Talking to Ourselves: A Novel (3 page)

We trust this has not wearied you, esteemed gentlemen of the panel, and that our research will attain, if not your
unmerited
theoretical approval, then at least your paternal consent to carry on failing. Thank you very much.

I take my phone out of my bag, I turn it on, look at it, leave it on the table, put it back in my bag, take it out again. I act like a delinquent.

The first thing I did when I got up was call Mario. It took a while to get hold of him. They seem fine. They are seeing places, enjoying themselves. They sound almost happier without me. When I asked Mario whether he was sleeping eight hours a day like he had promised, he hesitated. I got annoyed and we argued. We fell silent. And then we were tender. Lito tried to explain something to me about the truck and the rain, I couldn’t hear very well, whatever it was it sounded adorable. He told me very excitedly that he had beaten his dad in a race. I asked him to let me speak to Mario again. He promised he hadn’t really run, how could I even think that, didn’t I know the little tyke had an
overactiv
e
imagination. We ended on a happy note. I felt reassured. I busied myself cleaning windows. I did some washing. I boiled vegetables. I read for a while. I prepared the literature exams. I sewed on two buttons. Then I called Ezequiel.

He asked me if I had thought about our dinner the
previous
night. I said no. He asked me if I’d had difficulty getting to sleep. I said no. He suggested meeting for coffee this afternoon. I said no. He asked if he could call me tomorrow. I said yes.

“Hypocrite lecteuse! Ma semblable! Ma soeur!,”
I underline with a highlighter in a manifesto by Margaret Atwood, hypocrisy is a leveller, sisterly hypocrisy, sister hypocrisy, “Let us now praise stupid women,” praise them, praise them!, “who have given us Literature.” Without stupid women, not a single love poem would have ever been written.

Is Mario jealous? Somewhat. Am I jealous? Not particularly.

I could just as well have written: Is he jealous? Not really, because he acknowledges it as such. Because he is a man at ease with his jealousy. Like my sister is with hers. She even cultivates it. She regards jealousy as a sign of love.

And I could as well have written: Am I jealous? Perhaps in a twisted way. Because, although in theory I am less possessive than they are, in fact I am afraid to acknowledge the possessive impulse in myself.

Is jealousy related to love? It is related: they fight. They
probably
cancel each other out. Are fantasies related to marriage?
They are related: they cohabit. Maybe they are mutually
sustaining
.

Not long ago I reached a certain age, how can I define it? an age: that’s all. After which we begin counting it, we become too aware of it. It isn’t a number so much as a kind of frontier.

Why is it that suddenly, without having decided to, we begin noticing younger people? Observing them with a certain
nervousness
? Why are we tempted to attract their attention, to
display
ourselves surreptitiously in front of them? What do we hope they will avoid? What do we want them to give us back?

Any woman who thinks this is a problem restricted to men, very well: she is probably naïve, a coward, or a hypocrite. I have women friends who fit neatly into all three categories. Until one day, when they least expect it, they leave their bald husbands for some other man.

I can’t help but admit that I, too, am turning into That. The thing I didn’t want to become. I should have been fully prepared. I had seen it in books, films, in my neighbours. But that couldn’t happen to me. Yet it has: I am starting to mistake beauty for youth.

… testing, testing, let’s see, is this piece of shit working or not?, testing, tes, well, it seems to be, getting started is difficult,
breathing
is a bit of a struggle sometimes, but the main thing is to get started, isn’t it?, like with Pedro, after that, well, everything speeds up, I’ll explain, bah, can I explain this?, you’re at your grandparents’ and you don’t know why, we’ve sent you there until the end of the holidays, I’m meant to be travelling, we talk every day, I try to sound cheerful, am I deceiving you, son?, yes, I’m deceiving you, am I doing the right thing?, I’ve no idea, so let’s assume I am, I prefer you not to see me like this, we can’t tell you what’s going on now, what is now in any case, if I don’t even know when you’re listening to me, will those mp thingamajigs still exist?, or will iPods seem as old-fashioned to your kids as my record player?, formats disappear just like people, hold on, is this thing still recor—.

And at the same time I’m not sure, do you see?, I swear I’d give my life to, how ironic is that, I’d give anything to know what’s going to happen to this lie, what you’ll think of me when you discover it, you’ll have a few photos of me, I hope, and if so Mario
you’ll look at them sometimes, won’t you?, but I have no way of seeing you, I mean, will you be a nice guy or a rogue?, or will you be nice some of the time and a bit of a bastard others, like the rest of us?, and, you know, I try, I really do try to figure out if you’re going to look like me, not too much I trust, for your sake, and part of me is desperate for you to grow up now, and another part of me is scared by how fast you, I mean, for you time will also, well, and I spend hours inventing a face, a height for you, but not a voice, I can’t do voices, it’s strange, I make up bodies, but I remember voices, and I can picture your back, your nose,
whatever
, your beard, you have a beard?, I can’t believe it.

