Mr. Gwyn

by Alessandro Baricco

My boyfriend?

  Maybe. You and him, yes. That’s all wrong.

  Listen to you.

  Maybe I’m wrong.

  Of course you’re wrong.

  You’re sure?

  Of course.

  Then I’m sorry. Take the towels. Good night.

  Just a minute, just a minute.

  Go.

  Just a minute. The story first.

  I said that I would be glad to tell you, but in exchange you must do me the kindness of leaving through that door and going home.

  What’s with you, idiot? Surely you don’t think that I’ll really do it? Leave just because you’d like it.

  In fact I see it as an unlikely possibility.

  You could even say impossible.

  Why?

  It’s my life, what do you have to do with it?

  Apart from that?

  Apart from that, in any case I couldn’t go.

  Why?

  He’d beat me up.

  Ah, there.

  Satisfied?

  No. Not at all. How did you get into this situation?

  How do I know.

  Fantastic.

  I liked… that is, I like, except that…

  What do you like?

  My boyfriend.

  Yes, but what do you like about him?

  What a stupid question, I like him, how he looks, I like that he’s crazy, I like him in bed. You know what I’m talking about?

  I think I can get an idea.

  Okay, then get it.

  Wasn’t there someone less inclined to vulgarity and violence?

  What the fuck are you saying?

  Why don’t you find a nice man who doesn’t beat you?

  Are there any?

  You are splendid.

  Forget about it. Give me those towels.

  Here.

  I think I need a good shower.

  Probably.

  I’ll have to do it without finding out how the hell an idiot like you ended up as a murderer.

  Go home and take the shower, and you’ll find out.

  At home? You have no idea.

  You must have a house.

  It’s not my house, it’s my mother’s.

  In general it doesn’t matter.

  Answer, it’s certainly him.

  Reception, good evening… Yes, she’s here…I have no idea… Yes, I’ll give her to you.

  Hello… I’m coming… I stopped to chat a moment… With the clerk… Yes, chat… He could be my grandfather, Mike… That’s my business, isn’t it… No, look… I told you I’m coming… Leave me in peace for a minute? I told you I’m coming… You’re the one who’s shouting!… What do you mean half an hour, it must be five minutes… What do I know, it must be at the bottom of my purse… Don’t shout, please… Don’t shout, shit… I said… fuck off.

  I’m sorry, it’s my fault.

  What the fuck…

  Go on.

  No, call him back for me, please.

  On the telephone?

  If not, then what? Hurry up.

  I really think that…

  Hurry up, or else he’ll come down!

  Here.

  Hello?… Hello?… Sorry, sorry, please, I’m sorry… Mike… right… I’m coming right up… I swear… I’ve just got the towels… I love you… yes… I told you… yes, I’m coming.

  Now go.

  Yes, I’m going.

  Good night.

  You weren’t kidding me, right?

  In what sense?

  You really were in jail.

  Thirteen years.

  Thirteen?

  I read a lot. They passed.

  I’d go mad inside.

  You’re young, it’s different. Go.

  How old do you think I am?

  Eighteen. You wrote it, on the form you filled out for the hotel.

  And you believe it?

  No.

  So?

  You tell me.

  Sixteen.

  Goodness.

  Everyone says it’s a special age.

  Yes, it seems to be.

  You think it’s a special age?

  I don’t know, I never was that age.

  You skipped it?

  So to speak.

  Too bad.

  It’s also too bad to throw your life away the way you’re doing.

  I’m not throwing it away in the least.

  I’m sorry, you’re right, I don’t know anything about it.

  Why do you say I’m throwing it away?

  I don’t know. Your face.

  What about my face?

  It’s very beautiful.

  And so?

  It would be very beautiful if it didn’t have that mean look.

  Mean?

  You have a mean face.

  Cool!

  Well.

  I am mean.

  As long as you’re satisfied.

  Yes, I am satisfied, I like being mean, it protects me from the world, it’s the reason I’m not afraid of anything. What’s wrong with being mean?

  The man thought a moment. Then he said that you have to pay attention when you’re young because the light you live in when you’re young is the light you’ll live in forever, for a reason he had never understood. But he knew it was so. He said that many people, for example, are depressed in their youth, and then they remain so forever. Or they grow up in a half-light and the half-light follows them all their life. So you have to pay attention to meanness, because when you’re young it seems a luxury you can afford, but the truth is different, and that is that meanness is a cold light in which everything loses color, and loses it forever. He also said that he, for example, had grown up in violence and tragedy, and he had to admit that through a series of circumstances he had never managed to escape from that light, although in general he could say that he had done things properly, in the course of his life, with the sole intention of putting them in order, and basically succeeding, but undeniably in a light that had never been other than tragic and violent, with rare moments of beauty, which he would never forget. Then he saw the elevator descending from the third floor to the ground floor and he realized that something on the girl’s face had hardened, something very similar to a small spasm of fear. Instinctively the man wanted to go back into his little room, but then he thought he couldn’t leave the girl there, and so he said to her, Quick, come with me, and she, oddly, followed and let him lead her into the office, where the man signaled to her to be quiet while he looked around for something—he wouldn’t have been able to say what it was. He heard the door of the elevator open and the voice of the boy shouting the girl’s name. The man waited a moment, then came out of the room and went to the desk. The boy was in underpants and a T-shirt. The man looked at him with all the impersonal mildness he was capable of.

