The next morning he told me the story of the Andalusian all over again. It looked like he hadn't slept. It's the last time I'll be with anyone, he said. Why should it be the last time? I said. Are you dead, or what? Arturo, sometimes you drive me up the wall.
The story of the Andalusian girl was very simple. He met her when she was eighteen. That much I already knew. Then she broke up with him, but in a letter, and he had a funny feeling, as if the relationship had never really ended. Every once in a while she would call him. The years went by. They had their own lives, they got by as best they could. Arturo met another woman, he fell in love, got married, had a child, was separated. Then he got sick. He almost died: he had some kind of problem with his pancreas, his liver was a wreck, he had an ulcerated colon. One day he called the girl. It had been a long time since they talked, and that day, maybe because he was in bad shape and felt sad, he called her. Years had gone by and the girl wasn't at the number he had anymore, so he had to track her down. It didn't take him long to find her new number and he reached her. The bitch was in more or less the same shape he was in, if that. They were in touch again. It was as if no time had passed. Arturo went south. He was still recovering, but he decided to go and see her. She was in an essentially similar situation. There was nothing physically wrong with her, but when Arturo got there she was in bed because her head was a mess. According to the girl, she was going crazy: she saw rats, she heard rats scratching around in the walls of her room, she had horrible dreams and she couldn't sleep, she hated going out. She was separated too. Her marriage had been a disaster too, and so had her lovers. They managed to stand each other for a week. It was that time, on Arturo's way back to Catalonia, that the Talgo almost went off the rails. According to Arturo, the engineer stopped in the middle of nowhere and the ticket takers got off the train and walked along the tracks until they found a loose plate, a piece on the bottom of the train that was coming off. I frankly don't understand how they didn't notice it before. Either Arturo didn't explain it very well or all the workers on that train were drunk. The only passenger who got off the train and walked along the tracks, according to Arturo, was Arturo himself. Maybe it was at that moment, as the ticket inspectors were looking for the plate or sheet coming loose from the underside of the train, that he started to go crazy and think about escape. But the worst came later: after five days in Catalonia, Arturo began to think about going back, or realize that he had no choice but to go back. During that time he talked to the Andalusian girl at least once a day and sometimes as often as seven times. Usually, they argued. Other times they talked about how much they missed each other. He spent a fortune on phone calls. Finally, before even a week had gone by, he got on another train and went back. No matter how much Arturo tried to sugarcoat it, this last trip was just as disastrous as the first, if not worse. The only thing he was sure about was that he loved the fucking Andalusian. Then he got sick and came back to Catalonia or the Andalusian girl kicked him out or he couldn't take it anymore and decided to come back or whatever it was, but the bottom line is, he was sick and the girl let him get on the train with a temperature of a hundred and four, something I would never have done to my worst enemy, Arturo, I said, even if I don't have any enemies. And he said: we had to get away from each other, we were devouring each other. Don't give me that, I said. That girl never loved you. That girl has a screw loose, and you must like that, but she never really loved you. And another day, when I saw him again at the bar in La Sirena, I said to him: what matters is your son and your health. Worry about your son and worry about your health, and stop getting yourself in these messes. It's hard to believe that such a smart guy could be so dumb.
Then I was at a bodybuilding championship, a minor championship in La Bisbal, where I came in second, which made me really happy, and I hooked up with this guy Juanma Pacheco, who was from Seville and worked as a bouncer at the club where the championship was held and used to be a bodybuilder. When I got back to Malgrat, Arturo wasn't there. I found a note on his door informing me that he would be gone for three days. He didn't say where, but I assumed he'd gone to see his son. Later, thinking about it, I realized that he didn't need to be gone for three days to see his son. When he got back four days later, he looked as happy as I'd ever seen him. I didn't want to ask him where he'd been, and he didn't tell me. He just showed up one night at La Sirena and we started to talk as if we'd just seen each other that morning. He stayed at the pub until closing time and then we walked home. I felt like talking and I suggested that we go have a couple of drinks at a bar that a friend of mine owned, but he said he'd rather go home. Still, we didn't hurry. At that time of night there's hardly anyone on the Paseo Marítimo and it's nice out, with the breeze from the sea and music drifting from the few places that are still open. I felt like talking and I told him about Juanma Pacheco. What do you think? I said when I was finished. He has a good name, he said. His real name is Juan Manuel, I said. I guessed that, he said. I think I'm in love, I said. He lit a cigarette and sat on a bench on the Paseo. I sat down beside him and kept talking. At that moment I even understood, or thought I understood, all of Arturo's insanities, the crazy things he'd done and the things he was about to do, and I would've liked to go to Africa too that night while we were watching the sea and the lights in the distance, the little trawlers; I felt capable of anything and especially of leaving for somewhere far away. I wish it would storm, I said. Don't say that, he said, it could start raining any minute. I laughed. What've you been doing for the last few days? I asked him. Nothing, he said, thinking, watching movies. What movies did you see? The Shining, he said. What an awful movie, I said, I saw it years ago and afterward I couldn't sleep. I saw it years ago too, said Arturo, and I was up all night. It's a great movie, I said. It's very good, he said. We were quiet for a while, watching the sea. There was no moon and the lights of the fishing boats were gone. Do you remember the novel that Torrance was writing? Arturo said suddenly. Torrance who? I said. The bad guy in the movie, in The Shining, Jack Nicholson. That's right, the son of a bitch was writing a novel, I said, although the truth is I hardly remembered. More than five hundred pages long, said Arturo, and he spat toward the beach. I'd never seen him spit. Excuse me, there's something wrong with my stomach, he said. Don't worry about it, I said. He'd written more than five hundred pages and all he'd done was endlessly copy a single sentence, in every possible way: capitalized, lowercase, double-columned, underlined, always the same sentence, nothing else. And what was the sentence? Don't you remember? No, I don't, I have a terrible memory, all I remember is the ax, and that the boy and his mother are saved at the end of the movie. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, said Arturo. He was crazy, I said, and at that moment I stopped watching the sea and turned toward Arturo, beside me, and he looked like he was about to collapse. It might have been a good novel, he said. Don't scare me, I said, how could it be a good novel when it was just one sentence repeated over and over again? That shows a lack of respect for the reader. Life is shitty enough without being stuck buying a book where all it says is "All work and no play…" It would be like me serving tea instead of whiskey, it would be false advertising but it would just be rude too, don't you think? Your common sense amazes me, Teresa, he said. Have you looked at what I write? he asked. I only go into your room when you invite me in, I lied. Then he told me about a dream, or maybe it was the next morning, while he watched me doing my daily exercises, sitting at the table with his chamomile tea and with that look on his face as if he hadn't slept for a week.