Come On Up

by jordi Nopca

  ###

  Two weeks later, when the alarm went off at five-thirty in the morning, we leaped out of bed, showered, and had breakfast. Estrella and I left the house just like close siblings on their way to school, dragging suitcases with wheels instead of backpacks with cartoon bunnies on them. I had tried to forget about the evening at the hotel by reading more novels by Walser, and some Hesse—which I’d quickly tired of—and some Max Frisch. I had mostly tried to throw myself into my work, selling coffeepots. I’d sold so many that it was seeming more and more likely that, when I came back from vacation, my boss would call me into his office and tell me I was getting a raise. And, all of a sudden, he’d pronounce my last name right for the first time.

  I wanted to move on, but the loathing inside me grew and accumulated. I was plotting my revenge, which I would implement on our trip to Switzerland, a placid, civilized country that we crossed by train for two days, starting in Zurich and going past Basel, Lucerne, and Lake Constance, all before reaching the French part, whose literature we had yet to sample. Estrella loved Lausanne; I thought Geneva was more interesting, particularly the United Nations buildings and a guided tour around the lake, which seemed like a good place to get rid of her definitively, but I ruled that out as excessive, considering that the only thing I was sure of at that point was that my wife was cheating on me. I had to think of some other sort of humiliation. As I tossed and turned in the hotel bed, after much thought, I felt I’d found the perfect option. Then I slept like a rock.

  The next day, during a pleasant dinner at a quiet restaurant in Geneva, I decided to verbalize the unusual suggestion I’d been thinking about.

  “What if we go see Peter Stamm?” I asked.

  “Stamm? The writer?”

  Estrella lifted her knife and fork from her plate and held them aloft for a few seconds over the monkfish with vegetables she’d ordered and a half-full glass of white wine.

  “Yes, the only Peter Stamm we know. I remember his mentioning the name of the small town where he lives, when he was launching his novel in Barcelona.”

  After a wicked pause, I let drop the town’s name, and then I pulled out a train schedule. I showed Estrella that, although we were far from where the writer lived, thanks to the efficiency of the Swiss train system, we could easily be there in just a few hours.

  “We could stop by and say hi, get him to sign a couple books.”

  “It sounds like a great idea, Octavi,” she declared, preparing to show the affection she still felt for me with a standard-issue touch of my wrist.

  “Pure deliquescence,” I murmured through my teeth.

  “What’s that?”

  “Nothing. Sorry, just thinking aloud.”

  Estrella was so pleased that she let me take a walk by myself through Geneva, which allowed me to find the store I needed. It was closed. I typed the address into my cell phone and the next day I went back there first thing, saying I had to buy some hemorrhoid cream. Estrella reluctantly let me go, repulsed by finding out for the first time, on vacation, that her husband had hemorrhoids, something she hated almost as much as I hated her incontinence, and the smell of piss she left in the bed, bathroom, and particularly the armchair where she would sit to read. I went back to the room with the tools hidden inside my coat, but there was no need for such precaution: Estrella was in the shower.

  “Can I come in the bathroom?” I asked.

  “Whatever,” she replied.

  Just to annoy her, I opened the door as wide as possible, letting all the steam out, and washed my hands twice, while watching the translucent glass of the shower out of the corner of my eye. I confirmed that Estrella, buck naked and rubbing her body in that abrasive way of hers, was a bit like a huge machine, maybe a bulldozer.

  “Why don’t you close the door, Octavi, for God’s sake!” she screamed after a few seconds.

  I apologized with just a touch of sarcasm: I had to keep playing the attentive, submissive husband, at least until I could enact my revenge.

  We spent another day in Geneva before taking the train to the town where Peter Stamm lived. We were trying to decide between taking the funicular up to Salève or a relaxing stroll through the neighborhood of Saint-Gervais. As we breakfasted on café au lait and two slices of apple cake, we decided to stay in the city. We visited the Museum of Modern Art, more attentive to the cards identifying the art than the works they were next to—Estrella and I had never been big fans of the painting and sculpture of the second half of the twentieth century.

  “This painting is too difficult,” she would say.

  “It’s a scam,” I added.

  Even though we expressed it differently, we shared the same opinion: We didn’t like or understand anything that had come after Pop Art—uncomfortable abstractions, concrete blocks, and trash—and saying that out loud was a relief. “Truly cathartic,” Estrella would have said, with a know-it-all expression on her face.

  After eating too much fondue at lunch, we spent the afternoon at Geneva’s Art and History Museum. We scribbled dates and curious facts into our notepads over a few narcotic hours. If we hadn’t spent so much time there, we could have gone to the Ethnographic Museum, but we checked the guidebook too late, and as I read the information out loud, slightly miffed, Estrella processed it with a disappointed clearing of her throat.

  “Let’s go shopping,” she commanded.

  But the shops closed early, too. Luckily, we happened upon a mall. We spent a couple of hours exploring it. Meanwhile, we kept using our notebooks. Instead of recording historical miscellany, we jotted down the prices and names of local products that we planned to later research in Barcelona. Estrella wrote down the names of facial lotions and slimming creams; most of my notes were about food.

