Divorce Is in the Air (19 page)

What I'm trying to tell you is that I couldn't have just torn myself away from Helen and found another, similar woman. It was as if a cord of intangible flesh had grown between us and was keeping us tied together. So I even followed her to the bathroom, peeking in when she thought she was safe from my gaze, and I watched as she leaned her backside against the sink; sometimes there were tears and she let them run down her cheek, then she'd ask me to make her a bowl of yogurt and cereal and fruit. I'd slice apples with the gentlest version of the virile strength I used to shift and pinch her on the defenseless sheets in the Barcelona light. In the background I'd hear the water heater and the shower and I'd smile like an idiot, anticipating Helen's damp footprints as she tramped around the living room (they started to evaporate at the outline of her heel), in search of a towel to match the one she had tied up in a turban. And I know you won't like this detail, but even after rinsing them, the furrows in my fingers retained Helen's smells, like the ghost of an orgasm, a subtle olfactory bond. I never tired of seeing Helen's full breasts through the crook of her arm when she sat down to tear skin off her just-washed toes. The matter that flayed like layers of chipped paint during our arguments came from other parts of our life. I always felt that we were safe from wear and tear in our bed, which was like a well containing the waters of that altered state.

So while Helen grew desperate, I had to be brave and turn down various offers of work on her behalf. Sure, she hadn't finished her degree, but she could speak English and German, and no one had to convince me of her good looks. The offers came from some of Dad's friends, and classmates from ESADE who'd done better than me. I suppose they just wanted to do me a favor, but I didn't like their condescending tone, and the salaries they offered Helen were too high. The money would have come in handy, but a husband's first responsibility should be to find and protect his wife's vulnerable side; economic independence would have exposed Helen to the dog-eat-dog world out there, and she wasn't ready for that. Plus, my situation was temporary: the plan for the cheese business was giving off a splendid aroma then. There was no way it could fail, I was paying Passgard too much money. The funds would start to flow again through the magic channel of Dad's inheritance. We were sowing the seeds of profits, the small capital gains were gestating, growing organs in the shadows. Helen didn't need to dress up and expose herself to the responsibilities of the working world. It just wasn't her style.

I did my very best to hide what I was doing, and I wasn't bad at it. There was one time, though, when she almost discovered that the temp agencies' most-ignored CV led a triumphant double life in family businesses looking to expand to Bonn or fabulous Hamburg. It was one afternoon when she came home unexpectedly because she'd forgotten her hand lotion. I was at the other end of the apartment, gargling with the same mouthwash that had provided a minty disguise for the putrid vapors my father's bad digestion gave off. I heard the door open and Helen's voice, wrapped in a greeting, drove an image into my head: the open letter (its red envelope) where that jackass Recassens officially reminded me of his father's keen interest in interviewing my girl. I rushed out and startled her; she was in the same tight green dress she'd worn the day we left Madrid, the day we'd uprooted ourselves from the life we never got to know there. The fabric wasn't as snug around her thighs, she was thinner now, and when she saw my joyful race down the hallway, she smiled at me as the letter fell from her fingers: thin cheeks, thick lips.

“My hand lotion. Dry day.”

She went into the kitchen, and I heard the liquor as it splashed into the glass—that magic touch. I folded the letter and stuffed it in the pocket of my robe; you could say I hid it. She went into the bathroom and I took the opportunity to tear it to pieces; then, when Helen left again, her stomach warm from the liquor, I held the flame of a lighter to them. I called Recassens that very afternoon to thank him for the kind gesture. And heard myself say for the first time the mantra I would repeat for weeks, whether it was relevant or not:

“Helen is very happy with her new job. I don't want to boast, but you wouldn't believe what these shipowners pay.”

I know if I'd read her the whole letter she would have scratched my eyes out, though she would have struggled with Recassens's Catalan. But before she left, she kissed me joylessly on the mouth, and she didn't take the hand lotion with her. It stayed on the counter, untouched.

