After the Winter, page 12
When I heard this, I thought of Tom and of how pleased he would have been with this Caribbean creed. I felt a pain in my chest I chose to ignore.
We did not manage to get very far along the winding paths of Père-Lachaise. Despite her stubbornness and her attempts to hide it, Haydée was still injured and we were all concerned she would get worse if she forced herself to walk too far. When we got to the third avenue in the cemetery, Julián suggested we sit down on some large steps and asked Haydée to show him her sprain. The ankle had gone blue, nearly black. Claudio, accustomed to New York hours, offered to go and buy a bandage. We had to tell him that at 6:00 p.m. on a Sunday evening it was rather unlikely he would find a pharmacy that was open. I looked down at him from up on my stone step. The light was shining on his face and made him seem several years younger. Under that almost supernatural sunbeam, he looked familiar to me. I would not be able to say where or when, perhaps in the photographs Haydée had at her house, but I was sure that I had seen him before. He had stood up impulsively, and now did not know what to do. So he amused himself by reading the inscription on the grave to our right.
“It’s Kreutzer’s grave!” he shouted, as if we were a long way away and could not hear him.
But he was all on his own. No one else knew who this was.
He had to explain that he had been one of the best violinists in Chopin’s time.
“Beethoven’s Violin Sonata No. 9 is dedicated to him. The famous Kreutzer Sonata, which inspired the title of a Tolstoy novel.”
Haydée gave an ironic smile.
“Yeah, right. That novel everyone knows.”
I wondered what Tom would have thought of Claudio and the tombs he liked so much.
It had begun to rain. Fine drops of water were falling on our heads. The guard walked past, very close to us, ringing his little bell.
“Ça va fermer, messieurs, dames!”
“What shall we do about your leg?” Julián said.
I suggested we go over to my apartment to have a cup of tea. I would have something in a drawer somewhere we could bandage her ankle up with.
Haydée mentioned the stairs.
“We didn’t sleep there last night because of them, remember?”
“If you like I’ll go up on my own and bring you down a bandage,” I said. “But we’ve got two strong men with us today who can carry you upstairs.”
Claudio took charge of carrying her up to my apartment. I was glad I had not slept at home the previous night. As a result it was tidy, with no dirty glasses on the little table or Haydée’s fag ends stubbed out on dirty plates.
I saw Claudio give me an approving look.
“Would you like a glass of water?” I said. “You must be exhausted.”
After making several flattering remarks about the simplicity and austerity of my home—completely unintentional—he downed three glasses of water, slurping like a horse. Then he sat down heavily on the sofa next to poor Haydée, who was staring silently at her foot. I offered everyone a mint tea and, while the water was boiling, went into my room to look for a bandage in the chest of drawers. In the living room, none of my guests spoke. The silence went on for several minutes, until the soft notes of a piano could be heard: Claudio had put a disc into my CD player, an Albéniz concert played by Alicia de Larrocha, which he had bought in FNAC before meeting us.
Miraculously I found the bandage, among a tangle of T-shirts and underwear. I put it on the coffee table and went back to the kitchen to turn the gas off and pour the hot water over the mint leaves.
Not much else happened that afternoon. After drinking our tea with pine nuts, Moroccan- and Belleville-style, my guests left, each to go back to their homes, except for Claudio, who was flying back to New York first thing the next day and had a dinner to attend close to his hotel. We said goodbye very naturally, certain that there was already a growing complicity between us. I told him not to forget his CD, but he refused to take it with him. As soon as I had closed the door, I sat down on the sofa to carry on listening to it and, not long after, fell asleep. In the morning, Haydée’s friend rang me from the airport to say goodbye. It was a brief but warm call, and confirmed the good impression I had already formed of him. He thanked me for inviting him to my house and said he was very glad to have added me to his list of Parisian friends. Then he hung up, but just before doing so, as he replaced the telephone on its cradle in the booth, I caught the sound of another animal sigh.
Several hours later, a new message popped up on my computer screen.
Claudio had sent me a declaration of love, quoting César Vallejo.