  We didn’t have dinner the night before we took the train. We stayed in the hotel room to rest up for the trip. Stretched out on the bed, we both decided to read Peter Stamm. Estrella put her book down first. She turned off the light on the bedside table and after a few minutes started snoring. I kept reading for a while; all I remember of those pages was a story where a group of teenagers went swimming at a lake in Thurgau, a boy and girl had an unexpected sexual encounter, and when one of their friends caught them in the act, the boy jumped off a cliff and ended up dead, floating in the lake’s shallow waters.

  The next day, already on the train that would take us to Peter Stamm, I pulled out the manga version of Heidi and read the entire thing, four times, before Estrella started to mock me.

  “What in the world are you doing?” she chided.

  “I’m reading Heidi.”

  “Aren’t you embarrassed?”

  “Should I be? Those mountains on the other side of the window are the same ones where Heidi lived with her grandfather, the goats, and Peter, that clever, kind shepherd she was in love with.”

  Estrella didn’t comment any further, even though I’m sure she was dying to mercilessly dump on my choice of reading material. She had started Montauk, by Max Frisch, a more adult option, which kept her entertained throughout most of the trip. Swiss trains are spaces where practically nothing interferes with your reading. The passengers don’t talk on their cell phones, or if someone dares to, he keeps it short and covers his mouth with his hand, muffling the sound waves. Anyone who listens to music does so at a respectable volume that rarely bothers anyone else. The minority who aren’t traveling alone speak only when strictly necessary, which is to say, hardly ever: a comment, the response, a thoughtful pause before a typically short reply, and then eyes back on the passing landscape or a book. Like everyone else, the Swiss read mostly historical novels or thrillers by American authors. You see a fair amount of self-help books, too. Every once in a while there’s someone underlining technical or computer books; that’s the only exception.

  On our way to Peter Stamm’s town, while Estrella dived into Frisch, I went to the café car and ordered a soda. The waitress served it without glancing at me even once. Since there was no one
else around, I got up the courage to ask her, in my rudimentary English, if she had ever waited on any Swiss authors. She took the question professionally and said that she had never seen any Swiss authors but that she had once served an Austrian one, Peter Handke. Since she mentioned his nationality, plus the title of a book I was unfamiliar with, I felt obliged to ask her for more details about Handke. How she had found out about him. What she had read of his. What she’d done when she recognized him. Did he have a cocktail or a soda?

  I had more questions, but my lack of language skills made the conversation difficult. The waitress, on the other hand, expressed herself very well. She tried her hand at translating the titles of Handke’s novels from German into English; she explained she’d discovered him thanks to a friend some thirty years older than she was, someone who must have been more or less my age. Instead of sitting at the bar like I had, Handke had gestured from a table for her to come over, and then ordered a tonic water. He hadn’t taken his eyes off his reading, which the waitress hadn’t been able to identify.

  “I’m sorry,” she said at the end of her story, right before asking me if I was also an author.

  I didn’t dare be too explicit about what I did for a living. I just pointed to the coffeemaker behind her and said, “I work with coffee.”

  She thought I was ordering a coffee, and began to make me one. I didn’t try to explain the mistake. As I alternated between sips of soda and coffee, she continued telling me about some books that had stayed with her. I thought she mentioned Franz Kafka. She also clarified that in recent months she’d been reading more philosophy than fiction, probably influenced by her fiancé. While she said it, she played with her engagement ring.

  I got the hint. I finished my two drinks in silence (first the coffee, then the soda). After paying, I went back to the car where Estrella was still absorbed in Montauk. Not having asked the waitress if she’d ever read a novel by Peter Stamm was an error that tortured me for most of the remaining train ride, which ended punctually three hours and twenty minutes after leaving Geneva.

  An extremely comfortable bus took us to the town we were looking for. In the early afternoon, once we were settled into a hotel that we’d had no trouble finding, we began to plan how we would locate the writer’s home. Instead of opting for the official route, which sooner or later could raise suspicions, I reminded Estrella of something he had said on his last visit to Barcelona.

  “Stamm goes to pick up his daughters from school every afternoon. All we have to do is figure out how many schools there are in town and what time they let out. Once we find them, all we have to do is discreetly follow them home.”

  Estrella nodded, as if I had already explained the strategy before. We searched for the addresses of the town’s schools—there weren’t many—and we passed by them all, even though the students had already gone home. The next day, after a nervous morning in a museum of local curiosities, we split up to double our chances of finding Stamm. I wasn’t the least bit surprised when, after a couple of hours, Estrella sent me a text message with the writer’s address—she had always been cleverer and luckier than I.

  I quickly answered, saying that she should wait for me. “I’m on my way,” I wrote. I had to ask a couple of red-faced residents the best route to get there.

  Estrella was waiting for me, hopping up and down with excitement.

  “He lives on the second floor!” she shouted. She had figured that out because, about ten minutes earlier, the author had gone out on the balcony to smoke, despite the cold. “His wife must not let him stink up the house with nicotine.”

  “A sensible injunction. And very female.”

  “You know that kind of comment isn’t a very flattering look for you, Octavi.”

