Divorce Is in the Air

by Gonzalo Torne

  In the meantime, though, what I did looked very much like living on Córcega, eating for free and helping Pedro-María develop his craft as a photographer. Given how little he touched the Nikon, though, I assumed he was going through a more cerebral phase of creative development. I tended to get up before him from the sofa he assigned to me as a bed (my feet almost fit), and since I’m of a curious nature, I started nosing around a little. You have no idea what you can learn about a person when you discover what they don’t even try to hide. It’s a shame my virtual incursions were limited. He opened a guest account for me on the Mac, and I enjoyed the stupendous highways fiber optics have to offer: I looked over forums about The Wire, I steeped myself in the latest scientific articles on Discovery Salud, I read the inanities my “host” wrote on Facebook about “friendship” (and that I wouldn’t have been able to bear if he’d ever said to my face), but I was never able to guess Pedro’s password, though I tried every combination of birthdays and anniversaries, just like they’d taught me in cryptography class. What I mean is that I could snoop around in drawers all I wanted, but the strongbox was off-limits; I couldn’t get to the map of his deepest, darkest concerns that was his browser history (and it’s very clear that my “best friend” is not the kind of person who periodically erases his bookmarks).

  What surprised me most was not that the filthy pig gave his underwear a second chance (he kept the previous day’s socks tied in a knot so he’d recognize them), but rather a small plastic folder where he hid his bank book and the termination notice from his company: the salary dissolved whatever jealous impulses I may have had while staying under his roof and, in passing, I learned that he’d fought tooth and nail to stop them firing him for absenteeism.

  Before opening any drawers, I made sure he was still sleeping; it’s such a nuisance that humans can wake up all of a sudden, that we don’t have a timer or something like that in our heads, especially when someone is taking the trouble to investigate us for our own good. I decided that since he was breathing with his mouth open, snoring like a beast, I still had a good half hour. So I had a scare when I heard the tap running—I barely had time to gather all the invoices and receipts I’d scattered over the desk. Out of the corner of my eye I saw one scrap of paper creep away, seeming to want to hide under the table. I stuffed it into my pocket in a ball.

  “You’re not going to believe what I dreamed.”

  I put on the unmistakable smile of a man listening to a little dream he doesn’t give a damn about—one he’s not even in. It’s a sign of disinterest so universal and recognizable it only proves the teller doesn’t care whether you’re listening or not, he just wants an audience onto whom he can dump the latest episode of the mental show he stars in while he reestablishes contact with the world of touch and consequences. I overcame my impatience (Pedro was entering a deep forest where all the trees were being uprooted by a balloon with the features of the sister he never had…), but not my curiosity about what was waiting for me crumpled up in my pocket. I sidestepped toward the hallway, and used the latch on the bathroom door. Sitting on the throne, I calmly read the invoice that confirmed my worst suspicions: Doctor Petra, Roger de Flor, ninety euros. I felt that male fury that rises from the stomach, unravels through the arms, and twists the joints of the fingers. Now, it wasn’t just the fact that he was hiding his meetings with an emissary of the headshrinking sect. It was the cost, the spending; it wasn’t rational or practical, it was domestic and administrative stupidity. If we were going to live together for a couple of weeks (my mancation), I couldn’t tolerate it. I couldn’t allow him to take a shovelful of what little money he had left from his severance and toss it out the window.

  I scrubbed my face with water to calm myself down. I had to be careful. I couldn’t exactly come out of the bathroom and start screaming in his face. The night before, Saw had had the decency to pay for dinner and drinks, and he said that since he’d figured I would stay the night, he had bought coffee for me. So I found him in the kitchen, wearing that indescribable robe. I approached, relishing the feeling of superiority that comes from following a well-planned strategy. But when I saw that for himself he was making a lightly roasted three-year-old Japanese tea, and that for me he’d bought a packet of that muck called Bonka (1.30 euros) that tastes like gasoline—and, on top of that, he was going to make me thank him for it—I turned my back superciliously and began to improvise.

