by Quim Monzó
“I’ll go get you some.”
“Not for me, for you. You poured yourself another cup of coffee. I don’t take sugar in my coffee, remember?”
“Of course I remember. I don’t know what made me think you might want some now. I’m going to get to work.”
“Give me a kiss.”
•
In the afternoon, Humbert looks over the newspapers. He considers the space they devote to city politics excessive. He reads an article about the alarming spread of herpes, an article on Policarpo Paz García, an article on Fats Waller, an article on unhappiness. He comes across an interesting piece of news: a week before, a man had become a millionaire by playing the lottery. As soon as he collected the money, and before spending a cent on anything else, he went to a casino and bet the lot of it, right down to the last penny. “Surprisingly,” the paper says, “he won and multiplied his millions in such a way as to become one of the most notable multi-millionaires not only in the city, but in the entire country.” Humbert sees a very clear moral to the story: you should never be satisfied with what you have achieved. He also finds the word “surprisingly” out of place: “A thing could happen. If it did happen, that means it could. If it could, then, there was nothing surprising about it.”
He also reads a review of the Nina Hagen concert and looks for quite a while at a photo of Cherry Vanilla, who performed at the Ritz. He looks closely at an ad for the Mudd Club. Turning the pages, he comes across the ad for the Metropolitan Opera. Marino DelNonno was singing Madame Butterfly. It’s been ages since he’s been to the opera . . . The music has never meant a thing to him, and he finds the libretti ridiculous, but he loves the sets. He calls to see if there are seats for that evening. There are.
Helena is in the living room, reading a book with illustrations by Folon: into a building that is nothing more than a windowless cube, a stream of men is entering through one door and leaving through the other, going on to enter another, similar building, and once again leave it, and once again enter another . . .
“Would you like to come to the opera?”
“What’s got into you?”
“They’re doing Madame Butterfly.”
“What a bore.”
He phones again and reserves one ticket. He puts on his tuxedo. In front of the mirror that takes up an entire wall of the room, end to end, he combs his hair and, unhappy with the results, musses it up again. He puts on a white scarf, picks up his coat, makes sure he has the little notebook in his pocket, gives Helena a kiss on her left cheek, opens the door, closes it, goes out to the garage, takes out the car (a Chevy Malibu, full of dents), and, before going to the theater, stops at the gas station to fill up the tank.
•
The performance leaves him cold. He finds the scenery (the only thing he was really interested in) very unimaginative. He does take a lot of notes, though. He wouldn’t mind designing scenery, perhaps not so much for the opera as for classical theater. How can he tell if DelNonno has sung well or poorly? What’s it to him if he sang well or poorly? He had almost fallen asleep and had only stayed awake by sketching a view of the stage, the figures of some of the singers, a few profiles of the ladies and gentlemen surrounding him—whose expressions, on seeing him scribble so dutifully, lead him to think they must have taken him for a critic. He remembers it with amusement as he leans on a wall by the door Marino DelNonno will be exiting through.
Finally he comes out, escorting a slim woman with red lips, well-defined eyebrows, and a raincoat that hangs open to reveal an impeccable black tuxedo. She is wearing shoes with stiletto heels, an enormous black bow tie with her white shirt, and she is clinging to DelNonno with joy. They get into the black sedan that is waiting for them. Humbert is already in his own car, following them at a prudent distance. That woman must be Hildegarda. The black sedan drops them off in front of a luxury building in Midtown. Humbert doesn’t even consider waiting around. If this is where they live, they might not come out again until the following day, unless they are going to meet up later with friends. But at that time of night, if they are going to meet up with friends somewhere other than their own house, maybe they weren’t going home, and this is precisely the house of the friends. Before leaving, he takes down the number of the building and the street.
•
When Helena gets in, Humbert calls out to her from the studio. He has finished up a few canvases that he had left off in the middle weeks ago, and he’s painted two more, from the notes he took at the opera. Helena gives him a kiss, looks at the paintings, and asks him what he’s doing up at that hour.
