Three Messages and a Warning (19 page)

He treated himself to a silent pep talk about how his fortune would improve after lunch, but, when he realized he had lingered too long, he made a dash for the exit, hardly noticing the lady with whom he nearly collided at the door. While digesting his meal in that fleeting subway trip which took him from Colonia Moctezuma to Observatorio, the image of the pin suddenly flashed back from the depths of his memory before vanishing once again. The rattle of the subway drained out this fleeting association, and his thoughts wandered to more pressing matters.

His afternoon mirrored his morning. He ended up arguing with a secretary who banished him forever because he had refused to give her a paperweight with the company’s logo. It was one of those rare occasions when he found forced flattery and all such courtesies necessary for his job unbearable—and he simply exploded. But he also knew through experience that the misunderstanding would be resolved upon his next visit, when with feigned remorse bearing no correspondence to his true feelings, he would present her with the acrylic figure, and she, before allowing him to pass, would make a sardonic remark followed by a smile and forgiveness. This was a ritual he knew very well since he had married one such receptionist: the kind with fulsome, curly hair and tight-fitting skirts. His marriage ended six months later because she, as he so bluntly put it, didn’t measure up to him.

But he did not consider that a defeat. It was barely a bump on the road. Not for nothing was he responsible for the training of the company’s new employees, a task which he performed meticulously, having read all sorts of personal self-help books and expert guides on superior management practices. He knew what he wanted and—even better—how to get it. If success meant bringing down a colleague, especially one who interfered with his ambitions, he wouldn’t hesitate. In fact he had rid himself of several such individuals. Two or three of those whose agenda differed from his had fallen prey to his wiles. He was thinking of this and of his future with the company, when again he spotted the woman with the pin among the sea of people in transit.

The woman with the pin avoided him as if deliberately refusing to clarify his doubts, slipping through the crowd awaiting the train; but the man was more agile and caught her up just as the subway’s doors were opening before them. He reached for her shoulder with the firm intention of questioning her about the riddle of the pin. A human tide rushed over them, heaving them into the depths of the subway car and scattering them in opposite directions, but he held firm.

The person with the pin no longer was a woman but a man; moreover, a man bearing a striking resemblance to the chief of staff the pursuer had replaced just six months ago. By all accounts the former chief of staff, though physically distinct from his younger replacement, had been akin to him in spirit, ambition, egoism, and the persecution of his subordinates. Yet one day he mysteriously relinquished his post. His replacement proved to be so successful that within a few weeks on the job he had purchased a new car, leaving it parked near the subway station and using the subway to move between appointments because it was cheaper and faster.

According to what the new chief of staff had heard about his predecessor, he wasn’t the type to wear a pin on his lapel reading “Ask me about happiness.” Yet the resemblance between his predecessor and the man with the pin was undeniable. The younger man got off at the same stop as the man with the pin and tried again to reach him. Yet once again the man with the pin sought refuge in the crowd. The younger man (proud of his good physical condition, the product of regular use of his gym membership) was faster and managed to grasp the other’s shoulder just as the doors opened to another train. There were so many things about happiness that he wanted to ask him.

“Choose something to borrow for the week,” the kind voice of Ricardo will offer, a compensation for the evening’s embarrassment. You asked for a book with green edging and silvered letters. You’ll nurse it among the rush of bags and carts on the metro; you scrutinized the index, eyelashes knitted for your astigmatism, and will choose page 23: “Umbrarium” is the name of the story. You found it very moving. You noticed the initials that hid the author’s name: P.M. You descended from the car and return to your house feeling that you inhabit the world of the story, the air transformed by its pages into a terrible, kind sorrow enveloping your breast.

(“Umbrarium”, page 26.)

It’s not that I, in the natural passage of my life, have never encountered a virtuous woman. On the contrary, I have admired the strength of friends and the beauty of passersby; I have contemplated at length their gestures, I have laughed along with their voices full of ingenuity; modesty will not impede me from recording that I’ve loved the sensations of their shapes and warmth. Nevertheless, no one before had ever submerged me in the depths of Agape like she did, the Nereid . . .

You’ll love the Nereid, not only for the similarity of her name to your own, but for the water that carries the word and the creature. More than once, you’ll read over certain passages in the bathtub, walking in the shallow end of the pool where you work out, or at that table by the fountain to which you escape at mealtimes. You’ll return the book with regret. You wondered whether it wasn’t one of those books that must be stolen, and you considered saying to Ricardo, “Give it to me. It isn’t yours anymore, please.” But sense will return to your head, and like the good girl you’ll be, you returned it. And like the good girl you are, you’ll ask in a timid voice in each of the libraries on that street—the one that right here is called Montealegre—if they have anywhere the story of the umbrarium. Wide-eyed you’ll describe the green cover, the silver lettering . . . but nothing.

How many of the small hours of morning did you spend thinking of his words spun like crystals, or bells, or silken flowers?

(“Umbrarium”, page 28.)

