“Does Teresa vote?” I wondered.
“Yes,” he said, but it sounded like he wasn’t sure.
“And Carlos?” I asked, as if I knew all about Carlos.
“Carlos is a Marxist,” Arturo said, picking up one of the volumes of Tolstoy and flipping through it.
“A Marxist,” I repeated. “How long have you known Carlos?” It occurred to me that I didn’t know if there was an active Communist party in Spain.
“Forever,” he said, still looking at the book. “But Carlos votes.”
I don’t know why I was surprised: “Really?”
“Yes, but he votes for the wrong side on purpose,” he explained.
“He votes for the PP,” I exclaimed in disbelief.
“He votes to exacerbate the system’s contradictions,” is what I guessed Arturo said.
“That fucker,” I said in English. Arturo looked up at me. “He votes to make things worse,” I confirmed in Spanish.
“Yes,” he said, and repeated the thing about contradictions as though he’d said it many times that day. “Carlos wants a revolution.”
“What kind of revolution?” I asked, making no effort to contain my disdain.
“Don’t worry about Carlos,” he said, smiling again. “Teresa doesn’t love him.”
“I’m not worried,” I lied. “He should vote for the Socialists,” I said.
“Carlos doesn’t believe in socialism,” Arturo said. “If the Socialists win, we’re having a big party at Rafa’s. If the PP wins, there will be more protests. Maybe riots. Teresa wanted me to tell you, and to say that you should come with us.”
I thought about saying I was busy, but said, “O.K.”
“We’ll pick you up at nine either way,” he said. And, as he stood to leave, “If you’re going to stay in Spain, you should get a phone.” I wondered what he meant by “stay.”
The Socialists won. The American media were furious, claiming the Spanish had been intimidated by terrorism. Outside I heard people cheering. A little before ten the buzzer rang and I went downstairs and Teresa was there. She kissed me on the lips and I felt in love with her. We walked together to the car, where Arturo was waiting. It took us a long time to get beyond the city. Arturo talked to Teresa the whole drive, something about how Pedro Almodóvar had said on TV that the PP was planning a coup, but I might have misunderstood. When we finally arrived at Rafa’s expansive house I asked how Rafa made his money. They laughed. I said I meant how did his family make its money. Teresa said something about banks. And your own family, I asked, tentatively. Arturo said they didn’t make it by writing poetry and we laughed. Then Teresa said she had told me already, didn’t I remember. I hesitated and said yes, I remember now. She might have told me the first night I met her. Or she might have told me at various points and I failed to understand her Spanish. Or she might have been lying about having told me. We went inside.
Beautiful people were there again, a few of whom I recognized from the gallery or Teresa’s apartment. Everything was a little changed, a little charged. For whatever reason I thought again of the photographs of Teresa’s distant family. I didn’t know how to compose my face, if indifference tinged with vague disdain was still the right expression. If I could have smiled Teresa’s inscrutable smile, I would have. One of the paintings was covered with black felt. It didn’t look like a covered painting from the nineteenth century; it looked like contemporary art. People were talking about politics, or everything seemed suddenly political. I overheard conversations about the role of photography now, where “now” meant post — March 11. A “post” was being formed, and the air was alive less with the excitement of a period than with the excitement of periodization. I heard something about how the cell phone, instrumental to organizing the marches, was the dominant political technology of the age. What about Titadine, the form of compressed dynamite used in the attacks, I wanted to say; wasn’t that the dominant technology? I said this to Teresa, who corrected me gently as we poured ourselves drinks: these attacks were “made for TV”; she said the phrase in English.
I meant to pour myself gin, but when I tried it, I discovered it was silver tequila. At seventeen I had made myself violently ill drinking tequila and had never had it again, except to taste it every couple of years to see if it still disgusted me, which it always did. I thought back to that night in Topeka, vomiting for an hour near a bonfire and then sleeping in the bed of a pickup in the middle of the winter. I could smell the campfire and felt cold and a little dizzy. Then I thought of Cyrus trying to wash the taste out of his mouth. Teresa took the drink from me and handed me a fresh one, a vodka tonic, which smelled clean. You don’t want tequila, she said, as though she knew what I was remembering, as though we had known each other for many years. I was becoming almost frightened of her grace and gifts of anticipation; I worried that I would not be able to lie to her, and I worried, not for the first time, that whenever I’d thought I’d successfully lied to her, she had in fact easily seen through me. If I were forced to rely on only the literal truth, she would soon grow tired of me. I thought I would attempt to preempt or slow this situation by naming it, and as we walked out back with our drinks, I said to her in English, “You are the most graceful and protean person I know. The way you handed me the coffee right when I awoke or the way just now you took the tequila from me or,” I paused to think of an example not involving drinks, “the way you can move without apparent transition from your stylish apartment to a protest.”
“The proper names of leaders are distractions from concrete economic modes.”
“Why do you keep speaking to me in English?” she asked, with something like concern.
I ignored the question and went on, “But I’m worried you’re too cool for me, that you’ll realize I’m in fact a fraud. An inelegant fraud. I won’t be able to fool you and you’ll get bored.” As I said this, I thought it would be impossible to hide my pills from her. I had a sudden, involuntary memory of the Ritz.
“All you’re describing,” she said in Spanish, “is the personality of a translator. From apartment to protest, from English to Spanish.” If she had spoken in English, I would have found it a little grand; in Spanish I experienced it as profound. I wondered if she’d weighed the sentence in both languages before selecting the one that would produce the desired effect.
Teresa started to remove her clothes and for a second I thought she had lost her mind. But she had a swimsuit on underneath, and she left her clothes in a little pile and slipped noiselessly into the heated, lighted pool, as if to punctuate the ease with which she could move between media. There were a few other people in the pool, all of them women, all of whom appeared to know Teresa. I found a nearby patio chair and lit a cigarette, reiterating to myself my promise that I would never smoke another cigarette once I left Madrid, but that until then I gave myself permission to smoke without guilt. This little psychological mechanism, as crucial to my smoking as lighter or match, reminded me of Arturo’s comment about staying in Spain. I saw Teresa dive underwater and thought, why wouldn’t I stay? I could make enough money teaching English to keep the same apartment. Maybe Arturo would pay me to work at the gallery in some capacity. Maybe my parents would send me money. Or maybe Teresa would support me. I would write and she would translate and we would walk through El Retiro at dusk. I imagined people visiting from the U.S., imagined their amazement and envy at the life I had made for myself. How long would I stay beyond the fellowship, I wondered. Maybe another year; I would make myself really learn Spanish, which seemed dimly possible now, and I would also begin to translate Teresa’s poems into English. I would publish a book of poems and then a book of translations and I would come home, perhaps with Teresa, as a celebrated author imbued with Iberian mystery. Or would I never go home, except to visit? I finished my drink and went to the bar for another and there was the man who had argued with Abel after my reading, the man who believed the disjunction of my poetry was a radical political gesture.