“Is he going to go on for much longer, Gloria?”
“Leave if you want, I’m staying.”
“Years earlier, in 1964, Beuys, as a provocation, recommended that they elevate the Berlin Wall by five centimeters, arguing that in this way it would be better proportioned.
“In 1969 he shared the stage with a white horse that was eating grass…”
“Wow, is he talking about Napoleon?”
“That’s enough, Lazkano.”
“‘The artist and the criminal,’ Beuys said, ‘are traveling companions, they are both in possession of a crazy creativity, a creativity without morals fired only by the energy of freedom.’ But of course, Beuys’ words shouldn’t be understood literally. Provocation was a part of it.
“But, as was made evident in the happening he performed in 1974 at the René Block Gallery in New York, Beuys was no mere provocateur. The title of the performance was I Like America and America Likes Me, and it had a second protagonist as well as Beuys: the coyote Little John. It’s the most widely renowned and debated work by the German artist. Beuys arrived in JFK airport wrapped in a felt rug. He asked to be placed on a stretcher and taken to the art gallery in an ambulance, without him ever touching the ground of the United States. The coyote Little John waited for him in the gallery in a bed of hay. There were also piles of copies of the Wall Street Journal and several pieces of felt. He carried a walking stick and wore his perennial felt hat. He sat on the ground and spoke with the coyote. Beuys then hid under the felt, leaving only the tip of his walking stick outside it. The coyote then pulled the felt and ripped the fabric. As the days progressed, Beuys ended up surrounded by hay, and the coyote, resting among the felt and the newspapers. Every now and then, Beuys made music with a triangle that hung from his neck. After three days they got used to living together. Beuys gave the coyote Little John a big hug before saying goodbye to him. He spread handfuls of hay all over the place they had shared. He returned to JFK in the same way he had arrived: they lifted him into an ambulance on a stretcher, wrapped in felt, without him ever touching the ground with his feet, and he left New York and the United States without seeing anything in the city other than the space he had shared with the coyote.
“He accepted an invitation from the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and to the surprise of his nearest friends and acquaintances, he started to enjoy caviar, Cadillacs, and other luxuries. Thomas Messer, the director of the Guggenheim Museum at the time, reported on Beuys’s change of attitude with the following words: ‘I was afraid that Joseph Beuys had decided that, from his point of view, destroying and wrecking a museum might be a formidable work of art…Happily, his attitude changed from one day to the next, as if he had suddenly realized that he was done with the theatrics…”
“Eva, his wife, used to say that Beuys had always been dead. She called her husband Beuys, and his children, Wenzel and Jessyka, didn’t call him dad or father either, but Beuys, always. ‘He was dead his entire life,’ Eva Beuys used to say, ‘but at the same time he was always very alive. Beuys never complained about the weather, he always said: no matter what the weather is like, it’s always good.’
“He created his last installation in the Museo di Capodimonte in Naples, on December 23, 1985. He died a month later.
“It’s strange that Beuys’s ghost doesn’t manifest more often. Maybe the words I saw this afternoon graffitied on a wall in El Raval, words that Beuys himself said, are right: ‘I think, therefore I am redundant.’ Maybe we are the dead hare in Beuys’s arms, we just haven’t realized it yet.
“I thank all of you for being here.”
“Aren’t you going to ask him for an autograph? He’s the great Heiner Stachelhaus!”
“Go fuck yourself, Diego…this is the last time you come with me to a conference.”
It was a balmy night in Barcelona and it would have been nice to have dinner on an outdoor terrace, but Gloria chose a place indoors, quiet and with white linen tablecloths.
“Are you sure you want to have dinner? You look thoroughly satiated…”
“I used to admire Beuys a lot back in the day, he was always one of my idols, but I’ve neglected him a bit in the past few years to be honest. This was wonderful, even though he forgot to mention the story about the lightbulb…”
“Have the lady and gentleman decided what they’re going to have?”
Escalivada, the Catalan salt cod salad, to start, and a sea bream to share. To drink, white wine: they asked the server to choose it, their only condition being that it be a Penedès wine. By the time the server came out with the fish they needed a second bottle.
“Apparently the heating vent was blocked, so he climbed on a chair to try to unblock it: he lost his balance and had a tremendous fall. It was such a bad fall that they had to take him to a hospital in Düsseldorf. When he returned home, he put a red bulb with this sentence on it in the dining room: ‘Always stay awake.’”
“You could have told that anecdote in the Q & A session.”
“I am not an exhibitionist like you.”
“It would have been a way of earning the support of Heiner Stachelhaus…That anecdote could have led you to have dinner with Ramoneda and Stachelhaus! You could have spent the evening with two big fishes, making contacts that could help you exhibit your work in Berlin, instead of sharing your table with two dumb fishes, like you’re doing now!”
“Go fuck yourself.”
“Go fuck yourself, go fuck yourself…Don’t you have anything else to say? You’re repeating yourself, and that’s not a creative way of living, Beuys wouldn’t approve!”
