Moving Parts (2 page)

The narrator feels tired at the mere thought of the next sentence,
though the story hasn't even begun. It could be thought that all this time it has been spinning its wheels, emitting a hum thoroughly reminiscent of street sounds muffled by panes of glass. Its emptiness and sterility are written in the dull-colored plaster and the indifferent sky. One feels like ordering a beer and watching the foam settle in the mug, nothing more. If the narrator could choose, he'd prefer to tell about things free of complications, about leather-bound furniture exuding the cool tranquility of affluence and fortunate never to feel the weight it is its lot to carry; about glistening tiles of synthetic stone; about spotless panes of glass; about white porcelain cups in sets of six dozen – if one or two are broken it won't be the end of the world. If the narrator really could chose, he would prefer not to tell about anything at all. Then where did this next character come from? How could he suddenly have come into view? He has arrived in a taxicab that drove around a square on which a bronze horse covered in green patina rears on its hind legs bearing a rider encased in armor. A few sparrows have taken wing from the raised visor. The newcomer has paid for his ride and is climbing out of the cab. From his pocket there juts a folded newspaper; it could, for example, be the Financial Times. This vignette is an agreed-upon signal intended especially for the narrator – a sign that forces itself on his gaze.

Let's say that it is still raining. Let lights be reflected in the wet asphalt as if it were a mirror; let clouds pass across the puddles, and in the aquaria of the shop windows let umbrellas
rise, weightless as jellyfish. The raindrops have already added a spotted design to the plain fabric of the man's jacket. Let's say that his overcoat was stolen at the airport. Did he also lose his wallet, tucked into an inside pocket? The wet sidewalk reflected the lights of the hotel, while the semitransparent image of the bronze rider shook slightly in the glass of the revolving door and spun on his horse as if on a merry-go-round when the new character entered the lobby. Across the mirrors drifted the aforementioned jacket, an immaculate white shirt collar and a necktie that is rather ironic, but also rather flashy – of course, within the limits of what's permissible in places where the only salvation is to reconcile freedom with servitude. Narrators have a fondness for details; they pluck them skillfully and with relish out of the background. The necktie tells them almost everything, while the eyeglasses merely reflect the external world, little more than a fragment of a setting that narrators know like the back of their hand. Different profiles and faces are chosen for jackets than for black sweaters; foreheads can be smoother, gazes milder, and this principle, let it be noted, has been upheld. Despite this, it's hard not to notice a striking resemblance between the two male figures, especially when the strip of lamps shining coldly over the front desk flashes in the newcomer's glasses. The reservation is found under the name of a well-known shipping company whose shares have for some time been considered an excellent investment. Having the traveler's expert knowledge at its disposal, the firm did
not omit to arrange for a roof over his head, forbearingly, with resignation even, accepting the fact that he, too, has a body, as troublesome and demanding as any other. On the hurriedly completed form there briefly appeared a long and illegible name beginning with the letter F. The top-class specialist, whose involvement guarantees success for the company – by now it's certain that it is him – reaches for his keys. The tan lines on his hand reveal that as recently as July or August he was wearing a wedding band. He could have taken it off a quarter of an hour ago even, slipping it into the same pocket from which the now unnecessary newspaper protrudes. But the smiling desk clerk doesn't fall for such a trick – neither she nor anyone else. In the meantime the bell of the elevator rings out over the door with its steely gleam, described in the trimmings catalogs as a half-matte easy on the eye. The door opens and closes with a barely audible hiss, easy on the ear, and F. is already exiting on some floor or other; thick carpeting muffles his steps. He opens the room vacated by the other two, which by now has been cleaned so thoroughly that no trace of them is left. F. ought immediately to put in a call to his bank and give them the numbers of his lost credit cards. Instead, he rakes his fingers through his hair and goes up to the window. So it's possible that his wallet remained safely in the inside pocket of his jacket, though even in this matter there can be no certainty, for there exist states of mind in the face of which the security of one's bank accounts is of no importance. Mr. F. stares at the
dull plasterwork and the gray sky that the narrator was reluctant to observe. He, too, has no wish to look at it; he draws the drapes carefully. He isn't missing much. Walls and clouds were, in any case, blocking the view. There was no way to see beyond what was in plain sight. F. sits on the sofa, then lies down on it, like a passenger on a ship who has been overcome by the nauseating pitch of the vessel and has retired to his cabin. And thus a maritime metaphor encroaches on a foaming wave between the lines, thwarting the earlier circus metaphor that the narrator had only just finished dealing with. The new complication perplexes him. From the slipshod, woefully incomplete score with which he was provided, an equally important second subject is emerging. The rhythm is familiar – that of cautious steps over the abyss; in it one senses the quivering of ropes strung between the masts of a circus tent, or a sailing ship. This rather unexpected response to the first subject, which was presented in the passage containing the circus fanfares, is introduced, let's say, by the French horn – does it not roar out in the voice of a ship's foghorn? Either way, the second subject has now been imposed on the narrator without a trace of decency or sympathy, since in the parts of the score that are supposed to give a sense of the whole, gaps have been left. It isn't clear whether the one who appointed the narrator left him without guidelines through an oversight, or whether perhaps he neglected the details, preoccupied with some other, more important task. Or he simply couldn't be bothered, and so deliberately shirked
the effort of finding harmonies. In place of a round island yellow with sawdust and washed by lofty waves of admiration and awe, from the heights of the crow's nest there can be seen somewhere down below the deck of a sailing ship tossing on the ocean waves. The planks of the deck have the same yellow color of untreated wood; the clamorous undulations of the audience closely resemble the sound of high seas. In essence we are still dealing with the same thing: that which is visible. Then what is the essence of the invisible structure, its foundation and its core? Maybe the ropes strung across the abyss; maybe the ocean currents in the depths; maybe the precipitous lines of the graphs of market reports in the columns of the Financial Times. F. cannot know this either, since others who are better informed also do not know. No handbook can resolve the matter; no trade journal will figure it out. F.'s hand falls limply to the floor, as if he were asleep, when suddenly a sob issues from his throat. This sob will be heard a floor above by the maid when she turns off her vacuum cleaner for a moment. Is this really the room left by the other two? There's no doubt about it; never mind the details. Whichever of the numerous rooms on many floors it might be, it would always be the same one. His other hand pulls the tie over his head, reaches for his collar and loosens it with a single tug, ripping the button off. In this scene the pop marks the turning point, which has just passed. From this moment all is preordained, with no return and no escape. It transpires that the well-paid professional with
the ironic glint in his eyeglasses who was seen only a moment ago in the lobby and at the front desk – does not exist. The character lying tieless on a hotel sofa is not to blame for this. The fault lies with the troubles of life, with the dull plaster, the gray sky. It lies with hope or with the lack of hope – there's no difference, since hope and lack of hope both lead to the same point.

