Necropolis

by Santiago Gamboa

  Sabina paused and sipped at her wine. Her cheeks had flushed as she spoke and she seemed dazed. She again looked me in the eyes and said, I suppose you must be asking yourself why I’m telling you all this, aren’t you? I was about to agree, but noted that, like the others, her question was rhetorical, a prolepsis, because she went on, obviously I didn’t ask you here only to tell you about our battles, but because we want you to join us, to fight at our side, to join Eve Studios as a creator of stories, beginning with the story of José Maturana, a story with great potential. We’ve imagined a movie that tells that adventure, that goes back to the beginnings, to the great secrets of life, that asks questions about the divine and the human and shows us a way, do you follow me?

  I said yes, and Sabina filled my glass again.

  Before I could say anything, Kay spoke up, saying: we are willing to give you a check for two hundred thousand euros, right now, so that you can start work on something that could be called, as a working title, The Passionate Pastor, something like that, I even think it would be a good idea to include the word Christ in the title, what do you think, darling? and she said, I don’t know, I like “pastor,” or even “priest,” it would arouse more morbid curiosity because it includes the idea of pedophilia in its semantic field, which would allow us to make it more combative and accusatory, but there’ll be time to discuss that.

  Kay continued: anyway, we’re interested in the story and we believe you’re the best person to write it, given that you were here and saw him. By the way, did you have the opportunity to meet him? I said yes, I had spoken with him at the opening cocktail party, but did not say anything about Jessica or the book or of course the message. We could see about that later.

  Good, said Kay, you knew him, you remember his voice, his figure, his style, that will make it possible for you to recreate him in verbal and at the same time philosophical terms, and I say to you right now, don’t worry about inventing sex scenes, we have some very talented people who specialize in creating them from any text, I assure you you’ll be surprised, they would be capable of making a sex scene from the opening chapter of the Critique of Pure Reason, that’s why what you have to provide is a literary version that holds up by itself, that’s all we need; the publication rights will be yours, all that matters to us is the adaptation rights, and if it turns into a box office hit you’ll receive royalties, do you understand? We only ask that you deliver it within six months, do you think you can do that?

  While I was thinking of a way to accept the commission that would not reveal my precarious situation, Kay interrupted me: we know you’ve been out of circulation for more than two years for health reasons and haven’t published anything in quite a while, but contrary to what others might think, in our eyes that makes you an even more attractive proposition for this project, since we assume you’re less influenced than the others by all the shit that’s been dumped on us in the last two years when you were absent, and believe me, there was a lot of shit; and as far as the previous shit is concerned, I assume that being alone will have allowed you to cleanse yourself, and that’s important, it means that in your subsequent work that wisdom you’ve acquired with distance will manifest itself, that translucent condition of the soul, do you accept our offer?

  It was the first contract I’d had in front of me since my illness, one related, moreover, to something that had already become an obsession. I accept, I said, I’ll write the story of José Maturana within six months.

  Kay stood up, went to his study and came back with a folder. He took out a contract with my name printed on it and said, please read it, and if you agree print your initials on each page and sign the last. He handed me a pen, I wrote EH on all the pages and signed at the end. When I had done that, he opened a checkbook from Citibank and wrote me out a check for two hundred and one thousand euros, explaining that the extra thousand was to cover bank and postal charges. He blew on it to dry the ink and handed it to me, then shook my hand. Sabina gave me a kiss and again filled the glasses for a toast.

  Then we ate herrings and smoked salmon with vodka. We talked about cinema and literature, Cassavetes and George Cukor, the epigrams of Svellenk, Kristin Lavransdatter. I asked Kay if there really was a newspaper in Norway called Morgen­bladet, as mentioned on the first page of Knut Hamsun’s Hunger, and he said, of course there is, I read it every day, it’s the national newspaper.

  As he talked about a film version of a book by Daphne du Maurier we started to hear explosions, with increasingly shorter intervals between them. The fifth one made the building shake and Kay said, damn, that fell close to here. The sky lit up and its glow entered the room through the glass dome. The suite was flooded with bluish electric light, which made our faces look ghostly.

  The subsequent explosions ruined the atmosphere of the dinner, so I put down my knife and fork and announced that I was going back to my room, which seemed to relieve them. It looked as if it might be a difficult night. When I was already at the door, Kay handed me a card with all the information I needed to contact them, and said, call any time you need something or have any doubts, our way of working is based on trust and friendship. I thanked him. When I said goodbye to Sabina I saw two purple rings around her eyes, and an inflamed vein or nerve just under the skin throbbing in her face like a small uneasy heart.

  As I walked out into the corridor, the explosions continued.

  The lights were flickering so much that it was impossible to walk more quickly. I passed marble-clad reception rooms, wide staircases with handwoven carpets, polished doors, but there was not a soul about. The hotel was one huge abandoned house and from outside came the noise of the bombs, as if a loudly howling wolf was eating what remained of the night.

