Enrique Vila-Matas: Because She Never Asked

Ray was a little skeptical. He had called a few days earlier to inquire after my acute renal condition that would require surgery. “You can’t be serious,” he said. “Oh, completely,” I responded. “You honestly want to go to Paris half fucked-up, wearing a catheter, to meet Sophie and play this game with her?” he asked, and then he laughed. There was a brief silence. “What for?” It seemed a bit zealous for me to bring up Petronius and explain how I wanted to see what would happen when you live out an adventure that you had previously written, or in other words, when you take the leap from literature to your life, and so I kept quiet. “Answer me,” he insisted. “Why?” Another brief silence. I answered as best I could. “To be in Paris and, more than anything else, to spend time living what I’ve written, instead of just writing it.” Ray wanted to know why I didn’t go and do something else. “Such as?” I asked, feeling more curious than a very curious boy. He didn’t think twice: “You have plenty of other ways to amuse yourself, and none of them include going to Paris with a catheter to live out what you’ve written.” I felt bad, even suspicious that I was acting against my own interests. I had the troubling impression that my desire to reach beyond it all was actually putting obstacles in my own path. I told this to Ray. “Oh the tangled web of the world,” was all he said. I can’t explain it, but his words soothed me, as if for the first time in my life I had shared with another person one of the most quiet and self-evident truths.

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6

Two days later, I was lying on the hard shell of my back (which is just an expression, what I mean is that I was half asleep, lying naked in bed on my back, which felt very hard due to how long I had been that way; my catheter was showing since I was home alone, and I hadn’t bothered to decorously cover myself with the sheets). The telephone rang, and it was Sophie Calle.

“At last, we speak again. It’s about time, don’t you think?” She spoke in Spanish with a thick French accent. I saw that it was a Paris number, but it hadn’t yet occurred to me that it could be Sophie Calle calling, and I asked, half alarmed, who it was on the other end of the line. “I’m Sophie, I just wanted to talk to you again, so you don’t think I’ve abandoned our project; I’m still on but I have been very busy lately…” My legs trembled slightly, as I abandoned my beetle-on-its-back position and sat up in bed. She acted as though we were a couple making up romantically after having experienced a brief separation. It wasn’t what I had asked Ray for. That it was really her on the phone, the real Sophie Calle, there was no room for doubt. I had heard (and even studied) her voice in a variety of different recordings. It was her all right.

I felt as though I should play along. “Believe me, I don’t expect anything from you. I’ve also been very busy, it’ll work out,” I said. But she seemed bent on clarifying things: “Venice took up a lot of my time, but the worst was the bureaucratic paperwork after my mother passed away, which was and still is utterly exhausting. I just wanted to let you know that despite the interruptions, I still want to bring your story to life…” I let her know that everything was fine, that she shouldn’t worry, and for a few minutes I had the impression that I was speaking to someone familiar, as if we had known each other for a long time. I might have ended up going into details regarding my liver and urethra problems, how I was awaiting surgery, if it hadn’t been for a sudden change in her tone of voice, which turned serious, even slightly aggressive.

“You’re sure everything is all right? I detect a slight hint of disappointment in your voice,” she said abruptly. I kept quiet and inert; I was sitting upright in bed, naked, muddled, with sudden heart palpitations. “Huh?” I asked. “I want to make a proposition, but I can’t do it over the phone. Can we meet? I’d like to know if you will be coming to Paris anytime in the next few weeks.” We quickly arranged to meet on Friday, the 16th of June, which was in four days, at the Café de Flore, to stage the farce. But what if she didn’t mean it as a farce, and she was treating the proposal that I write a story for her in earnest? That was my great expectation. If she proposed the same as with Auster and Loriga, I could surprise her by handing over a copy of “The Journey of Rita Malú.”

I called Ray to thank him for his help but couldn’t reach him. Later, through mutual friends, I found that he had been called away; it had something to do with the movie he had just filmed about Santa Teresa. He wouldn’t be back for a few weeks.

I decided to ask my wife to accompany me to Paris, but she flat out refused to have anything to do with such a ludicrous scheme. First comes surgery, she said. Then, after the catheter was gone, I could spend my time talking to Sophie Calle or whatever trifles I wanted. “By the way,” she asked, “what’s up with you and Sophie Calle? It’s one thing to admire her work or get jealous of her proposals to your pal Ray; but to risk your catheter, your life, just to see her, is another story.”

I knew that her words were sensible, but I also knew that art isn’t, it never has been; in fact quite the contrary: it’s always been an attack against common sense, an effort to get beyond the beaten path. Not only that, my wife was clearly exaggerating, since I had all the necessary medical authorizations for air travel and I wasn’t risking my life by going to Paris. Besides, the adventure of living out what I had written seemed entertaining, and nothing prevented me from returning to Barcelona in time for my appointment with the anesthesiologist in Vall d’Hebron hospital on Thursday, June 22.

“What if the hospital moves the anesthesiologist’s appointment forward? They warned that could happen. What then? Huh? What? You’d postpone an emergency operation because you feel like having coffee at the Flore?” my wife asked, beyond exasperation. I don’t remember how I answered her; all I know is that I couldn’t convince her to come with me.

The fact is that I boarded a plane for Paris early on the 16th of June, lonesome as a rat, and with a pang of self-reproach, bearing in mind my wife’s righteous indignation. Arriving like a wounded bachelor and with a return ticket to Barcelona that same evening, I showed up half an hour early to the neighborhood of Saint-Germain where the Flore is located.To be honest, I had butterflies in my stomach, more than I had expected. Ideally, I should have gone to the Café Bonaparte first and tossed back a few shots of whisky to keep wholly faithful to the story on my computer. But drinking whisky like that would have been nearly suicidal. My kidneys couldn’t process the alcohol. I’d have forced them into working overtime, and in view of my physical condition, put myself at high risk. So I strolled into the Bonaparte and asked for a glass of sparkling water at the bar. I swigged it back in a single shot and asked for another. I shot that one back, too. I looked around to see if my zeal toward the fizzy water had attracted any customer’s attention, but, understandably, the world remained unmoved, continuing its course without a care, without anyone wondering why I did or didn’t drink those glasses of water. I went to the restroom and emptied the urine from the little plastic bag tied to my right leg. I returned to the bar, paid, and left the Bonaparte at a leisurely stride, since I still had twenty minutes before the clock struck twelve noon. I stopped at the window of La Hune bookstore, ten meters away from the Flore, and looked around to see if anyone was following me, but nobody was there. I didn’t want to seem paranoid, so I stopped looking around. But, how silly of me. Who would think I was being paranoid if nobody, not a single person, was watching me?