“Of course not. I’ve got a day job as a customer-service executive with an international marketing corporation.”
“And what do you do there?”
“Basically, I talk to potential clients on the telephone twelve hours a day, from a room that holds another thirty-nine customer-service executives just like me. I call people at all hours, but the company asks us to try to do it at particularly inopportune moments. It makes it easier to sell them objects and services that they never thought they’d want or need.”
“Telemarketing?”
“Precisely.”
“Lady stalker, telephone predator. You wouldn’t happen to be a serial killer or cannibal too, by any chance?”
“Well, I haven’t killed anyone, and I can’t say my hunger has ever reached those extremes.”
“I think I see a pattern here. Your thing is to take stuff away from people who you can hear, but never really see.”
“Yeah, I guess you’re right. I never thought of it that way. But you gotta understand, my work in the marketing company isn’t something I do for pleasure. It pays the bills.”
“Sure it does—but even so, it’s probably not worth it.”
“You can get used to anything, even making an old lady with Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s invest her life savings in shares of a pharmaceutical company the night before it tanks.”
“You used to do that?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“So you didn’t?”
“I never said that either.”
“You’re a professional crook.”
“Everything I do is legal. Not especially ethical, or nice, but legal. That is to say, strictly speaking, I don’t break the law; I just create the conditions necessary for my bosses to abuse the trust of naive and defenseless people.”
“Disgusting. Forget all that and come work for me.”
“How? You want me to steal for you?”
“I need a sound engineer for my program.”
“Program?”
Joaquin told him about Ghost Radio. He listened with interest.
“I’ve never done radio.”
“Even better. We can start from scratch.”
“But what about jail and your girlfriend?”
“Never mind that. Quit working for those con men, come with me, and all is forgiven. Although I am going to have to think up a good excuse for Elena.”
“Tell her I got away.”
“Or that I killed you, cut you into little pieces, and threw you into the sewer.” That would get me more hours of grateful sex.
“Whatever.”
“Nope, I’m gonna have to tell her the truth. Which means I’ll probably be left without a girlfriend. So I hope what I’m doing for you is worth it. Here.” Joaquin gave him one of the business cards the station had had printed up for him. “Show up on Monday at eight P.M., we’ll talk then.”
“You know, if you want some memories of her, I have a bunch here.”
“Don’t test my tolerance.”
“Thanks. So you’re really offering me a job?”
“Yep. What’s your name? Mine’s Joaquin.” He offered him his hand to seal the deal.
“People call me ‘Watt.’”
chapter 37
CALL 1904, MONDAY, 4:01 A.M. THE TRANSLATOR
“This story is about me,” said the caller, “but even more it’s about a man who was my friend for many years, Norbert Gutterman:
This happened a long time ago when I worked in downtown New York. This would be around ten years ago now, and at the time I was still trying to make it in middle management at Emigrant Savings Bank. We usually worked from eight to five, but I would stay longer on most days, trying to impress my bosses, you know. I rode a packed train at seven in the morning, and came home on a nearly empty one, at eight or nine in the evening.
I rarely had free time, and when I did I usually spent it at bars or at home watching soccer games on Telemundo. One Sunday morning, on a whim, I decided to head into Central Park, I’m not sure why. Fresh air, maybe. I was carrying the newspaper under my arm; I figured I might find a nice spot in the sun and read the financial section. As I made my way down one of the paths, I noticed a man sitting by himself at one of those outdoor chess tables, kind of isolated in a small plaza under a couple of oak trees. He was thin, older, wearing a brown suit that was threadbare but clean, and he held an old-fashioned briefcase on his lap. Even though he was outdoors, he conjured up images of thick leather-bound books and wood paneling. You might even say that with the crisp creases in his trousers and the defined shadows and lines in his face, he resembled a well-preserved antique book himself.
He looked up as I passed, and waved me over, which surprised me. I hadn’t found people to be that friendly in the city, and except for the women professionals I occasionally dated, I tended to avoid contact outside of work. I wondered if maybe he was looking to hustle me. Something about him, his posture or his hair that curled a little at the neck or his shoes, reminded me of premature unemployment, living alone, and for a reason I can’t explain, of pickles and onions floating in a jar.
I needn’t have worried. He looked down at the chessboard in front of him, the pieces all laid out and ready, and asked, “Care for a game?”
I almost shook my head and walked away, but something made me stay. Pity or curiosity maybe.
So we played chess. He tested my game, let me joust a couple of moves, and then beat me with a simple queen pin. He told me his name was Norbert. He was a Polish immigrant, a translator by trade, specializing in Eastern European poetry and history; I asked him if he’d done anything I might have read.
“From the look of you, I doubt it,” he said.
It was embarrassing, but true. I hadn’t read a good book since college, and as for poetry, well, I didn’t think nursery rhymes counted.
It was actually fun, but at last I excused myself. One of those chance encounters, I figured, a story that would be remembered for a few weeks or months and then forgotten. As I walked away, Norbert called after me: “Next week, then?” I laughed and waved patronizingly.