“You’re mistaken: shamans, as a matter of fact, tend to be quite repetitive. Repetition is the key to trance: Go fuck yourself, go fuck yourself!”
“I much prefer Always stay awake. Or even: Heiner Stachelhaus, Heinerstachelhaus, Heinerstachelhaus…Isn’t that a great name? What a great advantage, to have a name like that! Don’t you think that being in possession of a name like that and making people’s jaws pronounce those words must definitely cause astonishingly complex neuronal connections to happen?”
“We shouldn’t have ordered that second bottle of wine, Lazkano. You’re delirious.”
Lazkano was dead tired. The sea bream, however, pushed against the current of the white wine, and removed gravity and weight from the tiredness of the night. The next day’s hangover was going to be lethal, but thinking that the memory of Beuys deserved that and more, they kept squandering their energy conversing and drinking one Trentino grappa after another, until they ran out of strength and money.
They zigzag back to the house. Lazkano lies down on the sofa without taking his shoes off.
“Would you like to sleep in my bed?”
Diego Lazkano gets up and gets into Gloria’s bed.
“Who gave you permission to get into my bed with your shoes on?”
She takes his shoes and socks off. Shortly after Gloria is in her underwear: she’s tanned; having sunbathed on the terrace, her swimsuit has left some sexy pale areas here and there. They’ve slept together before, sexless bed companions, but that was many years ago. Although this woman of prominent curves is very far from his usual standard of skinny fragile girls, Lazkano realizes that his preferences are changing slightly. It’s funny how our carnal tastes evolve with the years.
Gloria pushes her ass against Diego’s package and feels his penis’s reaction through the two layers of fabric.
“It breathes, still,” Gloria lets him know, in a tone that’s anything but lustful.
“When he’s got reason to,” Lazkano answers, and falls immediately asleep with his arms around Gloria’s waist. When they wake up in the morning, they both have the soothing impression of having fallen asleep at the same time.
“Have you ever wondered why we never slept together?”
“Because we’re good friends?”
“More the reason…”
“I come to Barcelona because I can’t get it right with th
e women back in the homeland, and you want me to sleep with you? Who will I run to, then, to tell them that you’re obsessed with me and I can’t get rid of you?” Lazkano says jokingly.
“You’re so vain…someone might think you’re a writer. A fuck without alcohol…you’re not tempted?”
“To overcome the hangover?”
Gloria touches Lazkano’s package with her fingers.
“It breathes, still…”
How can he say no to that friendly smile, to those caresses. It seems unbelievable that they’re on a terrace in a big metropolis, they can’t hear the slightest sound from that house in the foothills of the Montjuic, except the occasional trill of birds. Lazkano places his hand on the inner side of Gloria’s thigh, searching with the tips of his fingers. Gloria undoes the buttons of his shirt and caresses his ribs with her fingertips and with her lips. Her first bite on his neck drives Lazkano completely and unexpectedly wild. They’re both sitting on folding chairs, and Gloria abandons hers to remove her panties and, without bothering to lower Diego’s pants to his ankles, releases his penis from behind his briefs. When she sits on top of him, Diego takes her breasts out of her blouse and buries his head in them, surprised by the fact that the folding wooden chair hasn’t collapsed under them and sent them to the floor. Gloria takes her time caressing his shaft and rubbing it against her pubis. Their mouths meet, unable to hold back. Gloria presses harder against Diego when he grabs her ass, pushing her cheeks aside. A middle finger slides in search of a center, a thumb feels for a crack, a penetrating smell, not at all cosmetic, Gloria’s own, mixed with the spiral of his own excitement. As she rides him, Diego feels a profound wellness, something completely unlike an orgasm, as the sun’s rays tickle the hairs on his naked thighs. He stays like this for three or four minutes, inside her, and only reacts when he realizes that Gloria is getting ahead of him, and then he starts to grind her too.
Gloria’s moans and sighs are not that different from her laughter, and even though ecstasy and laughter have always seemed essential but contradictory and independent pleasures that should never get mixed to him, he is pleased to see that they can happen simultaneously. Those breathless moans excite him more than all the obscene words in the world. Is it the unexpected novelty of it that’s making everything so pleasurable?
“Nothing is stopping us from repeating this…”
“And if I fall in love with you?”
“Would you look at that, here I was thinking that my falling in love with you was the risk here.”
“I’m human too.”
“You’re mistaken: you’re a writer, the Devil. You’re going to miss the train. Have a good trip back home, and don’t call me when you arrive.”
They smile. Their skins hold one another’s scent, and they like it.
He has a gut feeling when Gloria doesn’t open the door. This time he calls the Eixample police station directly.
He guessed right. Bingo.
“She’s given evidence in front of the judge and spent the night in jail.”
“In the police station?”
“No: in jail.”
“They sent her to jail? For selling marijuana?”
The policeman sighs, and asks who might he be speaking to.
“Are you her legal representative? A relative?”
“No…a friend.”
“In that case I can’t tell you anything else. I’m sorry.”
