The Man of Feeling (3 page)

Now that I am reasonably famous, because I appear now and then on the televisions of the world, I usually get to know someone or other, albeit superficially, wherever I go; such people, however, are nearly always admirers, whose questions and sameness bore me. But four years ago, when I still had to make do with roles like Spoletta, Trabuco, Dancaïro and even Monostatos (it's a good role, but I hated having to make myself up like a bald negro), I found it impossible to form any kind of relationship with the inhabitants of those cities, who would merely look at me the way one looks at an advertisement for a performance in a foreign newspaper which one reads at home. That is why, despite my inclinations, curiosity and non-conformity, I would often have to give in and lead the same kind of monotonous, lax and rather unimaginative life led by other singers. I found it exasperating not being able to blend in with the local population except on a purely physical and incidental level (sharing the same space or, at most, rubbing shoulders with them in various forms of public transport), not being able to take part in the deals and the desires being cooked up right there in front of me, nor in the determined, almost mechanical movements—denoting an objective, a plan, a job, haste—of the passers-by and the drivers who were continually passing before my gaze wherever I was in the city and whenever I chose to go on one of my rambles. It irritated me not to be one of them; it irritated me not being able to share their souls. Even the hotel foyer, by definition plagued with strangers, with people—like me—who were just passing through, filled me with infinite unease and envy: everyone, even those who clearly are just waiting, resting or killing time, gives the impression that they know exactly what they want, they all seem so busy, so determined, as if they were just about to set off to some place whose existence takes on real meaning because it is expecting them, so absorbed are they in their present or imminent or dreamed-of or planned activities that my awareness of my own dead hours used to depress me immensely, so much so that during my stays in hotels, I came to enjoy only the moment in the morning when I would stride across the foyer carrying a file full of scores and notes in order to step out into the street and head for the rehearsal hall, plus the few minutes that it took me to get there: the only moment in the day when my appearance and my gait and my gestures could become assimilated with those of everyone else, the only moment when I too, like those fortunate settled citizens, was obliged to direct my feet, I had no other option, towards a particular, pre-established place, a place—even more importantly—arranged beforehand by members (the opera impresarios) of that mysterious and elusive community. En route I would walk quickly and determinedly, head up and eyes front, stopping only for the traffic lights, not noticing faces or buildings, immersed in the self-absorbed, anonymous, ever-changing morning flood of people, knowing—for once—where I was going and where I had to go. I really savored that moment, as brief as it was coveted, in which I could at last pass among the crowd as one of them and, consequently, feel no desire to know anyone I did not already know. For one takes it for granted that someone who lives in a city all the time has—for good or ill, satisfactorily or unsatisfactorily—filled his quota of acquaintances.

In my leisure time, however, once I had returned to the hotel and, above all, when, after rehearsals, I had already spent a long time wandering fruitlessly through the city—always feeling an integral part of what in the great capitals of the world is known as the floating population—the only possibility remaining to me of meeting someone, even another foreigner or visitor like myself, was in the foyer or bar of the hotel, where, as I have said, the only person generally available and eager to strike up some sort of conversation (with no monetary or sexual interest involved, for, with the odd exception, these are not the best conduits to a sharing of souls) was the traveling salesman who, on those particular dates, has decided to lodge in that particular luxury hotel in order to prove fleetingly that, even far from home and among those who travel, there exist other lives in which suits are always pressed, and thus be confirmed in his utter despair and reaffirmed in his rebellion or death.

