I remember that I took a shower, then I put lotion on all over and I even had time to do a few exercises in front of the steamed-up bathroom mirror. When I came out Arturo was sitting at the table with chamo-mile tea and a cup of tea with milk for me, covered with a saucer so it wouldn't get cold. Did you call her? Yes, he said. And what happened? She hung up on me, he said. Her loss, I said. He snorted. To change the subject I asked him how his book was going. Fine, he said. Can I see it? Can I go in your room and look at it? He looked at me and said yes. His room wasn't clean, but it wasn't filthy either. Unmade bed, clothes on the floor, a few books scattered around. More or less like mine. He'd set up his typewriter next to the window, on a little table. I sat down and started to look through his papers. I didn't understand any of what he'd written, of course, but I wasn't expecting to. I know the secret of life isn't in books. But I also know that it's good to read, that it can be instructive, or relaxing: we agree about that. He read books, I read magazines like Muscle or Muscle & Fitness or Body fitness. Then we started to talk about his great love. That's what I called her, to make fun of him, your great love, a girl he'd known a long time ago, when she was eighteen, and who he'd seen again not long ago. His trips back to Catalonia had always been disastrous. The first time, he said, the train almost went off the tracks. The second time he came back sick with a temperature of a hundred and four, huddled sweating on the bunk, wrapped in blankets and his coat. And this girl let you get on the train knowing you were that sick? I said as I looked at his things, he really had so few things. She doesn't love you, Arturo, I thought. Forget her, I said. I had to leave, he said, I had to come see my son. I'd like to meet him, I said. I've already shown you his picture, he said. I just don't understand it, I said. What don't you understand? he said. I never would've let a sick friend get on a train with a temperature of a hundred and four, even if I didn't love him anymore, even if I wasn't in love with him, I said. First, I would've taken care of him and made sure he got better, at least a little bit better, and then I would've let him go. Sometimes I feel so guilty, I thought, but the strangest thing is I don't know why, I don't know what I've done wrong to make me feel that way. You're a good person, he said. So you like bad people? I said. The first time she was afraid to come and live with me, he said, she was only eighteen. Stop right there, I said, or you're going to piss me off. That girl is a coward, I thought, and you're an idiot. There's nothing left for me here, he said. Why are you being so melodramatic? I loved her, he said. Stop! I said, I can't keep listening to this ridiculousness. That night we talked some more about the fucking Andalusian and Arturo's son. Do you need money? I said. Are you leaving because you don't have money? Because you aren't making enough? I'll lend you money. Don't pay me this month's rent. Or next month's. Don't pay me until you have more than enough. Do you have money for medicine? Have you been going to the doctor? Do you have money to buy your son toys? I can give you a loan. I have a friend who works at a toy store. I have a friend who's an aide at an outpatient clinic. There's a solution for everything.
The next morning he told me the story of the Andalusian all over again. It looked like he hadn't slept. It's the last time I'll be with anyone, he said. Why should it be the last time? I said. Are you dead, or what? Arturo, sometimes you drive me up the wall.
