Sometimes we don’t catch those details, but for me, whatever happens, she will be the first girl I had a coffee with at five in the morning after my mother’s death.
The night was still pitch black. I felt tired. I had only slept four hours and it wasn’t enough. I yawned.
“Do you sleep?” she asked me.
“I do.” I didn’t add the word still.
“You?”
“I sleep too.”
We both drank another two sips of coffee.
One more sip and she would go. She took the sip and I remained silent. She didn’t say anything either. I knew she would get up. Then she cleared her throat; she was about to stand up.
But just then I heard my name in the plaza. The concierge of my building was calling my name as she dragged a suitcase.
The sound of the wheels on that suitcase transported me to airports, train stations and thousands of hallways on hotel floors.
I knew the sound of that suitcase, I had spent hundreds of hours with it, beside it, and I had placed it in hundreds of high, inaccessible places so it could rest between trips.
“They brought this suitcase for you, from the airport,” she said, staring at the girl who was with me.
She left the suitcase beside me and it seemed to be giving off cold. That was my mother’s suitcase and even though the authorities in Boston had informed me that they would repatriate her body and belongings, I never thought the luggage would arrive before she did.
I didn’t dare to look at that brown suitcase with three wheels. My mother, over the years, had had an extra wheel added, because she thought that would make it easy for her to transport it. I didn’t even touch the handle because I had the feeling that, somehow, her essence, her perfume, part of her last moments would be there.
“It’s yours, right, Marcos?” asked the concierge, seeing how little interest I showed in it.
“Yes, it is,” I said. I didn’t want to give more details.
Then I smiled and thanked her. She left devastated because she was hoping I would introduce her to my coffee companion.
“Did you lose your luggage in the airport?” asked the girl from the theater.
Maybe it was the conversation I needed, talking to her about what that suitcase meant to me. What it would mean to open it, find part of her world and be able to share it with someone now that she was gone. But I didn’t want her to feel sorry for me, to discover that it was a tragic day in my life and that she had met me at a time when I was no longer myself.
“Not exactly,” I said. “It was my mother’s.”
She didn’t stand up
“Does your mother live with you?”
I didn’t want to lie to her but I didn’t want to tell her the truth either. How many times had I found myself at that crossroads... Maybe there should be a concept halfway between a lie and the truth.
Before I could answer, my phone started barking again. I saw fear in her face, even though the barks weren’t real. It was the boss. I had forgotten that he’d called me when I was in the theater. I answered it.
I could tell that she was getting ready to leave; the call was the perfect ending. But she waited for me to finish so she could say goodbye.
I decided to take full advantage of the call, I would drag it out as long as I needed to.
“We managed to set him free without implicating ourselves,” the boss said curtly.
“Really?” I asked.
“Yes. He said he would go to the main plaza in Salamanca. He has something to do there,” he added. “He wants you to go there; the stranger wants to see you. I’ll call you later and you can tell me about it, we can’t leave here now. It’s at a fever pitch.”
I didn’t know what to say, the stranger was free and wanted to see me. I know that I should have asked my boss a lot of questions about the escape, about why the stranger needed to go to that Castilian city and why he wanted to talk to me. But I couldn’t ask any of them, because the boss hung up before I had a chance.
I acted like the call hadn’t ended; I didn’t want her to leave. I kept saying “yes” and “no” randomly. A couple of times I added “aha” and finally, when I saw that she was going to stand up even if I stayed on the call, I let out a “perfect, I’ll see you there.”
I hung up. She stood up. Suddenly, I felt I was losing her and I took a risk.
“Do you want to come somewhere with me?” I asked.
She didn’t answer. She just waited to see what else I said.
“When you told me you didn’t want to leave Death of a Salesman alone because there was someone you didn’t want to see, I believed you. Now I am asking you something stranger: for you to come with me to Salamanca to see someone I don’t want to face alone either.”
She continued in silence. I didn’t know what else to say to convince her.
“I promise it isn’t a trap or anything shady. Trust me.”
She smiled.
“Do we know each other?” she asked in a tone so soft it was almost imperceptible.
I was very surprised by her question.
“No,” I said. “I don’t think so.”
“I have the feeling I’ve seen you before. You seem...”
She took a few seconds to find the word. I didn’t try to help her.
“...trustworthy. I trust you.”
Now I was the one who smiled. I stood up, so did she. I made the gesture of “put it on my tab” to the waiter, who had been observing our conversation from a distance.
We headed toward where the Peruvian was parked. His gold teeth were my north star.
I had to grab the suitcase; I felt something strange when my fingers touched the handle.
My mother never let me carry it for her; she said that the day she couldn’t transport her own suitcase would be the day she would stop traveling.
Now her suitcase was mine. It was unfair that fate allowed me to carry it. I felt a terrible pain, unimaginable, but I didn’t mention it to the girl from the Teatro Español.
