Thomas Pynchon (lo que me pediste...)

No te voy a hablar de Salinger, no, porque no es eso lo que me has pedido. Pero si lo voy a hacer a su manera. Mira, si en serio quieres que te lo cuente, que te cuente por qué me gustan ciertos libros, lo primero que vas a querer saber es dónde nací, y cómo fue mi jodida infancia, y qué hacían mis padres antes de tenerme y toda esa mierda a lo David Copperfield, pero la verdad es que no tengo ganas de ponerme a hablar de eso. 

Lo que sí te voy a decir es que en esto de escribir uno llega siempre tarde. Será que la palabra es así, que llega al papel sólo después de haber dado vuelta en las circunvoluciones de esa masa gris y pegajosa que voy paseando bajo el gorro croata, pero el hecho es ése: uno llega —siempre— tarde. 

Me dijiste que te contara algo sobre esos que llaman «escritores fantasma» y me ha bastado una vuelta por la Red para ver que todos se han puesto a hablar de lo mismo. Y, perdóname, pero yo no te voy a escribir otro articulito sobre el agua caliente. Basta que teclees «escritores fantasmas» en Google. ¿Que no sabes quiénes son? De hecho, por eso son fantasmas: ellos mismos se esconden. De ti, y de todos los que les van persiguiendo. Ahora, te soy franco: a mí no me importa lo más mínimo ignorar cuáles son los verdaderos nombres o las caras actuales de WuMing, J. D. Salinger, Cormac McCarthy o Thomas Pynchon, y si les cuesta mucho escribir, o lo que piensan de lo que pasa en Libia —las opiniones sobran, y los cabreos también—, o si han votado por Obama y si lo volerán a votar, o si se decantarán por otro emperador. Es más, creo que con respecto a eso deberíamos quedarnos así, ignorando (que es gerundio) o ignorantes (que no es adjetivo sino participio presente). Esto es discutible, por supuesto, pero por si opinas lo contrario, te dejo un frasecita de otro gran fantasma, Patrick Süskind (El perfume): 

«La ignorancia no tiene nada de vergonzoso, la mayor parte de los hombres ve en ella la felicidad. Y, de hecho, es la única felicidad posible en este mundo. No la rechacéis a la ligera». 

Y sin embargo... Mira, por ejemplo, lo que dice El País en un articulito ya viejo 17/12/07 (el enésimo artículo sobre Pynchon, McCarthy, Salinger, WuMing y el «nuestro» Víctor Salero): «[...] ejemplos de la nueva crisis de la autoría. [...] experiencias surgidas en estos nuevos tiempos en los que las historias interesan más que las firmas que las crean». Y te pregunto: ¿es que en algún momento de la Historia —y de las historias— las firmas han interesado más que las historias mismas? 

No sé a ti, pero a mi lo único que me interesa es precisamente eso: sus historias (las que cuentan, entiéndeme bien). Esas historias en la que uno se pierde, se cabrea, se ríe, se desintegra... Por ejemplo, ¿te has leído algún libro de Thomas Pynchon? Yo qué sé, La subasta del lote 49 o El arcoiris de la gravedad o Mason y Dixon...  Mira, cuando lo empiezas a leer... te desconcierta. Como te desconciertan todos esos escritores maximalistas —Mann, Faulkner, Bulgakov, Cortázar, Proust—, y te pasa lo mismo que con ellos: entrar te cuesta, pero enseguida lo que pasa es que no quieres salir.

