Perhaps he’d spoken this last thought aloud, or else the old bootblack knew whose shoe he was polishing, for he said immediately, as if it were nothing at all: “How about right now? Would you like to trade it this very moment?” The old man raised his head and, shading his face with one hand, waited for his customer’s reply.
A syncopated laughter rose in the young man’s throat as he considered how to respond to this joke, but the bootblack made an insistent hiss that demanded of the young man with anxious precision: You want to be number one at something, right? Yes, I want to be remembered in a hundred years, be immortalized in encyclopedias worldwide, for instance in England and Germany. That’s what he’d demand before he’d barter with the old peasant, he thought, trying to hide his fear. Trying to keep his eye on the prize.
From his black, ornamental box the bootblack had removed a large book the color of old bone. (In the center of the cover was a round golden seal with the number 1768 stamped in gilt.) He opened the book and offered it to the young man who found himself face to face, as if in a mirror, with a man who had managed to pass into posterity.
It was volume seventeen of the Encyclopedia Britannica, and bore the date 1969, though the dazed young man couldn’t comprehend what that might mean. But that was exactly the point: many years, editions, and generations would have to pass before that deceptive golden number was reached.
Nor could the young man understand what the image, engraved in copper, representing the Boulevard du Temple, completely deserted, was supposed to represent.
It’s not deserted, the old man explained, because if you look here in the lower left-hand corner you’ll find the man who is just now finishing having his shoes shined—frozen forever.
That’s the one, the small figure there with his left foot raised, posed on the edge of the Boulevard.
We can imagine what he thought, how he felt, to see himself there, hardly the size of a pin, the shape of a miniscule H, a manikin, a homunculus…
Life had vanished from the boulevard, all movement had ceased, abandoned houses stretched toward the horizon, not a soul appeared in the doors and windows, the double lines of trees with their immobile crowns stood firm and cast shadows across an empty street from which all carriages had disappeared, the light-flooded pavement had swallowed all pedestrians and he remained alone, a tiny doll riveted in place.
It’s not exactly an engraving, the old man continued amicably, even though it appears on copper, or rather, on silver-plated copper. As he spoke, the old man pulled on a robe and a black velvet biretta that gave him the appearance of an alchemist or antiquarian. Mercury works its magic and the latent image appears. It involves a new procedure that allows the perfect and permanent reproduction of images obtained using a camera obscura. He then pointed to the encyclopedia where that miniscule figure with its raised left foot appeared in its image in the middle of the page. Below the image was a caption in English that explained that this was the first man to be photographed—a new art invented by the painter and set designer Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre, who waited a year before divulging his secrets. His patron, the learned astronomer and minister François Arago, would later refer to these images as “photographic drawings.” The new art would be baptized after its inventor: “daguerreotype”—small, magical mirrors to contrast with his huge, fantastic set designs. I suppose you’ve seen his Diorama, with its spectacular views of Paris and Venice, or the burning of Edinburgh and the inauguration of Solomon’s temple? But all that’s already going out of style. From his elevated studio on Rue de Marais, near here, Monsieur Daguerre has been able to seize, to capture this luminous boulevard forever with his camera obscura. The image in the book doesn’t do justice to the beauty of the original, the silver gray of the metallic plate, the special mirror. The Encyclopedia Britannica simply titles it “Paris Boulevard,” but we know it’s the Boulevard of Crime, or rather, Boulevard du Temple. Now it remains fixed, an empty stage. Everything that moves is in the process of vanishing, dissipating without a trace. You see, nothing that moves can be captured in the daguerreotype. That part has yet to be perfected, because right now the art requires a long exposure to light. With my modest collaboration, you sir, my young gentleman, have paused long enough to pass into posterity. That is, your image will be passed, printed, and reproduced in volume after volume, as you can see, for example in this encyclopedia from the rather interesting year of 1969.
What a lot of nonsense! the astonished young man exclaimed, gesturing in disbelief at the bootblack who’d delivered this strange monologue on the Boulevard of Crime.
Did someone drop something into my drink when I stopped for refreshment in the flower market? The witch had been so persistent that he’d drunk what she offered him just to get rid of her, as he was making his way toward the Boulevard…
He’d go back and review the path that had led him here detail by detail. But that would have to wait until the revelation on the Boulevard was complete.
The old man was standing in decorous silence, dressed in his new robes, suddenly a rather imposing figure.
As a last resort, it occurred to the young man that he might save himself by playing for time. The book hasn’t appeared in print yet, he said. Only its future readers would be able to confirm that it’s not a hallucination or the work of some sorcerer or mesmerist. In order to truly see if the book is authentic, one would actually have to be alive in 1969 and be able to physically hold the encyclopedia and read if the printed image was really the first of its kind…
The old man gave him a look of contempt, but he nodded in silence. So be it, he said, and disappeared.
So hell’s been biding its time…and Delsena stirred the last embers in the fireplace.
