He heads down a narrow street and stops in front of a window that’s displaying an enormous photograph, modified with gaudy streaks of paint and various objects stuck to it, empty pouches of tobacco and crushed beer cans with the bottoms ripped off. The montage recreates a street besieged by filth and abandonment, and the bramble of add-on substances, the chains and crumpled newspaper, convert the entire panel into a masterful depiction of motion that contrasts with the stillness of the image, which lacks any other presence; it seems however to be whipped by a wind that has carried them all, the theoretical neighbors of that street in the picture, very far away, to other latitudes foretold and unfamiliar, with fewer hidden corners and incisions in the texture of what lays visible, as if the photograph were boundless, merely a continuation which aspires not to depict reality, but to instead put a name to that emptiness.
He sees a light inside, although the establishment is closed now. He rings the bell, and after a few seconds Ingrid appears, in a white blouse and jeans, with a downcast expression, suddenly smiling upon discovering Jonás on the other side of the glass. She opens the door. “Hey, guy! How are you? How long’s it been since I’ve seen you around here?”
She gives him a peck on the cheek, and they contemplate each another at length. She stretches out her arms and grasps him by the shoulders, looking at him intensely. Jonás motions toward the window.
“It’s striking. I like it.”
Ingrid’s eyes open wide, a delicate and pale celeste.
“You don’t recognize it.”
Jonás shakes his head and takes a look, from inside, at the photo montage.
“Of course! It’s Oliver’s,” he whispers. “Sebastian told me everything. But I didn’t know you had it on display.”
The gallery owner lowers her hands, crosses them over her chest, and turns her back to him.
“I had his exhibit scheduled for two weeks ago. He sent me a first installment with that composition there and a bunch of sketches; I already gave those to Sebastian, and he took them to the police. That was the last we heard from him. We tried everything we could think of to track him down, but it was useless. In the end, I had to cancel.”
He turns to analyze Oliver’s work. Ingrid is right: he didn’t recognize the artist, and that in itself seems significant. A photograph of a street colored by different paints and shades, with an intensity and equidistance in the reliefs that accentuate the perspective. Empty cans, crumpled cigarette packs, sheets of newspaper by the sidewalk where the streets cross, as well as a few other nuances which he observes now in greater detail: a stray plastic strip of unknown provenance, a whistle concealed by a scab of black paint, like asphalt cracked suddenly open by the increasing curvature of the tarmac, materials and mud, the tangibility of an unadulterated touch. He’s struck by the coincidence, however, because he was going to tell Ingrid his idea about the stage without actors, provisionally baptized by Sebastian as Faces, and it turns out that Oliver, from some inscrutable region, from a latitude with no known return address, had already sent Ingrid exactly that: a street without life, marked by absences.
“I’ve got a bit of whisky in the office.”
Jonás follows her. They walk through a door, painted white like the wall, and he recognizes the desktop covered in papers, laid out in a seemingly contradictory arrangement which could also be a work of art: the bills mixed with the photographs, the catalogues piled until they practically brush against the bulb of the reading lamp, pens and notebooks, an empty cup with coffee grounds encrusted in the bottom sitting atop pads of paper, with samples from different painters who also aspire to hang on those walls, luminous and high, where Jonás presented his two individual shows and some group exhibitions, not so long ago really, though it seems like it now. In Ingrid’s eyes he thinks he can make out that same shimmer, that none of it ever happened, as if those memories belonged to another lifetime.
The room has a door leading to a patio, where Ingrid tends to a grapevine and several pots of plants, mostly roses: the door stands ajar now and a pleasant breeze enters, as if bringing in the soft caress of the leaves’ respiration. They have seated themselves in armchairs at a table that’s been built in to the corner, as if they were about to negotiate an agency agreement or privately celebrate an opening; but there is so much heaviness in them that Jonás fixes his gaze on the fragrant, rounded bottom of his glass.
“Sebastian says you have an interesting idea.”
“Maybe,” Jonás takes a short sip. “The problem is that I’m not so convinced.”
Ingrid looks at Jonás, unable to hide a smile so understanding and subtle, but also fleeting, that it’s almost imperceptible. She holds her glass with both hands, tiny and nearly transparent, stands up, and walks to the shelving: also white and crammed with books, next to the patio door. She leans her left elbow on one of the shelves and looks out at the night, at that darkness.
“Kid, I know you too well. You think if you stop taking photos you’ll feel better, but it’s not that simple. Life isn’t about just pressing a little button, no matter how many incredible photographers you can name by heart. The only decisive moment is right now. The only camera lucida is the one which lets you capture that. There is nothing else. As far as I’m concerned,” she takes a long sip and looks at him intensely, “you don’t ever have to take another picture again. And I’m not talking to you now as a gallery owner.”
“The thing is—” Jonás sits in silence for a few seconds. “I’ve actually taken some new photos. Bad ones, probably. But I’ve got lots of material… They’re empty sets. Inhabited right up until that moment, as if the very act of photographing them were equivalent to abandoning them.”
“Wow.” Ingrid sets her glass on the shelf and crosses her arms, looking directly at him. “You must have noticed your concept is a lot like the one Oliver was working on. From a different perspective, but very similar: a deserted street, although not as neat and tidy as you would have made it.”