No sabría decirte, pero al mismo tiempo es como mezclar la locura marina de Melville con las enajenaciones holliwoodianas de Nathanael West mientras éste se pone a escupir verdades exorbitantes con el virus lingüístico de William Burroughs, porque acaba de descubrir que todos somos personajes de una conspiración histórica pensada por Don DeLillo y Bulgákov y puesta en escena por Philip K. Dick. ¿Me entiendes? Es... exagerado. Pero lo es precisamente porque todos somos exagerados cuando en realidad nada lo es. Y lo es, al mismo tiempo, de una manera temperada, suave. Es como estar en el ojo de un huracán, donde todo es calmo y alrededor todo está volando y frantumándose, hay una vertígine de vida pero desordenada: lo reconoces todo pero ya no sabes qué es verdad y qué es mentira. ¿No te acuerdas de la entropía, eso que nunca se entendía en las clases de Físicas? Es esa parte de energía que sobra, que no se puede emplear para hacer un trabajo, es el grado de desorden de las moléculas y es también el grado de incertidumbre que existe sobre un conjunto de informaciones: cuanta más información, más entropía y menos comprensión. Es esa cantidad de información que está por debajo, al lado y encima de lo que crees que estás buscando cuando googleas. Es internet... Óyeme bien: es algo que crees ignorar, pero que conoces muy bien. Pues eso: leer a Pynchon es como descubrirse hablando un idioma que nunca supiste que hablabas a la perfección, y donde esa entropía es su sintaxis.

La subasta del lote 49 narra la historia de una mujer que descubre un sistema de comunicación subterráneo que suplanta al sistema postal norteamericano. Mason y Dixon tiene la complejidad inverosímil de lo que, en realidad, es asombrosamente verídico: relata la historia —verdadera— de un astrónomo y un topógrafo que a mediados del siglo XVIII fueron contratados por la Royal Society para trazar la línea que separaría a las colonias de Pennsylvania y Maryland en el Nuevo Mundo. En El arcoiris de gravedad un militar estadounidense que tiene un grave problema físico (jejeje) trabaja para los servicios de inteligencia aliada en Londres y tiene que enfrentarse con numerosos enemigos. Vaya, me dirás. ¿Eso es todo? Pero tanto los reglamentos que rigen al desintegrante Sistema Tristero en La subasta del lote 49, o las erecciones de ese soldado todas las veces que pasa un cohete V-2 en El arcoiris de gravedad, o el trazado de esa línea que en realidad quiere dividirlo a-b-s-o-l-u-t-a-m-e-n-t-e  t-o-d-o en Mason y Dixon, te precipitan en un mundo que se desintegra y que, al mismo tiempo es tan cotidiano como las judías verdes con patatas que te preparaba tu madre cada dos por tres (judías verdes o acelgas, eso dependía del tipo de crueldad materna, pero patatas, eso sí, siempre). Y si Mason y Dixon es una profunda reflexión sobre la responsabilidad de poner límites, de marcar territorios, de separar una cosa de la otra; el tema central de El arcoiris de gravedad es la disolución del yo, la muerte de la identidad en un mundo en el que todo se va pareciendo a todo (¿globalización?...ese libro se publicó en 1973).

Mira, no sé si te he sabido decir que cuando abro las páginas de La subasta me convierto en un Indiana Jones alucinado que acaba de darse cuenta de haber vivido siempre en un mundo que en realidad le era desconocido y en el que hay que explorarlo todo de nuevo, y rápido además, porque se está yendo todo al carajo. Este mundo que no tiene nada que ver con el Sueño Americano que siempre hemos tenido ante los ojos, sino que más bien se parece a esa zona liminar y tierra de nadie y de todos: el Insomnio Americano.

En fin, que no sé si te has dado cuenta, pero a mí lo único que me interesa es que te lo leas. Y no soy ya de ninguna editorial: si quieres, te escaneo el libro, te lo pongo en PDF y te lo envío. O, para no caer en la ilegalidad (hola, SGAE), te presto mis ejemplares. Ahora sí, si aún no lo has entendido, te lo advierto claramente: entrar en sus libros es un ejercicio de riesgo. Si te ha gustado, yo qué sé, El código da Vinci, no te leas La subasta del Código 49: no me gusta que se caguen en mis muertos.

The world is changing

Something big, very big, is happening. World is changing. Bahahaha, you'll say: this is nothing new. Actually it's not. But now it's accelerating a bit.

