Come On Up

by jordi Nopca

  After jotting down the three Hesse titles on the envelope from the most recent telephone bill, I continued my research. The name Johanna Spyri brought me back to Heidi, but not even the fact that she’d been born, lived her entire life, and died in Switzerland (1827–1901) made me want to find out more about her work. Largely because, above a brief bio, I found a portrait showing her severe face crowned by intricate braids.

  The next few writers didn’t make it very far with me, either. The name Friedrich Dürrenmatt meant nothing to me, and even less so Ágota Kristóf, who, despite being Hungarian and writing in French, had lived in Zurich for more than fifty years and died there just a few months earlier. I wrote their names down beneath Hermann Hesse’s, in case after reading the Nobel Prize winner I wanted to continue with Swiss authors. Then I came to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, a philosopher and writer I’d always assumed was French. Discovering that he was born in the Republic of Geneva as far back as 1712 led me to pour myself a glass of whiskey. I drank a sip with the intention of continuing my research, but I wasn’t able to because of an urgent phone call from my mother—my father had just been admitted to the hospital with symptoms pointing to an imminent heart attack.

  “I’m on my way, Mom,” I murmured.

  I left the house without telling Estrella, turning off the computer, or even grabbing my jacket. But he didn’t have a heart attack. False alarm. And after a week of combining my sales visits with the required trips to see my parents, I went back to the bookstore where I’d bought my first Stamm and approached the bookseller, who quickly found a pocket edition of Siddhartha.

  “Here it is, sir,” she said.

  I found her use of “sir” a bit too insistent. Maybe she remembered me from the last time and was a little scared of me. I was thinking that as I waited in line to pay, and occasionally watched her helping some other customer, tidying the stacks, or checking something on the computer, probably her e-mail. Instead of going home, I went to a spacious café and started to read Siddhartha. I got stuck on page fourteen. Despite my efforts to keep going, my gaze ended up glued to the television screen at the back of the café. It was showing a rebroadcast of an English football match. No one was watching it. The café owner must have thought that having it on would establish an upbeat mood and attract a customer or two.

  I killed time until nine, hoping in vain that Leeds would score a goal. Then I paid and went to the restroom, where I sprayed the entire toilet lid—in a wide circle, twice—with a stream of my piss. I didn’t wash my hands. When I left, I walked back to the sidewalk in front of the bookstore, which closed at nine-fifteen, to wait for the bookseller who had up until that point been so amiable, although perhaps a tad stiff, maybe because of our age difference, or the vagueness of my requests. She had skillfully established just the right distance between us, which was understandable but still bothered me.

  I waited for her beneath a streetlight, so she would see that my intentions were pure and luminous. I wanted to be sure of how she felt about me. If it became clear that I scared her, I would come straight out and ask her why.

  The young woman showed up ten minutes later, hand in hand with a coworker, a woman with white hair whom I’d caught watching shoppers from an office located on the upper floor. She acknowledged my presence with a glance. When she saw that I was holding up the novel to help her place me—“I’m the Siddhartha guy”—she ran a hand through her hair, and as it dropped to her side, she waved me off with a slight gesture. I didn’t do a thing. I didn’t even watch as the two women headed off, one beside the other, so well matched. Blank mind. Excessive perspiration.

  I spent the entire evening talking to Estrella about coffeepots. We focused on the two new models that the company wanted to feature during the upcoming months and the slight chance I had of getting a bonus this year.

  “They keep raising the quotas,” she said to console me.

  She had a point. As far as I knew, only two of the twelve staff vendors were set to exceed the sales figures needed to earn a nice bonus at the end of the year. It was also true that I’d been pretty unmotivated for a while now. All I wanted to do was go to Switzerland, even though I wasn’t prepared for the trip: I hadn’t read enough Swiss literature, not by a long shot.

  “I need a break,” I told Estrella that same night. “Can we move our trip up?”

  “You tell me this now? Are you sure that’s what you want?”