What's a job, really? A load of bullshit imposed on you: a suitcase full of wasted hours you have to watch over jealously so they'll give you a check for the appropriate amount (never much without first negotiating with your boss's superior, the board, some underling from HR). That smell of wall-to-wall carpet, disinfectant, and heating that sticks to you and stakes a claim on a patch of your mental space. And that's where you'll find good old Pedro-María. How funny you'd both think he was, I can just see you laughing. A programmer! The very pinnacle of grayness. But tell me why it's worse to drive a taxi or to be one of those poor women who spend the day bathing patients than it is to strangulate your days stuck in a room reading and writing. Maybe a programmer has fascinating algorithmic experiences, while a scribbler racks up painful hours trying to get the balloon of linguistic imagination off the ground. I'm only saying there's something very ambiguous in this idea of grayness. And don't go thinking I'm going after your brother here, absolutely not. At least you can use his fat novels as guides to Barcelona streets.

And don't think I mention Pedro-María by chance (the only undeliberate thing here is the fever of your rejection, which goes on and on). I bring his name up because in the meantime, since our disastrous re-encounter, we'd resumed our friendship. In a big way, too: we saw each other almost every day.

“You're not going to believe this, Johan, but you gave me the wrong address.”

I answered the door. I opened up, let him in, let him hug me. I guess it was good to have someone get me out of the house, take me places where they treated us with the condescending respect reserved for regulars. It helps to feel superior to someone once in a while. It does my spirit good.

Plus, Pedro has a story, a good one—he's got a wedding ring rolling around in some drawer—and he's told it enough times to have mastered its dramatic effects; the guy knows how to build suspense. He took me on his motorcycle to the Miramar, a desolate building between patches of vegetation, and he told me about his disastrous marriage to a violent girl. They screamed at each other, she wanted more from him. He thought he could calm her down with a baby, but being parents only intensified the ferocious battle for time to themselves. He backed off, felt responsible, he wasn't sure that Isabel could hold it together if they separated.

He tried to light a cigarette. His hands were trembling—delicate nerves. He told me that when he used to smoke in college he'd been convinced that there'd come a day when he would finally feel calm. A life crowned with a wife, children, in-laws, and even stranger creatures (siblings-in-law, nieces and nephews). A life so cushioned by the everyday, by family ties and civic duty, that it would be like living on a bed of pillows. He would leave the house to buy the newspaper and read it start to finish; Sunday's main adventure would be the
tortell
cake. For years, he'd known he would recognize that day by its special light, and that it would come before he reached thirty. The bells of adult life would chime, and he would only have to puff out his chest and wait for them to hang the medal around his neck.

We leaned against the Miramar's balcony, suspended over a city that seemed animated by the lifeblood of electricity, and he told me his daughter's name. I watched him move his tongue inside his mouth, searching for a broken piece like he was extracting a thread of meat. He told me that Isabel had gone to live with an uncle in Seattle, and she'd taken the little girl with her; there was nothing the Spanish divorce laws could do. A cold fog of pollution quivered over the well-lit streets. He didn't see her at all anymore, they barely spoke. It hurt him that something that had left an open wound in his flesh could be condensed in phrases recited in two or three minutes.

On another of those endless nights, I gave in and told him my story with Helen, and my life with you. I don't know if it was in that order—I have no reason to respect chronology, time does what it wants with me, and doesn't ask my permission. He sat there in the bar's armchair, sucking on his cigarette; his pose emphasized the impression of an erudite Indian when he declared:

“You are no good at marriage.”

Of course, we did more than tell each other sad stories. Even when men are on the ropes, we have our pride; I told him about the day I put my sister in her place, and he filled me in about something much more important to him than photography: his apartment on Calle Córcega.

