Dublinesque

by Enrique Vila-Matas

  “What can the Rotunda corner be?” Ricardo asks.

  “The Rotunda corner? The corner of Death. At least that’s what it seems like, doesn’t it?”

  “But also like Gothic Rotunda, that font invented in I don’t know which century. But it’s true, it would be normal for the Rotunda to be Death. About being normal. Didn’t you know I was?”

  Short silence.

  “What? Normal? Well, no.” Another brief silence. “I associate you with art and as far as I know, art is never normal. It’s labyrinthine, fantastically deceitful and complex, my friend. Look at Walter, for instance.”

  “Is Walter an artist?”

  “In his own way he is. He’s not normal, even when he’s taking out the garbage.”

  In another corner of the square, Bev has just noticed Riba’s notebook.

  “What are you writing in there?” she asks.

  Riba reckons that maybe, if she’s addressed him so familiarly, it’s because she doesn’t see him as that old or decrepit. He cheers up suddenly, actually he cheers up a lot, enormously so. It was worth taking the Irish leap for something like this alone. The girl’s question has given him an opportunity to shine, and given that he’s already taken the much desired English leap, he understands that now he can even reconcile himself with his French past — he’s already quite keen to do so — and become an echo of the Parisian Perec, his eternal idol, and a superb expert in questioning the everyday, the commonplace.

  “Oh, nothing,” he replies. “I’m taking notes on what seems not to be important, what isn’t spectacular, what happens every day, what comes back every day. The trivial, the everyday, the obvious, the common, the ordinary, background noise, the usual, what happens when nothing is happening. .”

  “What did you say? Don’t you think Bloomsday is spectacular? But that’s awful, baby, that’s awful you don’t think it’s spectacular!”

  Did she say “baby’? It’s not the most important thing, but her tone of voice didn’t sound nearly as wonderful as before, this is true. And although everything can be improved on, the bad first impression he’s doubtless managed to have of the girl is beyond repair. He thought ingenuously that the South African ambassador’s daughter’s intelligence was equal to her beauty and all he’s achieved is to come across like a fool, as someone incapable of valuing the spectacular qualities of Bloomsday. Good heavens, this is hopeless now. And it won’t do any good to think this “baby” of hers was vulgar and unnecessary as well, nor will it do any good to think the girl looks like or is a total idiot. Even if she is or looks that way, he was the one not to rise to the occasion and everything is beyond hope now. And so is his age, and what’s worse: his blatant decrepitude. It’s better to take a few steps and move away, to help the famous fruit fly to fly.

  When, after walking in a slow zigzag across the square, Amalia gets to where Nietzky and Ricardo are, they finally discover, thanks to her, that the Rotunda isn’t Death, or a typeface, nor can it be associated in any way — everything would fit too neatly if it could — with the death of the age of print. No. It’s simply the old maternity hospital of Dublin, the first one in Europe.

  Birth and Death. And Amalia’s laughter.

  At the same time, Bev has returned to her attack on Riba. She looks at him, laughs. What can she want now? Will she go on about how spectacular the day is? She’s very beautiful. Despite his recent letdown, he’d give anything to hear her voice again. He’s bewitched, he admits it, but she makes him feel like he’s in the States. Will she call him “baby” again?

  “My favorite writer is Ragú Candor,” Bev says in her attractive voice, just as sensual as before although now she has a French accent. “And yours?”

  Riba, much taken aback, understands that whatever happens he’s now faced with a second chance and starts to think carefully about his answer. In the end, he chooses not to make mistakes and opts for this Candor as well, a man he’s never heard of. What a coincidence, Riba says, he’s my favorite too. Bev looks at him in surprise and asks him to repeat that. Ragú is my favorite, Riba says, I like his stylistic restraint and the way he deals with silence. I thought you were more intelligent, Bev says. Ragú Candor is for silly girls like me and now you seem silly too.

  She’s won the game. And what’s more, Riba was wrong again and the worst of it is that — the idea of getting along with Bev now ruled out forever — he feels he’s aged ten years. He’s incapable now of seducing young girls. He’s made a fool of himself, he’s finished. Without drink he lacks the humor that at least made him more daring and funny. His face darkens, and gradually acquires a slow, mournful look.

