by David Odell
I switched on the television, it was time for Family Feud, which was on every day, and I felt that the images might help to mitigate the growing atmosphere of irritation, might perhaps silence the words. It's impossible to resist looking at a television screen now and then, once it's on.
"Why don't you try to negotiate a meeting? Write to him again, he'll reply, even if you don't send him what he wants."
"I don't want to waste any more time. Are you going to help me or not?"
There was nothing light about her tone of voice now, it sounded almost commanding. I looked at the screen. I said:
"I'd rather not have to."
She was looking at the screen too. She said:
'There's no one else I can ask."
Then she remained silent for the rest of the evening, but she didn't spend it with me, she just passed me now and then on her way from the kitchen to her bedroom. When she passed I could smell the Trussardi cologne she was wearing.
Over the weekend we spent more time together at home, as we usually did. (It was the sixth weekend of my stay there, the time was coming for me to return to Madrid, to Luisa and our new home, I used to talk to her a couple of times a week, never about anything much, as tends to be the case with hurried, vaguely amorous conversations, especially long-distance ones), and on Saturday, Berta again asked me. "I have to make that video," she said, "you must help me." Her limp had seemed more pronounced over the last few days as if, unconsciously, she wanted to arouse my pity. It was absurd. I didn't answer and she went on: 'There's no one else I can ask. I've been thinking about it and the only person I'd trust is Julia, but she knows nothing about the whole affair, she knows about the agency and that I write to the personals and that from time to time I go out with someone and that it never works out, but she's no idea that I send and receive videos or that I end up in bed with some of these men. She knows nothing about 'Visible Arena'; you, on the other hand, have been in on it from the start, you've even seen his face, don't force me to tell it all to someone else, people always talk. I'd be so ashamed if my colleagues found out. You must help me." She paused and hesitated before speaking and then said (the will is always slower than the tongue): "After all, you have seen me naked before, that's another advantage."
"Any relationship between two people always brings with it a multitude of problems and coercions, as well as insults and humiliations," I thought. "Everyone obliges everyone else," I thought. 'That's what this guy Bill has done to Berta and now Berta's trying to do the same thing to me, Bill has tried coercion, he's also insulted and humiliated her even before meeting her, perhaps she doesn't realize that or perhaps she doesn't really care, she's too caught up in it all, Berta is trying to use coercion to persuade me, just as Miriam did with Guillermo to get him to marry her and just as Guillermo tried perhaps to coerce his Spanish wife into dying, into death. I coerced and obliged Luisa, or perhaps Luisa was the one who did it to me, it's not quite clear; who must my father have tried to coerce, who had he offended, who had he obliged, how was it that there'd been two deaths in his life, perhaps he'd coerced someone into dying, I don't want to know, the world seems so innocuous when you don't, wouldn't it be better if we all just stayed very still. But even if we were to do that, the problems and coercions and humiliations and insults continue, as do the obligations, sometimes we oblige ourselves, a sense of duty it's called, perhaps my duty is to help Berta do what she's asking me to do, you should give importance to the things that are important to your friends; if I refuse to help her I'll offend her, humiliate her, any refusal is also an offence, an act of coercion, and it's true that I have already seen her naked, but that was a long time ago, I know it happened, but I can't remember, fifteen years have passed since then and she's older now and lame, she was young then and hadn't had any accidents, didn't have one leg shorter than the other, why had she brought that up now, we never talked about our slender past together, which was both slender in itself and in comparison to the broad present, I was young then too, what happened between us both happened and didn't happen, it's the same with everything, why do or not do something, why say yes' or 'no', why worry yourself with a 'perhaps' or a 'maybe', why speak, why remain silent, why refuse, why know anything if nothing of what happens happens, because nothing happens without interruption, nothing lasts or endures or is ceaselessly remembered, what takes place is identical to what doesn't take place, what we dismiss or allow to slip by us is identical to what we accept and seize, what we experience identical to what we never try; we pour all our intelligence and our feelings and our enthusiasm into the task of discriminating between things that will all be made equal, if they haven't already been, and that's why we're so full of regrets and lost opportunities, of confirmations and reaffirmations and opportunities grasped, when the truth is that nothing is affirmed and everything is constantly in the process of being lost. Or perhaps there never was anything."
"All right, but let's do it fast, right now," I said to Berta. "Let's get it over with." I used the plural, this time with some justification.
"You'll do it?" she said with sudden undisguised gratitude and relief.
"Tell me what I have to do and I'll do it. But be quick, come on, get ready, the sooner we start the sooner we finish."
