Little Misunderstandings of No Importance

  A sharp wail, almost a whistle, came through the wall. This was how Guido woke up when the pain was upon him. Then the wail turned into something heartrending, a whine, punctuated by massive and fearful outcries in the night. Amelia got up and lit the lamp. On the linen cloth covering the toilet table the metal box containing the sterilized syringe, the alcohol and the vials was ready. Now Guido was awake and scratching the wall with a finger; the nail had dug out a furrow in the plaster above his bed. With a small metal saw Amelia opened a vial. She took the syringe from the box and squirted out the water left in the needle. Then she sucked up the contents of the vial, before pointing the syringe upward and pumping out the last air bubbles. Finally she dipped a wad of cotton into the bottle of alcohol and squeezed it out. “I’m coming, Guido,” she called out. She thought of the meaning of pity and knew that her hands were administering it. There was an emptiness in her breast, like an icy tunnel. But the hands holding the syringe were steady, without a shiver, without a tremor.

  ANY WHERE OUT

  OF THE WORLD

  The way things happen! And what determines their course. A trifle. Sometimes it can start with a trifle, with a fragmentary phrase lost in this great world full of phrases and things and faces, in a big city like this one, with squares and subway lines and people hurrying away from their jobs, with trams, cars, parks, and then the placid river. Towards sunset, boats glide down to the river’s mouth, where the city widens into a sprawling, low-roofed, white suburb, with great empty spaces, like eye sockets, among the houses. Vegetation is scarce and there are shoddy little cafés where you can eat standing up, looking at the lights along the coast or seated at rusty red wrought-iron tables that make a scraping sound on the pavement, served by waiters with weary faces and soiled white jackets. Sometimes I wander around there in the evening. I take a slow tram which goes down the Avenida and then wanders through the narrow, crooked streets until it runs along the river. As if it were in a race between two asthmatics, it vies against the tugboats on the other side of the embankment, so close you could reach out and touch them. There are old wooden telephone booths with, occasionally, someone inside—an old woman who seems to have seen better days, a railway worker, a sailor, and I wonder: with whom are they talking? Then the tram circles the Navy Museum, around a square containing three century-old palm trees and stone benches. Poor children play poor children’s games, the same as in my own childhood, skip-rope or hopscotch.

  On this particular evening I got off the tram and started to walk, with my hands in my pockets and my heart pounding; I didn’t know why, unless it was the effect of the simple music coming out of an old gramophone in a certain café, always a waltz in F major or a fado played on the accordion. Here I am, I thought, and nobody knows me; I’m a nameless face among a multitude of nameless faces, nameless here or anywhere else, and this thought caused me torment and a feeling of splendid and superfluous freedom, like that of rejected love. And then I thought nobody knows, nobody suspects anything, nobody can blame me; here I am, scot-free, I can even imagine that nothing happened if I want to. I looked at my reflection in a window. Do I look guilty? I adjusted the knot of my tie and pushed back my hair. My appearance was good, a little weary, perhaps, or slightly sad. Anyone would take me for a man who’s lived his life—nothing special, the usual thing, with some good points and some bad, all of which have left their mark on his face as on any other. Of the rest there’s nothing to be seen. This too gave me a feeling of splendid and superfluous freedom, just as when you’ve wanted for ages to do something and finally you’ve done it. And what was I to do now? Nothing, just nothing. Sit down at a table in that café, stretch out your legs (“Bring me an orange juice and some almonds, thank you”), open the newspaper, which you bought quite lackadaisically since you’ve little interest in the news. Sporting Lisbon tied with Real Madrid in the championship cup, the price of shellfish is going up, the government crisis seems to have been staved off, the mayor has approved the plan to create a pedestrian area in the historical centre of the city, with flower-boxes in the middle of this or that street so that here there will be an oasis for walking and shopping; in some town up north a bus ran off the street and into a corner shop because the driver suddenly had a heart