The Vanishing of the Mona Lisa

by Martin Caparros

  Then they told them that Mercedes was in the infirmary and that Doctor Firmin was there and that, yes, it had been a hard bump but that there was hope. That she might pull through, they said. That God would take pity on her.

  The very first thing I thought was: why did I never think to kill that dog before, avoid the whole chain from the beginning? If only I’d thought of it before—before!

  Accidents are little flashes of only seconds that change hours, months, years—everything. We tend to think of an accident as a skip in the normal order of things, in which certain people and things—the dog, the trap, the young lady—don’t cross, wouldn’t collide. This is what we tend to think, because we think that there is at base a natural order, a normal succession of events that doesn’t include accidents, a normal succession that has been organized by someone or something. But everything is an accident; we only register a few of the more abrupt of these as such.

  So that what we tend to call accidents are where the randomness of chance reveals itself and where chance takes on an epic cast. What we call accidents are where the chance of any given moment defines years—a life—in just a few seconds, and seems to change the shape of time. Like a brushstroke, for example, which is made in seconds but then lasts for years. Accidents partake of the essence of art: we see life as made up of those moments that don’t change anything substantially, of the moments of chance that have no extraordinary manifestation; art and accidents are made up of the other ones.

  Accidents are terrifying. They show that chance rules everything and will often choose not to let you slip by unnoticed. We cannot bear that arrogance, that randomness, so we invent fictions, philosophies, religions to help us bear the randomness of chance. Our history is the history of these inventions—invented to make chance less cruel. Invented so that things have meaning.

  Afterward, I tried over and over to remember what I was doing when they gave me the news and especially at the exact moment that the horse ran over her. The worst thing was knowing that while she lay there, I was going on as if nothing had happened. That our connection was not, therefore, what I’d thought.

  Mercedes Coutiño’s eyes are closed. She has a bloodstained bandage around her head and bruises all over her face, but most serious are the blows to her chest. Of the two kicks, the one that injured her lungs was the worst, or seems to be, says the doctor, “though we can’t be entirely certain.”

  Mercedes breathes as if she didn’t know how—slowly, irregularly, hesitantly. Standing beside her bed in the infirmary, Enrique Bonaglia inhales and exhales as if to show her how—he inhales so she will inhale. What used to be routine seems to him now superhuman. Each of the young woman’s attempts to gulp air seems to require an effort that completely overshadows all the other, quiet efforts of that body. The body is usually selfless in its modesty, he thinks, never seeking recognition for all its work. Suddenly, the accident has taken away that pretension, as well as his notion that bodies were not all that important. He thinks that if they get a chance—for he does not want to say, “if she lives”—they will have to learn another way.

  For a week, the two of them—Enrique and Don Simón—go to visit Mercedes every day at the infirmary in San José de Flores. They each go at different times, so as not to leave the shop unattended. Don Simón is there in the mornings, when the doctor tells him again not to lose hope, to be strong. Enrique is there during siesta and hears from the nun about the small improvements in the injured young woman. Enrique is convinced that the nun is lying to him; he sees no improvements, and on the sixth day he catches himself trying to plan for the time after Mercedes’ death, but nothing occurs to him. “For now,” he murmurs, “I can’t think of anything—thank goodness,” and he watches her mouth and her efforts to breathe. He wants to feel worse than he does, more abject. One afternoon he tries to imagine how his mother died.

  On the eighth day, in the afternoon, alone in the infirmary, Mercedes opens her eyes and babbles a few words. When the nun arrives she is not able to understand her, and she calls for the two men, who now close the shop and come, running.

  “What are you thinking, Don Simón?”

  “Nothing, my boy, nothing. What should I be thinking?”

  “Be careful, Don Simón.”

  “O, Charlotte! If I could only have had the joy of dying for you, of sacrificing myself for you. I would have gone to my death filled with joy if it would have brought you happiness and peace. O, but only a few privileged men were lucky enough to shed their blood for you,” said the book he’d read some time before, that he rereads again now. The one he’s not now sure that he understands, in the midst of his unease.

  They told us that we could take her home. Not that she was better, nor out of danger, but that what she needed now was not medical care but rather rest and peace and God’s help. Later, it occurred to me—many times, whenever I couldn’t avoid thinking about it—that Doctor Firmin simply didn’t know what else to do. Don Simón gave her his bed and arranged for another nun to come and be with her all the time. Mercedes spent all her hours dozing.

  Every so often she would wake up and try to speak. That night she tried several times; I failed, in amongst all those awkward grunting sounds, to recognize any words. With her face even tighter now to her skull, and her eyes staring out wildly, Mercedes looked at me desperately. When I held her hand it gripped mine; she was trying to tell me something.

  She stopped trying, and slept, and I remained by her side for one or two more hours, watching her struggle in that room. I thought that the flesh that we’d disdained was now taking its revenge. I thought that if she recovered I’d ask her to marry me, that I’d surrender to the banality of a union of two bodies. I also thought—I hate to admit it, but I did—that if she survived she would be crippled, would in some way be prevented from being herself. I couldn’t stand that idea. Even less could I stand the idea that, had she been in my place and I in hers, she would have cared for me with all the devotion her generosity made her capable of. And that she would have felt a certain pleasure in having me be her cripple, dependent on her, at the mercy of her kindness. This thought made me shudder.