Lately, hundreds of analysts have published their own visions of what could happen in the few next months and years. Opinions are raining over us as monsoons, but on the same we cannot control the seasonal changes in atmospheric circulation and precipitations, we cannot put a curb on what is happening in North Africa. Models used for weather forecast works pretty well. Models for Climate Change are quite controversial. Models for social uprisings and human behaviours... are still a bunch of conjectures.

Mahmoud Al-Nakou says, in his article published today in The Guardian: 

Hundreds of thousands of Libyans have studied and lived in the UK, Europe and the US in the decades since oil was discovered, and those highly educated individuals yearn for a productive, co-operative and collaborative relationship with the west. Make no mistake, post-Gaddafi Libya will require a healthy link with western governments and companies to benefit from their technology, skills and expertise, while the west needs our immense natural and mineral riches.

[...]

The fear expressed by some international commentators that Libya will fall into the hands of extremists is totally unfounded. The very nature of Libyan society will not allow it. There is little doubt that Islam as a faith, culture and identity runs strongly through our heritage and tradition, but violence and extremism are foreign. Indeed, Gaddafi had to bring hordes of mercenaries from other African countries to carry out orders that Libyan police and army refused. Rather, it is the Turkish model of government that most Libyans aspire to; where Islamic ethics and values enrich endeavours to achieve democracy, justice, freedom and development.

One optimistic forecast. I really hope he's right. And I really hope that the Western World, this time, will just help Libya (and Egypt, and Tunisia, Yemen and Barhein and all those countries which will follow —it's just a supposition of mine, but if Libyans succeed in their struggle, this success can turn itself into a boost for countries like Algeria, South Arabia, Syria, Morocco, Iran...) to find their own way.

At the very same time, while the Western World Governments are being horrified by the hundreds (perhaps quite more) of people killed in the last days clashes in Libya, they shall admit the hypocrisy which has been leading their approach to the situation in Libya and to all the rest of undeveloped countries. From this article in The Economist:

In al-Hayat, a Saudi-owned pan-Arab daily, Randa Takieddine criticises Western leaders who she says have overlooked Mr Qaddafi’s human-rights abuses in recent years:

This "leader" has, for many years, wasted the wealth of his country, kept his people under lock and key, and nurtured terrorist movements from east to west. And now he is wildly trying to kill off those of his compatriots who would rather die than let him cling to power any longer. Europe and America carry a large part of the responsibility for this because they opened their doors to Qaddafi, rushing to rehabilitate him among the international community. 

How many dictatorships have our Western Governments not only "overlooked" but supported till now just for the sake of expanding neoliberalism? How many people have been killed for it?

Something big is happening. Could this lead to a change in the way the Western Governments (from US to the last one: Italy) have approached the rest of the World?

I have to admit I have serious doubts about it. And this make me feel almost blue... I leave you with this song, and go to sleep.

Gaddafi, Berlusconi and the psychology of a psychopath

For some reason I've never sought to understand, I'm kind of obsessed with dictatorships: most of my short stories are set in an ambience where dictatorship is the underlying cause of what actually happens in the tale.

I'm furiously enraged with any dictator (doesn't matter if he's already dead). I should tell this to some psychologist...

Anyway, I didn't want to speak about me, but just to suggest an article published yesterday by The Economist.

Here just an excerpt::

[...] Nor, as has now become abundantly clear, had Mr Qaddafi really changed his stripes. As far back as 1975 he told an audience of students that he rose to power by force as the leader of a revolution and could only be removed by force. In one of the concluding passages of his Green Book, a stream-of-consciousness promoted as a blueprint for his leadership, Mr Qaddafi, with a characteristic mix of bluntness and illogic, declared that his ideology was “theoretically” a genuine democracy, but in reality, “the strong always rule.” “I was the one who created Libya,” he is said to have declared recently, “and I will be the one to destroy it.” In the typical fashion of dictators, Libya’s leader appears to be confusing his own person with the nation as a whole. [...]