  Up there, on the stage — as if it were a parallel story — the reading of the novel goes on and the funeral cortège continues slowly on its way at the height of a sunny morning: “Dunphy’s corner. Mourning coaches drawn up drowning their grief. A pause by the wayside. Tiptop position for a pub. Expect we’ll pull up here on the way back to drink his health. Pass round the consolation. Elixir of life.”

  The Rotunda was always a good excuse to take to drink.

  Time: A quarter to four.

  Date: Bloomsday.

  Place: Martello tower, in the village of Sandycove, a circular tower on the outskirts of the city of Dublin, the place where Ulysses begins: “Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead. . Solemnly he came forward and mounted the round gunrest.”

  Characters: Riba, Nietzky, Javier, and Ricardo.

  Action: They have climbed up the narrow spiral staircase to the round gunrest, and are now contemplating the Irish Sea from up there. The day is still calm and the sky is a surprisingly uniform white. The tide is high, and the surface of the sea, taut and burnished like rippling silk, looks higher than the land. Riba is hypnotized for a few moments. Strange sea of an intense blue, dangerous like love. He imagines that the sea, in reality, is only a pale gold gleam that extends out to the impossible horizon.

  As time is getting on, because they’ve arranged to meet the Dew siblings and Amalia and Julia Piera at the gates of Glasnevin Cemetery, Nietzky decides to found the Order of Knights right here, high up in the tower. What’s more, he considers the setting a nobler one. They went to Finnegan’s pub yesterday and when they pass it again going to Dalkey to get the train home, they’ll have too little time to stop and found the Order there.

  They’re alone on the gunrest, but Riba has the feeling that the wind is carrying broken words and that, what’s more, there’s a ghost hidden on the spiral staircase. Javier, who hates Ulysses, is pretending he’s Buck Mulligan and shaving his chin. Nietzky reads the rules he drew up yesterday: “The Order of Finnegans has as its sole purpose the veneration of James Joyce’s novel Ulysses. The members of this society are obliged to honor the work and to honor Bloomsday every year, and when possible, go to the Martello tower in Sandycove and to feel there that they are part of a now ancient race that began like the sea, without name or horizon, and which today is in danger of dying out. . ”

  In quite a hurry and after the symbolic inauguration of the Knights, it’s decided that every year one new member can be admitted, “only if and when three-quarters of the Knights of the Order agree to it.” And then, with no time left to lose, they go to catch the train. They walk for half an hour along the road to Dalkey and from there, without stopping at Finnegans, take the train back to Dublin singing a song about Milly, the fifteen-year-old daughter of the Blooms who left Dublin to study photography and who only appears obliquely in Ulysses:

  O, Milly Bloom, you are my darling.

  You are my looking glass from night till morning.

  I’d rather have you without a farthing

  Than Katey Keogh with her ass and garden.

  Time: After five o’clock.

  Character: Riba.

  Theme: Riba’s old age.

  Action: Takes place entirely in Riba’s imagination, on the train returning to Dublin from Dalkey. With his friends singing “O, Milly Bloom” in the backgro
und, he imagines that this ghost haunting him and taking notes of everything happening on the train, and whose breathing he can practically hear, is a young novice in the world of letters; someone who’s spent weeks getting more and more involved in an adventure that’s driving him mad and which, moreover, he doesn’t know whether or not will end up leaving him buried under the books of his future oeuvre: an oeuvre that sooner or later will prevent him — a parallel story to that of Riba as a publisher, who these days sees his true personality obscured thanks to his catalog — from knowing who he is, or who he might have been.

  He imagines that the young novice has chosen him as a character, a guinea pig for his experiments, as the character of a novel about the real life, without any exaggeration — of a poor old retired publisher who’s somewhat desperate. He imagines that young man observing him closely, studying him as if he were a guinea pig. For the novice it’s a question of finding out if devoting himself to good literature for forty years has been worth the trouble, and he tells the story of the daily life, without too many surprises, of the character he’s observing. At the same time as considering whether such literary passion is worth the effort; he tells how the retired publisher is still looking for the new, the revitalizing, the foreign. He comes as close to the character as he can — sometimes in the most physical sense — and narrates the problems the man has with his wife’s Buddhism, while commenting on his movements — having a funeral in Dublin, for example — to fill an empty space.