  “I don’t usually give advice, you know, but if you go on spending that money on hucksters every month, you’re going to lose the museum.”

  “What museum are you referring to?”

  “This apartment of your father’s—and your grandfather’s before that. You’ll have to rent it out and move to some proletarian neighborhood, like Sants. You’ll have to move into a little apartment in a building with no elevator, surrounded by fags and Peruvians. Believe me, I know what I’m talking about.”

  “And what, in your opinion, have I spent all this money on?”

  It was revealing that he didn’t just tell me to go to hell, that he didn’t remind me he was an adult and could do as he pleased. That tune he was humming was the music of emotional dependence.

  “And don’t you believe that the new tenant will respect your father’s clothes, or the laundry sink. Of course not. He’ll destroy it to build an ironing room or a pantry. Everyone wants a new addition to brag about these days. It’ll be worse with the clothes. It won’t even take him a day to stuff it all into a bag and throw it into a recycling bin. He’ll fill your apartment with electronics and cables, he’ll profane your temple with a tsunami of cathode waves.”

  “You’re presuming a lot here. I don’t follow. Sweetener?”

  “It’s not a presumption, don’t give me that. I saw the receipt in the dining room, ninety euros, twice a month. You can’t afford that.”

  “It’s a temporary thing. After a while some patients only go once every three months.”

  “They’re never cured?”

  “It’s called the maintenance stage.”

  “Are you a truck? You have to stop that shit—shrinks are addictive. If they soothe the pain for a while it’s only in exchange for breaking a cog in your system. Then you’ll never be independent again, you’ll need it forever. If you’re overwhelmed it can seem like an authentic pleasure to have someone supporting you, and changing you while they’re at it. But it’s a disgrace.”

  “You seem pretty familiar with it.”

  “They destroyed my mother and Helen, all those psychologists and psychiatrists, not to mention the fifth column of psycho-magicians.”

  “You’re wrong. Petra’s nothing like that. She’s a neurolinguistic programmer.”

  “Sure, NASA-certified. Look, I’m not one to defend any smug scientist. They’ve got their own lapdogs, their media, their community. If you ask me, I wouldn’t put my trust in any bunch of people that can’t distinguish a pumpkin’s DNA from a human being’s, or who have stars explode on them when they least expect it, and who still don’t know if viruses are living or dead. Their vision might be limited, yes, but at least they work with protocols and methods. You can blow the whistle on them. But you can’t say the same for that charlatan. Programmer? What does she do, implant chips?”

  “Don’t go there, you don’t know what you’re talking about. You haven’t lived it. She’s helped me keep going. It was her idea that I look up my old friends, and that I choose a ‘best friend.’ She’s responsible for our reunion. Think how much you owe her.”

  “An oxygen mask would help you keep going, too.”

  “She saved my life. I was thinking seriously about…you know.”

  “No, I don’t know.”

  “About bailing out.”

  “You mean suicide?”

  “That’s a forbidden word.”

  “Like ‘poo’? Like ‘pee’? That woman is infantilizing you, and while she’s at it she’s going to clean out your bank account. You’re not going to change th
e way things are with torrents of good energy. Once you go out into the street again, even if it’s just to buy a toaster, you’re going to find the same aggression, the same human hostility. The only trick is to accept it, learn to dance to that tune. A man alone in his apartment, lying in bed, is a man in his apartment in bed, no veneer of spirituality. You don’t owe her anything. You could have felt better talking to a crisis hotline, or your mother.”

  “I didn’t have the number.”

  At that moment I’d forgotten that his mother (who was always so worried about the crumbs we dropped as we chewed) had, after five years of fighting, been asphyxiated by a cancerous ball. So I presume it was my eyes that said: “What number?”

  “Neither of them.”

  “What problems do you have?”