Berta came over to me and gave me a peck on the cheek. She left the living room to get her camera, but we went back into the room she'd brought it from, because she chose her bedroom and her unmade bed as the backdrop. We were in the middle of breakfast, it was still morning.
That body bore no resemblance to the one I remembered, or no longer remembered, although the truth is I only looked at it through the camera, to provide the framings and the closeups she suggested to me, as if seeing her in that indirect way was like not seeing her, every time we stopped filming for a few seconds to think up a new pose or to vary the shot (I did the varying, she did the thinking) I would stare at the floor or into the distance, at the wall or the pillow, at some point just beyond her, keeping my gaze opaque. To start with, Berta had sat at the foot of the bed, as "Bill" had done in his pale blue bathrobe and Berta had imitated him in that as well, she'd put on her own bathrobe (which was white), having first asked me to wait while she showered, then she emerged with her hair still damp and the bathrobe wrapped about her, she opened it a little afterwards, let it fall open a little to reveal her front, keeping the belt still knotted, I didn't remember those full breasts, perfected by the passing of time or perhaps by touch, I couldn't believe she'd had silicon implants, it was as if they'd been transformed or become more maternal since I'd last seen them, and for that reason I felt not only indiscreet, but also troubled (perhaps like a father who stopped seeing his daughter naked when that daughter stopped being a child and then sees her again as an adult, by accident or because of some misfortune). Her whole body, the body I saw through the lens, was more solid than the one I'd embraced in Madrid fifteen years ago, perhaps she'd taken up swimming or gymnastics during the twelve years she'd been in America, a country where they cosset and mould their bodies, but only their bodies. But as well as being more vigorous, it was older too, her skin had grown darker the way the skin on fruit grows dark when it begins to rot, there were creases at her armpits, around her waist, some areas were striated by that shadowy hatching you can only see from very close to (those almost-white lines that look as if they'd been painted on wood with a very fine brush), even those strong breasts were wider set than was ideal, the channel between them broadened, they wouldn't suit certain low- cut dresses. Berta had abandoned modesty, or so it seemed, I, on the other hand, had not and I tried to force myself to remember that I was filming it all for other eyes, the eyes of "Bill" or "Guillermo", for the piercing, indecipherable eyes of the man in the Plaza Hotel, his penetrating, opaque gaze would see what I was seeing, that was who it was intended for, not for my opaque but unpenetrating gaze, I wasn't seeing it, even though the angle I chose would be the one he would see, what he would see later on his screen depended on me
(but also on Berta), nothing more, nothing less, only what we decided, what we chose to film for that briefest of posterities. Berta had let the bathrobe slide down to her waist, the belt still knotted, her legs covered by the rest of it, only her torso uncovered (but entirely uncovered now). I only filmed her face in passing, when the movement made by the camera required it, perhaps wanting to disassociate the familiar face (nose, eyes and mouth; chin, forehead and cheeks, the whole face) from the unfamiliar body, that body which was older, stronger or perhaps just forgotten. It wasn't like Luisa's body, which is the body I'm most used to, then and now, although I realized at that moment that I'd never observed Luisa's body in such detail, through a camera lens, Berta's body was like a piece of wet wood at which knives are thrown, Luisa's was like indiscreet marble on which every footstep echoes, younger and less worn- out, less expressive and more intact. We didn't talk while I was filming, the video picks up voices — Berta perhaps felt no sense of fun or relief now, I never had — voices debase what happens, any commentary clouds the facts, even recounting them does; we paused, I stopped filming, it all took very little time, I only had to record a few minutes, but we'd still not finished. I was looking more and more as if through "Bill's" eyes, the eyes that I had seen but Berta had not, they were not my eyes but his, no one could accuse me of having looked with that look, of having really looked, as I said before, because it wasn't me but him looking through my eyes, his eyes and my own opaque eyes, my eyes growing ever more penetrating. But she didn't know those eyes, we still hadn't quite finished. "Your cunt," I said to Berta, and I don't know how I managed to say it, how I dared to say it, but I did. "We haven't filmed your cunt yet," I said, and I used the plural in order to include myself or perhaps to soften what I was saying, just two words, then six, the two words repeated in the second phrase (perhaps I was speaking through "Bill's" mouth too). Berta didn't answer, she didn't say anything, I don't even know if she was looking at me, I wasn't looking at her (I wasn't filming at that point), but into the distance, at the wall and the pillow from which those who are ill and those who are married end up seeing the world, as lovers do too. She undid her bathrobe and opened it up to reveal her stomach, still keeping her legs covered, that is, you could see her inner thighs but not the front or lower down, the rest, the lower part of the bathrobe fell like a pale blue cascade (or, in this case, white) hiding her extremities, one longer and the other shorter, one shorter and the other longer, and I filmed her, going in closer, just a few video seconds, for that ephemeral posterity, Berta would take a copy, that's what she'd said. She wrapped her bathrobe around her as soon as I'd filmed what I needed of her crotch and I withdrew a little with the camera. I thought that her scar must be very purple now, I still wasn't looking at her, I still had something to say to her, we still hadn't finished, there was still something that "Bill", "Jack" or "Nick" had demanded of us, we still hadn't filmed her leg. I lit a cigarette and as I did so the spark fell on to the unmade bed, but it burned out on contact without singeing the sheet. Then I or "Bill" or Guillermo said to her in our saw-like voice: "Your leg," we said, I said. "We still haven't filmed your leg," we said, "remember, Bill said he wanted to see it."