At the moment the message from New York arrived, the first in a long series, my world, as paradoxical as it might sound, was made up of an absence. It was a world in negative, where everything was a reminder of someone not there. The places and objects of my daily life, the boulevard outside, the main door to my building, the windows in my apartment, and the view from them of the sprawl of Père-Lachaise and the treetops, the walls in my room, the sheets on my bed, the radio playing; everything betrayed Tom’s absence and, as such, all these objects were frustrating to see and to touch. Claudio’s message, those terse, unexpected lines that expressed in all candor his happiness at having met me, had a similar effect. They underlined the lack of communication between Tom and me, our lengthy silence. Waiting for someone, at least in this way, is equivalent to canceling out one’s own existence, loaning it out for an unknown period of time, exchanging it for a meaningless, absurd doubt. To be obsessed with someone who has decided to absent themselves is to gift minutes, hours, and whole days of our life to someone who has not asked for and does not want them; it is to condemn those minutes, hours, and days to the dimension of lost time, of the futile; to waste the infinite number of possibilities that this time offers us and trade it in for the worst of all options: frustration, suffering. I read the e-mail three times, quite taken aback. How easy it seemed, all of a sudden, to sit down and write a few friendly words to thank someone for an encounter. How sad that Tom—whatever his circumstances might have been—was unable to make such an effort. Before I replied, I decided to go for a walk to shake off my mood. It was a brilliant morning with a clear sky, an unusual day for this time of year. But that sun, that beauty, were also painful for me. Absence prevailed like a toxic rush of water spilling over uncontrollably, soaking everything. I felt angry with myself for not being able to enjoy the lovely weather and the new friendship hovering into view in my life. Who was Tom compared with the force and splendor of nature? An insignificant individual among several millions; more than that, an intangible memory. How much did it matter that he was not here in a city so overflowing with beauty? Avec des si on mettrait Paris en bouteille, they say round here, and this is exactly what I was doing: bottling the city, turning it into a compressed, gray miniature, impossible to enjoy. When I got home, I switched on the CD player with the album Claudio had left behind and remembered his face in the cemetery, illuminated by that strange late afternoon light. After trying out two or three possible replies, I decided to write this:
I’m still trying to decipher the familiar sensation I felt when I met you, almost as if I recognized you.
In any case—know that it was a pleasure.
As I listened to the record, I made another mint tea and stood for a long time in front of the window. I thought of the lives of those million or so people now buried over there: I thought of the intensity with which many of them would have passed through the world, struggling to leave something valuable behind so that they would be remembered forever; and I thought of all the other people whose names did not feature on the list of celebrities and whose biographies had passed into oblivion. Did they feel anything? Did they think, as Tom claimed they did? What if our existence were a kind of mold, a mold like the one a sculptor or a metal worker uses? I wondered. If each experience we have while we are alive, each emotion, each thought, were equivalent to a record made just once and then listened to passively, again and again, with no possibility of modifying anything—would we waste time in the way we do, tormenting ourselves with painful thoughts and ideas to be repeated for all eternity? I stood and thought about this for a good while before concluding that we would. The most likely scenario was that, even if we knew this were the case, we would not stop doing it. I am afraid it is a kind of inertia, I told myself, an uncontrollable behavior like that of insects, which we like to think of as so stupid—and which, at the same time, seems strangely familiar—when we see them carry out their repetitive routines, not to mention flying close to a flame or smashing into windows (an image, incidentally, which appears with suspicious frequency in literature). But supposing that, on the contrary, informed of the definitive nature of our time on earth, we could choose how we wanted eternity to play out, what would we choose to do, to think or to say? What would our final judgment look like? I could not find an answer. That night I received another message:
It seems that exactly the same thing happened to us both. I know what that recognition is, Cecilia. You’ll know it too, when you see me again.
The sun stayed out all the following week, and little by little, I began to notice the beneficial effects of the Indian summer on my state of mind. Tom never wrote back to me after that first postcard, and nor did he call after that first message and, although I had not forgotten his scent, his closeness, his tenderness (which, despite the silence, I did not totally mistrust), I began to think more and more of Claudio and to enjoy his frequent letters, as if life had somehow determined to compensate for such scarcity with the sublime silver tongue of this Cuban. When a relationship, no matter how intense, opens up so much space for uncertainty and frustration, it makes room for other interests, other hopes.
