3 Novellas: Home / Leaving for Jerusalem / The Nobel Prize

by Mois Benarroch

  "I am an alien."

  "Then it’s a better reason."

  "What? –She asked."

  We were passing by the Aromatic and I couldn’t decide whether to invite her for a coffee or not.

  "I don’t know. How about having a coffee?"

  "Fine."

  We sat in a noisy street corner coffee shop with its, cold modern decor. We sat inside, although it was a sunny day, in order to avoid the noise.

  "Want some ice cream? –I asked."

  "No, I want some coffee."

  "We ordered two coffees."

  "Have you heard of the guy I spoke to at the clinic?"

  "One more crazy guy. Somewhat rude."

  "But you are completely nuts too."

  "No, I am an alien."

  "From what planet?"

  "I was born here, thousands of years ago, but my parents come from another planet, well, my grandparents, but we scarcely reproduce, one descendant in a thousand years or so, and we live for thousands of years, nobody in our family has died since I was born."

  "It must be hard. I know it because of my mother in law: there is no way to make her die and she is only 98 years old."

  "Well, no, it’s a matter of getting used to it, you will see it when you start living for 300 years, I do not know whether we will let you, because we need you dead in order to survive."

  "Good alien you are."

  "Don’t you eat your chickens and cows? We also get our foods from humans, but don’t worry, we don’t eat you, what we need is your memories. We have no memory, so when someone dies we take their memories, that’s the reason we keep your race alive. Each of us needs one dead person per day, and that’s why you keep multiplying. Such is nature."

  "I am a vegetarian."

  "Anyway, plants are not so different from you, but they have no memories, not like yours, and don’t be so sure man is so different from a chicken or a cypress."

  "And how come we are not aware of your existence?"

  "Some of you are aware, but people cannot believe that we exist, so they do not see us. Well, almost never. I like to play with that, those of my race don’t like it too much, we do not mix much, we live in the sea, a hundred miles under the sea, I am the one who brings the memories, because I like talking to humans."

  "But you have a human body?"

  "Don’t be so sure, I can make you see in me whatever I want, for example if I go to the woman who is there I can make her see the man of her dreams, would you like to see it?"

  She did not wait for my answer and went to talk to that woman. I saw two women talking, they exchanged about five sentences, all I understood was that she was waiting for someone but she gave her mobile number and scratched her back and I could see at once she was a woman in love, very nervous, she played with her hair, she touched her chest with her hands. At other times we used to describe those girls with the words: ‘Ready for a fuck,’ I think Pisces likes that expression. It’s something I never in my life was able to implant in a woman. I wish I could, but I’ve only seen it in other couples.

  She returned to the table as the single woman’s date came in. She stared at us from time to time.

  "You see, she is convinced that I am a man."

  "Or a lesbian, or bisexual."

  "None of that, you can ask her."

  The Beautiful Brandy… suddenly I remembered the book of Pisces, Franco.

  "What?"

  "It’s the title of a book. – I remembered the title."

  "A little weird, right?" She said.

  "Do you read?"

  "A lot. It is a way of eating memories. When you read it is easier to digest and absorb human memories. It’s what you would call a catalyst."

  "Oh yeah, I forgot that."

  "Look, I have to go, I have to go through the morgue and hospitals and bring memories to my people. But if you are interested — my offer still stands. She got up creating a triangle in which she saw me and the other woman, and facing us both of us at once.

  "See you tomorrow."

  I didn’t even ask her what her name was.

  11.

  I came back home and my wife was already there, not feeling well. You’re a little weird, she said. But there was nothing special about that, she used to say that every second day. Or she would say: "Honey, how strange you are!" and I used to answer, "It’s been more than ten years that you have been saying so, so it’s not strange anymore," and she would respond: "Yes, but you’re weird." And I went to my room, my basement. But how could I not be strange? For starters, an unnamed alien wanted to throw herself on me and a divorcee was willing to fuck me, which comes to the same thing, and on top of it I had a crazy writer I could not get out of my head. Now all I needed was a drunken narrator and I could have the perfect novel that no writer should write.

  I could not move forward with the novel that I was writing, and I felt very bad and very guilty, I felt it was my duty to write novels without stopping, one after another, at least one a year to justify my lack of income. I explained to myself that I must stop and think and live to write and that one cannot write without stopping, it did not solve my feelings of guilt. So what I did was what I always did: I went to bed early.

  My wife came to the bed, sat down next to me and told me she sensed something was wrong. She kissed me. I did not react. I was stiffer than ice.

  12.

  The next morning I woke up early and went out, before anyone woke up at home. I wandered from 6:30 – 9:00 until the Aromatic opened where I sat down and ordered coffee. They said it would take some time because the machine needed to heat up. I pulled out my e–reader and read Cesar Aira’s, How I Became A Nun, and although nobody is going to believe that, it was pure chance that being in an ice cream shop the book begins with ice cream and the ice cream repugnance part of a boy or a girl. Writers keep that part of their life secret so no one will think they’ve gone bananas. With coffee came Lextra, or so I started to call her in my mind, for extra—terrestrial.

  "What are you doing here?"