THE REASON I'm remembering all this now is because what happened afterwards, very shortly afterwards and whilst I was still in New York, resembled, in one aspect at least (but I think only in one, although it may have been more), what happened later on (but not much later on), when I'd returned to Madrid to rejoin Luisa and I again began experiencing those presentiments of disaster - only more strongly and perhaps with more reason this time - which had dogged me ever since the wedding ceremony and which have still not dissipated (at least not entirely, and maybe they never will). Or perhaps it was a third feeling of unease, different from the two I'd experienced during the honeymoon (particularly in Havana) and even before that, a new feeling, just as unpleasant, which, nevertheless, like the second, may well have been invented, imagined or discovered by chance, a necessary but unsatisfactory answer to the terrifying question asked by that initial unease: "Now what?" A question that one answers again and again and yet which is always resurfacing or reformulating itself or is simply always there, emerging unscathed after every reply, like the story of the good pipe, guaranteed to drive children to distraction and which was told to me by my Cuban grandmother on the afternoons when my mother left me with her, afternoons spent singing songs and playing games and telling stories and sneaking involuntary glances at the portraits of those who had died, or during which she would watch past time passing by. "Do you want me to tell you the story of the good pipe?" my grandmother would say with gentle mischievousness. "Yes," I would say, as all children do. "I didn't ask for a yes or a no, all I asked was if you wanted me to tell you the story of the good pipe," my grandmother would continue, laughing. "No," I would say, changing my reply as all children do. "I didn't ask for a no or a yes, all I asked was if you wanted me to tell you the story of the good pipe." By then my grandmother would be laughing louder than ever and so it would go on until desperation and weariness set in, capitalizing on the fact that the desperate child never thinks to give the reply that would undo the spell: "I want you to tell me the story of the good pipe," repetition as salvation, or the formulation that never occurs to the child because he still lives in the yes and the no, and has no time for perhaps or maybe. But this other question about then and now is worse and repeating it serves no purpose, just as it served no purpose, or remained unanswered or undispelled, when I turned it back on my father in the Casino de Madrid when he asked me the question out loud, when the two of us were alone in a room after my wedding. "That's what I want to know," I said. "Now what?" The only way of escaping from that question is not by repeating it but by not allowing it to exist, by not asking it or allowing anyone else to ask it of you. But that's impossible and perhaps because of that, in order to answer it, you have to invent problems and feel fears and entertain suspicions and think about the abstract future, and think "so brainsickly of things" as Macbeth was told not to do, to see what is not there in order for something to be there, to fear illness or death, abandonment or betrayal, and to dream up threats, if necessary from a third party, even if only by analogy or symbolically and perhaps that is what drives us to read novels and news reports and to go and see films, the search for analogy, for symbolism, the need for recognition rather than cognition. Recounting an event distorts it, recounting facts distorts and twists and almost negates them, everything that one recounts, however true, becomes unreal and approximate, the truth doesn't depend on things actually existing or happening, but on their remaining hidden or unknown or untold, as soon as they're related or shown or made manifest, even in a medium that seems real, on television or in the newspapers, in what is called reality or life or even real life, they become part of some analogy or symbolism, and are no longer facts, instead they become mere recognition. The truth never shines forth, as the saying goes, because the only truth is that which is known to no one and which remains un- transmitted, that which is not translated into words or images, that which remains concealed and unverified, which is perhaps why we do recount so much or even everything, to make sure that nothing has ever really happened, not once it's been told.
