Dublinesque

by Enrique Vila-Matas

  “Sorry,” Waits said, “but there’s no room for anyone else.”

  Ricardo experienced his own particular and somewhat unfortunate great moment there. He experienced it in the center of Waits’s world, a place he was ejected from by a slamming door. There was no interview. His friend cried and blamed him for Waits having acted that way.

  The fact is, the most avant-garde poetics in Ricardo’s work, as he himself has always acknowledged, is nourished from the same sources as Waits’s: the lyrics of Irish ballads, the blues of the cotton fields, the rhythms of New Orleans, the lyrics of German cabaret from the 1930s, rock and roll, and country music. It’s a poetics that always fails, although with dignity, in its attempt to imitate, to put down on paper no more than the barroom register of Waits’s voice.

  This phrase of the singer’s, spoken in the doorway to his hotel room, really stuck in Ricardo’s head. The phrase stuck in his memory, but so did the Hawaiian shirt and the dark glasses. And more than once he used this phrase to get rid of someone.

  It’s what Ricardo uses now in his attempt to leave the Belvedere to go to La Central to buy some books. He says he’s sorry, but there’s no room for anyone else.

  “Eh?”

  Ricardo always needs movement. He’s monstrously frenetic. Something must be done quickly to detain him. Riba still hasn’t proposed going to Dublin. Why not, for God’s sake? When does he plan on doing it? Not now, because Ricardo is physically trying to project himself toward the street to flee from the Belvedere, where there really is no room for anyone else.

  Half an hour later, Ricardo finally gets the proposal. And he claims to have only one question before he accepts the invitation to travel with Javier and Riba to Dublin. He wants to know if it’s just to be there for Bloomsday, or if there’s some dark motive he sould be warned about beforehand.

  He still thinks it would be suicide to give Ricardo any kind of clue about his intentions to hold a requiem for the Gutenberg galaxy. Ricardo might think, and he wouldn’t be far off either, that Riba wanted to hold the funeral for himself: a funeral ceremony for his current unemployed state of half-failed publisher, embarrassing idler and computer nerd.

  “Look, Ricardo. There is another motive, in fact. I want to take the English leap.”

  After agreeing to travel with them, Ricardo is quiet for a long time at first and then starts telling him — almost in passing and without giving it the slightest importance — that he was in New York not long ago, where he interviewed Paul Auster in his house for the magazine Gentleman. He says it as if it’s nothing. At first, Riba can’t even believe it.

  “You were in Auster’s house? And how was it? When did you go to New York?”

  His eyes have become like saucers and he’s genuinely stunned just by the idea that Ricardo has also managed to visit this three-story brownstone in Park Slope that he once went to and that has since become so legendary in his mind. Straight away he asks Ricardo, doesn’t he think the house was really nice and weren’t Paul and Siri very likeable, pleasant people? He says it with almost childlike wonder and in the belief he has shared a similar experience.

  Ricardo practically shrugs. He has not the slightest opinion on the neighborhood, or the Austers’ hospitality, or the house or even the red bricks of the façade. In fact, he has nothing to tell about his visit to the old neighborhood of Park Slope. He hadn’t given his foray into Auster’s house a second thought. For him, it was just another interview. He had more fun the other day, he says, interviewing John Banville in London.

  Could it be that having grown up in New York has left Ricardo immune to have any sense of fascination for this city? Quite likely. For him, walking around there is natural, inconsequential.

  How different two people can be, even though they’re friends. The city of New York, the Austers, the English wavelength, for Ricardo all this is the most normal thing in the world, it holds no secrets and no special attraction for him. It’s something he’s had ever since he was a child.

  Quite easily, Ricardo changes the subject, and above all the character, and tells Riba that in Boston, the day after his visit to Auster, he interviewed O’Sullivan. And then he starts talking about Brendan Behan, who he says was one of the most tremendous Irishmen who passed through New York back in the day.

  He doesn’t want to point out to Ricardo it’s useless to tell him things about Behan, as he already knows everything about the man. He lets him talk about the Irishman, until, in a brief lapse of concentration, he brings up the topic of Auster again.

