Chandelier, page 18
He is smiling. Arrogant, self-satisfied. He sips an espresso. He has the face of an astronaut, with the shaved crop of grey hair and chiselled chin. I wonder at that chin. Has it ever been struck? I’m not a small man myself. I could give his nose a sizeable, physical jolt. I might. But for now, I’m curious.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” I say with all its rich nuance.
“Hoping I might catch you, Hugo. It’s been a long time.”
I am tempted to say Not long enough, but there is something too John Wayne about it. Instead, I just stand here, shifting my weight onto the ball of my left foot to hide the pain of my right.
“Estrella told me where you were staying. I want to talk to you,” he says. His open palm indicates an empty chair next to him. His eyes stray to my scuffed and torn trousers. He looks me over again with a baleful squint, as if he’d discovered something tremendous. Something fresh to mock. I step toward the table but won’t sit down. My little victory.
“So, Estrella’s turned me in, has she?”
“She’s concerned.”
I snort and look across the square, where groups are scattered on the stone steps leading to the old cathedral. A young couple are singing a Spanish song with a straw hat set out in front of them. The man, with a spray of dreadlocks, stares at the ground, strumming a battered acoustic guitar. The woman warbles high notes that penetrate the street noise.
“What do you want, Norcock?” I say, summoning a tone of annoyance.
He shrugs but it has no conviction. Because he wants the world. And sitting there with his tireless self-assurance and well-fed, pink cheeks, he thinks he can have it. I thought I could once too. I glance down the patio held in the sun’s weakening rays. There’s a couple with a small child at a nearby table who are looking our way. It might seem strange to them that I’m here, talking to this other man and refusing to sit down. They have gleaned our body language.
It’s started now. The conflagration I had pictured for weeks, years really, is in front of me, and I have no fuel left to feed it.
A waiter approaches with a questioning air, trying to assess the meaning of our stiff postures. Norcock sees him and smiles. “Please,” he says. “Another grappa. And a whiskey for my friend.”
Once the waiter has nodded and returned to the café interior, Norcock repeats the invitation for me to join him. “It is whiskey, isn’t it? I think I remember. But I’ve always been a student of the grape.”
I hold my ground, my features blank, though dizzy and in pain. He sighs and leans forward, gesturing to where the waiter had stood.
“He thinks you’re begging for change, Hugo. Sit down, for heaven’s sake. What have you done to yourself?”
I tug on the chair and sit. The blood rushes to my head. It buzzes through the arteries of my weary feet. “I got swiped by a car,” I say, an embellished, abridged summary of the evolving collapse of my physical being.
Norcock actually tsks at this. The sharp, salivary clucks reduce my tribulation to mere tiresomeness.
“I could have been killed!”
“The traffic here,” he says. “You have to be careful.”
Patronizing prick. I should smack him right here. Lay him out flat in his stylishly wrinkled blazer. But my head’s spinning. The sweat is trickling down my spine and I need to catch my breath. Maybe with a few minutes to regain my energy I can put this whole farce to rest. Bring it to its proper conclusion. With a nod, the waiter delivers our drinks. Norcock drains his espresso and pushes the cup to the side of the table. He takes the delicate stem of the grappa glass between his thick fingers, holds it under his nose and twitches his nostrils like a rabbit in dewy clover. Then he looks me up and down again.
“The grapevine tells me you are preparing to do a very stupid thing,” he says. “Do you really think it would be smart for you to stand up in front of your esteemed colleagues and make some kind of scene?”
“I think—”
“Please, let me finish what I want to say. My time is limited. I’ve spent this whole morning preparing a few words for you when I should have been polishing tomorrow’s lecture. So, you see, you’ve done it to me again. Your appearances in my life have the uncanny capacity for siphoning off energy that could be put toward much more important things. You are like some collapsed star, Hugo, a black hole pulling away at the available light. What happened to you? I don’t know. But you’ve been hell-bent on demolition for so many years now. A revenge scheme against the world. Everything you touch, you turn to bitterness. You find a fresh spring in the meadow and immediately pour your poison into it. Sure. Sure. You don’t like what I have to say. You don’t like my taste in architecture. At one time you were even articulate about it. I respected that. But you have gone way beyond rational discourse. Take a step back and look at yourself. You haven’t had a commission for years. Don’t you wonder why your columns have been dropped from the Independent? Don’t look so shocked. Everyone knows this. No one wants to go near you. The vitriol. The name-calling. All the drama and strife. And now here you are, on a flight across the ocean, to do what? Barge into a conference uninvited for the sake of some public display?”
“I’m trying to defend my name.”
“I am not your enemy.”
“You don’t say.”
“You’re deluded, Hugo. In fact, I want to help you.”
I drain the scotch Norcock has bought for me, though I should have saved some to spit in his face.
“Help me?!”
“Do you really believe that I have been plotting against you? Think back. You attacked me, Hugo. We had disagreements, yes. It was there in the papers. The interviews. We played each other. For the public’s attention. It was fun.”
It’s the last word I expect from his mouth.
“I thought you were enjoying it too,” he adds. “The game of it. The hyperbole. The nudges and winks. Do you think I took it all that seriously?”
