Enrique Vila-Matas: The Illogic of Kassel

“Without the McGuffins,” she said, “there’s not much we can do, perhaps sing hey, ho, the wind and the rain. But dinner’s over.”

It seemed as if she’d controlled the exact length of time for our dinner. In any case, it was much better that it should all end there because, at home before going out, I’d taken a happy pill that my old school friend Dr. Collado was trying to patent at the time. (I’ve changed the name of this dear and somewhat frustrated inventor of somewhat medicinal drugs.)

I’d taken that pill thinking it would help me minimize my nocturnal anguish. And although the pill did work initially, for a while now its effects had been wearing off and my situation was getting dangerous. I was starting to notice my usual bleak nighttime mood beginning to emerge, my deeply melancholic side. It seemed that at any moment Boston was going to ask me where I had left that supposed severe anguish I’d told her arrived so punctually every evening, which meant it was inadvisable for me to go out at night. . I dreaded that question and all the more so as I observed my melancholy advancing moment by moment. I even began to fear my face would turn into that of Mr. Hyde, so it seemed a very good idea that things here should end as soon as possible.

One evening, several weeks later, Chus Martínez and I arranged to meet. But when I arrived at the appointed place, there was María Boston, even more amusing and luminous than on the previous occasion, as if she wanted to show me she was capable of getting into the skin of a better character than the one she’d played for me the first night. I asked about Chus and there was a strange exchange of glances that struck me as incomprehensibly arduous.

“Don’t you understand that I am Chus?” she said.

For a moment, she managed to make me feel like a complete idiot. I had to understand, she said, that the first time she phoned me, she thought it best to pass herself off as María Boston, a more energetic name so much more attractive than Chus Martínez, which was so Spanish and traditional. Afterward, she hadn’t known how to unravel the snag, the windup that she was now trying to undo.

“I’m Chus. I’ve always been Chus. Got it?”

She seemed to be saying: Look, you really are stupid.

I smiled. What did one do in a case like this? Once again I had taken another euphoria-producing pill from Dr. Collado. What choice did I have? I couldn’t sit there looking anguished all evening. I hoped I was taking it for the last time in my life. It had made me smile in a very natural way, although I was actually smiling, it seemed to me, like a perfect fool. The truth is I was in a fine mess. From the start, I’d noticed the mood produced by Collado’s experimental pharmaceutical — what he called “the aspirin of charm”—wasn’t entirely bad, but still left quite a bit to be desired.

I smiled like a poor fool.

“You’re Chus, of course,” I said. “You’ve always been Chus. Now I understand.”

Over the course of this second encounter, she confirmed everything that had been said: she and Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev had agreed I could spend fewer days in Kassel, that one week would be enough, she only asked that I spend a while in the Chinese restaurant each morning. Indeed, they’d be grateful if I’d communicate as much as possible with the people I met there, with those interested in what I was writing, or rather those interested in my being a writer, and also with those simply wondering what on earth I was doing lost in that Chinese restaurant on the outskirts of Kassel.

Lost! Why did they want to see me adrift? Did they want to laugh at me? I decided to ask her why two women I barely knew — she and Carolyn — had devoted themselves to planning my loss in some faraway corner in the summer of 2012. What interest could they have in seeing me lost beside a forest? Luckily, my question coincided with an explosion of joy produced directly by the tablet, enabling me to show a more than ample smile on my face and scarcely any anxiety. I think, she said, that you’re blowing things way out of proportion. There was a brief silence. I was trying to surmise, in any case, that there was something good about my being lost and also I tried to believe that deep down she, as curator of Documenta 13, was very deliberately challenging me: I had to accept her squalid proposal and not be offended, seeing the bright side of her paltry offer by virtue of my imagination.

I got up the nerve to ask her if she and Carolyn believed that, once I was at Documenta, my powers of observation would help me to probe more deeply into the amazing splendor of contemporary art. (I was being as ironic as I could.)

She stared at me. I could tell she was not going to affirm or deny anything. She simply recommended that I not lose sight of the fact that near the Chinese restaurant there was a forest, and forests were always where real stories took place. I didn’t know what to say to that. I didn’t know what she meant by real stories.

I told her that for years, I thought in order to write well one had to lead a bad life, and she immediately asked: What’s that got to do with any of this? Nothing, Chus, it’s just a McGuffin, as I suspect your phrase about real stories was. For a moment, everything got tangled up; the rhythm of our conversation was broken. We fell silent. I tried to remedy the situation, and the only thing that occurred to me was to tell her that I had a weakness for McGuffins, but that produced nothing but stupor on her part and more silence. Until she decided to diminish the tension and told me that the following day she was going to Afghanistan. The Documenta she and Carolyn were preparing with their curatorial team was taking place not only in the German city of Kassel, but also in Kabul, Alexandria, Cairo, and Banff. With the exception of the small team of organizers and a few invited guests, Documenta 13 would be too vast for any single visitor. She was sorry she had to be away for a while because she was really enjoying our conversation and she was grateful for how well I’d taken her passing herself off as María Boston one day and revealing her true identity the next.

Well, anyway, I said, it’s a relief to know you’re not going to change your name again. No, don’t worry, she said, smiling enigmatically as she began to tell me about Documenta’s road map, insisting on the spatial expansion from Kassel to Kabul, Alexandria, Cairo, and Banff. She advised me — in case it had occurred to me to think so — that I shouldn’t believe she and Carolyn had a postcolonial attitude, rather that it was pure polylogical will.

I made a mental note of that adjective, which I’d never heard before. A short time later, I believed I saw a certain hope for my apparent dark future as a man confined to a polylogical Chinese restaurant. Among other things, she told me that a group called Critical Art Ensemble had found a recondite space far beyond the Kassel forest and was planning a series of lectures during the hundred days Documenta lasted. Talks, she told me, which probably no one will attend and no one will hear, given the remoteness of the place. I immediately realized that this space could be an ideal spot — obviously better than the blasted Chinese restaurant — to give a talk on any subject related to the avant-garde and the art of the new century. I asked her to try to get me invited as one of Critical Art Ensemble’s hundred speakers, for suddenly nothing fascinated me as much as planning a talk that would be delivered beyond a forest, entitled “Lecture to Nobody.”

I got very excited about this title, and here the pill, which was meant to liven me up, seemed to function perfectly. Perhaps the enthusiasm I displayed was excessive. We’ll look into it, she said coldly, as if it bothered her to see me excited by the possibility of having some truly interesting activity in Kassel. But not much later she changed her tune and said she loved the title of my lecture. I could start preparing it because from that very moment it was in the program; but that wouldn’t relieve me — she lowered her marvelous voice — from my daily sessions at the Chinese restaurant.