Bad Light (11 page)

N
o one kisses like the desperate
.

MANUEL VILAS

It wasn’t long before I wrote to Nadia. In my head I drafted email after email, how many I couldn’t say. I’d head out for a stroll and I’d be writing to her. I’d duck into a bar to grab a coffee and I’d be writing to her. I’d be watching a movie and writing to her at the same time, letting myself be swept along in a frenzy of words. Also in my head I tore up sheet after sheet of paper before kicking them to one side. Then I’d start afresh. Dear Nadia. Esteemed Nadia. Just the name
Nadia
and nothing else. You don’t know me. I’m a friend of Jacobo’s. I’m not sure how to tell you this. I don’t know if you’ve heard the news of his death. He was murdered, in fact. If you did know, then you’ll know how dreadful it was. If you’re finding out now, if these words are the first you’ve heard, I’d like you to imagine them accompanied by a warm embrace for you. I’d like to see you. I don’t understand a thing. I’d like to see you so that we can talk.

She called me that very night. I was lying on the couch and eating a pizza while watching a documentary about double agents during the Second World War when the phone rang. It was a minute or two after midnight. I turned down the volume on the TV, and Nadia’s voice reached me over a backdrop of black-and-white images of soldiers striding through the snow. It’s me, she said. She did not identify herself with her name. She simply said
it’s me
, as if there were no way I might be expecting any other call. As if she were my wife or something. She did not, as I had imagined, have a Russian accent. In fact, she had no accent at all, and she spoke very softly, as if she were afraid of waking someone. It was one of those rather catlike voices, with a natural inclination toward whispering that make you rue the fact that you are not on sufficiently intimate terms to change the subject all of a sudden and come out with the sort of lovey-dovey drivel spouted by lovers who live far apart and who call each other every day after dinner, without much to say, their hands toying with the buttons on their pants. I told her how events had unfolded, what little I knew, in reality, while the TV screen showed bombs falling from the skies of London and Dresden and columns of prisoners taken on the Russian front and marched semi-barefoot toward the trucks, their eyebrows white from the frost. Nadia could barely get a word out. She stuttered a little, and her silences were so lengthy it sometimes seemed to me as if the line had gone dead. I had no wish to lie to her about how I had come across her name. After thanking me again for the information in a somewhat stilted, almost inaudible fashion, she seemed in a hurry to hang up. Though she made no protest in that moment, it was clear that she did not like the idea of a stranger reading her letters one bit. Without much conviction, she began to outline a farewell that I was in no mood to hear. The unusual circumstances in which we were talking for the first time, the brutality of the murder, and all the rest besides freed me from any need to stand on ceremony, so I came straight out and asked her who she was. Who are you, Nadia? Where did you come from? The TV was now showing how by applying a special product with a paintbrush, messages written by spies in invisible ink would appear. And also how much information can fit inside a single typewritten period when looked at later under a microscope, everything you need to know about the enemy’s plans in less than one square millimeter. Somewhat half-heartedly, Nadia began to explain how she and Jacobo had met, the “friendly” relationship they’d had, making light of the matter—a meal, the odd stroll here and there, three or four conversations, in some of which my name had cropped up. There were cardboard dummy planes and tanks at the Pas De Calais in an attempt to throw the Germans off the scent and keep them away from the Normandy coast. Nothing was what it seemed, let alone what it claimed to be, as I listened to Nadia’s voice on the other end of the line. Her breathing was the biggest giveaway, the alarm in her voice. I want to see you, Nadia. I want to see you, now that the Spanish troops are all set to cross the Oder and Stalin is bellowing from high up on a balcony draped in flags, now that Eva Braun, in the heart of the Alps, is shooting a full-color film of her nieces showing off their new dresses, playing with a ball and smiling for the camera. I want to see you, now that the diggers are beginning to unearth the dead bodies at Auschwitz and the snow is starting to melt in Leningrad. I want you to tell me what’s going on here, I want to see those thighs in the photo up close, to reach out and touch them, I want you to come wearing that same dress, with your Greek sandals, I want to hear what the tremor in your voice sounds like in person and to see if it has anything worth listening to in the midst of these nights that are shackled to one another, each one strangled by its own chain, because you know what? I’m on my own now, and I’m pretty drunk tonight, and I’m speaking to you from an apartment that festers in darkness at all hours, no matter whether I turn on every light and fling the windows wide open, for it’s as if the darkness is born beneath the beds, right where the dead bodies would sleep in your childhood and you’d look and it seemed there was nothing there, but they were there, all right, and they burst forth now, so late in the day, and the darkness that springs forth from down there below then clings to the walls, and is oily, too, and it sticks to the fingers and to the mirror and fills everything with shadows and cannot be removed with detergents of any type or gusts of wind or any music whatsoever, an apartment in which everything right now is upside down, upturned drawers emptied onto the dining room table, books that might or might not burn in the bathtub, I haven’t decided yet, albums and notebooks piled up on the floor, ready for the day when I can bring myself to look at them, to turn the pages without closing my eyes or looking away. Come, for Berlin is now a vast expanse of smoldering ruins, the survivors make their way through the rubble, their eyes glazed over, and everyone is looking for bread and counting the dead, Nadia, you who hold between your legs the key to the secret, the meaning of the meaninglessness, and all the light I’d like to drink tonight. A dead man who slipped through the same hole through which I’d say my life is ebbing away as we speak, as I munch on a now cold pizza and watch as the Jews, their heads bowed, march toward the gas chamber, and everything is sinking, now and at the same time in the past, into the same mud, outside time, and I’m talking to you and you’re telling me nothing.