I'm quite interested in Psychology and Anthropology. And tonight, reading the Economist's article about Lybia & this psychopath, it came to my mind an article I read some months ago which was a good & simple resume of other readings I had about Dictators' psychology. Here an excerpt:

The psychopathic Signs 

According to psychologists, dictators are the individuals whose narcissism is so extreme and grandiose that they exist in a kind of splendid isolation in which the creation of the grandiose self takes precedence over legal, moral or interpersonal commitments. While the psychopath gives no real affection, he is quite capable of inspiring affection of sometimes fanatical degree in others. Indeed, he has no genuine human qualities, but opportunistically adapts himself to any situation. This is not a normal type of behavior we need to adjust ourselves to a necessary situation, but purely an opportunistic trick.

Psychopaths have no human feelings

Psychopaths have no feeling of guilt or remorse no matter what happens. A good example is the famous Khomeini’s response when he was asked about his feeling in his flight to Iran after 15 years in exile, when he surprised a whole nation by saying: "I have no feeling on my return to Iran!“ His spontaneous, unscripted and unadvised reaction to a simple obvious question that would require him to express either empathy or caring and compassion for others, including the millions of his followers waiting enthusiastically for his arrival, shows his real side and his lack of human feelings. Although this little statement in itself was very revealing, it was not seriously taken in consideration at the time. Khomeini’s fumbling with statements and phraseology was not a proof that he was merely unintelligent in the conventional sense, but also showed a typical apathy, no sense of concern for his people. [...]

The full article is here.

It -obviously- made me think again in our own little Italian dictator Mr. Berlusconi (how can that dwarf be called "Mr."?). And thinking of him had two very different effects on me: first it made me retch, and, second, it brought to my mind another article (this time a bit funny) about what dictators collect (apart from power and money). They actually seem to collect -compulsively- the most different things... Read it here.

The funny thing is what Stephen Anderson, professor of neurology at the University of Iowa, says:

Stephen Anderson [...] has come closest to finding a biological basis for the yen to collect. In 2004 he showed that damage to an area of the prefrontal cortex can lead to hoarding—the pathological cousin of collecting. Anderson doubts that's the case with the dictators. "Most people who have injuries to this part of the brain are not going to be successful," he says, "even in a bad-guy way." Still, he wouldn't be surprised if the bad guys' neural wiring were somehow amiss.

York has one more theory to add: the need for compensation. "Some of these people," he says, "were really very short."

Now, I'm going to ask you a question: do you know how tall is "Mr." Berlusconi?

. 

Me miro de reojo

Me miro de reojo en el espejo,

me busco las cosquillas (o eso intento).

¿De qué vivís, boludo, tan de espaldas

A un mundo que querías y aún no tienes...

(me hago el rioplatense: así me sabe

un poco más a Freud y a Lacán,

y a consultorio, clases de yoga y sentidos de culpa.)

¡Qué bueno estaba Edipo!

… mamá, dame  otro poco…

.

Yeso que de enano

creía que un trauma era algo comestible

con cierto sabor a carne y chocolate

y una textura semigranulosa.

Recuerdo que le hinqué el diente

—por primera vez a un trauma—

un día de primavera

Se me olvidó su nombre.

(lo digo así de un soplo:

como en el consultorio).

Recuerdo que era duro

Y me rompió algo dentro

Ahora me remiro de reojo

(no estaría mal un cambio de perfil…)

Más no descubro nada.

Es otra vez la espalda al puto mundo

(o la puta espalda al mundo, no empecemos

a descargar las culpas).

Y sin embargo insisto y me concentro más.

Y entonces sé:

Tres espinillas gordas y una subctutánea,

De las que duelen.

Al fin y al cabo (recuento de una venganza)

Ahora que lo escribes, aquí donde todo pasa bajo el signo de una implacable ruptura, en este tiempo bajo tierra con olor a espeso y a alientos encerrados (huele mal, muy mal), ahora se te ocurre que no hay nada de extraño, que todo eso tenía que ocurrir así.

