She walked into the street again and for the second time in a few minutes felt as if she were taking part in a film, but now she wasn’t just another extra, someone to make up the numbers. She was walking surprisingly nimbly, and she had an objective: not to lose sight of the old jacket; to follow it at a distance. And for a few moments she thought that the people walking around and about her realized what she was doing and were aware of her objective. That was why they were looking at her, falling into step with her, spurring her on. But were they really spurring her on? She wasn’t young any more and had passed through the doors of invisibility some time ago. She could move around comfortably without anyone paying her any attention. And now, when she needed to be more anonymous and invisible than ever, she was the target of comments, remarks, flirtatious compliments, outrageous proposals. What was happening that morning on Gran Vía? Before she had time to answer her own question he suddenly headed off, taking great strides, and she had to run to keep up with him. She no longer cared that people were looking at her or that some idiot jokingly tried to block her way. She couldn’t lose him. Those great strides of his – that was how he walked, with great strides. Then he stopped dead in his tracks. He often used to do that. When he remembered something important he would stop dead in his tracks. She took a deep breath and stopped in front of a perfume shop. Just for a few seconds, she thought, until he moves off again and I can follow him without being noticed. But the glass in a mirror reflected her face back at her, and she just stood there fascinated, astonished and not moving a muscle.
Because it really was her. Who could say how many years ago, but it was her. She was wearing a very short skirt, and her long, shiny chestnut hair was loose. She thought she looked pretty. Very pretty. Had she ever been so pretty? She wanted to think she was in a dream, someone else’s dream. Wherever the man she loved was, he was dreaming about her, and now she was looking at herself through his eyes. That’s how he must have seen her around the time they met; that time, so long ago now, when anything seemed possible. She took a great big breath and had the feeling she had already experienced that moment. The shop window, the mirror, her girlish reflection, Gran Vía one sunny morning. A mirage or simply an optical illusion. The sun, her reflection, a trick of the mirror, the objects and posters in the window becoming entwined with her own image.
‘Where did you get to?’ she suddenly heard.
She put her hand out to stop herself from falling over. He was there – tall, slim and just as young as when they first knew each other. There was no longer any doubt. The boy in the beige jacket was right there, behind her, and he’d just put his hand on her shoulder.
‘Come on. We’re late. Don’t forget, we’re meeting up with Tete.’
He put his arm around her waist, and she let herself be led away like an automaton. Tete Poch. Tete Poch had died years before. Tete was the first of their friends to disappear, to abandon this world. But now it seemed as if none of this could have happened yet. Tete was still alive. He had not yet departed to the place from which there is no return, and she was a girl with long hair who wore amazingly short skirts. She took a deep breath, and once again thought she might faint. She bit her lip until it bled. It wasn’t a dream. This was really happening. She gradually recognized streets, shops and bars. They went into one that seemed surprisingly familiar. She knew the place. There was a time she used to go there regularly, although she couldn’t now remember its name. A blotchy mirror reflected back her face. She was still pretty. And there he was beside her, very, very young, wearing that nice corduroy jacket he never wanted to take off and which she still (without knowing why) kept in the wardrobe.
‘Tete’s borrowed a car off someone. We could go to Segovia for the day.’
‘Great.’
‘What’s up? You’ve hardly said a thing all morning.’
She shook her head.
‘You were walking so quickly…’
Tete hadn’t arrived yet. It was better that way. She needed some time to take in what was happening. He had just taken out a book from his pocket.
‘I found it in an old bookshop yesterday. It’s a real gem.’
She looked at the cover. The Oresteia by Aeschylus. She was surprised that she could read the title without her glasses. Her sight was still good back then. Perhaps, but anyway she’d recognized the book immediately. It was still at home, too, on the book shelf in the study. She hadn’t dared take anything out of that room, even though he had gone.
‘It’s a trilingual edition,’ he said proudly. ‘Classical Greek, Modern Greek and English.’
‘Yes.’
He took her hand. ‘Something’s up with you. Or are you worried about the exam?’
The exam? What exam?
‘I’m sure you’ve passed. Don’t worry.’
She suddenly began remembering: Tete, a beaten-up old car, the three of them in Segovia, the journalism exam. That’s why they’d gone to Madrid. She had to take an exam in journalism, and he’d gone with her. They went everywhere together, almost from the first time they’d met at the Faculty of Law in Barcelona. They were never boyfriend and girlfriend. They didn’t like those words. They hated them. They were friends. That’s what they used to say. ‘FRIENDS’ in capital letters. No one had been surprised that some years later the friendship turned into marriage, although they didn’t like the word ‘marriage’ either and ‘husband’ and ‘wife’ even less. They thought they sounded formal and boring. If anyone had asked them what they were back then, at the time Tete was around and when they used to go to Madrid and when she was taking the journalism exam, they would have said ‘FRIENDS’.