The story of the Andalusian girl was very simple. He met her when she was eighteen. That much I already knew. Then she broke up with him, but in a letter, and he had a funny feeling, as if the relationship had never really ended. Every once in a while she would call him. The years went by. They had their own lives, they got by as best they could. Arturo met another woman, he fell in love, got married, had a child, was separated. Then he got sick. He almost died: he had some kind of problem with his pancreas, his liver was a wreck, he had an ulcerated colon. One day he called the girl. It had been a long time since they talked, and that day, maybe because he was in bad shape and felt sad, he called her. Years had gone by and the girl wasn't at the number he had anymore, so he had to track her down. It didn't take him long to find her new number and he reached her. The bitch was in more or less the same shape he was in, if that. They were in touch again. It was as if no time had passed. Arturo went south. He was still recovering, but he decided to go and see her. She was in an essentially similar situation. There was nothing physically wrong with her, but when Arturo got there she was in bed because her head was a mess. According to the girl, she was going crazy: she saw rats, she heard rats scratching around in the walls of her room, she had horrible dreams and she couldn't sleep, she hated going out. She was separated too. Her marriage had been a disaster too, and so had her lovers. They managed to stand each other for a week. It was that time, on Arturo's way back to Catalonia, that the Talgo almost went off the rails. According to Arturo, the engineer stopped in the middle of nowhere and the ticket takers got off the train and walked along the tracks until they found a loose plate, a piece on the bottom of the train that was coming off. I frankly don't understand how they didn't notice it before. Either Arturo didn't explain it very well or all the workers on that train were drunk. The only passenger who got off the train and walked along the tracks, according to Arturo, was Arturo himself. Maybe it was at that moment, as the ticket inspectors were looking for the plate or sheet coming loose from the underside of the train, that he started to go crazy and think about escape. But the worst came later: after five days in Catalonia, Arturo began to think about going back, or realize that he had no choice but to go back. During that time he talked to the Andalusian girl at least once a day and sometimes as often as seven times. Usually, they argued. Other times they talked about how much they missed each other. He spent a fortune on phone calls. Finally, before even a week had gone by, he got on another train and went back. No matter how much Arturo tried to sugarcoat it, this last trip was just as disastrous as the first, if not worse. The only thing he was sure about was that he loved the fucking Andalusian. Then he got sick and came back to Catalonia or the Andalusian girl kicked him out or he couldn't take it anymore and decided to come back or whatever it was, but the bottom line is, he was sick and the girl let him get on the train with a temperature of a hundred and four, something I would never have done to my worst enemy, Arturo, I said, even if I don't have any enemies. And he said: we had to get away from each other, we were devouring each other. Don't give me that, I said. That girl never loved you. That girl has a screw loose, and you must like that, but she never really loved you. And another day, when I saw him again at the bar in La Sirena, I said to him: what matters is your son and your health. Worry about your son and worry about your health, and stop getting yourself in these messes. It's hard to believe that such a smart guy could be so dumb.
Then I was at a bodybuilding championship, a minor championship in La Bisbal, where I came in second, which made me really happy, and I hooked up with this guy Juanma Pacheco, who was from Seville and worked as a bouncer at the club where the championship was held and used to be a bodybuilder. When I got back to Malgrat, Arturo wasn't there. I found a note on his door informing me that he would be gone for three days. He didn't say where, but I assumed he'd gone to see his son. Later, thinking about it, I realized that he didn't need to be gone for three days to see his son. When he got back four days later, he looked as happy as I'd ever seen him. I didn't want to ask him where he'd been, and he didn't tell me. He just showed up one night at La Sirena and we started to talk as if we'd just seen each other that morning. He stayed at the pub until closing time and then we walked home. I felt like talking and I suggested that we go have a couple of drinks at a bar that a friend of mine owned, but he said he'd rather go home. Still, we didn't hurry. At that time of night there's hardly anyone on the Paseo Marítimo and it's nice out, with the breeze from the sea and music drifting from the few places that are still open. I felt like talking and I told him about Juanma Pacheco. What do you think? I said when I was finished. He has a good name, he said. His real name is Juan Manuel, I said. I guessed t