  "The truth is that I have no idea. As, I said, I don’t know, I came here to think. I don’t know whether today I will see the character of the writer or the divorced nurse, and now I find you here, I did not expect that, I thought you’d be busy with your memories."

  "That’s something I finished a while age, and I’ve taken them to my people. It went pretty well. They were very happy. I brought them some excellent ones. The best. Do you know which ones are the best?"

  "No idea."

  "The Jews. It seems that every Jew has the memories of ten others."

  "And the worst?"

  "The Buddhists, until recently. Nowadays there is a movement called ‘without memories,’ though still young, they learn to not remember, I think we will exterminate them, before they multiply and complicate things as we’ve done in the past. We need memories."

  "What about young people?"

  "From 20 years on it’s fine, but babies are worthless, that’s why we’ve almost finished with early deaths, especially newborns. In the eighteenth century there was a shortage of dead people and therefore of their memories, so we started the industrial revolution, to multiply the number of people, since the end of the First World War we are well supplied and we have large quantities stored in case there is a problem."

  And then the woman from yesterday came in.

  "I, well, I came to expect her. Said Lextra."

  The woman looked at her with desire and was a bit silly when watching Lextra.

  "Look, what a coincidence that my friend is here drinking coffee. You want to sit with us for a moment?"

  "No, no, I have no time."

  "Well, then let’s go, – and she looked at me very sensually and said – if you wait for me I’ll be back here in an hour, or an hour and a half."

  Aira’s book starts with a female – male character, pure coincidence, and maybe I was Lextra, or she was teasing me and she was bisexual, or maybe I also had the stupid f
ace that woman had, in love, who had just left with Lextra. Who knows?

  "You want something else?"

  "What?"

  "Do you want something else?"

  "No, with what I have in mind, I have spare."

  "Do you want another coffee?"

  There I awoke from my dreaminess. I was really somewhere else! My wife was right I, was a little weird, maybe for the last 10 or even 20 years.

  "Yes, yes, of course, and a croissant."

  "We have croissant with chocolate, with dates, sesame, or nothing."

  "Sesame it will be."

  "I never tried a croissant with sesame. In Irxal anything was possible."

  13.

  Lextra came back and told me that if I wanted to go with her to her friend’s house it was empty; she went on a trip with her husband and left her the keys. I didn’t know if he wanted to make love, the last time I did it with another woman I went back quickly to my wife as if I was smitten, but if it was true what she said this was something else. I had never made love to an alien before.

  We entered a two–story villa with a swimming pool. Lextra led me to a room without much introduction. She undressed faster than me (that never happened to me) and there she was lying without any hair on her body. I stripped as quickly as possible and before taking off my socks I penetrated her. I went in and back and a little to the side, because I learned to like that more, but she suddenly surprised me going from right to left at a speed with which I could hardly cope, I was afraid that this would break my dick, and soon I ejaculated out of pleasure and fright. But before lying back like I use to do, she put her hand on my dick and gave quick circles around my cock and I erect, so strong that it hurt. When I penetrated her she asked me if I would like her to jump on me, I said yes, although I do not like that much, but instead of turning around, as I was beginning to turn, her whole body and mine climbed to the roof. Then she straightened her body and started mulling over my cock, this time I did not ejaculate, but then my head bent down, I said I’d rather be on the bed, "ah" she said, "I had forgotten about gravity."

  She said "there’s something that is bothering you," and then she took off the legs, I don’t know how, I am not even sure she took them off, but she was now without legs above me, with two stumps at the height of the bed. Before I could react I realized that it gave me more pleasure, and wanted to say that I was scared but instead I said, "Who is Roberto Bolaño?"

  "The coach of Atletico Madrid."

  "I can’t take it anymore," I screamed and then bent slightly upwards and the stumps could spin around my cock and I couldn’t stop it anymore and I ejaculated.

  I was exhausted, I was going to ask her to please get her legs again but there she was already back standing on them and I didn’t know if I had imagined the whole thing or if it happened for real. Instead of thinking aloud I said, "What is the truth?"

  "A pack of tampons."

  She did not laugh. Nor me. She tried again to harden my cock but this time it would not budge. "Now look," turn around, and as I did I saw she had a dick.

  "Not that, I said, I do not like that."

  "You’ll see," and she penetrated me from behind.

  "I do not want this", I said, but again she turned and put herself on me, Now she had cock and pussy and she ejaculated on my belly, like they do in porn films. Then I fainted.

  14.

  I don’t know how long it took me to wake up. I was terrified, I had suffered a sexual terrorist attack. All I wanted to do was get out of that house. I dressed up, or was already dressed, I am not sure. Maybe everything happened in my imagination. I left the house without making the slightest noise, I heard the door close and Lextra with that name I gave her (Isn’t it time I ask her what’s her name?) on the phone. I felt dirty and guilty. I was terrified that someone on the street would shout at me that what I did was very wrong, I had the impression that everyone knew where I came from, that they thought I had committed adultery, that I was a sodomite, or a devotee.