“It’s not so strange. We’ve always had our own ways of looking at everything.”
“That’s true.” Ingrid sits back down across from him. “But, even if it didn’t seem like it, the two of you shared a connection. And now you come to me with the same idea, without knowing he was already working on it…”
“Those were amazing days, when we used to show together. But that,” Jonás points through the gallery at the window, “is a complete coincidence. This is the first time I’ve seen that piece.”
Ingrid sits in silence. She crosses her legs. Then she gets up again, walks over to the shelves, and recovers her glass, which still has just over a finger-width of whisky.
“Of course you haven’t seen it before. I just hung it up today. Not even Sebastian knows I have it; I stored it away after I got it. And when he reported Oliver missing, I only gave his notes to the police. What good are they going to do them? What sense does it make to have that work buried in a storage deposit?” She drains her glass and slowly closes the patio door. “But you’re not getting it. It’s not just that. Something’s happened to Oliver. I know. I can feel it.”
“Come on now, Ingrid. We’re all a bit on edge. But when it comes to Oliver… I’m sure he’ll turn up when we’re least expecting it.”
She shakes her head from side to side. Her entire body, agile and small beneath her blouse and jeans, shakes while she takes the glass from Jonás, who also gets to his feet. They go back into the gallery, and she shuts off the light in her office before closing the door.
“You still don’t understand. I’m telling you what I know. I could tell you how Oliver has never even been a second late handing in his work for an exhibition; he could get lost along the way, and he did sometimes, but he always got his stuff to me on time. You don’t find that odd either?”
Jonás remains pensive. The drink has upset his stomach.
“I’m worried too. My mother has disappeared, and that’s more unusual than Oliver’s escapades.”
&n
bsp; “I had no idea.” She takes his hand. “And your father?”
“He’s looking for her.”
She reenters her office and comes out with a blazer. For a moment she seems to hesitate.
“What I’m about to say is something I haven’t told anyone. Not even Sebastian. But I dreamed of Oliver’s montage before I received it. I saw it. Exactly the same. Every single detail. And I knew then too that he would never return.”
They walk out into the street. Jonás helps her lower the shutters. She connects the alarm; under the shine of the streetlights, her face is stunning and pure, so poised and serene that Jonás doesn’t suspect for a second that she might be making it up. Whatever it is that comes to her in dreams, he’s never seen Ingrid so sure of herself.
They stand in front of the window, absorbed in the composition, powerful and dreamlike, of that empty street under a magnetic sky, splattered with garbage; discreetly they start to make their way in through the glass, as if they could distance themselves in this way from the world.
Chapter 36
“If there wasn’t so much proof all around me, I’d swear I was going crazy.” He grabs his father by the arm; they get up from the bar and head to one of the unoccupied tables next to the picture window. He can no longer find the physical vigor in his father, that ever-reliable sturdiness beneath his overcoat: he gets the impression that if he doesn’t hold him up, his father will collapse. He received his call at eight in the morning, and they agreed to meet an hour later. Jonás arrived punctually. He’s glad he decided not to stay out all night, not to keep drinking; he and Ingrid took a walk along a boulevard flanked by poplars, which the two used like a raft, comforting and buoyant, helping them confront not just the night but the following day’s sun.
“Don’t ever say that again.” They fall into their chairs. His father takes a moment to find his position, uncomfortable, and doesn’t bother to remove his overcoat. “You’re just tired.”
“Look, I’m perfectly aware of what I am. I don’t know if you remember Thibault.”
“Of course I remember him. Your partner.”
His father looks out the window and shrinks behind his large lapels, raised as if it were raining, though the day has dawned cloudless.
“He’s more than that. We’ve spent over twenty years together, since we were named inspectors; he’s helping me look for your mother. Or he was, at least. I haven’t heard a thing from him in two days. They’ve ordered a search. But honestly, I don’t think that will do much good.”
“He must be somewhere. And Mom too. Everyone has to show up.”
His father sits, looking at him. The waiter leaves the cups of coffee on the black table, and Jonás recalls then how he passed by the café the night before and looked in at the last customers, sheltered here, just before lights-out.
“Everyone? Who else are you talking about?”
Jonás pours a packet of sugar into his cup and concentrates as he stirs it. “You never met Oliver; back then you didn’t want anything to do with photography.” His father starts to shift in his seat, but he maintains a controlled stillness in his features, as if the memory of those arguments has given him back his natural gruffness. “Yesterday I went to our gallery, around the corner from here, and the owner told me she was planning a show of his; but he left her hanging, she hasn’t heard anything from him, he hasn’t sent a thing. And apparently he’s very punctual with his deadlines. Another friend of mine, Sebastian, has been trying to locate him for months. He even went to the police. But Oliver’s vanished.”
“Could be a coincidence.” His father’s expression, uneasy, lacks all conviction.
“It could be in all those other cases too,” Jonás lowers his voice sharply, leaning in over the coffees—his father hasn’t touched his yet, “but then you wouldn’t be so unsettled.”