‘I’m just going to the toilet,’ she said, and he stroked her cheek. Her cheek, my God, her cheek was burning! She was scared she would burst into tears, get emotional, say something out of place and spoil the marvellous encounter. She got up and added, ‘I’ll be back in a minute.’
She didn’t need to ask where the toilets were or stop to look at the sign (‘TOILETS. TELEPHONE’) because she knew exactly where she was. It was as if she had been there just the day before. She went down a couple of steps and turned back to look at the table. Tete had just arrived, and they were giving each other a hug. They were giving each other a hug! Then she did burst into tears. Tears of joy, tears of forgotten joy. Her mascara had run into one eye, and she almost had to feel her way down to the toilets. She splashed some water on her face when she got there. She needed to clear her head and sort herself out. She had to look happy and carefree and think there was still a whole life ahead of them. If they were surprised at how she looked or guessed that she’d been crying, she would simply say, ‘Bloody mascara. I don’t know why I bother with make-up.’ She suddenly remembered that that was exactly what had happened. She remembered it clearly, word for word. ‘Bloody mascara. I don’t know why I bother with make-up.’ She also clearly remembered that, on that morning she’d miraculously been allowed to relive, her eyes had stung for a long time and they went to a chemist’s and bought eye-drops (which brand was it?). Then they all got into the borrowed car and sang songs the whole way. Back then it was quite a journey to get to Segovia. They sang war songs, anthems, banned lyrics that were just as forbidden as the fact that she, a girl of twenty years of age at the time, should be in a car with Tete and him, as free as birds, happy and carefree, while her parents in Barcelona thought she was taking an exam or studying. What a charmed life they’d led before mobile phones. She dried her face with a towel (paper towels still hadn’t invaded the toilets) and went up the steps two at a time. She was ready. She knew the script and was happy. She was the happiest girl in the world, even though her mascara was still running and for a moment, when she rubbed her eyes, she could see only a grey mist. Bloody mascara!
For a second she thought she’d made a mistake and that the bar had another room or that the toilets were shared between two different premises. But there was only one staircase and upstairs was a soulless bar with an enormous coun
ter, a few customers and a dozen tables piled up any old how in a corner. ‘Where are the young men who were here a short while ago?’ she asked a waiter in a quavering voice. The man shrugged and didn’t understand. She leaned against the wall. Where had they gone? How could they leave her behind?
A young woman offered her a seat and asked, ‘Are you OK?’
She shook her head.
‘She seems confused,’ said the waiter. ‘She came in a while ago and went straight to the toilets.’
The young woman spoke to her gently, very slowly and in a loud voice as if she were a foreigner who found it difficult to understand. ‘What’s your address? Shall we call a taxi for you?’
She didn’t reply. She opened her handbag and took out a small mirror and looked at herself in it for a moment. She wasn’t surprised. In the distance she could hear a hum of voices wondering what was going on and the young woman asking for a napkin with some ice-cubes and talking to the onlookers.
‘It’s all right. The lady doesn’t feel very well.’
She went back to the hotel, to the apartment-room she had liked so much that morning. The past, the present, she remembered. There is no past and there is no present. Today, the present had slipped into her past. Or it was the other way around and fragments of her past had surfaced in the present? She opened her suitcase. By this time they would already be on the way to Segovia. Once more she wondered how they could have left her behind. But taking the high-speed train would mean she could overtake them and get there before they did. The present racing against the past. Not everything was lost yet because once again she remembered everything perfectly well: the restaurant, as much wine as you could drink, searching out a cheap hotel for the night. The names and the exact locations didn’t matter. She would go to each and every restaurant, inn, tavern or hostelry until she found them. It would be best to leave her suitcase down at reception and travel without any luggage. There wasn’t a second to lose. She would take a taxi and go to Chamartín Station. She’d catch up with them and would reappear in that delightful day from so long ago. Tete, him and her, with their whole lives ahead of them.
The key slipped out of her hand and clattered on the floor. She saw the number on the key fob and smiled. She smiled. ‘Eight months, oxygen, four plus four, infinity.’ She kneeled down, picked up the key and couldn’t help recalling her thoughts from just a short while ago, her frustration or despair at her question ‘How could they leave me behind?’ But also, as she was leaning against the bed to help herself get up, she was grateful for the miracle of time travel, the hope that if that (whatever it was) had happened it could happen again; clinging to Einstein’s words, which had become a mantra: ‘There is no past and there is no present.’ Suddenly she understood that she’d made a mistake about something very important. They hadn’t left her behind. How could she have thought something so ridiculous? Of course they hadn’t left her behind. There they were, the three of them, together on the road in an old banger someone had lent them, singing and laughing. They were free! That day from years and years back she had experienced once again just for a few moments was not over. She squeezed the key as if it were an amulet. 404. Oxygen. Four plus four equals eight. Infinity was a figure 8 on its side. She opened her hand without realizing it; the key slipped from it once more and hit the floor. But now she thought it was mocking her. A fresh start. A fresh start. A fresh start.
