Enrique Vila-Matas: Because She Never Asked

Finally, a message from Sophie arrived on February 3rd: “My mother wanted to see the sea one last time before she died and we’ve traveled to Cabourg. As to what concerns us, I finally found out why I never received your emails or your story: it all went into my spam box, including poor Rita Malú. I will begin to read your story very soon.”

I remember dreaming that night that Cabourg was the capital of one of the Azore Islands. But the dream was much calmer than the previous ones. As if Sophie’s promise to read my story had a soothing effect on me.

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5

Remember to distrust.

— Stendhal

The next day I went to Girona to present at a conference. Later, I had dinner with some friends, where I outlined a few details of the project I had gotten involved in with Sophie Calle. I had been drinking, and the alcohol had put me on edge. I felt the need to explain everything to them, as if I were writing by proxy, since I couldn’t do it for real. I had to cross my arms and wait for Sophie to decide to make a move. Naturally, I could begin a story or a novel that had nothing to do with Sophie’s scheme, but I was incapable of setting off on a parallel venture.

“I’m paralyzed,” I told them, “because I can’t wish for the death of Sophie’s mother in order to resume work on my novel. I can’t do anything, I can’t even write her an email. Nor can I show polite interest in her mother’s health, since it might seem as though I wished for something critical to happen to her that would allow me to get back to working on the project.”

I ended by invoking the pathetic case of Truman Capote in In Cold Blood : the writer who suffered unspeakably from not being able to finish the book without the execution scene.

When I got back from Girona, I couldn’t stand the inactivity any longer and was overcome by a suicidal urge to press the send key and shoot over to Sophie a beautiful image of the volcanic Island of Pico, which looked vaguely reminiscent of Roberto Rosellini’s movie Stromboli . Something had to happen, anything, if only a slight breeze, I remember saying to myself.

She answered with surprising briskness that same day. The picture she sent frightened me, because it was her elderly mother’s face with a severe look in her eyes, as if she were reproaching my obscene impatience to see her dead.

Sophie had written below the photo: “I’m sending a picture of my mother. It’s the one she picked to decorate her grave, and the epitaph will read: I was getting bored . I’m sending it to you because in a way she’s what’s standing between me and Pico Island. I’ve heard that you’ll be in Paris on the 16th of March. Perhaps we could see each other then.”

In fact, I did have to be at the Salon du Livre in Paris on the 16th of March. But the date was so far away. It seemed way too long to have to wait for another encounter. It seemed to me as if the two of us were doomed to communicate in fits and starts. But what else could I do? The lack of action had me feeling restless, but I couldn’t very well murder Sophie’s mother in order for Sophie to kick into gear and get started with the journey.

In my red notebook, I jotted: “Someone in Paris wants me to reveal the fact that I no longer want to write. And she’s going about it in infinitely perverse ways. I must write about it in order to continue writing.”

A few days later, I dared myself to send Sophie a new email that might break this deadlock, though I tried not to get my hopes up. I wrote:

“All life is a process of breaking down” (Francis Scott Fitzgerald).

I pressed the send key. There was no way back now. It was irreversible. The sentence about breaking down had already traveled to Sophie’s inbox. Minutes later, again with surprising speed, Sophie answered with the photo of a grave that read Don’t expect anything .

I took it very hard. As if that Don’t expect anything was meant for me. I responded immediately, desperate to defend my self-respect. I sent her a quote by Julien Gracq that went: “The writer has nothing to expect from others. Believe me, he writes only for himself!”

Once again, silence fell over our correspondence. A silence that reigned for days. One afternoon at the end of February, I ran into my friend Sergi Pàmies and vented my frustration by conveying the whole story of Sophie Calle and the strange labyrinth of emails in which I had gotten lost. To keep him interested, I absurdly reminded him that just like Sophie, he had been born in Paris. Obviously, there was no need to dwell on such a thing. Sergi listened to me with his customary kindness and curiosity, and after thinking it over a while, insinuated something rather dreadful, something that had already occurred to me, too. He said that perhaps Sophie’s mother wasn’t on her last legs after all, and the point of the game was in the exchange of emails, which Sophie Calle would turn into a wall novel, a study of my ethical behavior during the silent wait for the supposed death of her mother.

“You might just find all the emails you’ve been writing to Sophie reproduced someday in large format on the walls of some museum,” Pàmies told me. “Be careful what you write from now on, because you might be reading it through a magnifying glass in the near future.”

When I described how the relationship between Sophie and me had taken on the structure of a love story (the jealousy of one person not knowing what the other was thinking, which is really what lover’s jealousy has always been about: not knowing what the other is thinking; read Proust to understand it better), Sergi preferred not to wax transcendent and instead mentioned a French song called “Les histoires d’amour,” sung by the Rita Mitsouko Duo. “Love stories generally end badly,” Rita Mitsouko sang.

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6

When I got home later that day, I was surprised to find Sophie’s response to my Julien Gracq quote. This time there was no text, only the tiny photograph of a funerary cross. Irritated by the mute and solitary cross, I decided to banish the image by resending it to Sergi, who had just emailed me the full text of the song by the Rita Mitsouko Duo.

“Sergi, look what that Sophie sent me,” I wrote. But oh, horror of horrors, I hadn’t been paying enough attention and in my haste, I actually resent the message to Sophie herself. It wouldn’t be long before she found out that I had referred to her somewhat disrespectfully as “that Sophie,” and, what’s worse, that I was forwarding her emails to someone named Sergi.

As soon as I realized my mistake, I was mortified.

The days went by in ominous, strict, horrendous silence. Surely, it was all over.

One afternoon, suddenly, when I least expected it, an email arrived: “I hope you didn’t think my plurien meant anything.”

Did this plurien refer to her Don’t expect anything ? Her sentence came accompanied by the image of a road leading into a town called Faux. I understood there was clearly a message here for me: she was calling me a “fake.” And even more obvious, or what seemed to be finally confirmed: it was over between us; I had proved that I was a pig.

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7

I spent several days in a daze, writing down small, ridiculous notes in my red notebook. Crushed. Until one morning, carried away by the alcohol-infused bliss of the previous night, I began telling myself that I had nothing to lose by trying to reconcile with Sophie, so I dared send her an email: “I will be in Paris from the 16th to the 21st of March, at the Hotel de Suède, on Rue Vaneau. Since they don’t always inform their guests of missed telephone calls, I wanted to advise that if you’d like to reach me, it would be best to communicate by fax.”