  My body is torn to shreds and my skin red-hot, said Marta when I entered the room. She was dancing about naked, completely drunk. But I’m happy, I want to spend my life with this burning, these pains that emerge after pleasure, oh, I want to sing, I want the walls to let my voice through and everyone to hear me and know about my happiness, I want the angels of this holy city to celebrate with me, instead of the bombs and the fires, I want the last judgment to find us singing, let’s drink, the world is going to end! I feel calm and fulfilled, I’m sorry, I think I’m in love . . .

  She went into the bathroom and from there called out, don’t wait for me, I need a long restorative shower, then you can tell me where you were and what you’ve been doing, what time is it? what does it matter where the hands of the clock are, the important thing is where we are, don’t you think? I said something but she had stopped listening, so I started making notes on my dinner with Kay and Sabina, trying not to think about the explosions. To cheer myself up I looked at the check from Citibank, a figure I had never before seen in relation to money, let alone money that would soon be mine. I was doing this when something novel and unforeseen happened. Another shell roared, the building shook, and the electricity went out. I stood up and went out on the balcony. There were a few flashes still visible, but the whole city was in darkness. I gazed for a while at that thick blackness, feeling slightly dizzy, and heard voices from the lower floors. People were opening windows and, like me, coming out on the balconies.

  I went back into the room and heard Marta calling from the bathroom, why did the light go out? has something happened? I opened the door and said, we have to go down to reception, there’s a lot of bombing tonight, let’s go, hurry up.

  She put on one of the white bathrobes and we went out into the corridor, where others were lighting the way with cigarette lighters. We ran to the stairs and found a swarm of frightened guests. I was sure the light would come back on or that the hotel’s generator would start working before we got down to the first floor, but neither happened. Marta looked for my hand and squeezed hard. I hate the dark, she murmured, which you may think is stupid coming from a country that’s in darkness most of the time, but that’s how it is, my analyst says it’s related to sexual fears, he may be right.

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bsp; I saw the backs of the people moving in front of me in rhythm with their steps. Whenever one lighter went out another flared up, and so we had light all the time. By the time we got to reception I felt that I was in the bowels of the earth, the gallery of a mine dug centuries ago. Outside, the explosions were increasing in intensity and we were asked to keep calm. The manager stood up on a chair and said, we’ll go down a few floors to the sports club. We’ll be safe there because it’s an air raid shelter, but in any case there’s no danger, it’s purely routine, the light will come on again any minute now, could I ask you please to form groups of twenty and carry on down, it’s vital that everyone stays calm.

  Near us somebody said: I know what happened, the defenders cut the lights off because a squadron of enemy planes has gotten through the antiaircraft batteries and anti-missile radar and is on its way here. The defense planes are already flying overhead. There’s going to be a battle in the sky, planes will crash onto the roofs and there’ll be fires, may God help us. Marta got scared and squeezed my hand hard. Another voice said: a missile of enormous power is heading straight for us from long range, that’s why they cut the electricity and made us go down, but a second voice rejected that, saying, long range missiles with nuclear warheads move according to pre-established GPS systems, and just turning the lights out won’t save a city from the impact, that might have been true in the days of biplanes and the Red Baron.

  The sports club, with its sauna and Turkish baths and muscle-building machines, was covered in tiles. The groups advanced slowly, somewhat inhibited by the funereal atmosphere of the place. Marta and I sat down in a corner, on the track of a treadmill, and waited for everything to pass. It was only when she laid her head on my chest that I realized she was crying. Nothing’s going to happen, it’s just routine, in a minute the light will come back on, relax, but she said, that’s not why I’m crying, I wish my sadness were only fear, no, I’m crying because of Amos, I’m crying because I’ve realized that I love him with all my soul and because at this moment, when a woman needs her lover’s embrace, he’s embracing another woman, protecting another woman; I know he would be capable of putting himself in front of a grenade to save her, and here I am, wrapped in a bathrobe, with my body still trembling because of him, but I’m alone, in a poetic sense I mean, please don’t take it badly.

  I interrupted her and said, I understand you but don’t think too much, and don’t keep going on about it, any moment now the generator will come on and everything will be the way it was. Then Marta said, you’re an angel, why the hell didn’t I fall in love with you? it would have been simpler. To tell the truth it never even occurred to me.

  And what about your planned article on the life of a doctor in a city under siege? I don’t think I’ll do it, said Marta, I’m too involved personally and I wouldn’t be objective; I don’t want to violate journalistic ethics, that was one of the first things I learned in this fucking profession, ethics, and I’m not going to throw that overboard now. I think I’ll go with my earlier idea, something on Maturana and his tragic death, a summary of his life and the circumstances of his death, all that spiel, of course I’ll have to rely a lot on you, my dear, I’m a bit of a disaster when it comes to organizing my work. By the way, how did it go in Tel Aviv?

