Distant Star (14 page)

As to the poem (a narrative poem, which, to my eternal shame, reminded me of John Cage’s poetic diary spliced with lines that sounded like Julián del Casal or Magallanes Moure translated into French by a Japanese psychotic), what can I say? It was one of Carlos Wieder’s ultimate jokes. And it was deadly serious.

Two months went by before I saw Romero again. When he came back to Barcelona he was thinner. I’ve tracked down Jules Defoe, he said. You know, all this time he’s been living practically next door. How about that, eh? Romero’s smile frightened me.

He was thinner and he looked like a dog. Let’s go, he said crisply that afternoon. He left his suitcase in my flat and as we went out he made sure I locked the door. All I had time to say was: I wasn’t expecting it all to happen so quickly. Romero was already in the hall. He looked at me and said, We have to go on a little trip, I’ll explain on the way. Have we really found him? I asked. I don’t know why I used the plural. We’ve found Jules Defoe, he replied, with a movement of the head that could have meant almost anything. I followed him like a sleepwalker.

It must have been months, or maybe even years, since I had ventured out of Barcelona, and the Plaza Cataluña station, just a few blocks from my apartment, looked completely unfamiliar: brightly lit and full of new contraptions installed for purposes mysterious to me. On my own I would never have been able to
proceed with Romero’s briskness and efficiency, and having noticed or foreseen my predictable bewilderment, he took it on himself to guide me through the devices blocking access to the platforms. Then, after waiting a few minutes in silence, we took the local train that runs along the edge of the Maresme and over the River Tordera to Blanes, where the Costa Brava begins. As we were leaving Barcelona, I asked him who his client was. A Chilean, said Romero. We went through two métro stations, then emerged into the suburbs. Suddenly the sea appeared. A weak sun lit the beaches, which flashed past like the beads of a necklace suspended not from a neck but in empty space. A Chilean? And what’s in it for him? You’re better off not knowing, said Romero, but you can guess. Is he paying a lot? (If he is, I thought, this can only be leading to one thing.) A fair bit; he’s made a fortune in the last few years, sighed Romero, and in Chile too, not abroad. How about that? Apparently quite a few people are getting rich in Chile these days. So I’ve heard, I said, in what was meant to be a sarcastic tone of voice, but it probably just sounded sad. And what are you going to do with the money? Are you thinking of going back to Chile? Yes, I’m going back, said Romero. After a while he added, I’ve got a plan, an idea. I’ve been working it out in Paris and it can’t go wrong. And what’s your plan? I asked. A business, he said. I’m going to set up my own business. I didn’t react. Every exiled Chilean was planning to go back and set up a business. Looking out of the window of the train, I saw a magnificent modernist house with a tall palm tree in the garden. I’m going to become a funeral director, said Romero. I’ll start small, but I’m confident
the business will grow. I thought he was joking. Stop pulling my leg, I said. I’m serious. The secret is to provide a decent funeral for people who don’t have much money, something dignified, even elegant (this is where the French are unbeatable): high-class touches for the middle class, a middle-class service for the working class. That’s the key to success, not just in the undertaking business, but in life in general! Knowing how to treat the family of the deceased, commenting on how kind, courteous and morally superior the stiff was, whoever it happened to be. Three rooms, he said as the train pulled out of Badalona and I began to realize that this was for real and that it was too late to turn back, three well-furnished rooms will be enough for a start: one for the office and tidying up the bodies, one for the wakes, and a waiting room with armchairs and ashtrays. Ideally I’d like to rent a little two-story house somewhere central, live upstairs and use the ground floor for the funeral parlour. It’ll be a family business; my wife and son can help out (although I’m not so sure about my son), but I’m thinking it would be good to hire a secretary too, a quiet, hard-working sort of girl. As you know, at wakes and funerals people really appreciate the physical presence of the young. Naturally, every now and then, the boss (or in his absence, an assistant) has to come out and offer the friends and relatives a drink, pisco or whatever. This has to be done in a sympathetic and tactful manner. Without pretending that you were close to the deceased, but making it clear that you understand what they’re going through. It’s important to talk softly and not be over-eager. When shaking hands, you take the other person’s elbow in your left hand. You
have to know whom to kiss and when, and how to join in the conversations, whatever the subject – politics, soccer, life in general or the seven deadly sins – without taking sides, like a retired judge. The profit on the coffins can be as much as three hundred per cent. I have an old friend in Santiago from my homicide days who’s gone in for making chairs. I was telling him about my idea the other day on the phone and he said, Chairs, coffins, it’s all woodwork. I could make do for the first year with a black station wagon. You have to remember it’s mainly about knowing how to deal with people, not elbow grease. And having lived abroad for years, I’ve got plenty of stories to tell … People in Chile are dying to hear stuff like that.

