The Vanishing of the Mona Lisa

by Martin Caparros

“Marqués, don’t be an idiot. It’s not what you imagine.”

  “And what is it I imagine? Do tell me.”

  “I’d rather not guess. In any case we both know it’s pure fantasy. I simply want to tell you this: a friend of mine knows a fellow who until just recently worked at the Louvre. He’s an idiot, but he’s without scruples. That’s not that common in an idiot like him. You know what they say: morals are the substitute for intelligence. This fellow can go in and out of that museum the way you do at the Hippodrome d’Auteuil.”

  “Why would that be of any interest to me?”

  “I don’t know, Valfierno, but think it over. You’re the thinking type. You don’t always know how to do things, but you do know how to think. If we work hard, my love—even harder than last night—maybe something will come to you.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Or I can tell you what I’ve been thinking.”

  “You?”

  “Yes, me.”

  7

  SHE HAD GONE; WE REMAINED there—Don Simón and me, two men missing the same person, such different things. Mercedes’ death had joined us somehow, victims of the same event who seemed destined—destined?—to suffer together. I could have left, of course, but I couldn’t find any reason to. The old man treated me with a strange affection, made up not of words or gestures but rather of a kind of shy maintenance of our silences, as if he knew of the pact that had bound me to his daughter and wanted to make up to me what I’d lost. In another way, it was also as if the woman’s disappearance had removed a weight from us, and a barrier.

  Don Simón continued his card games, which became longer, and lost interest in the shop. I read and read and tried to cover his absences, though we both knew—without saying it, since we didn’t say things—that we didn’t know why we kept on with it. A death is not so hard for what you lose—it’s terrible because it makes you create a new life when you thought you already had one.

  They were interminable days, and there were so many of them. In those days, during those years, I couldn’t stand for things to finish, and I always left a little of whatever I had so that I could go on with it later if I wanted: a last bit of soup I’d take to my room each night, a sip of wine left in my glass, five or six pages left to read in every book. In this way, I made a life that didn’t seem to have beginnings or ends; it was always the same; time didn’t cross it. I was busy all the time without knowing why. Nor am I sure that I was unhappy.

  Though I had inherited all her books, I nonetheless got in the habit of buying one or two books whenever I went into town, which was every Sunday then. I was not only reading her novels now, but also history books, tales of journeys to the most exotic places, biographies of some of the important men who were changing our world. It pained me sometimes to think that in reading these new books I was leaving her behind.

  My Sunday outings were the only times I went anywhere, my times for peering over the precipice. Every Sunday I would get up at eight to shave and wash and then take the train into town. I would have lunch in one of the inns there—Berta the Frenchwoman’s, Narcis the Catalan’s, one of the Italian ones—and drink a couple of glasses of wine. In this state I would make my way to Doña Anunciación’s brothel. Sometimes I had the Calabresa, sometimes others. They all shared the same floral smell of their disinfectant, and they all made more or less the same gestures, probably on purpose, so that the client would think he was causing them, that they were his.

  On more than one occasion I considered not going, but I never missed it. It continued, in a way, to be an homage to Mercedes, a way to renew our communion, to assure her that the body was not what was important and that no one could take her place in my soul. When I finally left, refreshed, I would walk along the Calle Florida and occasionally end up in a theater. I had discovered in those depictions a way of not thinking that was not so different from reading.

  In the evening, the train would take me back to San José de Flores. Each Sunday I’d arrive tired and satisfied. I’d have savored that other world which others envied and desired, and confirmed to myself that I could still reject it; I had no need of any of that.

  There is a certain contentment attainable in the imagination that does not anticipate any change; that does not expect ever to have to confront reality. Such an imagination, which needs nothing but itself, contains great pleasure within.

  Those were days in which Enrique Bonaglia used to imagine things that he would never do, and be happy. Ideas would come to him: he would go to sea, become a cat burglar, live off a rich widow. He’d be a sailor who became bosun on a sailing ship that crossed the world’s oceans, braving storms and savages and taking his courage to its limits. He’d come up with the perfect scheme to con coarse nouveaux riches by selling them bonds in a small central European monarchy, which would return them enormous financial rewards and other, irresistible benefits. The young widow of a pampas land baron would come into the shop one day by chance and fall prey to his charms, offering him the world and more to tempt him to come away with her.

  The stories he thought up became more and more elaborate, full of adventures and risks and triumphs. Sometimes during his siesta he’d even indulge in defeats from which he would recover, and avenge himself.

  On one of his voyages, he’d be almost shipwrecked but would save his crew and go on to perform amazing feats, discovering a trade that would make him rich—would make him, for example, into the most powerful opium smuggler in Southeast Asia, and he’d build a secret empire that would spread its tentacles across pagodas and jungles, across slums and palaces. Later in his life he’d write his memoirs and show the world of the bored just how different a life could be—more different than they could have imagined—though to protect his high position, the memoirs could not be published until after his death.