  Mercedes died a few hours later, in the middle of the night, fast asleep. I, too, had been sleeping. I died considerably less. Although you never really know.

  6

  VALÉRIE LARBIN IS BORED. THE night is just beginning and, as usual at this time, the Faux Chien seems an unlikely proposition. It’s at this time—as usual—that Valérie thinks that no one is going to arrive, even though she knows they will. She thinks that feelings don’t count in the face of experience, though that’s not quite it. She thinks, How strange that I think that every night even when I know it’s not true. How different what I feel is from what I know, or something along those lines, and she orders a Pernod. She likes Pernod because it leaves her fresh-tasting, as if she hadn’t been drinking.

  Valérie Larbin sips her Pernod and discovers that there is someone there—at the table by the door, a man of a certain age, his distinguished grey hair glossed back, a perfect mustache, perfectly composed, sipping champagne. It surprises her—sharing the empty bar with him feels indecent, an intolerable intimacy. She looks at him again. Something about him attracts her, and so she launches an attack:

  “This doesn’t seem like the right kind of place for you.”

  “And what would be the right kind of place for me?”

  “I don’t know that—yet.”

  What attracts her most of all is a style—the way he moves as if he were keeping still, the way he speaks, as if the words themselves were speaking. That was class, status, distinction; there are many words for it but none is exactly right. She’d like to be able to say what they mean. Usually it’s enough for her to know that they refer to her more appealing clients, but on this night that won’t get going she wants to know more, and she stays with Eduardo de Valfierno.

  “This is a place for me, not for you.”

  “Exactly, Mademoi
selle.”

  Valérie doesn’t answer. This is obviously a trap the man has set and she prefers to have the control. She doesn’t reply, she doesn’t smile. Valfierno continues anyway. Valérie has on a great deal of makeup, and he thinks he can see a bruise beneath it. He hasn’t yet seen her teeth.

  “That is why I would like to see you somewhere else,” he says, and he hands her his card.

  “Love orders, in extremities,” he recited to her, not long after.

  Vincenzo Perugia went to pick her up at the exit to the Faux Chien sometime after three in the morning. Occasionally he would simply show up, but that evening they’d made a date—Valérie had invited him to stay with her until Sunday at the house of a friend who’d gone to see her family in England.

  They met occasionally. Each time Valérie told herself that it was the last time, and each time she’d capitulate. Perugia bored her. She was excited by the quiet of his strength, his seeming lack of motive, his apathy, the way he didn’t chase her—but she was also bored by it. Most of all, she didn’t yet understand him, and she would have liked to know what he wanted from her.

  The last time, they had spent a particularly intense night together of perfect silences. In the morning, as he left, Valérie gave him a hundred francs “for a shirt, my love,” she managed to say, before some beast in him lashed out and landed a hard blow to her face. She screamed at him to go to hell and asked him if all he wanted from her was her body, and he replied no and shut his mouth. She yelled at him again and told him to go to hell, that he was a thug and peasant and he didn’t deserve her and that was it, no more. “No more?” he said. “Alright, I get it,” and he didn’t go back to the Faux until Valérie sent him the invitation. She hesitated before writing it. First she didn’t want to, then she wondered if he’d understand it. If he could even read, to begin with. Perhaps.

  Next, she loses all time, it dissolves: he has his left hand—stubby, those thick fingers—in between her legs, his thumb in her cunt, the other four fingers moving against her mound, the movement stronger and stronger and in rhythm, and she arches and with his other hand on his cock he moves with her. She yells out, sighs, and he gets on her, climbs onto her, is on her, moves with her and now their two bodies are moving fast, together, in rhythm, a gallop; suddenly time is back, she arches and yells, yells and collapses, breaks. He no longer matters.

  Now she doesn’t give a damn about him.

  “You don’t know what it’s like to be born in a town and then live there, thinking you’re never going to be able to get out.”

  “You think I don’t?”

  “No, it’s not the same, it’s different here. In my town, the guys, all they can say is ‘I hope I can get out,’ but you look at them and you just know they won’t, they don’t have the balls. I have balls; I’m here now.”

  “You call that balls, huh? So you’re the one who’s got balls?”

  “That’s right, Mademoiselle. That’s why I’m here—’cause I got balls. I’m going to get to do what those guys want but they can’t. I’m going to do it, going to make money here, know what I mean?”

  “If I knew what—”

  “You know. Here in the city you can. I’m going to do it. Even though you don’t think so, I’ll be able to. Then you’ll see, I’ll go back to my town.”

  “You’re going to go back to your town?”

  “Sure, I’m going to go back with money and I’m going to set up my own carpenter’s shop. I’ll be famous all over the area ’cause I know how to make things nobody there knows how to make, modern things, from Paris. Then I’ll make even more money and I’ll find myself a good lady, decent, from the town, and we’ll raise a family together, a family…”

  “Great. You thought of all this yourself?”

