On my subsequent visits to Barcelona, I compared notes with Enrique's other friends. No one had noticed any significant change in him; he hadn't given sketched maps or sealed packets to anyone else. Concerning one aspect of his life, however, the information was contradictory or incomplete: his work for Questions Answers. Some said that his association with the magazine had come to an end long ago. According to others, he had been a regular contributor right up to his death.
One afternoon when I had nothing to do, after sorting out a few things in Barcelona, I went to the office of Questions Answers. The editor received me. Had I been expecting a shady character, I would have been disappointed. He could have been an insurance salesman, pretty much like any magazine editor. I told him Enrique Martin was dead. He didn't know, said he was sorry to hear it, and waited. I asked if Enrique had been a regular contributor to the magazine and, as I expected, he replied in the negative. I mentioned the International Science Fiction Writers' Conference, which had been held recently in Madrid. He told me that his magazine had not sent anyone to cover the event. Fiction, he explained, was not their domain; they were investigative journalists. Although personally, he added, he was a science fiction fan. So Enrique went on his own account, I thought aloud. He must have, said the editor, in any case he wasn't working for us.
Before everyone forgot about Enrique, before his friends grew accustomed to his definitive absence, I got his ex-wife and ex-employee's phone number and called her. She didn't remember me at first.
"It's me," I said, "Arturo Belano. I went to your apartment five times; I was living with a Mexican woman."
"Ah yes," she said.
Then there was a silence and I thought there was a problem with the line. But she was still there.
"I called to say how sorry I was to hear what happened."
"Enrique went to your book launch."
"I know, I know."
"He wanted to see you."
"We did see each other."
"I don't know why he wanted to see you."
"I'd like to know too."
"Well it's too late now, isn't it?" 1 guess so.
We talked for a while more, about her nerves, I think, and the state she was in, then I ran out of coins (I was calling from Girona) and we got cut off.
A few months later I left the house. I took the dog with me. I gave the cats to some neighbors. The night before leaving I opened the package that Enrique had given me to look after. I thought I'd find numbers and maps, maybe some sign that would explain his death. There were fifty A4 sheets, neatly bound. There were no maps or coded messages on any of them, just poems, mainly in the style of Miguel Hernбndez, but there were also some imitations of Leуn Felipe, Blas de Otero, and Gabriel Celaya. That night I couldn't get to sleep. My turn to flee had come.
A LITERARY ADVENTURE
B writes a book in which he makes fun of certain writers, variously disguised, or, to be more precise, certain types of writers. In one of his stories there is a character not unlike A, a writer of about B's age, but who, unlike B, is famous, well-off, and has a large readership, in other words he has achieved the three highest goals (in that order) to which a man of letters can aspire. B is not famous, he has no money, and his poems are published in little magazines. Yet A and B are not entirely dissimilar. They both come from lower-middle-class or upwardly mobile working-class families. Politically, both are left wing; they have in common a keen intellectual curiosity and a deficient formal education. With A's meteoric rise, however, a sanctimonious tone has crept into his writing, and B, who is a slave to print, finds this particularly irritating. In his newspaper articles and with increasing frequency in his books, A has taken to pontificating on all things great and small, human or divine, with a leaden pedantry, like a man who, having used literature as a ladder to social status and respectability, and now ensconced in his nouveau riche ivory tower, snipes at anything that might tarnish the mirror in which he contemplates himself and the world. For B, in short, A has become a prig.
B, as I said, writes a book, and in one of the chapters he makes fun of A. The portrait is not especially cruel (and it is confined to one chapter of a sizeable volume). He creates a character, Alvaro Medina Mena, a successful writer, who happens to express the same opinions as A. The contexts are transposed: where A rails against pornography, Medina Mena attacks violence; where A criticizes the commercialism of contemporary art, Medina Mena marshals his arguments against pornography. The story of Medina Mena doesn't stand out from the others in the book, most of which are better (in terms of composition though perhaps no better written). B's book is published — it is the first time he has been taken on by a major publishing house — and reviews begin to appear. Very slowly at first. Then, in one of the country's leading newspapers, A publishes a review positively glowing with enthusiasm, which convinces the remaining critics and turns B's book into a minor best-seller. Naturally, B feels uncomfortable. Initially, at least. Then, as is often the way, it strikes him as natural (or at least logical) that A should praise his book; after all, it is an interesting book in various ways, and A is not a bad critic, after all.
But two months later, in an interview published in another (less prestigious) newspaper, A mentions B's book again, in extremely laudatory terms, wholeheartedly giving it his stamp of approvaclass="underline" "an untarnished mirror." There is something about A's tone, however, that makes B wary, as if there were a message to be read between the lines, as if the famous writer were saying to him, Don't think you've fooled me; I know you put me in your book; I know you made fun of me. He's praising my book to the skies, thinks B, so he can let it plummet back to earth later on. Or he's praising my book to make sure no one will identify him with Medina Mena. Or he hasn't even realized, and it was a case of genuine appreciation, a simple meeting of minds. None of these possibilities seems to bode well. B doesn't believe that minds can meet in a simple (or innocent) way and he resolves to do all he can to meet A in person. Deep down he knows that A has recognized himself in Medina Mena. He is at least reasonably sure that A has read his book in its entirety with due attention. So why would he be talking about it like this? Why praise a book that makes fun of you? (By now B is beginning to think that the caricature was not only exaggerated but also perhaps a little unfair.) He can't figure it out. The only half-plausible explanation is that A hasn't, in fact, identified himself, which, given his advancing cretinism, might just be the case. (B reads his articles systematically; he has read every one since the glowing review, and some mornings he longs to plant his fist in As increasingly prudish face, oozing self-assurance and righteous anger, as if he thought he were the reincarnation of Unamuno or something.)
So B does everything he can to meet A face-to-face, but does not succeed. They live in different cities. A travels a good deal and B can't be sure of finding him at home. His telephone is almost always busy or the answering machine is on, in which case B hangs up immediately because he is terrified of answering machines.