by Andrés Barba
“Where did you get the flowers?”
“Well, it’s about time! I thought you were never going to notice!” A smile of contained indignation broke out. “I bought them at the market yesterday. I love daisies and sunflowers . . . Have you ever seen Van Gogh’s sunflowers? They’re so beautiful.”
Again, the child. Roberto had brought Van Gogh to him, right there on the sheets, was windmilling his arms in the air to imitate the starry night. It wasn’t that he didn’t like Van Gogh, but he felt a sort of indulgent affection for him, like a childish passion, crude and impressionable. And there was Roberto, lost in praise for his strong colors and passionate brushstrokes, of course, drifting away from him again. How could he introduce this child to anyone? What was he thinking? He let the predictable conversation about cut-off ears and hysteria run its course, and when it died down, Roberto became the boy he’d dreamed about for five long days once more. He envied his youth again, his agility when he watched him leap out of bed to run naked to the bathroom. He had been that way once, too.
“Well, we have to get dressed soon,” he said when he came back, pausing in the bedroom doorway.
“Get dressed for what?”
“For the party. Don’t you remember the party I told you about tonight?”
“I don’t want to go to any party, I want to stay here with you.”
“But don’t you remember? We talked about it. And besides, I already bought you a ticket.”
“Well. I can just picture what it will be like, this party.”
He didn’t want to go, so everything Roberto said about the venue, the friends who would be there, the open bar, seemed to confirm his decision not to go rather than entice him. What would he do surrounded by all those boys? Wouldn’t he seem ridiculous? Wouldn’t they laugh at him? He’d always felt an almost visceral disdain for those people who held on to some absurd sense of adolescence when they were too old to do so, who refused to dress their age, who went to young bars, told young jokes, and that disdain, which he had felt since he was at college and which had often impelled him to dress and act older than he was, now made it impossible for him to even contemplate the idea of going with Roberto now.
“So who is going to this party, tell me, who that I know?”
“No one, but they’re really nice boys.”
“Can’t you see? That’s the problem. They’re nice boys.”
“Well, I’m a boy, too,” Roberto said, imitating the disdainful tone he had placed on the word.
“It’s different with you.”
“Oh, yeah? Why?”
He didn’t want to be having that conversation and yet he knew that Roberto was taking him, maybe unintentionally, into the pit of his fear.
“It’s different with you because you’re older, really.”
“I am no older or more mature than any of them, and they’re my friends and I love them.”
“I’m not telling you not to love them, or saying that they’re not nice, I’m sure they are.”
“But?”
“I don’t know, Roberto.”
“Look, all I know is that you’ve been acting strange ever since you got back from Barcelona. You have no idea what it took for me to get the night off and you don’t seem to appreciate it at all, and I put flowers everywhere and you don’t even notice.”
There was a silence in which Roberto seemed to expect him to agree, and he didn’t. Although he was right, he just looked at him without saying anything, praying silently that he would not go down that road.
“Plus, the tickets cost me eight thousand pesetas each,” he concluded, almost whispering.
“If that’s what you’re worried about, you can take the money from my wallet.”
“Don’t be stupid.”
Roberto started to get dressed, quickly, without looking at him.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m going.”
“Well, then, don’t come back. If you leave, don’t bother coming back.”
“You are a real asshole.”
“Yes, I am.”
Why was he doing that? Why was he sitting there, motionless, watching him get dressed, wearing that stupid, self-satisfied expression on his face, pretending he didn’t care if Roberto left? What was he going to do now? Roberto put on his shoes and left the room. He heard him put on his coat by the door. He slammed the door when he left. He looked at the unmade bed, the glass Roberto had drunk out of, the ashtray full of butts, the flowers.
“Don’t go,” he said.
A second went by, and then another, and another, and with each passing second a void was accumulating, making a minute, then thirty, and then an hour when the sky turned a leaden gray, with no faces but with voices calling to each other on the street, laughing on their way to a party, maybe the one Roberto was going to. Twelve o’clock was just another minute, one when he heard the ruckus of a group of kids who had been taken by surprise under his window as the clock struck. Then the phone rang and he felt his blood run cold. He tripped over a piece of furniture as he ran to the living room to get it. It was Marta. Happy New Year, and did he want to come over, Ramón was there and the kids hadn’t gone to bed yet. No, he didn’t want to. He had a bad headache. Since he’d boarded the plane, ever since he’d boarded the plane his head had hurt terribly. He hung up. He thought about Roberto, but as if he’d never belonged to him, and he was afraid, again, to stop loving him, to stop being loved by him. He dressed quickly, without a clear idea of what he was going to do, and went out. He recalled that Roberto had once told him that he liked to go to the bars in Chueca so that’s where he headed. It was too crowded and everyone was shouting. The annoying presence of happiness rejected him like a foreign body and he felt, suddenly, very old amongst all those drunk teenagers.
“Happy New Year!” a boy next to him cried, looking at him. “Cheer up, man, it’s New Year’s Eve!”
