The afternoon she invited him to tea. He’s leaning against the doorframe watching as she carefully puts the excellent ham she bought at the delicatessen into a perfect circle on the plate, and then she stands on a chair to get something down from a cupboard. He holds her around the hips and lifts her up into the air, she protests and waves her arms around, not touching him with her open hands, because she doesn’t want to dirty him with the ham grease; but he doesn’t care about that and carries her to the sofa. They didn’t have their tea that day, either. He’s surprised by that uncontrollable desire of his to jump on top of her as soon as he sees her. He never showed any shame about it. He knows she was happy to see that she awakened his desire.
He’s glad he never had what people often call a domestic scene with her.
And he’s glad that he was clear about things when he broke up with her. It would have been worse to take a longer time over it, to say he had to think about it, that he had doubts. She said it herself: when you love somebody, you don’t have any doubts. Even so, he’s very surprised he isn’t missing her more, and he thinks he really does want her to find a young man who’s more appropriate for her as soon as possible.
He touches his jacket to feel the envelope inside it. He’ll open it later.
The track around the clinic has a thick line of grass down the middle. He stops to see if there are any four-leaf clovers, just as Lynn used to whenever she saw a bank of grass. He used to call her “Little Red Riding Hood” because of that habit of hers, bending over like a grandmother looking for field mushrooms. One day, they found half a dozen of them, and another two or three the day after. She was delighted and said that Martutene was a place for being happy. He thought that four-leaf clovers were a mutation and that the chances of finding one were proportional to the amount of time you spent looking for them. But Kepa set him right—apparently, there’s one four-leaf clover for every ten thousand three-leafed ones. But the worst of it was that the four-leaf plants Lynn found weren’t clovers, they were a type of fern, and a protected species, what’s more. Learning that really disappointed Lynn, having harmed a Marsilea batardae, which is that fern’s Latin name, made her feel guilty. Abaitua’s never found a four-leaf clover, even though he often looks.
The track joins the main road, and he has to walk beside it for a few feet to reach the entrance to the clinic. Pilar’s little Golf is badly parked, diagonally crossing one of the yellow lines on the ground. It’s unlocked, as usual, and the keys are inside. He gets in and sits in the driver’s seat, without knowing why. Perhaps to prove that anybody could do the same. There’s a strong smell of her perfume, the one with violet in it.
When he comes across the administrator in the hall, she says, “Are you going to join us here?” which makes it clear she knows about his problems at the hospital, and she’s probably heard that dirty lie that he’d been drunk when he did what he did. He abruptly says he doesn’t think so, and she replies it was just what she’d heard and then shrugs. Who did she hear it from? A nervous laugh. “You know, just things you hear.” Apparently it’s Pilar herself who said on some occasion that she hoped he’d end up working with them there. To an extent, he’s glad she hopes that. He’d like to know how she talks about him when he’s not there. Does she say “my husband”? He doesn’t think so. He’d say that women always say more or less what they really think of their husbands, at least if you know how to hear them. If they’re bored, it’s the first thing you notice; perhaps more so when they’re bored than when they’re angry. What idea does she give of him when she mentions him?
He sees her at the end of the corridor with her back to him, two other doctors to either side of her. Like her workmates, she’s wearing green scrubs and, over them, a white smock. They’re examining an X-ray image, which Pilar is holding against the glass of the window. She’s wearing a brightly colored cap, one of those ones he thinks frivolous and never wears himself. He doesn’t know one of the doctors, and the other’s the young Portuguese doctor, Adolfo’s his name, and in fact, he isn’t all that young. Pilar has both her hands up on the window, and the Portuguese doctor takes her cap off for her; she’s probably asked him to because it’s in her way. She shakes her head in the way she does when she comes out of the shower and turns around just then, realizing he’s there. Abaitua keeps still, and it’s she who comes toward him with her chin up, arms dangling and reluctant steps, which reminds him of the day they met in the vestibule of the Zaragoza train station. “To what do we owe the honor?” she says, a few steps away from him. Abaitua doesn’t look for any pretext to explain his unusual visit, he doesn’t mind her deducing that he doesn’t have anything else to do and just felt like seeing her. “I was in the neighborhood.” She lifts her arms up and lets them fall down again with resignation. She doesn’t even have time for a coffee. Since everyone’s gone AWOL, she has to go back to the operating theater herself. She’s got a shunt and a hypophyseal tumor waiting for her. She thinks she’ll be back home late.
