A Brief Theory of Travel and the Desert Page 5
Heikki is her best client, and when he comes to stay she earns good money for her work. She busies herself with the household tasks while he watches her, talks to her, discusses whether a player was offside, or amuses himself building a house on the lawn. Today he’s watching the 2006 World Cup final. The poor guy has no semen, Tina thinks to herself, but it’s better that way. She would give anything for him to get it back. Where can he have lost it? In what dark corner of his addled head can he have buried it? Today she will have to leave early. For all his forty-two years of age, Heikki still can’t get his head round the fact that night and sunlight can coincide. Or that a man can have no semen in his body. He looks tired. She goes on sanding. In a little while, a few circles of sawdust are piled up on the windowsill beneath the transparent sky, inside the illuminated bell jar.
But Heikki has just leaned his furrowed forehead against his clenched fist. It is the universal sign of despair in a man. Looking at the TV screen, Tina sees that Zidane has just been sent off, which seriously damages the chances of the French team in this final. The TV camera lingers on the numbed, apologetic face of player number 10 as he heads toward the locker room—everything is the color of ashes on this old Grundig, lending the whole scene an aura of a bygone age: it’s as if everything had already happened, or had never happened at all. Zidane’s teammates look at each other, and Heikki starts muttering at the screen, like it represented something that had to be smashed to pieces.
“It isn’t the screen’s fault,” says Tina, unplugging the sander.
(And anyway, since when is Monsieur Sans Sap a freaking French citizen?)
“So, where did my semen go?” thinks Heikki.
It is almost midnight when Tina finishes sanding the shutter on the porch. Everything is green in this World Cup light, as green as sulfur smoke. She unplugs the machine. She looks at him. That’s why he sometimes thinks of himself as a half-finished building. That terrible year 2001 and all that godawful stress . . . It’s like when you’re staying in a place that’s being renovated, and you don’t really feel you know what the building is like. It isn’t the same building anymore, but a building under construction. He isn’t Heikki anymore; he is the man without semen, even though I’m the only one who knows. There is still something on the TV, but Heikki has fallen asleep with his arms folded on his chest, worn out by stress and the lack of vital sap. Is it because he is getting old? He’s starting to get a few small brown warts on both his eyelids, and his eyebrows look thicker and straggly. The two twenty-euro notes that Heikki left for Tina (who went inside the cabin a few minutes earlier) are lifted and blown onto the lawn by a passing breeze. Only the dazzling round disc of the sun is ref lected on the surface of the lake, whose occasional gentle ripples are the reverse image of the lines scored by the blades of skaters on the ice in winter. Sensing that he is alone, Heikki slowly wakes up, gathers his things, and leaves. He walks away from the green. Without seeing another gleaming fish jump out of the water, blighted sun scrotum between the ether and the ground.
DUALITIES IN A THREE-STAR
MEDITERRANEAN SUNSET
Tiny flashes of white light sparkle on the crest of a wave that rolls on and on, seemingly never to break, indifferent to the sea around it. The light is a mellow orange color. In fact, that cloud is exactly the color of a segment of exceptionally luscious tangerine. The air is warm, in harmony with the temporary respite from low pressure and humidity. In the distance, the cloudscape is tinged with the hues of both evening and morning light. The few clouds in the sky are cirrus, thin as morning mist, and look like the fossilized remains of the plumage of a prehistoric bird; they could be drifting or simply disintegrating. As she stands facing the sparse landscape, the old woman with a Dutch passport who has come out onto the balcony of her hotel room is struck by the fleshiness of this time of day: her name is Ria, she is eighty-one years old, and she lives with her husband on the outskirts of Breda. It is an in-between time, a time of transition, but one that is repeated every day during the summer season. Depending on the latitude, on how far north or south you are on the Mediterranean tourist coast of Spain featured in the travel agency catalog, it occurs around nine or half-past nine. Ria takes several deep breaths of the salty island air. It’s as if the day were straining to overstretch itself, like a taut bow made of some indestructible material. As if—just this once—night, hunger, and sleep would never come. It is the moment when dogs—always true to themselves—bark at the retreating sun. Leaning against the railing, Ria sips her gin and tonic; it will take her three days to familiarize herself with the surroundings. The predominant colors are: the green of the pine branches, the turquoise of the water, the velvety orange of the clouds, and the soft mauve of the sand on the beach opposite her. A fundamentally warm range of colors, instilling in her a profound sense of physical well-being and an acceptance of the twilight of experience.
Ria rests her arms on the sharp edge of the railing, which is still warm from the afternoon sun. Meanwhile, she waits for her husband to emerge from the shower. During the holidays, this is the only routine there is: the warm touch of the sun on her freckled, liver-spotted skin; occasional dips in the sea; the appearance of sudden crops of varicose and spider veins; open windows and curtains; gin and tonics; an excursion on a catamaran and performances by local vocal groups around the pool. Since she arrived, Ria has eaten nothing but the Ritter Sport chocolate bars that she bought at the airport. She continues to gaze at the scene, savoring under her tongue the pale blue bitterness of the gin mixed with the iodine in the atmosphere.