B
UT
NOT
ALL
OF
THIS
WAS
IN
MY
morning dream, or at least not in such an orderly fashion as I am relating it now, but the dream was imbued with all the feelings I've described, feelings that were just as oppressively present in what had once been my own city, Madrid, when I arrived there four years ago to play what, up until then, had been one of my most important roles, that of Cassio in Verdi's
Otello.
I remember spending two whole days in the grip of these extremely unpleasant feelings, which were made all the worse in Madrid because there the buildings constituted neither novelty nor rediscovery, and contemplation of them did not, therefore, provide me with much distraction during my walks around the city, and above all because, although I felt like a visitor, I knew that I wasn't a visitor, at least not strictly speaking, and I was afraid that what I most desired in other cities might actually happen: that, given my inevitable recollection of the place, given my appearance—possibly, who knows, my actual features— given my lack of accent in my own language, I might be taken for a native or a resident. Everything was at the same time strangely familiar and alien, intimate and reprehensible, from the ridiculous, affected gait of the inhabitants to the grimy, suffocating atmosphere in nearly all the streets, from the ill-disciplined traffic— directed by delinquents—always full of taxis (although these were now mostly white not black) to the bars which were inexplicably packed at the most unseemly hours, from the constant gabble and the brusque manners to the anachronistic facades of the cinemas with their vast billboards, and the omnipresent garbage trucks. All of it abominable and utterly typical.

Perhaps it was the overwhelming sense of ambivalence in my contact with the city as a whole that made me hesitate rather longer than usual on my third night in the hotel bar—where at least the degree of familiarity and strangeness was within the habitual bounds of all capital cities—over whether the other man sitting there, while I was sipping a glass of hot milk before going to bed, the two of us separated by several feet of empty bar, looked more familiar to me than usual because his was a face from my remote Madrid past and who—for example—had just happened to arrange to meet someone there, or because he combined every one of the most common characteristics of traveling salesmen on their way to the four final truths: the bright, shining eyes of someone who has suddenly lost all scruples or is delaying the advent of a unique experience the nature of which he alone will decide; the slightly worn clothes which, at first sight, look new: rehabilitated too suddenly and too soon; a need to drink which one senses is quite recent and which is comparable only to the need felt by certain Nordic types on some festive eve or to that felt by Americans when they set themselves down at a bar, an act, it seems, indissolubly linked in their imaginations to the ingesting of alcohol as both process and goal; an undisguised predisposition to dialogue which, however, has nothing to do with the verbal diarrhea of certain drunks—for traveling salesmen, however drunk, keep a cautious grasp on their prudence until the very moment when they explode, for fear of being unmasked prematurely—and which is only evident in the impatient glances they give the disdainful barman or the other customers; the sagging or, at best, loose-fitting socks (something about which the dry-cleaner can do nothing); the position of their hands, often folded and resting on the table or the bar in a gesture of uncertainty—a remnant of prayers, which may or may not be answered—a gesture in which I too have sometimes found momentary relief from my latent despair. It was this man's hands—tiny hands like those emerging from frilled cuffs in paintings or from eighteenth-century costumes—which, after a few involuntary sideways glances on my part and much racking of my memory, allowed me to identify him as the individual who had sat opposite me on the train four or five days before. I had not immediately recognized him because, despite his highly unusual appearance, the first time I saw him I had been deprived of the two things which I could now observe unimpeded, first, while he kept shooting me insistent looks and, subsequently, when he finally turned and addressed me in an act of recognition that seemed almost simultaneous with my own, and which were, in fact, the most striking thing about him (more even than his perverse jacket, more than his huge head, more than his presumptuous perfume): his indisputably bulging eyes and the large expanse of protuberant gum that his brief and cordial smile instantly revealed.

"You," he said, pointing at my chin with a movement of his little finger that seemed to me overly intimate in a stranger, "you were on the same train as us a few days ago, weren't you?" And without giving me time either to reply or to agree, he added: "Don't you remember me?"

