Gonzalo Torne - Divorce Is in the Air

But you had fled, and what I actually did all day long was try to work out when you would return. Of course I’d read your note, but it was too literary, excessive even for you. So I sat down at the little kitchen table, projected my mind into the future, and started to explore how our pairing would end. Who would get ill and be the first to go, things like that, as if what we were going through weren’t already an ending.

I tried to keep my cool, though no one would believe it if they calculated the frequency of my e-mails (technology makes everything far too easy). I was guided by a principle of economy — what good would it do me to expend all that emotional energy? Who would want that now? You’ll meet someone, and it will be such a natural thing I won’t even be allowed to complain; then you’ll forget me. Of course, you won’t really forget me, that’s just a figure of speech, because if we were capable of truly forgetting someone, we would wipe clean our shared existence, leave and be ready to try again. What you will do with me is reduce me to a cuddly size, to something comic and insignificant. What you’ll leave imprinted on me will be like a watermark; I won’t be able to erase it.

But don’t think I spend all day licking the raw edges of my wounds. Though the streets are a bit faded as they stretch before me, it’ll be no time at all before they recover their old intensity. My health sometimes seems a mess, but don’t let my tendency to exaggerate confuse you — the old organ of optimism is still beating, oozing the stuff of enthusiasm. I’ll grant you that my fling with the young girl doesn’t lend itself to a sentimental journey, but you know how it works: you feel you’re lost, but life (for lack of a better word) always catches up with you. You get interested by something that creeps into view, and the next day, though you don’t know how you got there, the landscape has changed completely. You’re OK as long as you don’t stay still, and staying still is impossible; you always move at the speed of time, even if it’s toward a dismal experience.

The fact is, I’ve spent my time looking for Eloy. I was intrigued, and I couldn’t think of a more exotic sauce with which to season the present. Plus, I was enchanted by the suggestive powers of phonetics; I let the sharp edge of his alias roll around (Larumbe, Larumbe, Larumbe). What a wonderful world, where a man can be seduced by a combination of fricatives.

I was resolved, but he wasn’t easy to find. They’d taken down the page with his contact information, so I dialed the agency’s number. I don’t know what men say when they’re making that kind of transaction (I didn’t even understand the services offered on the page, it was like a weather report to me), so I practiced putting on a perverted voice that was male but with effeminate touches.

The pimp who answered informed me that Señorita Larumbe didn’t work for them anymore, nor could he help me find Eloise; she’d “settled down.” I pushed harder; he hung up on me.

I wasn’t expecting anything grand from my reunion with Eloy, but after that setback the thing felt personal. I looked in the Web cache, and hidden in the electronic trail I found Eloy’s rates (eight hundred euros for two hours) and mobile number. It turned out to still work.

“Yes?”

“Hi.”

“Yes?”

“I’m a voice from your past.”

“Rolando?”

Rolando ? What were you thinking, parents, when you named us? I recognized Eloy’s soft timbre immediately, though his retreaded body produced a new, pretty voice now. I felt a playful spirit of camaraderie awaken in me.

“ Chicle .”

“You don’t know how long it’s been since I’ve heard that. Now there are no more than ten people you could be.”

“Nine. Antolín went to live with the Uros on Lake Titicaca. He sleeps on an artificial island made of straw, sunbathes naked, eats dried fish, lives without a roof.”

“Shall we rule out the ones who didn’t have a sense of humor?”

“Caballero. Perales. Zurrias. That’ll leave you with an initial five.”

“You’re not Pedro, either. Did you know he got in touch with me recently, and that we’ve seen each other?”

“The past travels in twos. It’s like a pick and roll.”

“It’s not a coincidence? Does the voice from the past know anything about what I’m like now?”

“You look marvelous in the photos. I wouldn’t be surprised if it asks for your photographer’s number.”

“This was a risky joke, Joan-Marc.”

“I’m sure you recognized me from the start. Everyone does, don’t think you’re so smart. I’ve just got such a recognizable voice.”

“Pedro told me about you and the state of your arteries.”

“The dirty little rat. That’s a prank I played on him. I didn’t want to intimidate him with my good health. When can we get together?”

“Another one who wants to dig around in the past.”

“Don’t get the wrong idea, I detest all that nostalgic crap. I’m interested in the present you. You’ve got to admit, some people have a pretty impressive here and now.”

“Are you dying of curiosity? It’s terribly entertaining to hear your voice. I’ll call you.”

“No, absolutely not. It has to be this week. Then I’m going to Montana. Fuokville is the best-kept secret in the United States — we’re repopulating the migratory routes of vultures. They’re splendid animals, and I’ve been invited to a carrion fest.”

“Are you an ornithologist?”

“Cold. I still don’t have a label. I just write the checks. I had a lucky streak on the markets. Don’t tell Pedro, it’d break his heart, he thinks I’m practically broke. It’s good for him to feel superior, to pay for my food, my coffee. Charity is a good painkiller.”

“I don’t believe a word you’re saying, spirit of the past. Are you free on Wednesday?”

“You took the words right out of my mouth. What do you think about meeting in Bonanova? You won’t believe it, but the Madri is still open.”

“I live in Sants now.”

“OK, you can catch the 75. Not that I travel by bus much, but I have, well…I had, and hope to have again, a girlfriend with family around there.”

“I’d rather you came to my house. You’ll like it — it belongs very much to the present.”

I jotted it down, something like Violant d’Hongria. We agreed on a time, neither too late nor too early.

“A stupid question: What should I call you?”

“Me? Eloise. That’s my name, I don’t have any other.”

I went out wearing a gabardine raincoat and gloves because the sky was black. I reached his street under gathering lumps of tar, but no rain was falling. I was very aware during my last twelve, ten steps, that I could have turned around at any second, disappeared without explanation, but I rang the bell of a house sandwiched between two apartment blocks, and I waited.

“You can come on up, I’m on the second floor.”

I went directly into a foyer. The light that the clouds let through concealed as much as it showed, and I felt a pinch in my chest when I confused a strange object with Dad’s Australian clotheshorse. I made out a staircase at the back, and I started up while slowly peeling off my gloves, finger by finger. Through a window halfway up I saw it was finally beginning to rain, weakly.

I don’t remember the pleasantries we exchanged. Eloy received me in loose white pants that weren’t very tight on him, billowed out like a woman’s, and an open-necked blouse. I don’t think we ever shook hands; he darted smoothly behind me to help me with the raincoat.

On a clear day, that enormous living room must have been luminous; now, the recessed bulbs were turned up high. He sat down on a three-seater sofa and crossed his legs, directing me to a leather armchair; it was very fashionable, like the rest of the furniture (my eye is still just as sharp, perfectly suited to a different walk of life). Through an alcove I could see more stairs; three stories — upstairs must have been the bedroom or a studio.