The narrator could assert that he saw with his own eyes the events that took place in the hotel lobby, and likewise the arrival of the cab. He watched them through the glass panes, over a beer, which at his request had been brought to him in the dining room, even though the tables were already being cleared after breakfast. But how was it with the interior of that room on some floor or other? This is a critical question, assuming the world actually exists, and does so reliably enough that we should not consider ourselves entitled to discuss uncertainties. And could the narrator drink his beer if the world didn't exist? But in fact he didn't drink it at all. He merely watched the foam settling in the mug.

There now reappears the question of the rolls that the other two spread with butter not so long ago: it would be nice to know for certain that they at least actually existed. The narrator smirks when the word
actually
moves full sail into the dangerous straits that have emerged between the image of the rolls and the period. In order to eat the rolls one must have a body – it's as simple as that. Body and rolls are of the same substance. There's no need whatsoever to concern oneself with what that
substance is; it's enough that there is someone to name the one and the other – and thus the narrator pulls out of his ear an egg that he had only just put in his pocket, and takes a bow. The body is indifferent to this entire matter. Naive and simple-hearted, it wants only to experience good; it desires nothing but comforts and pleasures, and that is why sofas sink so softly and caressingly beneath its weight, and why cream is served with coffee. On the other hand, that which is called life demands impossible positions of the body. It requires monkeylike agility for climbing masts; it requires crawling on one's knees with a scrubbing brush across the planks of the deck, in gleaming white dress shirts, in jackets on which there is not to be a single speck of dust, nor drop of brine. What torture it is to sail day after day in the fog of the present tense. Subjects and predicates welter in it devoid of outlines, drifting without goal or direction. Until they are stopped by a period at the end of a sentence, everything still seems possible; every unexpected “therefore” opens the sluice gates to seas of subordinate clauses, to narrows of ironic meanings, to foreign ports of perverse conclusions in which the last word casts doubt on the first, like a customs official boarding a ship at the end of its voyage and looking for any pretext to question the bills of lading and discreetly pocket a wad of crumpled banknotes. The fog lights of adverbs and complements summon one fragment after another from the hazy background; let's look for instance at a bright smudge of red moving through the grayness of an autumn
afternoon. It's a red umbrella, which a fourth character is just about to fold with a snap. The narrator hopes that at this point he'll finally be able to put his foot on the dry land of the past tense, in the kingdom of certainty where facts live and flourish. Only there do they flourish, nowhere else; the past tense is their entire world, the homeland of truths that are incontrovertible though, it must be admitted, usually contradictory.