On Wednesday I decided to go back to the swimming pool I occasionally went to and which I had not visited since Tom left, partly because of the cold and a little bit due to the paralyzing apathy I was dragging around with me. As I was leaving my building, I found a package in the postbox. It came from New York and was in the shape of a CD. I had time to go up and open it in my apartment, but I was afraid to hang around. I decided to leave it for when I got back. Before setting out, I had a look in Tom’s postbox, stuffed with bills and junk mail. The pool helped me to relax and meant I came back hungry. I made some pasta and poured in sauce from a jar. I opened the package in front of the steaming plate of food. It was Dark Intervals by Keith Jarrett, whom I had never listened to. Before I put it on, I washed up the plates and tidied the kitchen. When I had finished, I realized I had another e-mail. It was a set of instructions for listening to the CD:
Cecilia—I suppose by now you’ll have received the package. I decided to send it because I need to explain a few things to you, and because I know that I wouldn’t be able to say anything either as exactly or as frankly precise as what this piece of music says and what I hope it tells you about me. Close your eyes and listen to “Americana.” When you get to 2:19, or 2:56, or 4:16, or 5:25, or 6:11, imagine me by your side. Or put on “Hymn,” and listen to as much of it as you can from 1:11 onward. This is what I am trying to tell you, imperfectly, like taking you by the hand, like being on the road right this minute, heading somewhere, watching you look at what is near, at what is far away.
I must admit that I did not pay any attention to these instructions, but they did give me a clue as to the personality of this new friend Haydée had described as “odd.” It was not the only time. More than inspiring repulsion or curiosity, such a level of precision bored me. And so I listened to the CD the same way I almost always listen to music I put on at home, carefully and quietly, in front of the window. Then I wrote to Claudio to thank him. From then on, I began receiving CDs with instructions for listening to them as he would suggest. There were messages, too, in which he asked me to go to a certain park or museum and observe a sculpture from particular angles, how far I should walk from the front of the piece to one of the cardinal points, and how best to tilt my body so as to bring such and such a detail into focus. How on earth did he have such a good memory? Did he get this information from a notebook somewhere, with things he has scribbled down during his years in Paris, or was it simply a kind of madness? Looking back at it now, I am inclined to think it was the latter.
Claudio:
Today was an incredible day, just as how I imagine days in New York to be. It was cold, but the sky was intensely blue and the sun was shining. I went out for a swim this morning for the first time in ages. Afterwards, I went home and sat down to listen to Dark Intervals, which arrived in the post today. Thanks for sending it. It’s great that your rhapsodies in the key of Jarrett reach as far as Paris, but can I ask you a favor: please don’t idealize me. I can’t bear to disappoint people.
UNCERTAINTY
Ever since returning to Manhattan, I have been trying to avoid Ruth as much as possible. Being with her fills me with despair now. Her snobbish frivolity, the attitude she has of a spoiled little girl who has obtained everything she has without lifting a finger and yet still indulges in the luxury of getting depressed; it insults me. The last thing I want is to hurt her and this is the main reason I continue to spend time with her, at the price of a guilty conscience. As I feast on delicacies in her Tribeca loft, I think of Cecilia. I imagine her sleeping, or eating breakfast alone, across from the cemetery, deprived of my embrace, face to face with that implacable lucidity that characterizes her, with no one to protect her, to guide her along that painful path I know so well, the path of beings such as she and I, incapable of deceiving ourselves. While Ruth chatters away, plays with her nails, chooses a tablecloth to go with the vase of roses she has put on the table this evening, and takes out bottle after bottle of the most expensive wine to indulge me, the remaining embers of the desire she once made me feel are slowly dying out. In their place has arisen a nostalgia for this other life being lived far away from me, with nothing I can do to stop it, or almost nothing, apart from writing to Cecilia with everything I cannot say to her in person.
I cannot deny that I have gone back to those peach-colored sheets and yielded to sessions of violent sex. Sometimes there is a force in my body I can only release through acts such as these. But in the morning, whether I awake on the satin sheets or in the sobriety of my own room, the first thought that comes to my mind is Cecilia, the existence of Cecilia, and her absence, painful like a snakebite. It is then that looking at Ruth sleeping by my side becomes unbearable. If before I was not satisfied with my deficient existence with her, the sensation it gives me now is of lying in a bottomless vacuum, certain of not finding myself where I should be, of failing in everything I do. Cecilia, meanwhile, gives me inner peace. All I have to do is think of her to feel it.