“I was so engrossed in the painting that I didn’t realize what time it was.”
They go to bed, and, even though at first Helena isn’t quite sure at the beginning she’s in the mood, they have passionate sex. They turn out the light, and four hours later, Humbert has breakfast, gets dressed, picks up the car, drives around, and parks in front of the building DelNonno went into the night before. He buys a sandwich and a newspaper at a deli and eats and reads in the car.
Towards noon, Marino DelNonno leaves the building and stops a cab. Humbert writes in his little notebook: “Series of photos: on someone’s trail.” He thinks that trying to go up to the DelNonnos’ apartment would be fruitless because they live in one of those buildings where the doorman announces the name of each visitor over the internal telephone. He spends an hour and a half trying to come up with a ruse, unsuccessfully. What he does do, though, is fill up the little notebook with notes, and if that doesn’t exactly offset his failure to come up with a scheme, it is gratifying, at least.
At 1:15, the woman appears at the door of the building: she is wearing a black raincoat (shiny, very tight in the waist, with a very full skirt), a black hat, great big round earrings, black gloves, black stockings, and black shoes, shiny and high-heeled.
The girl takes a bus; Humbert follows it methodically, trying not to miss her stop. When she gets off of the bus, close to the cathedral, he parks the car in the first space he finds and fills the parking meter with coins.
He watches her walk in front of him. He finds her attractive. He imagines her in Heribert’s arms, soft and warm. He gets an erection. He takes out the little notebook. He takes notes as he walks.
He has no doubts about how to approach her. Using the most common, cheesy approach of the neighborhood guys from his teenage years, without more ado he asks her where they’ve seen each other before.
“Did we meet at . . . ? Were you at the Yacht Club on a motor . . . ? No. Then at that quiche place on . . . ? No, no. Were you at the Paquito D’Rivera concert last week? No, not there. At the opera. That’s it. I’m sure. I know you from the opera. You were at the Met last night, weren’t you?”
The woman smiles, and in that moment, Humbert is certain he will never know if she did so out of politeness or because the line had amused her.
“Why did you smile just now? Where are you going? What dumb questions, I’m sorry. Am I bothering you? Do you mind if I walk along with you?”
It doesn’t matter to him that she doesn’t answer. On the sidewalk a silver-painted bald man is imitating the movements of an automaton to such perfection that the group of rubberneckers gathered there gives him an ovation. Humbert would like to be capable of performing in public, doing something like that man is doing. He takes out the little notebook and jots down in the last remaining corner: “Silver-painted man moves like a robot. Reflect upon this. Body art?” He adds another line: “Hildegarda’s face, watching him: joyful.”
“What are you writing down?”
“I take notes so I won’t forget what I have to do.”
The woman smiles at him. Humbert thinks it is the prettiest smile anyone has ever smiled at him. He would like to kiss her on the spot. He wants to embrace her, feel the warmth of her body. He wants to kiss her from her toes to her eyelids. He wants to caress her, make love to her (make love to her?) without even undressing her. He would have gone to the ends of th
e earth with her, traversing deserts and streams, glacial crevasses . . . Note in notebook: “Review (and, if necessary, recover) romantic symbolism.” He takes her hand and kisses it.
“Are you crazy, what are you doing?”
•
“Are you crazy, what are you doing? We don’t even know each others’ names.”
She laughs with her white teeth, gossamer lips, and brilliant eyes, dark as the night. He feels he has never met a woman like her. They kiss and caress each other. Humbert has successfully undone her bra without taking off her sweater. They are in the car, close to the docks and meatpacking houses, parked on a silent and deserted street. Humbert isn’t entirely sure whether the possibility of some guy’s showing up with a knife adds excitement to the moment or not. She takes off her hat. He kisses her again, and her lips open like a shell. He tells her his name is Humbert.
