Loop

  Dreaming about Ernesto’s father, whom I loved so much, made me feel strangely looked-after.

  Julia gave me a book about small, almost imperceptible islands. It reminded me of my dear, elegant friend on the block. The first island in the book:

  Lonely Island (Russia)

  Russian Ostrov Uyedineniya ‘Solitude Island’

  20 km2 | uninhabited

  Loneliness lies in the centre of the Kara Sea in the northern Arctic Ocean.

  An island has another scale, other rules of growth; the sea decides the pattern of an island’s development. The island that’s twenty kilometres from end to end, and is called Lonely Island, carries the tautology in its name.

  An island is like someone who’s deaf. A space with which communication is difficult. Being deaf, unable to hear, is a way of being an island. And in that way, like an isolated phrase, badly communicated, not listening to the others, I’ll say that I don’t know the whole of the national anthem but I know entire Juan Gabriel songs off by heart. ‘ Siempre en mi mente ’ could be the anthem for this apartment. Always on my mind.

  To write is to maroon yourself on an island the size of a page.

  I thought about the famous hypothetical game about the island. The ideal island to which you can take books, records, friends, as an exercise in choice.

  When I was a teenager, my father helped me change the toner cartridge in the printer. He did a test. Thinking he should write something to try out the printer belonging to his daughter, who was studying communication at university, who liked reading, my father wrote the first thing that came into his head, in the middle of a blank sheet of paper: ‘A word all alone’. But that word isn’t alone, dad. And what’s more, that line you wrote is a good snapshot of you. You’re never alone. And yet.

  My father’s handwriting is difficult to read, difficult to understand. He has trouble communicating. I could never copy his signature at secondary school. It’s like a closed circuit. A kind of island handwriting?

  The word loneliness is unlikely to be alone. In the name Lonely Island it naturally forms an adjective, a fitting one for any isolation.

  I’m on a plane to the Oaxaca Book Fair. At the airport, I bought a guide to the common birds of Mexico City. According to that guide there are two common kinds of swallow. One, the barn swallow ( cuicuitzcatl , in Nahuatl), has a black mask, a red face and a yellow body. A subdued yellow, like the body of my Bic pen, which, by the way, has a black lid. The covers of my notebook are red. When I write in this notebook and leave my Bic pen between the pages, it makes the three colours of the common swallow of Mexico City. If my notebook began whistling a Juan Gabriel song, it would be my ideal notebook.

  I’ve got the guitar. My notebook is my guitar, though it’s not always in tune. Maybe when I reach the hotel I can write a song about how similar birds are to open books.

  I’m eating a delicious plate of chicken with mole sauce and handmade blue tortillas. I think Oaxacan food deserves its own small island, with a national anthem and flag.

