August

by Romina Paula

  Did you get married because you wanted to or because you thought it was the right thing to do? I ask him, not looking at him, as I pass him the mate. We both stare straight ahead, both looking at the road. He doesn’t talk. He’s thinking. I don’t know, he says after a while, she wanted to get married, her family is very conservative, and there wasn’t that much of an option, we were going to have a child, so I mean it was already kind of the same thing, anyway, in any case it was a really small thing, just for family and very close friends. That’s so intense, I say, I never would’ve thought you would get married, or maybe I did, but not so young. Or at least not with someone other than me. You didn’t want to get married. What does that have to do with anything? is the only thing I can think of to respond. I wouldn’t have, says Julián, thought so either, but that’s what happened, it just happened, I don’t know, and now here I am. So intense, I repeat, as I push the metal straw around, and I realize that that’s my default phrase whenever I don’t know what to say, whenever I’m perplexed about something, so intense. I want to go more in depth; I can tell he’s amenable, and I want to go into more depth. It’s a good opportunity, and it isn’t only that: I really want to know. Are you in love? I ask him. The heavy artillery, he says, and I say, let’s just start with the hardest stuff, get the worst out of the way, that way we can relax for the rest of the trip. I need it, I clarify, I need to know. He says, okay, and he thinks. And drinks mate. I wait. And look, look out the window, at the landscape. It’s been many, many years since I’ve been on this road. I’m not even sure that I ever came through here. Actually, I did, once, with my dad, but we were traveling at night, by bus, and I don’t remember anything. I don’t know, I care about her a lot, says Julián. She’s very fragile, he concludes. Right, I say, closing my fist over the lid of the thermos yet again. That always sells well, fragility. Well, a lot of people buy it. I guess. But you get along well? Yeah, she’s very laid-back, Lala, you can’t not get along with her. Is that a good thing? I don’t know, I think so. I don’t think about that, I mean she’s the mother of my child, of my children, that’s that. Stab. Sure, let’s say that’s that, I think, but I just say, sure, and add, partly trying to conceal it, partly to give myself a little breathing room: You mind me asking? No, he says, and neither of us says another word.

  29.

