“Come in,” he said, giving in to the interruption, relieved deep down, resigned, the thick charcoal with its creamy tip still in his hand, held close to the surface of the paper.
Ignacio Abel burst into the stillness of his room, bringing with him the rush of the street, the busy life, as if he’d let in a cold current through the door. With a glance that Moreno Villa noticed, he quickly formed an impression of the messy room, a combination of painter’s studio, scholar’s library, and old-bachelor’s den, canvases stacked against the walls and sketches upon sketches in disordered piles on the floor, paint-smudged rags, postcards pinned haphazardly on the walls. Ignacio Abel’s suit with its wide trousers and double-breasted jacket, his silk tie, shined shoes, and good wristwatch, made him conscious of the penury of his own appearance in the stained smock and flannel slippers he put on to paint. It comforted Moreno Villa, however, who’d spent perhaps too much of his life with younger people, that Ignacio Abel was almost his age, and even more that he didn’t attempt to feign youth. But he knew him only superficially: the architect also belonged to that other world, the world of people with careers and projects, those capable of acting with a pragmatism he’d never possessed.
“You were working and I’ve interrupted you.”
“Don’t worry, Abel my friend, I’ve been alone all afternoon. I was actually in the mood to talk to someone.”
“I’ll bother you only for a few minutes.”
He looked at his watch as if measuring the exact amount of time he had left. He spread papers on the table, from which Moreno Villa removed the fruit bowl that Abel had glanced at, intrigued, followed by another glance at the almost blank canvas, where the only result of several lazy hours of contemplation were a few lines in charcoal. An active man who consulted an appointment book and made phone calls, drove a car, worked ten hours a day on the construction of University City, and recently had completed a municipal food market and a public school. He asked for details: how long his lecture was to be, what kind of slide projector would be available, how many posters had been printed, how many invitations sent out. Moreno Villa observed him as if from his shore of slower time, improvising answers to things he didn’t know or hadn’t thought about. To come as far as he had from such an unpromising background, Ignacio Abel needed exceptional determination, a moral and physical energy that was evident in his gestures and perhaps in his somewhat excessive cordiality, as if at each moment, and with each person, he were calibrating the practical importance of being agreeable. Perhaps he, Moreno Villa, never had to make too much of an effort, thus his overall apathy toward things, his inability to set his mind to one thing, his tendency to give up so easily. He had the reluctance of an heir to a limited position but one that allows him to live with no effort other than not aspiring to too much, accommodating to the soporific inertia and lethargy of the Spanish provincial middle class. He looked at Ignacio Abel’s gold watch, his shirt cuffs, the cap of his fountain pen visible in the breast pocket next to the tip of a white handkerchief with embroidered initials. He’d married well, he recalled someone saying in those Madrid circles where everything was known; he’d married an older woman, the daughter of someone influential. Here in the stillness of Moreno Villa’s room, he seemed out of place, his energy intact after so many hours at the office, a day full of phone calls and paperwork, decision after decision, executed by his construction crew at the other end of the city.
I can easily imagine the two men talking, and listen to their calm voices as the afternoon sun slowly leaves the room and disappears behind the roofs of the city. They are not exactly friends, because neither one is particularly sociable, yet they are united by a vague familiarity, by a common air of decorum, though Ignacio Abel is younger, of course. They use the formal usted with each other, which is a relief to Moreno Villa now that almost everyone calls him Pepe or even Pepito, reinforcing the suspicion that he’s lost his youth without gaining respect. He keeps comparing — he can’t help it — his rumpled, stained clothing to Abel’s suit; the tense, erect posture the other maintains in the upright chair as he spreads drawings and photos on the table to his own, old man’s carelessness in the easy chair that belonged to his father; his two more or less borrowed rooms to Ignacio Abel’s apartment in a new building in the Salamanca district, this father of two children whose work gives him a solid, undeniable place in the world.
“And what will you do when University City is finished?”
Ignacio Abel, disconcerted by the question, took a moment to answer.
“The truth is, I don’t think about it. I know there’s a deadline, and I want that date to come, but at the same time I don’t really believe it.”
“The political situation doesn’t seem very reassuring.”
“I prefer not to think about that either. Of course there’ll be delays, I have no illusions about it, no matter how many guarantees Dr. Negrín gives me. All construction sites have delays. Nothing turns out the way it was planned. You know what you’re going to paint in that picture, but uncertainty is much greater in my work. Each time there’s a change of minister or a construction strike, everything stops, and then it’s even more difficult to get started again.”
“You have plans and models of your buildings. I don’t know how this picture will turn out, or whether I’ll paint it at all.”
“The model doesn’t serve as your guide? It’s calming to look at the fruit you have before you, the glass bowl.”