The following weekend, I was busy, on a conference call most of the day. Afterward, I was exhausted, drank a six-pack watching football, and went to bed. But I couldn’t stop thinking about that chess game, half in, half out of the shade, my opponent considering his moves carefully, the way I imagined he picked words out of the back of his mind before he laid them down on the page. The next week, I went back. Norbert was there, reading; he didn’t mention our missed appointment, and after that, I went to the park every Sunday. Sometimes I would even beg out of weekend meetings or put off projects until Monday. That weekly game was like a tropical island in a sea of work. It was my one genuine human contact, a time when I could sit in the quiet of the park, reveling in the shouts of children, the sprinkle of fountains in the distance, and just live and breathe and think. It was a friendship with no strings attached.
It seemed like Norbert didn’t do much work anymore, but every week, he’d be sitting there, with a book in a different language, or maybe a sandwich, always on rye bread with raw onions. We’d talk about poetry and history; he’d tell me stories of his childhood in Poland. And we’d admire the women that jogged or walked past us. Norbert, you see, was a great lover of women. He had so many different anecdotes that I often accused him of fabrication; inside, though, I didn’t doubt him.
After we got to know each other better, I occasionally invited him to join me outside of the park, for dinner, for coffee, for a local poetry reading or play. He always said he was busy; although it was obvious he was being evasive, I figured that maybe there was a part of his life that he wanted to keep private, whether it was a dingy apartment, a wife—maybe he lived in a rest home. Or maybe, he didn’t even have a home. I didn’t have his phone number, or address. We only met in the park at that table. Now and then we took a turn around the pond to watch the fish rise to catch flies as dusk moved in.
Eventually, I quit my job. I think my meetings with Norbert had a lot to do with it; I started to dread going to the office; I lived for those days in the park. I’d applied to graduate school, and a place in Baltimore accepted me into a writing program. The weekend before I was to move, I sat down at the chess table and told Norbert that this would be the last time I’d see him. He took the news quietly. We played chess in silence and sat for some time, until I had to go. I looked back at him as I walked away; he was sitting with his hands in his lap, looking after me, wistful, as firmly planted as the oak that hung over him like an awning.
It was in my second year of school that I found myself searching the aisles of a used bookstore; I needed an obscure text for an independent-study project, and I hadn’t been able to find it in the school library. As I was browsing, I came across a small, yellowed book, the kind that they used to print in the seventies. The cover read, The Minsk Publishers in 1952, in black on white. This volume didn’t fit in with the cloth-and leather-bound hard covers next to it, and I flipped through the first few pages. The author was Ignacy Chodzko, an unfamiliar name, but underneath were words that caught my eye: “translated from the Polish by Norbert Gutterman.” I was thrilled. It felt like I had been looking through a keyhole for years and the door had suddenly been thrown wide in front of me.
I leafed through the book that night. It was on odd history of Poland, but I could hear Norbert’s voice in its words, the careful pacing that imbued everything he did. It felt like a window into his mind, a validation that he had a rich, vibrant history of which I was only the latest chapter.
In the back, I noted with some excitement, was a page titled “About the Translator.” A moment later, the book fell from my fingers and landed, pages spread, facedown on the floor. I picked it up again, my hand shaking a little, and reread the first few sentences:
Norbert Gutterman (1901–1984) was one of the most prominent translators of the twentieth century. Born in Poland, he lived in countries all around the world, making his home in New York for many years. He moved to Cuernavaca, Mexico, in the 1980s, where, in June 1984, he passed away of natural causes.
That was ten years ago. Since then, my experiences with Norbert are never far from my mind. At worst, I thought I’d gone crazy. In my better times, I think fondly about the man I’d met and wonder who he really was.
Well, I moved back to New York two years ago. What can I say? I just couldn’t stay away. My first weekend back in town, I hurried out to the park. I had to know whether my Sundays in the city had been a dream.
I return to our table often and just read books and wait. I have started many games waiting for him. Sometimes I catch the faint odor of pickles and onions and think he has come to play chess.
chapter 38
THE CALL
At eight in the morning (which, by Joaquin’s schedule, was midnight), the telephone rang.
“Yes?” Joaquin roared, with what little energy he could muster.
“Hi, I want to share a story with you,” the voice said, imitating the style of Ghost Radio.
“What?”
“A story. I’ve got a story for you.”
“Wrong number,” he said. He moved to hang up, but his arm stopped when he realized he recognized the voice.
“No, Joaquin. I’ve got the right number. I want to talk to you and I prefer to do it in the intimacy of your home, but we can continue to follow the program’s format. Would that make it be more comfortable for you?”
“Who is this?”
“Someone who wants to share a story with you.”
“Look, I don’t know how you got this number, but this isn’t the right time or the right person. Have a nice day!” Joaquin slammed down the telephone. He felt sure that hanging up that way would solve things.
He couldn’t get back to sleep. Alondra raised her head.
“Don’t tell me that’s what I think it was. Someone found our number and wants to give us a little home delivery?”
“It looks that way. Let’s hope he doesn’t keep calling back.”