  I don’t want to ask any more questions. Now for a while I don’t feel like doing it anymore, like asking. We drink mate, for now we focus on drinking mate. He doesn’t seem surprised that I stay silent, that I don’t keep asking him questions, just when he’s set me up for that, to want to know freely. But it’s a question that I asked out of bewilderment, from a place of bewilderment, and now I don’t want to go any further. Or else I just can’t, it’s probably that I can’t. I’m left with everything he did tell me, everything he affirmed. It’s strange: I’m not relieved he’s not in love with her; or am I? No, because it’s not like that means he’s in love with me. Because I don’t even know how I feel, what I would want. And because all of this is ultimately a big stupid waste: who loves whom. It would seem to be more mixed up than that: it would appear that no one knows exactly who loves whom, if indeed anybody loves anyone, if indeed anyone understands, knows, or has a clear idea of what it is to love, or of what love is. Which is horrific, there’s clearly something very wrong here, something I am obviously doing wrong. Or judging, judging wrong. He says he isn’t in love with her, that is clear to him, hence I can infer that he knows what it means to love someone, or knows what love is. And he clarifies he cares about her. And that he has kids and has a lifelong commitment (even if it’s just via the kids, which isn’t nothing) to this other person. This person—he says—he does not love, but rather cares about. Perhaps love is unnecessary, that’s another thing. Perhaps romantic love, like that, in those terms, the soul mate and all that goop is nothing other than a movement towards, but always from afar. It’s not that bad, all in all, that he keeps a distance, that he always keeps his distance. Who really wants to have and hold and all of that? Nothing compares with wanting. Having itself is nothing, let’s just agree on that. In sum, what more can I say? In this sense I’m in the best moment of my relationship with Julián: I don’t have him, I’m never going to be able to have him, he doesn’t belong to me, and, nonetheless, here we find ourselves, sitting next to each other, looking in the same direction, ahead, at the highway, at the desert, and—farther up—at the ocean, too, behind a pane, the landscape behind a pane of glass and us moving into it, moving in its direction. What more can I say? Counting Crows, of course, is what is coming. I’m in a good mood, in a happy place, in a profoundly, fundamentally happy place, I’m here and it’s now and this is, very clearly, the best place to be right now in the whole world. The first chords of “Round Here” start up. Tralala tralala tralala, tralala tralala tralala . . . Step out the front door like a ghost into the fog where no one notices the contrast of white on white. / And in between the moon and you the angels get a better view of the crumbling difference between wrong and right. / I walk in the air . . . What was that? Julián interrupts me. I ask him if he’s kidding, he says no, that it sounds very familiar, and he makes that little sound, like of pain, and makes a gesture with it, that little painful sound of knowing, of having it there somewhere, of being able to tell that you know and nonetheless not being able to recall what it is. Counting Crows, jackass, I say. No, he says, a no with a very extended o to it. I say yes, and I also tell him I found it in your room, half-hidden, that it had been years since I’d thought about it, about this album, that the past few days I’d been listening to it a lot. It wasn’t their best, right? he says, oh, I don’t know, I say, I can’t be very objective, that for me it has to do with more than just its quality as music, that I can’t really evaluate that. And I add that this song is awesome, that “Round Here,” which is still playing, is amazing. It’s good, he says, and he asks me if it wasn’t in the music video for this song where the singer was walking along these tracks, that he was singing on some tracks in a leather jacket and like these dreadlocks. I tell him I don’t remember that, but that I do remember other images from the video, of an esplanade, a salt flat, and this crazy woman, this girl with this suitcase, but that yeah, it probably was, because the guy, the singer, had dreadlocks. He tells me he also remembers that he was doing something with his hands while he sang, something unusual, but he’s not exactly sure what it was, but he feels like he remembers that. I don’t know, maybe, I say, and I put it on again, start it from the beginning, so we can listen to it. During the intro I say it’s a good CD to listen to on the road. And then we fall silent, for the rest of the song. Outside the landscape has gradually lost its greenness, has desertified little by little, and the mountains have retreated into the horizon, and, ahead of us, the steppe. A great synchrony: this song and the landscape. If we stopped and I got out of the car with my stuff I could be the crazy woman with the suitcase, but with a backpack, a matter of details. Then, right around the second song and after saying that this one, the new one, doesn’t seem as good to him, Julián tells me that León loves music and that it really calms him down. I say I’ve heard that, that people say that, that kids really like music. Cats, too, cats really like music too, it relaxes them, if it’s soft music, obviously. As soon as I finish saying it I recollect myself and realize I’ve done it again: again I have compared his son to a cat. It’s the best I can do, I guess, it’s the most similar thing I have. In any case, he doesn’t dwell on it, and he tells me, smiling, that what León really loves is reggae. I laugh, I mock him by telling him he probably didn’t give the kid much of a choice. He tells me Lala (how I hate hearing the nickname) puts on a lot of other stuff for him too, music for children or classical music, and it’s not the same, the little guy keeps crying. That, on the other hand, reggae always works. He’s pleased, he seems to be something like proud. It’s touching to see him like this, and, at the same time, it makes me nauseous. I ask him if it doesn’t scare him, he
asks what, I say having a kid. Scare me how? Oh, I don’t know, just scare you: scare you that something might happen to him, or just the responsibility you have, that you guys have, as parents, I don’t know, as adults, as people responsible for someone else’s life. He thinks. After a while he says he doesn’t know, that he never thought of it like that. That when I say it like that it sounds terrible, like taking out a loan from the bank or something like that, like being arrested, like having sold your soul, like a punishment. That it doesn’t seem that bad to him. I tell him it’s not that I think it’s bad, but it does seem transcendental/definitive to me. Yeah, he says, yeah, it is, but that as far as that goes it’s definitive in a good way, and that, like everything, once the kid is there it stops seeming so monumental and starts just being there. The kid’s just there, he says. That’s what he has to say. That it’s not that big of a deal, that you don’t stop being you. I add that, nevertheless, in some way, you kind of divide in two. I mean, he says, I don’t know, I guess I don’t know what you mean by divide in two, and then I’m the one left thinking. These are actually all just speculations, that’s what I think I think, and that’s what I say, and I add, too, that like I look at him and look at him with this, this other person who’s like him but like a miniature version and that—the last time I saw him—that other person wasn’t there, because he didn’t exist. That that to me seems amazing and miraculous, a miracle, and not in the happiest of meanings. In what, then? asks Juli, in what what? I say, in what meaning. I’m not sure, I mean, I really don’t know, I guess in more of a surprising or surprised meaning, like in the most dumbstruck, flabbergasted way. He’s quiet for just a second, and then he wants to know what exactly flabbergasted means. Idiot, I say, and I punch him in the shoulder. Immature, he calls me, and he pushes my head with his right hand. He’s looking straight ahead, driving. Can we talk for a while about something other than me being a father? he asks, and I remind him that he was the one who started it, with the cute little anecdote about his Rastafari kid, he admits this and insists, then, that we declare a truce for at least an hour or so, just for a while. I clarify that I like talking about his son; he says, so do I, but not only and not all the time. And he says he wants me to talk too, that he wants to know about me. What do you want to know? I don’t know what to tell him, I don’t know if I should be honest, I don’t know if I feel like it. The last time he asked me if I had a boyfriend he didn’t really want to hear the whole answer, it was enough for him just that I said yes, just the fact, and then he didn’t want to know anything else. I don’t want to expose myself to the same situation again. What do you want to know? I don’t know, what you’ve been doing for the past five years, for example, I don’t know, whatever. I don’t know, like when you ask that I don’t know what to tell you, I don’t know where to begin. Are you happy with your boyfriend? he wants to know. A completely impartial listener, of course, this is not tendentious at all. What a question, I tell him. Yes, I’m happy. I mean, happy, I don’t know exactly what you mean by happy, you know me, I’m still me, but yeah, we get along well.