  He pointed to the bottle, to one of the bottles. After the initial confession it got harder and harder to make out the kernel of truth amid all the fantasy, but Saw let me know that the rate of our drinking was not actually due to the effervescent effect of our renewed friendship, as I’d been inclined to believe; he’d already been drinking daily. By the time the moon came out to inspect the night sky, he was already pretty crocked. The office had been the only dam against his liquid vice, and now he’d lost even that; he was defenseless, at its mercy.

  “I lied to you. It was absenteeism. I don’t even really like photography that much. I’m sick of fighting for everything, and gin is so tolerant and kind.”

  It was hardest on the weekends, when he started to drink five minutes after he was out of the shower.

  “On Saturday, my strategy consists of keeping the bottles hidden away. I prepare myself mentally, but it doesn’t help that I know my own best hiding places like the back of my hand.”

  He’d given up going out. He traipsed around the apartment in his underwear (and a modest T-shirt in case a neighbor dropped by), alternating between phases of self-indulgence and fits of eloquent rage. Around mid-afternoon his brain managed to find some sort of clarity among the clouds brought on by the gin he sent streaming continuously toward his liver. The poor organ did what it could to dilate his spongy pores and drain the toxins.

  “It’s not such a bad life.”

  He told me about the horror of finding himself without tobacco on a Sunday, the crippling sensation. He’d throw on some sweatpants and start to wander the neighborhood: he looked for places where it wouldn’t be so humiliating to ask them to turn on the vending machine. In July and August the pavements seemed painted a sunny yellow, and he felt even more miserable.

  “We’re friends. Friends play tennis, they go on trips. They don’t make themselves ill. Not so soon! Are we going to hug like a couple of diabetic old ladies?”

  There you have an example of my grand attempts to bring him around: I was giving him a sermon! Just what my father would have done, though Dad wouldn’t have gotten up from the sofa and spoiled the immaculate line of his cream suit to pace through rooms like an outraged lawyer before a jury. Nor was I so surprised to find myself imitating Dad. He was my role model in life, the one that had fallen to me; if you and I had had children (if you’d wanted them), I would have spent my days overacting. I learned to recognize in the incipient expression on Pedro-María’s face the soft happiness of the child who discerns worry behind the scolding: the concern that those tall and strange characters, adults, had projected toward us when we were boys. And to hell with that stuff about friendship—since the moment he saw my photograph on Facebook he’d chosen me to give him a hard time, just so he could feel a little warmth again. The silly boy was looking for a daddy, Petra didn’t hug him enough, and so it made sense he’d turned to me. I’d been the only one at school taller than him.

  He liked my tone, sure, but he wasn’t willing to listen to me. It was like when you hear a favorite song over and over, but it never occurs to you to shape your life to the lyrics. He’d fill another glass, turn on the transistor (sorry, but that’s the only word that fits the thing) or glue himself to the Mac screen to watch BBC news, fishing shows, or the festival of anorexics on MTV.

  “George Michael is still alive!”

  Well, I guess I didn’t really give it my all, either. I chastised him for drinking, for neglecting his projects (yeah, right), for flushing the best years of his life down the toilet, but it was just lip service. You cultivate friendships that allow you to shine, and what can I say—I’m vanity’s sweetheart. In my wretched emotional state, Pedro was like manna from heaven.

  And don’t give me any crap about how I was overprotecting him, with maybe a little joke thrown in about how we were acting like a couple. That old chestnut of yours about how I repress my bisexual leanings—which according to you are latent in every Tom, Dick, and Harry—to the point of homophobia…I’m not in the mood. I understand that your literary aspirations mean you can’t resist holding original points of view, but I’m not going to buy that crap like it’s some age-old truism. How could I take anyone seriously who can’t even be sure what kind of genitals they like to go to bed with? Pedro and I weren’t even living together. We were just two guys recuperating from three bad marriages, taking a fresh gulp of male company, happy, stupefied, ignoring the clock, avoiding any exhausting domestic routines. It wasn’t even a temporary fix, it was about regaining our strength before setting off in search of new women. Things aren’t so bad out there for healthy-looking forty-year-olds: you have your contemporaries, intimidated by dark myths of never-ending singledom; then there are young women with their fantastic and favorable ideas about maturity; and then you have those astonishing fifty-somethings heading off to the gym. Not to mention the married cheaters, the dreamers, the unsatisfied, the adventurous, and the bored, all burning with libido. What an idea, that once you’re past forty the passion stops!

