Gonzalo Torne - Divorce Is in the Air

“Just stop it with all that age shit; you’re very young.”

She let go of me slowly, and I followed the street until it opened onto Carretera de Sants, its shopwindows projecting shining brushstrokes over the pavement. Even though you grew up here, I’ve never understood this neighborhood, nor do I understand these good kids who whizz around the streets on their mopeds carrying lunch boxes full of crumbs, their backs weighed down with work and the temptation and the fear of never leaving these streets behind. Nor do I understand all these shoes, toys, hardware shops, shirts, keys, notebooks, and bars where they serve pork shoulder and rice and sandwiches, with all their heaters and air conditioners, the smell of fried food and chemical lemon air freshener. I understand the dog dragging himself along like a drenched mop, and I understand the SEAT and Renault cars that steam impatiently at the traffic lights. But don’t ask me to understand those thin girls who stand on tiptoe to kiss their boyfriends while their mobiles ring in their knockoff handbags; blue screens, sport socks. I was getting hungry, but I didn’t want to get on a bus. The foot traffic urged me to get walking, and I sped my steps toward Plaça de Sants and its trees. There were so many things I didn’t understand as a boy, and I still don’t understand them. My eye has grown wider but it hasn’t learned to let in more light. If you take away the civil demands on me, I’d be the same child, fascinated with the world, learning the names of hundreds of colored, creaking objects around him. Matter strikes me as a good thing and cities are impressive and how can I say a bitter word about the worst moments as long as I get to stick around here?

An innocent, yes, a dreamer. What else are all these pigeons trying to tell me, swooping over the plaza’s pitiful sand with their racket of beating wings? The dark crowds moving like a finger into the mouth of the metro didn’t help me think, either. I moved away from the plaza, crossed a little island with two peeling benches, skirted a pile of shit — trampled and split like a ripe fruit — and passed a phone booth that looked like a monument to an obsolete technology. I entertained myself comparing the prices of eyeglasses, looking at orthopedic shoes, pricey high heels, sports gear, wooden chairs, cheese sandwiches, and in the window of a bakery I recognized the same Swiss roll with thick cream they used to buy for Pedro and me when we finished practice.

And I may be innocent, but I’m not such an idiot that I didn’t notice what was cooking between Eloy and Dad. Another Australian clotheshorse? The sudden interest in his cremation? The giggling? The smell of cinnamon? Was it you, Eloy, who sought Pedro out so he could tell you the end of the story, your story with my father? Did you buy her that house, Dad? Did she blackmail you? Did she hang you herself? That would be one explanation, and a good one at that, for your calluses. I’d only have to force the chronology a little. OK, he was a woman now, but he’d played basketball, and you were always a weakling, Dad, a wimp. I was tempted to retrace my steps and interrogate Eloy, but if he had been important to you, how would we make up in the Great Beyond if I overdid things now?

Why couldn’t you have been like other men and insist ad nauseum that we all go out to eat together: me, my sister, and your new girlfriend, to play at getting along as a new family? Why couldn’t she have been one of those affectionate, common girls who think their situation isn’t respectable unless they can knead their hands into the dough of your past? I can’t speak for my sister (OK, I’m convinced she would have managed to be fantastically rude), but I assure you, Dad (how I miss your voice, Dad), that I would have done my best to skirt around our sentimental mess; I, for one, would have lived up to my reputation: generous, friendly, loyal. A real champ, in the broadest sense of the word. I know loads of jokes for situations like that, I’ve built up a lot of experience with separations. I’m good at it, I know how to break the ice, I’d manage to make everyone feel comfortable. Let’s speak honestly, Dad: Why the secrecy? Was there still a thread of love that tied you to me and to Mother? Did it hurt? You know what I think? That you used us to hurt her. Pleurisy, diabetes, clogged arteries, hypertrophy of the prostate, omnivorous cancers, renal deficiency…long before one of those things does us in, our ridiculous private lives will. Sometimes I have the feeling that no matter what I do, life is impossible. That’s the only lesson to learn, the only one we don’t want to learn.

