Mr. Gwyn

by Alessandro Baricco

  But I’m doing it just for you, she added.

  Thank you.

  I’m glad to do it. It’s a long time since I did something willingly.

  Really?

  So willingly, I mean.

  You’re strange, you don’t seem like a cop.

  Why?

  You’re fat.

  The world is full of fat policemen.

  You’re not dressed like a cop.

  No.

  And this car is gross.

  Hey, kiddo, you’re talking about a Honda Civic, property of the Birmingham police department.

  Inside. The inside is disgusting.

  Ah, that.

  Yes, that.

  Every morning, at headquarters, they wash the cars, but not mine, I don’t want mine washed.

  You like it like this.

  Yes.

  There’s popcorn everywhere.

  I love popcorn. It’s not easy to eat it while you’re driving.

  I understand.

  And then you see me like this now, but I was a real knockout, you know?

  I didn’t say you’re ugly.

  Right. I’m very beautiful. And I was even more. In all honesty, my tits are famous in all the police stations of the Midlands.

  Wow.

  I’m joking.

  Oh.

  But it’s true, I was a beautiful woman, I was a very beautiful girl, and then I was a very attractive woman. Now it’s something else.

  What?

  It doesn’t matter to me anymore.

  I don’t believe it.

  I know, you don’t believe it if it doesn’t happen to you. Like a lot of other things.

  Do you have a husband?

  No.

  Children?

  I do have one, but I haven’t seen him for years. I wasn’t very good at being a mother. It went like that.

  You were good at being a cop.

  Yes, for a certain period, I was.

  Then you got fat.

  Let’s put it that way.

  I understand.

  I wouldn’t be so sure, but all right.

  No, really, I understand.

  What do you understand?

  You’re like my parents. When the fire broke out they didn’t escape. Why does it happen to you people?

  Well, now, what are you talking about?

  I don’t know.

  Damned if I would have stayed to get burned up in that house, believe me.

  …

  Sorry, I didn’t mean that.

  It’s okay.

  I meant that I always escaped when the house was on fire, I swear, I escaped plenty of times, I’ve done nothing but escape. It’s not that.

  Then what is it?

  Come now, that’s a lot of questions.

  It was just to find out.

  Then find me some popcorn, there should be some on the backseat.

  Here?

  Somewhere. A family pack already open.

  There’s nothing.

  Look on the floor, it must have fallen off.

  Down here?

  And what the hell is that?

  But she wasn’t talking about the popcorn. She was seeing something in the rearview mirror that she didn’t like. Hell, she said again. She narrowed her eyes to see better. There was a car, in the distance, behind them, and from the blue light on the roof it appeared to be a police car. That shit Stoner, thought the woman. Then instinctively she pressed the accelerator and bent slightly over the steering wheel, murmuring something. The boy turned and saw the car with the blue light, distant in the darkness. It didn’t have a siren, only that blue light. He glanced at the woman and saw her concentrated on driving, her hands gripping the steering wheel. She read the road with her eyes almost half-closed, glancing from time to time in the rearview mirror. The boy turned again and it seemed to him that the car, back there, was closer. Don’t turn, the woman said to him, it brings bad luck. She added that when you’re followed you shouldn’t pay attention to who’s following you, you have to focus on your choices, stay clear-headed, and know that if you give your utmost no one will capture you. She talked to relax and because gradually she had begun to slow down, tired. If, on the other hand, you’re the one following, what you have to do is repeat everything he does, without stopping to think, thinking wastes time, you just have to repeat what he’s doing and when you’re within range detach yourself from his brain and make your choice. Nine times out of ten it works, she said. If you don’t have a wreck like this under your ass, obviously. She looked in the rearview mirror and saw the police car rolling impassively toward them, like a billiard ball toward the hole. Who knows how he found me, that shit, she said. I told you he’s good at what he does, she said. Hide the cans, she said. What cans? The beer, she said. The boy looked around but there really weren’t any cans. Maybe they were sliding under the seats, in the midst of the popcorn and all that incredible stuff like the box for a hair dryer, a crumpled poster, two fishing boots. No beer, he said. Good, said the woman, and then she said it would be better if he stretched out on the seat and pretended to sleep. It occurred to her that that would keep Stoner from shouting. It would be better if they avoided shouting. Speaking calmly, maybe she would convince him. She looked in the rearview mirror and saw that the blue light was now flashing fifty yards away. I can’t manage to do anything right anymore, she thought. And she was seized by the anguish that suffocated her at night, in the sleepless hours, when every piece of her life passed through her mind, and there wasn’t one in which a creeping, inevitable end wasn’t written. She took her foot off the accelerator slightly and the car behind closed in. The boy had shut his eyes, the blue flashes under his eyelids, closer and closer. The police car put on its blinker and slowly came alongside them. The woman said to herself that she had to remain calm, and thought of the first words she would say. Let me do my job, she would say. The car came alongside, and she turned. She glimpsed a face that she didn’t know, a young cop. He seemed to be nice enough. He stared at her for a moment and then raised his thumb to ask if everything was all right. She smiled and made the same gesture. The car accelerated, and when it was twenty yards ahead got back in the lane. The woman knew exactly what was happening in that car. One of the two was saying something about the strangeness of women who go driving at night. The other would say nothing and this meant that they wouldn’t stop, there was no reason to. If she wants to drive at night, let her, he would perhaps have said. She saw them grow distant and she continued to drive in the most disciplined way possible, in order to be forgotten. She thought she had made it when she saw them disappear around one of the rare curves, and then she gripped the wheel with her hands, because she knew how it worked and she wouldn’t be surprised to find them stopped along the road, beyond the curve, waiting for her. She glanced at the boy. He was motionless, eyes closed, head leaning to one side of the seat. She said nothing to him and started to take the curve. All right, she said softly. She saw the road stretching ahead in the darkness and the blue light flashing in the distance. She slowed down a little and kept driving until she saw a turnout on the side of the road. She braked and drove into the turnout, stopping with the engine running. She let go of the steering wheel with her fingers. Fuck, she thought. Just listen to that shit heart pounding, she thought; anything frightens me now. She leaned her forehead against the steering wheel and began to cry, in silence. The boy opened his eyes and looked at her, without moving. He wasn’t sure how things had ended up. He looked at the road, but there were no blue lights around, only the darkness of before and nothing else. And yet that woman was crying, and in fact now she was really sobbing, rhythmically beating her head against the steering wheel, but softly, without hurting herself. She didn’t stop for a while and the boy didn’t dare to do anything, until she suddenly raised her head, dried her eyes on the sleeve of her jacket, turned to him and, in a rather cheerful voice said, Just what was needed. The boy smiled.