  “Do you think Paul Auster’s considered a good novelist in Ghana?” he asks Ricardo provocatively.

  “Oh, how should I know?” He looks at him strangely. “You’re behaving really oddly today. You never go out, do you? It’s not that you don’t go out much, you just don’t go out, you’re not used to talking to people. It’s good you’re going to get some fresh air in Dublin. Believe me, you’re a bit unhinged. You should start up the publishing house again. You can’t just do nothing. Auster in Ghana! Well, let’s go to La Central.”

  They leave the Belvedere. There’s a strong wind. Water’s flooding everything. They’re out in the open. They walk slowly. The rain grows more and more violent. The wind bends their umbrellas. They’ve heard a few apocalyptic voices speaking of a universal flood. Reality is becoming more and more like the installation Dominique is preparing in London.

  In the end it’ll turn out to be true that the end of the world isn’t far off. In fact it’s always been clear that the end couldn’t be too far off. While they wait for the end, human beings amuse themselves holding funerals, little imitations of the great end that is to come.

  As they’re about to go into La Central, Ricardo throws away his Pall Mall and doesn’t even bother to stamp it out, because the downpour instantly takes care of the butt. As they close their respective umbrellas, a gust of wind hits them with such force that they’re pushed forward and burst into the bookshop, falling comically on their butts on the doormat, just at the moment when a young man is leaving La Central wearing round tortoiseshell glasses, a blue Nehru jacket beneath an old raincoat, and with the collar of his white shirt quite torn.

  Riba thinks he knows him by sight, although he can’t manage to place him. Who is it? The man walks insolently past them, indifferent to their ridiculous fall. An unflappable guy. He acts with astonishing coldness, as if he hadn’t noticed that Ricardo and Riba have just fallen over. Or as if he thinks they are two comedians from a silent film. A strange guy. Although he’s come from inside the bookshop, his hair is plastered to his head from the rain.

  “We nearly killed ourselves,” comments Riba, still on the floor.

  Ricardo doesn’t even reply, perhaps dazed by what’s happened.

  It’s quite striking. The indifferent young man looks like the same one who was spying outside his parents’ house the other day, and also the same one he saw from a taxi at the intersection of Rambla de Prat and Avenida Príncipe de Asturias. He tells Ricardo that recently he’s seen the guy with the Nehru jacket everywhere, and for a minute fears his friend won’t even know who he’s talking about. Who knows, maybe he didn’t even notice the young man with the round glasses who walked passed them so indifferently. But this isn’t the case, he soon realizes he saw him perfectly well.

  “Well, you know,” Ricardo says. “Always someone turns up you never dreamt of.”

  June

  If one day he were to find this much-searched-for author, this phantom, this genius, it would be difficult for such a person to improve on what’s already been said by so many others, about the rifts between the expectations of youth and the reality of one’s later years, what’s been said about the illusory nature of our choices, about how our search for success culminates in disappointment, about the present as fragile and the future as representing a need for control over old age and death. And what’s more, it will always be an annoyance, a malaise of the soul for every perceptive publisher, to have to go out
in search of those phantoms, those damned authors. He’s thinking of all this now lying on a beach in front of blue water, surrounded by towels, red bathing caps, gentle waves lapping the warm yellow sand, near the center of the world. A strange beach in a corner of New York’s harbor.

  When he wakes up, still embarrassed as much as for having believed he really was on this beach, as for having unconsciously revived the sickness hidden inside every publisher, he dresses at top speed — he doesn’t want to waste time — and goes to his regular branch of the Bilbao Vizcaya bank, knowing there’ll be hardly any customers at this hour and he’ll be able to resolve a tiresome matter as quickly as possible. He’s seen by the smiling bank manager, whom he abruptly informs that he wishes to transfer half the money he has in an investment fund to another account in the same bank, one called External Cash Fund. First he confirms with the bank manager that the bonded capital in this new account is fully guaranteed. Then he carries out the transaction. Then he instructs her to transfer some of the money in his current account to another bank, the Santander. The manager knows she can’t ask him to explain this treacherous gesture, but it’s very likely she’s wondering what they’ve done wrong to make him undertake it. Finally, he signs some more forms and asks for the checkbook they forgot to give him on his last visit. He takes his leave very politely and cynically. Out on the street, he hails a taxi and goes to the other end of the city, to the neighborhood of Sants, to a branch of the Santander bank where Celia’s younger brother, who has worked there for a while, has offered him a pension plan with an excellent seven percent return. Having a pension plan already depresses him, as he’d never imagined growing old, but he prefers to be practical about it.