Roberto wasn’t there. Or, rather, he was everywhere. A back, a similar coat, a voice. Every time he thought he saw him his heart would start to race. He’d tell him he was so sorry, that he had acted like an idiot, that he had been right, that he wasn’t embarrassed of him, or of his friends, that it was just that he was scared. Could he understand that? Of course he could, he’d go to the damn party, they’d get drunk together, and then they’d go back home together. He wouldn’t do it again, he swore he wouldn’t do that again.
Roberto didn’t appear. In his place, the night took on a cold, icy chill. The cars were all honking their horns in an infectious jubilation that seemed artificial. A boy vomited in the doorway of a bar. He went back home slowly, burdened by the unbearable weight of love.
He called him three times the next morning but got the answering machine each time. On his fourth attempt—it was almost two o’clock—Roberto’s tired voice answered.
“Roberto . . .”
“Hello.”
“Roberto, I’m so sorry, I acted like a complete idiot last night.”
“Yeah.”
His voice sounded tired, or disappointed, or sad.
“Do you want to come over? I bought champagne, and lamb. We can have lamb.”
“I’m going home for dinner, with my sisters.”
“You could come over afterwards.”
“OK.”
“Will you come?”
“Yes.”
“What time?”
“I don’t know, about eight.”
“Eight? Can’t you come any earlier?”
“No.”
“OK, eight. Big kiss.”
“Goodbye.”
Roberto didn’t come at eight. Or eight-thirty. Or nine. At nine fifteen he heard the elevator coming up, but there had already been so many false alarms that he didn’t get excited until he heard it stop on his floor, and when it did, he didn’t know what to do. He didn’t know if he should run to the door or stay on the sofa, as he normally did. Roberto opened the door with his key and he got up. He walked over to him. Roberto’s
furrowed brow made him look strangely unattractive, like a child having a tantrum.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“You’re an asshole.”
“I know. Do you forgive me?”
“I guess.”
They kissed. Within two hours Roberto’s reservations seemed to have vanished completely and they were taking off their clothes in the bedroom. Roberto asked him what he’d done last night and he confessed that he’d gone out to look for him. This pleased Roberto and he wanted to hear every detail.
“You never would have found me in Chueca because I wasn’t there, I was in Sol.”
“Did you have fun?”
“No, everyone kept asking me what was wrong, why I wasn’t dancing or anything.”
“You didn’t dance?”
“I didn’t have anyone to dance with.”
“I bet there were thousands of guys who were dying to dance with you.”
“There were lots of guys, but I didn’t want to dance with them.”
Roberto was wearing lipstick, and his lips were so full and fleshy that they gave his whole face an almost fictional quality and he felt an almost religious devotion to him, as if he couldn’t quite believe that this boy actually loved him.
He had that day off, and the next, and the following two as well. Since he’d worked an extra day in Barcelona, they were giving him a day in return. The joy of the night they made up turned out to be, in part, fictitious. It wasn’t long before his fear, jealousy, anxiety returned. At times he even thought he would have been better off if he’d never met Roberto. He was tired of living in a constant state of agitation and some part of him missed the peace he’d felt in his years of resignation, when happiness was simple and had no consequence, when it was a tumbler of Napoleon cognac in his after-dinner daze, when it was expensive cigarettes, the odd dinner at an elegant restaurant.
Roberto’s love moved him, and yet, ever since the night of the argument, it seemed as if something had broken; it wasn’t the argument itself (which had been unimportant), but the consequences it had had. In the same way that sometimes a beautiful body stops being beautiful when put on display, Roberto’s silence, like all things peaceful, could become intolerably boring. And yet beneath that “no” lay a passion for the “yes” that broke each time he observed Roberto’s unwavering need to be a loving creature. Within his predictable form of loving—nothing could be as predictable as his kindness—youth at times conquered corporeality, the voluptuousness of a look, and that was when he became, once again, indecipherable.
One of those evenings, Roberto called one of his friends who worked at the Laundromat and they spoke for about fifteen minutes. Roberto had decided to make the call, in fact, because after sitting down next to him on the sofa, he didn’t pay any attention. He was watching the news and, though it wasn’t very interesting, Roberto’s presence felt like an intrusion. Feeling rejected, Roberto had gone, without resentment, to make a phone call, and when he did, he couldn’t stop looking at him. Roberto asked for Marcos and he thought he noted from the tone of the conversation that there was some degree of complicity between the two of them, jokes that he wouldn’t understand and that, nevertheless, made Roberto laugh hysterically, carefree. The discomfort he felt watching Roberto laugh was too complex to be called simply “jealousy.” That was the first time he became aware of the fact that there was a huge part of the twenty-one-year-old boy’s life that he would never be a part of, and that he suddenly felt an urgent need to share. When had Roberto ever laughed that way with him? Why hadn’t he? The boy who was on the phone (legs crossed, cigarette in the ashtray), was he Roberto or not? And if that was the real Roberto, then why did he have the impression that he didn’t know him? Within a few seconds he became terrified by the idea that Roberto had tired of him. It all added up, it was a perfect syllogism: Roberto had never loved him, he had, at first, admired him, and later pitied him, so his love would only last as long as his admiration or his pity; he would never truly possess that boy who was laughing carefree, with bare feet and painted toenails, because he was not equal to him. What happened then was more than self-disdain, or the desire to be like someone else, to be someone else; what happened then is that he yearned to be the boy Roberto was talking to, to be twenty, to work at the Laundromat, to have to save up for a night at the theater, and for cigarettes, to make Roberto laugh like that.