  He’d exploit the greed of those nouveaux riches by selling them bonds in the Kingdom of Belgravia. Thanks to the promise of enormous wealth—bolstered by some initial small but encouraging returns, and especially by the bestowing of various Belgravian noble titles on the more important buyers—he would begin to frequent the most aristocratic salons and eventually become one of them himself.

  Thanks to the widow, his life as a rancher would be peaceful and happy—summers in the country, winter trips to Paris, and autumn nights at the opera—until, finally tiring of this idleness and inspired by the prospect of inheriting his wife’s lands upon her death, he’d experiment with breeding different types of cattle and would create a new breed that would revolutionize Argentine ranching and propel him to a position of power on earth so far only dreamed of. He’d make a fortune, buy himself Argentine citizenship, launch a political career noted for its intelligence, make even more money, run for senator, become a minister and perhaps even, finally, president.

  He would be, he thought, a captivating millionaire, an aristocrat, a leader of men, the object of great envy. He had legions of ideas and with them the great pleasure of knowing that he’d never have to realize them. The comfort of their being only ideas—unassailable perfection.

  It occurred to me then that Don Simón must have some peace of mind, knowing that he had come to this country to achieve something and had achieved it. I, wanting nothing, could also achieve that if I put some effort into it.

  Until the night that Don Simón said that he had something important to tell me. This was unusual, and I think I was scared. Later I concluded that it had scared me because I thought I knew what he would say and I was afraid he might not say it.

  It was hot, a summer night. Mosquitoes circled the kerosene lantern; the smell of kerosene was in the air. Dogs barked nearby. The old man served wine and spoke to me carefully: of course I knew that, like me, he was alone in this world, that everything he had done he had done for his poor daughter, and that now that she was gone his world had crumbled, he said, and then was quiet. He took a drink of wine. It seemed to me that he was heading in the direction I’d predicted, meaning that I would no longer n
eed to worry about my future. Meaning that, though he hadn’t said anything, he was worried about my future, about what would happen once he was no longer there to run the shop. Which all meant that I no longer had reason to worry: if the old man kept on in the direction I thought he was going, I’d never have to worry again, and I could continue with my fantasies in peace, without a care.

  “Son, everything I imagined for my life is now destroyed. But I don’t want everything I managed to build to be lost. Tell me that after I’m gone you’ll look after the shop, you’ll make sure it survives.”

  “Of course, Don Simón, if that’s what you want.”

  “Of course that’s what I want.”

  “That’s fine then, Don Simón, we don’t need to talk about it again.”

  It gives him a funny feeling, that night, in his bed, sweating, knowing that his life—the question of his future—has been solved. He searches for the joy he should feel at such monumental news but doesn’t find it, and he suspects that he’s stupid, lacking in imagination. That he’d never thought about what his life could have become after the old man died if what had happened had not happened.

  His life has been solved, meaning that he can keep doing what he has been doing for years. What from this distance seems to him like his fate, or his nature. His fate or his nature, he thinks to himself.

  One day it came into his head that Diego de Baltiérrez—Diego, from his first life—must now be grown up, and he was surprised that he hadn’t thought about him before and decided to try to find out about him. He must be in the papers, he thought. He must be someone important.

  I memorized Greek history, and then Roman history, and was, in sequence: Leonidas and Brutus, Aristides and Camillus, Harmodius and Epaminondas. All this while I sold maté and sugar and scowled at anyone who would try to pull me out of the world I’d discovered to live in. “I was reading, as I used to, on mornings after the shop had been swept, when a woman named Laora passed by on her way to church,” read Enrique, delighted: a story about a man—a shop attendant—who’d invented himself to perfection.

  Reading like that—not just reading but reading a lot—I came to see that Argentina was the perfect place for this. Argentina was an idea that was being created, made, and in a country that was making itself its men could also make themselves, even make themselves into other men.

  Those Basque hawkers who spread over the pampas with their little wagons, living like Gypsies until they’d amassed enough land deeds to trade them to the soldiers for gin. Within a few years they were the new lords, the nobles of a new aristocracy of cattle. And those countrymen or near-countrymen from Italy who arrived with nothing more than their hands and their hunger and used both to build themselves a house and family. And the Jews who, aided by the support of their brethren, launched themselves in business and money lending and became wealthy merchants not long after arriving there. And those blond women who, once here, entered the profession they wouldn’t have dared to enter in their own cold countries, and who after a few years retired with enough money to allow them to purchase a near-spotless reputation. And, finally, the poor local criollos who rose to heights on the strength of hard work and study, like the late Sarmiento, a shopkeeper who became president. If anyone had led the way, it was Sarmiento.

  It came to him out of sheer boredom one afternoon in the shop. He had the idea of selling certain items they’d never sold before. He told the customers—certain customers, the ones who gave him looks—that there were only a few left, that they were the latest thing from Paris, and that they were very expensive but that for her he could offer a special price, and he’d quote an inflated number and usually the lady would buy. Until one day Don Simón discovered that he was selling more than usual and asked why. With something like pride, Bonaglia told him what he’d been doing and the old man forbade him from doing it anymore. Bonaglia said that no one was getting hurt. Don Simón said that it wasn’t about that, that in the shop they did what he said. For the moment, son, I’m still the one in charge here. He said this calmly, without any anger. Bonaglia told himself he didn’t care, that the old man was an idiot; no one understood him and he didn’t need any of those fools to understand him.