But I had stopped listening to Romero. I was thinking of Bibiano O’Ryan, Marta Posadas, and the sea staring me in the face. For a moment I imagined Fat Marta working in a hospital in Concepción, married and reasonably happy. Unwittingly, unwillingly she had been the devil’s intimate, but she was alive. I imagined her with children, still a keen reader, but prudent and balanced in her choices. Then I thought of Bibiano O’Ryan, who had stayed in Chile and followed Wieder’s tracks. I saw him working in the shoe shop, helping doubtful-looking middle-aged women try on high-heeled shoes, or serving innocuous children, with a shoe-horn in one hand and a sad-looking Bata shoe box in the other, smiling absently, day after day, until he reached the age of thirty-three, just like Jesus Christ, and then I saw him publishing successful books, signing copies at the Santiago Book Fair (if such a thing exists) and spending semesters as a visiting professor at North American universities, whimsically deciding
to lecture on the new Chilean poetry or contemporary Chilean poetry (whimsically, because the serious choice would have been the novel) and mentioning me, albeit near the end of his list, out of sheer loyalty or pity: An odd sort of poet, working, last I heard, in a factory somewhere in Europe … I saw him climbing like a sherpa towards the peak of his career, winning respect, status and wealth, perfectly placed to settle his scores with the past. I don’t know what it was that possessed me: melancholy, nostalgia or justifiable envy (which in Chile, by the way, is often the cruellest kind), but for a moment I thought that Bibiano might have hired Romero. I said so. No, it’s not your friend, Romero said. He wouldn’t have enough money to get me started. My client, he said, lowering his voice and adopting a falsely confidential tone, is someone who has
real
money, if you see what I mean. Of course, I said, and he didn’t make it from writing. Romero smiled to himself. Look at the sea, he said. Look at the countryside. Beautiful, isn’t it? I looked out of the window: on one side the sea looked as calm as a millpond; on the other, in the orchards of the Maresme, black men were laboring.

The train stopped in Blanes. Romero said something I didn’t catch and we got off. I felt as if I had a cramp in my legs. Outside the station, in the little square that seemed round although it was in fact square, a red bus and a yellow bus were parked. Romero bought some chewing gum. Noticing how drawn I looked and hoping to cheer me up, I suppose, he asked which bus I thought we were going to take. The red one, I said. Right you are, said Romero.

The bus dropped us off in Lloret. It was the middle of a dry spring and there were not many tourists around. We took a street that led downhill, then one that climbed steeply and another that brought us to a district full of holiday flats, most of them unoccupied. The silence was strange, intensified by faint animal noises, as if there were a field or a farm nearby. In one of the soulless buildings surrounding us lived Carlos Wieder.

How did I end up here? I thought. How many streets did I have to walk to end up on this one?

During the train journey I had asked Romero if it had been hard to find Delorme. No, he said, it was simple. He was still working in Paris as a caretaker, and treated every visitor as a potential source of publicity. I pretended to be a journalist, said Romero. And did he believe you? Of course he did. I told him I was planning to publish the complete history of the barbaric writers in a Colombian newspaper. Delorme was in Lloret last summer. In fact, the apartment where Defoe is staying belongs to one of his disciples. Poor Defoe, I said. Romero looked at me as if I’d gone mad. I don’t feel sorry for people like that, he said. By then we had reached the building: tall, wide, devoid of style, a typical product of the tourist boom, with empty balconies and an anonymous, neglected façade. I couldn’t imagine anyone living in it, or perhaps just a few sad cases left over from last summer. I wanted to know what was going to happen to Wieder. Romero didn’t answer my question. I don’t want anyone to get hurt, I murmured, as if someone else could hear me, although we were the only two people in the street. I couldn’t
look at Romero or at Wieder’s building; I felt I was trapped in a recurring nightmare. When I wake up, I thought, my mother will make me a mortadella sandwich and I’ll go off to school. But I wasn’t going to wake up. This is where he lives, said Romero. The building and the whole district were empty, waiting for the start of the next tourist season. For a moment I thought we were going in and I hung back. Keep walking, said Romero. His voice sounded calm, like the voice of a man who knows that in real life things always turn out badly and there’s no point getting worked up about it. I felt his hand brush against my elbow. Keep going straight ahead, he said, and don’t look back. We must have been an odd sight, the pair of us.