I don't know quite what it was that occurred on my return, or rather, I'm not sure that I'll know what occurred in my absence until many more years have passed. I only know that one rainy night, at home with Luisa, when I'd been back from New York for a week, after eight weeks of work and keeping Berta company, I got out of bed and left our shared pillow and went to the fridge. It was cold or the fridge made me feel cold and I went to the bathroom and put on a dressing gown (I was tempted to use my bathrobe as a dressing gown, but I didn't), and afterwards, whilst Luisa in turn visited the bathroom for a wash, I paused for a moment in the room where I work and looked at a few texts, standing up, a Coca-Cola in my hand, already feeling sleepy. As is so often the way in clear-skied Madrid, a weary, uniform rain was falling, untroubl
ed by any wind, as if it knew it was going to last for days and there was no need for fury or haste. I looked out at the trees and at the beams of light from the curved street- lamps that illuminate the falling rain and turn it to silver and then, on the same corner at which, later, the old organ-grinder and the gypsy woman with her saucer and her plait would stand, the same corner you can see only partially from my window, I saw the figure of a man who, unlike them, I could see because he was leaning against a wall, away from the road, sheltering unsuccessfully from the rain beneath the eaves of the building opposite, the building that doesn't block my light; there was little chance of him being knocked down by a car and, besides, there was little traffic. He was sheltering beneath a hat as well, a rare sight in Madrid, although less so on rainy days, a few older people, like Ranz, my father, wear them. That figure (you could tell at once) was not that of an older man, but of a still-young man, tall and erect. Beneath the brim of his hat, and given the darkness and the distance, I couldn't make out his face or rather his features (I could see the anonymous white smudge of a face in the dark, his face was far from the nearest beam of light), because what made me stop and look at him was the fact that he had his head raised and was looking upwards, he was looking, or so I believed, directly at our windows, or rather at the window that was now to my left, our bedroom window. From where he was standing, the man wouldn't be able to see into the room, all he would be able to see, and this was perhaps what he was after, was whether or not the light was still on, or perhaps, I thought, the shadows cast by our figures, by Luisa and me, though whether we were close enough or had moved close enough, I couldn't remember. He might have been waiting for a signal, from time immemorial people have used the lighting and extinguishing of fires to send signals, just as they have used their eyes, opening and closing them, or the brandishing of torches in the distance. The fact is that I recognized him at once despite not being able to see his face; figures from one's childhood are unmistakable in any place or at any time, one glance is enough, even though they might have changed or grown taller or older since then. But it took me only seconds to recognize him, to recognize that beneath the eaves and the rain the figure I recognized was Custardoy the Younger looking up at our most private window, waiting, watching, just like a lover, a little like Miriam and like myself a few days before, Miriam and I in different cities on the other side of the ocean, Custardoy here, on the corner opposite my house. I hadn't waited like a lover, but I had perhaps waited for the same thing as Custardoy, for Luisa and I to turn out the light so that he could imagine us asleep, with our backs to each other, not facing, or perhaps lying awake in one another's arms. "What's Custardoy doing there?" I thought, "It must be a coincidence, he must have got caught in the rain when he was walking up our street and decided to shelter under the eaves of the building opposite, he doesn't dare ring or come up, it's late, but that can't be, he's waiting there, he must have been there for some time, that's what it looks like and that's why he's got his coat collar turned up, gripped by his bony hands whilst he gazes up with his huge, dark, wide-set, almost lashless eyes, gazing up at our bedroom, what's he looking at? what's he looking for? what does he want? why is he looking? I know he's been here with Ranz sometimes to visit Luisa during my absence, my father brought him, what people call "dropping by", a visit from the father-in- law and a friend of his and, in theory, a friend of mine, he must be in love with Luisa, but he never falls in love, I don't know if she knows anything about this, how odd, on a rainy night like this, now that I'm back, standing there in the street getting drenched, like a dog." Those were my immediate thoughts, rapid and disorderly. I heard Luisa coming out of the bathroom and going back to our bedroom. From there she called out my name and said to me (there was a wall between us but both doors were open on to the corridor): "Aren't you coming to bed? Come on, it's late." Her voice sounded as natural and cheery as it had every day since my return, a week ago, as it had a few minutes before while she was murmuring vaguely amorous things to me on our shared and mutual pillow. And instead of telling her what was happening, what I was seeing, what I was thinking, I stopped, just as I didn't go out on to the balcony and call Custardoy by name and ask him straight out: "Hey, what are you doing down there?" Almost the same question which, not knowing who I was, Miriam had asked from the esplanade, as naturally as you would address someone you know and trust. And I gave a furtive reply (the furtiveness of suspicion, although I didn't yet know it): "You can turn out the light if you like, I'm not sleepy yet, I think I'll just check over a bit of work."