  I didn’t answer and I didn’t bring it up again. But a few days later, as Christmas was approaching, Estrella called me on the phone and asked me if I was still interested in taking our trip sooner than we’d originally planned. I said I was, and she suggested we go the third week of January.

  “Perfect!” I shouted.

  That same afternoon, I sold half a dozen coffeepots, and still had time to stop at the supermarket and buy a vacuum-sealed package of carpaccio. I was planning to make a special dinner, but it had to be postponed because we got a call and had to rush to the hospital. This time, my father had had a heart attack.

  “What timing,” said Estrella under her breath as I turned the key in the lock on the car door.

  I noticed that she had a run in her stocking, but I didn’t point it out to her. I didn’t respond to her comment, either.

  My father’s recovery was slow. My mother, whose memory was starting to go, asked me, every single time I went into his hospital room, if I’d lost my job.

  “Things are getting so bad, son …” she would say, her hands clutching a prayer card she’d tried to palm off on me on several occasions, “so bad that I don’t how we’ll manage to get on.”

  While my father was in the hospital, Estrella’s spirits were high (maybe a little too high). She would talk about the law firm, her new English conversation teacher, and her spinning classes, but mostly she would read selected passages from the guides to Switzerland that she had bought at a mall. It seemed she’d set aside Peter Stamm’s and Max Frisch’s books. I was surprised one day when she started telling me about Hermann Hesse’s thrilling life, after finishing Narcissus and Goldmund, Klingsor’s Last Summer, and The Glass Bead Game. I didn’t mention that I had Siddhartha at home. When she showed up at the hospital room one day with the book, I was tempted to ask her if it was my copy, but after my mother’s interruption, I just let it go.

  “Estrella, honey, you read too much; it’s not good for you,” she said without taking her eyes off my father, who was starting to want to be released from the hospital, just so he wouldn’t have to deal with so much family in such a small space. “You hear me? People who read too much end up a little off their rockers.”

  Estrella got up from the armchair she had just sat down in and left the room. After scolding my mother, I went after my wife. I found her standing in a corner of a tiny waiting room, gnawing on her arm.

  “She’s unbearable,” she said, allowing me to put my arms around her from behind.

  “Don’t worry. Soon we’ll go on vacation and we’ll forget about all this.”

  The very next day, we bought the plane tickets for Zurich. Our plan was to travel through the country by train, free to go wherever we pleased as long as we didn’t miss our flight back to Barcelona after two weeks.

  Buoyed by the upcoming trip, I started January off by selling such an impressive number of coffeepots that the head of our Barcelona branch even called me into his office to congratulate me.

  “Mr. Fonallosa, I’m impressed. The rough patch this country and our sector are going through hasn’t stopped you from performing your job more boldly than ever. You have my sincerest congratulations.”

  The boss held out his hand and I shook it with feigned enthusiasm. I couldn’t believe that after twenty years at the company he still couldn’t pronounce my last name correctly.

  Unless it was a strategy for humiliating me: When pronounced like that, my lineage was reduced to a parody of itself.

  After I left his office, I locked myself in the bathroom, looked in the mi
rror, and repeated, “Son of a bitch. Son of a bitch. Son of a bitch. Son of a bitch. Son of a bitch. Son of a bitch.”

  At home, I explained to Estrella that the boss was very happy with my work. Perhaps as a reward, she agreed to masturbate me right after dinner, while we watched the news. After the expeditious hand job, she went to bed and I called my parents.

  “How are you?” was the first thing I asked my mother.

  “Your father is eighty-three and I’m almost eighty-one. I think that answers your question, honey.”

  “Is he still feeling low?”

  Since his release from the hospital, my father had barely gotten out of bed. He refused to talk to any of his friends and he hadn’t even gone down to the local bar to watch the Barça games. If my mother or I chided him, he would say, “A timely retreat is a victory.” Then he would close his eyes and drift off to sleep.

  “Your father is in terrible shape. This heart attack is the last straw.”