hat, he said. I think I'm in love, I said. He lit a cigarette and sat on a bench on the Paseo. I sat down beside him and kept talking. At that moment I even understood, or thought I understood, all of Arturo's insanities, the crazy things he'd done and the things he was about to do, and I would've liked to go to Africa too that night while we were watching the sea and the lights in the distance, the little trawlers; I felt capable of anything and especially of leaving for somewhere far away. I wish it would storm, I said. Don't say that, he said, it could start raining any minute. I laughed. What've you been doing for the last few days? I asked him. Nothing, he said, thinking, watching movies. What movies did you see? The Shining, he said. What an awful movie, I said, I saw it years ago and afterward I couldn't sleep. I saw it years ago too, said Arturo, and I was up all night. It's a great movie, I said. It's very good, he said. We were quiet for a while, watching the sea. There was no moon and the lights of the fishing boats were gone. Do you remember the novel that Torrance was writing? Arturo said suddenly. Torrance who? I said. The bad guy in the movie, in The Shining, Jack Nicholson. That's right, the son of a bitch was writing a novel, I said, although the truth is I hardly remembered. More than five hundred pages long, said Arturo, and he spat toward the beach. I'd never seen him spit. Excuse me, there's something wrong with my stomach, he said. Don't worry about it, I said. He'd written more than five hundred pages and all he'd done was endlessly copy a single sentence, in every possible way: capitalized, lowercase, double-columned, underlined, always the same sentence, nothing else. And what was the sentence? Don't you remember? No, I don't, I have a terrible memory, all I remember is the ax, and that the boy and his mother are saved at the end of the movie. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, said Arturo. He was crazy, I said, and at that moment I stopped watching the sea and turned toward Arturo, beside me, and he looked like he was about to collapse. It might have been a good novel, he said. Don't scare me, I said, how could it be a good novel when it was just one sentence repeated over and over again? That shows a lack of respect for the reader. Life is shitty enough without being stuck buying a book where all it says is "All work and no play…" It would be like me serving tea instead of whiskey, it would be false advertising but it would just be rude too, don't you think? Your common sense amazes me, Teresa, he said. Have you looked at what I write? he asked. I only go into your room when you invite me in, I lied. Then he told me about a dream, or maybe it was the next morning, while he watched me doing my daily exercises, sitting at the table with his chamomile tea and with that look on his face as if he hadn't slept for a week.
I thought it was a nice dream and that's why I remember it. Arturo was an Arab boy who goes hand in hand with his little brother to an Indonesian outpost to launch a transoceanic communications cable. Two Indonesian soldiers wait on him. Arturo is dressed like an Arab. In the dream he must be twelve years old, his little brother maybe six or seven. His mother watches from a distance, but then her presence fades. Arturo and his little brother are left alone, although both are wearing those wide, short, sharply curved Arab knives on their belts. Together they haul the cable, which looks handcrafted or homemade. And they're also carrying a barrel of a thick, greenish-brown liquid, which is the money to pay the Indonesians. As they wait, Arturo's little brother asks him how many feet long the cable is. Not feet, says Arturo, miles! The soldiers' hut is built of wood and it's on the shore. As they wait, another Arab, an older guy, cuts in front of them in line, and although Arturo's first impulse is to insult him or at least accuse him of being rude, first checking to see whether his curved sword is in place, he soon gives up the idea when the older Arab begins to tell a story to the Indonesian soldiers and to anyone else who wants to listen. The story is about a party in Sicily. Arturo told me that when he and his little brother heard it they felt happy, they felt thrilled, as if the other man was reciting a poem. In Sicily there's a glacier made of sand. A motley crowd of spectators watch it from a safe distance, except for two men: the first climbs to the top of a hill where the glacier is balanced, and the other stands at the foot of the hill and waits. Then the one on top starts to move or dance or stamp on the ground and the top layer of the glacier begins to crumble, sending down big masses of sand that fall toward the man below. He doesn't move. For a moment it looks as if he'll be buried in sand, but at the last instant he leaps aside and is saved. That was the dream. The sky in Indonesia was almost green, the sky in Sicily almost white. It had been a long time since Arturo had such a good dream. Maybe the Indonesia and the Sicily he dreamed of were on another planet. In my opinion, I said, that dream means your luck is about to change. From now on, things will go your way. Do you know who your little brother in the dream was? I can guess, he said. It was your son! When I said that, Arturo smiled. Days later, though, he brought up the Andalusian girl again. I wasn't feeling well and I told him to fuck off. Now I know I shouldn't have, even if it didn't really matter. I think I talked to him about life's responsibilities, the things I believed in and clung to in order to keep breathing. It must have seemed like I was angry at him, but I wasn't. He didn't get angry at me. That night he didn't come home to sleep. I remember because it was the first night that Juanma Pacheco came to see me. He had time off every fifteen days and he came to Malgrat wanting to make the most of it. We went into my room and tried to make love. I couldn't do it. I tried several times, but I couldn't. Maybe it was because of Juanma's muscles, which were flabby since he hadn't been to the gym for so long. Whatever it was, it was probably my fault. I kept getting up to go into the kitchen for a drink of water. One of those times, I don't know why, I went into Arturo's room. On the table was his typewriter and a neat stack of paper. Before I flipped through the sheets I thought about The Shining and it gave me the shivers. But Arturo wasn't crazy, I knew that. Then I walked around the room, opened the window, sat on the bed, heard footsteps in the hall. Juanma Pacheco's face appeared around the door. He asked me if anything was wrong. Nothing, it's all right, I said, I'm thinking, and then I saw the packed suitcases and I knew he was going to leave.