  I was so inspired by the possibilities my fantasies spread before me that my heart skipped a beat the night I heard him say:

  “I’m done with fucking. It’s just not worth it anymore.”

  He managed to get up from the sofa he was sprawled on, but the momentum wasn’t enough for him to recover his human shape—he looked like an octopus with a tentacle trapped between two rocks. When he managed to reach something like a standing position, the idiot pointed to a box and told me to remove the contents: a bundle of photos, in splendid full color. They shone like fresh banknotes.

  “My daughter.”

  He told me again about the injustice of the divorce laws: defenseless men, female greed, the criminal belief that women are all delicate and weak and men are tough and selfish. He told me he never would have uprooted himself from Isabel’s life. He talked to me about the Fathers for Justice group. And I said: “Yeah, of course.” I took his words in and gave him back a ration of empathy: cold, urbane, weary. Going through the motions.

  “They’re strong. Very strong. They put on feelings and take them off again like dresses. They’re like those marsupials that can interrupt their gestation at will. They decide when they’re going to stop loving. They complain about language, about how there’s no feminine equivalent for ‘womanizer’ that isn’t degrading…”

  He stayed standing, holding on to the sideboard. Everything pointed to him falling flat on his face if he let go. He made to reach out, but with a combination of gestures and looks I managed to persuade him not to pick up the bottle. I should have helped him to bed, but the linguistic twist the conversation was taking struck me as terrific and unexpected.

  “…but just tell me what the masculine equivalent of ‘gynoecium’ is? It’s just taken for granted that women have the right to band together and stay in the shadows. There’s a space reserved in language for that. And for us? Why wouldn’t we want to withdraw from the world and live together under the same roof and share costs, without bringing God and his son into it? Oh, no, our only option is to be exposed to the elements, the streets, the struggle. If you consider us individually, maybe men aren’t so great, but when we’re together we understand each other, we lau
gh, we have a good time. We don’t tear each other apart beneath all the social niceties like they do. Why don’t we just quit? Do you know? Me neither. Good-bye to all of them, they can go fuck themselves.”

  “Because we want them….Well, I do, anyway.”

  From deep inside him grew a smile that brought him onto his tiptoes. He took two steps and fell onto the sofa again; I was starting to feel awkward about lying down there later to sleep. Lately, people have been knocking at my door (it’s an expression—Saw’s the only person I see, and I write only to you) trying to persuade me that sex isn’t all that great, really, and the deep layers of physical attraction that can turn your head inside out are all in my imagination.

  “Descarrega had the best solution.”

  After a second I heard some cogs in my brain start creaking after having lain dormant for at least ten years. But there was no clarifying the rumpus of my disjointed memories. The acid aftertaste of astonishment concentrated into a single first name.

  “Eloy?”

  “Eloise Larumbe, our own Eloy Descarrega.”

  “Eloy?”

  He realized I’d gotten confused and was stuck in a loop, and he rummaged around for the right words to orient me.

  “You didn’t know? He bought himself some tits, injected hormones, got fully lasered, had his cheekbones reconstructed and a good dose of noninvasive filler put in his lips, the full works. And you don’t have to spend a fortune anymore, or have them saw open your face or cram you with silicone. It’s getting cheaper and faster, and less painful. And reversible. Eventually we’ll switch in and out of genders like we go from country to country. The only hitch is the nervous system—they can’t give you a female brain. You bring home the body of a woman, but the soul driving the thing is a boy who understands you. Paradise. The only possible harmony.”