Aparicio, who was leaning with his Kodak against the small window in the train compartment, would never forget the way he’d jumped when the dark figure confessed what his mind couldn’t immediately comprehend.
I was the first person to be photographed.
The man’s pompous tone was somewhat ruined by his dreamy slurring, like someone who’d had too much to drink.
And Aparicio realized he hadn’t seen the stranger among the group of Englishman who had huddled together on the ferry, drinking their last beer shortly before they’d docked in Calais.
The stranger, masked in shadow, continued speaking in his monotonous, merciless voice, which seemed to be striving to make his extraordinary tale sound as insignificant as possible.
After the pact, he continued walking along that Boulevard known for its melodrama, arguing with himself out loud, pulling his hair, beating his breast, and crying out toward the azure afternoon sky.
He didn’t remember his appointment with Lemaître because now he had another lord and master. One he fully intended to flee.
He indulged in countless calculations, figured that he had 47,579 days and nights before his time ran out. But perhaps he was wrong…Time is an illusion, an interior voice whispered.
He spent many days severely agitated, wasn’t able to sleep, and at the end of the seventh night he reached a terrible conclusion: he’d never sleep again. That precious oblivion, the escape into dreams, was denied him; instead, he’d be awake day and night, alone with his conscience, suspended in perpetual nightmare. At the most, he could relax as if he were sleeping, like at the beginning of this train trip, which was coming to its end.
A few months after the fateful encounter on the Boulevard, he was sent to an asylum in Montparnasse run by a doctor called—and this is not a joke—“Esprit Blanche,” the “white spirit.” White, because his was a mind in which the darkest of thoughts could be recorded—a silver-plated surface like that in which the stranger’s tiny, living image was imprisoned. The haunted mirror of Daguerre.
Time passed, and the invention of Daguerre remained a secret. Perhaps the whole thing was a cruel, elaborate joke, the work of a hypnotist disguised as a bootblack?
But the press lost no time in divulging that the renowned D
aguerre was about to unveil a sensational new experiment.
Eventually, the young man began to think that if he could destroy the unique view down Boulevard du Temple that Daguerre had captured—while the old man was shining his shoes—along with the figure of his homunculus, then he could break the spell as well.
On March 8, 1839, at one in the afternoon—he’d never forget the day or the hour—he slipped into the Diorama on Rue de Marais with a candle beneath his coat and started a fire. He waited until the doors were open to ventilate the hall before crowds gathered for the evening show. The ticket seller was talking cheerfully with the doorman, allowing the young man to slip between them without attracting any notice.
The flames immediately caught the thin, colorful curtains and drapes. They began to climb and in no time at all had arrived at the fourth floor of the adjacent building, where Daguerre had his studio and laboratory. The firemen, egged on by Daguerre himself, finally arrived upon the unfortunate scene. Daguerre begged, screaming, that they should forget the Diorama and direct their hoses at his study. He threw himself boldly at the gigantic flames and was finally able to reach the narrow, smoke-filled stairway, hack his way through the garret door and, with the help of a chain of neighbors, succeed in saving his optical instruments, plans, diverse manuscripts, and some metal plates that would shortly thereafter receive the name of daguerreotypes.
The stranger had watched in dismay as his plans were ruined. He decided it was better to meet the eternal fire sooner rather than later. After a nearby wall collapsed in upon itself in a cloud of rubble and embers, making a terrible noise and eliciting numerous cries of panic, he made his way through the cloud of smoke and walked right into the spectacular flames—which, he soon realized, simply caressed his skin like a warm breeze.
It occurred to him then that if he wasn’t mortal, he could at least enjoy immortality as a hero. With great effort he was able to drag a fireman with a broken leg out of the flames, and immediately thereafter rescue a volunteer who, thanks to the young man, sustained only minor burns.
In the midst of the chaos, the confusion of shouts and cries, he answered the questions of a couple of reporters and left them his name.
The following day every newspaper in Paris contained exhaustive news of the Diorama fire, which had destroyed the theater in less than a half hour, but his heroic action remained unanimously ignored. In vain he read and reread Le Quotidien, La Gazette des Tribunaux, Le Constitutionnel…
Since he had an abundance of time ahead of him, he decided that if he was going to be number one in something that was actually worthy of being remembered, he’d have to reduce that insignificant figure on the deserted Boulevard du Temple to nothing, thereby destroying his debt and with it the pact that he had made with the old bootblack.
He traveled the world, covered every continent, and tried everything that came his way, including the most reprehensible things he could think of, for example murder, treason, and theft, not excepting such mercenary occupations as flatterer and social climber. In the grip of his ambitions he lived the high life in London, Madrid, Berlin, Rome, Prague, Brazzaville, Buenos Aires, New York, Mexico, Macau, Tokyo…
We must have heard of him by way of one of his false personae, said Delsena. The names may have changed, however, but the man was always the same.
Time didn’t fly. 1969 didn’t arrive before he knew it. In a library in London, in Dillons, in Bloomsbury, he could finally touch and see volume seventeen of the same Encyclopedia Britannica that he’d examined with such confusion on the Boulevard of Crime one hundred and thirty-one years before.
