Quim Monzó - Guadalajara

He keys in the last sentence with a mixture of excitement and trepidation. It’s the first of his novels to end with a death. This is remarkable in itself because dead bodies had been notably absent from his books, a rejection of the facile solutions that so many writers resort to when they don’t know how to heighten the drama. Now, for the first time, and driven by the logic of his narrative, he has been forced to change this given and kill his protagonist. He wrenches the page from his typewriter, puts it at the back of all the others, and re-reads the beginning: “That early afternoon, when he was setting the table, the man dropped the salt shaker by chance and some salt fell on the serviettes. He was terrified.”

The writer’s contract with his publishing house obliges him to write a novel a year. He signed it seventeen years ago, and every January he punctually hands over the new novel to his publisher. He has by now published sixteen novels. He doesn’t think writing novels is particularly difficult, and he systematically makes fun of writers who take two years to write one. Sometimes he’s happier with some than with others. Sometimes the story flows, he feels passionate; it almost gushes out and is a pleasure to edit. At others the story is contrived; he writes as if it were a punishment (because, under contract, he must finish, come what may, before the year is up) and struggles to make a few edits. It makes no difference: nobody complains when it’s on the feeble side. Insistence on quality is minimal in this country; a situation that is so notorious its inhabitants like to joke about it. His constancy, then, allows him to earn a living—a precarious one, but he doesn’t have to get up at 8:00 a.m. His only prayer to this God he doesn’t believe in is that he should never have writer’s block. That wasn’t an option.

His publisher gives him some good news on the day the book is launched: They are going to re-issue his first novel in a new collection, and if he wants, as they have to re-set it, he can re-read it and introduce any changes that he thinks are necessary. He does just that. He has written so many novels that he’d forgotten the precise plot of his first effort and could only remember, rather hazily, some of the characters. He knew it was about a writer who is writing a novel, is quite successful, and that this allows him to publish a second novel the next year and a third the one after that. But when he reads it from one end to the other, he is astonished. The plot and the characters anticipate exact details from his life—events that happened months or years after publication. After sixteen years, he can pinpoint exactly which secondary character the protagonist’s wife falls in love with. Because soon after publishing his first novel, he met an identical character, and the woman who fell in love with him was his wife. And the protagonist’s struggle against pressure from the world around him was the very same one he faced after his first success.

Intrigued, he reads his other novels one after another, in the order they were written and published. One accurate prediction after another. He recognizes individuals, feelings, sensations, successes, and failures, always written months before the event. He sees his whole life anticipated from book to book. He presages events, situations, women, dramas, and epiphanies. The almighty power of the character in Green Steppe anticipates his own power a while after. The anguish of the protagonist in Pure Soaked Earth anticipates what he subsequently suffered. And the musician’s awareness of his failure in All the Fire of His Great Sun was his very own a few months later. He also recognizes actual individuals. The woman in Colts in the Corral is Lluïsa, whom he met on the very day of the book’s launch. Teresa appears portrayed with almost photographic precision, in The Spirit , but when he was writing it, he didn’t even know her. He systematically foresaw and wrote things that would happen to him months afterwards.

When he finally comes to his last book, the one he has published a few days ago, he is frightened by the fact that his protagonist dies. He leaves the book on his desk, goes into the kitchen, looks for a can of pre-cooked stew, opens it, pours the contents into a saucepan that he puts into the microwave. He can’t recognize any of the characters or events in the book. On the one hand, it’s obvious sufficient time hasn’t passed for what he’s written to turn into reality. On the other, however, the fact he can’t recognize anything at all is cause for hope: if it’s all about prediction, some of the events should already have happened. That this isn’t the case may indicate that this novel is different from the others. Indeed, no law decrees that the norm has to be eternally realized. He thinks all this while setting the table; he is aware of the situation and is going to try to avoid the inevitable.

The man has unsuccessfully been trying to leave his apartment since daybreak; whenever he opens the door, the same thing happens: he can’t see the landing, only the hallway he’s trying to leave at that exact moment. He’s tried dozens of times. He tries again: He opens the door to go out, it’s dark out there, he takes a couple of steps, touches the wall, gropes for the switch for the light that’s next to the elevator. He can’t find it. On the contrary, he finds the coat stand, and underneath that, the umbrella stand. So he’s back in the hall he’s just tried to leave. He stretches a hand out to the hall light switch, finds it, switches it on, and sees that he’s standing with his back to his own front door. He turns half around and once again confronts the door. Opens it wide and looks outside. It is very dark, and there’s a single patch of light on the floor, the light that is coming precisely from his hallway through the open door, too little light to determine whether beyond his doorstep the landing that’s always been there is still there, a generously spacious one, as in all old apartment blocks. He could try to leave again, but there would be no point. He’s tried repeatedly and unsuccessfully since the early morning. He shuts the door and leans back on it.

He goes into his dining room and looks into the street. Several people are walking up and even more are walking down it. He tries not to get stressed. He must get out one way or another. He picks up his phone, dials a girlfriend’s number. It’s a girl he’s not known very long, and he hasn’t yet managed to be intimate with her, which he regrets. Why not? Is it because he’s shy? Because he’s never had the right opportunity? He thinks that it’s perhaps because he’s not reached that degree of intimacy with her that he’s decided to ask her this favor: She should come to his place immediately. The friend asks why. He adopts an extremely somber tone of voice, and without saying exactly what’s wrong (he doesn’t tell her because she won’t believe him or will think he’s mad and won’t come), he tells her he is caught in a most unusual situation (not a serious one, but a most unusual one), so unusual that if he tells her on the phone she won’t believe him or will think he’s gone mad; he needs her help. She says nothing for a few seconds and finally says she will drop by at three, after work.

The man spends the next couple of hours staring at the door and smoking non-stop, until he’s filled a vase with butts. In effect, his friend arrives when it’s three minutes to three. He briefly tells her what the situation is, as clearly as he can, and before she can react in shock, he tells her what they are going to do: “This is what we are going to do: We will leave the apartment together. If I leave by myself, I will never reach the landing. I always find myself back in my hallway and not on the landing.”