“My name is Alexandra.”
Was this some kind of joke . . . ?
“Alexandra?”
“Yes. Don’t you like it? You made a face. It’s not such a strange name . . .”
“You’re kidding.”
“What do you mean?”
He knows by the way she looks at him that she isn’t kidding. Her name is Alexandra and it has never been Hildegarda, and never will be, and she will never be the Hildegarda he thought he had in his arms. All at once those supple lips, those legs wrapped in black, that tiny skirt that Humbert has slowly been pushing up, make no sense at all . . . He tries to visualize a scene that will keep him from losing interest in the woman, at least sexually. He tries to forget that her name is Alexandra, he tries firmly to believe that this is Hildegarda and that Marino himself, dressed as if he were onstage in Madame Butterfly, was offering her, Madame Butterfly herself, to him personally: “Here. Do as you wish with her. See how soft she is. She’ll do anything you ask.” But it doesn’t work. The woman is not Hildegarda, and only with his eyes closed is he able to go on, follow the ritual, undress her partially, allow her to undress him partially, and finish up in a hurry, murmuring trivial excuses, leaving her at her door, taking out the notebook to write down a number he will never use, giving her a fake number, not even waving goodbye when he drives away.
He looks up the name DelNonno in the telephone book. He calls a few numbers that could be Marino DelNonno’s, but aren’t. He puts on his tuxedo.
“Since you don’t like the opera, I’m not going to ask you if you want to come along,” says Humbert, not unaware that, having formulated the offer in this way, Helena might just decide that she would like to come along.
“You’re going to the opera again? What’s gotten into you?”
“It intrigues me.”
“It must. No, I’m not coming. Give me a kiss when you get home. And another one right now.”
•
This time Marino DelNonno leaves the theater with a man. They go for martinis at a bar by the opera house that’s strung with Christmas lights.
Humbert double-parks in front of the bar and waits. When they finally come out, they say goodbye right at the door. DelNonno stops a cab and gets in. Humbert follows him. The street where the taxi drops DelNonno is not the same one as the night before. The building is small, but similarly sumptuous. He takes down the address in a new little notebook. He calculates the possibilities of spending the night waiting. From a nearby phone booth he calls information in case DelNonno’s number is listed, but not yet in the phone book. No new DelNonno. The phone must be listed under his wife’s name. What is Hildegarda’s last name? If only there were reverse listings, by address . . . After a while he calls information again. It’s a different voice. He requests the phone numbers for that building, claiming not to know the last name of the person under whose name the telephone is listed.
He calls all the numbers, asking to speak with Marino. If the number doesn’t correspond to the apartment where DelNonno and Hildegarda live, the response will be unsuspecting. If, as on the previous day, he is at a house that is not his own, Humbert might sense some hesitation on the other end. If nothing comes of it, he can opt either to spend the night or return the following morning, as he did yesterday. From the list of seventeen numbers he had gotten from information, at the ninth he notices a slightly uneasy response. It was a woman’s voice; she was not terribly convincing about Marino’s not being home.
“Who’s calling?”
“Who do you think? Put him on quickly, I have no time to waste. This is urgent.”
“. . .”
“Do you hear me?”
“But he’s not here. Well, let me go make certain.”
He doesn’t hear the sharp clack receivers make when they are left on a table, or footsteps pattering toward a fictitious inquiry, but rather the silence of a hand over the mouthpiece. Humbert considers the possibility of hanging up. This may not be DelNonno’s apartment either, but the home of another girlfriend. But what if it is, in fact, DelNonno’s house and that is Hildegarda’s voice, trying to screen their calls. They don’t leave him time to decide: the other end has gone dead. Humbert smiles. He could have some fun. Blackmail them. Would they be concerned about the press exposing DelNonno’s adulteries? He doubts it. These days of libertines and decadents weren’t exactly a golden age for blackmailers. He might even be doing him a favor, publicity-wise. Humbert leaves the booth. He is walking toward his car, lost in thought, when the solution opens the door to the building: Marino DelNonno is arranging his scarf and calling for a taxi. The telephone stratagem has produced an effect that perhaps, if it can’t exactly be qualified as unexpected, at least is not the one he had initially been after.