Y sin embargo a ti sólo una cosa te extrañó, al comienzo: el saber que estabas pensando; eso, sí, que estabas pensando tal y como lo hacías antes —aquel algo que no era propiamente un antes sino un otro— y además con el mismo yo del antes u otro, con el mismo nombre (tú a ti mismo siempre te has llamado tú) con el mismo vocabulario y el mismo idioma e incluso los recuerdos, la memoria de las caras. Y la nostalgia. Y te pareció fuera de lugar que las cosas, incluso ahora, siguieran doliendo. Porque, claro, todo esto pertenecía al antes, o a lo otro, por llamarlo de alguna forma.

Decidiste que no valía la pena y te fuiste, hace unos días. O unas semanas (aquí es tan difícil eso del tiempo). Pero eso, los motivos, las razones, es material para otra historia. U otro relato, que al fin y al cabo da lo mismo. Cómo decirlo, no es que ya no te gustaran las estaciones, el sol o la nieve, o los colores o el pelo crespo y suave del sexo de Michelle, a veces las hojas secas del Retiro en noviembre. Siempre te gustó arrellanarte en el sofá toda una tarde, cigarro, coñac y unos relatos y mirar de vez en cuando ese cielo azul, tan azul el cielo de Madrid cuando hacía frío. Pero sabías de antemano que siempre, inevitablemente, llegaría esa sensación, esa pregunta, ese para qué. Como si todo estuviera ya escrito, como si nada importara de veras, como si la verdad estuviera en otro sitio. De eso siempre hablabas con el Bebo: te daba por culo la sola idea —más bien una sensación, algo como un temblor en la barriga y una pesadez de ojos— de la existencia de un final preestablecido, esa falta ya escrita de fantasía y de libertad, ese ciclo determinado de antemano y, al mismo tiempo esa perruna convicción de que todos pudiéramos elegir.

—La gente se va imaginando los porqués y los para qué— le dijiste una vez al Bebo — se los inventa, y muchas veces tan minuciosamente que parece obvio, casi natural, caer en la religión o incluso en la mitología, o en algún sucedáneo. Mira tú el David, tuvo su crisis chunga, y todos pensaban que uno de estos días se tiraría por la ventana o haría alguna tontería, y al final salió, volviéndose un friki de las pelis de serie zeta. Carla se fue de voluntaria a África y allí sigue. Silvia marchó a la India, volvió, y ahora se pasa el día meditando, con una media sonrisa estampada en la cara. ¿Y tú crees que eso es elegir? ¿Y para qué?

 Y si embargo, ahora que lo piensas, aceptarlo o no habría dado lo mismo: al final todos seguíamos esperando respuestas que el paso de las mañanas o de los años nos irían dando: ingresar pasivamente en cada almuerzo con olor a tomate frito y cebolla o pescado; comentar lo que se había dicho en la reunión de la mañana en la editorial sobre los diseños de cubiertas de la colección, mientras hojeabas las propuestas; encender el cigarro con las promesas de dejarlo, porque claro eso mata; pedir una caña más con la ciudad ahí fuera; las tres y media y tener que volver a la reunión, mientras Lucas y Julia se besaban como si fueran adolescentes (casados los dos, maldita sea). Todo como una película: aquí un vacío de palabras, más adelante las imágenes que se escapan y nosotros como personajes con la ilusión de no estar actuando en un papel.

Ese fin de semana lo habíais pasado juntos, pateando las calles y los bares. El Bebo acababa de llegar de Italia y tú tenías que enseñarle la ciudad, el Madrid de otoño, el Retiro. El Bebo era escritor y le gustaban las hojas secas.

Andaba un poco enojado porque él había debido de dejar de fumar por lo del asma, mientras que tú seguía con un paquete de Lucky al día y, a cada rato, el viento le echaba tu humo en la cara.

 —Eso te matará —te dijo.
 —No es eso, Bebo, deberías saberlo— dijiste con una sonrisa medio socarrona.