  I must ask you not to shout, he said.

  I’ll shout as much as I want. Where is she?

  Who?

  My girlfriend.

  I don’t know. She took the towels.

  And where did she go?

  I don’t know, I think she went upstairs.

  When?

  After you called her, on the phone, she took the towels, then I don’t know.

  And what are these?

  These?

  Are you an idiot? These, these, aren’t they towels?

  She must have left them here. I don’t know, I was busy, I went back to my—

  What the fuck?

  She must have forgotten them.

  Where did she go?

  Maybe she went up to the terrace for a moment.

  What terrace?

  I told her there was a terrace on the top floor, where it’s very beautiful at night, you can see the whole city lit up. Maybe she felt like—

  The terrace?

  I don’t know, if she didn’t go back to the room…

  How do you get to this goddamn terrace?

  You take the elevator to the top floor and then
there’s one more flight of stairs. The door is open.

  Now, tell me. You’re sure you didn’t see her go out?

  Out of the hotel?

  Out of the hotel, yes, am I speaking Arabic?

  She may have, but as I was saying I was busy and so I went back in there and…

  Don’t try to make me an idiot, you know?

  I’m only doing my job.

  Shit job.

  I have thought so at times, yes.

  Okay, good, think so every so often, it won’t hurt you.

  Your towels.

  Fuck you.

  You won’t take them?

  You old fool…

  Then the boy said nothing else. He headed toward the elevator, but something occurred to him that made him take the stairs, cursing in a low voice. The man didn’t move. He realized only at that moment that his hands were trembling and he was glad that the boy hadn’t noticed. He stood there for a moment, because he wasn’t sure that the boy wouldn’t come back, and he tried to think quickly what he should do now. Nothing occurred to him. What an idiot, he thought, but he didn’t mean the boy. He went back to the room and this time he knew the girl’s name. Mary Jo, he said, now it would be best if you go up, quickly. She was sitting on the cot. She kept her feet together, in that nice way she had. She shook her head no. I’m afraid, she said. Of what, asked the man. Of going upstairs.

  Then leave, but hurry, said the man.

  I’m afraid of that, too.

  I’ll go with you.

  It makes no sense.

  Why?

  I have to go back upstairs.

  But instead you’ll leave, it’s the right thing to do, I’ll go with you.

  You have to stay here.

  No one will notice.

  And then where the fuck do I go?

  We don’t have time to discuss it now. Come on.

  Forget it. It’s over.

  Come on, I told you.

  Why?

  Look outside, it’s already dawn.

  So?

  It’s time you went home to bed.

  What does the time have to do with it, I’m not a child.

  It’s not a question of time, it’s a question of light.

  What the hell do you mean?

  It’s the right light for going home, it’s made just for that.

  The light?

  There’s no better light in which to feel yourself cleansed. Let’s go.

  You don’t really think that.

  Yes, I do. Come with me.

  We don’t even know where the fuck to go!

  We’ll improvise. To the station, maybe. They open early. We both need a good coffee, don’t you think? Come, we’ll go out the back. Do you mind leaving the towels?

  I wouldn’t think of it. I’ll take them with me.

  As you like, but hurry up, this way.

  I love stealing hotel towels.

  Very childish.

  No way. What do you think, I take them to be rude?

  I don’t see any other reason. As towels they’re nothing special. Come on, let’s turn this way.

  The quality isn’t important. It’s that later, at home, they remind me of where I’ve been. Can you understand that?

  A souvenir?

  Sort of.

  Cumbersome, as a souvenir.

  True. Will you hold them for me? Thank you.

  But walk a little more quickly, please.

  Are we in a hurry?

  I don’t know.

  What light, anyway.

  I told you.

