Felipe Alfau - Chromos

Outside he felt calm once more and walked fast away without one look back at her. His next step was foreordained. He was now committed to this, and there followed the days, long and dreary days, like a tunnel, but with the far light of hope at the end, days of debating with himself before buildings whether to go in and make inquiries from the concern whose name he had seen in the directory.

From the beginning he had suspected the great difficulty of attaining his desire, but now he began to see that this was a formidable task and then the fear that he might not find her and trying to assuage it by repeating to himself that he was bound to find her duplicate somewhere, that the manufacturer must have turned out many alike. But would they be exactly alike? And if they were, if there were so many twin sisters, how could he bear not to have them all? One must be calm and resigned. No love is perfect. It wants to possess completely, leaving nothing for those who have not been made deserving by it. But this can never be, and much less in a love as absurd and doomed to imperfection as the one he now realized would eventually destroy him.

One after another he went into buildings without finding her and endured discussions and persuasion to accept a substitute, an insulting suggestion of disloyalty, an invitation to abominable betrayal. He endured the humiliation of jeering remarks from persistent dealers, disappointed in their hopes for closing a deal, the accusations of not really wanting to buy, the adhesive tenacity rising and then flaring into inquisitorial high pressure, the fear, mind-obscuring fear, of being found out, trapped in the end, and the ultimate total disgrace. He felt that he was living in danger, risking the most vulnerable part of his being.

And at last he found her.

How he lived through the moments of that transaction will always be a monument to self-control. It was not the deal itself. Compared to what had gone before and his gradual adaptation to his quest, this was easy. It was conducting it in her presence, the imagined disdainful mockery of her countenance congealing through imagination into a visual fact, fluctuating in and out of his consciousness like the pulse of a life all her own and like no other’s.

The fellow was ease and accommodation personified. He did not show any particular interest in his reasons for wanting her and he would deliver anywhere he wanted that same day. Her clothes were another thing. He would furnish a complete outfit: underwear, shoes, stockings, dress and hat, but of course, that was extra. He did not supply those as a rule and only had them for display purposes, but he could let him have those for an additional consideration. He did not ask the obvious and feared question of why he wanted the clothes if his purpose was to display those of his own shop. He was only interested in making a sale.

When he left, he felt as if all his organs had come loose and were bounding inside of him, colliding among themselves and against the shell of his body. He felt tears gathering in his eyes, the flesh quivering over his skull. He took the subway back home and found the station quite deserted at that hour of the day and, walking to the far end, he waited for the train while his whole frame was shaken brutally by sobs.

When he arrived home, he had the foolish idea of fixing the place up for her arrival and then decided that it could never make any difference to her. It was only for his love that she was coming and nothing else mattered. With her he could be himself, completely, unabashedly himself as no one ever could be with another human being. No matter how intimate we may be with a real lover, there is always a last recess that is closely guarded, and even as the intimacy grows, the recess also grows stronger by the importance which this intimacy lends to that person’s opinions of us. If we sometimes open that recess to a chance acquaintance, it is because we feel protected by an anonymity which makes a vaster recess out of the rest of us.

Being able to exercise this self-criticism diminished his fear for his sanity. He thought of going out again to kill time, but the deliveryman might arrive in the meanwhile and he wanted to be there to receive him and make things as quiet as possible lest the neighbors might notice. He was in danger of discovery, when everything he had built would come tumbling down to bury him in disgrace. He noticed a well-known fear creeping up and was filled with sadness and remorse. He thought of abandoning the whole adventure, sending the deliveryman back, but the memory of her set his body on fire and in panic he succumbed to his destiny.

He sat and smoked cigarettes, but he was too tense to sit still and do nothing. In the end he began to fix the place up and do innumerable little things which did not require any concentration of the attention he was incapable of giving but rather distracted it.

Then the bell rang and he was outside his door and heard his name called and the man ascending the stairs laboriously with the great package. He went down and met the man halfway and helped him carefully, gently, to avoid unnecessary noise and because of the nature of the contents.

Up in his room he paid the balance and a good tip, and once alone, turned to his bed where the long bundle had been laid. Patiently at first and then furiously, cutting cord with kitchen knife, he undid the heavy wrapping, endeavoring not to look at her face until he could do so undisturbed. With anticipation already at the flood level, he stuffed all the paper and cord away, made certain that his door was locked, pulled down the window shades and then, with fumbling, trembling hands, shaking from head to foot with desire, he began to undress her.

That was one of two converging ways. The other way was more forthright. The other way was like this:

He had met her while working as a helper for a window dresser in a department store. There he had met her among others in the storeroom and there all his will to resist, strengthened by fear of fateful premonitions, had been brought down to its knees in helpless surrender.

He always managed to get hold of her first if they were using her, but one night — that was the time when they dressed the windows — another fellow beat him to it. He screamed at him not to do that. It was a howl torn from him before he had time to stop it. The fellow inquired what the matter was and he explained that he had thought he was dropping her, and the fellow answered that screaming like that had nearly made him drop her and then, with gross mockery, he asked another helper whether this chap was one of those.

That time he was sure he had given himself away and, after a surge of panic, the realization that the game was up made him feel remarkably calm. She was not appearing in this particular show, and when the others began marching along the corridor that led to the stairs up to the main floor, he lagged behind without even bothering to act up an excuse. Then he wrapped her carelessly in a large piece of canvas and rushed along the same corridor in the opposite direction. Then a door that opened on a short flight of stairs and he was on the street.

The street was empty at that hour but even so he walked cautiously, without undue haste. He met no one, however, until he realized that he had no clothes on and then he began to notice an occasional stroller, but it was dark and by holding her between him and the other person, his nakedness would not be noticed. After thus walking for a while, he used some of the canvas wrapping and held it around himself, holding her with his other arm. She was a precious burden and his love made her feel light. Being thus close to her under the same cover was a delightful foretaste of greater, immeasurable happiness to come. This made him quicken his step. He wanted to reach home soon and he did not want to be long exposed to detection. His lack of clothes might be noticed. He might be suspected, his crime discovered.