Gonzalo Torne - Divorce Is in the Air

What I’m trying to tell you is that I couldn’t have just torn myself away from Helen and found another, similar woman. It was as if a cord of intangible flesh had grown between us and was keeping us tied together. So I even followed her to the bathroom, peeking in when she thought she was safe from my gaze, and I watched as she leaned her backside against the sink; sometimes there were tears and she let them run down her cheek, then she’d ask me to make her a bowl of yogurt and cereal and fruit. I’d slice apples with the gentlest version of the virile strength I used to shift and pinch her on the defenseless sheets in the Barcelona light. In the background I’d hear the water heater and the shower and I’d smile like an idiot, anticipating Helen’s damp footprints as she tramped around the living room (they started to evaporate at the outline of her heel), in search of a towel to match the one she had tied up in a turban. And I know you won’t like this detail, but even after rinsing them, the furrows in my fingers retained Helen’s smells, like the ghost of an orgasm, a subtle olfactory bond. I never tired of seeing Helen’s full breasts through the crook of her arm when she sat down to tear skin off her just-washed toes. The matter that flayed like layers of chipped paint during our arguments came from other parts of our life. I always felt that we were safe from wear and tear in our bed, which was like a well containing the waters of that altered state.

So while Helen grew desperate, I had to be brave and turn down various offers of work on her behalf. Sure, she hadn’t finished her degree, but she could speak English and German, and no one had to convince me of her good looks. The offers came from some of Dad’s friends, and classmates from ESADE who’d done better than me. I suppose they just wanted to do me a favor, but I didn’t like their condescending tone, and the salaries they offered Helen were too high. The money would have come in handy, but a husband’s first responsibility should be to find and protect his wife’s vulnerable side; economic independence would have exposed Helen to the dog-eat-dog world out there, and she wasn’t ready for that. Plus, my situation was temporary: the plan for the cheese business was giving off a splendid aroma then. There was no way it could fail, I was paying Passgard too much money. The funds would start to flow again through the magic channel of Dad’s inheritance. We were sowing the seeds of profits, the small capital gains were gestating, growing organs in the shadows. Helen didn’t need to dress up and expose herself to the responsibilities of the working world. It just wasn’t her style.

I did my very best to hide what I was doing, and I wasn’t bad at it. There was one time, though, when she almost discovered that the temp agencies’ most-ignored CV led a triumphant double life in family businesses looking to expand to Bonn or fabulous Hamburg. It was one afternoon when she came home unexpectedly because she’d forgotten her hand lotion. I was at the other end of the apartment, gargling with the same mouthwash that had provided a minty disguise for the putrid vapors my father’s bad digestion gave off. I heard the door open and Helen’s voice, wrapped in a greeting, drove an image into my head: the open letter (its red envelope) where that jackass Recassens officially reminded me of his father’s keen interest in interviewing my girl. I rushed out and startled her; she was in the same tight green dress she’d worn the day we left Madrid, the day we’d uprooted ourselves from the life we never got to know there. The fabric wasn’t as snug around her thighs, she was thinner now, and when she saw my joyful race down the hallway, she smiled at me as the letter fell from her fingers: thin cheeks, thick lips.

“My hand lotion. Dry day.”

She went into the kitchen, and I heard the liquor as it splashed into the glass — that magic touch. I folded the letter and stuffed it in the pocket of my robe; you could say I hid it. She went into the bathroom and I took the opportunity to tear it to pieces; then, when Helen left again, her stomach warm from the liquor, I held the flame of a lighter to them. I called Recassens that very afternoon to thank him for the kind gesture. And heard myself say for the first time the mantra I would repeat for weeks, whether it was relevant or not:

“Helen is very happy with her new job. I don’t want to boast, but you wouldn’t believe what these shipowners pay.”

I know if I’d read her the whole letter she would have scratched my eyes out, though she would have struggled with Recassens’s Catalan. But before she left, she kissed me joylessly on the mouth, and she didn’t take the hand lotion with her. It stayed on the counter, untouched.

What’s a job, really? A load of bullshit imposed on you: a suitcase full of wasted hours you have to watch over jealously so they’ll give you a check for the appropriate amount (never much without first negotiating with your boss’s superior, the board, some underling from HR). That smell of wall-to-wall carpet, disinfectant, and heating that sticks to you and stakes a claim on a patch of your mental space. And that’s where you’ll find good old Pedro-María. How funny you’d both think he was, I can just see you laughing. A programmer! The very pinnacle of grayness. But tell me why it’s worse to drive a taxi or to be one of those poor women who spend the day bathing patients than it is to strangulate your days stuck in a room reading and writing. Maybe a programmer has fascinating algorithmic experiences, while a scribbler racks up painful hours trying to get the balloon of linguistic imagination off the ground. I’m only saying there’s something very ambiguous in this idea of grayness. And don’t go thinking I’m going after your brother here, absolutely not. At least you can use his fat novels as guides to Barcelona streets.

And don’t think I mention Pedro-María by chance (the only undeliberate thing here is the fever of your rejection, which goes on and on). I bring his name up because in the meantime, since our disastrous re-encounter, we’d resumed our friendship. In a big way, too: we saw each other almost every day.

“You’re not going to believe this, Johan, but you gave me the wrong address.”

I answered the door. I opened up, let him in, let him hug me. I guess it was good to have someone get me out of the house, take me places where they treated us with the condescending respect reserved for regulars. It helps to feel superior to someone once in a while. It does my spirit good.

Plus, Pedro has a story, a good one — he’s got a wedding ring rolling around in some drawer — and he’s told it enough times to have mastered its dramatic effects; the guy knows how to build suspense. He took me on his motorcycle to the Miramar, a desolate building between patches of vegetation, and he told me about his disastrous marriage to a violent girl. They screamed at each other, she wanted more from him. He thought he could calm her down with a baby, but being parents only intensified the ferocious battle for time to themselves. He backed off, felt responsible, he wasn’t sure that Isabel could hold it together if they separated.

He tried to light a cigarette. His hands were trembling — delicate nerves. He told me that when he used to smoke in college he’d been convinced that there’d come a day when he would finally feel calm. A life crowned with a wife, children, in-laws, and even stranger creatures (siblings-in-law, nieces and nephews). A life so cushioned by the everyday, by family ties and civic duty, that it would be like living on a bed of pillows. He would leave the house to buy the newspaper and read it start to finish; Sunday’s main adventure would be the tortell cake. For years, he’d known he would recognize that day by its special light, and that it would come before he reached thirty. The bells of adult life would chime, and he would only have to puff out his chest and wait for them to hang the medal around his neck.