November was a strange month and very different from the rest of my life in New York. I was euphoric at having finally found the ideal woman, at her constant presence in my fantasies, and at her positive reaction to my messages. Even so, I was still visiting Ruth. One part of me, the most honorable and moralistic, demanded I put an end to this habit. If now I had the intention of being as far as possible a better man, of reaching my full potential, it was due to Cecilia, not to Ruth, and especially not for Ruth. Why, convinced as I was that this certainty in my life I mentioned before was finally before me, did I not act in this spirit and send the old thing packing once and for all? It was getting harder and harder to hold a conversation with her, and I felt less and less like sleeping curled up next to her. Not even sex interested me now. Meanwhile, the correspondence with Cecilia, no matter how scant it was, kept me in a mood that favored sublime feelings over physical sensations. Instead of such elation strengthening my spirit, however, I saw myself acting with hideous faint-heartedness with regard to Ruth. Now, perhaps to excuse my behavior, I tell myself that the experience of love, when it is as indisputable as this, brings with it the threat of revolution, of radical change, of renversement. And no matter how much we avoid—or put off, as was my case—making abrupt, untimely decisions, everything seems to be on the point of collapse, of an earth-shattering tremor. When a love of this magnitude appears, when it foists itself upon you, the fragility you feel is enormous. And it is natural and inevitable that you look for something to cling to, no matter how absurd or mistaken this might be, so you don’t feel you are being swallowed up by the abyss: work, everyday habits, but also relationships with the people who make up your universe prior to the shattering encounter. This, at least, is how I explain to myself my cowardly attitude toward the old thing. Ruth gave me all the security that Cecilia took from me merely by existing, by having appeared in my life. Unlike Cecilia, whose feelings I knew very little of, she was happy with me, was happy spoiling and indulging me, welcoming me into her aura of luxury and comfort. I harbored no doubts about this and could only acknowledge her constant benevolence. I felt grateful, concerned about her, and doubtless a certain amount of affection. No small thing, although not enough, either. Nevertheless, as soon as my moralistic side began pressuring me to let her go and honor my undeniable love for Cecilia as I should, I was flooded by a feeling not dissimilar to grief. On a couple of occasions, as I relaxed in the armchair in the loft after a sumptuous dinner, watching as Ruth dutifully cleared the table or arranged some magazines on the bookshelves, I tried to organize in my mind the reasons for a breakup, the way to express it. Then I recalled the vulnerability she had displayed in the days prior to our trip, the naïve enthusiasm with which she had voiced her wish to live with me. The childlike expression on her face would seem suddenly defenseless—far more than usual—and the explanations about our inevitable breakup would vanish before I could even formulate them in silence. It is not that it was impossible for me to do without Ruth—far from it; but thinking about breaking up with her made me start to miss her. The need to end the relationship sharpened my affection and made me suffer prematurely. Moreover, to be totally honest, my practical spirit would frequently oppose the breakup, and not without reason: Ruth lived in New York, Cecilia did not. My work was in this city, and everyone knows how hard it is to find a job as flexible and well paid as mine was. It is true that my love for Cecilia justified anything, including leaving everything behind to set myself up in Paris to try to make a life by her side. However, reason and prudence, two deities I have paid tribute to my whole life, advised me to wait before making a decision like this, before giving up something that meant a daily escape from the tensions of working life, before hurting someone who had only ever been infinitely patient, caring, and good to me. If things went well with Cecilia, if I managed to make her feel something similar or in proportion to what she inspired in me, then I could try to get her to live in New York to finish her studies, without having to give up my job. To do this, however, it would be necessary to act with tact and caution. Give her time to take things in, not force anything. My strategy with Ruth would have to be equally judicious so I didn’t cause hurt. Sooner or later—of this I was convinced—I would have to shake her off, move our courtship toward the terrain of friendship, but the transition would need to be stealthy, almost imperceptible. And this is what I attempted after our return from Paris. The problem, as ever, lay in that feminine ability to detect danger, to correctly read any sign of inattention or lack of interest. From the moment we got back, Ruth started asking me all the time what I was thinking about. She would wake several times in the night, dreaming that I was leaving her. She even began to jealously interrogate me about the day I had gone to see Haydée, as if her subconscious understood that this meeting signified the turning point in our story, the moment the scales had tipped down toward a definitive “no.”