His father unbuttons his coat and opens it wide, without quite taking it off. It hangs from his shoulders, falls over his sides like a wrinkled gray cape, cut short, as he reclines a bit further, stretching his back, arching it. Then he leans on his elbows, drawing his face close to Jonás’s.
“Look, son,” his voice has turned grave but more resolved, “missing persons reports come into the police station every day. It’s always been that way. From the moment I started until my last day on the job. Most of these people come home, or they’re found, sooner or later: teenagers, husbands who abandon their wife and children, wives who run away with their boyfriend, or their girlfriend, old folks with Alzheimer’s who suddenly forget where they live and end up wandering around the streets, asking everybody, until someone notifies the police or social services… Think of every possible variation: because they happen; and there are certain behavioral patterns. But there’s a very small percentage, open cases on missing persons who never do come back, who never turn up: little girls who were last seen getting on the bus or coming home from school, men who vanish from a bachelor party, or who leave on a trip but never make it to their destination. Believe me, it’s not a very considerable proportion, but it’s skyrocketed in these last few months. And yet no one makes a big deal of it. What are they going to say? They think everything’s the same as always. Television, the radio. All of them. There’s nothing outwardly different. The brass thinks it’s just a streak of bad luck.”
Jonás finishes his coffee and takes a sip of water. He looks around them. The café is the same as any other day at that time: the early breakfast crowd. Or are there too many empty tables? The waiters are standing together by the bar, unoccupied and distracted.
“And what do you think?”
“Of course,” his father continues, “they’re not regular disappearances. None of them: your mother, Thibault. The photographer kid. It’s this absolute silence. And that’s something we’d never seen before.”
Jonás zips up his jacket and adjusts the collar.
“I’m going over to Sergio’s for dinner tonight.”
“Say hi to him for me.”
“Hey,” he lowers his voice again, “you’re not crazy.”
His father forces a half-smile that quickly dissipates, leaving behind a grimace.
“That matters to me less and less… But before you go, there’s one more thing I wanted to tell you: Be very careful with your new friend.”
“What new friend?”
“The one with the house outside the city, in the middle of nowhere. With the greenhouse.” Jonás starts to ask him in surprise how he found out about that, but he keeps quiet. His father draws close and hugs him unexpectedly. He sits there holding Jonás, without letting go.
“I can’t keep looking for your mother and protect you at the same time.”
Chapter 37
It’s warmer out than the last few nights and Martina has served dinner on the terrace. Sitting at the table with them, while the couple argues over who gets to refill his wine glass and Paula tells him about her favorite cartoons, Jonás looks discreetly out at the dark immensity of the gardens and roofs under a sea blue sky.
Paula has her chestnut hair tied back with a bow. From the nose down, her features are Sergio’s, with a mixture of impulse and willpower modeled into a smooth chin with a barely perceptible dimple. Her eyes are her mother’s: gorgeous and peaceful, with a singular self-assurance for a four-year-old girl. The all-encompassing grace of her body when she moves, the smile that’s never absent from her lips, and her charm, like that of a hostess who’s accustomed to receiving friends, seem to Jonás the consequence of her family’s character and the layout of a house designed as a space for socializing. The décor is pleasant: a combination of rustic furniture with a tendency toward minimalism and an emphasis on comfort.
“Jonás, are you going on vacation too?”
He shrugs his shoulders as he contemplates Paula’s rosy cheeks and visibly tired eyes.
“Vacation?”
“Yes. Some of the kids at daycare have gone on vacation with their parents.”
“Wow,” Jonás
looks at Sergio, who looks in turn at Martina, “that’s a good idea. But I don’t know if I can.”
“What time is it?” Martina gets up from the table, glancing at her watch, with the silver band hanging loose around her wrist. “Because we are not going on vacation, as far as I know, and it’s after eleven.”
The girl turns to her father with an exhausted yet irritated expression.
“But I want to stay.”
“Paula,” Sergio walks over, lifts her from the chair, and gives her a kiss, “let your father talk with his friend a while.”
Jonás gets up and looks from one of them to the other.
“The dinner was lovely, as was the terrace and the company, but don’t worry about me; I was about ready to head out.”
“I won’t hear of it.” Sergio sets his hand on his shoulder. “I’ve got an eighteen-year-old whisky that’ll get you buzzed on just the smell.”
“Paula, kiss Jonás goodnight. I’m going to go lay down too, if you’ll excuse me. If you want, you’re welcome to spend the night: we’ve still got that inflatable mattress… By the way,” she says, lowering her voice as she kisses his cheek, “Sergio told me about your mother. I hope everything gets cleared up soon.”
Jonás lowers his head slightly. For a moment, he had managed to forget.
“Thanks. For dinner too. The next time we’ll do it at my place. It’s tiny, but I’ve been told my dry martinis are worth it.”
“I can vouch for that. They’re excellent. But it’s not so small, we’ll be fine there.”
“It would be our pleasure. Have a good night guys; I’m beat. It goes without saying, I know, but make yourself at home.”
Comfortably reclined in their wicker chairs, they watch Martina and Paula cross the living room and head down the hallway to the bedrooms. Jonás takes a deep breath.
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