Jaume Cabré - Winter Journey

He concentrated on making an effort. For the moment, he had to set aside that new feeling (new feeling? Marta had wondered in Les gavines del port by Bartomeu Cardus, Reus, 1881, when she found the criminal hole in the net she was repairing) because the conversation was about something else and between his discovery and her body there was an unbridgeable thirty-year gap. It helped him a great deal to think of the words of T.S.Taylor, who affirmed that thirty years is the exact span of ridicule. It helped him to think of their two bodies nude and to imagine her laughing at his old age. And he came out with:

"I read Pauvre Dido and every now and again 1 find in it a thought that can be of use to humanity."

"And you write it on a card."

"And I write it on a card, or you do. For example…" He opened the book and flipped past many pages until he came to the one he wanted: "I'm translating," he warned, and cleared his throat, "'I love you so that 1 want to marry you, oh, queen,' said the prince, `and if you do not wish it, 1 will cleave your teeth with my fist and your liver with my knife. And if anything is left of you, oh, beloved, I will wage war on you unto death.' Because you know, oh, human, that between love and hate there is the thinnest of barriers, as delicate as skin. And so Dido, who already knew this, lighted the pyre and plunged the knife into her stomach."

A few seconds of silence. Regretful, Sr. Adria: "1 didn't know how to translate it into alexandrines…" And more energetically: "The unknown wisdom of this fragment that everyone knows, because it's based on the Aeneid, doesn't lie in bringing to life poor Dido, desperate because Aeneas has left her, but in the hidden `who already knew this'. Dido, the new Ariadne, is eternally deceived, because the fate of a good-hearted woman is to allow herself to be taken in by masculine tricks. Do you understand?"

"No."

And they were quiet for a space of five pages, the girl with her mouth open. Until she shook her head skeptically.

"1 can't believe it."

"You can't believe what?"

"That you spend your fortune looking for phrases like `which she already knew' Sometimes it's more educational and fun to go to the movies."

"With your boyfriend."

"It's more useful to watch TV than to look for a `which she already knew' in a book five-hundred pages long."

They were silent again. How could it be that he hadn't noticed what a pretty woman Victoria was until then? Now, exasperated as she was, she reminded him again of sad Andromache. More silence. Eetion's daughter took a breath and he dreamed that now he would declare his love for her.

"And also," Victoria said, almost as a rebuke, "you say the books you have are mediocre."

"Most of them. And unknown. And it's possible that no one has ever taken a careful look at them in search of great truths. Somebody has to do it."

Hector's beautiful wife stood up and smoothed her librarian's smock with a very feminine gesture and his heart leapt for the first time. She, with her hands on her hips, a little defiantly:

"What, exactly, is unknown wisdom?"

"Perhaps it's something you can't yet understand."

Andromache didn't back down; she looked at Pyrros with queenly pride and said, imprudently:

"Looking for unknown wisdom isn't everything."

The sick man was taken aback. Did she dare to contradict him? Sure of herself, she continued:

"You read these books because you're sad that no one's ever going to read them. Forgetting and forgotten people make you sad."

He said nothing. Andromache had pulled his great secret from him as easily as Belisario had torn the heart from his enemy in Oro en rama by Perez]aramillo (Buenos Aires, 1931).

"You want to bring them back to life by reading."

And without waiting for him to react, she said she was going to make tea and left the room. Instinctively, Sr. Adria patted his chest to see if he still had his heart. Resignedly, he observed that when Andromache left, Troy went, inevitably, dark.

In the kitchen, she let the water heat up little by little as she thought about snippets of the conversation and the many thoughts that stayed with her more every day and furrowed, in a still invisible way, the God-given softness and texture of her young skin, which Toni had so far failed to notice. Some far-off words reached her, like the echo of Roland's distant horn:

"And style, do you hear?"

It was Sr. Adria calling her, from the other side of the mountains, his voice hoarse because of his sore throat. She went to the room, a little rattled. For the first time, she noticed almost physically that, down the hall, through FRENCH THEATER, 18th cent., she was getting nearer to his room because he was pulling on the ethereal thread that united them, like Theseus on his way back to Ariadne's haven after having slain the minotaur.

"Why style?" And in the sick man's bedroom the light went on again.

"I said it's a matter of style." He lifted his arm. "If a work is well written, the person who created is there in the words."

She didn't get the whole thing, but she was impressed by the image. As if he could read her mind, Sr. Adria continued.

"It's not an image; it's reality. The soul is part of style. A wellwritten book cannot be forgotten. I love you."

"What did you say?"

"That an expression as banal as `1 love you' can form part of a soul if it's well placed within a sentence with purpose and style. See? I love you."

"Yes, but if you say it out of context…"

"Of course, if we take it out of context… Here, you say it."

"1 love you."

And Sr. Adria melted. Happiness paralyzed his blood, and a tremendous shock shook his memory to its very foundation. Sorrowful Andromache had declared her love for him. Then the whistle of the boiling water woke them up. She stood up and he made a gesture like that of Aeneas, meaning yes, she should put out the light, but somewhere else that was not in his heart.

Dido left the room a little disconcerted. He'd just said that he loved her, right?

Sr. Adria, in bed, trying to decipher the sounds made by the goddess in the kitchen, regretted his cowardice, because he was incapable of grabbing her by the arm, pulling her into bed, undressing her and adoring her as Ignatius did to Laura in Laura and Ignatius by Lottar Martin Grass (Munster, 1888).

"It's not that I'm a coward. It's that she has a boyfriend."

He said it out loud, to see how it sounded, but he couldn't believe it.

"What?"

Victoria, silently, was coming into the room with the tray and the teapot of steaming beverage. And they weren't even in the Trojan winter but in high summer in Sr. Adria's bedroom.

"Nothing. I haven't been sick in ten years."

Without realizing what she was doing, she put her hand to his forehead.

"You're burning up, Sr. Adria."

"Do you know how to apply cool cloths to the forehead?"

That afternoon, Andromache didn't fill out cards or dust. She was the consolation of the afflicted, the sinner's refuge, paradise, the queen of the angels, the ivory tower, Saint Victoria, melancholy Ariadne, virgin of virgins, sad Andromache. She finally managed to get the new lover to drift off. As in a mystic revelation, as if in a celebration of the mysteries, as she cooled Sr. Adria's burning forehead, Victoria like a new Nike, like a superior version of the worthy apprentice of Der Zauberlehrling, she felt herself to be gradually and firmly anointed, invested, consecrated to a new, profound and great power (cf. Ahnlund's Skog). Even her gaze changed, beautiful priestess invested with a new power.

"`Gonzaga said to Isabel,'" said Victoria in a deep voice, officiating for the first time, "`I take the fever from you and you offer up your suffering' The novice looked at him sweetly and loved him even more.'"