El Bebo se hizo escritor robándote un relato, el único que tú habías escrito en toda tu vida. Eso sí, hasta ahora, hasta que tu muerte te devolviese una por lo menos parcial comprensión del juego. Un relato sacado de tus entrañas años atrás, en una tarde amarillenta y jadeante de agosto en Palermo, allí en casa del Bebo. Ahora ya era más difícil hablar de eso con el Bebo, de eso que había ido mezclándose con otras historias que la vida, o uno mismo, había ido agregando: historias a base de recuerdos menores, de mentiras mínimas que tejen y tejen su telaraña para lograr la manta del olvido. Tal vez de eso ya no se acordara el Bebo, de alguna manera se lo había perdonado a sí mismo. Y todo hay que decirlo: tú nunca tuviste madera de escritor. Por algo acabaste siendo editor.

 —¡Mira! —casi gritó el Bebo— ¡Cuántas hojas! ¡Madrid es maravillosa!—.

«Maravillosa». Italiano tenía que ser. Maravilloso, Bebo, maravilloso, en masculino. El Bebo se revolcaba en una alfombra de hojas secas. El Retiro estaba casi vacío para ser un fin de semana. Te dio por imaginarme la cara del Bebo cuando se diera cuenta de esta convergencia al pronunciar esas palabras que dijo el día de mi entierro: su cuento —tu cuento— y este otro.

Tal vez el Bebo ya ni se acordara de su plagio pero aquella tarde en Palermo, al leer tu relato, te dijo que en aquel perfecto dibujo de líneas repitiéndose había encontrado algo raro, como si ese cansancio que el protagonista le tenía a la vida, ese disgusto a las estaciones, al pelo crespo y suave de su novia y a las hojas secas bajo sus zapatos en el Retiro de noviembre, tuviera algo de no acabado, de prefiguración, de representación anticipada. Sin embargo —añadió con una mueca— no es que la historia fuera muy original: al fin y al cabo, había muchos que se suicidaban por ese mismo aburrimiento que le tenían a todo, esa saciedad de porqués sin causas ni fines que sus minuciosas imaginaciones les habían proporcionado. Al final, tiempo después, la publicó como suya. Eso no se lo perdonaste. 

A ti te encontraron cinco días después de que el Bebo se marchara (con tu sobre en su mano «para que tengas algo que leer en el avión») tendido en la cama con las venas cortadas. No supiste encontrar una manera más limpia. Lo que alarmó a la portera fue el olor.

Con tu entierro comenzó el desenlace. «Que la historia copiase a la historia —dijo el Bebo en ocasión del sepelio— era ya suficientemente pasmoso. Que la historia copiara a la literatura —en su mano tus dos relatos: el primero y el último: éste—  era inconcebible». Una luz brilló en sus ojos. No había nada más que comprender.

El Bebo se pegó un tiro una semana más tarde.

Porque, al fin y al cabo, así estaba escrito.

Graffiti (and tattoos)

to a blue-eyed fairy

I’ll be back, with another tattoo on my left ankle. It’s going to be Freedom. You’ll know  when. Just have a look at the walls.

1. So many things begin and perhaps end as a game, I suppose that it amused you to find the sketch beside yours, you attributed it to chance or a whim and only the second time did you realize that it was intentional and then you looked at it slowly, you even came back later to look at it again, taking the usual precautions: the street at its most solitary moment, no patrol wagon on neighboring corners, approaching with indifference and never looking at the graffiti face-on but from the other sidewalk or diagonally, feigning interest in the shop window alongside, going away immediately.

2. The sketch didn’t really match with the one you had drawn just few hours before, but in some way it did. It was like that tattoo, just a word: Adventura. That was Latin, and you remembered it ‘cause you saw it just few weeks before, tattooed just up on the right ankle of that beautiful blue-eyed girl, having a coffee in the Starbucks. She was sitting right in front of you. A very attractive, picturesque and at the same time unpretentious blond and blue-eyed traveler or adventurous tourist, with that rucksack lying down on the floor and that look on her eyes like trying to retain every single detail of the limited landscape framed in the window she was sitting by. Retaining everything just to forget about all she had seen, few minutes, or hours, or days after. You also had been a traveler but you never had this ability, and your rucksack became heavier day by day with memories and people and stories. 