I came away with the promise of a meeting the following day. A coffee. It’s astonishing how long it’s been since I last wondered what to wear tomorrow. That delightful problem—which shirt, which jacket, sunglasses or no sunglasses, what pair of shoes to carry me to wherever she might be.

Some of the mechanisms that Nadia’s voice, more than her conversation in and of itself, triggered inside me, together with the painstaking search I was conducting of my own apartment at that time, with all of the papers, forgotten objects, and old photos that turned up in drawers and folders and the most unlikely of nooks and crannies, made my thoughts turn more than might be desirable to the presence of love over the course of my life, in general terms, you might say, and to whether it might be possible to come up with some sort of story of that presence over time, whether there might be a sort of thread on which to pull that might, following a pattern, somehow bind together the collection of triumphs and wounds, or if it all came down, at most, to disjointed episodes, more or less blurry in the memory, like out-of-focus images or snatches of songs without an overriding melody that might bestow on them something akin to a meaning. I have a stack of letters in different handwriting bound together with one of those hair bands, a strip of photos from a photo booth, now all but faded to nothing, showing me and Laura horsing around and pulling faces before kissing each other solemnly for posterity, various hats at the top of my closet, single-use bottles of shampoo stolen from hotels with something scribbled on the label (those middle-of-the-night check-ins, trying to keep the stiff cock beneath your pants hidden from view behind the counter and the girl two paces behind, her eyes on the floor), scraps of paper bearing messages left for me over time on a host of bedside tables, from promises of eternity to notes saying “be right back,” a little box made from what I guess might be mother-of-pearl in which I keep two rings, a green plastic one that was given to me one night beneath a vast moon in Berlin Park when I was fifteen years old, and a gold wedding band with a name and a date engraved on the inside (if I look long and hard at that word and those numbers, there comes a point when their meaning all of a sudden evaporates and all I can see is the material, pure and simple, the grooves once etched onto the metal by a small machine). I have a ton of stuff that may or may not be connected in some way, I’m not sure, nor do I know if the pain it causes me to touch them is of the same kind. I think of the faces I have held in my hands, caressing a cheek with my thumb, and of how eyes and lips now blend into one, when my battered memory brings forth from parted lips the wrong taste or a tongue that should not be there.