  “What were you doing just now?” I didn’t know how to continue the conversation, but I couldn’t get off the phone too quickly.

  “We were watching TV.”

  “The news?”

  “No. One of those gossip programs.”

  “Dad, too?”

  “No. He went to bed at eight. Or maybe even earlier. What can I tell you, son, we’re in bad shape.”

  As the agonizing conversation dragged on, I went to the bathroom, peed sitting down, and used a piece of toilet paper to clean off the remaining semen that hadn’t landed on Estrella’s hand.

  “Mom, you have to try to look at things a little differently,” I recommended, still cleaning myself off. “Take things with a grain of salt. There’s no use getting bitter about it. Can’t you see that?”

  I decided to tell her that my boss had called me into the office that very afternoon to congratulate me.

  “I’m convinced I’ve been selling more lately because of my positive attitude.”

  She, however, didn’t share my view: Her response was that a real piece of good news would be that he’d given me a raise.

  “Mom, that’s not fair.”

  “You should have stopped this door-to-door business years ago, dragging yourself around like a worm—” she began, but instead of listening to her usual speech, I hung up on her and then disconnected the wireless router.

  In the bedroom, Estrella was reading a book by Thomas Bernhard, The Loser.

  “Another Swiss author?” I asked. “Pure deliquescence?”

  “Go to hell.”

  Estrella got out of bed, walked past me without a word, and locked herself in the bathroom. I didn’t wait up.

  The next day, I went to the store where they’d tried to sell me Heidi. I found the same girl who had waited on me the first time and I asked her for the manga adaptation of Johanna Spyri’s story. She helped me easily and with an acritical, perhaps slightly robotic smile of satisfaction.

  “My daughter loves the manga,” I said, insecure about using the definite article, perhaps incorrectly. The salesgirl’s strange expression made me drop it. “Manga is fantastic. The drawings are just so special. … Those big eyes. And those wild hairdos.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  The salesgirl looked over my shoulder, hoping to find a new customer, someone who would save her from having to deal with me anymore.

  “I also wanted another book,” I announced. “One by Thomas Bernhard. Where are his novels?” “Over here.”

  She led me toward a bookshelf brimming with German authors and vanished before I could thank her. I had no trouble finding a couple of titles by Bernhard, both in comfortable, modest editions, but after reading his biography on the flap of each one, I decided not to buy them. Bernhard was born in the Netherlands in 1931. He had lived most of his life in Austria. The publishing house had deemed it worthy to note that the author had spent “long periods” in Madrid and that he was one of the great European authors of the second half of the twentieth century, thanks to “his merciless analyses of the human condition.” “He deals with themes such as death, illness, destruction, madness and the desolation that plagues mankind,” concluded the text.

  I went back to the counter, hoping to find the salesgirl, but she wasn’t there. I waited for almost ten minutes, my fingers gripping the glass countertop. When she showed up, I moved them and saw that they’d left ten circular sweat stains, warm like threats, intriguing like steamy mirrors after a too-hot shower.

  “Hi,” I said. “I have another question.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I found the books by Bernhard, but I realized he’s not Swiss. He was born in Holland and lived mostly in Austria. Do you know if he had any important links to Switzerland? I’m at a loss.”

  “You only want to read Swiss authors.”

  “Right now, yes. I have my reasons.” I ran my hand over my forehead. It was a bit sweaty. “Would it be too much to ask for you to look for another Swiss author in your database?”

  “No problem.”

  After a couple of searches, the girl came back with Heidi, by Johanna Spyri. I lifted up my manga version enthusiastically, as if I’d just won a school trophy.

  “That’s all that comes up,” the salesgirl explained apologetically.

  “What if you try searching for Hermann Hesse? Maybe some other Swiss writer will come up underneath him.”

  “What did you say his name was?”

  “Hesse. Hermann Hesse. The one who wrote Siddhartha. Hermann with an H and two n’s.”

