(The guy looks at her, narrows his eyes, tries to calm his breathing, and as it becomes more regular, he seems to be thinking: breathe in, breathe out, think, breathe in, breathe out, think. .)
“Then, instead of saying, I’m not Max, you try to catch up with your group, and for a moment I’m seized by panic, a panic that in retrospect seems closer to laughter than to fear. I follow you without a clear idea of what I am going to do next. But you and three others stop and turn and size me up with cold eyes, and I say, Max, we have to talk, and then you say, I’m not Max, that’s not my name, what is this, are you joking, are you getting me mixed up with someone or what, and then I say, Sorry, you really look like Max, and I say, I want to talk with you, What about, Well, about Max, and then you smile, and you finally decide to stay behind and let your friends go off; they shout the name of the bar where you’ll meet to set off home, No problem, you say, see you there, and your friends shrink away like the stadium behind us as I drive my bike at full throttle, confidently, and the Gran Avenida is almost empty at this time of night, there are only the people leaving the stadium, and you sit behind me with your arms around my waist, I feel your body against my back like a mollusk clinging to a rock, and it’s true that the air on the avenue is cold and dense like the waves that push and pull at the mollusk; you cling to me so naturally, Max, like someone who senses that the sea is not only an inhospitable element but a time tunnel, you furl yourself around my waist the way your tee shirt was furled around your neck, but now the conga is danced by the air that pours like a torrent into the streaky tube that is the Gran Avenida, and you laugh or shout something, maybe you saw some friends among the people sliding past beneath the canopy of trees, maybe you’re just yelling insults at strangers, oh Max, you’re not shouting Good-bye or Hi or See you, you’re shouting slogans that are older than blood, but surely not older than the rock to which you’re clinging, happy to feel the waves, the submarine currents of the night, sure that you will not be swept away.”
(The guy murmurs something unintelligible. It looks like saliva dripping from his chin, although perhaps it’s only sweat. His breathing, in any case, has settled down.)
“And so we arrive at my house on the outskirts of town, safe and sound. You take off your helmet, you touch your balls, you put your arm around my shoulders. The gesture betrays a surprising degree of tenderness and timidity. But your eyes are still not tender and timid enough. You like my house. You like my pictures. You ask me about the figures that appear in them. The Prince and the Princess, I reply. They look like the Catholic Monarchs, you say. Yes, the thought has sometimes occurred to me too, Catholic Monarchs in the confines of their kingdom, Catholic Monarchs spying on each other in a perpetual panic, a perpetual solemnity, but for me, for the person I am at least fifteen hours a day, they are a prince and a princess, a bride and groom who journey through the years, and are wounded, pierced by arrows, who lose their horses on the hunt, or never even had horses and must flee on foot, with only their eyes to guide them, and an idiotic will, which some call kindness and others good nature, as if nature could be qualified, good or bad, wild or tame, nature is nature, Max, that’s a fact you have to face, and it will always be there, like an irresolvable mystery, and I’m not talking about forests catching fire but neurons and the left or the right hemisphere of the brain catching fire and blazing for centuries and centuries. But, blessed soul that you are, you think my house is pretty, and you even ask if I’m alone and then you’re surprised when I laugh. Do you think I would have invited you here if I hadn’t been alone? Do you think I would have ridden right across the city on my motorbike, with you pressed against my back, like a mollusk clinging to a rock, while my head (or my figurehead) plunged through time, with the sole aim of bringing you back safe and sound to this refuge, the real rock, the rock that rears magically from its foundations and breaks the surface, do you think I would have done all that if I hadn’t been alone? And just on a practical level, do you think I would have taken an extra helmet, a helmet to protect your face from prying eyes, if my intention hadn’t been to bring you back here, into my purest solitude?”
(The guy hangs his head and nods, his eyes scan the walls of the room down to the finest crack. His sweat begins to flow again like a fickle river — or is there a kink in time? — and droplets gather in his eyebrows and hang ominously over his eyes.)
“You don’t know anything about painting, Max, but I get the feeling that you know a lot about solitude. You like my Catholic Monarchs, you like beer, you like your country, you like respect, you like your soccer team, you like your friends or buddies or pals, the gang or group or crew, the bunch that saw you stay behind to talk with some hot chick you didn’t know, you don’t like disorder, you don’t like blacks, you don’t like faggots, you don’t like being treated with disrespect, you don’t like getting pushed aside. There are so many things you don’t like, in that way you’re a lot like me. We’re approaching one another, you and I, from opposite ends of the tunnel, and even though all we can see are each other’s silhouettes, we keep walking resolutely toward our meeting point. In the middle of the tunnel our arms will be able to intertwine at last, and although the darkness there will be complete, making our faces invisible, I know that we will step forward without fear and touch each other’s faces (the first thing you’ll touch is my ass, but that too is a part of your desire to know my face), we will feel each other’s eyes and perhaps pronounce one or two words of recognition. Then it will be clear (it will become clear to me) that you know nothing about painting, but you do know about solitude, which is almost the same. One day we will meet in the middle of that tunnel, Max, and I will feel your face, your nose, your mouth — which generally expresses your stupidity better than anyone else’s — your empty eyes, the tiny folds that form on your cheeks when you smile, the false hardness of your face when you get serious, when you sing your hymns, those hymns you don’t understand, your chin that is sometimes rock-like, but more often, I guess, like a vegetable, that chin of yours, Max, which is so typical, so archetypical that now I suspect it’s your chin that brought you here, that was your downfall. And then you and I will be able to talk again, or we will talk for the first time, but before that we’ll have to roll about, take off our clothes and furl them around our necks, or around the necks of the dead — those who live in the motionless scroll.”