On Sundays, a thousand years ago now, I had to attend mass with my siblings and parents. When we went in the morning, we’d head to the Church of the Salesian Brothers of Francisco Rodriguez, and if, as tended to be the case, we ended up putting it off until the evening, then we’d have to make our way, for scheduling reasons, to the parish of San Antonio on the Calle Bravo Murillo, up near the Alvarado subway stop. This was, above all in winter, the saddest moment of the entire week. Though I was still too young and what the grown-ups liked to call those awkward teenage years were still a long way off, throughout the entire ceremony, I could not stop staring at the women’s legs. I couldn’t tear my eyes away and took particular pleasure in observing them from behind. The stitching in their panty hose, the shape their high-heeled shoes gave their calves. Panty hose of the nude, black, and sheer varieties. I also liked it when they knelt down in unison at the sound of the bell that gave the command from the altar, and when they gently beat their cleavages, saying, “Through my most grievous fault,” there, flanked by rows of lit candles, the gloved hands, the shawls, the breviaries, that whole mixture of perfumes. I dreamt that they’d stand still for me, that they’d get to their knees at the urging of my command, too. And I fantasized, too, about a sort of magic spell that would pin them to the spot, while my parents were blinded and time came to a standstill. Everyone, myself excepted, as if frozen inside the church. Which was when I’d wander over to a few of them, the ones I’d picked out beforehand, undoing a button here and there, all very slowly, running the tips of my fingers over their lips. I’d touch their hair and, I think, their knees. But it was not long before such caresses struck me as lacking, too meager for a dream in which nothing is out of bounds, in which anything goes, with time stopped in its tracks and the whole world blind. I’d grab a large kitchen knife and plunge it into their calves, in a downward, almost vertical, motion. But they did not stir or fully awake in the mental performance I staged—it did not hurt them, they made no attempt to flee, they did not scream. I was frightened by such a powerful yearning to watch as the blood ran down their legs, becoming trapped in every angle of their mesh tights, all that softness stained with the red of painted lips or of the sign on a whorehouse. Perhaps love was not the word, but it sure seemed that way. There was no need to wonder whether all of that was sinful. It had to be, no two ways about it. Not a sin of word or deed or omission but rather, in this case, of thought, and a mortal one at that. I expected nothing less. Fear of burning in the eternal flames, or, more to the point, of deserving to burn in that fire, made me feel wretched and alive.

My uncle slaughtered lambs almost every evening, so that my grandmother would have plenty to slice and sell the following day at the butcher’s she ran. I never missed a single killing, my eyes opened wide in astonishment, nor did I bat an eyelid at the sight of that ritual replayed over and over again in silence beneath a naked bulb and dozens of flies hovering nearby. I was seven years old, then eight, then nine, and so on, summer after summer. My grandfather would tether their four legs firmly together with the string used to make bundles of hay, before sharpening his knife on a corner of the barnyard wall, now worn away, then slit their throats from one side to another, gripping them tight between his other hand and his left knee. In no time, the bucket he had set on the floor would fill to the brim with foamy blood. One of the high points was when, after slicing a lamb open down the middle, he would pluck out its digestive apparatus almost in one piece, removing the small intestine, which was sold separately to make guitar strings, before tossing it over the door to the pigsty, whereupon the pigs began to fight one another amid horrendous squeals to devour those still-throbbing guts that were giving off a small cloud of steam. I have always been wary of connecting all of this to the butchery I dreamt of at church during those endless masses, but there’s no denying that I had the first erection I can recall the day on which my uncle allowed me to pick out and seize the lamb to be slaughtered that night from a group of six or eight he had set aside beforehand in a section of the pen that was, for the sheep, a death row of sorts. This was less and less a laughing matter; I was God back then, in every sense of the word. The lambs piled into one corner, clambering on top of one another, each of them looking at me with eyes that have crept into my dreams a thousand times over. Though they would all meet the same deadly fate in a matter of days, the fact remains that that night, I handed down death sentences and pardons and understood in my own way what the catechists were getting at when they spoke of divine glory. And my spirits would soar. Then, I’d feel sad and yet at the same time proud at having been able to shoulder, my head held high, my share of the hangman’s burden. And I remember that getting any sleep that night was out of the question—for my thoughts turned constantly to that jet of blood streaming into the bucket, all of that red foam that was like the juice of my guilt—and that I could not for a moment stop thinking of the power and the glory. Wide awake, I leant over the balcony in the early hours of the morning and felt, for the very first time, that all of the stars were on my side.

