I don't know what reasons he had for disappearing. One day he got angry at my friend because he found out that she was a girlfriend, or maybe he slept with my other friend and she said to him you dope, can't you see that Guillem's friend is a girlfriend? or something, conversations in bed do oscillate between the cryptic and the transparent. I don't know, not that it matters much. All I know is that he left and for a long time I didn't see him. It certainly wasn't my intent. I try to hold on to my friends. I try to be pleasant and sociable, I try not to rush the passage from comedy to tragedy. Life does a fine job on its own. Anyway, one day Arturo disappeared. The years went by and I didn't see him again. Until one day my friend said: guess who called me tonight. I wish I'd said: Arturo Belano. It would have been funny if I'd guessed it right away, but I said other names and then I gave up. Still, when she said Arturo I was happy. How many years had it been since we'd seen each other? Many years, so many that it was better not to count, not to remember, although I remembered them all, each and every one. So Arturo showed up at my friend's place one day, and she called me and I went over to see him. I hurried, I was running. I don't know why I started to run, but I did. It was almost eleven at night and it was cold and when I got there I saw a guy who was in his forties now, like me, and as I walked toward him I felt like the Nude Descending a Staircase, although I wasn't descending any staircase, not that I recall.
After that we met several times. One day he came to my studio. I was sitting there staring at a tiny canvas set beside a canvas that was at least ten feet by seven. Arturo looked at the small painting and the big painting and asked me what they were. What do you think they are? I said. Ossuaries, he said. In fact, they were ossuaries. By that point, I hardly ever painted and I never showed my work. Those who had been lieutenants with me were captains now, or colonels, and one, my dear Miguelito, had even reached the rank of general or field marshal. Others had died of AIDS or drugs or cirrhosis or had simply been given up for lost. I was still a ditch digger. I know that this lends itself to all kinds of interpretations, most of them grim. But my situation wasn't grim at all. I felt reasonably happy, I kept busy, I watched things, I watched myself watch things, I read, I lived a peaceful life. I didn't produce much. That may be important. Arturo, on the other hand, produced a lot. Once I ran into him as I was coming out of the laundry. He was on his way to my house. What are you doing? he said. As you can see, I answered, I'm leaving with clean clothes. Don't you have a washing machine at home? he said. It broke five years ago, I said. That afternoon Arturo went out into the inner courtyard and spent some time looking at my washing machine. I made myself tea (by then I hardly ever drank) and watched him as he examined the washing machine. For a brief moment I thought he was going to fix it. It wouldn't have seemed so remarkable, but it would have made me happy. But in the end, my washing machine was as dead as ever. I told him again about an accident I'd had. I think I told him about it because I saw him eyeing my scars. The accident happened in Mallorca. A car accident. I almost lost both of my arms and my jaw. There were only a few scratches on the rest of my body. Strange accident, wouldn't you say? Very strange, said Arturo. He told me that he'd been in the hospital too, six times in two years. In what country? I asked him. Here, he said, at Valle Hebrón and before that at Josep Trueta in Gerona. So why didn't you let us know? we would've come to see you. Well, it doesn't matter. Once he asked me whether I was depressed. No, I said, sometimes I feel like the Nude Descending a Staircase, which can actually be nice when you're with friends and not so nice if you're walking along the Paseo de Gracia, for example, but mostly I feel good.
One day, not long before he disappeared for the last time, he came to my house and said: someone's going to write a bad review of my book. I made him some chamomile tea and didn't say anything, which is the right thing to do, I think, when there's a story to be told, sad or happy. But he was quiet too, and for a while we just sat there, he staring at his tea or the little slice of lemon floating in his tea as I smoked a Ducados. I think I'm one of the few left who still smoke Ducados, or one of the few of my generation, I mean. Even Arturo smokes blond tobacco now. After a while, just to say something, I said: are you going to spend the night in Barcelona? and he shook his head. When he spent the night in Barcelona he stayed at my friend's house (in separate rooms, although it cheapens everything to spell these things out), not with me. Still, we would have dinner together, and sometimes the three of us would go for a drive in my friend's car. Anyway, I asked him whether he was going to spend the night and he said he couldn't, he had to get back to the town where he lived, a town on the coast a little more than an hour away by train. And then the two of us were quiet again, and I started to think about what he'd said about a bad review, and no matter how much I thought about it I had no idea what he meant, so I stopped thinking about it. Instead I waited, which is what the Nude Descending a Staircase does, contrary to one's expectation and which is exactly why it has always provoked such a peculiar critical response.
