Necropolis (9 page)

I listened to the speech passively, without knowing who the man was, let alone why he was on the platform. I assumed that at the beginning of the party the organizers of the conference had introduced themselves and that was why they were not doing so now, so I asked Kosztolányi, who's the man who just spoke? and he said, ah, you're a dreamer, adrift in reality, it's obvious you're a poet! That man is none other than Shlomo Yehuda, president and director of the ICBM, author of at least fifty books, scholar of language, essayist, teacher, and legal consultant, one of the most distinguished intellectuals in the country, and that's why I advise you, dear friend, when you're introduced to him pretend you know him, say something like: it's an honor to meet you, Mr. Yehuda, I have known your name since I was a boy, I never thought I'd shake your hand, do you see? You have to tell him something flattering because Shlomo is a vain man, an all too common failing in exceptional people, unfortunately, prepare one of those phrases that don't commit you too much and which, above all, don't have to be explained.

Suddenly the door opened and a woman came in. I recognized her immediately. It was Sabina Vedovelli, the Italian diva of the porn industry. I looked at her with great interest and was genuinely captivated by what I saw. Her body and her clothes seemed to say, or even scream, to each man present: “I know how good I am, that on seeing me your cocks stand up like harbor cranes, pulling your underpants to one side; I know you're trying to imagine my boobs jumping over your face and that you're fantasizing about my inflamed cunt and imagining my labia swallowing your penis, and your veins are already as swollen as the muscles of an athlete, and I also know that you're visualizing my anus that you'd like to sodomize, and you want to kiss me like a thirsty dog drinking from a puddle, and bite my tongue, which has sucked so many different cocks, oh, how well I understand you and how sorry I feel for you.”

Sabina Vedovelli was wearing a one-piece black leather
tailleur
, like Modesty Blaise in the comic strip (does anybody remember that?), with prominent cleavage, high heels in spite of her height and a silk bow around her neck. She had padded lips, violet eyelids, and intense dark blue eyes, like the doom-laden sky in a painting by Van Gogh, which seemed able to drill holes in anything put in front of her. Of course, seeing her I thought of the other woman, the one I'd seen not so long before, and I thought, she isn't the same, they were very different although there's something about them, the way you can say about somebody that they have a similar rhythm to somebody else, a certain cadence, even though the first one had a beauty that seemed to have appeared fully grown, pure and uncontaminated.

I remembered the video I had seen on the internet, her ass lifted in that legendary position, immortalized in the drawings of Milo Manara, which some experts on erotica call Looking at Constantinople. It seemed incredible that this was the same woman and yet here she was, before my very eyes. Part of her unattainable air came from the two gorillas who came in with her—and when I say gorillas I do not mean Tarzan's friends, I am using the term in the other sense, meaning bodyguards—two men with dark glasses and earphone leads sticking out of their ears, who cleared a path for her through the crowd. She waved and smiled at the organizers as if these men were not beside her, intimidating everyone, and I thought, she must be used to it, they are her guard dogs and for her they do not even exist.

Supervielle and Kosztolányi were also looking at her.

She's a catlike, dangerous woman, said Kosztolányi before taking a big slug of his whiskey, but you can't imagine the talks she gives, they're real performances, with photographs and animations, I was at a conference similar to this in Stockholm and the fact is, her contribution was fantastic, don't you remember, dear Edgar? Supervielle said, yes, although I must confess that her aggressive style bothers me, without wishing to be critical, I know it corresponds to a way of life that's very widespread in all cultures and it's useful that she's among us, which does not prevent one from feeling somewhat . . . how can I put it? remote from it all, yes, that's the word. Then they remembered an occasion when Sabina Vedovelli (was it in Seattle or Bucharest?) had appeared with a tiger cub, which had aroused a mixture of admiration and fear in the audience.