  Something you should le
arn, Malcolm, is that… your name is Malcolm, right?

  Yes.

  Well, a thing you should learn, Malcolm, is that when someone needs to cry he should do it, useless to sit there and worry about it.

  Yes.

  Afterward everything is better.

  Yes.

  Do you have a handkerchief?

  No.

  I had one, somewhere… Everything okay?

  Yes.

  Shall we get going, what do you say?

  Okay with me.

  Also with me. So off we go.

  Do we know where we’re going?

  Of course.

  Where?

  Straight ahead, to the sea.

  We’re going to the sea?

  There’s a friend of mine there. You’ll feel good there.

  I don’t want to go to your friend, I want to stay with you.

  He’s much better. Stay with him and nothing can happen to you.

  Why?

  I don’t know why. But it’s so.

  Is he old?

  Like me. Two years older. But he’s not old—he’s not someone who will ever be old. It will be like staying with another child, you’ll see.

  I don’t want to stay with another child. I never am with other children.

  All right, I tell you it will be fine, you trust me?

  Who is he?

  A friend of mine, I told you.

  Friend in what sense?

  Oh goodness, what do you want to know?

  Why him?

  Because the only places I know are grim, but with him it’s nice, and you need to be in a beautiful place.

  Beautiful because there’s the sea?

  No, beautiful because he’s there.

  What do you mean?

  Oh, Jesus, don’t make me explain everything, I’m not capable of explaining to you.

  Try.

  You’re too much.

  Come on.

  I don’t know, it’s the only place that came to mind, you were there on that terrible bed in that awful room and the only thing I could think was that I couldn’t leave you there, so I asked myself if there was a place to take you that was the most beautiful place in the world, and the truth is that I don’t know the most beautiful places in the world, I don’t have any anywhere, except for one, or maybe two, counting the gardens of Barrington Court, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen them, but except for those, which are too far, I only know one most beautiful place in the world, because I was there, and I know that it is truly the most beautiful place in the world, so I thought that I would be able take you there if only I could drive for hours at night, it’s a thing I hate doing and just to think about it causes me anguish, but looking at you while you tried to go to sleep I decided that I would be capable of it, and that’s why I got you up and put you in the car, having decided that I would manage to take you to him, because the things around him and the way he has of touching them and of talking about them are the most beautiful place in the world, the only one I have. Do I have to repeat, putting the sentences in better order?

  No, I understand.

  Good.

  If it’s so beautiful why don’t you live there?

  There, now we’re starting the interrogation again. You’d go far in the police, you know?

  Just tell me that. Why don’t you live there, if he is… if it’s so beautiful there.

  It’s a story for grown-ups, forget it.

  Tell me just the beginning.

  The beginning, what beginning?

  How the story begins.

  You’re something.

  Please.

  It’s nothing, the usual story, he’s the man of my life and I’m the woman of his life, that’s it, except that we have never been able to live together. Satisfied?

  Thank you.

  It’s not necessarily true that if you really love someone, really a lot, the best thing you can do together is live.

  No?

  Not necessarily.

  Oh.

  I warned you it was something for grown-ups.

  Yes, you warned me.

  You’ll like him. Him. You’ll like him.

