This Is Not America

by Jordi Puntí

  “Today I’m going to write the name of a Russian novelist.”

  “Not ‘Dostoyevsky,’ eh. We’ll never get to the end.”

  “Stop telling me what to do! Maybe I’ll write ‘Fyodor.’ ”

  Sometimes the invisible word was related with the street they’d started out from, or they used the game to comment on everyday matters with monosyllabic shopping-list words—“juice,” “bread,” “milk”—but there were also days when they didn’t feel like saying anything or were in a bad mood, and then they walked separately, wherever they wanted, randomly filling the city with unintelligible scribbles.

  If someone had been watching them from the air, they would have looked crazy, or maybe as if they were acting out some sort of complicated sexual perversion. For them, however, it was just playing to keep boredom at bay in an alcohol-free evening or, more like it, fending off any tantalizing thoughts of booze, now they were on the wagon. They didn’t talk about it much, but it seemed to them that their walks made the world go round, that their feet warmed the asphalt, as if they were helping to generate the energy that moves big cities. They didn’t keep a record of the words they wrote and soon forgot them, but perhaps an imprint remained in the memory of the streets, as if all those invisible flourishes were ribbons and knots binding the two of them together, making them inseparable. So, in the times they weren’t together, each was comforted by the idea that the other was walking round the city—at the other end of the thread—and they might link up at any moment.

  * * *

  He lights another cigarette and crosses Diagonal, hurrying because the traffic lights are about to turn red. Suddenly he has the sensation that someone’s following him. He can almost hear footsteps. When he gets across the road, he turns, intent on seeing who it is. But he can’t see anyone. It must be the specter of Mossèn Cinto, he tells himself, Verdaguer the poet-priest, stuck up there all alone on top of his column, struggling with the temptation to leap into the void. A few cars go by, tooting their horns and waving flags. So the match has ended well. Behind Mossèn Cinto, a bit farther on, as if hanging in the sky, the owl on top of the Roura building winks at him. With eyes like two phosphorescent yellow lanterns in the dark, the bird’s a kind of superhero guarding over Barcelona’s night people.

  He’d decided to do this last walk at night because that was when Mai shone most. If it wasn’t for his job teaching at the high school, which meant he often had to get up early, they would have ended up being denizens of the wee hours, urban vampires. Mai worked at her translations until late. She said that nightfall opened up the way for crossing between languages, and she’d only stop if he convinced her to go and see a movie in the late-night session at the Casablanca or the Arkadin. In winter they tended to stay at home, night creatures of inside realms. Sometimes, when she was still working, he’d go shopping, then boil up a saucepan of chicken and vegetables to make a three-day soup, which, when it was nearly finished, was warmed up again, padded out with a tot of whisky and a couple of egg yolks. At night they liked reading together, in their own worlds, or just chatting while they smoked some dope and listened to CDs. There was one by Pharoah Sanders that lasted exactly as long as the joints she rolled. Moreover, it was as if the music followed her mood swings. He’d eventually have to go to bed, but Mai stayed up. Sometimes she phoned a friend in Paris with the excuse of some problem with a translation, and, when they got talking about life, he was lulled to sleep by erotic murmurs in French coming from the next room.

  At weekends or when the weather was nice and he wasn’t teaching, any excuse was good enough for them to go out. They caught up with friends, went to concerts or to the Galician bar downstairs to have a beer, and if they were on some substance, they didn’t get home till the next morning. They could never get enough of it, and it wasn’t surprising that they took refuge in the night to avoid bad blood between them, as if it was neutral ground or constituted an armistice. For Mai, night wasn’t a measure of time. It was a space, a thick, verdant forest that needed to be crossed from end to end, even if you didn’t know what was waiting for you on the other side. And it was cheating to turn back. She said, “I don’t care if we never come back from the night.” He went along with that.