Every letter of her tattoo was of a different color, some kind of handwritten fonts with flourished spurred upstrokes, and the tattoo itself was like a silent scream, something shouted, yelled to the sky but mutely, with a sort of rational passion, a well-mannered, hidden and sensible rage. But coming to the town hadn’t been a very sensible choice. Tourists had run away after the sudden coup, and she was the only one sitting in that Starbucks which only few weeks before was crowded with people and languages.

3. Your own game had begun out of boredom; it wasn't really a protest against the state of things in the city, the curfew, the menacing prohibition against putting up posters or writing on walls. It simply amused you to make sketches with colored chalk (you didn't like the term graffiti, so art critic-like) and from time to time to come and look at them and even, with a little luck, to be a spectator to the arrival of the municipal truck and the useless insults of the workers as they erased the sketches. It didn't matter to them that they weren't political sketches, the prohibition covered everything, and if some child had dared draw a house or a dog it would have been erased in just the same way in the midst of curses and threats. In the city, people no longer knew too well which side fear was really on; maybe that's why you overcame yours and every so often picked the time and place just right for making a sketch.

4. You never ran any risk because you knew how to choose well, and in the time that passed until the cleaning trucks arrived something opened up for you like a very clean space where there was almost room for hope. Looking at your sketch from a distance you could see people casting a glance at it as they passed, no one stopped, of course, but no one failed to look at the sketch, sometimes a quick abstract composition in two colors, the profile of a bird or two entwined figures. Just one time you wrote a phrase, in black chalk: It hurts me too. It didn't last two hours, and that time the police themselves made it disappear. Afterward you went on only making sketches.

5. When the other one appeared next to yours you were almost afraid, suddenly the danger had become double, someone like you had been moved to have some fun on the brink of imprisonment or something worse, and that someone, as if it were of no small importance, was a woman. And you couldn't prove it yourself, but she was her, the blue-eyed girl sitting in front of you in the Starbucks. There was something different and better than the most obvious proof: the same tattoo now converted into graffiti. There was a trace of her smile, of the look of her eyes, her aura. Probably since you walked alone you were imagining it out of compensation; you admired her, you were afraid for her, you hoped it was the only time, you almost gave yourself away when she drew a sketch alongside another one of yours, an urge to laugh, to stay right there as if the police were blind or idiots.

6. A different time began, at once stealthier, more beautiful and more threatening. Shirking your job you would go out at odd moments in hopes of surprising her. For your sketches you chose those streets that you could cover in a single quick passage; you came back at dawn, at dusk, at three o'clock in the morning. It was a time of unbearable contradiction, the deception of finding a new sketch of hers beside one of yours and the street empty, and that of not finding anything and feeling the street even more empty. One night you saw her first sketch all by itself; she'd done it in red and blue chalk on a garage door, taking advantage of the worm-eaten wood and the nail heads. It was more than ever her --the stroke, the colours-- but you also felt that that sketch had meaning as an appeal or question, a way of calling you. You came back at dawn, after the patrols had thinned out in their mute sweep, and on the rest of the door you sketched a quick seascape with sails and breakwaters; if he didn't look at it closely a person might have said it was a play of random lines, but she would know how to look at it. That night you barely escaped a pair of policemen, in your apartment you drank glass after glass of gin and you talked to her, you told her everything that came into your mouth, like a different sketch made with sound, another harbour with sails, you pictured her as the one in the Starbucks, you chose other profiles too, you hugged her, you loved her a little. 