He follows the cab, which stops twelve blocks away. DelNonno goes into a new building. Humbert writes down the address. In light of the kind of life this Marino lives, it’s possible this is not his house either, but, according to the rules of chance, or intuitively (and right now he doesn’t feel like ascertaining which of these lines of thinking makes it clear to him), the probability of DelNonno’s living there is almost absolute. He decides to go home.
He opens the door. He finds Helena still wearing her raincoat and boots, looking over some files containing documents from the gallery. He takes them out of her hands, takes her in his arms, kisses her, undresses her.
•
The following morning at nine he has already parked by the corner and is standing in front of the building. He doesn’t think either DelNonno or Hildegarda tends to leave the building before nine with any regularity. He goes straight up to the doorman. He intends to ask for Mr. DelNonno, but at the last moment, not quite knowing why, but sensing that it is the right thing to do, he asks for Mrs. DelNonno.
“Whom shall I say is calling?”
He hesitates a second.
“Heribert.”
The doorman goes into his booth, unhooks the telephone, and presses a button, the number of which Humbert is unable to see.
“Good morning. Mr. Heribert would like to see Mrs. DelNonno.”
When the doorman comes out with a negative response, there’s nobody there. Humbert is in a deli, buying sandwiches and beer.
He sits behind the wheel of the car, positioned so as to be able to keep track of everyone who leaves the building. But how is he to know who she is if he has never seen her? Will he have to go after every woman who leaves the building? Recognizing someone he has never seen before is not exactly a task he can leave to mere inspiration.
He realizes he hasn’t been taking notes for a while. This whole thing is so entertaining that he can’t put his mind to it. It’s fascinating to pull on a thread and follow it without knowing if he will find a ball of string or the end of a rope. From the building emerge: a woman dressed in pink, a man dressed in navy blue, a man dressed in gray, a woman dressed in orange, a man dressed in white, a woman dressed in red and black and a woman dressed in beige, a man dressed in pink, a man dressed in yellow, two men dressed in gray, a man dressed in blue and a woman dressed in blue and white, a man
dressed in red, a woman dressed in black, and a man dressed in gray and black stripes.
•
At noon, when the sun is at its peak and Humbert has eaten all the sandwiches and drunk all the beers, and is thinking of making another trip to the delicatessen to buy more, Marino leaves the building with a woman. That definitely must be Hildegarda. He follows them with his gaze. They go into the garage next door. Humbert starts the car. When he sees them leave in a black Buick Park Avenue, heading in the opposite direction, he finds himself having to make a U-turn in the middle of the street. The man by the curb with a sandwich cart is forced to pull back in a hurry and backs into a passing ambulance, which doesn’t have time to brake and tips him over with a crash.
DelNonno’s car stops in front of a glass-and-steel building. Hildegarda gets out. The car takes off, crosses a double line, passes another car, and vanishes down the street.
Humbert gets out of the car and looks at the door of the establishment Hildegarda has gone into. A large neon sign proclaims in stylized letters that this is a Health and Sports Club, that is, a posh gym. The services offered by the club are detailed in a list on the glass door: swimming, tennis, sauna, gymnastics, dance. Dance? He takes out the notebook and makes a note. He never thought of doing anything on dance. He feels good: he hasn’t taken any notes in so long that, even though he knows that his lack of fertile ideas is due to his investigation, he was half worrying that his brain was rusting. He pushes the door open.
A very blond girl wearing a t-shirt with the name of the club and a short skirt informs him at length about the facilities the center has to offer. Humbert, who has always shunned all types of physical activity, signs up without even waiting for the girl to finish her promotional spiel.