“Let’s hope,” she said, her head dropping back down onto the pillow.
The room was almost pitch black thanks to the heavy curtains they had installed so they could sleep late. Joaquin stumbled away from the bed, smacking his knee on the way. His hands felt puffy; his face like a giant scab ready to fall off, and an acrid, acid taste filled his mouth.
He entered the bathroom, flipped on the light, and looked at his face in the mirror. It didn’t look like a giant scab; but two-day beard, baggy eyes, death-white lips, and tightened skin made him look about fifteen years older. Not much of an improvement.
“At least fifteen—maybe more,” he said out loud.
Quietly, he left the bathroom and stumbled into the kitchen. He fired up his latest toy, the Saeco Primea Touch Plus, a gift from the station. While the espresso dripped into the cup, the telephone rang again.
This time, Joaquin checked the caller ID: J. Cortez, followed by a number that meant nothing to him.
He quietly thanked technology for making it possible to catch red-handed all the imbeciles who harassed people from behind the anonymity of their receivers. Imbeciles too stupid to know that any phone could block caller ID.
“I believe in the microchip,” he said to himself as he picked up the receiver, “and you are now officially fucked. Yes?”
“Joaquin, it seems we were cut off.”
“Yes, we were. Because I hung up the telephone. Look, Mister”—he glanced at the display again—“J. Cortez, I don’t know you, I don’t feel like talking to you, especially at this time of day.”
“I just want to tell you a story.”
“Can’t you understand that this is neither the time nor place? Be so kind as to never call here again.”
“A friend of mine had a terrible accident when he was a teenager. His life was left in tatters. It seemed like the end, like they’d seal him up in a wooden casket and bury him next to the rest of the victims. Instead, he recovered and life went on. Years later, he had another close call and was left pulverized, burned to ashes. But just when everyone again thought they’d be sweeping him into a little box and putting him away with all the other relics, he got back on his feet and kept going. They thought this guy was either very lucky, or had a guardian angel, but actually he had a secret. He was a vampire who sapped the life energy from others, a parasite who could survive anything by stealing the inner flame of those around him.”
Joaquin listened, disconcerted, furious, and afraid, all at the same time. Was this nonsense? A biting accusation? Or the truth about his life?
“All right, you’ve told your story. Now what do you want?”
“Not my story. Yours.”
“I don’t like people invading my privacy.”
Thousands of his listeners knew that Joaquin had survived the automobile accident in which his parents had died, and those who dug a bit could easily find out about the events surrounding Gabriel’s death.
“What do you want?” Joaquin asked again.
Then he heard a click as the caller hung up.
Joaquin tossed the cordless handset onto the counter.
“Fuck you very much,” he said under his breath.
The perfect espresso he had prepared for himself was cold. He hated cold coffee. He watched its thick layer of crema—not too light, not too dark—dissolve. The coffee was dying.
He took a sip of it anyway, as he analyzed what had just occurred. But his thoughts were muddled, too many strange things had been happening to him. None made sense.
He’d never received a call like this one, and no matter how enraging it was, all he felt was a big hole in his chest.
Alondra came out of the bedroom. She held on to the doorframe as if the building were shaking.
“Was that the same idiot?” she said, shading her eyes, which carried traces of mascara.
Joaquin nodded.
She walked into the kitchen
, pulling down her T-shirt until it covered her belly button.
“Your coffee.”
“What?” Joaquin shook his head.
“Your coffee, it’s cold.”
“Yep.”
He raised the cup and drank it in one swallow.
The whole time they’d lived together, Alondra had never seen Joaquin drink a cold espresso. This time, he didn’t even blink.
Then he took a pen and wrote down the number next to J. Cortez on the caller ID.
“What are you going to do?”
“Look for the guy.”
Alondra shook her head.
“Alondra, I have to do this.”
Alondra said nothing. She sat down beside him and waited. He stared at the piece of paper as if it were a code he could crack, or one of those “Where’s Waldo?” pages.
“Are you going to make me a coffee, or will I be forced to go to Starbucks?” she said.
Joaquin leaped to his feet and prepared her an espresso with impeccable crema, worthy of a commercial with a living room bathed in morning light. His mind was elsewhere, not distracted or absentminded from drowsiness. Truly elsewhere.
Alondra’s warm and sensual body and the intimacy of their home looked unreal to Joaquin, as unreal as the set for that imaginary coffee commercial. He felt cut off from this modest paradise, expelled by J. Cortez. Somehow that man’s words had penetrated his hard shell. The shell that protected him during his communion with the dead. The call crushed all this with a single devastating blow.
When she’d finished her coffee, Alondra stood up.
“I’m going to take a shower. Want to join me? It’d do you good; it might even wash away those bags under your eyes.”
Joaquin hesitated, but he really couldn’t waste any more time. He needed to go.
“No, you go ahead. I’ve got something to do.”
He dialed the number. Let the hunt begin.
The telephone rang around nine times before a harsh voice with a strong Spanish accent answered.
Ghost Radio Page 14