He looks at the landscape framed in the large window in the living room: a dark gray strip at the top, and below, the black of the clouds on the horizon, their reflection darker on the sea than the gray of the sky, green with areas of white, and at the bottom, sand that goes from dark to light ochre. He feels useless. When he moves toward the window, the strips of color lose their intensity because of the light coming from the south.
Standing there by the window, he feels half like a retired man and half like a pupil expelled from the classroom, particularly now that he feels unable to enjoy the free time he has. It’s probably because he isn’t working that he feels he doesn’t have the right to enjoy things. It’s a feeling that comes from deep inside, or at least one he was indoctrinated with in early childhood. He picks up a shawl of Pilar’s from a chair and sits down without taking his jacket off. It’s a brightly colored shawl, mostly red and yellow. He doesn’t dislike the colors as much as when he bought it, colors that Nordic people like so much and he no longer scorns as he once did. Whenever he buys a present—a shawl, some perfume, or a necklace, that’s his basic repertoire—he leaves the choice up to the saleswoman. Because he doesn’t trust his own taste, and also to make it clear that he isn’t a man who “knows about such things,” he’s a man who wants to waste as little time as possible in fulfilling his commitments. At Benegas, where he bought it, the saleswoman told him it was “ideal,” and he didn’t dare to contradict her.
“Roughly how old is the lady?” If he’d bought it for Lynn, he would have had to say it was for a girl of just over thirty.
He goes to the study to be alone, even though there’s nobody else in the house. His hands are trembling. “My dear Iñaki. This is a short letter, not more than a dozen lines long, written in light pencil. Sorry, I don’t mean to overwhelm you by being pushy. I can’t help telling you that I’ve never loved anybody in the same way and I will probably never be able to love anybody in that way again. I’m sick, and you are the very symptom of my sickness. I suffer from an illness for which there is no cure. You shouldn’t feel guilty. There’s no reason for you to feel guilty about not being able to love me in the same way. I know you wanted to but can’t. Thanks for the hours of happiness you have given me. I hope you have good memories of the moments we’ve spent together. Thanks for the happiness you have given me. I am strong and I will not allow myself to be mastered by melancholy. Don’t worry about me, I’m strong and I won’t sink into sadness. I’m going back to my world, and I wish you all the best.
All my love, Lynn.
Martutene, September 10th.”
So she wrote it a week ago.
He decides to keep it inside the French translation of Montauk. It’s improbable anybody will ever find it there. At random, he puts it between pages 90 and 91.
My life as a man.
Since he has it in his hands, he reads the last two pages.
Frisch is saying goodbye to New York. Wash
ington Square, where the old men play chess; Sheridan Square, where there’s a statue of the man for whom the square is named; the streets around Eighth Street; the Chinese laundries where he gets his sweaty shirts cleaned after playing Ping-Pong . . . They had lunch at a restaurant there, their table was so close to the neighboring ones it made it very difficult to talk about intimate matters, which they were both thankful for. Lynn gave him a present, a hip flask with his initials on it, like the one he’d lost over the weekend. “Very nice,” he said, “but unfair,” because Lynn had refused all his presents apart from his Olivetti Lettera 32 typewriter. Afterward, he suggested they go back to the park, which wasn’t far away. United Nations. They walked there quite quickly. “I am going to miss you,” Lynn said, her eyebrows like circumflex accents, as if she found herself obliged to admit she’d done something wrong. They’ve decided not to write to each other. Just a postcard on the eleventh of May, if they haven’t forgotten by then.
As easy as that.