  They were often out of control and got too squalid—well, a day is just a day, and each day was each day—but they looked after each other to the end. The next day they tended to wake up at home, in bed, in the middle of a devastated bedroomscape that seemed to have been attacked by machete blows, the result of some violence they didn’t know about. Then the first one to wake up and see it blamed the other for the excess, and in the whole ritual they found some solace.

  “Who am I doing this for?” he asks himself as he keeps walking down Passeig de Sant Joan. “Her or me?” The owl whispers in his ear, “For both of you, knucklehead.” He heads down the wide pavement in a straight line and doesn’t walk past anyone for a while. The bars are closing after the soccer fever and waiters are clearing the terraces with a racket of tables and chairs. He’s walked more than half of the I and now he’s afraid of finishing it. He slows down, stops for a moment, and feels ridiculous. Once again, he has the feeling that someone’s coming up from behind, and even has a shiver of nearness but this time, too, there’s no one there. Just the night. He lights up and starts walking again, trying to shake off the paranoia, convincing himself with every step that he’s doing what he must do. No, he’ll never forget her. Mai. Never. He knows that. If he’s writing her name, it’s only so the city will remember her.

  * * *

  When he gets to the Plaça de Tetuan, he hesitates for a few seconds, wondering whether to go round it to cross Gran Via or go straight through it. The iron gates of the park are still open and, though there’s not much light inside, he goes in, because he has to keep the line of the I straight. In the shadows he can see three or four people talking in a ring, keeping an eye on their dogs, which are sniffing and chasing each other up and down the patches of grass. In the best-lit part, near the central group of sculptures, three adolescents are playing catch, trying to keep the ball in the air. They’re shouting, yelling insults if one of them fumbles and drops it. A bit farther on, in the stripy shadows of palms and banana trees, he spots the silhouette of a couple lying on the ground but, walking past, realizes that, no, it’s a hobo sleeping on a bed of cardboard and plastic bags. He keeps going and, just when he’s about to leave from the far side of the square, he hears someone calling his name.

  What surprises him most is that the voice sounds so calm and natural, as if it’s been waiting for him. He stops and looks harder to see where it’s coming from. Then he sees two figures coming toward him.

  “It’s you, right? What the hell are you doing here?” says the voice. He immediately recognizes Toni Forajido, who vigorously pumps his hand as if they were pals having an arm-wrestling contest. He and Mai called him that because he played bass in a garage band named Los Forajidos. They had a couple of college friends in common and they’d seen them play at Sidecar or Magic, but he can’t remember which. Then Toni left the band and went off to live in Berlin, after which they’d lost track of him.

  “Nothing. Just walking, as you can see,” he says, taking a couple of steps toward the gate of the park, where the glow from the streetlights is brighter. It’s at least ten years since he’s seen Toni, who’s hollow-cheeked and hasn’t aged well. It looks like he’s still sporting the same old black leather jacket, cowboy boots, and earring that he wore back then, but over the years he’s lost the air of outsider cockiness that bass players from all the bands around the world tend to have. “So, what are you two doing?”

  “Gonna get wasted.” Proud and solemn, Toni shows him two bottles of cheap vodka they must have bought five minutes ago. His roguish expression triggers the memory that Mai couldn’t stand Toni Forajido, that she used to say that he was a poseur and a moron. “We worked hard today, so we earned it. Yeah, Christa?”

  Then he notices the g
irl who’s with Toni. She must be Polish or German, and if he put her age at eighteen, that would be pushing it. Her upper lip is pierced, so her smile looks mocking, and her blond hair is a snarled mess. It must be days since she’s washed it. When he says hello, she looks at him with ill-concealed impatience. She seems tired, as if she’d rather sleep than get drunk. Toni Forajido strokes her back, tenderly caresses her cheek, and, with a wink at his old friend, asks if he’d like to join in the fun.

  “No, thanks,” he says. “I’ll pass.”

  “You still see anyone from the old days?” Toni asks. “We were such a bunch of animals.”