Lazkano makes a quick decision:
“Look, I’m her boyfriend…more or less…she doesn’t have anyone else.”
“Go the courthouse, with an attorney. She’s going to need one.”
He has to give his name, family names, and national ID number to the courthouse secretary before he’ll agree to let him in.
“Yago Machado?”
“No, Lazkano. Diego Lazkano.”
A cold sweat runs down his back. These places, these people.
“When is she going to be…when will they let her go?”
“She’s a defcondos…”
“Excuse me?”
Lazkano is not very familiar with police slang.
“Defcondos…it means this is not her first arrest.”
“But it’s only herb, it’s not such a big deal.”
“They seized fifty doses of ecstasy from her home. And she’s got priors.”
“You’re going to end badly.”
“Don’t expect me to come to get you out of jail.”
“Like we’ve money to pay an attorney.”
He manages to see Gloria alone before dinnertime.
“What have you done, Gloria?”
“New business models…Someone has to pay the electricity bills.”
“Didn’t you learn your lesson the last time?”
“They say I have priors. Because of the marijuana…But it wasn’t weed this time, right? It’s something else. Besides, isn’t there a statute of limitations for priors?”
“Not in three months, Gloria.”
“Oh…”
“Where did you get the ecstasy from?”
“People introduce you to people, and those people to other people. It’s not so difficult. Why? Are you interested?”
“This is not a joke, Gloria. Have you called your father?”
“That facha? No, he doesn’t know anything.”
“They’ve set bail at ten thousand euro this time.”
“Ten thousand! Fuck…”
“I could lend you half of that now…but I’d need a couple of days to get the full ten thousand.”
Gloria is despondent. She didn’t expect such a heavy fine.
She is going to have to talk again with that person she doesn’t want to talk with. The favor she owes him grows bigger. And she knows perfectly well that he’ll charge her interest.
“The Roma exhibition didn’t come through.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Maybe it’s better that way, I’m not sure the space would actually work.”
“Couldn’t you do it somewhere else?”
“No, I don’t think so. To compensate, I have other news…I’m embarrassed to tell you…They’ve asked me to direct a Chekhov play.”
“You’re kidding…”
“Like in the good old days. And with the same sort of wages.”
“I thought we hated the theater.”
“Chekhov is Chekhov, no? Besides, the play they want to put on is Platonov, it’s too tempting.”
“Platonov? I haven’t heard of it.”
“It’s his first theater play. Some anthologies don’t include it, they say that Chekhov disowned it. Truth be told, some even argue that it is not quite finished.”
“Do you have complete freedom to direct it however you want?”
“Yes and no. I have to turn the four acts of the original into one. The company wants to do something new…I’ll have a space for rehearsals, an apartment on Aldamar Street…They’ll give me everything I need. The only obstacle is my father.”
“Your father? Is he the money man?”
“He contributes the money and the director’s name. Would you believe it? Trapped in the spiderweb again. He also wants me to include an old friend of his from his stamp collectors’ club in the cast…Ever since he’s been sick, I submit to all his blackmail.”
“It doesn’t seem such a high price to pay. We’d see each other more often. Why would you let an opportunity like that pass?”
“I thought you’d be more disappointed by my failure. Look at Gloria, the anarchist, the alternative artist, eating out of her Francoist father’s hand, directing little projects for the Victoria Eugenia Theater, on commission…”
“Don’t punish yourself so much: you always do that. You’re your own judge and executioner.”
“Aren’t we all?”
“Maybe so.”
“If I decide to accept…The translation is really bad…I would be so happy if you wrote a new one.”
“Don’t ask me that, Gloria.�
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“Please…where else am I going to find someone who speaks Russian?”
“I’ve lost the habit, it’s been years since…”
“Tell me you’ll take a couple of days to think about it. Read the play at least…I brought a copy for you…”
“Okay, but don’t get your hopes up.”
“You’ll have to come to the premiere, to make sure I don’t hang myself from the ropes of the fly system.”
“I hate theater auditoriums.”
“But you love me. You’ll sacrifice your feelings for me, won’t you?”
“Diego Lazkano?”
“Who is this?”
“I have something that might interest you.”
“Who am I talking to?”
“Let’s say that I’m calling for Javier Fontecha?”
“Fontecha?”
“He wants to meet up with you.”
“I’m sorry, but I’m in Barcelona.”
“As chance would have it, so is he.”
A shiver went up Diego Lazkano’s back: they were shadowing him.
“Make a note of the address.”
It’s a hotel lobby. Noisy and full of tourists. They have to speak into each other’s ears. Maybe it’s because they want to avoid microphones.
“It’s very simple: don’t declare in the court case and the folder is yours.”
Lots of things come into his mind at the same time: the Toad, his daughter Cristina, Idoia, Ana…It’s strange, but this time Soto and Zeberio are not as prominent.
“You engaged in state terrorism.”
Fontecha stays silent. Diego has never heard a louder “yes.” He doesn’t feel any pleasure, however. Only pity and disgust. He doesn’t feel compassion, but almost.
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