She sat down at the dressing-table and looked at herself in the mirror. She wouldn’t go anywhere. The past had a cast-iron script, and there could be no improvisation. Whatever Einstein said, the past and the present were two irreconcilable spaces. She had been on the verge of doing something crazy; the whole morning had been completely ridiculous. If she closed her eyes she could still see and hear them – the songs, the car and the road – but if she opened her eyes she saw her tired old face again. That’s what her new life was offering her. It would be no use to try to cheat the clock and steal back times that didn’t belong to her any more. For a moment she saw herself, exhausted and in a sweat, finally finding the bar where the three friends were cheerfully chatting and discreetly sitting down at a nearby table to watch them and to wait for the miracle to work its magic once again. But now she felt ridiculous. She felt like an intruder, an interloper, a gooseberry, because those three were twenty years old; they were young and living for the moment. And, what was now clearer than ever, they didn’t need her for anything. They didn’t need a sixty-year-old woman staring into a mirror who sometimes, occasionally, didn’t feel very well.
A Few Days with the Wahyes-Wahno
I had always thought that my aunt and uncle, Valeria and Tristán, were happy and full of fun, but more than anything else they seemed young, really young, although perhaps they were already fifty years old or thereabouts. They were completely different from our parents and our parents’ friends. In fact, they were completely different from anyone else. That’s why I was extremely surprised that our parents sent my brother and me to stay with them in the mountains for the whole month of August that summer. They said over and over again that we would be able to breathe the pure mountain air, eat fresh eggs and drink goat’s milk straight from the goat. But the real surprise wasn’t the pure mountain air, the milk or the eggs. It was them. Just them. They were the bizarre, foolish, lackadaisical couple; the happy-go-lucky couple. Out of all the terms our family regularly used to describe their lifestyle the one I liked the best and the one that at the same time intrigued me most was ‘happy-go-lucky’. I imagined them in the privacy of their home, in the dining-room, the kitchen, the bedroom, taking bundles of clothes, sheets, tablecloths, throwing them up into the air and letting them fall back down shouting ‘Go with the flow!’ – the catchphrase of theirs that seemed to encapsulate their happy-go-lucky approach to life. They had an even better time with the pots and pans. Not to mention dancing in the dining-room to music from an old gramophone, waiting for the record to play the last few notes then throwing it up to the ceiling, celebrating when it came back down and stamping on it with delight, with a few signature chants of ‘Go with the flow!’ thrown in for good measure. I thought this routine could almost have been borrowed from the Frank Capra film my mother always talked about, You Can’t Take It with You. Although I had not yet seen it back then, I could quote some scenes almost word for word. Thinking back, it seems strange now that my mother was so fascinated by that black-and-white celluloid home where there were no obligations or rules. It was happy-go-lucky, just like her brother’s and sister-in-law’s house. Because I wasn’t wrong about that. There was complete freedom in Uncle Tristán’s and Aunt Valeria’s house. Compared with theirs, any other home seemed like a prison or a zoo. That’s why we were delighted. Surprised but delighted. And at that time we didn’t even know anything about the Wahyes-Wahno.
My aunt and uncle didn’t have children because they hadn’t wanted any. There was much talk about that in the family. Some people said they were selfish. Others – and my mother was one of those – thought it was better that way, as small defenceless children wouldn’t fit into their lifestyle. As for their lifestyle, I never got any clear information about it. They travelled a lot. They were always studying, reading, writing and painting. But was that a bad thing? No one definitively told me that it was, although anyone I asked generally shrugged, shook their heads with a smile or, best of all, with a certain air of superiority came out with words such as ‘artists’, ‘bohemians’, ‘lazybones’, ‘feckless’ and, of course, ‘happy-go-lucky’. Aunt Berta, my father’s sister, loved criticizing them more than anyone. But Aunt Berta thought she was perfect. She liked interfering, wouldn’t accept any way of life other than her own and came down heavily on anyone who dared to contradict her. I hated her, and she knew it. I hated her with good reason, as she had destroyed my Human Races scrapbook with all my drawings and comments. ‘This is madness,’ she had declared that day to my complete bewilderment. ‘You’ll have to go to the doctor’s.’ She was like tha
t. If it were down to her, she would have sent us all to see a psychiatrist at the slightest excuse. But all that had happened at least three years earlier when we had a miserable time staying at her house at the beach. I was ten years old then, almost eleven. It was summertime, too, just like now. Today, however, we were happy on the coach, feeling the strange sensation of the pressure change blocking our ears as we climbed; our faces glued to the windows watching rivers with clear blue water, pine forests, stone houses with slate roofs go past. We had seen all this before only on postcards or in magazines. When we got to the last village on the route we saw our aunt and uncle sitting outside the bar in the square. They ran over, helped us down and took charge of our suitcases. I think even then they said ‘Wahyes, Wahyes’ when they greeted us. But my brother and I were so happy that neither of us noticed.
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