  He shakes his head, saying no as neutrally as he can because he doesn’t want to get into a conversation, let alone rake over old coals. He wants to go, leave them to it, and meanwhile the girl’s starting to walk backwards, shuffling away to let them know it’s about time he did go. Before saying goodbye, Toni Forajido asks, “By the way, are you still with that woman? Mai, right? She was a bit . . . well, I don’t know how to put it, but, jeez, she had a spectacular ass and she liked a good time. Yeah, I remember her well.”

  “Right, right, we’ve been together for years.” He doesn’t want to tell the truth. Mai would see it as a defeat, and there’s no need. Then they say goodbye and go their separate ways, but at the last minute he stops and shouts, “Hey, Toni, just a matter of curiosity: Do you still play bass?”

  Toni Forajido doesn’t say a word but raises his open left hand, waggling it as if waving. In that light he’s just got time to notice that there’s a finger missing, the middle one.

  * * *

  He’s now on the last stretch of Passeig de Sant Joan and his feet are heavy. He’s done. The ink’s getting thicker. He thinks about the fluke of coming across Toni Forajido, today of all days, imagining the scrapes that have turned him into this seedy loser, a dopehead who picks up girls at railway stations or youth hostels or whatever. He also thinks about the way he referred to Mai. At first he felt flattered that Toni Forajido still remembered her after all those years, but was riled, too, by the offhand way he spoke about her. Now he feels bad for not objecting. They’ve known each other since the worst days (or best, depending on how you look at it) and he suddenly gets a mean idea: Toni, that bum, could have died and not Mai. Like a prisoner swap, except, in the end, it wouldn’t have been any use either.

  Now he can see the Arc de Triomf. There are more people going up and down in this section of the street, maybe because the subway’s nearby. A couple gets out of a taxi and goes into a building. He watches them, can see them entering, waiting for the elevator, how he loosens his tie and she laughs at something. When he crosses Ausiàs March, he once again has the feeling that someone’s coming behind him. He stops and a peppy girl with long, dark hair, jeans, blue sneakers, and a “spectacular ass” strides past, and he can’t help shouting, “Hey!” His voice comes out fretful, almost desperate. The girl hesitates for a moment or two but doesn’t turn around. On the contrary, she walks even faster and he knows he can’t follow her.

  As if needing some sign, he stops a few meters farther on in front of Norma Comics. Mai came here often. She loved comics. Through her, in their early days, he discovered Métal Hurlant, the brutal style of RanXerox, and Tardi’s war stories. They lost themselves in Moebius’s dreamworlds, and got worked up over Guido Crepax’s Valentina. He checks out the comics in the window, the names of superheroes he doesn’t know, the rubber figures of Tintin and Snowy, a life-size poster of one of Milo Manara’s beauties. He examines it all with an intensity that’s rare for this hour of the night. If it were open he’d go in. You might think he’s dragging out the time before coming to the end. But it’s not really that. He has a craving that can’t be satisfied.

  After a while, he starts walking again. At what point does writing a letter end if you can’t lift the ballpoint from the paper? He walks under the Arc de Triomf and then realizes that Mai’s name is now written on the city. He stops. He wants to cry but manages not to. He wipes his nose on his sleeve and lights up again. All at once, it’s as if she’s there, standing in front of him, more alive than ever, a fleeting presence with long, translucent hair, a weightless hand tugging at the other end of the narrative thread, pulling it tight. He looks at his sneakers. If he keeps walking now, the line won’t end. There are no rules today. This isn’t a game. He takes them off and keeps walking, barefoot, with the shoes in his hand. For a few seconds he’s not sure where to go, but Mai shows the way—go right—and he enters the cramped space of Carrer del Rec Comtal, heading for the narrow streets of La Ribera, looking for the darkest alleys. He pats his back pocket, where he always carries his wallet. Luckily he remembered to grab some cash before leaving home.