  “Are you in love?”

  “I don’t know. I was thinking about that a minute ago, when you said how your wife, Mariela—her name is Mariela, right?—how Mariela is someone you care about but aren’t in love with or you think you’re not in love with her and you said it just like that, with such clarity, and I started thinking about that, how you can have that much clarity regarding that, regarding how you feel.”

  “So you’re not in love, then.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because if you don’t know, it’s a no, you wouldn’t hesitate.”

  “That’s ridiculous, it’s very naive, I think everything’s much more complex than that.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “So then why the fuck did you get married to a girl you just like or kind of care about?”

  “Because that’s how things worked out.”

  “That kind of determinism is disgusting. You can’t do anything about your life, you don’t make decisions, you just let things happen?”

  “I guess so, yeah.”

  “Well, I think that’s horrible.”

  “That’s not the most important thing, that’s an immature argument.”

  “What?”

  “The argument that you can only choose someone or build something with someone if you’re in love, what the fuck is that? It doesn’t work like that, there are a million other things, other factors.”

  “You literally just told me that people know when they’re in love.”

  “Exactly, but what I’m saying is, that has nothing to do with anything.”

  “How does it not?”

  “It just doesn’t. Like you saying you were in love with me but still going off to Buenos Aires.”

  “What does that have to do with anything? That was because of something else.”

  “That’s exactly what I’m saying, it’s not the only thing, then, it’s not the determining factor; for you, in that moment, it wasn’t enough.”

  This stops me, I shut up. I don’t know what to say, I can’t rebut this, I can’t rebut anything. I wonder, I wonder then if it’s true that it wasn’t enough, for me, back then. Probably not, or it was, but it wasn’t important enough at that time. I had to live my life, and to do that I needed to go to Buenos Aires. I had to live my life, and to do that I needed to go to Buenos Aires.

  “I was your life back then, or at least a part of it, and you left to find another life, in some other place.”

  “Don’t be like that, Julián.”