  The new search brought up a name that was new to me: Robert Walser. I went back to the shelf of German literature. I had to kneel down to find Walser’s books, and I extracted three that were in bad shape: Jakob von Gunten, The Notebooks of Fritz Kocher, and The Assistant. I bought them all, and as soon as I got home I started reading Jakob von Gunten, a name that resonated for me, as if, somehow, it had been a part of my life for a long time. Jakob von Gunten, patient and submissive: a little man who didn’t want to change.

  It was the first time I’d ever read an entire novel in one sitting. When I was done, I felt exhausted and I closed my eyes for a moment. I dreamed that I was working at the stables of a castle. The work was very gratifying, especially every time some nobleman showed up with his lady, whom I would help up onto her horse, just as calm as could be. My only aspiration was having as much contact as possible with those young, haughty females.

  I was awakened by Estrella.

  “Are you not feeling well?” she asked, the hand she had used to rouse me still on my shoulder.

  I glanced at my watch before answering. It was five after ten.

  “No, no, I’m fine.”

  “I had a meeting and it ran late.”

  “That’s okay. I drifted off while I was reading.”

  Estrella looked at the book’s cover and asked me which of the two names—Jakob or Robert—was the author’s.

  “Robert Walser.”

  “And is it of any use to us?”

  By that, she meant was Walser Swiss. I nodded.

  “It’s definitely much more useful than that writer you were reading yesterday.”

  “Bernhard?”

  “He was born in Holland and lived in Austria. He spent some long periods in Madrid. I read that on his bio on the book flap. Bernhard’s of no use to us at all.”

  Estrella went to our bedroom and came back a few seconds later with The Loser in her hands. She opened it up to the middle and read me a very long passage—written with a sizable number of circumlocutions, which were somehow addictive—in which this character named Wertheimer was making a trip by train from Austria to Switzerland to see his sister. She’d recently married a pharmaceutical executive, left the family home in Vienna that she’d shared with Wertheimer, who had studied at the conservatory with Glenn Gould and the man who was the book’s narrator. Since she’d left him alone, Wertheimer had been ruminating over how to hurt his sister. He traveled by train to Zizers, and once there, he
found the large estate where she lived, sneaked onto the grounds, and hanged himself from one of the trees.

  “It’s a horrible story,” I said when Estrella had finished reading.

  “I find it fascinating.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Bernhard is a genius. It’s fascinating, no two ways about it.”

  The next day, during my conversation with the first client of the day, I used the very same adjective to describe one of the coffeepot models that the company wanted to implement—another borrowed expression—during the next few months. The owner of the bar was patient with my fake enthusiasm and bought the coffeepot. As I left, I got a message from Estrella suggesting we meet up in a hotel near the Plaça de Francesc Macià. I suspected something right off. Which was why I showed up fifteen minutes early, without replying to the message and cautiously erasing it.

  “Room three oh six,” I announced to the clerk in the lobby.

  “Room three oh six,” he repeated, as if his brain needed to hear the confirmation out loud in order to activate.

  Before I went up, I asked him not to mention my arrival to the woman who had reserved the room.

  “It’s a surprise,” I whispered, to further convince the clerk, who was probably quite used to all sorts of adulterous perversions anyway.

  Twenty minutes later, hidden in the only wardrobe in the bedroom, I could see Estrella enter, shut herself in the bathroom, and emerge wearing a lingerie combination I’d never seen on her before. I was about to come out of my hiding spot and pounce on her. She was now stretched out on the bed, and a brownish nipple slipped out of one of her bra cups. I was surprised to find I was completely turned on. After a few minutes, Estrella made a phone call to chew out her lover, who insisted that he didn’t know they were meeting up that evening. When she hung up, my wife got dressed and left, obviously irritated. I waited ten minutes before coming out of the wardrobe, in case Estrella forgot something and came back for it. I masturbated on the bed, and then in the shower, and one last time in front of the wardrobe, with the doors open, heady with the scent of wood that emerged from that secret cave. I still hadn’t realized that our marriage was down for the count.