attack and died, not from running into the shop but from a thrombosis; there were no other victims, only damage to the shop which was completely wiped out—it was a shop that carried wedding and first-communion gifts. Then you look at the job offers, but with little interest since the Language School pays well, is close to where you live and takes up only five hours a day; the rest of the time is yours. You can stroll, read and write (something you’ve always enjoyed) or else go to see your favourite films, from the 1950s, you might even give private lessons, like some of your colleagues, if you could endure teaching listless children from good families, for a good fee. Anyhow, let’s have a look; you never can tell. Food products firm, centrally located, seeks salesman good knowledge French, English, P.O. Box 199. Import-export business with Latin America, knowledge English, Spanish, accounting experience preferred. Swiss pharmaceutical house opening city office, German language essential, diploma in chemistry. Shipping company, Bangkok-Hong Kong-Macao line, custody and delivery of merchandise, must be willing to travel. And then the movies. Why not? Tomorrow’s your free day and you can stay out late, even for the midnight show. First a snack down the river at the Port of Santa Maria, shrimp in a sweet-sour sauce and Cantonese rice. There’s a John Ford festival—wonderful—where you can catch The Horse Soldiers (a bit of a bore), Rio Grande, and A Yellow Ribbon. The alternative is a French retrospective, slow-moving intellectual films and the complexities of Marguerite Duras, no thanks. Somewhere they’re showing Casablanca, oh yes, at the Alpha Cinema, never heard of it, must be at the ends of the earth, on a street nobody’s ever heard of. What did Ingrid Bergman do when she came to Lisbon and saw “The End” flashed on the screen? The story should have a sequel, said the reviewer. I know him, a fellow my age with a black moustache and keen eyes, who also writes short stories. But perhaps you’re tired. It must be the humidity. Sometimes a heavy fog rolls in from the Atlantic, penetrates and stops up the pores of your skin and makes your legs feel like two sticks. At the Capitol there’s a reissue of the Duke Jordan record, Sultry Eva and Kiss of Spain ; you remember it perfectly, from Paris, 1964. It was icy cold and you lived on sandwiches; she was still to come, in the mists of the future. Now the Personals; they’re the most interesting because humanity lays itself bare, pitifully hiding behind euphemism. It’s pitiful, yes, the veil of words. Trustworthy widow seeks a lasting friendship. Three special ads with indecipherable abbreviations. A retired man who’s perishing from loneliness. The usual matchmaking agency: why haven’t you come to us to find a kindred spirit? And then, all of a sudden your heart begins to pound furiously, tap, tap, tap; you can hear it in your throat and the people at the other tables must hear it as well. The world loses shape, everything is opaque, lights and sounds fade away, as if an immense, unnatural silence had paralyzed the universe. You look again at the little phrase, you re-read it, there’s a strange taste in your mouth; it’s not possible you think, it’s a horrible coincidence and then you take back the word “horrible” and think: it’s only a coincidence, a matter of chance, one little chance among millions, just a happening. But why is it happening to you, that’s what you ask yourself, and why in this place, at this table, in this newspaper? It’s not possible; you think, it’s a dislocated phrase, a slug that was mislaid at the printer’s, under hundreds of others, and which a careless linotypist pulled out by mistake and put into the want ads. You formulate this hypothesis and others which are even more absurd: they gave me an old paper, by mistake I bought one four years old. The newspaper vendor had it under the counter, it had been there four years and when he saw that I was a foreigner he palmed it off on me; it’s all a cheap trick, not worth losing your head about. In an embarrassed and clumsy manner you turn back to the first page to find the date, b