  BLINKER

  I’m the briefcase guy and I hitch rides. Everyone knows me. Well, when I say “everyone,” I mean all the folk who regularly take the road from Vic to Sant Quirze, or from Sant Quirze to Vic and beyond. Hundreds of people who, one day or another, have glanced at me when they’ve driven past, or looked at me with a sneer as if they’re bothered by the fact that I’m there all alone, or deliberately avoided eye contact. Sometimes I imagine them at home, having dinner, looking for something to talk about.

  “Today I saw that guy hitching just outside Vic. The briefcase guy.”

  “That’s creepy,” she says with a pointless shiver that starts and stops right there.

  They say these things because I’ve got a clown’s face—a clown without makeup—and everyone knows that clowns are scary, especially out of context and with no kids to amuse. I know because I look in the mirror at home and pull faces. I can see that I’ve got an agreeable, confident expression, but it only takes the movement of a couple of muscles to contract it into a grim mask. My reddened, slightly bulbous nose (rosacea, not booze), big mouth, thick, arched eyebrows, round head, and curly hair all conspire to turn me into a diabolical goblin or, worse, a diabolical old man on the lookout for heaven knows what. So I try not to laugh much. That, and because I’m getting old.

  Part of the problem, well, if it must be called a problem and not prejudice, is the briefcase, which is black and of a normal size. A traveling salesman’s briefcase. I’ve discovered that if I hitch with the bag on the ground beside me, they stop more than when I’m thumbing a ride with my right hand and hanging on to the handle with the left one. It must be because then it looks as if I’m on the move, in a hurry to get someplace, or maybe fleeing from some thorny situation, and normally people don’t go looking for problems.

  You keep discovering these kinds of details over time. At first, when it started to get cold in those milky-misted mornings of fall, I used to wear a long coat with a tartan flannel lining, which I’d inherited from a traveling-salesman uncle. It didn’t take me long to work out that it did me no favors. There were drivers who beeped at me with a cynical grin or who, crawling past, opened the window to say “Fag” or “Perv.” People are influenced by clichés they see on television, and a guy standing on the road with his coat half buttoned has to be a flasher. Then I got myself a black priest-style coat and it was plain sailing after that. The tie, too, you understand? That didn’t fit with the image of a hitchhiker. A man wearing a tie must have a car, and, if not, he’s faking and there’s something fishy about him. Swindler, pusher, gangster . . . Once the cops even stopped and asked to see my ID.

  * * *

  I’m telling you all this from my own experience. I’ve been hitching four times a week for more than fifteen years, always Tuesdays and Fridays (except in vacation periods and national holidays, when I move my schedule one day forward), always the same route, and always the same time frames, too: midmorning and midafternoon. Fifteen years is a long time: many miles, many faces, many cars, and many conversations with strangers. I’ve got into all kinds of vehicles, even vans and trucks, and once I was picked up by a Porsche 911 driven by a kid who chewed gum nonstop. I’ve seen how car interiors change. Good upholstery replacing pleather or faux
leather, or whatever they call it, tape decks getting more sophisticated, and smokers who put their faith in those vile-smelling air fresheners cut to look like a fir tree. I’ve seen how the roads around Vic have changed, with more and more traffic circles, and how, by the roadsides, fields and pastureland have been filling up with industrial buildings.

  People’s attitudes have changed, too. That’s inevitable, but from the standpoint of hitching they’ve got worse if anything. Women driving alone never pick me up now—never—and when they’re with a guy, they’ll make him renege at the last minute for sure—that’s if he ever intended to stop. (If I had to count the times, during all these years, that I’ve been picked up by a woman driving alone, I doubt I’d get to more than twenty, and I must say each time was worthy of celebration, as I’ll explain later.) Maybe young people are more open and know better what they want than before, but I still try to avoid them, because they drive like bolting horses, and anyway, conversation isn’t their thing. They’re hotheads. Wet behind the ears. Over the years I’ve become a bit of a sybarite, if I can put it like that, and I have to be really desperate to get in a car with two or three kids. They stop, open the window, and out comes loud music and gusts of sweet smoke. Sure, these are signs.