He puts the grappa to his lips and scans the square. The warbling couple have finished their finale of “What a Wonderful World.” They are gathering loose change and bank notes from the bottom of a guitar case. Another busker stands by, shirtless, tattooed and dreadlocked too. What wonders is he capable of?
Norcock leans toward me. I look at his shimmering expression.
“Two apprentice monks come to a river . . .” he begins to say.
“A parable, Alan? Are we really at the parable stage?”
“It’s a good one. I was going to start my talk with it tomorrow.”
“Spare me, Confucius.”
He concedes with a wave of his hand.
“I remember your labyrinths, Hugo. It’s all you talked about those many years ago. The great metaphor. It’s easy to take a few wrong turns,” he says. “Mistakes can be made. In the end, they constitute a life. Perspective. It’s about perspective. Take a step back. Adjust. Go forward differently. Change a little. Allow yourself that. Why is it so hard?”
I grunt and fold my arms.
“Forgive yourself,” he adds.
* * *
Where am I?
The older neighbourhoods of Barcelona are confusing at the best of times, but it is late now, and dark, and I’ve been drinking all day with very little sleep. In fact, I’ve slept hardly at all these last days. Ten hours? Twelve? What counts as authentic sleep anyway? Something about REM or brainwaves, if I recall. I look down the narrow street, its metal shutters tarted with graffiti. Sexo Policia, someone has sprayed on the concrete wall beside some pipes. I have arrived beside a line of dumpsters to take a piss. Some service lane, though it’s hard to tell in these medieval quarters. Paint a few signs and fit in some wide glass and it could be a shopfront. Instead, double-locked steel doors and vents count as frontage. I drift down the alley. Two men, boys really, chat in the shadow between street lamps. They are in kitchen whites, their aprons splashed with purple and yellow smears. Nearby, a service door has been propped open with a wedge of folded cardboard. A distilled rot of fish wafts from a compost bin but does not conceal the smell of the weed they are smoking. As I approach, they look me over and seem unconcerned, hardly pausing in their tête-à-tête. I am no threat, they’ve silently surmised.
“Buenas noches,” I say, shuffling up to them. One of them sports a goatee, the other is dark-skinned, of North African descent perhaps. They nod, unhurried. It must be a quiet night inside, or dinner has reached a lull. I picture the rattle of coffee cups and spoons. Liqueurs and pastries with rosewater. It’s tempting to find the street front to see what fare they have on offer.
“Can I smoke?” I ask. I gesture to their shared joint. They immediately begin to laugh and shake their heads. They pass the smoke between them, watching me.
“C’mon guys,” I say in English. “Give a man a break. I’m in pain. I got hit by a car today.” I point at my torn, scuffed suit and limp a few demonstrative steps as display of my plight. “Auto,” I say and growl out an engine sound, slapping my palms together for impact. They mutter something in Spanish to each other, laughing, and pass the joint between them again.
“Okay?” the North African asks me, pointing to my leg. “You okay?”
I nod and shrug.
Pinched in his fingers, he holds out the last scrap of the joint.
“Gracias.” I take it and press my lips around the burning paper and weed. It’s been years since I smoked anything, tobacco or otherwise. It took four stern warnings from my doctor to dissuade me from my pack-a-day of yore. But my lungs receive the smoke like an old lapdog, the warm weight shifting and settling into familiar contours.
My benefactors pat me on the shoulder. “Okay,” they say in turn. “Okay, okay.”
They wave at me as they slouch through the back entrance, pull the cardboard away and thump the door shut.
There is enough of the joint to draw a few more lungfuls of the pungent marijuana down my throat before the paper begins to taste like ash.
I flick it onto the cobbles.
There is something attached to my shoe.
Somewhere along the way, I’ve stepped in dogshit.
I look up and down the passage, uncertain which direction I’ve come from. Where is north or south? Which way to go?
Unverifiability.
The secret to a labyrinth is its uniformity, the illusion of movement coupled with the conviction of stasis. The mind is lulled by dull paths and ninety-degree turns. The heart races for the same reason. You believe you’re moving because nothing argues that you aren’t. You keep going because if you stop you might get lost. In suburbs and prisons, we are reassured by homogeneity. It is the source of our panic too. Removed from the source of our wanderings, we are denied the sight of our goal. Inside, we are denied escape. Some have argued labyrinths are sacred spaces, and to walk them is a form of meditation. These Catalan back alleys and side streets, though quaint, reiterate the labyrinthine through their monotony. With their metal shutters lowered, in the dim street lights, the routes look identical to visitors. Bereft of grid patterns, with few right-angle turns, it is nearly impossible to plot any organized headway.
Or it might just be the weed.
Ha ha.
Ha ha ha ha ha.
* * *
By the port, there are raucous shouts along the promenade. A group of five tourists—French, I think—are stumbling up the wide ronda, wheeling around each other, dashing forward and back in thievish scurries, like a band of raccoons. They’ve found some sturdy cardboard box and are kicking it around in an improvised, drunken game of footie. Legs splayed, I squat low by a palm trunk and bounce with my weight on my knees. My arms are out, hands spread. They spot me and laugh, forming a line of forward positions, advancing on me with concentration.