On the way to the car I saw that the televisions were showing the stranger’s photos, but as if he wasn’t related to the alien. Beneath his photo there was a sign that read “WANTED FOR PEDERASTY.” Then I saw the photos I had seen in the security guard’s folder entitled “attached” but with his face replaced by the stranger’s.
I felt disgust at the set-up. They had to find him and they were trying to make people feel repulsed by someone who hadn’t done those monstrous things, since they were the work of his possible captor.
Poor stranger, his first moments on Earth and they were already blaming him for something he hadn’t done.
Again, I said nothing. We got into the car; the Peruvian treated the girl as if he had known her his entire life.
“We’re going to Salamanca,” I said to the Peruvian.
“I know,” he answered as he put on my music.
The car started, the suitcase was between her and me.
My mother’s presence made itself clear.
16
THE ART OF DRAWING A GOOD BATH AND THE BRAVERY OF ENJOYING IT
It had been years since I’d visited Salamanca. The last time I was twelve years old. They had hired my mother to do an outdoor summer gig.
She really liked that kind of event; she used to say that the audience was relaxed, the dancers felt comfortable and that the influx of the stars, moon and the fresh air revitalized those mediocre shows.
Sometimes she told me that the performance was all of that and that she liked to mingle with the audience and see how the person to her left listened to the music as they looked up at the starry sky and how the one on the right followed the dancers’ movements closely, but their sense of smell was totally focused on enjoying the aromas of the summer night mixed with hundreds of tanning lotion scents.
She acted in Salamanca’s main plaza with her company, one very hot summer. The place, the audience and the climate were so marvelous that I remember my mother said that
they competed with the performance in a way that was almost illegal.
“Tell me,” the girl asked as soon as we took the first avenue with more than four lanes.
I knew that that “tell me” referred to everything. Tell me everything, she was saying to me. The Peruvian raised the dark window, and I thanked him with a look.
I also felt something strange toward her. That trust that shouldn’t arise between people who’ve just met, but sometimes exists and is more intense than what you feel for someone you’ve known for more than twenty years.
“It’s not that familiarity breeds contempt....” said my mother whenever someone let her down. “Familiarity shouldn’t exist. It is the laxity that provokes the big disappointments in every type of relationship.”
She believed that you had to earn the trust of the other person each day. Demand that they earn yours, that they surprise you and you must show them the same.
I never saw her living a day-to-day relationship with anyone. I never saw her live with a man in the traditional sense. I think that had to do with trust.
I’ve always believed that the person she spent the most time with, she shared more rooms with and had more conversations with... was me. And I can assure you that I always felt her demands on me and she taught me to make those demands of her.
The simplest time of our lives was in Boston, which was also where she had passed away. It is a city with its own spirit, indomitable, that seems like it was transplanted from the European continent to the American.
In the summertime, when I was fifteen, I loved to sit on one of the benches in its immense parks filled with lakes and observe, like Will Hunting, the tranquility of a city that demands nothing of you and doesn’t expect you to aspire to anything. In that city I felt that I was myself, my most intense self.
It was in that city where I felt closest to my mother.
She always took baths after her premieres, which I think I already told you. She said it was her way of liberating herself from the smell of the first performance, the accumulated nerves and passion.
Ever since I was ten years old, I was the one in charge of drawing her bath.
She had taught me that filling a bathtub is no different than preparing a meal in a kitchen. You have to be attentive to both things, so that they come out right and are perfect.
She would say that there were people who started cooking and then went off to finish other things. And that mix of activities showed in the results.
She told me that stoves and bathtubs need our affection, our full attention. As if that 36.5 degrees Celsius water we fill a tub with or cook pasta in was the key to the good taste we feel when eating it or the great pleasure we feel when slipping into it.
So, from the age of ten, I remained seated, in silence, watching the bathtub fill.
First, always six minutes of very cold water; then three minutes of very hot water. The soap always went in at the last minute and that was the most pleasant moment, because if it was done well I could feel how the foam took on its own texture. It was no different than the art of painting.
I liked being in charge of her baths. Then she spent exactly sixty minutes enjoying them. Always alone. And she emerged renewed.
In Boston I had helped in the direction of the work that was being premiered. It was my first time. So when the bath was ready she asked if I wanted to get in with her. One on each side, facing each other.
I hesitated, but since I believe that there really was something in the Boston air that made you forget your prejudices and preoccupations, I undressed and got into the bath. I took the side opposite her.
At first I was very tense, but gradually I relaxed and enjoyed the experience.
I felt how the nerves of the performance, the stress of the last rehearsals, were diluted and mixed with that water prepared with such affection.
Little by little, I noticed how my mother’s body, which at first I didn’t even want to brush, was touching mine involuntarily.
It was a pleasant experience, actually the most pleasant I’ve ever felt.