  He imagines that in the novel, the novice has set out to subvert a certain kind of conventional approach, but isn’t trying to transform literature into something mysterious, rather attempting to make it possible for the literary publisher to be seen as a hero of our time, as an individual who bears witness to the disappearance of publishers of distinction and reflecting on the difficult situation of a society headed toward stupidity and the end of the world.

  He imagines that suddenly this novice comes so close to him that Riba ends up sitting on top of him and blocking his view, suffocating him so the poor young man can only see a huge blurry blot, which is actually the written publisher’s dark-colored jacket.

  Taking advantage of this opportune blot that momentarily paralyzes the novice’s narrative powers, Riba manages in every sense to put himself in the other man’s place, and to take over his way of seeing things. He then discovers, not without surprise, that he shares absolutely everything with him. To start with, an identical tendency to narrate, and interpret — with the distortions peculiar to a highly literary reader — those everyday events that touch his life.

  Then the train goes into a tunnel and he is finally left with no imagination. Zero imagination. Total darkness. A bit of clarity comes when they emerge from the tunnel and he sees the light of dusk again. He thinks he’s missed everything already. And then suddenly, he feels a ghostly touch on his back. For a few moments he sits motionless in his seat, and little by little starts to understand that the novice is still there, lying in wait.

  Time: Fifteen minutes later.

  Style: As theatrical as in the Meeting House Square and maybe more gloomy than festive, although things could change at any moment.

  Place: The Catholic cemetery of Glasnevin. A million people are buried here. Founded by Daniel O’Connell, it is eerie at this time in the evening. There are many patriotic monuments, decorated with national symbols or personalized with sports paraphernalia and old toys. Curious towers on the walls, which were used to look out for grave robbers who worked for surgeons at the end of the nineteenth century.

  Characters: Riba, Javier, Nietzky, Ricardo, Amalia Iglesias, Julia Piera, Bev, and Walter Dew.

  Action: Outside the gates to the place, Riba becomes emotional when he sees the iron railings. They’re the same ones Joyce names in chapter six. Are they really railings or a line from Ulysses? Faced with this dilemma, Riba is lost for a long time, and after a powerful mental journey, his gaze ends up returning to the cemetery gates. “The high railings of Prospect rippled past their gaze. Dark poplars, rare white forms. Forms more frequent, white shapes thronged amid the trees, white forms and fragments streaming by mutely, sustaining vain gestures on the air.”

  “The same poplars,” Amalia whispers. They cross the threshold of the main gates and the eight of them walk through the terrifying cemetery, which looks like it’s come straight out of the Dracula film Riba saw this morning. All that’s missing is some artificial fog and for Paddy Dignam’s corpse to rise up from the grave. Riba continues to remember: “Funerals all over the world everywhere every minute. Shovelling them under by the cartload doublequick. Thousands every hour. Too many in the world.”

  Ravages of death, ravages of the Rotunda.

  An unexpected, inspired tirade from Ricardo when they’re already a few yards inside the cemetery. He says he’s had a sudden revelation and understood everything all at once. He now sees how pertinent the funeral for the Gutenberg age is, for we mustn’t lose sight of how much Joyce loved wordplay.

  “And I don’t know if you’ve realized that Bloomsday,” he says, “sounds like Doomsday. And the long day Ulysses takes place on is nothing less than that.”

  In the end, Ricardo says, Joyce’s book is a sort of universal synthesis, a summary of time; a book designed to make a few anecdotal gestures signal an epic, an odyssey in the most literal sense of the word. That’s why whoever had the idea for a requiem had the greatest idea of all.

  They walk slowly down the main path in Glasnevin and come to a beautiful lilac tree, which Ricardo photographs after explaining to them all, with unnecessary solemnity, that he’s almost certain it appears in Ulysses toward the end of the cemetery scene. Nietzky thinks the tree is the same color as the lilacs at the Rotunda, which he takes to represent Death, and talks — without the others really understanding him — about the beauty of the Rotunda’s lilacs, as if there had to be a logical and purely commonsensical relationship between the lilacs and Dublin’s maternity hospital. Riba comes to the conclusion that young Nietzky is talking for the sake of talking and has had a lot to drink again, besides.

