Gonzalo Torne - Divorce Is in the Air

What separated me from you was something too shapeless and slippery to understand. I intuited its size the way an insect’s eyes must take in the impression of a spatter of blue and oily paint, unable to situate it within the frame of a canvas that is too big to comprehend. Even so, while recognizing that my mind lacked the openness to understand the paths you trod, I haven’t lost hope I will change and develop the capacity to appreciate you. What separated me from Helen was small (two seconds and I could run my eyes across it) and well defined: a cold, smooth stone made of her basest emotions, hardened by incomprehension and distance. I never learned to soften it, I was unable to pry it open; it was as alien to me as the rest of the mineral kingdom.

If what I had with Helen blew up, it was because I couldn’t find the way to defuse the time bomb Daddy had planted in her brain. In schmaltzy terms: my love wasn’t strong enough to pull her from those cold waters that are only funny if you keep your distance, because once you see them reflected in the eyes of the person you’re trying to give a decent life to, they turn out to be too dark for a happy heart. I’m not saying that love should be able to raise the dead (although it should), but if it’s not even enough to support someone when the glass of her own existence is cracking, if your love is too weak to keep her from draining out to the point of collapse, then something’s gone wrong.

So I was forced to throw her out.

I mean, if you think about it I had no choice, and it didn’t exactly happen overnight. I don’t remember the precise moment when I stopped acting like a cornered marsupial and got my balls back, but along the way there were moments of tenderness, like the afternoon I went with her to the bookshop, holding the umbrella over her so she wouldn’t get wet. I walked outside but that was only because that combination of incense and sandalwood makes me jittery. Through the window I saw her in that baggy sweater, on tiptoe, reaching up to a high shelf. It’s not that she’d gotten fat, but the cheetah whose movements could flood me with desire had swollen into a sad cat. I had noticed it in older people: a month of worry was enough to dull the vital light that burnishes the skin and softens the hair. They feel depressed, they’re invaded by gray hairs, a rim of fat adheres to their waists, years consumed in days. But you can’t really grasp what it’s like until age takes a swing at the person you live with.

This was during the time all of Helen’s hopes were focused on the Jovanotti method. I did some research on the guy: he’d published two little “metaphysical” novels, and after miraculously escaping with his life after a period of experimenting with acid, he earned some sort of reputation writing books in which he assured girls who were aging like sad houses that they are crucial elements within a grander plan. And if you believe that, I’ve got a bridge to sell you. As if the double t in his name weren’t enough to whisper “charlatan, charlatan,” the only thing that ever emerged from Jovanotti’s mouth in his conferences, workshops, or master classes, was garbage soaked in slime. But I didn’t utter a single malicious word. Matrimonial common sense suggested I overlook that nonsense. My tongue bled from biting it so much.

When you’re deliberating between “to do” and “not to do,” choose to do; if you make a mistake at least you’ll have the experience.

Menstrual blood is sacred: use it to paint your self-portrait.

You’re not loved because you’re beautiful, you are beautiful because you are loved.

Transgress prohibitions and dare to confront the impossible head-on. Then scream for five minutes like a savage animal and you’ll achieve a psychological orgasm.

Grant yourself all the possibilities of being. Change your path as many times as necessary.

Before you die you must bury a firefighter, witness an epileptic fit, and dance with a Chinese prince: this is how you will master your ego.

Helen started the exercises from Jovanotti’s book. She drew her father in burlesque postures (luckily she let me convince her it was just as good to use pencils) and her mother copulating with all manner of creatures. She sewed a doll and stuck pins into it, and she also (I think, because of how it smelled) subjected it to symbolic humiliations with urine. She was so convincing about painting a mural on the white hallway wall that I was willing to turn our apartment into a grotto of cave paintings if only to see her beautiful face again, fatigued from the effort, soft wrinkles at the corners of her eyes, lit by a natural light: almost happy. The fact is she did seem to get better, and when I saw her through the crack in the bathroom door smearing blush on her cheeks, I had to admit that she was coming out of her hole. And although I didn’t like the intense shade she’d chosen for her lips (as if I’d married a discreet, modest bride, and not a woman who just by walking was already beyond the limits of decorum), I let myself be soothed by those frivolous signs with the complacency of a mutt that feels the reassuring touch of a human hand running over its fur.

“What do you want me to do, John?”

I asked her to shower (paying special attention to her hair) and get dressed. I wanted us to go out for dinner, to dance, to drink the way healthy people drink: slowly, letting the intoxication unfurl its solemn ability to soften the world’s revolting disfigurement without isolating you, to enable the embrace of the people you love. I wasn’t asking for anything most couples don’t give each other: to spend a few hours together, support each other with a word, to laugh…even that seemed magnificent to me! I poured a drink, still doubtful we’d make it out the door. The luminous six o’clock air filled the bedroom, and Helen tried on three skirts and two tops before deciding on some green pants that looked like jeans, and the red wool sweater that made her pull her hair back in a high ponytail; she must have had her reasons. I asked her not to wear lipstick: I liked to see her pulpy mouth in its natural shade. If she had gained weight it was only a few kilos; I didn’t care. When she had her usual attitude, I’d find Helen attractive with a baby bootee on her head. I felt tempted to threaten the calm atmosphere of a married couple dressing for dinner and test out that new behind right there. I was stopped only by how sick I was of that convalescent bed. I was all too familiar with the sheets’ wrinkles and folds, the textile expression of the anguish built up in the body that spent entire days between them: a piece of meat run aground.

So I gave up on the idea of touching her, and we took a shiny taxi to none other than Les Corts, where they’d opened a new restaurant with a romantic terrace. It wasn’t the most free-flowing conversation we’d ever had, nor did it help that Helen pushed my hand away just as it found the creases of her inner thigh through the stitching of her pants. A secret reason for bringing her there (other than that it was far enough from home to prevent that lazybones getting up all of a sudden and leaving me there) was that I’d heard wonderful things about the filete ruso , the dish that every Friday for three years an employee served me (I don’t have the heart to write “servant”). I can’t remember now if she went home (somewhere like Honduras), or if she was the one who cracked her skull open in a motorcycle accident and never came back.

I told Helen how filete ruso was a singular creation of industrial Barcelona’s calorific proletarian cooking. A fillet of chicken breast, chopped up finely and soaked in flour and egg. I may have overacted a bit, I’m sure I added something about its flavor as well as its social value, but I was spooked by the way Helen’s gaze was losing its softness. I guess I was hoping that some of my energy could spread to her through my enthusiasm for a delicious chicken dish.