Listening to them, I realized that most of them had been at other conferences together, and I asked them, do you all know each other? to which Supervielle replied, well, the ICBM is new and this is its first conference, but we've met at similar events. Kosztolányi added, those of us in the trade have periodic meetings, more or less once every two years, I can understand your surprise, I don't know what writers' conferences are like. They both looked at me, so I said, writers' conferences are usually on a specific theme that's sufficiently vague for everyone to fit in, things like
The Writer and the New Century
or
Where is Literature Going?
and, well, once the group is together there's an opening reception similar to this one, and then the round tables start; some people bring written texts and read them and others improvise, depending on their experience, and the members of the audience applaud and get quite excited because the only reason they're there is that they've read the authors' works or have heard of them, and at the end of each session they come up and ask for autographs and dedications, anyway, it's all a bit mechanical. At night, some writers set off on the prowl looking for young female readers or women delegates, and it's normal to see them in the bars and on the terraces, making passionate speeches about themselves or their books, enthusiastically telling anecdotes in which they, with all due modesty, appear as heroes or even superheroes and their books as outstanding masterpieces of modern culture. Others prefer to stay in their hotel rooms watching TV channels like MTV or Discovery so that they can then talk about them with scorn at dinner, when what they're actually saying is, I don't mix with you, you lousy bunch, I'm above all that, thereby creating an aura of respectability and mystery about themselves. There are also those who devote their time to drinking and forging closer ties that will allow them to obtain invitations to other conferences, and so some colleagues are able to go from one conference to another and spend the whole year traveling, giving interviews from which literary matters are usually rather absent, either because they're talking off the tops of their heads or because what they really want to create is some kind of political controversy, and so the writers sound off, taking sides and making accusations, ensuring themselves a great deal of visibility in the press, which records their invectives in banner headlines, and if the writer in question is lucky enough to be contradicted by some political or ecclesiastical authority, things really start to heat up, giving rise to a juicy polemic that increases their fame, and other writers jump on the bandwagon to support that first writer, because if the controversy is big enough there'll be enough left over for them, too, although, of course, the first writer wants to protect the fame he's acquired, he doesn't want to lose it to opportunists, and so, in the end, his books will sell more copies and the polemic will have given the event a contemporary, committed, and cosmopolitan air, which benefits everyone and will undoubtedly ensure that the banks and the financial or political organizations that sponsor them want to continue supporting them, even if one of those organizations was the very one that was being criticized or insulted.

On the last day, the historic achievements of the conference are proclaimed, both from a libertarian point of view, and in generating pure concepts and ideas, and a great final binge is held at which everyone swears friendship and respect and at which traditionally, in spite of the fact that each person knows that he is the best, everyone praises everyone else, saying things like this, “You're the greatest living storyteller since Cervantes, or Borges, or the best poet since César Vallejo,” to which the other replies, “Oh no, don't exaggerate, that's going a little bit too far,” they exchange quotations from books, and raise their glasses, and usually, by the time dawn breaks, there are already two and even three Nobel Prize winners at each table, depending on the amount of alcohol they've imbibed, including some who swear they'll refuse it if it's offered to them, because it's a disgrace that they never gave it to Borges, which means it's worthless, all these vows made on a great tide of whiskey, before they rush to the bathroom to throw up.

Kosztolányi and Supervielle looked at me in surprise, and Kosztolányi said, my God, you don't have a very high opinion of your colleagues, but I hastened to say, don't take all this literally, one always criticizes one's profession, but the truth is that I've also attended excellent conferences in which people talk seriously; nor did I say I wasn't myself one of the writers I was talking about. For years all I ever did was go to conferences.

After her triumphant entrance, Sabina Vedovelli had settled elegantly in the middle of the room as if she was in her own home. A tray of drinks was brought to her. With two fingers, she picked up a glass of champagne and raised it to her lips slowly and with great relish, as if instead of a glass container it was a fruit or a delicious ice cream or even a penis, and I could not have been the only one to think that, seeing that several men, including the main speaker, cleared their throats and shifted nervously.

