Blitz

by David Trueba

  Helga put on her overcoat and wrapped a delicately knitted scarf around her neck. I don’t believe I’ve thanked you for last night’s dinner, I ventured to say. Only for the dinner? she asked jokingly. At last the hostess showed up, and when she saw me, she broke into a run, her high heels making a sexy, musical clatter, and opened the door to the storeroom where my luggage was. Well, I said, but added nothing more, and Helga smiled again. Did you have time to get to know the city a little? Not much, I never use guidebooks when I travel, so I wind up seeing only whatever I happen to come across. Would you like a quick tour? she proposed. I felt an urge to refuse, more out of politeness than because a tour would interfere with any plans I had. I’ve got my car here, she explained.

  As she drove, Helga pointed out several of the city’s landmarks. A bridge over the river Isar, the English garden. She said we were going to drive past her favorite islet in the river. She talked to me about the nineteenth-century architectural developments that had enhanced Munich and about its postwar reconstruction. She showed me the towers of the Cathedral of Our Lady, the Frauenkirche, which were visible from many parts of the city because municipal regulations prohibited the building of anything higher. Unlike the four towers of Madrid, which had changed the profile of my city forever and shone like flagpoles flying the invisible banner of corruption. When we wanted to build our house in Mallorca, my husband had to grease certain palms too, Helga said by way of consolation. Next we saw the Isartor, one of Munich’s medieval gates, followed by the Haus der Kunst, with its massive stone pillars, its abiding solidity, and then the BMW tower, the train station, and a long concatenation of construction sites, some of them old buildings, some of them new additions. She told me anecdotes about Bavarians and offered some samples of their dialect. They call Munich Minga, which is the Spanish word for prick, a detail that very much amused Alex Ripollés when I mentioned it to him.

  Then we went back to the city center, left the car in an enormous parking lot, and walked back to Marienplatz. At every step along the way, she pointed out some representative building and gave me a quick summary of its architecture and history. Some classic buildings had grown together with modern glass structures in a combination of time periods. Old things seem more beautiful to us because they’ve been there longer, I thought. Helga revealed that she’d prepared excursions around the city for people attending the various conferences she volunteered with, and that her collaborations almost always included a walking tour. It’s a pleasure to discover your city again through visitors’ eyes, she told me. The façade of a nearby building announced an exhibition of works by Otto Dix. I love Otto Dix, I said. Do you want to go in?

  It was a small exhibition, about twenty oil paintings, preceded by an anteroom with some dramatic drawings from the period between the world wars, sketches marking out the path that would lead to Picasso’s Guernica. The oils presented enigmatic faces and some of the pinnacles of Dix’s art; the female presences in them were frightened, imperfect, spent, and fragile. The nude red-haired woman protecting her stomach and her chest, her arms covering her bulky, fallen breasts; the rather grotesque pregnant woman hiding her face by turning her head away from the viewer; the famous painting of another redhead, an extremely thin woman with a conspicuous nose and striking eyes; the nude little girl with the red bow in her hair and the delicate veins showing through her skin; older and exhausted women. Dix’s work was the most elaborate expression of what the Nazis considered Entartete Kunst, Degenerate Art. But what was degenerate was his way of looking, not his painting; his rejection of the cruelty of the real in a dream of reaching purity and perfection.

  (Illustration Credit 1.6)

  (Illustration Credit 1.7)

  (Illustration Credit 1.8)

  They’re disgusting, Helga said. I don’t know, I replied, I’m not so sure. The impression the paintings made was so strong that even the face of the museum guard at the exit, who waved good-bye to us as we left, looked as though it had been painted by Dix. We decided to have some tea in a glass-walled café very near St. Michael’s church, which she obliged me to go into in spite of my lazy attempt to avoid it. All churches are the same, I ventured to say. Oh, come on, that’s like saying all asses are the same. All right, you’ve got me there.

