But they could not reach agreement on other aspects. They were not able to decide whether she acted like Emma and he like Charles, or whether it was both of them who, without meaning to, played Charles’ role. Neither of them wanted to be Charles, nobody ever wants to play Charles’ role even for a brief while.
When there were only fifty pages left, they abandoned the book, trusting, perhaps, that they could find refuge, now, in the stories of Anton Chekhov.
They did terribly with Chekhov, a little better, curiously, with Kafka, but, as they say, the damage was already done. Since their reading of “Tantalia,” the end was imminent and of course they imagined and even starred in scenes in which their ending became sadder, more beautiful, and more unexpected.
It happened with Proust. They had postponed reading Proust, due to the unmentionable secret that linked them, separately, to the reading — or to the lack of reading — of In Search of Lost Time. They both had to pretend that their mutual read was, strictly speaking, a reread they had yearned for, so that when they arrived at one of the numerous passages that seemed particularly memorable they changed their tone of voice or gazed at each other to elicit emotion, simulating the greatest intimacy. Also, Julio, on one occasion, allowed himself to declare that he only now truly felt that he was reading Proust, and Emilia answered with a subtle and disconsolate squeeze of the hand.
Since they were intelligent, they did not slow for the episodes they knew to be famous: the world was moved by this, I will be moved by that. Before starting to read, as a precautionary measure, they had agreed on how hard it was for a reader of In Search of Lost Time to recapitulate the reading experience: it’s one of those books that still seems pending after reading it, said Emilia. It’s one of those books that we will reread forever, said Julio.
They stopped on page 372 of Swann’s Way, specifically the following sentence:
Knowledge of a thing cannot impede it; but at least we have the things we discover, if not in our hands, at least in thought, and there they are at our disposal, which inspires us to the illusory hope of enjoying a kind of dominion over them.
It is possible but would perhaps be abusive to relate this excerpt to the story of Julio and Emilia. It would be abusive, as Proust’s novel is riddled with excerpts like this one. And also because there are pages left, because this story continues.
Or does not continue.
The story of Julio and Emilia continues but does not go on.
It will end some years later, with Emilia’s death; Julio, who does not die, who will not die, who has not died, continues but decides not to go on. The same for Emilia: for now she decides not to go on, but she continues. In a few years she will no longer continue nor go on.
Knowledge of a thing cannot impede it, but there are illusory hopes, and this story, which is becoming a story of illusory hopes, goes on like this:
They both knew that, as they say, the end was already written, the end of them, of the sad young people who read novels together, who wake up with books lost between the blankets, who smoke a lot of marijuana and listen to songs that are not the same ones they separately prefer (of Ella Fitzgerald’s, for example: they are aware that at that age it is still acceptable to have recently discovered Ella Fitzgerald). They both harbor the fantasy of at least finishing Proust, of stretching the cord through seven volumes and for the last word (the word “time”) to also be the last word foreseen between them. Their reading lasts, lamentably, little more than a month, at a pace of ten pages a day. They stopped on page 373, and, from then on, the book stayed open.
III. LOANS
First came Timothy, a rice doll who looked vaguely like an elephant. Anita slept with Timothy, fought with Timothy, fed him and even bathed him before returning him to Emilia a week later. At that time they were both four years old. Every other week the girls’ parents made arrangements for them to get together, and sometimes they spent Saturday and Sunday playing tag, imitating voices, and making up their faces with toothpaste.
Then came the clothes. Emilia liked Anita’s burgundy sweatshirt, Anita asked for her Snoopy T-shirt in return, and so began a solid commerce that grew chaotic over the years. At the age of eight there was the book about origami which Anita returned to her friend somewhat destroyed at the edges. Between ten and twelve they took bimonthly turns to buy the magazine Tú, and they exchanged cassettes of Miguel Bosé, Duran Duran, Álvaro Scaramelli, and the group Nadie.
At fourteen, Emilia kissed Anita on the mouth, and Anita didn’t know how to react. They stopped seeing each other for a few months. At seventeen Emilia kissed her again and this time the kiss was a little longer. Anita laughed and told her that if she did it again, she would slap her.
At the age of seventeen, Emilia enrolled at the Universidad de Chile to study literature, because it had been her lifelong dream. Anita, of course, knew that studying literature was not Emilia’s lifelong dream, but rather a whim directly related to her recent reading of Delmira Augustini. Anita’s dream, on the other hand, was to lose a few kilos, which did not lead her, of course, to study nutrition or physical education. Soon she enrolled in an intensive English course, and continued for some years to study in that intensive English course.
At the age of twenty Emilia and Anita moved in together. Anita had been living alone for six months, since her mother had recently made a relationship official, for which she deserved — that’s what she said to her daughter — the opportunity to start over from scratch. Starting over from scratch meant starting without children and, probably, continuing without children. But in this account Anita’s mother and Anita don’t matter, they are secondary characters. The one who matters is Emilia, who gladly accepted the offer to live with Anita, seduced, in particular, by the possibility of shagging with Julio in the comfort of her own home.
Anita discovered she was pregnant two months before her friend’s relationship with Julio dissolved completely. The father — the one responsible, as was said then — was a student in his last year at the law school of the Universidad Católica, a detail she emphasized, probably because it made her mistake seem more respectable. Although they’d known each other a short time, Anita and the future lawyer decided to marry, and Emilia was the witness for the ceremony. During the party, a friend of the groom tried to kiss Emilia as they danced cumbia, but she evaded his face, claiming she didn’t like that kind of music.
At twenty-six Anita was already the mother of two girls and her husband was torn between the option of buying a station wagon and the vague temptation of having a third child (to close the factory, he said, with an emphasis that tried to be funny, and that maybe was, since people tended to laugh at the comment). That’s how well it went for them.