S.W.? Southwest? Some stranger’s initials or the enigmatic Simone Weil once more? Pointcaré? I didn’t recognize the street name, which sounded made-up, or maybe it was another hint. I had a vague memory of an art movement called point carré, but where? In France, Belgium, Switzerland?
I had to rifle through drawers and cabinets to find a map and scrutinize the metropolitan area. There were too many streets and the font was too small. I looked at the index and was surprised to find the street name from the note. It was near Avenida de Diego.
“Grandma’s Attic.” Was it a store? I had been in the area and knew it was mainly residential. There were office buildings, but I couldn’t recall any shops other than restaurants.
I got into my car and was soon in El Condado. I decided to park and scope out the street on foot. There were houses and small apartment buildings. I walked past the street where the Alliance Française sits at the far end.
A bit farther along, I found an old wooden house with a tin roof. Over the door, a crudely lettered sign bore two words, in English: Grandma’s Attic. The balcony was crammed with junk and old furniture. It was an antique store.
After crossing the threshold, I had to wait a few seconds for my eyes to adapt to the darkness. I discovered a series of rooms packed with all sorts of objects: furniture, dishes, crystal and ceramic knickknacks, musical instruments, table linens, picture frames. Behind a desk, a fat woman was talking on the phone in a blend of Spanish and English. She was obviously from the United States. As I walked by her, in the back of the store, I looked at her so inquiringly that she had to say hello.
I stayed in Grandma’s Attic for about an hour, staring like an imbecile at trays full of silver spoons; old posters for festivals and conferences at the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture or the Interamerican University; souvenirs of Venice, Buenos Aires, or Washington; broken cameras; outdated maps; dozens of chairs with no seats hanging from the walls and the ceiling. I lost hope of finding a message in that welter of objects, the wreckage of lives that had nothing to do with my own.
One of the back rooms held books. I was led there by my love of reading and a sense that I had been wasting my time, but I could tell at a glance that hardly any of the books would be worthwhile. They were a mix of hardcover bestsellers from the United States, old encyclopedias that might have helped with someone’s homework a couple of generations ago, a few classics that had undoubtedly passed through the hands of terrible teenage readers who had underlined whole pages and written their nicknames throughout the books, and Time Life manuals for plumbing or electrical wiring. Among these volumes that held no interest for me, I recognized the standard paperback binding of the French Livre de Poche series. There were two titles: a novel set in Italy by a woman whose name I did not recognize and a history of World War I. Both were practically ruined by the damp weather, the paper so deeply yellowed that the print was barely legible.
I was putting them back when my eye was drawn to the next shelf down, a hardcover book in English that had definitely not been on the bestseller list from ten or fifteen years ago. A translation of the biography of Simone Weil by Gabriella Fiori, it was also the only book I’d seen worth buying. Someone had read it, because several pages were marked up with neatly drawn lines, arrows, and asterisks. Some of the margins also had notes in a miniscule but equally careful hand. At the center of the book there was, as in most biographies, a photograph section printed on thick glossy paper. I looked through the photos one by one until I came across the image of Simone Weil with a cigarette in her hand sitting next to a man at a sidewalk café table. I was about to turn the page when I felt something: a note, taped to the back of the page. You could tell it hadn’t been there long; the tape hadn’t yellowed. Just above the center, written in a hand that I had seen for the first time just a couple of hours before, which I now realized was the same one in which all the marginal notes were written, were three short words: “You made it.”
I closed the book, incapable of rereading the terse phrase, afraid that, if I were being watched, I would give away my discomposure. I wanted to phone someone right away, but Diego was traveling, and it was impossible to bring up the subject with Julia. I wished I could have something sure to hold onto and calm me down, some thought that would seem halfway appropriate, given the circumstances. The book was no secret, holding it in my hands was no cause for regret or shame, but for those moments I felt as if its touch burned.
I took it up to the desk where the woman sat. After glancing at it indifferently, she told me the price: three dollars. It was a bargain. Then she asked in English if I wanted anything else. I replied in Spanish, asking who had brought the book there. She didn’t understand what I meant, even though she got all the words.
— Who brought you this book? I asked, switching to English.
— This book, she said, looking at it as if she might find a clue to the answer on the cover. Who knows! Lots of people bring in stuff. Some woman.
— ¿Cuándo? I asked.
— A few times. She also buys stuff.
— ¿Cuándo lo trajo? I asked again. When she gave you the book?
— Maybe a week ago. Give or take.
— You know her? You have her name? You keep a receipt? I am sorry, but it is important.
She must have thought I looked sufficiently decent, and the cardboard box with the receipts was sitting on the desk in front of her.
— Vamos a ver, she said, putting on her glasses. She peered over them at me, as if she were still trying to decide whether to give me the information. Then she flipped through slips of paper until she stopped.
— Aquí está. There she is. Simone Weil.
— Ese es el título del libro, I said.
— No, that’s her name, said the woman.
— You’re wrong. Look, it is the title, I said, jabbing my finger at the cover.
— No, it’s her name. I don’t write down the book titles. They don’t matter to me. Just how many. See, three books. Tres libros. I remember now that she also brought two little French paperbacks. Aquí está también su firma, her signature, here. She writes very clearly: Simone Weil.
The woman showed me the receipt. She had signed it in the same handwriting used in the notes and the message from that morning. It had the precision of typewriting. She had brought three books, had gotten five dollars for them, had signed to leave a record of the agreement and for me to find her traces.
— I wonder why she didn’t sign her real name, said the woman.
I, too, was wondering. Who was behind this game? At least now I knew it was a woman who had been writing to me for weeks in crude block letters that tilted toward the bottom of the paper, a handwriting she probably used only for that purpose, and that beginning today she was inscribing each word with the exactitude of a draftsman.
As soon as I got home, I opened Fiori’s book and examined the marked-up pages. If they were somehow supposed to be messages addressed to me, I didn’t understand anything. On page 64, however, a line and a half were underlined, and a tiny arrow pointed to a note: “Simone Weil was teaching philosophy to the railway workers at a night school on rue Falguière.”
Could there still be any doubt? There has long since ceased to be any chance that this is a coincidence, a sick joke, or a hallucination. A woman is after me, but I don’t know why, or who she is, or what she hopes to accomplish. A kind of fatalism makes me think I should expect the worst, but the situation starts to worry me when I admit to myself that I’ve willingly participated in this game of mirrors from the beginning; that Simone (can I really call her that now?), weaving her spider’s web, has made me see that I haven’t, in my whole life, done anything else; that this isn’t the first time I’ve fallen in love with a faceless mask.