Years later I decided that when I finished a painting I would take a post-painting bath, to get rid of the colors dwelling inside my body. And I swear that just hearing the sound of the water made my esophagus vibrate.
That has always been and will be my happy sound.
I have never shared a bathtub since. I almost suggested it to the girl in Capri, the one I embraced after my grandmother’s death, but in the end I didn’t dare.
I don’t know what it is about sharing a bathtub with someone for sixty minutes, but it’s as if you got to know that person better.
As if the water transported part of your secrets, your fears, and brushing involuntarily against their skin allowed you to enter their most private essence.
“Tell me everything, really. Don’t be afraid of what I’ll think,” said the girl from the theater again.
I knew that she would really believe me. The trust between us since we saw the end of the salesman was intense.
I did it.
In that hour and a half, I told her everything. The speed of my words reminded me of the tone that David Bowie used when singing “Modern Love.”
I swallowed sentences and glossed over some things but I conveyed the essence.
On the way between Madrid and Ávila I told her about the stranger, my gift, his escape, the red rain, the pentagonal planet and how I had seen her in the Plaza Santa Ana.
From Ávila to Salamanca I focused on my mother, her less, my decision to quit sleeping, my fears, my loneliness, the painting, the unfinished sex canvas and the suitcase.
It was an intense ninety-minute monologue without her saying a word. Not a single word.
It was an immense pleasure to tell her everything; well, that’s a lie, maybe I didn’t exactly explain my fascination for her. I was cautious in love, and since I had never had anything to tell, now that I did I wasn’t sure how to present it. It was like handling an explosive.
About the rest, I didn’t leave out a single detail.
She was the sixth person I had told about the gift. First I told my mother, then Dani, the boss, the girl in Capri and the guy who I thought was my father. Maybe I’ll tell you about him someday.
She didn’t say anything when I told her about my gift either. Not even when I mentioned the stranger.
I had never been so honest and open with anyone. I was afraid of her reaction.
The car went down one of the streets that led to Salamanca’s main plaza just as I was telling her about the escape plan.
In the middle of the plaza I saw the stranger. He was wearing a hood, probably so no one would recognize him as the supposed pederast.
We got out and headed over to him.
“Do you believe me?” I asked.
“Yes, I believe you,” she said.
And I knew that she believed me. I felt good.
Sincerity that is rewarded is one of the most satisfying pleasures in this life.
I was glad there hadn’t been a “but.” “I believe you, but…,” “I’m sorry, although...” Terrible conjunctions that end up deactivating the feelings that precede them.
When we were still fifty paces from the stranger, he looked up and smiled.
I loved that he did that before we reached him. And, I realized that he was right in the middle of the plaza waiting for us. Another plaza, and another fascinating person in the middle waiting.
17
BE BRAVE, IN LIFE, LOVE AND SEX
As soon as I reached him, the stranger hugged me. He smelled like a baby, a faint fragrance. I wasn’t sure if it was cologne or the scent of his skin.
There are so many bodies that generate natural perfumes...
The first girl I was with, a lifeguard at a pool in Montreal, always smelled of chlorine. We talked every afternoon that I spent at the pool of the hotel where she worked.
For me, that pool was a small Eden, far from the cold, from the vast network of t
rains that connected that city underground, and that kept you from seeing and feeling the 24 degrees below zero Celsius.
The few times that I went out on the street, if I closed my eyes more than ten seconds, the cold froze my eyelashes.
So, while my mother created in a nearby underground theater, I lived in the swimming pool.
The lifeguard talked and talked, and I listened spellbound.
The day we got together for the first time away from the pool, she didn’t smell of chlorine but of a fragrance somewhere between grapefruit and saffron.
We made love. It was my first time and that scent has always stayed with me.
I, on the other hand, don’t smell of anything.
Which is why, every time I think that someone I know has a virtue I don’t possess, I think they smell good. I find out what cologne they wear and I use it for a few months.
I’ve worn a lot of different ones; every six months I change my scent. As if my shortcomings would be absorbed by their cologne.
I would have liked to ask the stranger what he smelled of, so I could wear his scent for a while, but it wasn’t the time or the place.
“Did you tell her?” the stranger asked as he extended his hand to the girl from the Teatro Español.
I nodded.
“Did you like the play?” he asked.
She smiled and nodded.
The bells in the main plaza rang out seven in the morning. He turned 360 degrees, as if looking for someone. It seemed he was there waiting for somebody.
That was when I looked around the plaza, which I hadn’t visited in years. It was lovely. I think it is the most beautiful plaza in the world, hands down. My mother adored it.
“It is a brave plaza,” she told me hours after premiering a work and having a new success under her belt.
“Brave?” I asked. “There are brave plazas?”
“There are, this one is because it invites bravery.”
She took my hand in that moment, placed it on her belly button and kissed me on the back of my neck. It surprised me.
Everything You and I Could Have Been If We Weren't You and I Page 9