  Oblivious to his status as a fallen angel, Nietzky reflects aloud on the disparity between the length of men’s lives and that of lilacs and other trees. Julia Piera yawns, and then her gaze wanders to a mother and daughter in mourning, standing by a grave, the girl’s face streaked with dirt and tears. The mother with a long face, pale and bloodless. Mother and daughter, a hideous pair as if plucked from a drama from another century, as if they’d stepped out of a period film about life in the Rotunda.

  And Ricardo, totally oblivious to this, makes questionable macabre jokes. Minutes later, in the middle of an argument in overly raised voices about the gloomy beauty of the place and the by now hackneyed lilac tree, Bev asks for everyone’s attention so they can observe how the cawing of the crows blends with their argumentative visitors’ shouts.

  There are crows, but no one’s heard them cawing. A brief silence. A pause. The wind. “You will see my ghost after death.” Ricardo finds this phrase, lifted from Ulysses, carved onto a gravestone beside one of the smaller paths, in the Murray family crypt. Another photo opportunity, obviously. “How wonderful the Murrays are,” someone says. More group portraits. Now everyone squeezes around the tomb of the Joycean family. A cemetery worker wields Ricardo’s camera as if he were a great photographic artist and gives them all orders to pose with more style. When the session is over, someone realizes they’ve been walking around for quite some time now and still haven’t gone into the chapel at the end of the cemetery, the place where the brief and sad funeral for Dignam the drunk was held. This seems like the ideal place for the funereal words for the Gutenberg age, and actually for everything, for the world in general.

  Javier asks how they’re going to make sure the requiem is a work of art. They all look thoughtful. Then the laconic Walter speaks up. He offers to recite the prayer. It will be a short piece, he says, very artistic, thanks precisely to its brevity a
nd depth. Everyone looks at Walter, they all stare incredulously at him and carry on walking along the path that leads to the chapel. A laconic man’s words can always have an artistic side, Riba thinks. “It’s a prayer for writers,” Walter says, with an unnecessarily doleful air. And he tells them it was composed by Samuel Johnson, on the day he signed a contract to write the first complete dictionary of the English language.

  Then repeats what he’s just said, in English, despite it not being at all necessary. Walter has a great involuntary sense of humor. At the same time, it’s surprising that even before intoning the funeral prayer, he’s said so much already, even a few unnecessary words. What a waste, Riba thinks. Another long pause. Everyone’s gaze drifts to a bench, the last one on the left shortly before going into the chapel. Two men who look like tramps have just sat down there, two guys who are remarkably pale. “Two stiffs who’ve come out to get some fresh air,” Ricardo says, as if his flowery Polynesian shirt made him feel more alive than anyone else. Laughter.

  A gentle evening breeze moves the lilac tree. Actually, Johnson was praying for himself, Walter clarifies. And he says it so naturally it’s as if Johnson were simply one of them. No one in the group has heard of this prayer before. In any case they all think it’s a good idea to use a prayer of Johnson’s to intone a funeral hymn. After all, Walter says, Dr. Johnson is the only person in the world to have dedicated a genuinely brilliant essay to the theme of epitaphs. He himself specialized in them for a while, writing them in verse and giving them to the best tombs in London. So Dr. Johnson seems like the ideal person for this epitaph for the Gutenberg age, Walter says.

  Everyone is delighted that Dr. Johnson’s writers’ prayer is the one that will be used as an epitaph for the print age. Everyone that is except Riba, who at the last minute discovers that, as hard as he tries, he can’t identify at all with writers, against whom he actually bears a certain grudge, because when it comes down to it, they’re the involuntary cause of this sorrow that at times reappears in the middle of his recurring nightmare about the cage and God. Deep down, Riba fears that this writers’ prayer is pursuing him and making him regret what he stopped doing, his brain forever pierced by his publisher’s sorrow, by that intimate hydra gnawing away at him.