  The stationer’s in Oaxaca where I bought my Ideal notebooks today is called El Águila. The Eagle. It’s on Calle Morelos and there’s a lovely little old lady behind the counter who’s had the shop for sixty years. Her daughter was there, too. An attentive woman in her early forties, with a crucifix hanging from a thin gold chain. I started talking to her. She patiently showed me various notebooks, and although I didn’t find one identical to mine – the cuicuitzcatl – I bought four with black covers, in different sizes. Since they didn’t have the kind I was looking for, we ended up having a discussion about notebooks. The old lady got involved: ‘These notebooks are all very good quality, you see. They’re hand-sewn, the way people used to make them in my day. That’s why I buy them. But there was a time, miss, when I couldn’t get hold of them: the owners died and the kids didn’t keep the business going. Up in Mexico State, that’s where the family are with their bookbinding workshop. Now the grandchildren have taken it up again and I put in an order every six months. But they’re not like other brands, ones with big factories that can handle all the orders from offices and schools and what have you. No, miss, not at all. For instance, a fellow who works in the council came in here wanting some leather folders, the kind I get from a man who lives in the Isthmus, up in the hills. He was after a hundred folders to give to his whole office at Christmas. And, well, that’s not how it works, is it? I’ve got five folders because they’re the five folders the man can make: he makes them by hand. You see what I mean, people think you can get hold of anything just like that, that everything’s done on modern machines, that people make lots of the same thing, but there are still little family-run bookbinding workshops or people who make five folders in half a year. But the Ideal notebooks aren’t like the big notebook factories. That’s why I don’t have the red notebooks you’re after, miss, now I only have the black ones. Like I say, I couldn’t get hold of any for a while, and it took me years to get back in touch through the grandchildren; the children wanted nothing to do with it. Who knows what the children are up to and why they aren’t keen on their father’s bookbinding business – and him such a kind, hard-working man. But the grandchildren took it up again. Honestly, that makes me think maybe my grandchildren love me more than my children do. But then, you never know. Still, that’s the thing: grandchildren are like that, they’re easier to mould, they stay closer to you, they love you more, isn’t that right? And they’re the ones who keep making the notebooks like they made them in my day: top-quality. Look, they’re sewn, the edges are tinted with red, the pages are nice and thick. You could write in fountain pen without it going through to the other side. But people nowadays don’t think about that stuff. They don’t look at what they buy. Isn’t it true, miss, that the Ideal notebooks are very good? Now, listen, every year I get Christmas presents made for my lifelong clients. Do you smoke? Not any more? I’ve never smoked, but so you can put some sweets in your living room I’m going to give you this black pottery ashtray I had made with the name of my shop on it. Just a moment. Here you go, isn’t it lovely? Made here in Oaxaca. It’s for you.’

  At breakfast Luis Felipe told me there’s a poet who calls his wife ‘beloved’. ‘How do you mean?’ I asked. ‘Just like that. In public, wherever, he’ll say: “Beloved, could you pass the sugar?” Or: “Beloved, the bread, please.”’

  Luis Felipe smokes a lot. Tonight we were drinking mezcal, he lit a cigarette and I felt like smoking too. I used to smoke a lot before the accident. Loads. I started when I was at university. At first I didn’t smoke much, one or two a day. After the accident – before I hallucinated that the blanket covering me was an exotic plant with a temperature of forty degrees – and my gallbladder ruptured, that day I smoked a whole packet and had to go back to hospital. Like almost all the days leading up to that, I was smoking Marlboros. I have a sudden urge to smoke now. I decided to give up because it seemed like my activities had become nothing more than a thread which, like the thread in a necklace, connected my twenty a day. It’s so important to be able to see yourself differently, although when I’m with my friend and he’s smoking and the conversation’s really flowing, it makes me want to go back to it. Maybe I could start again, but only when I’m chatting to Luis Felipe.

  Missed call from Jonás. I’ll try calling back.

  Last night I heard a bad poet read. As I listened to the soporific verses dedicated to his beloved, I felt like I was watching a snail glide from one side of a floor tile to the other. His words were like a long trail of slime.

  There’s a church in Oaxaca with a statue in it called Holy Child, Mover of Hearts. The sheer quantity of balloons, cards, votive offerings and candles beneath it is enough to move the heart. If I hadn’t been with my friend, I would have knelt down and begged for Jonás to come back.

  I remembered the Holy Child of Grants. He could have a place in a church somewhere. The Divine Child who holds a scroll in his left hand, a piece of parchment showing the t
erms and conditions of the grant. The Holy Child has a miniature chair. I could offer the service of dressing the Saint. Provide accessories like a basket, carrycot or cradle. A stand to prop the Divine Child upright. A bell jar, glass case or cabinet to display him in if you’re awarded the grant. Flowers, electric candles, literary medals, stamps, lithographs, miniature books of poems, state prizes, vinyl records, scale models. Or any other item produced by Mexican artists between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five who want to be considered for the grant.

  The altar and the work dedicated to the Divine Child. So many books. Short films, full-length films, theatre productions. In his colourful corner of the church there are balloons, letters, artworks, records, poetry pamphlets, photos from Young Creators’ events, passport-size photos of grateful Young Creators. Rumour has it that, among the offerings to the Child, there are purple velvet pouches containing marijuana and other drugs.