These two sentences, exactly as they were spoken, albeit with more emphasis on the word
us,
were repeated over and over in this morning's dream, while I watched—although it was, I think, in black and white— the pleased and candid smile on the face of that man, Dato, who was holding an almost empty glass of whisky in one hand, while with the other he was still pointing at my chin with the easy satisfaction of someone who finally sees before him the person for whom he has long been waiting. Yes, I remembered him. I remembered him. I do not know why the selective memory of dreams is so different from that of our conscious senses, but I cannot believe in those vengeful explanations according to which the things that the latter suppresses resurface, in various guises, in the former. Such a belief, I feel, contains an excessively religious element, a vague idea of reparation in which I cannot help but see traces of such things as the presence of evil, turning a blind eye, the oppression of the just, the struggle between opposites, the truth waiting to be revealed and the idea that there is a part of us which is in closer contact with the divinities than our own direct perceptions. And that is why I am more inclined to believe that the frequent slowing down of time in dreams provides a civilized, conventional breathing space of a dramatic or narrative or rhythmic nature, like the end of a chapter or an interval in a play, like a post-prandial cigarette or the minutes spent leafing through the newspaper before getting down to work, the pause before reading a long-feared letter or that last glance in the mirror before going out for the night. Or perhaps it is merely hesitation, for dream truth and dream reasoning are not always as straightforward as they are made out to be. Some dreams contain as much vacillation, backsliding, and dead time, as one finds in the broad light of day. Occasionally it may be necessary to play for time in order to channel that dead time, that is, it may be necessary deliberately to kill time. I am not so very far removed from the beliefs of certain ancients and, like them, apart from any premonitions and warnings that we give to ourselves, I see in dreams intuitions and explanations that are not in the least at odds with our alert consciousness, but which are, in fact, explicit comments about the world—however metaphorical: there is no contradiction in that—about the same and only world that accommodates the daylight world, regardless of how alien the nocturnal realm may seem to us in the morning. For example, I have dreamed that I was singing Wagner, something I will never sing or, rather, should not sing because my voice isn't suited to it and I lack the necessary training. However, I
could
sing Wagner in the broad light of day if I made myself; more than that, in the broad light of day, I can remember, perfectly, whole Wagnerian roles which I would not even attempt to hum to myself while I was shaving; but I
can
think them, even though I am not in a position to actually reproduce them, as, indeed, could any person who, though not a singer, has a memory, as indeed could a traveling salesman if he knew the roles. I do this with my waking senses, I sing and don't sing just as I do and don't sing when I dream I am singing Wagner. And last night I dreamed about what happened to me four years ago in the real world, if such a term serves any purpose or can usefully be contrasted with anything else. Of course there were differences, because although the facts and my vision of the story all correspond, I dreamed what happened in another order, in another tempo and with time apportioned and divided differently, in a concentrated, selective manner and—this is the decisive and incongruous part—knowing beforehand what had happened, knowing, for example, Dato's name, character and subsequent behavior before our first meeting took place in my dream. The strange thing is that, while in my mind there was synthesis, in my dream there was progression. It is true, on the other hand, that while I was dreaming, I could not know if my dream would depart at a given moment from what happened four years ago or if it would keep close to it until the end, as proved to be the case and as I now know and can say as the morning advances. But it is also true that now I do not know to what extent I am recounting what actually happened and to what extent I am describing what happened in my dream version of events, even though both things seem to me to be one and the same. I once read in a book by a German writer that people who choose not to eat breakfast are trying to avoid contact with the day so as not to enter fully into it because it is only through that second awakening, that of the stomach, that you can entirely leave behind you the darkness and the nocturnal realm, and it is only once you have arrived safe and sound on the other shore that you can allow yourself to recount what you dreamed without bringing down calamities upon yourself, since, if you do so before you have broken your fast, you are still under the sway of the dream and you betray it with your words, thus exposing yourself to its vengeance. And you tell it as if you were still asleep. Beneath its pretended intention of taking the dream very seriously indeed, this idea, which has unmistakably popular origins, conceals—as do those bandied about by psychiatrists, psychologists, psychoanalysts, psychotherapists and all the other usurpers of the word "psyche"—an infinite scorn for the dream, because it is based on the assumption that there are two separate worlds, that of dreaming and that of waking, or, even worse, two hostile, contrary worlds, fearful of each other, ready to hide their wealth and knowledge, and never to share them or combine them except through the violent capture, forced conversion, and invasive interpretation of one of the territories, with the peculiarity that the only world that feels this yearning for submission, the only one that achieves this spirit of conquest, is the diurnal world. But what prompted me to this confession is that, while I do not accept such an idea, I have chosen, just in case, not to have any breakfast this morning, in the hope that I will be able to tell both what happened and the dream of what happened, by dint of not distinguishing between them. That is why I have still not eaten anything, and who knows when I will.