  As always happens, our tour of the city had been a tour of ourselves. Every now and then, she’d say something like that’s where I signed my divorce papers, or one of my children lives in this neighborhood now, or a friend of mine works for that company. I’d point out something noteworthy, a building, a clock, and at the same time, inadvertently, give out information about myself, describe my work or my life with Marta. We were talking about buildings, and we’d be talking about ourselves. We’d allude to a neighborhood, and we’d be alluding to ourselves. We’d point to something outside, and we’d be pointing to something within.

  We spent a pleasant, talkative few hours. It was only when we stopped for tea that silence fell. Being stationary inhibited us all over again. It forced us into an intimacy we probably found disturbing. There was a moment when she bent down to straighten her shoe and put her hand on my knee for support. I reacted to her gesture with a kind of embarrassment, but when I realized she meant nothing by it, I felt ridiculous.

  Then something unexpected happened. The door of the café opened and I saw Helga’s face grow tense. Two burly men, each accompanied by a woman, entered the place in the middle of an animated conversation. One of the men, a blond, powerfully built fellow, was laughing, but when he spotted Helga, he broke off and came over to our table. Helga stood up, they exchanged two kisses, and then they immediately started talking. One of the women also came over, and the earlier smiles and kisses were repeated. Helga turned to me. This is Beto, he’s Spanish, she said in English, and then added something in German about the conference. The man turned out to be Helga’s son, and the woman was his wife. I got to my feet to exchange greetings with them and couldn’t help noticing the excessive force the son put into his handshake. Perhaps it was only natural, given his impressive mass — it was like he was looking down at me from the floor above — but my fingers cracked inside of his like peanut shells. Despite a great urge to burst into explanations, I restrained myself. The woman, diverted by the situation, smiled at me cordially, said something like ah, Spanish, and held out a cold, long-fingered hand.

  After a while, they went and sat with their friends at the other end of the room. Helga and I stayed where we were, staring grimly at our teacups, afraid that any movement we made would be misinterpreted at a distance. Helga shook her head and made a comically tense face. All right, there, you’ve met my son. Yes, he’s very big for his age, I joked. He almost mangled my hand. Seriously? I guess he is a pretty strong guy, she said apologetically. He has bone-crushing strength, I said. Yes, he was an athlete at the university. Just as I feared, I said, laying on the irony. What’s his sport, Spaniard-tossing? Or maybe he holds the world record in the number of bones broken by a single handshake. When he shook my hand, didn’t you hear my knuckles cracking? I tried to pick up my teacup while pretending that my right hand had been rendered useless. Helga burst into laughter at my jokes and my antics as I launched into a series of jerky movements, like an animated drawing, trying in vain to make my crushed hand work. In fact, I said, I think I could use a ride to the hospital. You won’t have to explain the architecture or anything like that, just drop me off at the emergency room and let them X-ray my hand. I may have several broken bones.

  From across the café, the son, alerted by his mother’s laughter, looked over at us. Our eyes, his and mine, met for an instant, and he smiled the way you smile at a surgeon. Do you think my life’s in danger? I asked Helga. I’m lucky he only shook my hand. If he hugs me, you’re responsible for pushing my wheelchair. Helga put her hand over her mouth so she could laugh to her heart’s content, and when she saw me shake my aching hand and blow on it for relief, a bubble of air escaped her lips. She took a handkerchief out of her pocket
and blew her nose, continuing to laugh the whole time. I didn’t stop my ridiculous comedy act, because I liked seeing her like that, unable to contain her laughter. The situation helped to relax us and allowed a current of mutual sympathy very like what we’d felt the previous night to flow between us again. There was something free in those guffaws of Helga’s. Her son came over to us again and spoke to his mother, handing her two tickets he’d pulled out of his pocket.

  Helga turned to ask me a question. He says he’s got two tickets for the soccer match today and he can’t go. It starts in an hour. Do you feel like going? Helga and her son awaited my reply. Well, I don’t like soccer all that much, I said, begging off. But I thought you’d want to see the stadium — I remember you talked about its architecture when we drove in from the airport. Oh, right, I said, without much enthusiasm. Of course. The son handed her the two little tickets, and then he pulled a Bayern Munich team scarf from his pocket and put it around my neck. I thought he was going to strangle me. Regalo, gift, he said in Spanish. Danke, I replied in German.

