Enrique Vila-Matas: Because She Never Asked

I turned to glance in La Hune’s window and saw that the books of the writer I most despise in the world were on display. Luckily, they shared space with a magnificent, sizeable reproduction of The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even, the enigmatic double-glass piece by Marcel Duchamp that was painted in oil and divided horizontally into two equal parts with lead wire. At the top of the upper rectangle (the “Bride’s Domain”), I could see the perfectly reproduced gray cloud that was painted by Duchamp. I’ve always heard it’s the Milky Way. The cloud envelops three unpainted squares of glass, whose function (I’ve always heard) is to transmit to “the Bachelors” located at the bottom half of the glass the Bride’s concerns, possibly her orders, her commands. I paid particular attention to what most fascinated and captivated me about this Duchampian glass: those dots peppered around the far right section of the upper panel. Those dots have always been known as the bachelor’s gunshots.

I had nearly reached a point of ecstasy while contemplating the dots, but my vision betrayed me, and the books by the insufferable writer came back into sight. I considered sending him a bachelor’s shot. Was I to entertain the likelihood that Sophie Calle had put those books there just to irritate me? It was highly improbable. Then I thought of the surgery waiting for me when I got back to Barcelona, and of death, and I don’t know why, but I also thought that I could lose everything.

Death led me to reflecting on life. But what life? It was high time, I told myself, that in the chaos of our days, we start asking ourselves what we really mean by life ; what exactly are we talking about when we talk about it? Maybe what we’re always talking about is actually death, after all. Surely we should start trying to qualify the word experience … I, too, have a somewhat distant, rather fuzzy memory of it. Who lives in complete fulfillment? Is anyone truly alive? And come to think of it, what kind of life does life itself live?

I decided to exit the twilight zone into which I’d stumbled and begin speculating on what Sophie might say when we finally saw each other. That’s what really mattered just then. Would she ask me to write a story for her to live, and was I to understand her proposal in the code of farce, as a mere theatrical representation? Or might she be taking it all seriously, and so when she suggested that I bring my writing beyond writing itself, I should hand her a copy of “The Journey of Rita Malú,” whose twelve pages I had folded and placed so carefully in my suit pocket?

As I played it all over in my mind, I realized that I had stopped contemplating the books in the window, or paying attention to what was going on around me, and felt enveloped by a floating cloud. I was slightly startled when someone stepped between the window and me, greeting me in French with a heavy Spanish accent and outstretched hand, politely asking what I was doing there. I’d never seen this young person in my life, with his dark glasses, black suit and tie, and carefully groomed four-day beard. My offbeat sense of humor suddenly came out, and I asked if he was the window decorator. “Because if you are, I have some serious complaints,” I said, letting a little giggle erupt, which made me realize I wasn’t all there. I had been trying to concentrate on my meeting with Sophie Calle, but all these obstacles were getting in my way, from my negative thinking to this guy wearing dark glasses.

“You’ve been following me since the Bonaparte?” I asked to say something, since he was just standing there, completely still, with a strange expression on his face, staring at the little bulge on the inside of my right leg where the small bag of urine was. “Don’t you recognize me?” he asked, peeking again at the tiny protuberance. I swallowed hard. Could it be a drunkard, instead of that “anonymous alcoholic” I’d made up in my story based on my red notebook? “Honestly, you don’t remember me?” he asked again. But suddenly it came to me, I recognized him. The dark glasses had thrown me off a minute. He was a Spaniard who’d been living in the area of Paris for a while, more or less since I started coming back here. He liked to walk around the district, greeting people and politely asking if they remembered him. As long as you said yes, of course I remember you, then he’d leave you alone. But since I had a few minutes to kill before going to the Flore, I decided to respond saying of course I remembered him, but that I forgot what it was he did for a living. He got very serious, pretending to be embarrassed by the question, but clearly the opposite was true, he was delighted to have the chance to respond. He took a deep breath, gratified, and said: “I’m a retired artist and now I wander the world.” Oh perfect, a retired artist. No one had ever portrayed himself to me that way before. I smiled at him. He said: “I used to paint, but nobody seemed to care about what I did. So I got fed up one day and asked myself why I painted, and more importantly, why did it matter to me if anyone cared? So, guess what I did. I retired. And then I went on painting, as if nothing had happened, but only in my imagination. Take this window, for example. To me it’s a still life. There’s a dead crow in it. I don’t think you can see it. There are days when nothing exists outside the world of my imagination. I give you my word as a retired artist.”

His words had far surpassed anything I had expected to hear. But now it was time to get rid of the guy. Sophie Calle took precedence. The retired artist must retire from my sight. “Fine, see you around, I’ll always remember you,” I said. And I slipped away with a lively step, my body slightly inclined and head askew, as if a blustery wind were whooshing me from one side of the Boulevard Saint-Germain to the other, the catheter wild and cavorting from side to side, as I took lengthy strides forward, my hands gripping each other behind my back.

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7

I entered the Flore five minutes early, but Sophie Calle was already there, and she had gotten a good table. I approached her, trying to control my small panic.

“It’s me,” I said with a level of shyness that was out of this world.

As a grand gesture of respect, I asked permission to be seated, and she assented and then smiled at me. I tried to conceal how difficult it was for me to sit down with the catheter. But trying to hide it only made it worse; the clumsy movement jerked my penis, and the pain lasted almost a whole minute. Unaware of my private drama, she told me we would speak in Spanish, as we had done by telephone, since she had spent a year in Mexico and could speak the language well. I curbed my shyness and anxiety by speaking up straightaway. I got started with the apparent espionage and pursuit story that I’d been subjected to just a moment earlier by an anonymous alcoholic, who seemed straight out of the wall novels she was so addicted to: the man and the chase, that is. She wouldn’t have been the person who hired him to do it?

Sophie smiled faintly. She caressed the video camera perched atop the table and got straight to the point, no further ado. I tried to change my position to accommodate my genital equipment and catheter. But I wasn’t able to improve anything. What she wanted to propose, she said, was that I write a story. That I create a character she could bring to life: one whose behavior, for one year, maximum, would be contingent on what I wrote. She wanted to change her life, she was tired of having to determine her own deeds , she preferred that someone else do it for her now; she wanted to let somebody else decide how she was supposed to live.

“In short,” she said, “you write a story and I’ll bring it to life.”