For a while all I heard was the noise Arturo made as he drank his tea, muffled sounds from the street, the elevator going up and down a few times. And suddenly, when I wasn't thinking or hearing anything anymore, I heard him repeat that a critic was going to trounce him. It doesn't really matter, I said. It's a hazard of the trade. It does matter, he said. It's never mattered to you before, I said. Now it does matter to me, he said, I must be getting bourgeois. Then he explained that there were similarities between his last book and his new book that fell into the realm of games that were impossible to decipher. I had read his last book and liked it, and I didn't have any idea what his new book was about, so I didn't have anything to say. All I could ask was: what kind of similarities? Games, Guillem, he said. Games. The fucking Nude Descending a Staircase, your fucking fake Picabias, games. So what's the problem? I said. The problem, he said, is that the critic, a guy named Iñaki Echevarne, is a shark. Is he a bad critic? I said. No, he's a good critic, he said, or at least he isn't a bad critic, but he's a fucking shark. And how do you know that he's going to review your new book when it isn't even in bookstores yet? Because the other day, he said, while I was at the publishing house, he called the head of publicity and asked for my last novel. So? I said. So I was sitting there, across from the head of publicity, and she said hello, Iñaki, what a coincidence, Arturo Belano is right here across from me, and that bastard Echevarne didn't say anything. What was he supposed to say? Hello, at least, said Arturo. And since he didn't say anything, you've decided that he's going to tear you apart? I said. Besides, what if he does tear you apart? It doesn't matter! Look, said Arturo, Echevarne fought recently with Aurelio Baca, the Cato of Spanish letters, do you know him? I haven't read him but I know who he is, I said. It was all because of a review Echevarne had written of a book by one of Baca's friends. I don't know whether the criticism was justified or not. I haven't read the book. All I know for sure is that this novelist had Baca to defend him. And Baca's attack on the critic was the kind of thing that brings a person to tears. But I don't have any self-righteous strongman to defend me, absolutely no one, so Echevarne can do whatever he wants to me. Not even Aurelio Baca could defend me, because I make fun of him in my book, not the one that's about to come out but the last one, although I doubt he's ever read me. You make fun of Baca? I made fun of him a little, said Arturo, although I doubt he or anyone else would ever notice. That rules out Baca as a champion, I admitted, thinking that I too had overlooked the passage that was worrying my friend. That's right, said Arturo. Well, let Echevarne lay into you, I said. Who cares? None of this matters. Of all people you should know that. We're all going to die, think about the hereafter. But Echevarne must feel like taking it out on someone, said Arturo. Is he really that bad? I said. No, no, he's very good, said Arturo. Well then? It has nothing to do with that, it's about exercising the muscles, said Arturo. The muscles of the brain? I said. Some kind of muscles, and I'm going to be the punching bag Echevarne trains on for his second or eighth round with Baca, said Arturo. I see, this is an old fight, I said. So what do you have to do with all of it? Nothing, I'm just going to be the punching bag, said Arturo. For a while we sat there without saying anything, thinking, as the elevator went up and down and the noise it made was like the sound of all the years we hadn't seen each other. I'm going to challenge him to a duel, said Arturo at last. Do you want to be my second? That's what he said. I felt as if someone had given me a shot in the arm. First the pinprick, then the liquid going not into my veins but my muscles, an icy liquid that made me shiver. The proposition seemed crazy and unwarranted. You don't challenge a man for something he hasn't done yet, I thought. But then I thought that life (or the specter of life) is constantly challenging us for acts we've never committed, and sometimes for acts we never even thought of committing. My answer was yes and immediately afterward I thought that maybe in the hereafter Nude Descending a Staircase or The Large Glass really does exist or will exist. And then I thought: what if the review is good? What if Echevarne likes Arturo's novel? Wouldn't it be unfair then, gratuitous, to challenge him to a duel?