  Maybe.

  You’ll see.

  What does he do?

  Boats. Small wooden boats. He makes them one by one, he spends all his time thinking about his boats. They’re beautiful.

  He makes them himself?

  From top to bottom, everything.

  And then?

  He sells them. Every so often he gives them as gifts. He’s crazy.

  Did he ever give you one?

  Me? No. But once he made one with my name. He wrote it in eleven secret places, and no one will ever know, except me.

  And me.

  And you, now.

  Nice.

  He promised me, and then he did it.

  Nice.

  Yes. Oh lord, every so often I wonder what sort of creep must have that boat now, and I’m no longer sure that it’s such a beautiful story.

  You don’t know where your boat is.

  No.

  Ask him.

  Him?

  Yes.

  No way. I don’t want to know anything about him and his boats, the less I know, the better off I am.

  I’ll ask him, then.

  Don’t even try.

  Did you tell him what happened to me?

  Him? No.

  He doesn’t know anything?

  For that matter, he doesn’t even know we’re coming.

  You didn’t tell him.

  No. I didn’t feel like telephoning him. I haven’t called him for a long time.

  But really…

  In fact, to tell the truth, it’s been a long time since I’ve seen him.

  How long?

  I don’t know. Two, three years. Dates aren’t my strong point.

  Two or three years?

  Something like that.

  And you didn’t even let him know you were going there?

  I never do. I arrive and I ring the bell; every time it’s happened I arrived and rang the bell. And he, once, came to my house and rang the bell. We don’t like to telephone.

  Maybe he’s not even there.

  Possible.

  And what do we do if he’s not there?

  Look how marvelous.

  What?

  The light, over there. It’s called dawn.

  Dawn.

  Exactly. We’ve made it, kiddo.

  And in fact from the horizon rose a crystalline light that revived everything and set time in motion again. Maybe it was the reflection on the sea, in the distance, but there was something metallic in the air that not every dawn has, and the woman thought this would help her to remain lucid and calm. It wasn’t something to tell the boy, but in fact returning after all that time made her anxious. Besides, she knew she didn’t have another plan, if that one failed, which might also happen. Maybe he wasn’t there. Maybe he was with a woman, or with who knows. There were plenty of ways in which the whole thing could go wrong. Yet she imagined the way in which, on the other hand, it could go very right, and she knew that in that case she couldn’t have invented anything better for the boy, about that she had no doubts. It was just a matter of remaining optimistic. The light helped her. So she began to laugh, with the boy, telling him some stories of when she was a child. At some point they found the popcorn. Driving now was easier, and not even the fact that she had been driving for hours weighed on her anymore. They reached the sign for the city almost before they knew it. The woman stopped the car and got out to stretch her legs. The boy also got out. He said that the city had a nice name. Then he said he had to pee and he went into the fields. In the middle of that horizon of grass and distant houses, he looked small to the woman, and she felt a pang that she didn’t understand, it was so difficult to separate the flavor of regret from the good feeling of having done something worthwhile. Maybe you’re not the failure you think you are after all, she said to herself. And for
a second there returned to her the silvery impudence she’d had when she was young, when she knew she was neither worse nor better than many others, but only different, in a precious and inevitable way. It was when everything scared her, but she wasn’t yet scared of anything. Now that so much time had passed, a kind of uneasy weariness had taken hold of everything, and the clarity of that feeling had become rare. She found it there, on the edge of the road, in front of a sign that bore a name, that name, and she hoped that it wouldn’t vanish immediately. She had a strong desire for it to stay with her until they arrived, because then the man would read it in her eyes and again would think how singular she was, and beautiful, and unique. She turned because the boy was shouting something to her. She couldn’t hear clearly, but he pointed to the horizon, and then she looked, and what she saw was a truck, standing out in the metallic dawn light, hauling a boat, amid the fields, a large white boat that seemed to plow a ridiculous path through the corn, its sails lowered and the rudder facing the hills. Let’s go, she shouted to the boy. She looked at the time and thought it might be a little early to show up there, by surprise, but when the boy arrived she got in the car and started the engine because she had some force in herself and she didn’t know how long it would last. It didn’t matter if they woke him up, she thought, he wasn’t the type to get mad. It didn’t even matter if she found him with a woman, at that moment it seemed to her that it wouldn’t matter much. She had been like that, so long ago, as a girl.

  They crossed the center of the city and then took a dirt road that led to the sea. They entered a small open space surrounded by low, bright-colored houses and glided slowly amid skeletons of boats and engines. They stopped in front of a one-story house, painted red and white. The woman turned the engine off. Let’s go, she said. But she didn’t move. The boy looked at her without knowing what to do. With a caress she rumpled his black hair and said it would all be fine. She was saying it to herself, and the boy understood. Yes, he said.

  At the door there was a small bronze bell, of the type that are usually on boats, and the woman pulled the chain and let it ring a couple of times. It had a nice crystalline sound. For a while nothing happened, then the door opened.