The building resembled a fossilized bird. For a moment I had the impression that Carlos Wieder’s eyes were watching me from every window. I’m getting really nervous, I said to Romero. Does it show? No, my friend, he replied, you’re doing well. Romero was quite unruffled and that helped me to calm down. A few streets further on we stopped at the door of a bar, which seemed to be the only place open in the area. It had an Andalusian name and the décor was a rather sad attempt to reproduce the atmosphere of a typical Seville
taberna
. Romero came to the door with me. He looked at his watch. He’ll come here for a coffee in a while, I can’t say when exactly. And what if he doesn’t turn up? I know for sure he comes every day, said Romero, and he’ll come today. But what if, for some reason, he doesn’t? Well, then we’ll come back tomorrow, said Romero, but he’ll come, don’t you worry. I nodded. Have a good look at him and then you can tell me. Take a seat and don’t move.
It might be hard not to move, I said. Do your best. I smiled at him. I was only joking, I said. Must be your nerves, said Romero. I’ll come back when it gets dark. Rather too firmly and solemnly, we shook hands. Have you brought something to read? Yes, I said. What is it? I showed him. Hmm, I don’t know if it’s a good choice, said Romero, with a dubious expression. A magazine or a newspaper might have been better. Don’t worry, I said, this is a writer I like a lot. Romero looked at me one last time and said, See you soon, and remember, it’s more than twenty years ago now.

From the front windows of the bar there was a view of the sea, with a few fishing boats at work near the coast, under an intensely blue sky. I ordered a coffee with milk and tried to calm down; I felt as if my heart was going to burst out of my chest. The bar was almost empty. There was a woman sitting at a table reading a magazine and two men talking or arguing with the bartender. I opened the book, the
Complete Works of Bruno Schulz
, translated by Juan Carlos Vidal, and tried to read. After a few pages I realized I wasn’t understanding anything. I was reading, but the words went scuttling past like beetles, busy at incomprehensible tasks. I thought of Bibiano again, and Fat Marta. I didn’t want to think about the Garmendia sisters, so distant now, or the other women, but I couldn’t help myself.

Nobody came into the bar; nobody moved. Time seemed to be standing still. I started to feel sick; the fishing boats on the sea had turned into yachts (so there must be wind, I thought). The coast was uniformly grey and every once in a while someone walked or cycled past on the broad, empty pavement. I
estimated that it would take about five minutes to get to the beach. It was downhill all the way.

There was hardly a cloud in the sky. An ideal sky, I thought.

Then Carlos Wieder came in and sat down by the front window, three tables away. For a nauseating moment I could see myself almost joined to him, like a vile Siamese twin, looking over his shoulder at the book he had opened (a scientific book, about the greenhouse effect or the origin of the universe), so close he couldn’t fail to notice, but, as Romero had predicted, Wieder didn’t recognize me.

He had aged. Like me, I suppose. But no, much more than me. He was fatter, more wrinkled; he looked at least ten years older than I did, although in fact there was a difference of only two or three years. He was staring at the sea and smoking and glancing at his book every now and then. Just like me, I realized with a fright, stubbing out my cigarette and trying to merge into the pages of my book. But Bruno Schulz’s words had momentarily taken on a monstrous character that was almost intolerable. I felt that Wieder’s lifeless eyes were scrutinizing me, while the letters on the pages I was turning (perhaps too quickly) were no longer beetles but eyes, the eyes of Bruno Schulz, opening and closing, over and over, eyes pale as the sky, shining like the surface of the sea, opening, blinking, again and again, in the midst of total darkness. No, not total, in the midst of a milky darkness, like the inside of a storm cloud.