Suddenly somebody clapped a hand on my shoulder, and when I turned I almost fell to the floor in surprise, it was my friend Rashid Salman! In the second it took me to open my arms and receive him I remembered evenings in Rome with him and his movie associates, barbecues at a cultural festival in Damascus, and encounters in Berlin and Oslo, as well as his novel
Arab Sunsets
, translated into many languages, in which he recounts his own life as a young Israeli Arab educated in a Jewish school, and the contradictions and humiliations of that situation, and in the same second I thought, how on earth could I have forgotten that Rashid lived in Jerusalem? how come that wasn't the first thing I thought of when I arrived in this city?

My friend, he said, I saw you on the list of delegates and was starting to wonder where on earth you were! I've been in the room for more than an hour thinking, if he hasn't changed, sooner or later he'll come to the bar for a drink, and I was right! I know you've been sick, how are you now? Very well, I said, back on form, as you can see, happy to be here and embarrassed that I didn't look you up earlier, but I only arrived this afternoon.

Our previous encounter had been five years earlier in Vienna, yes,
Literature on the Frontier
, that was it. He had gained weight and his hair was very short, like an adolescent's, an image reinforced by his pink Converse tennis shoes combined with his linen suit and his tie knotted below the second button of his shirt. His face was still the same, a huge smile and two cross eyes, like planets floating in the middle of a storm. I could tell by the way he spoke and waved his hands in the air that he had already drunk quite a bit. This is going to be a really special conference, he said, like nothing you've ever seen before, I can guarantee you that! So I asked, are you referring to the war that's going on outside? and he said, no, that's the least of it, there's always been war here, I'm referring to the helplessness, the profound solitude that infects this region, even though it's in the eye of the hurricane, but come, actually I was referring to something more serious, which is that this hotel has the best bar in the Middle East, let's go fill our glasses, what are you drinking?

Kosztolányi and Supervielle were talking to a couple of venerable-looking old men, so I left them and followed Rashid through the crowd. Listen, I said, what on earth does
Alqudsville
mean? and he said, oh, that's nonsense, don't take any notice, people invent that kind of thing to give the foreign press something to write about, but here it's of no importance, you know wars are fought at every level, including the level of language, we'll see what happens, just forget it for now, better to hit this damn hotel's reserves of alcohol, don't you think? I took a long slug of whiskey and remembered that evening many years earlier, I no longer knew how many, when Rashid and I had gone to an Arab wedding in Tira, his native town, north of Tel Aviv. The bride and groom greeted the guests in the door of the living room, beside a huge strongbox with a slot, into which, after congratulating them, people put envelopes containing cash. Of course, the Arab tradition of not serving any alcohol was being respected, so we sat down at a table at least a hundred yards long that snaked through the living room and waited for dinner. There were bottles of mineral water, Fanta, and Coca-Cola, so Rashid, his father, and I spent the whole time passing each other a bottle of whiskey under the table. Parties without alcohol tend not to last long, so within a couple of hours we were already back in his house, drinking and waving to the neighbors. Rashid's novels were about the people of that town, so that journey was like entering the world of his books. A few years later, we met again in Bremen, at a conference called
Writing in the Midst of Chaos
, at which we were asked to reflect on fiction in countries in conflict, in cities under siege or under pressure, and of course, there were Rashid and I, an Israeli and a Colombian, as well as a couple of Angolans, some poets from Rwanda, and a few Yugoslavs, in addition to the Western Europeans, who theorized about other people's violence and seemed to have the best ideas. As it turned out, the best thing about that conference, as we both remembered, was the night the Belgian professor Céline July burst naked along the corridors of the sixth floor of the hotel, very drunk and a bit drugged, fleeing from the Congolese poet Abedi Lassora, who was following her waving a cock so big it knocked down flowerpots and candlesticks as it swung from side to side. They had been about to have sex when the author of the essay
Postcolonial Metaphor in the Former Zaire
had been startled to see the exaggerated dimensions of the member possessed by one of the leading practitioners in her field.