Let’s say that with you I’ve had good intentions but not much initiative, I fooled myself into believing I was waiting, waiting for you, for instance, the last few summers you’d been asking me if you could go with Uncle Juanjo on a delivery, he suggested it, he told me, but your mother and I were never sure, we thought it was dangerous, or not right for your age, or heck knows what, there’ll be time, we said, we thought there’d be plenty, and
suddenly
, or not so suddenly, there wasn’t any, that’s why I had to do it like this, in such a hurry, I had to create this memory for you, your mum was against it at first, we argued quite a lot, I was
feeling
better, and you know those trips, the ones the travel agency was supposedly sending me on?, well, I was staying with your uncle and aunt for a few days, until I had recovered a bit from the side effects, then I came home and did the best I could, your mother, it goes without saying—wait, someone’s coming in.

Once I quit taking the poison there was a, like a kind of
illusion
, I had mornings when I was elated, I got up and thought: I’m cured, then the next day I returned to reality, I had ups and downs, and during one of these remissions I asked Uncle Juanjo what deliveries he had, are you sure? he said, are you sure?, then I suggested we go together, that came first, right?, and at the
same time, why not, it would bring in some money, the pay was good, and I, well, you’ll agree, son, I was thinking about how little money we had left in the bank, about the mortgage
payments
, needing a new car, things like that, and I had a duty to you, didn’t I?, your duty is to take care of your health, your mother said, but this summer it was different, I hardly felt sick at all, you’d just had your birthday, the delivery date was okay, you can tell there aren’t as many truckers to put the screws on
during
the holidays, damned bloodsuckers, I more or less knew the route, I’d been there once with your granddad, he was the one who started trucking, then Uncle Juanjo took over, bah, and I was supposed to, that’s another story, your granddad wanted it to be me, you know?, he even taught me how to move trailers, how to strip engines, how to budget, I don’t know why the heck we teach our kids to behave the way we do, when we know we aren’t happy, sometimes when I think about it, I swear I—

Yesterday I didn’t feel so good, I tried to take a nap, then your mum came back, I had a bad night, bah, we both did, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about when she and I met, it’s amazing to think we might have lived different lives, a life without the other, the first thing I did after I told your granddad I was leaving the company was to enrol at the university, and it was a big shock for him, you know?, my father was one of those men who chop cheese with one stroke, you know?, that’s where I met your mum, she didn’t take much notice of me at first, how can I put it, she was more interested in rich kids, she denies it, we never agree about that part of the story, then luckily she started taking more of an interest in the lousy students, I had spotted her from day one, long before we started dating, do people still say
dating
?, maybe I sound old-fashioned, your mum would get straight A’s, you know what she’s like, heaven forbid a B, I used to scrape through, I never went near a classroom, as soon as I found out
your mum wrote short stories I quickly did some research, oh yes, dear, I crammed for that all right, it’s called doing field work.

Well, and that’s how she and I got started, I would tell her half jokingly: I’m your consolation prize, it irritated her, but I guess it was kind of true, her family always thought so, I didn’t care, we met up every day, lent each other books, went halves on buying records, studied together, well, not that so much, we went camping, the whole shebang, until midway through my degree I got this feeling, I don’t know, of being trapped, finally I decided to take a year off and go travelling, I went all over with my backpack, stopping at any old place, I got money from
wherever
I could, doing odd jobs, borrowing, or if I had to, well, I even read more books, I tell you, in hostels, in parks, in van—no, thanks, I still have some, yes, thanks.

I came back in the summer, and your mother said we should move in together, how about that? move in together or never see each other again, she told me, I was flabbergasted, we’d spoken hundreds of times on the phone, exchanged heaps of letters, but, I don’t know, I think during that year she tried a different life as well, and different men, she says she didn’t, and we both went off, to live together, I mean, and your mum got her degree, and never applied for that research grant, to tell the truth, that suited me fine, I preferred her to get a steady teaching job, now I’m not so sure, I don’t know, around that time, more or less, is when she stopped writing, in the meantime I had to do something, of course, I wasn’t about to go back to studying, and I wasn’t going to hang around waiting for my in-laws to give me a handout, in short, I started to look for things related to travelling, I did this and that, and then I started working at the travel agency, I was used to moving around, not to dealing with tourists, a tourist, you might say, is someone who pays you in order not to move
around, at first I thought of it as a stopgap, it was convenient, near home, finding something better wasn’t so easy, you know?, and so I stayed on, I began to settle, and the years went by like crazy, my parents died, one then the other, just imagine, as if they’d made a pact, your grandma always longed to have
grandchildren
, how can I describe her to you? my mother walked around staring down at her feet, the more they yelled at her at home, the more she painted her nails, and Uncle Juanjo took over the company, he was always telling me: why don’t you come and work with me, you know you love the open road, but we’d just had you, Lito, and something strange started happening to me, I started to be afraid of the open road, and every time that I …