  Night was falling as we walked back to the parking lot to get the car. I was wearing the soccer scarf around my neck, and Helga suggested we pop into the Max Planck Institute so I could see the wide stairways. After we left there, she took my arm as we walked along. She asked me the name of my hotel. I confessed the truth, namely that I had no hotel. You’re not a very practical boy, I’m afraid, she said. I agreed with her assessment. I always let everything resolve itself at the last minute, I said. Or let other people resolve it, she pointed out. Do you want to spend the night at my place? But no vodka this time, she added. We finished the bottle last night.

  We walked among the rows of cars in the parking lot. Helga was still holding my arm, and a blonde girl, leaning on a car close to us and checking her cell phone while she waited for someone, gave us an intense look. I felt an attack of modesty and unthinkingly detached my arm from Helga’s and moved a little away from her, and my withdrawal made her feel rejected.

  Right, she said a second later. We can’t have the girl thinking there’s something between us, thinking you’re out with an old woman. She didn’t say it like a reproach, but rather like an accurate analysis of my reaction. No, no, it wasn’t that, I apologized, but we continued on to the car in wounded silence. I myself couldn’t understand my attraction to her, or the chain of events that had led to my consenting to spend another night in her apartment, or for that matter the shame I felt at what others would say or think, the embarrassment irrepressibly growing inside me.

  In the car, after starting the engine, Helga turned to me. Look, she said, if you really think I’m trying to get in a relationship with you, you’re mistaken. As far as I’m concerned, it’s ridiculous, I don’t have any claim on you and I’m not idiotic enough to think you and I could have any kind of future. I look in the mirror every morning, I see me before anybody else does, and I know what I look like and how old I am. And I also know I’m not going to be able to console you for breaking up with your so beautiful girlfriend. I’m past all that sort of thing. Furthermore, I’m glad to be past it, don’t think I have any regrets, it causes a lot of suffering and I’ve suffered enough. Do you understand? Do you understand what I mean? I’m in a different stage of my life now, I don’t want complications, I’m too used to being alone and doing what I want when I want how I want, and what I don’t want is emotions invading my life, neither emotions nor the people they come with.

  There was some anger in this speech, delivered in faltering English; however, the anger wasn’t directed at me. I understand perfectly, I said. But there was also a challenge in her words, in her indifference, in her locating herself beyond the arguments of the heart and the questions of attraction. With positively masculine aggressiveness, Helga slammed the car into reverse. I kept my thoughts to myself and didn’t have much to say while she drove. Neither of us wanted to worsen a misunderstanding and bring our relationship to a close like the final speeches at a convention of loners. What had happened the night before would remain in the anthology of shocking moments. Or as she said when we stopped at the first red light, to tell the truth, I imagine you’ll keep what happened last night in your memory museum, in the horrors of my life section.

  It wasn’t a horror at all, I thought. An error, maybe, or a terror, which came to the same thing. At that point, I didn’t even know what part of my memory it would stay in, not that it mattered very much; past events find accommodation according to the caprices with which memories are molded by their owner. We reached the environs of the Allianz Arena, which from close up was a box in the shape of a cake. Its exterior of plastic panels was lit up with the colors of the local team. By the time we took our seats, the game had already begun, and our surroundings in the stands led Helga and me to talk more about architecture than about soccer. I told her that the plastic material covering the stadium was a polymer called ETFE, ethylene tetrafluoroethylene. Despite how laughable this show of pedantry was, she seemed impressed. Back in my university days, I explained, I had a professor who was obsessed by the works of Herzog and de Meuron. He even suggested that my final thesis project should be on one of their buildings. But I wound up choosing as my theme the removal of the benches from the public squares of Madrid as a way of displacing the beggars to less conspicuous parts of the city. You know, politically committed architecture and all that, I said, raising my voice above the roar of the crowd while she nodded and leaned her ear closer to my mouth.

