But she’d thought about it and an instant later was able to come up with a response. She’d put down the cup without taking a sip (moving the little telephone away from her lips, from which I inferred the matter of the coffee cup) and shot back: “But who do you think you are?”
Everything revolved around that, all misunderstandings: around who other people thought, erroneously, that they were. And it was necessary, from time to time, to correct them, put them in their place. To ask, “But who do you think, who have you believed that you are?” And the other party never reacting appropriately, always proceeding from the false position of the person she believed she was and not from the real and insignificant one of a person who was in fact a nullity.
A nobody!
And once the subject had been addressed, the incident acted out in a pantomime that was invisible to her interlocutor but transmitted to her through changes in the voice, pauses, the points of inflection of the altercation, once the whole matter had been explained and delineated, then and only then did the commentary per se begin. In the first place, opening with: who in reality this person was. An analysis that she could base on many factors, for even prior to this incident she had noticed: the horrible apartment the other woman shared with her mother, the hideous clothing she bought, the hairdresser she should have gone to but never did, for which reason she tied her hair back with a two-cent bit of elastic. All of this gone over in her presence yesterday in the office, details she now wanted to comment upon over the telephone so her interlocutor would understand, would finally manage to grasp the message, just as her enemy had finally grasped it the day before.
The train stopped. The cylinders in the doors released air. The woman in the red shoes stood up, the telephone still at her ear, her lips shaped into a pout from which words continued to fall into the receiver as from a cornucopia. She stepped uncertainly down to the platform and then walked along it with her head very still, listening now to the words of Ana or Inés, commentaries on her previous commentary or on a similar situation with the same person or on a similar incident with an equally unbearable person, perhaps she, too, stepping out of a train or, having waited throughout the whole conversation with one hand free, now parking her small car at the other end of the city.
It’s no longer necessary to wait to see each other once a week in order to comment upon the offenses that are inflicted upon us every day. They can now be commented upon on the go, only minutes after the coffee grew definitively cold and you had to get out of your seat—all because of that idiot!—and go warm it up in the microwave, taking advantage of that time to begin elaborating the principal points of your commentary as you watch the little cup spinning: but who does she take herself for? Who does she think she is?
4
I left the invitations in accordance with the procedure described by the Writer: To myself I seem, when I have dealings with other people, to be, despite everything, the worst of them all, and all seem to take me for a fool, so much so that I tell myself: “Well then, I will in truth play the clown; your opinion doesn’t matter because all of you, from first to last, are more vile than I am!” Words that support this gloss: myself dressed as a lackey, with the diminished volume of such an individual, the sunken chest, the elbows, small hands folded in front of me, obsequious. Moving forward with little skips of my dancing shoes, a smile of placid stultification. All that in a quick message to their retinas and nervous systems. Entirely false and contrary to my true self (and feelings? And feelings. You know). Maneuvering among the currents of distrust I saw emerging from half-open doors, the spying maid or butler watching me advance from the front gate to the house. Applying my whole weight to it, pressing the trap down against the floor, without neglecting it for a second, fearing that it might suddenly spring free, give a leap and catch my throat in its toothed jaws. In Spanish, but as if it were a foreign language, masticated, slow and torturous. Romanov? No, not Romanov. (Like a second-rate artist who’s always being confused with his competitors: Yes, you are Fili! No, I am not Fili, though I know and admire his work. What more do you want? Uri Geller, at your service. Though of course not Uri Geller either.)