He invited me over one afternoon at five. The sky was covered in a layer of dirty clouds, and he'd drawn the curtains, plush and thick. So I had to wait for my pupils to adjust to the floating remnants of light before I could take in the height of the ceilings and the well-preserved plasterwork, a fugue of vegetable motifs. We entered slowly, with the respectful silence demanded in sacred spaces, although the ashtrays, cans, and bric-a-brac (bell, music box, mosaic) set about like souvenirs gave the room the air of a shop waiting for its final customer before closing down.

He looked at me attentively, anticipating my admiration and savoring it. The place smelled of the dregs of alcohol: sickly sweet liquids carelessly distilled. The cups and glasses were all over the room, as if he'd decanted them, one into another, over the course of several nights. It wasn't hard to imagine how the hours here must have chased each other in tedious circles, caught unawares in a yawn that couldn't be stifled.

Flowing straight from the wellspring of intuition, from the preverbal part of my brain, the impression hit me that everywhere you looked, you felt the absence of a woman. And it wasn't just about cleaning and straightening (although that would have helped); what was missing was the spirit of renewal, the sense of space, the aromas.

“Impressive.”

I took two steps in, to avoid looking him in the eye. An air of familiarity washed over me. I'd been in apartments like this one, they're all over Barcelona. They call them
fincas regias—
royal indeed—and twenty years ago you could have found the same hand-painted wallpaper and plum-colored curtains keeping the cornucopias and carillons (words you'll only find in the dictionary by accident) company. If the place seemed to belong to another era, it wasn't because hundreds of years had passed, but because no one decorated houses that way anymore, or lived in them. They'd gone out of fashion.

He showed me the vinyl records that he stacked without their covers, the little toy theater, the walnut knickknacks. He showed me furniture and objects torn from their intended uses, selected for their thick aura of the past. I would have ended up figuring it out anyway, but his little smile, smeared with satisfaction and a peculiar pride, lubricated the idea that this apartment served deeper purposes than merely sleeping and eating (nor was it just a bar). I was stepping into a space that was easier to profane than break into.

“It's really something.”

We slung our jackets on a chair and he went into the kitchen to make tea. This turned out to be lukewarm water with a greenish tinge, in which charred fragments of vegetation floated.

“It's roasted.”

I found myself juggling two ideas: on one hand, that apartment; on the other, the incredible fact that during the twenty nights we'd gone out, Pedro-María had not made a single off-color remark. Divorce happens to us all, but that reticence signaled some secret caution. If I could fit the two pieces together, I got the feeling I could shine a light on Saw's state of mind.

It's very difficult to drink tea while filtering out singed particles with your tongue. If I failed, it was because I got distracted thinking back to when we'd first entered the labyrinth of girls, and Pedro-María unwrapped the truth of his erotic potential.

It was one of the peculiarities of single-sex education: you discovered from one day to the next the effect you had on girls. There were inveterate cowards who, because they boasted blue eyes or fine proportions, randomly found themselves recalculating their social value upward. I was one of the best athletes in the class, so I had it made. Even so, during the first weeks of shared classrooms, before I learned to interpret the code of approach and rejection girls camouflage themselves with as naturally as desert vipers in the sand, my six foot two inches trembled top to toe at the prospect of running the gauntlet of those pretty dwarves with their little looks, their smells, their giggles and discouraging silences.

For Pedro-María it was disastrous. With that Saw-body, he had all the charm of seaweed. It's also true that I could name twenty boys who started out from a similar place, but were not deterred. They took on the female species with the same determination as when they tried to get to grips with algebra, learn prepositional phrases, or master the plinth: they rolled up their sleeves and set about the task with a steady hand. But Pedro-María didn't have that kind of temperament. His most lively sentence moved at the speed of a provincial train.

I took the initiative and brought him to parties. It wasn't entirely altruistic, because it's better not to go alone, and you're much better off if your accomplice is like the dark eye shadow you use to emphasize the light in your eyes. But you can imagine how long it takes for even the best intentions to wither if you've got no vested interest in a guy's success. Plus, the way Pedro presented himself made me look bad, too: