And the old man told him he could no longer speak anything but Haketia because he had very little zman left on this Earth and would soon go to the Olam Habah, for he had seen his mother Freja and his father Moshe, and all his aunts and uncles, and that he sat down to eat with them every day and they said not to be frightened and they would help him on his journey, and that they could hardly wait for his arrival. But he asked all his children to please go to his funeral and say Kaddish together after he died, and do the same during the Avel period, the seven days of Shiva, and he asked them to do that throughout the year, and told them that in Tetouan there was a treasure that his grandfather Mimon had brought from Pará, consisting of fifty gold coins, and that this treasure was in the middle of the family’s small farm in La Torreta. They would need to make an X from one side to the other, and a hundred feet from the middle was the treasure, and he asked them to use the money to look after the cemetery and the graves of their parents and their family. And the next day the old man departed to the Buen Olam. May he rest there in peace.
18.
Saying goodbye to the writer, to a writer I was going to be, a prize-winning author who gave his opinions daily in the newspapers, who would get divorced and receive love letters from much younger women, the writer who would get drunk regularly, the writer who, deep down, I never wanted to be. Saying goodbye to what you never wanted. To what maybe you thought you wanted, to what other people wanted for you, to a dream that was never yours. Even saying goodbye to saying goodbye. That’s why I came here, to Madrid, to see that writer walking towards me and then cross to the opposite sidewalk, I never was him and never wanted to be him, and yet he kept crossing my path on the streets of big cities, and he kept saying, “Look, look how good I’ve got it, you should be like me, too, like me.” Cordial as ever, such a good friend, saying “Yes, that’s what’s good.” But no more, though I still haven’t been able to tell him to his face, at least I’ve crossed to the other sidewalk, across a broad avenue, the far sidewalk, where he didn’t spot me on a foggy day. If that’s what’s good and if that’s success, he can have it. Let him keep it. I’m looking for something else. A different sidewalk. A different scarf.
19.
On the last day with the scarf, I walked along the Calle Orense on the way to my aunt’s, but I was early and did not want to hang out there for three quarters of an hour before lunch, so I went to have a tapa at the Bar Delfín. I had ordered a glass of red wine (I’m not a beer drinker) and a mini-omelet when I heard someone say my name behind me, my old name that was never my real name, and years ago I switched back to the older original name. A woman’s voice was saying my name and then a male voice joined her. The place was basically a corridor with a counter on each side and a couple of tables in back, where Ester Cohen and Arturo Belano were seated. I knew her, and I had only read him, I’ve no idea how he knew me, but since they say he reads everything, maybe he even read one of my books, what I didn’t understand was why he didn’t call me by name, well, maybe he didn’t know me and was just following Ester’s lead. They waved me over to join them so I picked up the wine I’d already been served, my black backpack, and I didn’t have more hands to carry the mini-omelet but the bartender said he would bring it over. I sat across from the two of them, and I felt like an idiot. I didn't know what to say.
Arturo said, “What brings you here?”
“What else would bring me here? A book. Well, and unexpectedly, without my knowing it, also a scarf. And a woman who doesn’t love me anymore.”
“The usual.”
Just then, Ester’s phone rang and she answered it. “Oh, I lost track of time,” she said, “I’ll hop a cab and be right there, yes, in ten minutes.” She explained to us that she had an appointment she’d forgotten. She apologized, “I’ve got to go, I’m sure you can find things to talk about, I’ll see you at your aunt’s place in an hour,” she told me, “I was also invited,” well, I didn’t know that. “Okay. Later.”
And then there were two. More literary, I’d say. You’re more likely to find dialogue in a book than a three- or four-way conversation. That’s what I was thinking when, in the middle of that cloudy thought, I remembered Belano had been dead for several years. His death never fully convinced me, though, it seemed too literary, too well timed, after a mega-novel and before the decline, the international fame, the selling out and going commercial, dying just before all that sounded like a bad story I once tried to write with my friend Daniel Stawski, we’d even thought of preparing ten posthumous books completed before the death of a nonexistent writer.
“But aren’t you...” I wasn’t sure how to word it. “Aren’t you dead?”
I’m all tact.
“No need to exaggerate, I mean, I’m definitely dead but you don't need to take it literally.”
“In other words...” Now I gulped down my wine and ordered another as I anxiously polished off the omelet. I ordered a side of anchovies. Belano was not eating, he was drinking his beer (he was a beer drinker).
“First of all, you don’t die all at once, the body stays there underground and has its life, a life it lives and feels, years go by like that, maybe hundreds of years.”
“Dead and totally morbid, you’re trying to scare me.”
“No, of course not, you’d know more about these things than I do.”
They brought me the wine and the anchovies in vinegar, and I asked for a slice of bread.
“Me? What the hell would I know?”
“Haven’t you written about that?”
“About what?”
“Characters that are alive only in books.”
“What?”
“Well, let’s get to the point, in the Sonora desert I came to a deserted town, a tiny town with a dozen wooden houses, battered and ruined except for one that was nicely painted a light green, with a good door. I knocked and found myself face to face with an old Indian with Aztec-looking features and dark skin. I think maybe that’s what the Aztecs looked like. ‘Come in,’ he said. ‘I’ve been waiting for you for years.’”
“What was the town called?” The anchovies were delicious but there were few people in the bar, which worried me, for a moment I was afraid they’d go out of business, I don’t want to lose one of the few bars in Madrid that I know by name.
“Why does that matter?”
“I don't know. It might matter.”
“Then let’s say it was called Delfín.”
“You see, it does matter. Did you know this bar is called Delfín?”
“No, but it’s pure coincidence, or maybe I saw it on the way in and I made up the name of the town, these things happen to me all the time.”
“Okay, go on.”
“Well, the Indian told me he knew the path to literary immortality, and he could give it to me, but there was a problem.”
“What?”
“Hey, moron, let me tell the story. That’s just what I asked him, though I didn’t give a damn about literary immortality, I cared more about writing. And he said that at some point what happens is you become a character in other books.”
“Great.”
“That’s what I thought at the time, I was dead, I didn’t have a peso in the bank, no way to earn money, and the idea of being a character in a book sounded more like a trophy than a punishment. It even sounded better than immortality, I’d rather have been a character in a book than immortal. Or in a thousand books.”
“I can understand that.”
“But the Indian said, ‘Look, it’s not simple, it’s even harder than being human. Though,’ he said, ‘I wouldn’t know, I’ve never been a character in a book, so I wouldn’t know. I only know that I must warn you.’”
“And...?”
“Well, I took the deal. I wrote a few novels and one day I turned into a character. Now I’m a character in your book.”
“Another question, because that sounds good. Where’s that town? And where’s that Indian?”
“The to
wn is gone and the Indian was only waiting for me so he could offer me the deal and then I think he died, that’s the only reason he was there.”
“Like in Kafka.”
“Exactly,” said Belano.
“And how’s being a character working out for you?”
“At first it was a lot of fun, but not anymore. Here’s the problem.” He motioned me to move closer to his ear so no one would hear, though there was no one in the bar by then. “The thing is, a character has a body, minimal, but a body, ink, you won’t believe me but it’s the ink, now then, ink weighs micrograms, and some of those micrograms are devoted to the character, and the rest belongs to other characters, and the problem is that if all those micrograms team up and put you in a bestseller, it sucks, that’s why for the past few years I’ve only dealt with writers like you and Ester, good people who publish a book the way I did in my day, with runs of a thousand or two thousand copies, that way I don’t get fat, though of course when a publisher destroys the remaining copies or people throw out the books, which happens with a lot of bestsellers, then you lose a little weight, but now of course I prefer short books that don’t sell well.”
“What if this book sells?”
“Not even your mother expects that.”
“Another thing. Does Ester know?”
“No,” said Belano. “Writers can’t tell fact from fiction, or the living from the dead. Maybe she didn’t even read the newspaper that announced my death. If she knows, she’s never asked about it.” I had moved back away from his ear but he motioned me closer again. “I think she’s in love with me,” he said.
“Me, too.”
“What do you mean, you too? You’re in love with me, too? Look, asshole, I am not a fag.”
“No, I thought she was in love with me, too, that’s her charm, all men think she’s in love with them. All male writers, especially, since as you say they can’t tell fact from fiction.”
When I said that, he bristled a bit and he left.
Alone at the table, I realized neither of us had paid and I asked for the bill.
The waiter said the bill was paid already.
“But who paid it?” I hadn’t seen anyone pay.
“Planeta Publishing.”
20.
“What’s the question?”
“What’s the answer?”
21.
I came to say goodbye to another writer, the Israeli writer. The one who dreamed he could be part of Israeli society, who believed and still wants to believe it can be his country. The country he tried to create in his books does not exist, a country of Jews in which every Jew is the equal of all others. It was in Israel, over the years, that he became a Moroccan writer, though he publishes no books in Morocco. Only in Israel is he a Moroccan. In Morocco he’s probably just a Zionist and a traitorous Jew. What’s left is being a poet, because where you can no longer speak, a shout is all you have. And the shout is poetry. Twentieth-century poetry, at any rate, or post-Holocaust poetry, or Adorno’s, the poetry no one can write anymore. Because these days you’re only a writer if you can be marketed, if you can get your books to sell. That’s why poetry has been marginalized, because it’s impossible to market, in exceptional cases it sells, and even sells very well, but no one can find a formula for a poetry book that will sell. And let’s not discuss bestsellers. Today I got an email saying how you should go about publishing e-books, and it quoted a writer: “Before releasing your book, I would suggest downloading (and reading) at least the free sample of the top-selling twenty novels in your target category. Make sure your work looks something like theirs. If it does, your odds of selling well are higher. If it doesn’t, consider a rewrite.” In other words, more or less, write whatever is already on the bestseller list. I was astonished to read that, and I had been too stupid to know it, all I’ve been doing is the opposite, because otherwise we’ll keep writing the same book over and over. And what happens if someone like Bolaño is on the bestseller list, what happens, do you write like him or write like the twenty-nine others who don’t write like him? Well, no one can write like Bolaño, good writers teach you to write like yourself, not how to imitate them. The rest is business. It’s a misreading of what reading is. I mean, if we’re to believe this writer, who coincidentally is even named Larson, B.V. Larson, whom I don’t plan to read, we would all be writing Don Quixote. "Am I right or am I not wrong?" Which, in any case, would be better than anything being written now. Well, better than most, of course. So I’m saying goodbye to that Israeli writer I had in my head, that optimistic nut who left the Alliance and believed that in his country he would be judged by his qualities and not his ethnicity. Goodbye.
22.