7. Almost immediately it occurred to you that she would be looking for an answer, that she would return to her sketch the way you were returning now to yours, and even though the danger had become so much greater since the attacks at the market, you dared go up to the garage, walk around the block, drink endless beers at the cafe on the corner. It was absurd because she wouldn't stop after seeing your sketch, and almost any one of the many blond women coming and going might be her. At dawn on the second day you chose a gray wall and sketched a white triangle surrounded by splotches like oak leaves; from the same cafe on the corner you could see the wall (they'd already cleaned off the garage door and a patrol, furious, kept coming back), at dusk you withdrew a little, but choosing different lookout points, moving from one place to another, making small purchases in the shops so as not to draw too much attention. It was already dark night when you heard the sirens and the spotlights swept your eyes. There was a confused crowding by the wall, you ran, in the face of all good sense, and all that helped you was the good luck to have a car turn the corner and put on its brakes when the driver saw the patrol wagon, its bulk protected you and you saw the struggle, blonde hair pulled by gloved hands, the kicks and the screams, the cut-off glimpse of blue slacks before they threw her into the wagon and took her away. 

8. Much later (it was horrible shaking like that, it was horrible to think that it had happened because of your sketch on the gray wall) you mingled with other people and managed to see an outline in blue, the traces of that orange color that was like her name or her mouth, her there in that truncated sketch that the police had erased before taking her away, enough remained to understand that she had tried to answer your triangle with another figure, a circle or maybe a spiral, a form full and beautiful, something like a yes or an always or a now.

9. You knew it quite well, you'd had more than enough time to imagine the details of what was happening at the main barracks; in the city everything like that oozed out little by little, people were aware of the fate of prisoners, and if sometimes they got to see one or another of them again, they would have preferred not seeing them, just as the majority were lost in the silence that no one dared break. You knew it only too well, that night the gin wouldn't help you except to make you bite your hands with impotence, cry, crush the pieces of coloured chalk with your feet before submerging yourself in drunkenness.

10. Yes, but the days passed and you no longer knew how to live in any other way. You began to leave your work again to walk about the streets, to look, fleetingly at the walls and the doors where you and she had sketched. Everything clean, everything clear; nothing, not even a flower sketched by the innocence of a schoolboy who steals a piece of chalk in class and can't resist the pleasure of using it. Nor could you resist, and a month later you got up at dawn and went back to the street with the garage. There were no patrols, the walls were perfectly clean; a cat looked at you cautiously from a doorway when you took out your chalk and in the same place, there where she had left her sketch, you filled the boards with a green shout, a red flame of recognition and love, you wrapped your sketch in an oval that was also your mouth and hers and hope. The footsteps at the corner threw you into a felt-footed run, to the refuge of a pile of empty boxes; a staggering drunk approached humming, he tried to kick the cat and fell face down at the foot of the sketch. You went away slowly, safe now, and with the first sun you slept as you hadn't slept for a long time.

11. That same morning you looked from a distance: they hadn't erased it yet. You went back at noon: almost inconceivably it was still there. The agitation in the suburbs (you'd heard the news reports) had taken the urban patrols away from their routine; at dusk you went back to see that a lot of people had been seeing it all through the day. You waited until three in the morning to go back, the street was empty and dark. From a distance you made out the other sketch, only you could have distinguished it, so small, above and to the left of yours. You went over with a feeling that was thirst and horror at the same time; but then you saw the orange oval and the green circle, and the little letters spread out all around the oval and the circle: Adventura, and, on the very right of the circle, something like a clock and two little air planes, one going, the other coming. You stood there staring at the graffiti, and finally the relief came: this night the gin would be lifted for her. And I know, I know but what could I have done? I was lucky enough they didn’t kill me and decided to send me back, but in some way I had to say farewell to you, let you know I would be back one day, and at the same time ask you to continue. I had to leave you something before going back to my foreign refuge, remembering so many things and sometimes, as I had imagined your life, imagining that you were making other sketches, that you were going out at night to make other sketches.

.......................................

we'll meet again, somewhere
and I'll also have my tattoo done

........................................

(to JC, also, as  a tribute)