  I’m back from Oaxaca. Today I had to make a lot of phone calls for work. I’ve used up my daily quota of words. All I achieved was drawing a spiral on the back of a receipt while on the phone to someone, I forget who. Our Lady of Silence covers me tonight with her white veil.

  Jonás says he’d like to come home soon, that he misses me. I don’t know what to tell him. Here I am. I suddenly wonder: what will he be like when he comes back? Has anything about him changed? Is he still looking for something connected to his mother that he hasn’t found? Will he ever find it? That’s why his journey is so long: he can’t find peace. And what if he returns only to come face-to-face with the despair that made him set off in the first place? His life is on pause. The loss, the farewell, the death of his mother, are its themes. Indirectly, too: everything he does, everything he’s now afraid of, relates to the same things. What can I do? Nothing, of course. But I like to think I could do something for him. Believe in him, be with him, keep him company. I’d like to give him what he needs, in the way he needs it. So here I am.

  Sometimes I’m afraid. I wonder what will happen when Jonás returns from his trip. Sometimes I worry that when he comes back this will all be over, but then, I’m scared of endings in general. It’s a consequence of the accident. Sometimes I’m scared of the end of the day, and sometimes I think that when he gets back from his trip a new, positive phase of our relationship will begin. Still, here I am. I flung myself through the window with all my weight and now there’s no going back. Like in ‘Wild is the Wind’, I’ll go anywhere with you.

  I’d like to be a swallow so I could visit the dwarf, so I could chat to him. I’d like to be able to knock on the front door of that man I find so intriguing, have a few drinks, talk and talk without looking at the time. I’m sure we’d have a lot to say to each other. What would the dwarf think of my waiting?

  A swallow’s nest is shaped like a cup, I read on the internet. I go and get my cup of coffee so I can carry on reading: ‘The swallow’s song is a cheerful warble which often ends in a su-seer , with the second note higher than the first. The calls include a witt or a witt-witt , or a loud splee-plink when they’re overexcited or when they attempt to scare predators away from the area around their nests.’

  When Jonás comes back, I don’t know if he’ll sing a witt-witt or a loud splee-plink . It depends how threatened he thinks the nest is. And that’s the thing: for now, as Jonás sees it, the nest is with his mother. Or with the idea of his mother. Not here, with me, in this apartment which is also his. That’s why he’s away.

  It continues: ‘The common swallow was described by Carl Linnaeus in 1758 in the tenth edition of his work Systema Naturae using the scientific name of Hirundo rustica . Hirundo means swallow in Latin; rusticus , from the countryside.’ I love you, Jonás. I’m rustic. The swallow is a small bird, and migratory. If you want to stay in Spain, I can go there. If you want us to be apart for a while, that’s fine too.

  I read that swallows sing individually and in unison. Common swallows generally reproduce between May and August, but we can make an exception now it’s December, Jonás. And look at this: ‘Reproductive success is related to the length of the male bird’s tail.’ I’m telling a long tale for you now, Jonás.

  ‘The swallow symbolises the coming of spring and love in Pervigilium Veneris .’ Oh, I just love Wikipedia. Such a shame I had to study in the library when I was a student, surrounded by photocopies and books, index cards and highlighters. The kind of information I like is right here, in every colour at once. The internet is like a chewing-gum machine and a blue piece has just popped out, my favourite colour: ‘The common swallow is the national bird of Estonia.’

  If this apartment we live in is the size of a small island, we could have a regional bird. I read that swallows are a symbol of loyalty, that they choose a partner for life.

  12

  A long phone conversation with Jonás. It’s Friday night, my slippers are on and I’ve just watered the plants. I’m curled up in the armchair. The cat’s curled up here too, purring, like a miniature soul in slippers as well. Oh, I love spending Friday nights like this so much. I’d put some music on, but the cat’s just dozed off. I don’t dare wake him. A sleeping cat, that domestic dictatorship.

  I wonder if Jonás has slept with anyone. Is a French girl removing her hairband even as I write and placing it by Jonás’ watch? Or is a Spanish girl sitting in bed beside him, lighting a post-coital cigarette? I’d better stop, this is making me horribly anxious. I like questions, but not all of them.