  “Let me finish. I’m saying a good family, my kids won’t have to get into any trouble, I’ll teach them the business from when they’re young, and they’ll grow up to be great carpenters, even better than their dad. You’re looking at a real good carpenter.”

  “I’m sure I am.”

  “I am—a real good carpenter. Hear me? Real good. The Louvre even hired me—the Louvre—to be a carpenter for them.”

  “The Louvre did?”

  “Yup—the Louvre. Surprised, huh? You thought I was an idiot. Nope, I’ve worked in the Louvre. It’s been a few months now. I left ’cause I got some other work, but I can go back whenever I want, me, just like you see here. I can go back if I want to.”

  “Really?”

  “Yup. Whenever I want.”

  Even the way he said “Louvre”—the thick accent he had when he pronounced the word—irritated her. Everything about him irritated her. And she couldn’t get him to shut up. Or to leave. Or not call her again.

  When he gets Valérie’s call, it takes Valfierno a moment to remember who it is. Then comes that little primitive jolt of triumph—she called! I got her, the idiot—she called me! She pretended to play dumb but she called. He is often surprised—ashamed even—by how much he still enjoys these small victories. He’s surprised by how difficult he finds it to be Valfierno.

  “Do you remember me, Marqués?”

  “I implore you, don’t toy with your prey!”

  “But, Marqués!”

  They meet that night and Valfierno takes her to a dance at the Opèra-Comique. There are lights, a cascade of lights. Valérie looks at everyone—it is so cosmopolitan, so elegant—and Valfierno hopes she doesn’t notice that everyone is also looking at her. Valfierno takes pleasure in their looking, in their envy.

  Cosmopolitan and elegant, a pack of strivers like me making their way, thinks Valfierno, though some of them began their striving two or three or even ten generations before him. Everyone dances. The band plays one of the latest favorites: “Ma Tonkiki, ma Tonkiki, ma Tonkinoise…” Dancers move to an impossible rhythm, people moving fast, the thumping of the beat, the movement of the air, the perfumes that can’t mask the smell of warm sweat: “Son Anana, Son Anana, Son Anammite…,” the smell of bodies in the air.

  Valérie wears a lilac dress with crimson sequins, a neckline plunging all the way to the bottom of the sea, to those two great waves, the kind of vulgarity only a true gentleman could allow himself, thinks Valfierno, then he is suddenly alarmed—perhaps they are all looking because it’s too much, because she’s so out of place. She’s had a drink or two and laughs loudly, her mouth open and those teeth showing, marking her out, and she’s so young—that’s why they’re all looking.

  The smell of bodies in exertion, and he thinks: they’re looking at how coarse she is, they’re laughing at me behind my back. Damn them! These are all ways of disguising envy, he thinks. The ones who know me know that I can do this and they are jealous of me for it. As for the rest of them, what do I care what they think? But he doesn’t convince himself. That stunning body, tits like melons—who cares about the rest? Screw them! This is mine.

  More smells, fast-moving bodies, “Il m’appelle sa p’tite bou’geoise, sa Tonkiki, sa Tonkiki, sa Tonkinoise…”

  “Marqués, take me somewhere else.”

  “Somewhere else, my dear?”

  “Somewhere we can be alone,” she says.

  They are all moving with abandon now, and the smells—above all those smells. You didn’t need to say anything, thinks Valfierno as he gloats in anticipation and she spins and spins: “Marqués, take me somewhere where we can.”

  “Maybe the worst mistake I made was to include that girl Valérie.”

  “Did it cost you?”

  “It depends. I’d say so, yes.”

  “Tell me how you came to include her.”

  “I don’t know if I should.”

  “You did agree to tell me all the facts.”

  “I know that. But that was just an agreement.”

  One night much later it occurred to him that the probability of their meeting somewhere in the world—a demimondaine orphan girl from a working-class Paris suburb and the son of an Ita
lian seamstress who’d ended up in the city of Rosario—was infinitesimal. But then it occurred to him just how amazing it was that even things with a high probability ever actually came to pass.

  First I have to make him feel like king of the world, like a real man; that’s never been any problem. And then right afterward, right then, when he feels like he could do anything—then. But first get rid of those airs, get him to where he’s just like anyone else, have him lose his crown, mess up his hair, mess up his mustache, the little cocked eyebrow. Where the careful expression on his face drops as he gasps for just a little more air so that he can keep moving, touching me, finding me, and then the escape that’s also entry, the entry escape—in and out and in and again until it’s done, he’s undone and stays undone, a contented idiot, satisfied, a real man, feeling like he can do anything—then. Then how do I find a way to talk about the museum.

  If I could do it myself everything would be different. If I could get that Italian going by myself and get everything else going by myself it would be so different, but I can’t. I need him, and so I need to undo him, make him a contented idiot, a king of the world. But that’s never been a problem for me.

  “Marqués, couldn’t we work together?”

  “That’s just what I need!”

  “You’ll want to, eventually.”

  “No doubt, my angel. But now I have a lunch to go to, and if you don’t make yourself decent, I shall be late.”