I could talk about the raincoat, about raincoats in general, but I prefer the scarf. The raincoat had a good run, though I didn’t wear it much, but a raincoat also rubs shoulders with scarves and still leads an interesting life. The raincoat died a natural death, twenty years, especially nowadays, is a normal life. Besides, I left it at the hotel and maybe someone else put it on and it’s having a second life. A scarf, though, can die suddenly, maybe someone found it at the department store and threw it in the trash, or worse, found it on the Paseo de la Castellana and it was soaked from the snow, they thought it was just a rag and, poof, to the trash and death. The raincoat comes from Salamanca, it cost eleven thousand pesetas, and it has in common with the scarf that I found both garments in cities I was passing through, I’ve only ever slept one night in Seville, and I was only in Salamanca a few hours, maybe five. It was 1990 or 1991, back when I was very into natural medicines, it seems like another life, lived by another person, and I was at a natural medicines conference in Lisbon, and I remember I asked one of the homeopaths if he was Jewish, I don’t know why, and he said that one doesn’t talk of such things in Portugal, I consumed a great deal of fish and white wine, which the Portuguese call green wine, vinho verde, in those days I wanted nothing to do with literature, I was fed up with literature, I was escaping from literature, fleeing the word, fearing the word, I ran from it for almost four years, then I came back. I had traveled to the conference from London and already booked my return flight when a Canadian conferee asked me to ride with him to Calais, he said he’d rented a car and he liked me and didn’t want to travel alone and gave thousands of reasons, honestly I liked the man but I made a thousand excuses, that I’d already paid for my ticket, that I had no money, that I didn’t know how to drive, though I was certainly intrigued at the idea of passing through Spain, I hadn’t been to Spain in eight or nine years, after three trips in the eight or nine years before that gap, I was also running away from Spain, from Spanish, from the language, and maybe from the Spaniard I had failed to become, who I could have been, and now will never be. Maybe, if my father had gone through with the idea of moving to Gran Canaria and going into business with his cousin León. Finally the man convinced me. But it’s one thing to chat with someone briefly and quite another to spend twenty-four hours a day with the same person in an Opel Corsa. I remember the name of the car but not of the Canadian, who, I do remember this, was a Spanish speaker and originally from Mexico. It’s one thing to go to the market to have fried fish at midday, and another to have breakfast, lunch and dinner with that same person every day. What I do remember, out of everything we discussed, is his telling me with grief that in Canada his children don’t see their grandparents, the way children do in Mexico. The same is true of the Jews. New generations have no contact with their grandparents’ generation anymore, much less with their great-grandparents, if they’re alive. In many places, by eighteen, not even with their parents. Maybe it’s because of money, maybe children don’t need their parents anymore in order to survive, especially if the parents are not very rich. We slept in roadside motels, with the truckers. One or two nights, at most. Two, I think. I think he also got tired of paying for everything, though that was the agreement, and I also got bored with him in the car. So we got to Burgos and he said he wasn’t fi
nishing the trip to Calais, that he would return the car in Burgos and continue by train or plane and go back to Mexico. I don’t remember very clearly if he paid for part of my ticket back to London, though I do recall going by bus, there was a bus for London leaving in an hour and a half, which had originated, curiously enough, in Tangier. As always, I found myself partway between Morocco and some other destination. Anyway, the point is that in Salamanca I bought the beige raincoat, which I almost never wore, since in Israel when it rains it’s quite cold and I needed a warmer coat. A coat that I also bought on that trip halfway between two cities, at a factory that made denim coats stuffed with chicken feathers, with detachable sleeves, which I liked since it was adaptable to the snowy, subfreezing Jerusalem winters. I used that jacket for years till the feathers were coming out. Till there was nothing left of the denim jacket.
But the raincoat stuck around until this trip, I tend to travel with clothes that are already half dead, such as old underpants and t-shirts, because when I head home my luggage is always well over the weight limit. That’s been my solution for quite some time. So for a day or two I’ll wear a pair of socks that have lost their elasticity and then they go in the trash. That’s why I brought the raincoat, but even in Spain it didn’t have much luck, though I did have it in Seville when I found (stole?) the scarf, I only wore it a couple of days, the other days were too cold, or by then it was not presentable enough for certain events, and I put on a short Paul & Shark jacket that I bought in Antalya, Turkey for a hundred dollars, sold to me by a guy who said he was Jewish, and that his name was Nissim Cohen, but when he gave me his business card it had a very Turkish name, when I asked him about the name, he said that in Turkey it’s best if people don’t know you’re Jewish, a new twenty-first century version of the Inquisition? Or he was putting me on, because the guy knew every language, while my younger daughter and I were shopping for clothes he was talking with a customer in Russian, with another in Ukrainian, and with another in Polish, with me he spoke English, Hebrew, Spanish, but there was nothing Ladino or Judeo-Spanish about his Spanish, of that I’m sure. He convinced me and I still have that short jacket. And so they rubbed up against each other, the Seville scarf and the Salamanca raincoat, one lasted thirteen days, the other twenty years. Both vanished from my life in Madrid.
Brown Scarf Blues Page 4