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Herundina smiles.
“So. .?”
“So what?”
“So what? Oh, nothing. I thought you were going to say something.”
“Not me.”
“Where would you like to go?”
“Beats me.”
“Want to go for a drink?”
“A drink?”
“No, not if you don’t want one.”
“No, no. A drink would be just fine.”
“No, not unless you want one. It’s up to you.”
“I can’t think of anyplace to go.”
“I certainly can’t. It was you who didn’t want to go out dancing with the others.”
“Did you want to go?”
“No. I don’t care one way or the other. But I thought you had another place in mind.”
“Like where?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, neither do I.”
“Want to go for a walk?”
As soon as he says it, he sees that it’s a ridiculous proposition. He doesn’t know how to behave. Suddenly he feels entirely unschooled in the art of flirting. He feels as if he had amnesia, as if he were an adolescent again. Worse, because at least as an adolescent he had desire, which egged him on, even though his cheeks always got red and gave him away. What does one do with a woman? Chat her up? If only one could chat without saying anything. . Or if one could only come up with a fake language, made up of exotic sounds, and say: “Babatoo infrechemina, sadafa nogra ptsu allirà?” And if only she, to all that, were capable of responding, “Troc atodrefa mimenyac!. .”
He doesn’t know how to behave. Should he start kissing her right off and, if she resists, force her right then and there? He seems to remember it doesn’t quite go like that. They’ve been in the taxi for quite a while. They haven’t decided where to go, and the driver is showing signs of impatience. Heribert says the first thing that comes into his head:
“Drive straight ahead.”
The taxi drives up the avenue. Heribert wonders what to do. Stick his hand under her skirt, right now? Kiss her first? Talk to her about things that will seduce her? How contrived! It all seems hypocritical. In truth, he is so certain (from the way she’s looking at him; from the way she agreed not to go dancing with Hilari and Hilda; from the way she’s putting up with him, boring as he is; because he can feel it on the surface of his skin) that she likes him as much as he likes her (and realizing this is even more disconcerting) that it all makes him feel even more inhibited.
“You’re awfully quiet. Am I boring you?”
He’s caught in a bind. To say yes is a lie, and to say no seems ridiculous. The dilemma forces him to choose the middle road: he looks deeply into her eyes, as if he were so much in love that her question was absurd and not deserving of a response. When he can no longer maintain her gaze without betraying its emptiness, he kisses her on the cheek imagining that the girl must consider this style of courting to be senile. How old is this girl? Eighteen, at the most? As long as he doesn’t become very aroused, it will be fine. If he manages to look at her coldly, dispassionately, as if contemplating a particularly beautiful porcelain dish, he’ll get by. Maybe he should ask what she does. Is she a student? Does she live alone? Does she live with her parents? These are the things one is supposed to ask.
“Are you a student?”
“Yes. Interior design. Did you know that your paintings are perfect for filling up a sparsely furnished space?”
“Oh.”
Now what should he do next? He thinks they’ve gone quite far up the avenue. He tells the driver:
“Turn right at the next corner, and keep driving straight ahead.”
He looks at the girl again. She studies interior design.
“Do you work? I mean, do you have a job somewhere as a decorator?”
“Yes, with my father. My father is an interior decorator. Don’t you remember? My father: Hannah’s father.”
“Oh. Of course.”
He has absolutely no recollection of what Hannah’s father did for a living.
“Do you live with your parents?”
“No, I live with my mother. My parents are divorced and now I live with Mom. I see Dad in the studio whenever I go to work there.”
How do eighteen- and twenty-year-olds behave nowadays? Do they have the same attacks of shyness that he had, fifteen years ago? The taxi is still driving straight ahead; if he keeps going much farther they’ll end up right in the water.
“Listen,” the driver says, “if I keep going straight we’ll end up right in the water.”
Heribert tells him to turn right, and go down the avenue. He suddenly feels very tired. He decides to wrap things up: he asks Herundina for her phone number. She gives it to him, in exchange for his. He promises to phone her.
“Please do. I’d like very much to see what you’re painting now.”
He leaves her at the door to her mother’s house. What must she look like now? He remembers her from a few years back when he picked Hannah up at home. Every so often while he was in bed with the daughter he would fantasize about the mother.
Then the taxi starts up and takes him home. Heribert pays the driver, who has a sympathetic look on his face, for which Heribert gives him an excessive tip, so that he will realize that if either of them should feel sympathy for the other, it is he for the driver. At home, in the bedroom, he hears the door as he’s undressing. Helena. He hurriedly shuts off the light, gets into bed, and pretends to be asleep.
Heribert looks at the new, totally blank, canvas he’s placed on the easel. He’s put the paint, brushes, and solvents on a small table. He runs his hand over his cheek. What if, really and truly, he cannot paint another stroke, never again? In his current state of mind, even to entertain a doubt about it seems a sign of valor. This gives him confidence. But when he touches the canvas with the charcoal pencil, he doesn’t know what to draw. Downstairs the phone rings twice. Helena picks it up. He hears her speak: it is such a distant whisper that he wouldn’t be at all surprised if he had to take a train, a subway, and a bus to get downstairs.
To break the spell, all he has to do is yawn. When he was a child he would endow some gesture with an shamanic power, so that he would get what he was wishing for if he carried out the ritual, like tracing three circles over his belly before going into the classroom where he had to take an exam. He yawns halfheartedly.
Helena calls out to him.
“I’m going shopping. I’ll be back later.”
I’ll be back “later”? One is always back “later” when one goes out. Later than what, then? Wouldn’t it make more sense to have said, “I’ll be right back?” Of course she will buy something so as not to come back empty-handed, but what he’s sure about is that she’s not “going shopping.”
He hears the front door close. He quickly puts on his jacket and coat, leaves the brushes dirty and the paints uncovered, and goes down the stairs.
Once in the street, he’s taken aback: he doesn’t see her anywhere. Then he spots her off in the distance: one very blond head among all the others. He picks up the pace. He runs until she’s a reasonable distance ahead. Then he thinks that that distance isn’t, in fact, very reasonable. He slows down. He thinks: “Now I’ll find out who her lover is. Now this is something I find interesting.” But in his heart of hearts he realizes that it doesn’t really interest him all that much, and he’s sorry. In truth, he doesn’t really care if he never learns what the guy who’s going out with Helena looks like, how he dresses, whether or not he’s a nice guy. Helena turns a corner. Heribert follows her.