Some years later, I aimed the semen from one of the first masturbations of my life into the handbag of one of my mother’s friends. Visitors to the house would pile coats, scarves, umbrellas, and the like on top of a bed in the room closest to the front door. I went in and did that in the half-darkness, quite why I’m not sure. Perhaps because she was the prettiest and youngest of the female friends who would drop by for afternoon tea from time to time, and the one who best hooked one leg over the other as she sat down in the little side room for coffee and cake, not to mention the only one whose nails were always painted maroon, not only on Sundays, and I wanted those hands of hers, so soft, when fumbling around for something inside her handbag, to be stained with the semen that was the product of a love and a fever that, deep down, was hers by every right. Queen of all she surveyed. That semen was her doing, fruit of her harvest, the consequence of a desire she had worked for beforehand—whether consciously or otherwise, that’s neither here nor there—when brushing her hair that afternoon at the dressing table, when picking out her dress and trying it on in front of the mirror, turning this way and that, when covering her skin with lotions. I liked to imagine the look on her face, the grimace of disgust when she discovered her hands soiled with God knows what, so sticky, her sunglasses tainted with me, her small leather-bound address book with the telephone numbers of the men who’d buy her cocktails on Saturdays, her lipstick, and all those little bottles of eau de cologne, and the lacquer for those nails that never clawed my back.

I think of love now and I always picture the same dark room, much like the one in which the coats were left, the blinds partly muffling the noise of the street, the unbearable light of day, and a gray sheet damp with sweat, on which to lie while everything settles back down, barely saying a word, next to a body that just moments ago was nothing but moans and cries and frenzied desire and that now lies vanquished, still trembling a little, ravishing and filthy in the half-light. A summer afternoon in the city and wondering what is to become of us, how to fight against the flesh that binds us and drains us and satiates us and tosses us through the air, how we can go on living from now on without eating one another alive, without hurting each other, without having to crawl after the other’s desire each time one of us leaves and the other returns and the yearning draws blood and only flies come to the wound. Down what slope we shall tumble when the city comes to a standstill in the middle of a barren summer and we no longer have each other or anything other than the memory of all this like a torment, the imprint of my fingers on your buttocks while Miles Davis played and the candle flame flickered out atop a pink mound of melted wax. Sometimes, the punishment for the pain that is to come already lies, like a down payment, in the fury of love, when it brandishes its claws and is unleashed for real from the deepest depths of the blood, and when caresses and lashes of the whip, honeyed kisses and brutal thrusts all blend into one. Vengeance for the tears that have not yet but will no doubt be shed, sooner rather than later, and for the solitude that lies ahead and the sorrow of the evenings and yet more evenings, on the other side of a season or two, when memories will linger of the vertigo of this soft skin slammed against the wall, the hiss of the riding crop through the air, the parted lips that in the semi-darkness plead for punishment and mercy at one and the same time. Perhaps love is not the word, then. Perhaps it is not the word at all if the hips we hold firmly in our grasp, sinking our nails into them, are always those of a cheap whore and all of the pain that lies in wait, even when it has yet to take shape or come into being, is already seeping out from somewhere and drips onto our back in the darkness.

Today I remember, in no particular order, some of the women who passed through that bedroom that was not always the same one, much though it might be in my memory, as if the bed were a flying ship that traveled through time in every direction while also moving from city to city. Some of them I all but wrestled into bed. For the most part, though, their hips swaying a couple of steps ahead of me, they willingly climbed the staircase, with its plant pots and its cats, up to that bedroom, its window muffling the ever-present noise of the traffic in different streets in different cities and the ambulance sirens wailing down there below, on the asphalt, heading to the La Paz, the 12 de Octubre, and the Casa Grande hospitals.