Leaving those houses with the air of a beaten dog, a lackey (of Russian imperialism now), muttering poxes against them, who did they think they were? Doddering representatives of the doddering houses of Europe, little old men who went out to take the sun like those decrepit ancients in the Writer whose withered faces peer out over a courtyard, studying it with utmost care, its uneven flagstones, fearing it as they would a stormy sea where they might easily and, to my enormous rejoicing, break a leg, hearing their weak bones crunch, watching them fall to the ground from the height of their absurd belief that they might some day be called back: to rule! A thing that never in all of history! Ridding myself of this thought at top speed, unwilling or pained at having to concede that Batyk was correct. Who in his right mind, Batyk had laughed at us, at your mother and at me: what country would agree to acclaim as king someone invested with divine power? What country? In what possible way could you speak of sacred royalty, of the Davidic lineage of the kings of France or the lineage—what?—of the czars of Russia? How to retreat from the current state of triumphant and exemplary democracy to a state of abject (that’s what he said: abject) subjugation to a king, to the caprices of a king? To betray, to turn away from the hard-won equality of the people (or, if you like, of the Russian people) with such an elevation, and establish, outside the law, beyond the reach of the law, a king?
How absurd an ambition! False kings, oh yes, gentlemen, a King of Pop or a Queen of Love Songs with the same credentials, pure falsity, knowing it to be pure falsity. And I the accomplice and spokesman of this absurd claim. Just a young schoolteacher, in fact, one who would never forget his humble origins, an immigrant myself, who would never treat a foreigner as those heartless kings had, Leka of Albania, all of them as if hiding out there in Madrid, their black hearts drawn there by the resplendent example of the king of Spain.
The servants and grooms who burst out laughing when I announced myself. The sixth? How many czars of Russia does that make this week, Ramón? And they didn’t stop laughing as they rolled me down the stairs, delivering (this is true, Petya, absolutely true, it happened in Madrid) many blows to my back. These lackeys, unleashed and encouraged by their masters upstairs, dabbing at their lips with napkins of batiste linen and turning back to the Financial Times, not to Hidalgia, the (Spanish) magazine of nobility and weaponry, not to the Gotha. Coldly calculating the moment when a crisis in their countries would bring their people’s patience to an end, after which they would go back, acclaimed as the legitimate heirs to the throne! Carried aloft on a wave of popular fervor! To restore the monarchy. Though we were not seeking, I thought at the time, my back aching terribly, we weren’t trying to restore anyone. Ours was a better plan, more modern, less vulgar: a dynastic election.
I didn’t manage to explain it because I didn’t get past a single vestibule. I was not allowed to place our plan on the table, for which purpose I would have requested, with the greatest respect and consideration, that His Excellency move aside the plate bearing the Hohenzollern coat of arms (the china saved from the rockets of the T-34s in ’45, in Bucharest). And at other houses I only managed to leave invitations—without a seal! I realize now, without a coat of arms!—in the mailboxes.
A despot of that kind, deformed by centuries of rule and consanguineous marriage, centuries of despotic power, how to get him off your back, Batyk had asked me jeeringly, how, without elections?
Easy, I could tell him now, without having dared to answer him then, neither I nor your mother, but now, full of hate: easy. I myself guiding the plotters through the dark passageways of the palace to Michael of Romania’s quarters, smoking torch in my left hand, katana in my right, to bring an end to his absurd claim in one fell swoop.
5
Imagining and understanding Plato’s wrath in Syracuse as he watched the coast of Sicily recede,
his eyes burning with tears, all hope of a Philosopher King gone. Well, not that idiotic Dionysius; not in Syracuse. But a philosopher or scientist king somewhere else: why not? A physicist such as Louis-Victor Pierre Raymond de Broglie, a blood prince with deep knowledge of quantum mechanics, discoverer of the undulating nature of matter: why not call upon him to reign?
Still attempting a solution. Imagining there might be one toward which to direct my steps. Until chance put it in my path, without deep thought or meditation. A solution that at first I believed to be outside the logic of the Book, but then I came to understand that no, steered by it as if along iron rails. Because I saw, Petya, when I left the Marbella station and headed out aimlessly along the Paseo Marítimo, a sign high atop a hotel toward which, when I had read it, without knowing what was guiding my steps, I began making my way with entire and perfect confidence.