  The old watch, the wind-up watch his father gave him. The watch that belonged to his grandfather, his father’s father. Jonás takes it off every night before going to sleep. I miss the presence of that watch on the nightstand.

  I saw Carolina, whose belly is getting bigger and bigger. Julia called from Canada, she’s at a film festival. She’s happy because she bought a new guitar after a meeting. Tania called to say that books with tiny print make her feel like she’s on a treadmill, wearing jogging bottoms, and getting nowhere. ‘It’s awful, you just don’t move.’ Julia said she desperately needed to come home, to have a drink and a chat. Carolina said Lila was very fidgety this afternoon, but I didn’t get to feel her kicking.

  I had lunch with Philippe and Luis Felipe. I realised Philippe is responsible for Vila-Matas encountering Emmanuel Bove. This means he’s also responsible for my spending all this time hunting for a copy of My Friends , which Vila-Matas mentions in his book dedicated to Robert Walser, one of my favourite writers. Oh, it’s wonderful when one book leads you to another. A novel I’ve been trying to track down for ages, like a kind of savage detective. In the university library there was a copy of another book by Bove. ‘It’s his last novel, but I prefer Mes amis , the first one,’ said Philippe. I have Bove’s last novel photocopied on my bookshelf, a kind of adopted sibling to its out-of-print brothers and sisters.

  If I wrote about my friends, I’d dedicate chapters to Tania, Julia, Carolina, Guillermo, Tepepunk, Antonio and Luis Felipe. Jonás would appear too. I’d like to write a novel called My Friends . The chapter about Luis Felipe could be a long sentimental conversation over mezcal and cigarettes, and include the self-help verses and passages that come up as we talk. The chapter could end in a karaoke bar in the early hours, the two of us singing pop songs with our arms around each other. For the chapter about Tepepunk, I’d choose five or six emails in which he describes his days in Tokyo, the city as he discovers it with Nina. The constant comparisons with Mexico City from his point-of-view. I’d alternate the texts with the photos he sends of their walks. I could include the one he sent me recently, accompanied by this note: ‘Can you believe I stole these 3D glasses from a museum without realising? I walked out with them on, just like that, casual as anything.’ For Guillermo’s chapter I could choose a long night in a cantina, his sense of humour a magnet attracting stories like iron filings. Our long conversation would end just before sunrise; we’d be walking through a park, Guillermo would stop and chat to a street-sweeper, and at the end of the chapter he’d
give the street-sweeper a hug. I think Antonio’s daughters would provide a good portrait of their father, so his chapter could be a dialogue between them. The novel about my friends would be like a love letter. I’d make a character sketch of each of them. Come to think of it, I don’t know how I’d talk about Jonás, since it’s through him I’ve discovered what separates me from my friends. And what makes me closer to him than to anyone else.

  It’s not that things didn’t work with Ernesto. They were good years for both of us. Living with him was one of the best things I’ve ever done. I’ll always love him. The loss of his father was a loss for me, too. But I think we always tend to look on the bright side of misfortune. The accident happened not long after we broke up, and not long after that I met Jonás. By then, there was a before and an after. An equator, a kind of phantom line. Maybe afterwards, at my lowest, I found a power, a strength. And the way we relate to everything, especially when it comes to love, changes after we hit rock bottom.

  If this notebook had an ideal ending it would be a trip to the beach with Jonás. In the final lines I’d turn into a swallow, everything I’ve written would turn into a song and the notebook itself would take flight. Feathers would begin to sprout from Jonás’ arms, his feet would gradually leave the sand and he’d start to fly. We’d be able to see our shadows on the water and together we’d hold a ribbon in the air that proclaimed THE END .

  But no, it’s not the end yet. And all this is too long to turn into a song. Jonás hasn’t come back, this is a time of waiting and I’m Penelope. I weave, unravel, weave and unravel again. Will the day ever come when the waiting stops? Is there anyone who isn’t waiting for something?