laming the sea breeze for ruffling the pages and preventing you from folding them back neatly. Of course you’re not nervous, you’re perfectly cool and collected; keep cool now. It’s today’s paper, the paper of this day and of this year in the Gregorian calendar. Yes, today’s. Anywhere out of the world. You re-read the phrase a dozen times over; this isn’t a regular advertisement, it’s a paid, clandestine message in the evening paper, with no mention of a post-office box, a name, address, business, school. Only this: Any where out of the world. And you need to know nothing more, because the phrase drags after it, the way a flooded river carries flotsam in its wake, bits and pieces of words which your memory, with a frightening, icy calm, is putting into order. This life is a hospital where every patient wants to change beds. One would prefer to suffer near the stove, another thinks he can be cured beside the window. “Your orange juice, sir. Sorry, there are no more almonds. Would you care for some other kind of nut?” You make a gesture that might mean either yes or no, wanting not to be interrupted, because now you are looking at the coast, where the lights are once more visible to your eyes, and words and memories too, are lit up in your mind, to the point that you can almost see them shine; they are little lights in the night, obviously far away, and yet you could pick them up and hold them in the palm of your hand. It always seems to me that I should be better off where I am not, and this question of packing up and moving is one which I ceaselessly debate with my soul. You’ve picked up your glass and are taking little sips of juice. You seem a quiet, somewhat dreamy customer, looking, like the customers at other tables, at the river and the night. You’ve folded the newspaper and laid it carefully on the table in the exaggeratedly meticulous manner of certain old men who have borrowed a paper from the barber and have to give it back. You look at it with distracted indifference; it’s only a paper, after all, today’s paper, carrying already stale news, because the day is over and someone, somewhere, is already making up another paper with news that will shortly dispossess the news, coagulated into words, of today. But today’s sheet carries an item four years old and yet very new, disquietingly new. If you were to give in, it would greatly upset you; but you’re not going to give in, you can’t, you must stay cool. Only then do you notice the date—the twenty-second of September. A coincidence, you say to yourself again. But a coincidence with what? An impossible second coincidence, not only of words but also of dates, the same date and the same phrase. And nothing can stop it; it’s as if it had a voice of its own in your memory, like a clinging childish singsong which you thought you’d shaken off because it had been engulfed in the past, but it hadn’t really disappeared; it lay in a deep recess within you, until now its rhythm is re-awakened and its phrasing begins to drip, tic, tic, tic—it pushes against a rocky wall, it buzzes and gropes for an outlet, then bursts forth like a spring, bathing you in tepid water, which somehow makes you shiver, and finally pulls you into its eddies with a power that it’s useless to resist, violently and irresistibly whirling through subterranean tunnels as it leads you on. Tell me, dear heart, dear chilled heart, what would you say to going to live in Lisbon? It’s surely warm there and you’d revive like a lizard under the sun. The city’s at the water’s edge and they say it’s built of marble. You see it is a country after my own heart; a landscape made up of light and stone, and water to reflect them! And so you walk slowly through this marble city, between eighteenth-century buildings and arcades that witnessed the days of colonial trade, sailing ships, the bustle and the foggy dawns of anchors being weighed. Your solitary footsteps raise an echo; there’s an old beggar leaning against a pillar, beyond the arches there’s the square right on the river, licked by its muddy waters; the brightly lighted boats providing a ferry service to the opposite shore are taking off from the pier; soon the haste of the last passengers will be swallowed up by the dark, leaving only the silent night, peopled by a few distracted night-walkers—unquiet souls carrying their sleepless bodies around and talking to themselves. You talk to yourself, too, first in silence, then out loud, articulating your words very distinctly as if you were dictating them, as if the river could take them down and preserve them in some watery archive, amid the sand, pebbles, and rubbish of the sea floor. Until finally you say: guilt. A word you’ve never pronounced before, perhaps because you didn’t have the nerve, and yet a simple, unequivocal word, which echoes clearly in the darkness and seems to enter, completely, into the halo of your breath, where it is condensed for a moment in the damp air before fading away. You enter the empty square; the monument is impressive and the tall rider spurs his horse into the night. Guilt. You sit on the base of the monument and light a cigarette; the folded newspaper is in your pocket and the mere feel of it gives you a sense of subtle