He gave me four books that I still haven't read. A week later we said goodbye, and I went with him to the station.
25
Jacobo Urenda, Rue du Cherche-Midi, Paris, June 1996. This is a hard story to tell. It seems easy, but scratch the surface and you realize it isn't easy at all. Every story about that place is hard. I travel to Africa at least three times a year, usually to the hot spots, and when I get back to Paris it's as if I'm still dreaming and I can't wake up, although you might think that Latin Americans were less affected by horror than anyone else, at least in theory.
That was where I met Arturo Belano, in the Luanda post office, on a hot afternoon when I had nothing better to do than spend a fortune on calls to Paris. He was at the fax window going head to head with the guy acting as manager, who was trying to overcharge him, and I backed him up. By coincidence, it turned out we were both from the Southern Cone, him from Chile and me from Argentina, and we decided to spend the rest of the day together. I might have been the one to suggest it, I've always been a sociable person, I like to talk and get to know other people, and I'm not a bad listener, although sometimes when I seem to be listening I'm actually thinking my own thoughts.
We soon realized that we had more in common than we expected. At least I realized it, and I guess Belano did too, not that we said anything, or patted each other on the back. We'd both been born around the same time, we'd both split from our respective countries when what happened happened, we both liked Cortázar, we both liked Borges, neither of us had much money, and we both spoke shitty Portuguese. Basically, we were the typical forty-something Latin American guys who find themselves in an African country on the edge of the abyss or the edge of collapse, whichever you want to call it. The only difference was that when I finished my work (I'm a photographer for the La Luna Agency) I was going back to Paris, and when poor Belano finished his work he was going to stick around.
But why, man
? I asked him at some point during the night, why don't you come with me to Europe? I even went so far as to offer to lend him the money for the ticket if he didn't have it, which is the kind of thing you say when you're very drunk and the night is not just foreign but also big, very big, so big that if you don't look out it'll swallow you up, you and everyone around you, but that's something you wouldn't know anything about, you people who've never been to Africa. I do know. Belano did too. Both of us were freelancers. I worked for La Luna, as I've said, Belano as a stringer for a Madrid newspaper that paid him next to nothing for his pieces. And although he didn't tell me just then why he wasn't going to leave, we sat there comfortably together until we were carried by the night or by inertia (so to speak, since real inertia in Luanda made you hide under your cot) to a kind of private club belonging to this guy João Alves, a two-hundred-fifty-pound African. There we ran into some people we knew: reporters and photographers, cops and pimps, and we kept talking. Or maybe not. Maybe we went our separate ways there, maybe I lost sight of him in the cigarette smoke like so many people you meet when you're out on a job, people you talk to and then lose sight of. In Paris, it's different. People drift away, people dwindle, and you have time to say goodbye, even if you'd rather not. Not in Africa. People talk there, people tell you their problems, and then they vanish in a cloud of smoke, the way Belano vanished that night, without warning. And you never even consider the possibility of running into X or Y again at the airport. The possibility exists, I'm not saying it doesn't, but you don't consider it. So that night, when Belano disappeared, I stopped thinking about him, stopped thinking about loaning him money, and drank and danced and then I fell asleep in a chair and when I woke up with a start (more out of fear than because I was hungover, since I was afraid I'd been robbed, not being in the habit of going to places like João Alves's) it was already morning and I went outside to stretch my legs and there he was, in the yard, smoking a cigarette and waiting for me.
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