Knowing that only thus: the only solution. That the Russians, in Russia, would have noticed the same hotel I’d just noticed, placed their index finger on the glossy photo of the hotel, at the level of the sign several feet high (but diminutive in the photo), certain it was the best, the most luxurious. They from bad taste: it was the Grand Hotel. Me from the taste instilled by the Writer: the Grand Hotel (of Balbec). Easy to convince those tourists to attend a party very close by, along the beach, after the day’s heat had diminished.
And I entered the lobby certain I would find them there, my future guests. But this was what I found, Petya.
6
I found a man—it’s unlikely that he was a gentleman—standing in front of the reception desk who attracted my attention powerfully the minute I walked in. His blond hair and awkward bearing, the ponderousness of a nouveau riche who must constantly give to understand—with his manner of stopping to scan an empty spot between the armchairs in the lobby or speciously consult his watch with an expression of irritation or complacency, depending on whether he was on time or running late—his new status, the importance he’s gained in his own eyes.
The way he speciously straightened the lapels of his raspberry-colored blazer, bringing his chin down close to his chest, his neck tormented by a wide tie that was out of place and out of climate.
And I felt attracted by that unknown face, unknown though familiar—in its general aspect? Touched by a vulgar and predictable taste, smiling through the fluorescent light. I crossed the lobby for a chat, friendly. They always find it odd, let me tell you, to be addressed by me. They are my friends but don’t know it; they deny me and my friendship. Together, I would say to them, in the trenches of socialism! How’s that? In the trenches! The trenches of socialism! But now, almost next to him, I changed my mind, his face clearly illuminated by the massive gold watch that slipped forward on his wrist as he raised the tiny telephone, little blue screen to pink earlobe. The gleam of his too new shoes, unmarked by wear (small and overly elaborate coffins are what such shoes always remind me of when I see them, unworn, in stores). I walked past him and limited myself to calling: Sasha!—a name invented on the spot, any name. He turned in surprise, reached within that beam of light by my call. And without taking the phone from his ear he studied me from head to toe and spat back: “Nu, i kak banani v etom godu v tvoem Gondurase?” Well, how are the bananas this year in your Honduras? (Or wherever it is you’re from, he meant.)
The cutting phrase, the tone. To the point that I regretted having addressed him. He himself in a rush to abandon the Asiatic depths, little taste for fraternizing with a former ally, all that. Vast zones of his past totally clear to me: breakfasts of cheap sausage not three years ago, hard-boiled eggs in the train’s café car for the two-day trip, a mother and a father back in Russia.
I pretended to have mistaken him for someone else. I said: “I’ve mistaken you for someone else.” And he let it go, knowing I was lying, conscious that my retreat was due to his harsh response, the bulldog hostility he had turned on me.
You don’t want to? Then I don’t either, I explained to him, my eyes fixed on the elevator.
“Kirpich?”
7
I had calculated: a garden party, the effect of fair-haired aides-de-camp fluttering across the grass distributing pamphlets which candidly recounted our plan, your mother’s and my plan, the speed and simplicity with which leaflets can recount and explain the world: the Russian tradition of and love for monarchy, the fervor of a people who despite the errors of an entire century (or of almost a century, almost a century is better, Nelly), that despite the many errors (and horrors! And horrors) had not—ever!—stopped loving and venerating their czars, the imperial family. Who acknowledged the monarchy as the clearest and most natural and most perfect for a country, indisputably identical to the authority of a father.
An inaugural ball, the snobbery such a thing would awaken, that we could churn up around an inaugural ball. The reporters we’d have from many TV channels—guests passing by in the background smiling idiotically at the cameras, so much nonsense to talk. The dresses to describe, the celebrities who’d pose for a photograph with the new king and queen or czars of Russia, the men in tuxedos, the women in long gowns, the hairstyles of the Duchess of York and Athina Onassis, the impossible hats on certain ladies, strange as antigravity engines. The enthusiasm the celebration would generate across the world, the early-morning dash to the kiosk for the front pages, something with which to fill up and structure an otherwise empty Sunday. With this: caravans of Mercedeses (or of Rollses, I’d have to exchange the Mercedes for a Rolls), a policeman’s gloves holding a bouquet of roses, in black and white on the Tribune and in color on the Sun, the miraculous absence of security measures because so beloved a king, because the Russian people, so many years without a king. How enchanting it would be, the enthusiasm it would give rise to, how marvelous it would be to restore the imperial house of Russia.