The box is walloped around between them with chaotic punts. The two women watch. They shout encouragement with high-pitched squeals. One of the men, faking a pass, boots the box directly at me. I get my palm on it.
I boot it back.
The cardboard is knocked erratically about for a few more seconds. There is a goal, though no posts can truly confirm this achievement. But we are all exultant, arms raised and voices roaring into the night air.
“Goal!” “Barcelona!” “Goal!”
Just as quickly they are gone, these revellers, waving at me, their voices threading up past the Columbus statue toward La Rambla and into the night.
* * *
I stumble along past the old Customs House to Port Vell’s Olympic renovations. The last time I was here, a replica of Santa Maria was moored by the wharf. Now a marina drawbridge, the Rambla del Mar, crosses the harbour, with two retracting decks, like the gull-wing doors of a DeLorean. The bridge is slick and modern, the walkway’s undulating widths add visual drama to an otherwise mundane conveyance.
I am doing it again.
* * *
The night is funny. I find it quite funny. “Goal!” I am giggling and laughing on a park bench, in the middle of the night, thinking too of Norcock. How silly he is, that studious gravity, that false indifference. I’m finding it very funny and can’t stop laughing at the whole thing.
Two men in oily blue overalls stride past, and though I try to stop laughing, the idea of stopping also seems extremely funny. I consider telling the men they are wearing blue overalls, or even telling them I like their blue overalls, which is funny and I chuckle to myself. “Sexo Policia,” I say out loud. I look down the boardwalk to see if they heard me, but the men are far away now, almost out of sight.
I will say it to the next people I see.
That will be funny.
* * *
I pull my cellphone from my pocket. I should call someone. I’ll call Georgia. It must be morning in Korea. What do they eat for breakfast? I’ll call her and ask her how she’s doing. How are you? I’ll say. I’m in Barcelona. What are you eating for breakfast?
But my cell’s security code isn’t working. I try it three times, tapping out the numbers with the same result. I’m confused. My head is not clear. I reverse the numbers. The phone is dead in my hand. The battery is dead. The screen flashes a little heart with an X crossed through it and then goes blank.
The pleasure boats are lined up at their moorings. I walk along the pier and read the names of the boats.
“Brezza Estiva.” “Gabrijela.” “Utferdstrang.”
Summer families from Italy, Norway, Germany and Croatia.
We learned how to sail, Sarah and I. Once. It was a brief passion of ours. We even talked of buying a boat, but it came to nothing.
Very pleasant here, the inner harbour arrayed with ordered piers, like the street grids of cities.
It is the simplest, logical thing: space and access.
I can hear the banging of steel across at the dockyards, but otherwise it’s very quiet. The prows dip and lift in the jewelled water. The masts and rigging, with their lowered sails, cut a fine picture against the lights of El Raval.
Part 3
Sarah Trimble in the Wilderness
25
What would be nice is if they had a decent coffee place on the drive up here. It wouldn’t be hard. Worth trying. An old-timey sign with an attractive graphic of a steaming coffee cup. Warm interior. Potted plants or something. Ice cream once the summer arrives, some patio umbrellas out front.
Must be a herd of cottagers who would die for something like that.
Instead, greasy donuts and dirty gas stations.
Would be nice if they could pave these roads properly too. Or leave some decent signage prior to the exits, so you’re not constantly jamming on the brake pedal at the last minute, in danger of getting back-ended or pitching into a ditch.
Potholes, crumbling shoulders. The pavement is garbage. Where’s the infrastructure?
I’ll have to write a letter of complaint. I’m a taxpayer etc. Blown tire fib maybe. Danger of injury or death, threats of litigation. Costs. Wear and tear on the vehicle etc. Property values affected. This is certainly no way to stage a sale, with a future of a daily jolting commute.
What would be nice is if it stopped raining.
I’ve got the wipers at full blast, slapping back and forth through the Biblical deluge bucketing into my windshield. I need a shovel rather than wiper blades. I had to pull over for a few minutes at the 307 turnoff. Terrifying. Couldn’t see the median. Tires touching rumble strips. Like driving through a car wash without soap. I should’ve turned back. Should’ve. Stupid day. But my schedule’s limited. I’ve got a meeting on Friday, then something in Toronto this weekend and my creditors have been calling for . . . what is it they are calling for?
Guidance?
Clarity?
I’ll just drive up and take a look. A quick glance around. Home by dinner. No harm.
Had breakfast, at least. Get my stomach into gear to work through the calories. What I like to do now is mix stuff. A bit of bran with yogourt for the brain and bowels. Some walnuts. Dried apricots. Cranberries. Surprises the taste buds. Dates and almonds. Sweet, soft, crunchy. I bolted it down and tried to get on the road in a sweet spot between morning rush hour and those who wait to avoid morning rush hour. A little window there. Like how it’s good at Starbucks a few minutes before nine. When everyone’s left empty seats to get to work. I’ve made a science of not standing in line. Waiting is exhausting.
