Impressed, Onia asked: “And... have you ever felt curious to try it yourself?”
“No! If you value yourself in a certain way, it’s impossible to want to change your life for another, no matter how horrible it might be,” the clerk said sternly.
“How peculiar. I’ve never valued anything in that way... Of course, I can’t imagine what it must be like, so I guess I don’t really care one way or the other,” Onia said.
The clerk folded the sweater, sighed, and said: “I can’t sleep at night. What if someone tries the sweater on by mistake? What if the store owner finds out what I’m doing? That’s why as soon as I finish paying for the piece of land, I won’t let anyone else try it on anymore.”
“Don’t you have a telephone number or some other way to contact the woman who gave the sweater these strange properties?”
“Angels don’t have telephone numbers. Have you never seen one of those movies with angels in them that air at Christmastime? Like the one where James Stewart is going to commit suicide...?”
“I don’t like fiction stories. Anyway, I think what your customers do is closer to the devil than the angels.”
“You think these millionaires have sold their souls to the devil? I don’t see it that way... they only change the way they live: less time but in a variety of lives. Choice is no longer a problem for them. Haven’t you ever thought: I have to decide whether to do this or that, but if I had more than one life I could do both and I would never have to regret anything? Haven’t you ever regretted anything?”
Although she’d never felt anything like regret, Onia remembered that she had once prepared to embark on another life. She could have easily figured out that the clerk had a similar background and age as the children her husband had wanted to adopt. For however small an imagination, it was clear that the boy’s terrace could have been the one they never bought. But Onia didn’t speculate about any of this, and she didn’t ask if the house was in Sitges or if the terrace had art nouveau details. It didn’t even occur to her.
So she asked: “And... your son... you don’t think he would be interested in putting his head into the sweater?”
“He doesn’t know anything about it,” the woman said defensively. She lit a cigarette and shrunk into herself. “Of course he would like to... He’s like you. And like all the customers who are always right: incapable of glimpsing things his eyes don’t see. That’s precisely why it’s so important to save the view of the sea and the pine forest. Having a building blocking the views wouldn’t be such a bad thing for me... I can imagine marvelous things from nothing more than a slice of wall. From a crack in the ceiling or a spot of humidity I can imagine roads, caves, and lakes... But not him, no. For him, a wall is a wall. Nothing else can be borne from his walls. That’s why he can’t live walled in, do you understand?”
Onia listened in silence. She wasn’t disturbed by not seeing flowers where there weren’t any, she didn’t consider this tragic.
As she pressed the doorbell for Cristina to let her in, she suddenly thought: Black market money! How is she going to be able to buy the land with all that black market money? But then she realized that the girl was very clever and would find a solution. Onia could now forget about this bizarre episode.
The clerk saw her enter her house. She regretted having explained everything. Even though she was convinced the old woman wouldn’t say a word. She herself confessed that she was as silent as a grave.
Part III
Days of Wine (White Lines) and Roses
Epiphany
by Eric Taylor-Aragón
Barceloneta
There’s something that’s been troubling me, a gaze that won’t go away, and when I close my eyes I see this gaze, and sometimes I think I’ll only be able to escape it by moving to a different country or continent or solar system, to some parallel universe where what happened didn’t happen. I’m still not sure what I should have done or whether I did the right thing — but I did it and now it’s done. And now that it’s done, I’m actually glad it’s done. Am I making sense?
I’ll make this quick. It was right after I broke up with La Princesa, a crazy Spanish girl. I was busted up, in a bad way, moping about, drinking and feeling like life was worthless.
We all know that the end of love is like wartime. It’s like being bombarded. People who can’t take it throw themselves off bridges, shoot themselves in the mouth. You look for a bunker, you look for shelter, refuge, solace, distraction. And then, just when you think it’s safe to come out, you see or hear something — it might be something as innocuous as a bird — or a cell phone ringtone, or a TV show, or a piece of music, and the memories come flooding back and suddenly you hear the whistle blast of bombs, the crack of sniper rifles, the drone of drones. Anyway, there was a TV in the corner of this bar, and when I glanced up at it I saw an ad for dish soap. Our dish soap. The dish soap we used to use when we lived together. Nina, mi Princesa, I thought... My breath got jagged, I felt like I’d been punched in the solar plexus. I held onto the bar to keep from falling down.
I was sitting on an old rickety stool in l’Electricitat, an old-school bodega in Barceloneta, drinking vermouth after vermouth, spending the last of my meager savings. This is a fisherman’s bar, mostly locals. The people leave you alone. That’s why I like it. Every now and then I looked in the hazy mirror behind the bar. I looked bad. Dark circles under the eyes. Stubble. Disheveled hair. A wild, hunted look. I think I had my little notebook out and maybe every now and then I’d scribble something down, something foolish, something I’d come across in a couple of years and be terribly embarrassed by... I was probably writing to La Princesa about how much I loved her and how I’d change if she took me back. I was probably writing to myself, telling myself to get a grip, to ride it out, to try and be normal and content and full of loving kindness (which is the hardest thing of all).
Looking back, I think the final straw was when I threw a typewriter through the café window in Borne. I mean, who the hell walks around with a typewriter these days? So then I spent the night in jail and I called her afterward and she said, “You did what with the typewriter?” and I told her again, “I threw it out the window,” and then she started to laugh and replied in English, “You’re joking!” and I said, “Who’s Joe King?” This is one of our little jokes, but suddenly she wasn’t laughing anymore. She said, “I think we need to take a little break...” Her name was Nina and I loved her and she’d put up with a lot, even supported me financially for a time, and now she wasn’t up for it anymore. I apologized, I groveled and told her I would reform and be a better human being, and she said, “That’s what you said last time, and the time before that.” Nina is beautiful, with a remarkable bosom and a little birthmark in the shape of an upside-down teardrop just below her right eye, as if she’s crying in reverse. Anyway, that night I was thinking about all this and was feeling depressed in l’Electricitat and being devastated by dish soap ads. That was when I met Luca.