The beach opposite is deserted except for some youngsters who, in the eyes of the elderly woman, configure an essentially hermetic group. The procession of British and Central European couples making their way to the restaurant finished some time ago. Ria has observed that it begins around seven in the evening and finishes at half past eight. She puts down her glass and, on closer inspection, she sees that the lone group on the beach has just re-created the image of one of the Mansions of the Moon. To be precise, it is a moving, man-sized replica of Lunar Mansion 21: two men, one of whom is turning his back to the other, while the other is facing outward. Next to them, another man, who has cut their hair, is collecting it, or rather showing it to one of the young men, whose long locks have been replaced by a patchy, close-cropped haircut. The image is not at all faithful or strictly accurate, and it isn’t as sharply defined as it could be, owing to the jerky, erratic movements of the two young men, who are now pelting each other with pebbles and wet sand, impervious to the weather and the fact that it is fall. There is also a woman, whose sudden appearance jars with the essentially masculine nature of the hermetic scene.
(It is not until the third Mansion of the Moon that a female figure appears: magnificently attired and seated on a comfortable chair, her right hand raised above her head, while her left hand tugs at the hair of a madwoman who is trying to get away.)
The girl is not very splendidly dressed, either (all she is wearing is the bottom part of her swimsuit), nor is she trying to run away, escape, or disappear; in fact, she goes and joins the group of boys.
Meanwhile, Ria’s husband has come out of the bathroom and is sitting on the edge of the bed, getting ready. The colors in the room are dark and subdued. Outside, it is still sunny.
The girl lies down, spreading her hair on the upper corner of the towel (where there is a sprinkling of yellowish-beige sand). Through some imperceptible connection between her synapses, she becomes aware of the sand. Paying no attention to the loud laughter of the three boys, she gets up and walks to the water’s edge. Bending over to form a perfect ninety-degree angle, her bust level with her slim hips, she carefully rinses her hair in the water from the roots to the tips. After wringing it out over her right shoulder, she removes the elastic band encircling her biceps like a Sioux body ornament and uses it to gather her damp hair into a short, compact ponytail. They are all tanned from their exposure
to the sun all summer long on afternoons just like this. They probably live on the island, Ria concludes. And their skin is an earthy color, like wet clay.
Ria leans on a plastic chair. It is like those you see in cheap, unpretentious Spanish terrace cafés. Her gaze moves back and forth from the car park on the east side of the hotel to the little cove where the hermetic group of youngsters has gathered. The fabric of her cheerful summer outfit, with its violet, white, and blue stripes, peeks through the slits in the back of her chair, the openings revealing a sequence of colors and shades like a bright zoetrope of her ageing kidneys. Offering the basic amenities of a summer resort hotel, the room has a short passage leading to the bathroom, and there is just enough space for the bed, a bedside table and, about a foot from the end of the bed, a television and a remote control on a cabinet against the wall. Under the television there is a gaping space about the size a seven-year-old child’s back, where the wall is waterstained from some leaky old mini-bar that is no longer there. The mirror ref lects a reverse image of the whole room, including the sweeping sea horizon depicted in the watercolor hanging over the double bed.
Her husband is still sitting there. He pulls on his gray socks, and only then does he slip on a pair of dazzling white leather sandals, which leave the top of his feet exposed. Over the years, fatty cysts have formed all over his legs, small swellings like half ping-pong balls, threaded with tiny, pale veins. As he adjusts the Velcro strap round his ankle, the muscles in his arm firm up. It is the only time that the blurred outlines of the anchor, the chubby impish little Cupid, and the Feyenoord football club logo tattooed on his forearm are able to get the better of his wrinkles. His tattoos have long since lost their definition. With the passage of the years, the fine and bold lines have given way to a succession of tiny dots the size of the tip of a ballpoint pen. In the long corridor of Ria’s memory, the thin film of salt and moisture dispels any grudges born of past infidelities and betrayals.
The group forming the twenty-first image of the Mansions of the Moon has climbed to the top of the small slope overlooking the cove. As they walk, their feet kick up a few stones in the gravel lot used as a parking area by the hotel guests and the occasional visitors to the tiny cove. When they get into a red sports car, the elderly woman shifts her interest to two figures that have just emerged from between two cypresses; they have very likely arrived in that beatup old crate, which certainly looks nothing like a rent-a-car.
Ria sees a child and an adult walking in concentric circles, as if they have lost their bearings: aimless, concentric circles. The boy is clutching a shoebox to his right side. The elderly woman’s attention focuses against her will on this new visual stimulus. She needs to know who these people are. A mixture of piquant curiosity and inexplicable joy rushes through her brain. Her husband has come out onto the balcony; his right knee creaks. He is drinking another gin and tonic from one of the glasses they found hygienically wrapped in plastic covers in the bathroom on their first day. They have shared absolutely everything for the last forty-five years, although their gestures no longer mean the same or have become meaningless: he goes to stroke her belly, an insignificant gesture that has no bearing on their future. She draws his attention to the two strange figures, and she feels the renewed, damp shadow of blood between her legs. Before he reminds her that they need to go down to the swimming pool if they want to get seats for that evening’s show, she is so caught up in the moment that she cannot tell whether it is the child or herself (after thirty years she thinks she is menstruating again)—that is acting out his or her true role in this here and now.