I spent what was left of the afternoon taking bites of that log of cream wrapped in fragrant crepe dough, sitting at a table designed for pygmies. When the clouds in the sky parted, there was no longer any light, the pedestrians were moving in a mauve shadow, in their imitation leather jackets, Caramelo coats, and those impossible bomber jackets; many greeted each other as they passed, they looked like they were about to break into song. Pedro would have liked to know that they still made our pastry, but I’ve been avoiding him since the night we went to Sónar; I made the decision while I was fixing him a stomach-settling herbal tea, although ultimately I went instead with some fist-like buds that unfolded into surprisingly colorful petals on contact with the boiling water. I figured they’d do something good for him. I also made two pieces of toast for myself. I put it all on a tray and headed into the living room.

Pedro was still sleep against the sofa’s armrest, with his knees folded up and his mouth open, his nose whistling like a teapot. When his mother gave him that name I don’t think she thought he’d turn out so big, such an impotent mammal. He’d fallen asleep with the windows closed, and the whole room smelled of him.

I opened the curtains and raised the blinds. The room was soaked in light. I picked up the coats, straightened the chairs, emptied the glasses, and put away the bottles. Citizens flowed through the street (open kiosks, two bicycles, flowerpots tied down on the terraces): the dense mental foliage of regret, expectation, courage, and timidity writhing around in thousands of heads — what fabulous instruments. I ate a piece of toast. I got out a couple of cloths and dusted the furniture; what would my sister say? I felt the pleasant separation of the folds of my spirit; I made sure the murderous boxes were still in place and I sat down in the armchair to entertain myself with Pedro’s records. I guess I was waiting for him to wake up and restart the conversation, but he went on making faces and emitting noises. I looked for his wallet and took out forty euros, and I covered him with a blanket. I checked the taps and the gas and went around turning out the lights of the museum-house, but since I didn’t want Saw to wake up and think his eyes had been torn out (not everyone knows that blindness is thick and white), I turned on the lamp and left it glowing greenly.

What advice could I give that poor idiot? I don’t know any painkillers that work against the passing of the years or the many beautiful things that have died, swept away by the current of everyday life: hours and hours of indescribable vulgarity. Nor could I convince him that in general terms, this delicate business of living was going to get any better: age arranges things so the outlook only gets worse and worse. In terms of women…well, there were my marriages and a dozen girlfriends, falling one after another, asphyxiating the beacon of sex. What disaster can compare to the separation of a human couple: wrenching out living nerves implanted in your very heart? Haven’t we had enough? Isn’t this a good moment to turn out the light and say: “OK, that was good, it’s over, this is it, good-bye, good-bye?” I’m just saying that it’s fairly difficult to access sex; it should be simpler to free oneself of desire. Ever since I’ve had rational thought I’ve liked girls, ladies, women — their various incarnations for my changing biological phases. I appreciate their gorgeous design, the way they measure and evaluate each other, that heron-like way their eyes dilate when they see something shiny, what they can provoke in me using only their hair. I came to think: poor me, poor us, the ones who knew how to treat them. I told myself that I know when to remind them how pretty they are, how to act when they have those crises of confidence so deeply rooted in their hormones. I’ve always found myself willing to shelter them in my arms, to place the powers of my masculinity at their disposal. If it didn’t work out, it’s partly because the ones I found myself with weren’t what I’d been told to expect: no smiling creatures — serene, complicit, silent, and celestial — no humming or baking pies. The women who came and collided with my oh-so-sensitive present have all been complicated and ambitious, subject to shifting moods. If we’ve already played our cards, why don’t we fall into that armchair like lay monks, among crumpled socks and almost clean utensils, in the proud neglect of shared bachelorhood? Was that what Pedro was asking me from the sofa, rolled up like a question mark?