  I was a pervert, everyone knew it. Everyone looked at me. Despite the temptation to go home and get straight into my basement to write or smoke or whatever, I opted for the solution of my childhood by: taking the same path by which I came to this place and situation and return through the same steps to where it all began. So, with my face down, I returned to Aromatic and sat at the same table where I met Lextra before I went to her bed. I ordered coffee again as I had done an hour before, or maybe two. I could not know how long it took; I didn’t look at the watch when I went with her, or when I left the house.

  "She looked good, the girl you drank with," winked the waiter.

  "Yes," I was not sure how to react to this intrusive man. I should have sent him to hell but had no strength to do it.

  "Can you bring me a glass of water?"

  "Why not? Sure, sir."

  Well, at least he called me sir. That is something.

  Then I had the idea to change the past and everything that happened. I figured if now, after the coffee and before Lextra arrives I will go to see Pisces, it could be as if everything that happened in the last hour was erased from the start. I went to the Jordan with a decisive step.

  Upon entering I saw Eva, she said that today "our writer is depressed, so he has stayed in his room and is not coming out. I think he’s asleep."

  "Well, then I’ll come back another day."

  "If you want to, today I have more time to talk. I finish work at six."

  "What time is it?" As always I wore no watch, watches always stopped working on my wrists. From the first one my father gave me when I was seven.

  "It’s ... It’s half past one."

  "Well, okay. Meet me at six in the cafe next to the hospital. What’s its name?"

  "I don’t know, well, the one from the other time, and at 6:15, I need a few minutes to get ready, take off my robe, and exit."

  "See you soon."

  15.

  I went back home, and without going to the apartment on the first floor I went down to the basement. But ten minutes later I had to pee and that could only be done going up the two floors that separated me from the bathroom. I went and tried to do as little noise as possible. But my wife hears everything.

  "Did you come to drink coffee?"

  "I don’t know."

  "If you make a coffee I want one, but not too tight."

  It was an excruciating ritual, as if instead of telling me she loved me or hated me (since she does not say anything about it I do not know) she asked for coffee. I went to the bathroom. I did not want to drink more coffee but as always I gave up. I made a coffee for me and for her.

  "How do I send a fax?"

  "What?" – She had to ask me about some technological problem each day anew. How do you see this email? Bank account, why does this, newspaper page fail to upload, what’s the problem with the electric heater, I hated those questions but they kept falling on my ears like rain, but not a nice rain, no, it was a storm.

  "Look I am not to blame," I told her. These things happen.

  "But I have to send a fax to work, and another one to the doctor."

  "But you’ve done it a few days ago; all you have to do is do the same. Fax laws don’t change every minute."

  "But I don’t remember."

  "The machine will tell you exactly what to do, in English, do you remember the English language?"

  "And of course then came all those phrases that she could not ask anything from me, although she never stops asking for things from the moment she sees me. Silly requests. For more than five years she has not said a thing about her feelings towards me. The most she says is a compliment such as, "yesterday I had a great time with you." I have asked her a thousand times to tell me something which begins with you, you are, you make, you, you, I love you… I think she hates me. One can ask why I still live with her, it’s because I’m not sure she hates me, and I do not hate her, I admire her, but my admiration is not enough apparently. A few years ago she said she
stopped admiring me. I’m not worthy of her admiration. Must be because I do not make enough money, and sometimes very little or nothing. This is very normal in this century, but it was not that way at the beginning. She used to say that money was not what interested her, so yes it was always clear, from the start, but people change with age in many things (and do not change in many others) and she became much more bourgeois and now increasingly resembles to her mother, I remember my father telling me that if you want to see how your wife will be in 30 or 40 years look at her mother. I said that he could have said that before we got married, it was an Andalusian joke, yet my mother in law had to say I was not gallant. Yes I am gallant. And goal, goal, goal, goal, goal, I just reached the 10,000 words that for me are a key point in the progress of any literary work. GOOOOOOOOOAAAAAL!

  16.

  I was satisfied with my 10,000 words, but at the same time I was sad. I don’t know why. Well, I do know. It had been a terrible year, out of work, I moved to a new house (that was maybe the best thing that happened but it was kind of sad after 12 years in the same house), my best friend Alan and my sister Raquel had died, I still can’t talk about it, two young people under 55 years old, and I was alone in this world.

  Nobody called me since the prize, nobody asked for my translations, four publishers with whom I had worked did not need my services anymore, but they did not say so, they said sure, if we have a book you would be the first we’d contact. I, had finished ten good manuscripts, ,well almost, because you can always go back to see what happens and change some things, even if you are against change, even if it is against your literary religion, but who does not inflict something of their religious beliefs, and I was even more sad because yet again there was this big publisher that I was going to publish with but the contract did not arrive, this has been happening for 15 years ago or longer, they say they are going to publish, they liked the manuscript and they are going to send the contract or that it is a matter of days and then a month passes, a month and a half, two months, and then they change their mind. This time the mail did not come with many hesitations and the editor was clear when he emailed me thanking me for writing this book and for having sent it to him, but the contract did not arrive, I did not want to overemphasize this wind of desperation. I was not desperate, no, I could continue with smaller publishers, who sell few books, a thing that hardly bothers me. I believe that what I have to do is write the book, create the work and then, yes, publish, expose it to audiences, but no more than that.