Of course, back then he had no way of knowing that the encyclopedia had erroneously dated Daguerre’s picture of the boulevard a year later than it had actually been taken. Perhaps the devil had noticed it and perhaps not. No one’s perfect, Delsena commented; he’d concentrated his attention onto several trees—no doubt lindens—on the left side of the Boulevard, which didn’t have any leaves in their crowns. The lindens in Paris, he said, begin to sprout leaves at the beginning of May.
Good, we’ve arrived, the stranger said with complete calm as the train entered the Gare du Nord. He offered his hand to Aparicio and left with his bag.
No doubt he’s going to go back to the scene of the crime in time for his meeting, concluded Aparicio. A few minutes before they arrived in Paris, he’d asked the stranger: What are you going to do now? Ask for an extension, the man had said. Or perhaps not. He’d shrugged and crossed his arms. The only thing Aparicio would remember about his appearance afterwards was that his face was long and sad, and that the man was as tall and thin as himself.
He lost sight of him on the platform among the flocks of rowdy Belgians who celebrated the triumph of Eddy Merckx in the Tour, and, to a lesser extent, the arrival of a man on the moon.
TRANSLATED FROM SPANISH BY KERRI A. PIERCE
[SPAIN: CATALAN]
JOSEP M. FONALLERAS
Noir in Five Parts and an Epilogue
AT THE BROTHEL
Dabo Joanàs always wondered why the sign and the business cards for Chez J. Sussane had that J in the name. Were someone to ask him, he would have been able to say where the name “Sussane” on the façade came from, and he knew that “chez” means someone’s house. Yet, while he was able to understand that “Chez Sussane” meant “Sussane’s house,” he just didn’t understand what that J was doing there. Dabo Joanàs was the kind of guy who always came up with these types of questions while drinking a beer in a brothel. Which is to say that he was more interested in the world’s little mysteries than in getting to know any of the girls. He should have asked about the sign the first time he came in, but he’d been struck dumb—he remembered his first impression of the place: the wide sitting room, the lamp-covered ceiling; it was bigger and better-lit inside than he could’ve imagined—yes, he should have asked about the sign that first time, but he was struck dumb by all of those girls in bikinis: there must have been thirty of them. That was his first impression, but it was dispelled just as quickly when he learned that quantity didn’t necessarily lead to enthusiasm. It was the sheer number of girls that had left him dazzled: seeing them all there together, gathered in the lounge. None of them were, by his standard, interesting—not a single one. Yes, he should have asked Papà Cess what that J was for. He could think of a few explanations. He could imagine, for example, that the madam, who we may suppose was named Sussane, also answered to a J name, like Jacqueline or something. And so, in order not to make the place sound like a dermatologist’s office instead of a brothel, she’d decided to hold back on “Jacqueline Sussane” and thus shortened her Jacqueline to J. Another possibility was that a long time ago there was a brothel named “Chez J.,” and the new madam, determined to make her mark, but hesitant to make too much of a change, simply added her “Susanne” to the house’s old J.
Anyway, Dabo Joanàs didn’t ask about it. Papà Cess would just have confirmed whatever suspicions Dabo Joanàs had by providing him with the real truth; or maybe he would have thrown a new hypothesis into the mix. Maybe he would even have told him that the madam wasn’t the aforementioned Susanne at all but that a brothel just gets called whatever the hell you want to call it. “What’s important about a brothel is that you can fuck there,” Papà Cess would have said. He was fat and tough, extraordinarily tough. He’d still be a bouncer at the front door if it weren’t for his age. Now he serves beer from behind the bar. After a while, he became Dabo Joanàs’s confidant. And he can still remember the first conversation Dabó Joanàs ever had with a whore. “You asked where the fuck she was from—and she didn’t understand you at first. Then she told you that she was from Romania, and you told her that Romania is really beautiful, and that you’d been to Lake Constance. And, shit, she didn’t say anything because there’s no Lake Constance in Romania: you made it up.”
Dabo Joanàs had confused Lake Constance—which is located at the border between Germany, Austria, and Switzerland—with the
Port of Constantza, which is in fact in Romania. But what happened is that the girl, uninterested in anything that wasn’t a direct request to retire to one of the upstairs bedrooms, just looked at Dabo Joanàs with an expression best described as stupefied.
Thus went Dabo Joanàs’s life at the brothel: sitting at the bar, asking girls where they were from, and then relating some misremembered feature of their homeland to some similarly named but unrelated location. Not one of them ever asked him where he was from in turn. It would only have annoyed him. Reis Pequés—who also sometimes tended bar, her eyebrows retraced with eyeliner, her upper lip bearing the slight suspicion of a moustache—asked him once whether it was true that he’d been a journalist in Belgrade. Dabo had answered yes…and said that it was never to be brought up again.
Best European Fiction 2010 Page 33
