and my feet are pressing down against the floor; my body must be stiff from its earlier twisted positions.
I remember my father’s words scribbled in pencil: Son, you can be anything you want to be, always remember that... I remember Bea’s drawing, “our secret” hidden in the shadows. I remember the taste of paella and the sound of the voice that so haunted Los Hijos. I remember Ruth and the roof and the moon. I remember how I felt when I painted Bowl of Fruit (1907), and I remember how I felt when I came face to face with it again so unexpectedly in Ruth’s apartment. I remember misremembering Ivan, and I remember the Sprinkle of Rocket and the death of the man with the Dali moustache. I remember Laika the first dog in space, and I also remember the girl who had hair on her legs.
Most faithfully of all I remember the photographs of Bea, but I also remember Alonso, and I remember Anna’s father avenging my mother by cutting his throat – I even remember it crossing my mind that no man would have gone to such lengths, endangering his life and his family’s future wellbeing, unless he was deeply in love. All this I remember in sequence, then I remember it again and again in more and more intricate detail, and every time the sequence is exactly the same. Don’t dreams jumble everything up?
I must find my father’s letter. If I can read the Spanish words, then I did spend a day and a night with a ghost, because how else would I be able to understand them? But I ought to be careful: “understanding” is a dangerous quest. At one stroke the lack of it would rule out half my life, wipe out my new history entirely and leave me with none. Have I dreamt an entire fantastical life in a single fantastical dream? Do fantastical things ever happen? Have I invented my gift as a means of escaping the darkness, or the darkness as a means of exploiting my gift? If there was never a gift, am I left with only the darkness? I have no recollection of darkness.
“The disappeared” has acquired a new and terrible resonance for me, as if the world of everywhere and everything has travelled from the past at the speed of a dream and crashed into my world of now.
‘Ángel?’
Is Beatriz Solovera still among “the disappeared”?
‘Ángel?’
I have now gone full circle: Jack Faro, Leon Cheam…
‘Ángel, are you okay?’
And there, at last, is the bridge to the present and the proof I was looking for: Ángel Faro Solovera, the name on my new passport. I am not in the room, nor is this the day after I met Anna Tor. But I am waking up from a dream.
The stop in Madrid
‘You’ve been fidgeting and talking in your sleep,’ Anna says. ‘And then you started trying to get up, but you still had your seatbelt on, so you just kept falling back in your seat. Were you dreaming?’
‘We must be nearly there,’ I say.
‘We’re not nearly there,’ Anna says.
‘But it feels like I’ve been sleeping for hours.’
Anna looks at her watch.
‘One hour exactly,’ she says.
‘My God,’ I say, ‘did I really dream so much in just an hour?’
‘What were you dreaming about?’
‘Mostly about whether I was dreaming or not, but I wasn’t dreaming here, I was dreaming in the room.’
‘So you dreamt you were dreaming in the room about whether you were dreaming or not.’
‘And I wasn’t,’ I say.
‘You weren’t?’
‘Dreaming, I mean.’
‘In the room or here?’
‘Here I was definitely dreaming, but in the room I wasn’t. I dreamt things as they actually happened.’
‘Happened where?’
‘In the room, that day when I woke up and the painting was gone and I wondered if my life had been a dream. My whole life, not just you.’
‘I remember,’ Anna says.
‘But you turned out to be neither a thief nor a dream.’
‘I was next door in your living room.’
‘With Woman in Fur and my stories.’
‘Trying not to disturb you.’
‘But in the dream I hadn’t found that out yet, I still didn’t know where you’d gone or even if you’d ever really been there. Then suddenly I remembered Bea’s last name, which I asked you about much later, so I couldn’t have known it the day after we met, and then I think I heard you calling out my name and that’s probably what made me remember that I’d changed it.’
‘You’re so rational even in your dreams,’ Anna laughs.
‘I think by then I was already half awake.’
It’s a very long flight to Santiago, and an even lon
ger journey if you take into account the overnight stop in Madrid. In fact, we took an earlier flight to Madrid than we ought to have, because I insisted we make time for a visit to the Reina Sofia Museum. Now that I no longer paint, I am able to appreciate Picasso much more, and I wanted to visit again a painting I had seen only once many years before. On my only trips abroad to look at Picassos, first to Paris and then to Madrid, I had travelled with both Mary and George. Mary’s version had later dispensed with my father and invented Barcelona and New York.
Aesthetically it had never been among my favourite Picassos, and almost all of mine belonged to earlier, more groundbreaking periods in Picasso’s career. But so powerfully and uniquely does Guernica encapsulate the horror of war and the violence of man against man, that even as a child I had experienced it as physical pain. No other painting has had such a visceral effect on me, nor do I imagine that another ever will.
My recollection of that day, when the three of us had stood next to each other equally awestruck and moved, is one of only few happy memories I have of myself as a child. Yesterday afternoon, when I looked at Guernica again with Anna beside me, I could see for the first time how in Two Men and a Child: a Pope’s Crucifixion (1937), a precursor to my Kafka fixation and in terms of its date the latest Picasso I ever painted, I had more than just paid homage to a painting; I had also harked back to that day, in the same way that one day in the future I am certain I will hark back to this. By squeezing my hand the whole time Anna was letting me know that she knew I must be thinking of Bea, and that she was thinking of her too. And I squeezed hers back to let her know that I knew we were both also thinking of Ana and Daniel and of Mary and George, and even of Alonso – of all the dead without exception, not forgotten but all finally forgiven.
The morning flight from Madrid to Santiago is more than thirteen hours, and in January the time in Santiago is four hours earlier than Madrid; we would arrive late for us but early for the rest of Santiago. Sensible people would have had an early night, but evidently we are not sensible people, although I would insist I am more sensible than Anna.
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