“Il ne nous restait plus qu’à trouver l’endroit exact où on se sépare et à faire attention à la circulation; nous nous sommes pris par la main lorsqu’il a fallu traverser l’avenue et nous avons couru. C’était de manière patente l’endroit, nous avons dit BYE, sans baisers, puis une seconde fois en levant la main: HI. Après quelques pas je suis revenu à l’angle de la rue, je l’ai vue, sa silhouette qui marchait; elle ne s’est pas retournée, elle s’est arrêtée, et il lui a fallu un bon moment avant de pouvoir traverser.”
As easy as that.
As easy as putting the book back on the top shelf, next to the copy of Préverte’s Paroles that Barbara, his friend from Port Royal, gave him. A modest paperback he later had bound in green leather.
He’s often had hidden letters he couldn’t tear up because of the respect he had for the people who sent them. Some years ago, he burned them all, or so he thinks; when he received the letters, there was an obvious relationship between the senders and the places he chose to hide their letters, but now, after all these years, he isn’t so sure. The ones from Barbara (a photo and a short sentence, “Je t’aime quand même”—I love you just the same—written on a paper napkin) he kept. The hiding place is obvious: the little book with the green leather cover, the one with the poem titled Barbara. Rappelle-toi, Barbara.
That photo, the one he always puts off tearing up, is something he looks at from time to time, whenever he thinks his memory of her is fading. Her thick blonde hair falling down onto her shoulders; the lost look of her clear, short-sighted eyes; the smile exposing her beautiful teeth; her upper teeth in a straight line and looking like a single piece; her incisors quite a lot longer and sharper than the rest—she used to say she had Dracula teeth. Her lips are special, too. The upper curve is uninterrupted, without any vermilion border, and her cupid’s bow, which is what makes mouths look like hearts, is very slight. Sans arc de Cupidon. She always said she would have had a tough time in the 1920s.
Although he thinks it must be a door slamming in the neighbors’ apartment, he gets up in a hurry and leaves the study, to see if what he’s heard is the sound of someone in the living room. It can’t be Pilar. There isn’t anybody in the living room, or in the entryway, the door to which is open, or in the kitchen. He walks along the hallway. There’s nobody in Pilar’s room, or in the bathroom. He doesn’t hear any more sounds, and his own precaution, as he goes ahead silently opening doors, makes him nervous. There she is, sitting on the edge of the bed in the room that was once both of theirs but is now only his, just as he found her back then, but now she has her elbows leaning on her thighs and her hands on her forehead. She’s still wearing the same scrubs he saw her in not much more than an hour before, the same clogs. His heart misses a beat—what can have happened to her? He kneels down beside her and asks what’s wrong. She opens her hands just enough for him to see her eyes. Full of anguish, she says, “I want to die, I want to die,” he doesn’t know how many times.
She hugs him as she cries inconsolably, truly upset; it reminds him of when they buried her father, and he doesn’t know what’s wrong with her, he’s afraid that something may have happened to Loiola, that they’ve called her at the clinic to say he’s had an accident. But she’s says, “I’ve really done it now.” Which reassures him a little. He takes her by the chin and makes her lift her head up so that he can see her face and asks her, almost shouting, to tell him what’s happened. She looks at him as though she isn’t really there, as if she doesn’t know him. She lifts her right hand up, with her index finger and thumb pressed together and her other fingers curled in a fist. She holds her hand up in the air for a few seconds and then lets it fall. “I was so tired,” she says then, in a whisper, and she starts crying and sobbing again, sinking her face into her hands once more.
The telephone rings in the living room, but neither of them moves. He understands something’s gone wrong in the operating theater. How important? The phone seems to him to ring a long time. He sits down next to her, on the side of the bed, hoping she’ll explain it to him, but she’s just the same as when he found her—silent.
The phone rings again. Three rings, four. Finally, he gets up and calmly goes to the living room to answer. It’s Arana, the anesthesiologist. He’s calling from the clinic to make sure Pilar’s gotten home. Yes, he says, what’s happened? A silly accident. Orl was scheduled to operate on a pituitary tumor, but he didn’t show, and she decided to perform it with Adolfo. Everything was going well, but as they were removing the tumor, they came across a highly vascularized area, and there was a hemorrhage. Although they’re still assessing the consequences with the neurologist, it’ll probably be serious. Probably a stroke. Pilar got incredibly frightened, and before they realized what was happening, she left the operating theater without even disrobing.