discomfort, like the prick of a pin or an insect on the nape of your neck. It’s not possible, nobody knows I’m here, I’m lost among the world’s million faces; it can’t be a message for me, it’s only a phrase that many people know, it’s another reader of Baudelaire who’s secretly conveying a secret to somebody else. And for a moment you follow up the strange idea of a repetition, a doubling-up, as if it were plausible that the wheel of fate should possess stereotypes and print them out haphazardly, in the lives of other people with different eyes and hands and ways of being, in different streets and rooms. Another man, then, talking to another woman in another room, a room that is like a dream. And your fantasy creates the lighted window of a room that is itself a fantasy. You can approach the misted window and peek through the old lace curtains. It’s a room with antique furniture, and wallpaper with a faded tulip design. A man and a woman are on the bed; it’s evident from the position of the bodies and the rumpled sheets that they’ve been making love. He strokes her head and says: “Let me keep on breathing the scent of your hair.” At that moment a clock strikes. “It’s late,” she says; “I must go.” But you answer: “The Chinese tell time by a cat’s eye. It’s not time yet, Isabelle, everything has yet to happen: I’ve still to involve you in the real betrayal, but it won’t be my fault, believe me, it’s the fault of things that will it so—who knows what determines their course?—and you have still to let yourself be involved in the betrayal; but it won’t be your fault either, and then, in my own way, I’ll have to bring about your death, but this, too, won’t be my fault. It will be your remorse, and meanwhile he’ll know nothing of my betrayal, only one day a notice in the newspaper, a short, secret phrase, which only we two know—Anywhere in the world—will be the signal, and then everything will happen.” Instead, everything had already happened, only the man in that room didn’t know it and said: “You’re right, it’s late. Go along, and I’ll go afterwards.”

  Now you leave the café and walk across the square. A prostitute in a car signals to you with the headlights but you shake your head, still thinking: it’s not possible, it’s just a coincidence, a trick of fate. But something tells you it’s no such thing. A chill has penetrated your bones and its iciness is a sort of certainty; the cathedral clock rings out the same hour as a clock rang four years before, you think again that it’s a repetition of the same story; perhaps I could eat something—I’m just cold and hungry. A tram goes by, but you don’t want to get on. You prefer to go on foot up the steep street leading from the river to the castle; there are laughing foreign tourists and sightseeing buses and an Indian restaurant where you often go for a chicken balchao—the owner is a fellow from Goa who talks his head off, perhaps he drinks too much, but he makes a sauce that goes well with the rice and sometimes he serves a spiced wine. Two American couples are happily eating near the window; the table lamps have checked red-and-white shades which make for a cosy, intimate atmosphere; the floor is somewhat dirty, with paper napkins that have fallen from the tables and not been picked up. Senhor Colva is less talkative than usual, he looks tired, perhaps because the place has been too crowded. “The balchao may be a bit spicy,” he says. “I’ll bring you some cold beer.” He is unfailingly attentive without a touch of servility. Then, with the air of sudd
enly remembering something, he taps his forehead, as if to admit his forgetfulness and to beg pardon for it at the same time. He walks, with short steps, over to the bar and comes back smiling. “Your paper,” he says. You stare at the paper in his outstretched hand but do not reach out to take it. You feel yourself turning pale and sweating cold sweat; you touch your jacket. Your paper, neatly folded, is in the slightly bulging pocket where you had put it. You look at the paper that Senhor Colva is holding but do not reach out to take it. What he reads on your face is only surprise, not the terror that you feel like a stream of ants climbing from your ankles to your groin. “They must have brought it for you,” he says; “you’re the only one to read this particular paper.” “Ah, yes,’ you manage to answer with frightening calm, “but who brought it?” “I don’t know, sir; my son found it this morning under the door. There was a wrapping around it, of course, but the rascal tore it off in order to read about the soccer match. You know, don’t you, that Sporting Lisbon tied with Real Madrid?” You agree that this is an achievement, too bad the game