“Who’s that Marcos?”
“Oh, just a friend. We work together at the Laundromat. Why?”
“No reason.”
He tried to feign indifference while still staring at the television but Roberto suddenly burst out laughing.
“Are you jealous of Marcos?”
“Me?”
“You’re jealous of Marcos!” Roberto shouted, endlessly amused by the discovery, almost proud of having been able to incite jealousy. He felt stupid for having started the conversation and wanted to end it as quickly as possible, but he also wanted Roberto to squelch his fears, to tell him that Marcos was incredibly unattractive. And that feeling made him uncomfortable because he saw the childishness of his concern.
“You’re jealous of Marcos!” Roberto repeated, standing in front of him so he could look into his eyes, still laughing.
“Stop it.”
“You’re jealous of Marcos!” Roberto repeated again, putting his hands on his legs so it was impossible not to look at him. He pushed Roberto off and jumped up suddenly.
“Well, so what? What if I am jealous, you damn fool.”
Roberto stopped laughing immediately and opened his eyes wide. Roberto’s enormous brown eyes, staring at him.
“Hey . . .” Roberto said.
“You don’t understand anything,” he said, storming off. But when he’d left the living room he didn’t know what to do, so he headed for the bedroom.
“Hey . . .” Roberto said, walking in, with a tinge of sadness in his voice. He didn’t turn around to look at him; that would have been too easy, too predictable.
“What.”
He felt Roberto put his arms around him from behind.
“Marcos is just a guy I work with, I’m not interested in him at all, and he’s had a girlfriend for the past three years. Don’t get like this.”
“Like what?”
“Please. Sometimes you’re infuriating,” Roberto said, removing his arms and going back to the living room. He heard him turn off the television and put on the Chopin record, which lasted only a few seconds because he took it off almost immediately and put on the modern music that he had once bought for him, and which, from the bedroom, he took to be the definitive sign of Roberto’s no longer trying to please him. He was young, insultingly young, and always would be. That choice proved it. This was what he had feared ever since he’d started having this relationship with him; he had gotten tired of him, of putting up with him, he was suffocating, and so he was not surprised when Roberto came back into the bedroom and said he needed a break, just a few days, to think.
“Think about what?”
“About us, what do you think?” he said.
That night he hadn’t cared about Roberto going home, but the following day he’d had to stop himself several times from dialing his number. Roberto had asked for four days, told him not to call, and though exhaustion had made him believe, at the time, that it wouldn’t take much effort, in actuality not even one day had gone by and it was already torture.
The anxiety and nerves of the first day were followed by desperation on the second. He had gone to bed the night before repeating to himself, in an attempt to calm down, that Roberto was going to call him the next day and at five o’clock he was so nervous he hadn’t been able to have lunch. He went down to walk the dog, who had become more unsociable than usual due to the lack of affection he’d received in the past couple of weeks. Roberto had said he wanted to think “about us.” What a stupid expression. About us. It sounded like something out of a teenage miniseries. “To think about us,” Roberto had said, as
if he were on one of those stupid television series that he probably watched every day when he got home, like any other twenty-one-year-old boy. Roberto could be his son. That had occurred to him many times before, but at that moment the thought exceeded the limits of the grotesque. He could be Roberto’s father. He didn’t feel guilty then, he felt deceived; there had never, from the start, been any real reason for Roberto to complain about the way he’d behaved. He had always treated him to absolutely everything and never skimped on anything: the most expensive wine, the best meat, cigarettes. What did that boy have to complain about? About his not going to that party? Hadn’t that been Roberto’s own fault, really? He’d told him, right from the first, that he didn’t want to go and, inverting roles, he didn’t think he would ever have insisted on Roberto doing anything he had expressly and immediately said he really did not want to do. Really, he’d done it to test him.
But there was something in all of that that didn’t add up. To believe that would have meant believing Roberto was shrewd, and wicked, which was something he also could not accept. He returned home at night, after the longest walk with the dog he could ever recall, starving. He fried up a couple of steaks and ate them almost violently, and then he went to bed. He couldn’t sleep. He smoked three cigarettes in a row. He vomited.
The morning of the third day he felt exhausted, but also couldn’t stand the idea of staying at home. Everything reminded him of Roberto. He called Marta and asked if he could come over for lunch.
“Of course . . . Are you okay?”
“Yes, I’m fine, I just feel like seeing you. Is that so strange?”
“No, of course not. Come, come on over, whenever you like.”
In the time that passed while he was waiting for three o’clock to arrive, a strange destructive streak grew in him. He recalled years gone by with nostalgia, not because he preferred solitude, nobody in their right mind preferred solitude, but because at least he knew where he stood with solitude. Reflecting on his condition filled him with a mixture of displeasure and rage. And his picture of Roberto began to take on an almost dangerous, threatening air. Now he was afraid, not of Roberto falling out of love with him, but of Roberto himself.