There are dozens: groups circled around family tables, moments immortalized on the streets of old San Juan with a bottle of beer in her hand, or on the beach in a baseball cap, a seed necklace and a yellow bikini. At the bottom of the box, probably placed there on purpose, is a group in which she appears naked in unmade beds and of close-ups of her face looking at the camera through tender, half-closed eyes. I understand that these are the photos she let other men take of her. I discover, while Javier plays with a robot next to me, that these images never could have been mine, or ours.
“Simone Weil taught philosophy to the railway workers at a night school on rue Falguière.” So said the computerized female voice on my answering machine. Simone Weil? The French philosopher? I remembered nothing about her except that she had been a sort of saint for the left. Is this message a clue about the sex of its sender? For days, I’ve had the feeling that something is changing. I know I might be mistaken, but the vibes I get from this message seem to confirm this transformation. Simone, like the Simone of one of the first messages? Simone Weil? Is this a signature? Who are you? Why are you looking for me?
I find this article tacked up in a bus station on Avenida Ponce de León. It shows the self-demeaning insanity that seems to be part and parcel of this society:
“The separatists, from the most leftist derivatives of communists (there are no communists anymore but their ideas and theories are still around, especially the materialist method of analysis), the nationalists, the anti-American and the pro-American separatists have many differences, but they have one thing in common, they base their separatism on the idea that the Nation is the land, the utopian or ideological idea, and not its people.
“Is it being a Patriot to plant bombs and kill innocent compatriots or the negative and destructive criticism that kills the spirits of people who work, the effect being nearly identical? Is it being a Patriot in the new modality of ecoterrorists with their extremist demands of ‘environmentalism’ without trying to find a balance of benefits or harm to the citizenry and the environment?
“Thinking that Patriotism is just a walk in the park, or criticizing in a negative and destructive way, which are bombs that kill the positivism and creativity of the citizenry, is not being a Patriot, it is being a Patrioteer.”
How could I not fantasize that the person sending me messages is a woman — a woman I could fall in love with — when I’m surrounded by people capable of producing texts such as this? How could I not find hope in this seduction by words? How not dream of an unknown body that is utterly unlike these voices assailing me, voices that have nothing to do with me and nothing to tell me, which will never understand me, until having to share my life with them feels like a form of dying, of having been dying day by day throughout my entire life?
I didn’t notice until today that the article I picked up at the bus station includes a request at the bottom: “Print it Forward it to 20 to photocopy and they forward it to 20 more and they talk about it with 20 more.” How can I be sure that the person sending me the messages is writing exclusively to me? Couldn’t he or she be sending them, like the fanatic who goes around posting his allegations all over the city, to lots of people? Might I not be part of a network of victims, of a spectacle, of a work of art, or of a dirty joke?
I borrowed a CD of Arvo Pärt from Diego and played it in the car on the way to work. After just a few minutes, I came close to turning it off and tuning into the news. The music frightened me. I didn’t know the name of the piece; the CD was a burned copy that only gave the composer’s name. It must have been a requiem because the powerful chorus brought up waves of emotion that had been buried since who knows when.
Listening to it, I pictured my death on Avenida Central between San Patricio and Río Piedras — from the discovery of a cancer (in the pancreas or liver, one of the terrible, silent ones) to the last agony. I was listening to the music and experiencing my hopelessness, the malaise that would make existence intolerable and that would be expressed in my refusal to get treatment. That was the emotion that has been bottled up inside me for years, a swelling agitation that I didn’t know where to direct, which shook me to my core. Thus, between Avenida de Diego and Calle Andalucía, I confronted the banality of my death. The purpose of the music’s beauty was to produce this. Its art was to console those who await defeat.
I got to work still reeling from the impact of the music, and on entering my office I found a new message. The block letters were slanted rightward as usual and again precisely on target: “He knew that only permutation would secure him the truth.” This time the message came on the back of a bibliography; the phrase was written out and numbered one hundred times, as if it were some old school punishment.
I burst into the department office and, under the astonished gazes of the secretaries, left as abruptly as I’d entered. I badgered the people in the neighboring offices and checked my floor of the building to see if I could find anyone suspicious. Nobody knew or had seen anything. I didn’t want to go into details because I didn’t want them asking me what was up. But with my emotions so stirred, I could no longer be passive; I needed clarity. Waiting wasn’t good enough. “He knew that only permutation would secure him the truth.” What did that signify? How could someone fire into the air and hit the bull’s-eye? What truth was I afraid of? Why were the permutations undergone by the messages beginning to alarm me? Who could know me so well as to predict the movements of my mind? I was already old enough and cynical enough to take cabals and mysteries seriously. But how could I have a message waiting for me that expressed what I had experienced when I was sitting in a car driving from one end of Avenida Central to the other while listening to a CD that belonged to someone in Caracas? These messages had never been a joking matter, and for some time now, they’d started to worry me, admit it or not. Nevertheless, fear and fascination live at the same address. I scrutinized the faces of the people I crossed paths more closely than ever. Any one of them might be the person stalking me.
There was a singer-songwriter, as I now recall, who began by writing melodies that others made famous and then, years later, ventured to record his own album. It was a hit, leading him to face an audience for the first time. He wasn’t a great performer, but he became one of the indisputably important figures of his time.
Ever since I heard his story, I’ve been struck by the steps he took, his halting, measured introduction of himself to other people. Now, I’m relating this to the person sending me these messages, though perhaps the story has more to do with me and my relationships with others. I’ve spent my life carefully measuring out my ties with my fellow man, as if full, direct, and immediate contact would be too much. How many things have taken me too long because of my hesitation and throat clearing? Then again, how long have I taken to get out of certain matters and relationships? My life has passed by while I’ve kept strangers at a prudent distance. I’ve seen them as invaders; that is why I’ve been a pair of watching eyes more than anything, the man who observes, keeping the possibility open of just walking on by. I’ve been like that singer-songwriter who introduced himself to his audience one step at a time.
I’ve sensed the pain in this room, grief gathered over years, generation upon generation, between these four walls. All afternoon here in this room, I’ve felt its eternity, convinced to a certainty that when I am gone my grief will live on, who knows how long, who knows for whom.