  I was aware that, above all, I had to maintain my self-control, at least until we visited Stamm. So I swallowed my pride and focused on dissuading Estrella from going to see the writer that very afternoon. It wasn’t hard for me to convince her that if we went the next morning, the girls would be at school and we’d have fewer distractions.

  “I bet his wife won’t be there, either,” I added. “Stamm said he writes in the mornings. That must be the only time of the day when he’s home alone.”

  “Then we’ll be bothering him,” replied Estrella. “He might be finishing a new novel.”

  “That’s possible.” I took a long pause, during which I ran my hand over my frozen, dried-out, bald head. “We’ll have to risk it, Estrella.”

  “We’ll have to risk it.”

  “So, morning or afternoon?”

  My option won out. The next day, we left the hotel first thing, after a light, yucky breakfast, and we were out in front of Stamm’s apartment building in the blink of an eye. The only obstacle was the front door. We waited for the mailman, whom we had passed two blocks before reaching our target. When he left, we waited a couple of minutes and rang the same apartment he had. Just as we’d imagined, the neighbor buzzed us in without asking who we were, figuring we were the mailman.

  We marched solemnly up to the second floor. Estrella looked at me a couple of times, and in her eyes I saw, above all, a dose of almost unconditional support. Maybe she didn’t know that the visit to Stamm would make our marital crisis explicit, but I’m convinced she sensed it wasn’t going to be just an insignificant anecdote. Before ringing the bell, I put my backpack down. It was filled with all the things I needed.

  “I’m so nervous,” said Estrella.

  “You can say that again.”

  Stamm was slow to answer the door. His suspicious eyes appeared through a slight crack. He said something in German that I didn’t catch, because I was too busy ramming the door wide open and punching the writer so hard that he collapsed gracefully, almost in slow motion. Estrella watched me with her mouth agape.

  “Let’s get this party started,” I said.

  After picking up my backpack, I dragged her roughly into the Stamm family’s apartment and closed the door. Then I knocked her unconscious with a right hook and left her laid out beside her favorite author.

  “Let’s get this party started,” I repeated, indulging myself.

  The Stamm’s apartment was nice, decorated with minimalist luxury. The author’s library wasn’t as daunting as the kitchen or the dining room, where the furniture was arranged very tastefully. That was where I placed the two unconscious bodies. I managed to sit them up with great difficulty and restrain them with the duct tape I had bought in Geneva. Before waking them up by sticking a cotton ball soaked in alcohol under their noses, I spent some time amusing myself with the many functions of the Swiss Army knife, the small, practical instrument I planned to debut in those oh-so-special circumstances.

  “Good morning, Estrella,” I said when she came to.

  My wife realized that she was stuck to the chair. Her mouth was covered with duct tape and she was seated in front of Peter Stamm, who was still unconscious, also bound, and with his swollen nose bleeding a bit.

  “If you do what I say, this will all be quick.”

  After listening to my advice, Estrella started to cry.

  “Your tears won’t change anything. My mind’s been made up for days now. What has to happen is, to use one of your words, inexorable.”

  I waited for her to calm down a little bit before explaining how the game was going to work.

  “After all,” I concluded, “I chose Stamm because he’s one of your favorite authors. The best present you can give a novelist is a story, right?”

  Estrella thought that I had merely gone crazy and was nodding at everything I said.

  “Right now, all I ask, Estrella, is that you translate my words exactly. That’s it,” I reminded her before bringing the writer to.

  He opened his blue eyes slowly, still dazed, and the throb of pain he must have felt when trying to wrinkle his nose brought him back to the hell his home had become. Our eyes met. Then he stared at Estrella, whose mouth I had just uncovered.

  “Good
morning, Mr. Stamm,” I said in English, taking a little bow. Then I switched into Catalan: “Today, I’m gonna tell you a story you’re sure to remember for quite a while. Maybe someday it will become part of your body of work. If so, it will be a pleasure to read what we’ve created.”

  I signaled to Estrella to start translating: “Today, I’m gonna tell you a story you’re sure to remember for quite a while. …”

  Stamm was perplexed as he listened to that first message. As when he was in Barcelona, I couldn’t help but stare at the dark, tired bags hanging beneath his eyes. In an attempt to relate to the writer’s difficult job, I told him a little bit about my profession. Of the uncertainty—and challenge—of going door-to-door, trying to convince bar owners throughout rural Catalonia of the high quality of the coffeepots made by the company I represented. I also told him about the head of the Barcelona office, who a few days before this trip had called me into his office to congratulate me.

  “Not even then did he manage to pronounce my last name correctly,” I complained.

  Estrella translated my words at a comfortable pace. Those first few minutes, she must have been thinking that this insanity of mine was a consequence of the feeling that, at least in my work life, I was a failure, which was partly true but, in the end, wasn’t what had driven me to do what I was doing.

  “The day after that conversation with my boss, I bought a manga version of Heidi, and Jakob von Gunten, by Robert Walser.”

  When Estrella said the title of the novel and the last name of the Swiss author—her accent more contrived than mine—Peter Stamm nodded. He recognized my reference and, with a little luck, even approved.

  “For me, Jakob von Gunten is a book about humiliation,” I said before continuing my tale.