Count the present days until today arrives (YERMA)
(Is there always a hotel for chance encounters in history?) sitting on the edge of those gallbladder-shaped pools, under a scorching sun, feeling the wrinkles return along with the gin's effect, while K (my new Brazilian friend) vaguely suggested a light, refreshing Portuguese wine made in the remote province of Trás-os-Montes and called Mateus --- "The best to start a long day drinking on the beach," he said --- In the first hour of conversation with him, I lost count of how many times he used the expression "satisfactory result," referring to the tragic death of a Spanish writer there in the city, two days before; a writer I had never heard of in my life: Antonina Bergamín --- "It really makes you think, doesn't it?" A hundred thoughts running through my head, none, however, worth considering before I make sure that not everything is cleansing here at this event. The Morell case the day before yesterday (to paraphrase Rubem Fonseca), for example, made me cringe completely. The bosses in this game hate it when their "little people" talk out of turn, even when they're pushed against the wall; you know, all that worry about "covering" a whole reptilian scheme of action, in several places at the same time, and suddenly...'' ---Was he sexually attracted to me, to make me so curious and interested in such a short conversation? Had he read my thoughts or had access to a clandestine wiretap network spread throughout the city's hotel chain (I talk so loudly when I'm alone)? ; that subject gave his words a certain air of masturbation to come. In any case, I liked the idea of imagining him imagining making love to me. Talking to K had thrown me completely out of my element, and I felt once again like I was existing in a world as vague as a dream, yet sought after, closely watched by Scientological smiles and secret police parapsychology, disinclined to ask questions, but not exactly determined not to answer them when they made me feel important: "You know how it is in the books, Yerma" (K said), always the invisible ENEMY, evil, silent, and capable of all dangerous tricks. And when doubts narrow to a critical, hyper-concentrated point, we must focus on this: Antonino's biopsy was likely tampered with in that small hospital. She was poisoned, there's no doubt about it. Antonina Bergamín, a writer from Ávila who hadn't published a book in ten years, was actually FBS (former KGB) agent Magdalena Arzarello. She came here to put herself directly in the CIA's line of fire, as the coup d'état in Venezuela and Bolivia was imminent. She quickly found herself faced with the worst-case scenario. There wasn't even time to abort the operation, due to a deranged, alcoholic ex-police officer unforeseen by even the expert planners on either side. Now, besides not being aborted, the operation is following an uncontrollable course, because the person who took possession of the "critical material" is cloistered in a hotel room (the damned third floors of hotels) tactically inaccessible, reading and rereading it day and night, without the slightest idea of what it is: an exhaustive dossier coded in the form of a literary work, carefully manufactured over ten years within the scope of the PORTAL PINEAL operation, with access to all types of confidential sources and State secrets from at least eighteen different nations" ---
--- what a ghost island this is, my God (I thought) --- but I behaved like a block of ice while K spoke; when for a moment his gaze fell on my breasts, I held my breath, began to massage my stiff thighs frantically --- I imagined Agent Antonina, or Magdalena, comatose in that precarious hospital bed, and I realized that my reaction was damaging K's nerves, who seemed cornered in that moment of enticement, forced to maintain the minimum of appearances to survive improvised in an adverse hell of calculation and monitoring --- "And what does this have to do with you?" I asked --- As soon as I asked, Fábregas and Juan (two writers invited to the event) appeared in the pool, wearing light, flowery clothes --- I stood still in the water, feeling naked, vulnerable and lonely, an imbecile framed by the reflections of the sun on the water --- a fixed target with no desire to move --- "I think that obscurely I'm always writing a novel, working on something, even when I'm walking along the coast," Juan said, greeting us kindly --- "In my case," said Fábregas, "by being provincial, the tropical environment here is no less overwhelming for my inspiration. I'm almost becoming a leap poet, so little do I create'' ---
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ResponderExcluir--- "Well, I'm still hopelessly limited to worrying about the little hard-earned money I have in my pocket," K said, laughing nervously at the two he hadn't seen since the night of the event with Morell. --- "This is Yerma," K introduced me, "a political enthusiast, at least for the last half hour." --- "So, she probably has a story in her head too, being worked out while we chatter. Maybe it's the story everyone's looking for..." Juan said. --- "Last night I drank all night," I said, "reading, reading, reading; no power of synthesis, not a draft, nothing." --- "I know this kind of Yerma's loneliness well, the loneliness of the restrained writer; K's loneliness, on the other hand, I can only vaguely imagine, and everything I imagine is quite distressing," Fábregas added. --- A blonde girl in a bikini walked past K, smiling a beautiful, inviting, and radiant smile; he stared at her ass as she walked away. Fábegras and Juan smiled at each other with mischief and complicity --- I saw two other things on their faces as they smiled rather strangely: a quick flash of anger and impatience, and an expression of immediate concern ---
--- I saw two other things on their faces as they smiled a little oddly: a quick flash of anger and impatience, and an expression of immediate concern --- at that small nuance, the best I could manage was a neurotic, housewife-in-a-coffee-commercial frown --- to my astonishment, K suddenly turned to them both and flashed a formidable movie-villain smile, and with an energetic shake of his head, he declared: "Lonely, it is true, but a lonely one whose sources of intelligence are extremely comforting, not to say supernatural; my "alien" contacts around the world move like a great extraterrestrial shadow over the earth and speak to me in moments of greatest desolation and despair, like now, for example, in the secure knowledge that I will use any informant to further the multipolar world order and "de-Westernized" freedom. --- then K broke off and headed for the hotel bar, where a huge plasma TV was broadcasting a women's soccer match between Spain and Brazil in the Olympics --- in silence, Fábregas and Juan seemed to communicate better with each other than speaking ---
ResponderExcluir--- Anyway, I'm susceptible, I showed fear alone with those two there, watching me out of the corner of my eye; I had no friends there, I didn't really know anyone, not even myself --- just a day ago, I'd discovered the charms of hanging out on the city streets, among the lively tourists from all over the world, popping in and out of every nightclub on the bar street; I'd talked and danced with several people of different nationalities, watched the sun rise as I walked drunk back to the hotel --- "What do you guys write? Where are you from?" I suddenly ventured, emerging from the water and addressing the pair who handed me a towel --- "I'm from Madrid and Fábregas is from Córdoba. Can't you tell he's from Córdoba? All nerves and bones, a brain that's a labyrinth of lime in a courtyard of secret life. Rough and classic, fed only on Africa until recently, isn't that right, Fábregas? A typical ghost among merchants of weapons of death; close friends with the worst scum of that continent dominated by Chinese and now Russians. In this case, we write to 'solve our internal problems'......................
ResponderExcluir..........................For example, I spent a long time working for center-left newspapers in several South American countries, and I know firsthand the raw material of each national reality there. I saw firsthand the major problems, the major historical processes, and the major political and social polarizations; I covered general strikes, clashes with the police, radical insubordinations by wings of the armies; I scrutinized the minefield of every political and economic gap, state-owned oil reserves and the pirated trade of barrels; I raised issues in vast and dangerous peripheries: hospital networks, police stations, child trafficking, drug trafficking. Always digging, talking, pushing the envelope; I interviewed, read banned documents, sometimes stole them, sold them to other nations. Then, I realized that what I wrote literary-wise had to have a greater purpose. And for that, I needed full coverage, American-style," Juan concluded, in a tone of bison-like corporate pride, threatening to laugh or pull up a ball of phlegm from his chest to spit on the floor ---
ResponderExcluir--- I was reflecting afterwards that I had an indescribable ability to actualize the contents of my mind and make them immediate reality, or... ability to bump into the worst junk in the middle of nowhere)
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