Divorce Is in the Air: A Novel (21 page)

We come home from vacations with four hundred photographs. Parents document every detail of their children’s baths, and even I took maybe twenty of you the day you introduced that exhibition. We save them on hard drives, put them up on the Web, shift them from one device to another. The images surround us like a living fog, bearing witness to our passage through the world. They’ve lost their sparkle of mystery; they’re like an app that lets the eye shorten distances in a shrunken world. But in the laundry room of the museum-house, photographs recovered their captivating energy: an old barite paper retaining time’s emulsions, conserving vestiges of light from the past. When they struck the nerves of the species’ current, transitory representatives, those outlines of the dead could stir up complicated responses.

“Now you’re here and now you’re not.”

He didn’t understand. He paused on one of those windows (what else would they be?) onto another decade: a tall man, prematurely gray, stood at the mouth of a mine. He was holding the arm of another man who was almost a dwarf, who clearly wanted to offer his best side to the camera for when the graying man told his wife, in some Barcelona salon, who he was and what he was doing next to him. I wonder what he’d say if he knew that two boys, who hadn’t even been born that day he was so eager to be photographed on his friend’s arm, would someday see right through his posing.

“The one in the middle is my father. He was thirty years old, working on the Porma Dam—they changed its name later, but I’m used to the real one. He told my mother a lot of stories from back then.”

From his other arm hung a woman in an incongruous white dress, with a timid look on a smiling face. It looked like the photo had been doctored, like she was a humorous addition by the studio that developed it.

“When I went to live with Isabel, I took a photo of Dad with me. He had messy hair and the dam was in the background, half built. I carried it in my wallet for five years, folded in half. One day I took it out and left it somewhere, and I’ve never seen it since. I suppose I should admit it’s lost.”

You could barely make out any color in all that sepia, but I would have bet any amount of money the girl was redheaded: skin spotted with freckles, that straggly hair that untangles into splendid waves when it’s brushed, the exaggeratedly, unmistakably sexual lips. I’ve always felt it was a stroke of luck to share the earth with that genetic anomaly, which has so many physiological peculiarities: you dark girls aren’t so dark, and blondes don’t play the part of blondes very well; you’re all more varied, maybe. But when it comes to acting the role of redheads, redheads are unbeatable. I’m very fond of carrot tops, even though I’ve never slept with one. The only one I kissed—well, I wouldn’t say she was bad, but she did something strange with her mouth, it made a weird sucking sound. It’s yet another debt in life’s array of possibilities that I need to collect before my heart suffocates.

“When you think about it, it’s a bit sad.”

“And the other two people?”

“I don’t know. That’s the thing. They’re my family photographs and I only know Mom, Dad, and Grandpa. I don’t know the others or what their names are. I don’t know what they were doing there.”

Turns out, the coffee grinder comes in handy, and I discovered that watering plants to music from the gramophone relaxes me. It so happened that we stayed out later and later and I spent more and more nights at Pedro’s house on Córcega. All that stopped me from officially moving into the museum-house and paying a share of the bills was that I had the claustrophobic premonition that if I did, I’d be burying myself in a social grave. If Pedro’s father or grandfather had collected stamps, bottle caps, or packets of sugar, we could have charged admission. But the apartment held only what Pedro’s dad left the day he’d gone out unaware that that very afternoon he would be crossing the symbolic threshold of his windshield, headed for the other world. It was a catalogue of aging furniture, an inventory of mediocrity, accumulated and held on to without forethought.

