Mr. Gwyn (20 page)

Rebecca had heard that question dozens of times. She began to laugh. But the old man remained serious.

“I mean, what the devil did he write in those portraits?”

Rebecca had an answer that she had practiced using for years, every time someone asked her that question, to cut it off. She was about to utter it when she felt that soft, weary light around her. So she said something else.

“He wrote stories,” she said.

“Stories?”

“Yes. He wrote a piece of a story, a scene, as if it were a fragment of a book.”

The old man shook his head.

“Stories aren't portraits.”

“Jasper Gwyn thought so. One day, when we were sitting in a park, he explained to me that we all have a certain idea of ourselves, maybe crude, confused, but in the end we are pushed to have a certain idea of ourselves, and the truth is that often we make that idea coincide with some imaginary character in whom we recognize ourselves.”

“Like?”

Rebecca thought for a moment.

“Like someone who wants to go home but can't find the way. Or someone who always sees things a moment before others do. Things like that. It's what we are able to intuit about ourselves.”

“But it's idiotic.”

“No. It's imprecise.”

The old man stared at her. It was clear that he wanted to understand.

“Jasper Gwyn taught me that we aren't characters, we're stories,” said Rebecca. “We stop at the idea of being a character engaged in who knows what adventure, even a very simple one, but what we have to understand is that we are the whole story, not just that character. We are the wood where he walks, the bad guy who cheats him, the mess around him, all the people who pass, the color of things, the sounds. Do you understand?”

“No.”

“You make light bulbs, has it ever happened that you saw a light in which you recognized yourself? That was really you?”

The old man recalled a Chinese lantern above the door of a cottage, years before.

“Once,” he said.

“Then you can understand. A light is just a segment of a story. If there is a light that is like you, there will also be a sound, a street corner, a man who walks, many men, or a single woman, things like that. Don't stop at the light, think of all the rest, think of a story. Can you understand that it exists, somewhere, and if you find it, that would be your portrait?”

The old man made one of his gestures. It resembled a vague yes. Rebecca smiled.

“Jasper Gwyn said that we are all a few pages of a book, but of a book that no one has ever written and that we search for in vain in the bookshelves of our mind. He told me that what he tried to do was write that book for the people who came to him. The right pages. He was sure he could do it.”

The eyes of the old man smiled.

“And did he?”

“Yes.”

“How did he do it?”

“He looked at them. For a long time. Until he saw in them the story they were.”

“He looked at them and that's all.”

“Yes. He talked a little, but not much, and only once. More than anything he let time pass over them, carrying off a lot of things, then he found the story.”

“What kind of stories?”

“There was everything. A woman who tries to save her son from a death sentence. Five astronomers who live only at night. Things like that. But just a fragment, a scene. It was enough.”

“And the people in the end recognized themselves.”

“They recognized themselves in the things that happened, in the objects, the colors, the tone, in a certain slowness, in the light, and also in the characters, of course, but in all of them, not one, all of them, simultaneously—you know, we are a lot of things, and all at the same time.”

The old man sniggered, but in a nice way, politely.

“It's hard to believe you,” he said.

“I know. But I assure you it's so.”

She hesitated a moment. Then she added something that she seemed to understand just at that moment.

“When he did my portrait, I read it, at the end, and there was a landscape, at one point, four lines of a landscape, and I
am
that landscape, believe me, I am that whole story, I am the sound of that story, the pace and atmosphere, and every character of that story, but with a disconcerting precision I am even that landscape, I have always been, and will be forever.”

The old man smiled at her.

“I'm sure it was a very beautiful landscape.”

“It was,” said Rebecca.

The old man, finally, moved toward her, to say goodbye. Rebecca shook his hand and realized she was doing it cautiously, as years before she had been accustomed to do with Jasper Gwyn.

68

Recently another book by Klarisa Rode has come out, which is unfinished. It appears that death surprised her when, according to the plans contained in her notes, she still had at least half left to write. It's a curious text because, against all logic, the missing part is the beginning. There are two chapters out of four, but they're the final ones. So for the reader it's an experience that could justly be called unusual, and yet it would be incorrect to judge it ridiculous. Not otherwise do we know our own parents, in fact, and sometimes even ourselves.

The protagonist of the book is an amateur meteorologist convinced that he can predict the weather on the basis of a statistical method all his own. We can imagine that the first part of the book, the nonexistent part, would consist of an account of the origins of this obsession, but it doesn't seem so important, after all, when you begin the part that Rode in fact wrote, where she reconstructs the years of research carried out by the protagonist: the goal he had set for himself was to determine the weather every day, in Denmark, for the past sixty-four years. To reach it he had had to put together a staggering mass of facts. Nonetheless, with persistence and patience, he had worked it out. The last part of the book reports that, on the basis of the statistics he collected, the amateur meteorologist was able to establish, for example, that on March 3 in Denmark the probability of sun was 6 percent. That of rain on July 26 was practically none.