wasn’t on TV. They say that Sporting deserved to win if it hadn’t been for the incident with the cross bar and, of course, the referee; in such cases the referee is all-important, although Real have a very fine pitch and fans who are perfect gentlemen … but was he sure that your name was on the wrapping of this paper? He looked around, puzzled. You’ll have to forgive the boy, today young people don’t know how to behave; in his time it was different, they got the whip. He put on a serious expression and retreated with his quick short steps to the back of the room. Just before the kitchen there was a stairway leading to his living quarters. You know perfectly well that your name wasn’t on the wrapping although you can’t be certain for the simple reason that something of this kind is without certainty or explanation, that’s the truth; and then you begin to ponder what it really means to demand an explanation of something like that which is happening. Or an explanation of all that did happen, yes, all, getting to the bottom of it—she, he, you, and the pinwheel of subterfuges, postponements, and confusions which go to make up the whole story. Then you begin to allot the moral responsibilities, and that’s the worst thing of all because it leads nowhere; as you well know, life can’t be measured in moral terms, it simply happens. But he didn’t deserve it. That’s certain. And she knew that he didn’t deserve it. Equally certain. And you knew that she knew that he didn’t deserve it, and you didn’t care. Yes, but why shouldn’t you have deserved to stay with her? You met her only later, much later, didn’t you, that’s true, too—it was after all the chips were down. But what chips? Life has no such deadlines, no croupier who raises his hand to indicate that the chips are down to stay; everything moves on and nothing stands still. Why should we remain apart after we’d found each other, as the real game seemed to have decreed: the same tastes—white houses with scrawny palm trees or scarce vegetation, agaves, tamarinds, a rock; the same passions—Chopin or minimalist music, old rumbas, Tiengo el corazon maluco; the same nostalgia—the spleen de Paris. Let’s get away from this place and this spleen and look for a city of white marble at the water’s edge; let’s look together for such a city or another like it, it doesn’t matter where, anywhere out of the world. “I can’t.” “Yes, you can, if you want to.” “Please don’t force me.” “I’ll send you a message. I’m leaving, I’ve already left, I can’t stand it any longer, join me if you choose, buy this paper, it will be the signal and tell you where to find me, leave everything, no one will know.” No one can know, you’re thinking while Senhor Colva makes an apologetic gesture from the back of the restaurant, which you wave away. You and she were the only ones to know, and Baudelaire. You played a game with him, too—certain things aren’t to be fooled around with; you musn’t needle the mystery that brought them about. But no one else knew, of this you’re certain. He didn’t know, that’s sure, and if he did know, it’s ancient history. Because at present everything’s “ancient history”: that’s why your hands shake as you pay the bill. It doesn’t make any sense. Yet there is some sense to it, you know this or rather feel it. And you want to put it to the test. You go to the telephone near the washroom, insert a coin, and dial that dead number. This too is ancient history; the telephone company hasn’t given it to anyone else, so it hangs loose, a group of figures which transmit an acoustic signal to nobody; you’ve known that all too well for four years. You dial the number slowly, you hear one, two, three rings, then the receiver clicks, but no voice answers; you feel only a presence, not even a breath, because it doesn’t breathe. At the other end of the wire there’s only a presence which is there to listen to the presence of your silence. And so you hang up and go out onto the street. You’ve no intention of going home, because you know that the telephone would ring, one, two, three times, you’d pick up the receiver and hold it to your ear and there would be nothing from the other end, only the distinct density of a presence listening in silence to the silence of your presence. You go back to the river; the boat traffic is suspended for the night and the piers are deserted. You sit on the embankment wall, the water is muddy and rippling; perhaps it’s high tide and the river can’t work its way to the sea. You know that it’s late, but not merely by the clock; the hour around you is as vast and solemn as space, a motionless unit of time which is not marked on the dial and is as light as a sigh, as quick as a glance.