What about this is real? Here I am, looking at a book, reading and rereading every passage underlined by a woman whom I do not know yet am desperate to find. How is doing this different from the way I admire the façades of buildings I never enter or stare at women I find attractive, imagining their life stories? In the end it’s just me, my mind, my legs, my car. I have such a capacity for traveling and gazing, for roaming the world weightlessly and leaving traces that fade and disappear. I think for a moment I could be different, and I have to hold tight to this possibility even if I’m wrong.
I’ve written an e-mail to Diego telling him what happened to me. He is as intelligent as he is insensitive. Just one line on the computer screen, not even hello or good-bye or anything: “‘A man can’t be angry at his own era without suffering some damage,’ Robert Musil.”
At first it bothered me. I felt this was no time to cite literature, though I had to admit his choice of a quotation was almost as good as Simone’s. I mulled over my dissatisfaction for half the morning before concluding that Diego, in his own way, was playing the same game. This ability not to take ourselves seriously was what had drawn us together from the time we met, and now, it served to put things in perspective for me. In the end I was grateful to him. Maybe I had shown the messages too much respect. More than likely, I was taking the whole thing too seriously.
Even so, half an hour later, I was back at Grandma’s Attic. When I went up to her desk, I could tell that the owner was watching me with concern.
— She hasn’t come, she said before I could ask anything.
— That doesn’t matter. But when she does come in, give her this.
— Should I say anything else?
— No hace falta. Just give her the envelope.
— Are you guys in love?
— Sí, mucho, I answered.
Even before I turned thirty, I knew that what I most wanted was to put my life into a book. I suffered so I could write my suffering. That way life had direction; that way alone it was worth squeezing life to the last drop, here or anywhere else. This set me apart from almost everyone. But I didn’t mind because I was discovering and rediscovering who I was, and I asked for nothing else. The shadow that had crisscrossed the city for years and years wasn’t a man passing through a transitory bad phase he’d get over someday. No, not even close, though I had always assumed this was true. I had been waiting for a change, a trip, a new job, or even exile. Without realizing it, I had already found my place. This was what I should be, this man I so despised was the person I wanted to resemble.
More than two weeks went by without any news, but this silence was different. The search had taken on a different tone since I had given the envelope to the owner of Grandma’s Attic and since I had announced with breathtaking certainty that I loved a woman I didn’t know. It was obviously a huge risk to take, but I knew that avoiding risks and being sensible is sometimes the craziest thing you can do.
Inside the envelope I’d copied the phrase that Rodrigo de Figueroa wrote on the map of San Juan Islet, drawn on his orders in 1509 when they were considering transferring the capital from Caparra, “Here shall the city be,” repeating the phrase below with a short addition: “If you wish, here shall the city be, without question.” Later on, doubts and questions would assail me, but at the time, it was the most honest declaration of love I had ever made. The messages I had received deserved an answer. One of the most apt images of a love story is the streets of the city that gave birth to and in time may witness the death of that love.
The Chinese restaurant on Avenida Muñoz Rivera had a sign posted next to the cash register: “Try our delicious flan! We have ice cream!” The sign didn’t look any more Chinese than the Dominican woman who almost always took the orders. A little after the regular dinnertime, I would sit, once or twice a week, at one of the tables in the nearly empty dining room, and if I didn’t open my notebook to jot something down, I would sit looking through the service window into the kitchen, watching the hustle and bustle of the cooks, in their case authentically Chinese. Sometimes women were back there, or maybe a little girl learning to count in Spanish (“¡Uno, dos, tres, cinco!”), members of what was probably an extended family that lived somewhere in the building.
Only rarely did anyone enter the place at that hour, maybe a couple of policemen or a friend of the Dominican woman, who would while away the time by standing at the long mirrored wall and popping her pimples. The food was awful and more than once I spotted insects crawling on the counter. Even so, I kept coming back. When I was there, out of the house, far from everything, even from myself, I was at peace, and feeling at home in such a dreary atmosphere was also a way of transcending it.
One night, after eating a plate of fried rice, I opened the Simone Weil biography I had bought in Grandma’s Attic. I sat reading it for nearly an hour, and the Chinese cooks started giving me distrusting looks. It was unusual for someone to stay there that long.
The restaurant was connected to a sushi bar that I had never gone into. Both must have had the same owner, who was thus able to offer menus for every pocketbook. A waitress came in through the door connecting the two places and asked the Dominican woman to make change. I realized that they were looking at me, that the waitress was staring at my things: the notes, the book. Soon afterward she came back in, but then they called her from the other restaurant. Later she entered for a third time, and this time she went straight to my table. I knew she was approaching me, but I waited until her black-stockinged legs stood planted in front of me before I lifted my eyes from the book.
— Do you like Simone Weil? she asked.
Coming from an unknown waitress in that restaurant, this felt like one of the most disconcerting questions I’d ever heard.
— I’m starting to, I said.
— Here. I study at the university and I’ve seen you there. Maybe we can talk about Simone Weil someday. I work next door, but now I have to go.
— Thanks, I said, taking the small brown paper bag she handed me. Before she turned her back on me to go, for a brief instant, we looked eye to eye. We had spoken without saying a word. Then I watched her until she disappeared behind the door that divided the two restaurants. She must have been about twenty-five, though it was hard to tell for sure.
I opened the bag with trembling hands, amazed, but already confident. It held a sheet of paper, folded as usual, and a fortune cookie. I set them on the table and looked around. The Dominican woman was on the phone, but she seemed to be waiting to see what I’d do. The Chinese cooks were bustling around the kitchen, indifferent. I unfolded the paper. Just above the center, in a miniscule and near-perfect hand, was a quotation. This time I could be sure because for the first time the author’s name was provided:
“Freedom is not a human right conferred by Heaven. Nor does the freedom to dream come at birth: it is a capacity and an awareness that needs to be defended. Moreover, even dreams can be assailed by nightmares. — Gao Xinjian, One Man’s Bible”
I picked up the fortune cookie and broke it in half. There was the usual strip of paper inside, but this time the printed message had been crossed out. On the back was written, in the same handwriting as the quotation, “Page 46.” I knew it referred to the book I had there on the table, the book that had brought us to this same part of the city.