Worn out like the stone of the cliffs against which the cruelest waves come, at last I made the hard passage between one love and another. I was fed up with feeling like an outsider, undervalued for manifesting towards women (maidens, widows, or children) a respect that has never been common in the men of my time. While my contemporaries thought of women like mares or furniture, a part of their patrimonial inventory, I wished for a companion I could talk to about all this in tones of grand indignation, someone I could converse with as an equal, ache to be near all the time, hoping for some future scene together . . .

Later you’ll get up in the middle of the night with insomnia, feeling stupid for not having tried a data search already. On a first look, you’ll think you’ve only found the covers of intangible, discontinued books. But on immersing yourself a bit further, you discovered a trail of knowledgeable informants, your breath drawing you closer and closer to the screen. You’ll uncover the name and a brief biography: Pascal Marsias, a peculiar personality in the cultural life of the country during the nineteenth century, born in the same city as you. An author of scant, late-ripening productivity, whose principal themes are love and fantasy, voyages of time and space. His work consists of a few stories published in newspapers, the magazines of the era, some anthologies (the one you’d already read stood out as the most recent), and a book of poems: Songs for a Future Nereid. Then he disappeared, no one knows how or when.

As if this shock isn’t enough, your cursor encounters the button to display images, and you’ll click with trepidation. Immediately, a photograph. You could feel the blood beating in the veins of your wrists when the image filled the display: a charcoal drawing that showed a man like any other, but in his face, you saw his words reverberate; his lips, in which it would require only the merest impulse to find delirium, evoked in you a tremendous familiarity. You’ll wonder if what you perceive is an echo of something that can’t yet be said; if the future can’t, sometimes, be impatient, showing itself imprudently in the moment. You rejected the idea immediately, thinking yourself crazy.

In your belly something will shrivel at the thought of the unfortunate distance which sometimes separates us from souls so attuned with our own.

(“Umbrarium”, page 31.)

The feeling became more urgent when I reviewed my travelogues. Paradoxically, I was already incapable of controlling my will, but this only made me desire more to find her. I dedicated myself to completing her, to sketching her out on paper like a character in one of my stories: what would please her, how she would move, what kind of friends would surround her. Under which horizon would she live? A distant one, as it turned out, utterly remote, like my subsequent trips, but nevertheless, that night, in the umbrarium, for a moment I could make out her face . . .

You adored the writing of Pascal Marsias for many reasons. But above all you’ll say you loved that compassionate vision, the humane discourse that lay within the story. That which seemed the story of a haughty man, so desperate at not finding a worthy wife that—like Pygmalion—he decides to construct her himself, was in reality a grand apologia of love, reinforced by his last lines:

I thought it useless to create the Nereid. If something like her could be forged, it was the world that would make it possible. Since then, I carry out my part, trying to be a good man who delivers unto others the virtue lodged within him.

A great love—an inheritance the world deserves, you thought. You’d like to underline the words in this book as a substitute for a choir of caresses.

The next day you’ll call in; you said, “I’m not coming. Nothing’s wrong, it’s just that I feel the flu coming on and I don’t want to get anyone sick.” The metro will be the cradle of your desire, the rocking of a yearning that made pleasurable your most ordinary gestures. The air from the open window will lift the black threads of your hair to your mouth, dampen them with your saliva, something close to a kiss; and the wind, a strange gust, will toss some woman’s clutched papers into the tunnel. You picked them up, because you’re kind.

Downtown is boiling beneath each step you take because of that obsession of yours with covering your feet, though springtime has already announced itself with violets and yellows. You took notice of the clear sky; you were inspired by the freshness of the March air, feeling around you the serene embrace of the present. You’ll travel all the shelves, entering, leaving disheveled and blushing from the street—whose name has changed—a maiden on Don’s Street, one volume, another, another, dampness, dust, sawdust, ink, leather, buttery paper, your weak fingers pulling at your lower lip, and you’ll say, “Could you please look for anything else by this author?” and your coral-colored mouth outlined peaches in the air when you pronounced his name. But nobody had it. You began to despair, until, turning a hot, white corner, you saw this little bookstore, the owner just removing its padlock, opening its rusted shutters. You’ll walk up to her without hesitation, giving a gasp of amazement on discovering that the tiny door leads to towering walls closed off by massive bookcases, books like a fortunate plague. You’ll search among labels affixed with transparent tape, feeling the pulse of the words crawl up your arm. You didn’t want to ask for help, finding him yourself was the reward. And you did: two shelves away the book waited in solitary anticipation:
Songs for a Future Nereid.
Trembling, you’ll pay with a translucent bill; they’ll take their time giving you the change, but you didn’t open the cloth cover. You’ll want to keep hoping—for what? You won’t be able to decide, but that’s how you preferred it. You’ll feel a wave of gratitude because you felt that this moment was marked, as if someone had put a silver bookmark between two pages. You’ll know it was that moment which brought you here.

“Nerissa!” You heard the flutter of your name in the street, that dear, familiar voice, and you spin around . . . Ricardo, who has already shouted at you several times, and you ignored him. “Do you know Pascal Marsias?” you ask him desperately.

“I don’t think so.” You looked at him with sorrow. And omitting what you had to omit, you’ll tell Ricardo about him.

The Distaff of the Golden Cord (page 10)