  We followed the match with mutual indifference and slowly but surely regained the closeness we’d lost. When the local team scored a goal, I caught the euphoria of those around me, embraced Helga, and rejoiced like all the other fans. I’ve always regretted a little my lack of participation in groups or communities or activities enjoyed en masse. The misfortune of the individualist is that you never feel yourself included in the word all, in the expression people. And suddenly, without any clear idea why, I kissed her on the lips. It was a long, hearty kiss, something I owed her and she accepted with obvious enjoyment, though the looks she got from her compatriots, who were all around us, made her blush.

  She found a parking place close to her apartment. The snow had almost disappeared from the sidewalks, but some accumulations remained in recesses and sunless places. The last time it snowed in Madrid, Marta and I went out and took pictures of the Plaza de Cibeles, the Atocha station, and the Queen Sofía Museum. Memories that still rattled around in my brain even as their traces were dissolving in water. There would be no more snowfalls like that one, arranged just for the two of us.

  I don’t have much to offer you, but I can cook up some pasta, Helga proposed as we were removing our overcoats. I left my suitcase near the apartment door. The cat abandoned his throne in the living room and came to greet us. He rubbed himself against my leg while Helga stroked his face and throat. I followed her into the kitchen, where she began to open cabinets and choose among some neatly ordered glass jars.

  Do you like to cook? I never cook, I answered. We can make pesto, if you like that. It’s kids’ food, I made it for my children and now I make it for my grandchildren, she said, taking a whisk from a drawer. The drawers and cabinet doors in the kitchen were cream-colored with silver-plated fittings, and I got an occasional glimpse of the pots and pans and utensils inside, all practically and accessibly stored. I have a grandson who likes to cook. When he spends the night here, we make an apple cake together. Is he Bonecrusher’s son? I asked. No, he’s my daughter’s, his name is Andreas. Do you like apple cake? Sure. If you want, I’ll make a double portion, it’s easy to do. She put some water on to boil and then took eggs and flour from a shelf. Helga could operate the whisk and manage the burners at the same time, with the fluidity of those who know how to move in a kitchen. Peel a couple of apples, she told me. And I started peeling two beautiful green apples. Then she showed me how to slice them thin for the cakes. She took out two aluminum molds, poured the cake batter into them, and sprinkled the batte
r with raisins. She juiced a lemon and buttered the apple slices, distributed them in the molds, and then added the lemon juice, some powdered sugar, a small amount of chopped walnuts, and cinnamon. I remembered that cinnamon was a well-known aphrodisiac but didn’t say anything. I stuck a finger into the remains of the powdered sugar and licked it off with great pleasure. My grandson does that too, she remarked.

  She put the cakes in the oven and bent down to set it. Her ass was right in front of me, offering itself through her skirt, and I thought we could end up making love amid the spilled flour, like in movies where nobody cleans up the disorder passion leaves behind. The ceremony of cooking for someone else is always an erotic rite, a rite of seduction. After more than half an hour, I helped her set the table in the living room. Do you want to put on some music? she asked, pointing to some CDs on a shelf. I don’t feel like listening to music, I said, and then I described my visit to the call center and listening to the Uruguayan singer’s song. Vuelve el amor, Love Returns, that’s the title of his new record, I informed her. No, no, wait, it’s Vuelve la primavera, Spring Returns. I guess now he’s the stupid romantic and I have to become the cynic. Those are the rules of the game. Helga shook her head, as if I were beyond help.

  The moment I took my first bite of apple cake, I wanted to go to bed with Helga again. She offered me some ice cream to put on top, but I refused. The cake was still very hot. We should let it cool off, Helga suggested, but gluttony’s always in a hurry. We talked, not for the first time, about my plans for the future, about how I intended to go about moving out of my former apartment and finding a new one. I was thinking I’d give up my work too and find a job that would provide me with sufficient income to live on. It was time for me to stop fooling myself, time to put an end to my architectural career. Hearing me say I planned to give up landscaping made Helga sad. Yes, I joked, it’s too complicated to earn your living as a Lands​chaftsar​chitekt. I admitted that I didn’t have Nashimira’s talent. And Spain isn’t zen, I said; it’s chaos.