And though my heart problem called for more rest before putting my nose to the grindstone, I also didn’t move in because I’d already been plotting my next venture. I was taking inspiration from the Valencian shipowners: I was through with cheese-selling or bar-opening or apartment-showing. My specialization was going to be rich people. While I was falling at full speed, they’ve proliferated in this country: the upstarts, the climbers, riding high on scams either tolerated or encouraged by the city-planning authorities and other stables of corruption. An ocean full of fish weighed down by their full pockets, people who’ve accumulated constant streams of banknotes and bonuses and are just waiting for someone to introduce them to the refined pleasures they should be pouring their earnings into. Everyday guys who don’t know how to eat or drink or smoke (or fuck, if we’re going there, but I’ll specialize in families, I’m no age to start opening brothels), who get ripped off in hotels decked out in gold leaf, who get sold apartments with ceilings held up by cardboard Doric columns, who buy giraffes and let them die and rot in the garden because no one explained how to feed them. Builders, promoters, city planners, doctors who sell performance-enhancing drugs…people with those coarse but well-remunerated professions need someone like me, expelled from the fortress of the wealthy for breaking the rules, but with refined taste passed down by a father who’d been able to identify periwinkle blue and the notes of a Chypre cologne. Those poor men have heads full of blurry images of cars, watches, and fancy clothes, but they need a sherpa of luxury, a connoisseur. When you come back I’ll give you a job in the company, I’m going to need help if one of these johnny-come-latelies gets it into his head to start buying art.

In the meantime, though, what I did looked very much like living on Córcega, eating for free and helping Pedro-María develop his craft as a photographer. Given how little he touched the Nikon, though, I assumed he was going through a more cerebral phase of creative development. I tended to get up before him from the sofa he assigned to me as a bed (my feet almost fit), and since I’m of a curious nature, I started nosing around a little. You have no idea what you can learn about a person when you discover what they don’t even try to hide. It’s a shame my virtual incursions were limited. He opened a guest account for me on the Mac, and I enjoyed the stupendous highways fiber optics have to offer: I looked over forums about
The Wire
, I steeped myself in the latest scientific articles on Discovery Salud, I read the inanities my “host” wrote on Facebook about “friendship” (and that I wouldn’t have been able to bear if he’d ever said to my face), but I was never able to guess Pedro’s password, though I tried every combination of birthdays and anniversaries, just like they’d taught me in cryptography class. What I mean is that I could snoop around in drawers all I wanted, but the strongbox was off-limits; I couldn’t get to the map of his deepest, darkest concerns that was his browser history (and it’s very clear that my “best friend” is not the kind of person who periodically erases his bookmarks).

What surprised me most was not that the filthy pig gave his underwear a second chance (he kept the previous day’s socks tied in a knot so he’d recognize them), but rather a small plastic folder where he hid his bank book and the termination notice from his company: the salary dissolved whatever jealous impulses I may have had while staying under his roof and, in passing, I learned that he’d fought tooth and nail to stop them firing him for absenteeism.

Before opening any drawers, I made sure he was still sleeping; it’s such a nuisance that humans can wake up all of a sudden, that we don’t have a timer or something like that in our heads, especially when someone is taking the trouble to investigate us for our own good. I decided that since he was breathing with his mouth open, snoring like a beast, I still had a good half hour. So I had a scare when I heard the tap running—I barely had time to gather all the invoices and receipts I’d scattered over the desk. Out of the corner of my eye I saw one scrap of paper creep away, seeming to want to hide under the table. I stuffed it into my pocket in a ball.

“You’re not going to believe what I dreamed.”

I put on the unmistakable smile of a man listening to a little dream he doesn’t give a damn about—one he’s not even in. It’s a sign of disinterest so universal and recognizable it only proves the teller doesn’t care whether you’re listening or not, he just wants an audience onto whom he can dump the latest episode of the mental show he stars in while he reestablishes contact with the world of touch and consequences. I overcame my impatience (Pedro was entering a deep forest where all the trees were being uprooted by a balloon with the features of the sister he never had…), but not my curiosity about what was waiting for me crumpled up in my pocket. I sidestepped toward the hallway, and used the latch on the bathroom door. Sitting on the throne, I calmly read the invoice that confirmed my worst suspicions: Doctor Petra, Roger de Flor, ninety euros. I felt that male fury that rises from the stomach, unravels through the arms, and twists the joints of the fingers. Now, it wasn’t just the fact that he was hiding his meetings with an emissary of the headshrinking sect. It was the cost, the spending; it wasn’t rational or practical, it was domestic and administrative stupidity. If we were going to live together for a couple of weeks (my mancation), I couldn’t tolerate it. I couldn’t allow him to take a shovelful of what little money he had left from his severance and toss it out the window.