  In the branch of Santander, with the money he’s transferred from Bilbao Vizcaya, he takes out the plan and also signs a good number of forms. The bank manager appears, Celia’s brother’s immediate boss, and shows polite interest in Riba’s longstanding, famous, and now finished publishing work. Riba distrusts so much politeness and suspects it is actually because the manager is on the verge of asking him straight out if the whole book trade is going really badly now. He looks at him almost rudely, and then abruptly starts to talk about New York and about how much he’d like to live there. His excessive praise of this city ends up irritating even the phlegmatic manager, who interrupts him:

  “Listen, just one question, and forgive me, sir, but I’m dying to know. . Couldn’t you be happy living in Toro, in the province of Zamora? What is Toro or Benavente lacking to make you not want to go and live there? And sorry for asking — it’s probably because I’m from Toro.”

  Riba thinks for just a few seconds, and finally embarks upon the rocky Zamoran path of his answer. He replies in a deliberately gentle, poetic, anti-banking, vindictive tone of voice considering the financial space in which he finds himself.

  “It’s a difficult question, but I’ll answer it. I’ve always thought that, when it gets dark, we all need somebody.”

  A formidable silence.

  “I get the impression,” Riba goes on, “that in New York, for instance, if it gets dark and you’re all alone, the loneliness would always be less dramatic than in Toro or Benavente. Now do you see what I mean?”

  The bank manager looks at him, his face almost expressionless, as if he hasn’t understood a thing. He slides some more forms across for Riba to sign. Riba signs and signs. And then, in the same soft voice as a moment ago, Riba requests that tomorrow they withdraw the amount still in the Bilbao Vizcaya fund, and transfer it to one in Santander itself.

  An hour later, and he’s carried out all the transfers. It’s better this way, he thinks. Better to have the money spread about than all in one place. He gets into another taxi and goes home. He finds he’s rather exhausted, because it’s been two years since he’s carried out financial transactions or set foot in a bank. It seems to him he’s made a superhuman effort this morning. He starts noticing how incredibly thirsty he is. He’s tired and incredibly thirsty. He has a thirst for evil, for alcohol — well, for water, for calm, for being home again — but above all a thirst for doing wrong, for alcohol. He’d like to have a drink and launch back into his evil ways. After two years of abstinence, he’s confirming an old suspicion: the world is very dull, or — and this is the same — what happens to him is devoid of interest if not told by a good writer. But it was a real drag having to go out and hunt for all those writers, and on top of that never finding one who was truly great.

  What logic is there in things? None really. We’re the ones who look for links between one segment of our lives and another. But this attempt to give form to that which has none, to give form to chaos, is something only good writers know how to do successfully. Luckily, Riba’s still friends with a few, although it’s also true he’s had to organize this trip to Dublin in order not to lose them. In terms of friends and creativity, he’s been in a critical situation ever since he closed his business. Deep down he misses the continuous contact with writers, such strange, ludicrous beings, so self-centered and complicated, and such idiots, most of them. Ah, writers. Yes, it’s true he misses them, although they were such a pain. All so obsessive. But it can’t be denied they’ve always amused and entertained him a lot, above all when — here he smiles maliciously — he paid them lower advances than he could have afforded and contributed to their being ever poorer. Ungrateful wretches.

  Now he needs them even more than he used to. He’d like one or two of them to think to call and invite him to a book launch, or a conference on the future of the book, or simply show a bit of interest in him. Last year several of them still took the trouble to call (Eduardo Lago, Rodrigo Fresán, Eduardo Mendoza), but this year no one has. He’ll be really careful never to beg one of them, it would be the last thing he’d ever do in his life. Beg to be allowed to take part in some launch, or yet another swansong for the book! But he thinks there are a lot of people who owe part of their success to him and might remember him for some event of this sort or for anything. Although it’s a well-known fact: writers are resentful, jealous to the point of sickness, always penniless, and finally a load of ungrateful wretches, whether they’re poor or completely poverty-stricken.