Now if a true Russian noble had appeared before them he would have struck them as false. Like a young, virginal, and untalented actress who can’t manage to be convincing in the role of a young, virginal girl. We wouldn’t invite the Grand Duchess Maria. The Russian people wouldn’t understand her: a good lady, but a little bit, perhaps just a tiny bit fat, the lumpy figure of the lady in number eleven who goes downstairs to get her milk every morning. Vanquished by Nelly’s breathtaking beauty, very much in the Russian tradition, Petya, your mother, the beauty pageants that Ivan Kalita (or the Terrible) organized in 1547 and in 1561. A great deal of intelligence in that idea of Kalita’s, an absolute sure thing, a solidly historical detail: girls, vestals from across Russia, a beauty contest in all rigor, parading in bathing suits, wreathed in smiles, standing up to Kalita’s interviewers (or Kalita himself) with political platitudes, embracing the winner with false affection (nails long as spears ready to bury themselves in her back), the tears of happiness of the newly chosen czarina. Unerringly the most beautiful and intelligent woman—what doubt could there be?—in the whole country. A strictly historical antecedent, the intelligence and subtlety of the northern Slavs: only the most beautiful queens, only the wisest kings.
Which would all be received with understanding because of the total madness of the Russian people. The TV program I watched one night, my mouth gaping, not believing what my eyes were seeing: an imbecile, an idiot, an impossible man, who was passing himself off as the grandson of the last Romanov! And all Russia was supposed to believe this on the basis of a single test, a laughable demonstration in a TV studio. Do you know what such and such a word means in Greek? Such and such a word in German? Oh! Excellent! And I have written here (the host consulting his notes) that you know … how to tune a piano! Perfectly! Am I right or have my assistants misinformed me? Yes? … Excellent! A piano! To the studio! Though without your tools … It’s a long process … Some other time. Better yet, why don’t you say something to us? Something in Slavonic, old or ecclesiastical Russian.
The fact that the person who claimed to be a Romanov spoke many languages fluently had seemed to his children, crowded together at
his feet like the children of a miller (in the Writer), to be the final and convincing proof that their father was the son of the last emperor, miraculously saved. Who had survived and triumphed over his hemophilia and the terrible eyes of Yurovksi, the gaze of deepest hatred cast on him in that cellar, where he knew enough to lie still, Alexei, while he saw the bullets that were nearing him turned away by the force of the years that remained to him to live. His sisters no, Anastasia even less so, and not his parents, Nicholas and Alexandra, either. The bullets that flew past him and buried themselves in the sodden wallpaper at his back like the rays of a distant star which, through the effect of the gravitational lens, Petya, bypass the sun and end up shooting into your eyes, the day of an eclipse, in 1919. The same year when Alexei recovered consciousness in the middle of a forest, got up, walked, asked for help at a peasant isba, the memory of his former life as heir to the throne flowering colorfully in his mind, placing itself between his eyes and the sole of a shoe that had to be nailed down (such was his adopted father’s profession).
Wasn’t it enough to make you die laughing? A madness like the one Larissa had laughed and jeered at, and rightly so? We had to elude, to leap over it: not a restoration or an inauguration. Neither would I tell them that the invitation was from the czar and czarina of Russia (too much, no?). Better to say a party thrown by some nouveaux riches … How rich? “Very rich, believe me, I wouldn’t lie about a thing like that.” Looking them straight in the eye: “Very rich, you know?”
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