I scrubbed my face with water to calm myself down. I had to be careful. I couldn’t exactly come out of the bathroom and start screaming in his face. The night before, Saw had had the decency to pay for dinner and drinks, and he said that since he’d figured I would stay the night, he had bought coffee for me. So I found him in the kitchen, wearing that indescribable robe. I approached, relishing the feeling of superiority that comes from following a well-planned strategy. But when I saw that for himself he was making a lightly roasted three-year-old Japanese tea, and that for me he’d bought a packet of that muck called Bonka (1.30 euros) that tastes like gasoline—and, on top of that, he was going to make me thank him for it—I turned my back superciliously and began to improvise.

“I don’t usually give advice, you know, but if you go on spending that money on hucksters every month, you’re going to lose the museum.”

“What museum are you referring to?”

“This apartment of your father’s—and your grandfather’s before that. You’ll have to rent it out and move to some proletarian neighborhood, like Sants. You’ll have to move into a little apartment in a building with no elevator, surrounded by fags and Peruvians. Believe me, I know what I’m talking about.”

“And what, in your opinion, have I spent all this money on?”

It was revealing that he didn’t just tell me to go to hell, that he didn’t remind me he was an adult and could do as he pleased. That tune he was humming was the music of emotional dependence.

“And don’t you believe that the new tenant will respect your father’s clothes, or the laundry sink. Of course not. He’ll destroy it to build an ironing room or a pantry. Everyone wants a new addition to brag about these days. It’ll be worse with the clothes. It won’t even take him a day to stuff it all into a bag and throw it into a recycling bin. He’ll fill your apartment with electronics and cables, he’ll profane your temple with a tsunami of cathode waves.”

“You’re presuming a lot here. I don’t follow. Sweetener?”

“It’s not a presumption, don’t give me that. I saw the receipt in the dining room, ninety euros, twice a month. You can’t afford that.”

“It’s a temporary thing. After a while some patients only go once every three months.”

“They’re never cured?”

“It’s called the maintenance stage.”

“Are you a truck? You have to stop that shit—shrinks are addictive. If they soothe the pain for a while it’s only in exchange for breaking a cog in your system. Then you’ll never be independent again, you’ll need it forever. If you’re overwhelmed it can seem like an authentic pleasure to have someone supporting you, and changing you while they’re at it. But it’s a disgrace.”

“You seem pretty familiar with it.”

“They destroyed my mother and Helen, all those psychologists and psychiatrists, not to mention the fifth column of psycho-magicians.”

“You’re wrong. Petra’s nothing like that. She’s a neurolinguistic programmer.”

“Sure, NASA-certified. Look, I’m not one to defend any smug scientist. They’ve got their own lapdogs, their media, their community. If you ask me, I wouldn’t put my trust in any bunch of people that can’t distinguish a pumpkin’s DNA from a human being’s, or who have stars explode on them when they least expect it, and who still don’t know if viruses are living or dead. Their vision might be limited, yes, but at least they work with protocols and methods. You can blow the whistle on them. But you can’t say the same for that charlatan.
Programmer
? What does she do, implant chips?”

“Don’t go there, you don’t know what you’re talking about. You haven’t lived it. She’s helped me keep going. It was her idea that I look up my old friends, and that I choose a ‘best friend.’ She’s responsible for our reunion. Think how much you owe her.”

“An oxygen mask would help you keep going, too.”

“She saved my life. I was thinking seriously about…you know.”

“No, I don’t know.”

“About bailing out.”

“You mean suicide?”

“That’s a forbidden word.”

“Like ‘poo’? Like ‘pee’? That woman is infantilizing you, and while she’s at it she’s going to clean out your bank account. You’re not going to change the way things are with torrents of good energy. Once you go out into the street again, even if it’s just to buy a toaster, you’re going to find the same aggression, the same human hostility. The only trick is to accept it, learn to dance to that tune. A man alone in his apartment, lying in bed, is a man in his apartment in bed, no veneer of spirituality. You don’t owe her anything. You could have felt better talking to a crisis hotline, or your mother.”