I’ve arranged the volumes of fiction by their original language, then in more or less chronological order. Works of philosophy and non-fiction have their own bookcases and rooms. A library spreads out like an infection or a monster unfurling ever more numerous, longer tentacles. Then there are a series of special shelves in favored spots that at some point I began to call altars, devoted to a particular author or subject matter, with their corresponding ornaments and illustrative photos. These tributes have changed over the years. Now, for instance, there is an altar to Marguerite Duras, with the various editions of her books, besides which I decided to place those of Robert Antelme and Yann Andréa (who else?), so that she’s not altogether on her lonesome, as well as a bottle of Bordeaux that must be vinegar by now, deluxe editions of her movies Hiroshima Mon Amour and India Song, a bookmark bearing a picture of her seated, Emmanuelle-style, on a rocking chair, and a collection of postcards, with their black cardboard case and red ribbon, published by Les Éditions de Minuit and featuring the photographs that Hélène Bamberger took of her and her things, and of Yann, and of the sea, in the outskirts of Trouville in the early eighties, her face so lined with wrinkles, her terrifying thirst for peace of mind, her thirst, period. This is but one small example. The books by Mexicans are joined on the shelves by bottles of tequila, of the half-sized sort usually picked up at the airport right before boarding the flight home, and small potted cacti that call to mind a scorpion-filled desert, while the most tropical part of the library has been set aside for those by Rudyard Kipling, right where the leaves of the pothos cascade from on high like a green waterfall. It’s impossible to take out one of his books without first having to brush the branches to one side like the native guides of explorers. Sometimes, as can be seen, the combinations of books and objects reflect the most hackneyed of clichés (scenes of milonga and the mate with its corresponding bombilla straw next to the Argentine stories, miniature ships and antique compasses flanking Stevenson and Conrad, a leather-bound hip flask next to those of Malcolm Lowry), but sometimes they can be put down to more secret, intimate associations of ideas that would leave any casual observer utterly baffled. Things of mine, objects that only I know belong there and there alone. That’s where I should focus my attention. If there is some key that might help shed a little light on things, it is no doubt to be found there, mixed up in amongst the secret threads that bind the furthest recesses of my mind to that section of the library.
And then there are the shelves housing movies and music, which also endeavor, more or less intentionally, to tell a life story. Almost every movie I ever saw in the art-house theaters on Sundays back in an age that now looks golden from my current decrepit state is there. Whether or not I actually liked those movies at the time, whether or not I ever even understood them, is neither here nor there; pick up a program from Cinestudio Griffith or El Regio from the early eighties, scan the titles, and you’ll discover that every movie, every single one, is on my shelves, see for yourself. And the same can be said for the singers who left their mark on moments of my life, the concerts that truly set my pulse racing, the songs that for a time became private anthems, for they seemed to speak about me or to understand me in a way that was beyond the humans that surrounded me. It’s all there, albeit jumbled in amongst other records I’ve barely listened to, though I thought I would when I bought them, perhaps because I harbored the secret intention of beginning, one day, to be someone else.
Surveying my shelves now, it seems to me that they bear witness to the story of a fraud and that they might at most bear witness to the depths of a being who doesn’t actually exist. I think that those crammed shelves speak less to who I am than to who I wanted to be. It strikes me that every collector, be they a consummate bibliophile or a teenager looking to assemble the complete output of their favorite band, has in mind, albeit in an ill-defined, generic, or prototypical sense, the idea of a visit that will one day be paid by an individual they have not yet met, someone to whom they will reveal that treasure trove of items gathered together over the years, not without a great deal of hardship and penny-pinching, (or, better still, who will see it for themselves, without the need to have it pointed out to them, and who will spring up from the couch in one single bound to take a closer look), and who will know how to appreciate it and will be able to spot there and then, thanks to all that stuff, the sense of a whole life, the identity of a man. Every library, no matter how personal, is arranged as if on display. It seeks out the other, it craves admiration, the simple recognition of a like-minded soul or a polar opposite. This is not altogether uncalculating, for it is, when all is said and done, a language. And as such, it may be heartfelt or duplicitous. One would first of all have to know, in each case, who is being addressed, who, for each of us, that blurry silhouette might be, that mysterious caller, always as unexpected as death itself, who will turn up one day and take final stock of our things, and will know who we are by tallying up what is here and what is missing, volumes and gaps, treasures and absences. For if not, then how come it’s impossible to get a wink of sleep if but a single volume is not where it should be and, in an enormous living room, crammed full of belongings, furniture, and volumes, the first thing that leaps out is the gap left behind by the book that isn’t there, the one, say, that was lent out and has yet to be returned? And there’s no need for a physical space to actually exist, since books have a way of huddling up next to one another, and doubling up, and lying sideways, filling the space up to the next shelf; the simple knowledge that that missing spine, with its color, its exact words, ought to be standing between another two books is enough to ensure your gaze is always drawn to that spot. The fraud I spoke of earlier lies in the fact that my library might not, as I have always thought, be the map of my soul. Yet it remains to be seen who I was hoping to fool, whether more or less mindful of this fact, over the course of so many years. Sometimes, when I give the matter some thought, I picture a woman, well into the early hours of morning, a glass in her hand, browsing my shelves. She wears her hair tied up and removes her raincoat to reveal a black dress that leaves her bare shoulders on display. She takes out a book now and then, leafs through it, then puts it back where she found it. She has her back to me and pays me no heed directly, though I wander over to her every now and then and softly kiss her back or the nape of her neck. I make the occasional remark on what she is looking at, but she doesn’t listen, she has no interest in anything I might now have to tell her. She searches for me among the spines of the books she lightly brushes with her fingers. She searches for me there and there alone. Which might explain why, without fully realizing it, I have spent my whole life working up to this future moment or this delirium of which I occasionally glimpse a faint image, with piano music and the rain beating down on the other side of the window. Other times, however, I think that the one who’s been duped is none other than myself, a more innocent, trusting side of me that revels in it all and takes comfort in the belief that he has managed to make something of his life, that he has built something.