Liliana Heker - Please Talk to Me - Selected Stories

‘Oh no, it never concerned me,’ she’d smile condescendingly. With exquisite good manners, she’d overlook the fact that several young men, out of sheer admiration, have brought up the subject of her nebulous beginnings.

‘But it was something outrageous. A talent like yours… Wasted on unbearable minor roles. How were you able to put up with it? Did the thought of giving it all up ever cross your mind?’

‘Never,’ she’d answer indignantly. ‘Do you think that with displays of false pride I’d have become who I am? Learn the lesson well, my children: nothing, nothing at all is ever achieved without struggle. One must start from the bottom, bear every blow and never falter.’

How true! she thinks, reaching the end of the corridor. She has at last understood the meaning of this moment, the greatness locked in all those anonymous years. She opens the door to her dressing-room. The other two women have taken off their costumes. The last performance of the Three-Penny Opera is over. In their slips, the two women, both perched on the only chair in the room, are smoking cigarettes. Georgina sees them, steps back and closes the door.

‘Come in,’ she hears. ‘If we try, all three of us can fit.’

Inside the room, they laugh.

‘What can you do,’ she hears. ‘The inconvenience of not being a star.’

Georgina makes a grimace of distaste.

‘Let her be,’ she hears. ‘That’s how she is.’

‘How?’ Georgina cries. ‘How am I?’

Santiago, his back towards her, lying by her side in the bed, isn’t startled. In the seven years he has known her, he has learnt not to be bothered by her sudden questions.

‘You’re Georgina,’ he says simply.

‘Yes,’ she says. ‘But. I don’t know. I don’t know how to explain.’

She remains silent for a moment. Then she says, ‘Why are you here, with me?’

He laughs half-heartedly.

‘Don’t you think it’s a bit late in the day to ask me that?’

‘You don’t understand,’ Georgina says. ‘In the early days… Don’t you see? In the early days it was different. It was… I don’t know. There was a time when everything was crazy, vertiginous. Each time we were together it was something new, something unpredictable. The joy of sin, remember? As if we had things to teach, as if. It was so lovely, Santiago. So lovely. Wasn’t it? It was. Wasn’t it? It was as I just said, yes? Santiago? Was it?’

He’s silent. He looks up at the ceiling and smokes. He seems eternally tired. Or sad.

Georgina speaks again. Her voice is anxious and afraid.

‘Was it like that? Tell me, Santiago. Was it?’

Santiago touches her hair.

‘Yes, Georgina, yes,’ he says.

‘I too, you know,’ Georgina says. ‘I too always felt that way and would think, I don’t know, would think, please don’t laugh, that every day I’d be more beautiful and more, I don’t know, and then. Of course, it’s so absurd if you say it yourself, but that’s how it is, understand? I thought one day we’d die of too much love.’

Santiago laughs, but it is not a happy laugh.

‘Don’t laugh. As with all the rest, you know. But I don’t. Now… Of course, nothing can be repeated. Isn’t there…? Isn’t there anything, Santiago? How am I?’

‘It’s okay, Georgina. It’s okay. Be quiet.’

‘No, no. It’s awful. As if I were denying myself, don’t you see? Sinking. You know what I should do now if I were the way I imagined myself? You know what? I should say, Goodbye Santiago, goodbye my love, it was all very beautiful but it’s all over now for Georgina. And put an end to it all.’

The silence that follows frightens her. She doesn’t dare move. At last, he puts his hand on her waist. She relaxes, it’s fine. Now everything will be the way it was. And it will be beautiful. Won’t it be beautiful? Words are such nonsense. She feels a great calm. This is not being vulnerable, no, it’s all right, everything is all right like this.

He still has his hand on Georgina’s waist but makes no movement, says nothing. This troubles her. She sighs and curls up against Santiago, suddenly tender and fragile. She laughs.

‘I’m a fool,’ she says. ‘Words are so foolish, you know. Don’t ever believe what I say, Santiago. Never believe anything I say.’

He lifts his hand away. Then, with so little violence that the change of position seems rather a thought than an act, he draws away from Georgina.

‘No,’ Georgina says. ‘Why? Everything’s okay, silly. Everything will always be okay.’

Santiago is barely smiling. Georgina speaks again: he must believe her when she says it’s all a lie.

‘That’s it,’ he says. ‘That’s exactly it. You’ve got to understand.’

Before leaving, he touches her face. Georgina sees him leave, without making sense of what is happening.

‘Go!’ she shouts. ‘I never want to see you again, you heartless man!’

Then the door slams shut. The part is over.

Another of the extras, a rather fat man with a stupid face, stares at her inquisitively.

‘Why did you make that grimace?’ he asks.

‘Grimace?’ Georgina looks at him with studied indifference. ‘When?’

‘Just now,’ the man says. ‘As you closed the door.’

‘It wasn’t a grimace,’ Georgina says, reflecting that the tone of her voice had been far more violent than what the scene called for. ‘I was laughing.’

‘Ah.’

The man yawns. He plays with the signet ring on his finger.

Georgina waits a few seconds, impatient and uncomfortable not to be asked anything.

‘Because once, years ago,’ she laughs inexplicably, ‘What madness. I kicked a man out, with more or less the same gesture.’

A model in a leotard crosses the studio.

The man follows her with his eyes.

‘Yes, of course,’ he says.

‘I loved him, you know.’ Georgina shrugs. ‘And all the same, I kicked him out.’

The woman in the leotard turns. She balances a tin of wax in her hand. The man watches her, amused.

‘Really,’ he says.

‘No,’ Georgina says. ‘No need to be surprised. It was necessary.’

Now the woman in the leotard is half hidden by a gigantic pudding made out of cardboard. The man stares down at his shoes. Georgina follows his stare. They’re horrible shoes, an indefinite mustard colour. She wonders what would make a human being choose such ugly shoes.

‘You can’t understand, can you?’ she asks. ‘Of course you can’t understand. Life in the theatre, you know.’ She looks up at the man guardedly. ‘It demands many sacrifices.’

The man chuckles softly.

‘That’s rich,’ he says. ‘People like us.’ He looks at the front of his shirt. He chuckles again. ‘That’s really rich.’

Georgina looks at her nails.

‘How could an idiot understand,’ she says.

The man does nothing in particular. He looks around the studio at the TV cameras, the sets. Then he looks at Georgina.

‘How old are you?’ he asks.

Georgina lifts her head, as if in defiance.

‘Thirty-four,’ she replies.

Now the man stares at her from head to foot.

‘You’re still young,’ he says.

A blow. As if the meaning of the words were exactly the opposite. I shouldn’t mix with people like that . Georgina is about to explain something, but the man is no longer there. She shrugs and goes out into the street. It’s a cold, bright night. Momentarily, she feels relieved. I can’t bear this life . She’s startled. No: it’s just the noise. I was never able to bear it . She lifts her head haughtily. Nothing so distant from art as all this stupid cackling, yes sir . She doesn’t realize how fast she’s walking. A man with a little feather in his hat says something to her that she doesn’t quite understand. She feels a sweet sensation of pleasure. I’m still young , she thinks. But as soon as she has the thought, she’s overcome by uneasiness. Someone once said these words to her. When? Oh well, better not think about it. The man in the hat wasn’t old. Everything’s fine once again, isn’t it? Of course it is. After all, no one ever said it was going to be easy. What matters is carrying on: reaching the end without stopping. One day, they’ll know the whole truth. The Memoirs of . Of course it was difficult, but one had to keep climbing. Higher, understand? Higher and higher each time. So that life itself becomes one luminous ascent. That’s something you carry within, do you hear? It’s as if a light had been lit somewhere inside.