  As he doesn’t drink anymore, there’s no danger of him turning into a blabbermouth and going around letting one of his secrets slip. The best-kept one of all is about how much he enjoyed feeling like a real bastard every time he bragged about the number of reduced advances he paid to novelists, who are by far the most unbearable — more than poets or essayists — when they become truly insufferable. Of course, if he reduced their advances it was because he thought that, as he wasn’t very gifted in financial matters, if he didn’t haggle and earn himself a reputation for being stingy, he would have been ruined even sooner. If he hadn’t put a stop to his alcohol consumption and his business, he undoubtedly would have been well on his way to ending up like Brendan Behan: totally impoverished and an eternal drunk. He thinks about this Irish writer and the New York bars he used to visit. And he thinks again that today, after so much banking activity, if it wasn’t for the fact he himself has prohibited it, he’d knock back a glass of the strongest liquor right now.

  “Strong liquors / like molten metal,” said Rimbaud, probably his favorite writer.

  It’s a suicidal impulse, but what can he do? His thirst is great and the shadow of temptation long. And long too this life that’s so brief.

  Riba imagines that Nietzky actually has something of the fleeting spirit that accompanied him in his childhood of continuous sessions of soccer on the Aribau patio. Those early years, the shadow of the spirit was always with him, but he soon lost sight of it, and has only seen it again in that dream he had the day he arrived in New York for the first time. He imagines Nietzky is a kind of guardian angel, this angelo custode. And he also imagines that now he’s speaking to this sort of relative of that lost spirit and that he’s doing so in a joyous realm of white cricket trousers, tartan socks, binoculars slung over one’s sh
oulder, and English languages.

  You should lead a more healthy life, says Nietzky, you should go for walks in the fresh air. I’d like to see you walking around your neighborhood, or else out in the countryside. Tire yourself out in the natural world. Or else try to have other goals, instead of devoting yourself to your computer, or spending all your time thinking now you’re old and washed-up, that you’ve become very boring. But do something. Action, action. I have nothing else to say.

  It seems to him that thinking about Brendan Behan is a more than suitable way of preparing for his trip to Dublin. For a time — long ago now — this Irish writer was an enigma to him, a mystery from the moment Augusto Monterroso said in Journey to the Center of the Fable that “travel writing such as Brendan Behan’s New York is the greatest happiness.”

  For a long time he asked himself who the hell this Behan could be, but without going so far as actually looking him up. And now he remembers that whenever he saw Monterroso, he forgot to ask him. And he remembers too that, one day, when he least expected it, he found the name of Brendan Behan in an article about famous guests of the Chelsea Hotel in New York. All it said was that he had been a brilliant Irish writer who used to describe himself as “a drinker with writing problems.”

  This last was etched into his mind; at the same time, an intensity yet scarcity of information made the enigma of this drinking saint still greater, until one day, many years later, he discovered Behan camouflaged behind the character of the garrulous Barney Boyle at a bar in Christine Falls, a novel written by John Banville under his pseudonym Benjamin Black. Still surprised by this discovery, he devoted himself to spying on the environment of this Boyle, Behan’s counterpart: an atmosphere of fog, coal fires, whiskey vapors, and stale cigarette smoke. And he began to think that each day he found himself ever closer to the authentic Behan. He wasn’t wrong. A few weeks ago, he went into a bookshop, and as if it had been there waiting for him his whole life, he suddenly came across the Spanish edition of Brendan Behan’s New York. The first thing he regretted was not having published it himself. And he regretted it more when he discovered that Behan’s book was a wonderful monologue about the city of New York, which he considered “the greatest city on the face of God’s earth.” To Behan, nothing compared to the electric city of New York, the center of the universe. The rest was silence, glaring darkness. After having been in New York, everything else was awful. And so London, for instance, must seem to a Londoner returning from New York like “a wide flat pie of redbrick suburbs with the West End stuck in the middle like a currant.”