Jorge Volpi - In Search of Klingsor

Despite having been raised with the proper manners of a New Jersey society boy, Bacon had made little contact with girls of his own age. The girls he always felt attracted to were, inevitably, the ones who ignored him: carefully coiffed, religious and austere, unattainably beautiful. At first, Bacon tried to act as though it didn’t bother him. To fend off potential rejection, he would tell himself, a priori, that they were all so stupid they probably thought a square root was some kind of orchid bulb. After many fruitless efforts at maintaining a conversation that lasted longer than five minutes, Bacon gave up on them, frustrated and depressed. He felt that he would never find someone who could understand, much less love him. This was the kind of thinking that led him, for the first time, to one of the non sanctos establishments that one of his loudmouth classmates had suggested he try. There he would never have to make small talk or feign interest in the weather, parties, or fancy designer dresses. According to his friend, at these places everything was reduced to a silent, discreet procedure, a release of pleasure that implied absolutely no obligations of any sort. The first time he tried it, Bacon was terrified: He tried to concentrate on mathematical formulas in an effort to hide his discomfort and to allow his body to respond the way he wanted it to. He selected a thin, timid girl—it made him feel better to think that she was even more nervous than he—who turned into an emotionless machine when she got into bed. She took her clothing off all at once, displaying a microscopic pair of nipples that seemed to protrude directly out of her chest, and which she allowed Bacon to lick briefly before she took over. When it was over, he felt no remorse, and no emptiness, either. In fact, he had rather enjoyed it. He had really enjoyed it. In fact, it had been even better than his fast-talking classmate had said it would be. This was the perfect thing for chasing away the demons of lust, for it allowed him to concentrate harder on more important things, like quantum physics. Whenever this bodily urge arose, all he had to do was lay out a few dollars. And like a true scientist—they all have a bit of the entomologist in them—he certainly appreciated the diversity. He was constantly surprised at the unbelievable variety he found from woman to woman. The smallest details became an inexhaustible source of arousal for him: a new beauty mark, a curve he had never seen before, a slightly misshapen belly button. They all filled him with a pleasure that, until now, he had only ever felt before when solving algebra problems. He explored those specimens with the eagle eye of the collector, and somehow this always prevented him from ever coming close to anything like tenderness.

For some reason, Vivien was not like the other girls. It had been several months since Bacon had first laid eyes on her brave, sad face. Later he would try to remember the exact date of their first encounter, to identify the precise starting point of their relationship, but for some reason he never managed to mentally retrieve the information. He couldn’t even remember if it had been summer or fall, or if it had been before or after his twentieth birthday. All he could remember was the distant sound of his voice when he finally spoke to that young woman who seemed little more than a girl. That day, instead of grabbing the New York Times from the pile and leaving the coins on top of some women’s fashion magazine, as he usually did, Bacon looked straight at Vivien and asked her for the paper himself. As she handed it to him, Bacon noted a stifled expression of pain in her eyes. The exchange may have lasted only a few seconds, but it was enough time for her somber, delicate face, like a pin stuck into a piece of cloth, to pierce his imagination and remain imbedded in his mind. This woman possessed a certain kind of beauty that he had never appreciated until just then. From that day onward, he would go to the newsstand every Sunday hoping to find her there and, perhaps, learn a bit more about her.

The way the young woman looked at him made him feel both uncomfortable and intrigued. One day he tried striking up a conversation with her, commenting on some aspect of current events—the war was always a good pretext—but she didn’t take the bait. All she did was smile wanly, without even opening her lips, and then returned to whatever she had been thinking about.

“Cat got your tongue?” asked Bacon in a playful tone that he immediately regretted. “How old are you, anyway?”

“Seventeen,” she responded. Her voice was low and deep.

Bacon paid for the paper and slowly walked away, as if he was waiting for her to call out to him at the last minute. She, on the other hand, didn’t even seem to have noticed the anonymous face that had just asked her age. The next day, Bacon returned. His legs trembling, he somehow managed to speak in a neutral, firm tone of voice.

“Would you like to go to the movies with me?” he asked her.

For the first time, she looked up at Bacon, displaying a set of teeth that made the newsprint in front of her look yellow and old. She watched him with imploring eyes. Was this some kind of joke?

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because I can’t.”

“Are you afraid?”

“No.”

This scene would be repeated over and over again during the months that followed. Bacon would stop by, pay for his New York Times , and tell her about the various movies playing at the nearby theaters, in the hopes of finally eliciting a yes from her. But she always just shook her head violently from side to side, as if trying to scare away a bothersome fly. Bacon refused to be discouraged, however; from his perspective, the situation was slowly evolving into a weekly routine. He was genuinely surprised, then, when one morning, she finally granted his request. At the end of the day, he met her in front of the box office of one of the local movie theaters, a highly undesirable place, it was said. The movie was (how could he forget?) Gone With the Wind , which had just recently opened, and was the first film Bacon had ever seen in color. Later on he would remember little of the plot, having been far more interested in sneaking covert glimpses of his companion’s profile, silvery blue in the light reflecting off the movie screen. He did, however, manage to memorize both the name and the gestures of the film’s starring actress, Vivien Leigh. And that was the name with which he chose to baptize his new lady friend. Later on, she told him her real name, but he stated quite plainly that he preferred calling her Vivien. By doing this, he had invented a new creature, blessed with the qualities and characteristics that he saw fit to imbue her with.

The following Sunday they repeated the scene from the previous week, even seeing Gone With the Wind again, as if testing the full range of laws of inertia. Again, they spoke very little. It was as if they had signed a tacit agreement to spend time together, nothing else. Their first kiss took place on the way to the movies. Just like almost everything Bacon ever did, this kiss was inspired by a curiosity that was more scientific than romantic. After a few weeks, they added a twist to their incipient tradition: the small cottage in the country that was the one thing Bacons father had left him when he died. Even there, they never spoke more than they absolutely had to. But he would have liked to know, for example, if she felt the same pleasure he did, or if she was subjecting herself to this intimate physical activity just to make him happy. He really had no idea of the emotions that they felt for one another; to speak frankly and openly about their relationship, prohibited and precarious as it was, would have been an unnecessary provocation. And as the days stretched on, he slowly accepted that his relationship with Vivien could exist only by observing this vow of silence.