  He has put on weight. He looks at himself in the full-length mirror that Don Simón put in to attract more of the maids who like to shop there, and he’s pleased. He, Enrique Bonaglia, who never paid much attention to his body, now has the slight paunch that reflects the comfort of his new station. He likes it. He likes the word “comfort,” which he sees in magazines. It has a modern, European, sophisticated air. He now reads magazines as well. Since he’s learned that he’s to be the owner of a shop, Enrique reads them, studies them, especially on those Sundays, on the train into Buenos Aires.

  It occurs to him one afternoon as he comes out of the brothel that when he becomes the owner of the shop he’ll be able to pay a shop attendant of his own, which will allow him to come into town two or three times a week if he wants. After everything he’s been through, he’s going to end up a prosperous businessman. He smiles, but is alarmed at the same time. Perhaps he’ll even marry—as a shopowner he won’t want for that kind of attention. He smiles again and is more alarmed. He does not want any dramatic changes in his life.

  But that afternoon in the theater, watching a play in which an aristocratic family battles with the daughter’s dishonor and sinks into tragedy, he thinks again of the Baltiérrez family and realizes that he could also sell the shop and use the capital to launch himself on one of the lives he’s imagined. Afterward, he leaves the theater and, without deciding to, goes into a bar and orders a grappa. He drinks a great deal that night, becoming drunk.

  That it is nothing but cowardice for a man to stay in the role he drew in the big lottery. That there is no greater endeavor than to create a man. That there is nothing more difficult, no greater art. That there is no greater folly.

  I spent the next months in a state of anxiety that I wasn’t used to. Don Simón grew worse every day; the moment when I would have to choose my life was fast approaching. And though I told myself that it didn’t have to be this way, that there was no reason things couldn’t go on as before, I had already changed course. No one returns to paradise after having left it. Doubt had decided to pay me a visit; from that moment, nothing was as before.

  Reading was now perilous for me. As soon as I would enter into those fantastic lives—which I did almost as a reflex, having subsisted on it for so long—the unease of knowing that I might try that life if I wanted would take away all the pleasure and turn it instead into an interminable struggle. I suffered, but I kept going back. Time and time again I returned to reading and imagining and turning over my options. I hated it, but I kept going back.

  I found him dead one morning. It was autumn, though not yet cold, and I’d noticed that it was already after eight o’clock and he hadn’t come down to the shop. Before I did anything else I tried to feel grief and was on the point of succeeding before I got distracted. As I was going back downstairs it dawned on me that my story was now about to start. Now, at last—my story.

  8

  “I WAS WITH THAT FRIEND of yours yesterday.”

  “Friend of mine?”

  “Whatever he is; I’d rather not know. The Italian mason, that fellow Perugia.”

  “I thought he was a carpenter.”

  “Does it make a difference?”

  “It depends on what you want him for,” replies Valérie, and Valfierno thinks that it must be hard to be twenty or twenty-one and all alone competing in a world full of crooks, and that it’s not surprising that she always presents this stupid and improbable façade of certainty, but it still irks him that she does. That she stops short of understanding that at that age you can’t begin to know everything. As if she didn’t realize that she didn’t have to pretend to know everything, he thinks, and he smiles to himself.

  “What? Now what?” Valérie demands.

  “Nothing. I was just thinki
ng that it’s sometimes much easier to see other people’s faults than one’s own.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about and I don’t care. You were telling me you saw Vincenzo.”

  “Vincenzo?”

  “Perugia.”

  “Oh. So you call him Vincenzo.”

  It’s hard to say if this is a question or a statement; probably neither. Valfierno decides on a momentary truce. Lifting his champagne glass, he waits for Valérie to join him in a toast. He looks into her eyes and smiles. She responds with a textbook indifference. Around them the hubbub of the brasserie is slowly dying down. It’s after midnight, a time when he is less likely to encounter someone he knows, when Valfierno will dare to go out with her to a place like this.

  “I saw him last night.”

  “You already told me.”

  “I know. Do you really think he can be trusted?”

  “As much as you can trust any man.”

  “How far is that?”

  “Only a little bit more than a woman,” replies Valérie, and she opens her vermilioned lips to stick her tongue out at him, showing her teeth at the same time. Valfierno looks away, or begins to, but then makes himself focus on those teeth. They’re the price, he tells himself—seeing them, knowing that they’re there, can help me.

  “I asked him what he could do, and he told me that if the money was good he could do anything.”

  “Don’t take too much notice when he says ‘anything.’ He should have said ‘anything I can think of,’ which is much less.”

  “That’s what I thought. He doesn’t give the impression that he’s any kind of genius.”

  “I suppose you want him to teach you Ancient Greek?”

  “Seriously, Valérie. I’m worried that he may be too stupid, even for this.”