  I told her about my encounter with Jessica, adding something I forgot to include in my notes, which is that she had been with the Universal Coptic Church for ten years, first in Miami, then in Bolivia and Ecuador, then in Nairobi, and finally in Tel Aviv; she had donated the property she had inherited from the Ministry to the order and thanks to that had been allowed to jump the queue in being assigned to the Tel Aviv branch, which was closer to the tomb of Jesus, where every true Christian longed to be.

  The story seemed to calm Marta down, so much so that she stopped sobbing and was now making circles with her finger, saying, Amos is turning into an obsession, I can’t stop thinking about him, I feel his warmth and his smell, I feel his touch, being a woman is the dumbest thing in the world, always falling in love at the most inappropriate time, damn it, I’d rather be a male who fucks and forgets, so I said, but Amos hasn’t forgotten you, as far as I know, he simply isn’t here, that’s all, don’t think too much, don’t let your imagination run riot, think about your life just forty-eight hours ago, isn’t that too short a time to be making such a big thing out of this?

  Marta looked at me with a hint of annoyance: you’re talking like an attorney, someone who analyzes and dissects, not like a writer, don’t you know that literature is filled with cases like mine? cases of women who turn their lives upside down overnight for love, without looking back? have you forgotten Twenty-four Hours in a Woman’s Life by Stefan Zweig? I mean, that woman took half the time I did, and I have more of an excuse than her, because I’m in the middle of a war, where love affairs are common because the fragility of life is so evident, have you forgotten Malraux’s La condition humaine? You should know all that.

  Look, I said, I’ve just come out of a long period of silence and illness, surrounded by people with greenish skin and eyes bloodshot with hatred. People sick with emphysema, the swelling of the pulmonary tissue, who think they can’t breathe because of the others, and that’s why they look at them with the silent hatred of the weak, who can’t act on their hatred but only feel it. Having been there I’ve developed strong nerves. My sensors are covered with a layer of what might be ice, like a plane in a cold airport, and I react slowly, like those who’ve been in this siege for a long time. Don’t ask me for tears I don’t have, don’t ask me to screw up my eyes in anxiety. At the moment all I feel is tired and sleepy.

  Murmurs could be heard. The shadows around us were engaged in agitated discussion. Suddenly there was a movement, the arrival of another group of guests in the protected cave of the gym. Some came and sat down with us, no doubt haggard and resigned. We could barely see them, until a woman said: we’re going to lose everything, who had the terrible idea of holding the conference in this dead city? When the light comes back I’m going up for my things and getting out of here, I should have done that earlier. Damn it, this is all my fault.

  She was a woman of fifty, slightly weather-beaten, but still proud and beautiful. She was wearing tight jeans and Texan boots. As she bent, her backside protruded over her pants and part of her buttocks appeared, revealing a triangle of black thread and a tattoo with the opposing signs of the yin and the yang. Her hair had been dyed thousands of times in different shades and the roots were iridescent lines; her nails were purple half moons, with white tips.

  Seeing her distress I said, don’t worry, the generator will start up again any moment now, in no time at all we’ll be back in our rooms. She looked at me angrily and said, this is a cold, inhospitable place, without windows or ventilation, ugh, I hate enclosed spaces, look how my muscles are tightening, look at my pulse, don’t you see I’m shaking like a jelly? I suffer from claustrophobia, I don’t know why the hell I’m here, so I said, come, let’s chat a little, are you a delegate at the conference? She shook her head and said, no, I came on my own account, do you think I can smoke here? oh hell, I’ll make an effort not to smoke, pleased to meet you, my name’s Egiswanda but everyone calls me Wanda, it’s easier to remember, the truth is, I’ve been very alone in the last few hours, so alone, you can’t imagine how much . . . So I said to her, you have a lovely accent, you’re not by any chance . . . ? Yes, she said, I’m Brazilian, I was born in Sao Paulo but I grew up partly in New York and partly in Miami, my parents emigrated when I was a girl, I’ve been many things, but mainly a nurse at the Marieldorf Memorial Hospital in Detroit, anyway, I’m sorry, I don’t want to bother you.

  Marta, who had been silent so far, said, don’t worry, what we have to do while we’re in this hole is tell each other things, rather like the conference but on a lower level, that way the time will pass and the light will come back, then Wanda said, you’re very kind, and she started crying bitterly, as if all the sadness in the world were in her
eyes. Marta hugged her and said, concentrate, imagine you’re a stone at the bottom of a river: the water passes over your sides, the fish brush past you, the vegetation on the river bed caresses you from below; gather those sensations in a single pleasant image, put it in the center of your mind, now you’re fine, your face is already calmer and your eyes aren’t darting about, breathe from your stomach, one, two, breathe out, think of your talisman and . . . once again, one, two, again fill your stomach with air, deep breath, press the plexus when you breathe out, do you feel a little better? Wanda opened her eyes and said, yes, I need professional treatment, you can see that a mile away.