To collect the data he needed, the amateur meteorologist used a method that is in fact one of the reasons for the book's fascination: he asked people. He had come to the conclusion that on average every human being distinctly recalls the weather on at least eight days of his life. He went around asking. Since each person connects the memory of the atmospheric weather to a particular moment of his life (his marriage, the death of his father, the first day of war), Klarisa Rode ended up constructing a striking gallery of characters, drawn with masterly skill in a few bold strokes. “A fascinating mosaic of real and vanished life,” as an authoritative American critic put it.

The book ends in a remote village, where the amateur meteorologist has retreated, satisfied with the results he has obtained and
only partly disappointed by the faint echo that their publication caused in the scientific community. A few pages from the end he dies, on a day of cold wind, after a starry night.

For Catherine de Médicis and the master of Camden Town

1

There was the hotel, with its slightly faded elegance. Probably in the past it had been able to keep certain promises of luxury and civility. It had, for example, a fine revolving door of wood, the sort of detail that always inspires reveries.

Through it a woman entered, at that odd hour of the night, apparently thinking of other things, having just gotten out of a taxi. She was wearing only a low-cut yellow evening dress, with not even a light scarf over her shoulders: this gave her the intriguing air of one to whom something has happened. There was an elegance in her movements, but she also seemed like an actress who has just left the stage, relieved of the obligation to play her part, and reverting to some more sincere version of herself. Thus she had a way of stepping, wearily, and of holding her tiny purse, as if letting go of it. She was no longer very young, but this suited her, as happens sometimes to women who have never had doubts about their own beauty.

Outside was the darkness before dawn, neither night nor morning. The lobby of the hotel was still: clean, soft, its features refined,
its colors warm; silent, the space carefully arranged, the lighting indirect, the walls high, the ceiling pale, books on the tables, puffy cushions on the sofas, paintings thoughtfully framed, a piano in the corner, a few necessary signs in a deliberately chosen typeface, a grandfather clock, a barometer, a marble bust, curtains at the windows, carpets on the floor—a hint of perfume.

Since the night clerk, having placed his jacket over the back of a plain chair, was, in a small nearby room, sleeping the light sleep that he was a master of, there would have been no one to see the woman who entered the hotel if it weren't for a man sitting in an armchair in a corner of the lobby—irrational, at that time of night—who saw her, and then crossed his left leg over the right, when before it had been the right that rested on the left, for no reason. They saw each other.

It felt like rain, but then it didn't, said the woman.

Yes, it can't seem to make up its mind, said the man.

Are you waiting for someone?

I? No.

I'm so tired. Would you mind if I sit down for a moment?

Please.

Nothing to drink, I see.

I don't think they serve breakfast before seven.

Alcohol, I meant.

Ah, that. I don't know. I don't think so, at this hour.

What time is it?

Four twelve.

Seriously?

Yes.

This night is never going to end. It seems to me it began three years ago. What are you doing here?

I was about to leave. I have to go to work.

At this hour?

Yes.

How do you do it?

It's nothing, I like it.

You like it.

Yes.

Incredible.

You think so?

You seem like the first interesting person I've met this evening. Tonight. In short, that's what you are.

I don't dare think about the others.

Frightful.

Were you at a party?

I'm not sure I feel very well.

I'll call the night clerk.

No, for goodness' sake.

Maybe it would be better to lie down.

I'll take off my shoes, do you mind?

Of course not…

Tell me something, anything. If I'm distracted it will pass.

I wouldn't know what…

Tell me about your work.

It's not very fascinating as a subject…

Try.

I sell scales.

Go on.

There are a lot of things to be weighed, and it's important for them to be weighed accurately, so I have a factory that produces scales, of all types. I have eleven patents, and… I'm going to call the clerk.

No, please, he hates me.

Stay down.

If I stay down I'll throw up.

Sit up, then. That is, I mean…

Do you make money selling scales?

In my opinion you should…

Do you make money selling scales?

Not much.

Go on, don't think about me.

I really should go.

Do me a favor, keep talking for a little while. Then go.

I used to make a fairly good living, until some years ago. Now I don't know, I must have made a mistake somewhere, but I can't seem to sell anything anymore. I thought it was my salesmen, so I started going around myself, to sell, but in fact my products aren't popular anymore, maybe they're old-fashioned, I don't know, maybe they cost too much, in general they're very expensive, because everything is made by hand—you have no idea what it means to obtain absolute accuracy when you're weighing something.