When he hangs up and goes back to the bedroom, Pilar’s in the same position as before, but now she looks him in the face, waiting for him to talk. She knows someone’s told him what happened, and she’s waiting for his response. Abaitua doesn’t think he’s ever seen her so shocked, so upset. Two situations come to mind, precisely and fleetingly. Her father’s funeral. The sound of the first shovelful of earth, her pale, frozen cheeks, her shivering body, which felt smaller to him as he embraced her, because he hadn’t held her for a long time and she seemed like a defenseless child. And he remembers that other scene from longer ago, when she was sitting on the edge of the bed like now, her coat still on, whispering “I fell asleep,” with just a thread of a voice, when he, just like now, came to the bedroom door from the living room.
He doesn’t know what to say, what to do. The sight of her pain and helplessness moves him, of course, but he feels his pain starting to burn inside him again. Pilar realizes, too. She mumbles something he doesn’t understand, but he doesn’t ask her to say it again. Remembering her then, with her red coat on and saying “I fell asleep,” he senselessly fears that she’ll say the same thing again. What did she do? How did it happen? Why wasn’t she more careful? He knows they’re unfair questions, but he can’t stop himself from saying, “What did you do?” with anger and disappointment in his voice. She accepts his criticism humbly, meekly, expressing nothing but guilt. As she did back then. It’s moving. With her eyes full of tears, she lifts up her right hand again, her thumb and index finger pressed together to mime holding a scalpel. Unilateral pararim incision to the perichondrium. As if it were some lesson she’d learned by heart, she holds her hand up, her index finger and thumb still together, the rest of her fingers curled in, carrying on with her senseless, mechanical demonstration. Hypophyseal adenoma, four-millimeter central friable portions, solid outlying areas. She starts saying short, unrelated sentences that are difficult to understand, faster and faster, as if she didn’t have time to find the right verb forms, and she empties her pockets onto the table, which reminds him of her looking for her keys among the spread-out objects. Circle of Willis. The heptagonal arterial circuit at the b
ase of the brain was what she was trying to remember, apparently, because she goes quiet after that. Not for long, the time it takes Abaitua to check his pockets and see that he doesn’t have any tissues. She tells him about what happened as if it were something from a long time ago, following a scarcely coherent thread. From what Abaitua can gather, the typical procedures for operating on a hypophyseal tumor weren’t followed. The anesthesiologist wanted to go in through the nasal passage for the extirpation of the hypophyseal adenoma, rather than adhering to the classic sublabial approach, because the post-operative recovery is easier. Orl should have been the one to access the nasal passage, but he never turned up—as is often the case with him these days—and she thought she would be able to do it with Adolfo instead. The cut wasn’t straight, the scalpel slipped to one side and scraped the circle of Willis, causing a stroke. He asks her if that’s what happened. Yes, it is, and she continues holding her hand up in the air as if she were holding a scalpel, and for some reason, he can’t stand seeing her like that any more. Her holds her by the wrist to make her lower her hand, but it’s hard, it’s as if her arm belonged to a corpse with rigor mortis. She seems to have realized again that her hand exists, as if it had been something foreign to her for a few seconds, and then she lifts it up to her face, along with her other hand. She covers her face up and cries, sobbing that she’s ruined the poor person’s life. “Poor them, poor them, poor them,” she says, three times, four times, a thousand times, and then drops her hands into her laps and looks him straight in the eyes for the first time since he got there, as if wanting to know what he’s thinking, as if expecting him to be angry with her. If he slapped her, she wouldn’t protest. He’s sorrier for her than he is angry. He kneels down, just like back then, and takes her hands. They’re much wider than Lynn’s, he finds them unfamiliar. She rests her forehead on his chest as she starts crying again. “What have I done? What would my father say? What should I do?” she recites like an endless rosary between sobs. She moves one hand to dry her wet face with the back of it. First her eyes, then her nose, and mouth, and then that lost-child look, which is so unlike her and moves him so much.
Martutene Page 90