  “Like what?”

  “So difficult.”

  “I’m not being difficult, stupid. I’m not saying it because I’m holding a grudge, I’m being cool about it.”

  “Being cool about it, fuck you.”

  A little strain, but at least we laugh about it. I’m kind of depressed now. He asks me to switch the music. He tries to look through the glove compartment; he can’t look and keep driving, he asks me to look for the Babasónicos CD. Which one do you have? Dopádromo, I think, and Trance Zomba’s on there, too. A good selection. I applaud him for compiling it. I put it on and put it on shuffle; I want “Montañas de agua” and “¡Viva Satana!” to come on as soon as possible. And I want them to surprise us. It starts off with “Ambush.” What crafty things, these shuffles. In any case “Ambush” is perfectly fine. Juli says, let’s stop in a bit to eat something, I tell him I made sandwiches. He says then let’s stop to eat the sandwiches, that he doesn’t like to eat while driving, that then he feels like he hasn’t eaten. I like the idea of a little picnic by the side of the road. What kind of sandwiches? he wants to know; don’t worry, I put mayonnaise on them, I do remember some of what you like. I’m hurt, I realize, but I don’t want to share that with him. All in all, it’s not entirely his fault. In fact what he said is true, and it’s not like his tone was particularly hurtful. We were having a conversation, laying out our arguments alongside one another, and he ended up being right, what can be done. But is he, ultimately, right? Or did his tone just make me think that? Let us see. That love is not enough, was what he said, I think. Or that it doesn’t matter, or that it’s beside the point. He also said, as evidence, that I said I was in love with him and that I left all the same, left him. This is true in some sense and not at all true in others. I left, that’s true, but I didn’t leave him. He could have come along. And he didn’t want to. Or couldn’t. Meaning that either he wasn’t as in love with me as he said or—and here we get back to the crux of it—love is not enough/love is insufficient/love gets you nowhere/love leads to nothing. I was in love with him, I was, I wouldn’t even maintain that I’m not any longer, and yet I decided to go and live far away from him. I didn’t give up other things for his sake, on the contrary, I went away from him towards those other things, all of them uncertain. I had a life and a possible future life in that place, and a different life, an unknown life, in another place. I opted for
the latter, I opted for not knowing. I went towards the uncertainty. And then I opted not to go back to think about whether or not I was in love with him and whether or not it was enough or if it was a one-way street on which you had to either make a choice or make a choice. At that time I thought that if I stayed, a few months more would have killed us. Literally. Or worse: everything would have dissolved. I thought I had to go to college, I thought I had to get far away to—to be better, to be different?—to see other things, to meet people from other, many other, places. I couldn’t (I wouldn’t) give that up. And he wouldn’t (or couldn’t) give up his aversion to the city, to the big city. And that was stronger than us, because it was an us, that was what we were, but each of us on our own, as individuals, no longer together. And so it went: and so we didn’t. The worst is that now I can’t even tell which one’s better, what is for the best, what would have been best, to leave or to stay, stay with him or not stay with him, if Manuel, if what. It’s probably all the same, that’s the point. Now I don’t even know. How depressing. If love isn’t enough, what’s left? I always thought—at least with this—that it was something you could believe in. So many books, so many movies where everything is solved with love, by means of love. Where love is the saving grace. And here, in the real world, it neither saves nor is even sufficient. It’s just another thing, like an accessory, an adornment, something that embellishes but that could—easily—not be there. Love as ornament, what do you make of that? As ornament. So depressing. So then, what difference can it make at this point if it’s Julián or Manuel or whatever, if in any case it’s nothing more than a contingency and will never be enough? He asks if I’m depressed now. No, no, nothing’s wrong, I lie, and it’s only then that it sinks in that “Montañas de agua” is just ending. Who cares, I’m depressed, what difference will a Babasónicos song make, who can drag you out of the mud of not being in love, of the absence of love, or worse, of its futility. I keep my mouth shut, I stay quiet, I opt for silence and float around out there, on the other side of the window. Such sadness, such nothingness.