While most of the women I chose, insofar as they were mine to choose, had their dark side, there were others whom I snatched straight from the light, above all in the early days. I plucked them from gentle worlds in which they were happy in their own way, flitting cheerfully between their English lessons and their piano lessons, their Wednesdays at the swimming pool, their Friday tango classes with an Argentine instructor, their afternoons at the library highlighting veritable mountains of photocopied notes with felt-tip pens of every color, with their adorable short-sightedness, with their hair tied up so as to be able to let it down if and when the mood took them, when the time came, with the simple gesture of removing their hair band and placing it on their wrist, by way of a bracelet, to make sure it didn’t vanish as if by magic on a bedside table overflowing with stuff (earrings, a box of tissues, used condom wrappers, tea lights, a small pile of books, a lamp, an ashtray), then putting it back on before heading home by ten to set the table in great haste for a dinner at which they often went without dessert as punishment for having lost their temper when arguing with their fathers about the class struggle, about Cuba as a beacon of hope for the people, or about the Cold War. That was one sort; and then there were others, yet more radiant, who came later, as if in batches, touched by the rays of the Sun God, with flowers in their hair and white bicycles that slept in the living rooms of their apartments, leaning against the wall, just another animal among the many that stretched their limbs amid the cushions that always lay strewn on the floor. There were several of their type, and I’ve never understood why. Those girls never ate dinner at ten at their parents’ place. Indeed, they never had dinner anywhere. They’d grab a yogurt and a piece of fruit. If ever a girl used the word
piece
when discussing fruit without being on a diet, it was because she was mixed up in some weird meditation and balance vibe; those were the worst, they liked to carry little bottles of water around in their pockets and would not be separated from them. I know their sort well—they end up hating you because you smoke and also because they know that, much as they might desire you, they will never be able to love you. They hate you because they figure you won’t brush your teeth as often as you should. They hate you because it’s plain to see that it’ll never work. I don’t know why, but my life has always been well-stocked, rather too generously for my liking, with women of that ilk, considering how much trouble they’ve always given me, for the fact is I’ve never been able to peel a simple tomato, chop an onion, or dress a salad worthy of the name. Come to that, I still hate salad, even more so one that’s been smothered, as those girls were wont to do, with soy sprouts or brewer’s yeast. To this day, the absurd consensus that holds all such things, salad in particular, to be edible still strikes me as utterly conventional, arbitrary, and hare-brained. I don’t like riding a bike, either, nor do I understand the need to spend the whole day discussing herbal teas and types of honey. There are, by all accounts, many types of honey. Lavender honey, so they told me, albaida honey, thyme honey, rosemary honey, orange blossom honey. Though, as far as I’m concerned, it’s hard to tell one apart from another and they all share the same common denominator of being sticky and foul. And yet I have never strayed too far from that world of bikes secured to the staircase railings in the patio or at the door to indie bars, next to the notice board announcing yoga, street theater, and tantric sex courses, that world of sticks of incense burning nonstop and all that crappy whole grain and raw sugar. Which begs the question: What was I doing there if I hated, with every ounce of my being, all that inner balance bullshit, the kettledrums, the baggy pants, the dancing on the sand, and if it was clear to me that my life’s best moments have always taken place with a brimming ashtray and a clutter of glasses and empty bottles nearby, adding, for the truly memorable ones, clothes strewn on the floor, torn, if possible, and a record that goes on spinning well into the night with the first light of dawn, the world now broken, shoulders slumped, defenses in disarray thanks to all that poison guzzled without a second thought? Perhaps the answer is that, contrary to popular belief, the opposite of love is not hate—the opposite of love is revulsion. For I was searching for something in those women who lay barefoot on the campus lawns in their long skirts, like Indian princesses, and who, in my darkest hours, took me into their clouds of incense and marihuana smoke and soothed my nerves, taking me for walks through the gardens separating the different department buildings from the parking lots, pointing out the trees and their names, this leaf, that branch. Something like ensnaring moments of peace in my nets, moments of a light I never knew how to use and all I could do was devour it later on, at the hour when the moon takes its leave and the wolves remain, at the back of a lair, when the night is dirty and pure darkness sweating and spinning. Those girls wanted to take to the air with me, and that was love, the clean air of a certain paradise they seemed to know beforehand, while I needed to be led astray, to ask questions, to grope around for the path, to stumble and to bleed, to fall from the cliff tops holding tight to their hips.