  And in fact, on that summer morning, dawn spread over the clear sky with such assurance that even those unambitious suburbs seemed taken by surprise, yielding to a sort of beauty that they had not been built for. There were optimistic gleams on the windows, and the thin grass shone, where it was, with an unexpected green. Even the few passing cars seemed to have suspended any particular haste, as if they had been given a respite. The man and the girl walked beside each other, and it was an odd sight, because the girl was pretty and the man very ordinary, besides old. You would have struggled to figure out the story, seeing them, she in her high heels, her steps confident, he slightly bent, with a set of white towels under his arm. Maybe a father and daughter, but not even. Leaving the main street, they skirted the walls of an old brewery, and the man didn’t say that he had chosen that way because there was still the fear of the boy in underpants, and the certainty that he wouldn’t find the terrace, since there wasn’t one. He preferred to talk about the brewery, and the odor of malt and of pubs you could still smell, passing by. He recounted that the owner had run off to the Caribbean, three years earlier, and for a while the workers had managed the brewery themselves, and hadn’t done too badly, but then things went as they were bound to go. The girl asked if he’d ever drunk that beer, and the man said he hadn’t had a drink for years, he couldn’t allow himself to, because he was on probation and if anything stupid happened he’d end up back in jail in the blink of an eye. So I prefer to remain lucid, he said. In any case, I’d like it to be something stupid that I chose to do lucidly, he added. Maybe he was referring, remotely, to what he was doing at that moment. The girl must have thought so, too, because immediately she said that he could go back to the hotel now, she would manage. But the man shook his head no, without adding anything. He was so evidently helpless, in his tranquility, that the girl loved him, for a moment. Only then did she realize that he was in fact risking losing his job, walking at dawn around an abandoned brewery, beside a crazy girl, and strangely the situation didn’t please her. Suddenly it was important to her that that man not suffer, and following her thoughts she went so far as to think that she would like him never to have suffered in life. So at a certain point she asked the man if they had waited for him, his family, during those years in prison.

  More or less, the man answered.

  Yes or no?

  My wife more or less. And the children, one was already grown up, he left, the other two stayed with their mother.

  You mean when you came out you no longer had a home of your own.

  We tried it for a while, but it didn’t work. Many things had changed.

  Such as?

  I had changed. They had, too. All. It isn’t easy.

  Were they ashamed of you?

  No, I don’t think so, ashamed isn’t the right word. Maybe a term that has to do with forgiveness would be more appropriate.

  They didn’t forgive you.

  Something like that. It’s too bad, because in fact I had done it for them.

  What?

  It’s for them that I killed that man.

  Seriously?

  Yes. For myself, for them. To protect my house.

  I can’t manage if you walk so fast.

  I’m sorry.

  We’re not in a hurry, are we?

  I don’t know.

  My boyfriend?

  Him.

  Bah. Continue the story.

  What?

  You owe me a story.

  Right.

  So?

  He was a loan shark. The man I killed was a loan shark.

  Wow!

  You know what I’m talking about?

  Of course, I’m not an idiot. A loan shark.

  I owed him a lot of money. He would have gotten angry with my children.

  And so you shot him.

  Yes.

  How stupid, they threaten, but when the moment comes they don’t do anything. It’s their system.

  Not in this case.

  How do you know?

  He began with irritating things, nothing violent, but unpleasant. Warnings.

  And you got frightened.

  No. I was calm. But I couldn’t come up with the money, and he kept it up. He knew everything about us, schedules, places, everything.

  You could report him.

  Sooner or later it would come out and then he would find us. That’s how it works. If you report it, you’ll pay for that
later.

  What shit. You know where we’re going, right?

  More or less.

  Okay. Then go on.

  Nothing, I asked for it, I needed the money, and found myself in that mess.

  And nothing occurred to you except to shoot him?

  There was no other way out, believe me. Killing him was the only move that could end the game.

  And you came up with a plan?

  More or less. I tried to figure out if there was something in which I was stronger than him.

  And you found it.

  Yes. I had more imagination and the face of a coward.

  You mean?

  He would never have expected that I could do something courageous, or violent. So I told him that I had the money, decide a place; he didn’t even take the trouble to choose carefully, or to have someone accompany him. He arrived, I approached, and I shot him. It was the last thing he would have expected.

  Shit.

  That’s how it happened.

  Didn’t it… I mean, didn’t it upset you? To shoot, I mean.

  I grew up in a world in which people shot. My father was an accountant, but when it was necessary he’d shoot.

  Seriously?

  It was a world like that. People killed each other, and did it normally.

  In what sense normally?

  That’s another story that I don’t owe you.

  All right. Then finish mine.

  What do you still want to know?

  What you did, afterward. Did you run away, did you go to the police, what did you do?

  I got in the car and for a couple of days I wandered around. The first day I had some appointments with clients, I kept them. Then enough, I wandered around and that’s all. I didn’t even call home.

  You ran away.

  No, I wandered around. But I didn’t hide even for a moment. I didn’t care if they caught me.

  Why?

  I still had the gun with me. I kept it in my jacket pocket. I thought sooner or later of killing myself.

  Really?

  That was the idea. It was a logical idea.

  But then you didn’t do it.

  I thought I’d do it when I saw the police arriving. But they were very clever.

  How?

  They imagined something like that, and so they were very clever. They followed me for a while from a distance, then they chose their moment well. I was in a hotel and they came to get me there, at dawn, but in a nice way, politely. I was lucky, they were policemen who knew their job.

  So you didn’t shoot yourself.

  As you see.

  Maybe it would have been better if you’d shot yourself.

  Who knows. But I would rather rule it out. It’s always better to be alive.