Up until now the narrator has been given no opportunity to speak with someone in authority who would have a better idea where this story is heading; and so the course of events takes him by surprise time after time. Having no binding agreement to rely on, he had wished that three characters would be the end of it, but it was not in his power to insist. And so the figure with the umbrella is crossing a damp terrace covered with dead leaves. It's still the same November. Somewhere in the corner, garden furniture has been stacked in a soggy pyramid. The torpor of autumn has deprived its forms of lightness. Raindrops tremble on the upturned backs of chairs; the fancy cast-iron legs jut skyward. The season is over, and nothing more will happen; as for the next one, no one knows if it will ever come. The whole property is for sale, and has already been assigned a number in the listings of the real estate agency; the description is accompanied by a photograph in which the succulent green of the trees stands out against a cream-colored facade. Under the heading ‘garden' is frozen the mute echo of bursts of laughter at a table adorned with red wine stains and lambent patches
of sunlight filtering through the glass tableware. By the gate next to the bell push a metal nameplate of no use to anyone has been put up; never mind what it says. The narrator will ignore the first letter of the surname; he's already grown tired of the game involving initials. When the key grates in the lock, an empty interior will open wide to reveal white walls and ceilings; a staircase will lend the space depth. Rectangular marks on the wall are mementos of frames that must have held pictures; but of what? The punctured remains of a colored rubber ball will be lying in the corner beneath the stairs, until the sale of the house summons new owners; but this is foreordained, and so the floor will seem to show through the rubber integument. The lighter things are, the easier it is for them to disappear, as if they were blown away by a gust of wind produced by the difference in air pressure between future and past tenses; in recesses they last longer. It would seem that when buying, for instance, such a solid thing as a grand piano, one could count on its weightiness, on the boundless durability of its black lacquer, and on the immutable laws of harmony. But it was placed, as sometimes happens, in a draft, and so the piano passages, volatile shoals of triads that cannot entirely be taken seriously, died away first, before the murmur of voices, and even before the smell of coffee had dissipated. The perfection of a silence capable of containing all sounds will no longer soothe any ear. The furniture has vanished, along with a colorful mist in which life was pleasant and imposed no thoughts about its
direction or its meaning. Even the umbrella stand has gone, and so water drips onto the floor, onto the perfectly maintained beechwood tiling, while the female figure turns in her hands an envelope taken a few moments ago from the mailbox. It can be surmised that the trick involving the juggling of passions worked perfectly for her for a very long time; the golden balls of love, jealousy, and longing, obedient in her hands, passed through the emptiness of the spheres as they described their giddy, collision-free double and triple trajectories high over the depths of despair, far from the misery of ruination, leaving no trace other than streaks of light. Ink can stain; a mark has been imprinted on her index finger. It's a capital
F
from the last name of the addressee, turned back to front. Stubborn, it managed after all to find a way to appear. The first letter of the sender's name, also smudged from the dampness, tries to squeeze into the next sentence, but without success. The forwardness of these capital letters has gone too far, thinks the narrator. In any case the woman still tears the envelope into shreds, along with its contents. Now she needs to get rid of the pieces and doesn't know what to do with them; she ought to throw them into the toilet and flush them away. After all, she must know where the bathroom is. While she's at it she ought to put the red umbrella in the bathtub. But whatever she does now, it will not satisfy the narrator, who has already allowed the insidious word ‘ought' to take control, peremptorily imposing its weight on the sentences. And thus, because of the last name beginning with F,
probably her husband's, out of wifely loyalty she ought to stick to the metaphor of life as a sea voyage, and especially avoid the circus images associated with the character in the black sweater. Either way, little here depends on the opinions expressed by the narrator. All he can do, and that only to a certain degree, is to govern grammatical forms, an essential element, especially as concerns the verbs, which are constantly striving to escape into open space, of their own accord taking on the forms of the future tense, without any obligations. Brought forcibly down to earth, while they still can they steer clear of perfective forms; they thrash like kites and drift toward waters into which one cannot step twice, and even at a distance it's evident that as the lesser of two evils they prefer to spin in the eddies of the present.