The rough cardboard box is chafing against his side. On one corner there is a triangle of insulating tape, the point of which is so sharp that it has pierced the delicate skin of one of his fingertips. The child isn’t squeamish at the sight of blood. He casually sucks the wound without saying anything to his father. Only after the sports car has pulled away and he is given the signal do they walk on. At the same time, the boy catches a glimpse of a woman’s eyes, which disturbs the rhythm of his breathing.
In spite of his father’s explanations, the child interprets the tinkling of the bell coming from inside the box as renewed signs of life or stif led calls for help that only he can understand. It is quite heavy. He feels a little light-headed from all this aimless wandering about. Now that night has fallen, the only thing that betrays the dilapidated presence of the old Opel Kadett is the faint sound of the radio coming from the dark interior of the car. On their short drive to the cove, the boy had gazed at the sun setting over the landscape. Meanwhile, his temples throbbed with the last heat of the day mingled with the smell of the cracked vinyl upholstery. Everything flashed past. Thanks to the compliant law of inertia, his neck wobbled as if constantly nodding in assent. He is familiar with the route: during summer vacation he travels along it every day, both on foot and on his bike. It is the distance that separates the quiet residential area where he lives with his parents from the small cove, where elderly foreigners with hairless, white legs go swimming in the sea. He is thinking that the box, although not actually empty, in reality is empty. It is a complicated thought. It’s like when he was on the highway and inside the car at the same time; the box is both empty and not empty. The only way he can grasp anything is to remain in a vague, cloudy haze. He doesn’t know if he feels sad. At home they have a communal garden, shared by all the residents, so his father said they would have to go to the plot of land next to the nearby hotel after dusk. They had driven there so as not to meet anyone on the way. A short distance beyond the fenced parking area, they come to the clump of pine trees. Night has continued to fall the way it does in folktales, in all the pre-Christian myths, and in some forests; or maybe like in the distant memories of a real-estate agent suffering from cancer, very, very slowly. By doing it at that time, his mother said, they would avoid being seen by anybody they knew. But, now that there is no daylight, it is impossible to judge where it would be best to bury the box. Besides, the ground is very stony.
The father begins to dig several feet away from the boy. His moving shadow is a little lighter than the color of the sea at this time of night.
“You can’t see anything from here,” the boy says suddenly. “If somebody from the hotel parks their car here, it will block the view of the beach.”
To his right, his father leans on the handle of the shovel and pauses to catch his breath. He looks right and left and right again, making sure the coast is clear. He hesitates for a moment and motions to the boy to keep well clear of the area where the cars are parked. There are pebbles and gravel everywhere, and sinking his shovel into the ground is more difficult than he had anticipated.
“But Moose didn’t poop here,” the boy insists, pointing toward the slope leading down to the cove. He used to do it over there.
The father agrees to dig next to the last pine tree before the wooden fence. It is dark now, and the only faint light is from the full moon and the lamp strung from the branches of a pine. The long, twisting roots of the tree, extending a dozen feet or so under a pale mantle of flickering light, appear to be the only thing holding the clay soil of the slope above the cove in place. The murmur of the waves mingles with the sound of music drifting over from the hotel garden, and the tiny wildf lowers growing among the stones are all atremble. There are lights on some of the hotel balconies.
Having recently discovered sex on the Internet, the boy’s imagination conjures up female bodies concealed behind the curtains of those illuminated balconies that punctuate the darkness. Not even the sinister tinkling of the bell on the flea collar can stop his erection. There is nothing he can do to prevent it, and even though the darkness would conceal the little bulge in his pants, he only feels more embarrassed; so he bends forward in the hope of creating a bit of slack at the crotch.
But his father is bound to notice his strange behavior and reprimand him for walking like an animal, or waddling like a duck.
The hole is dug.
The boy helps his father to fill the grave with earth. As he does so, he thinks of the inside of the box dropping into the hole. He imagines a big dragon curled up within the four cardboard walls; he imagines it beginning to lumber majestically through a rocky wilderness of dry cactus plants and stubble. Running along the dragon’s back there is a row of fierce-looking triangles reaching as far as the flea collar. In the distance there is a craggy hill, which at the same time is a volcano. From the crater gushes a copious jet of clean, transparent water, which floods the entire plain. The motionless dragon is submerged—the fleshy triangles on its back gently swaying like seaweed or jellyfish—at the bottom of a soothing, crystal clear sea. Then the boy has a terrifying idea: “What if they build another hotel on this land?”
The father responds with a long, drawn-out silence. He seems to be mentally counting the recent building projects in the area. The cove is the same as always, enclosed on one side by the restaurant and by the hotel gates on the other. The hotel isn’t new; it has been open at least twenty-five years. What’s more, if he is not mistaken, this is a protected area. He tries to allay his son’s fears and goes on filling the hole with earth. Nevertheless, this new fear leads the boy to imagine a Caterpillar excavator chewing up the soil and the trees, the stones and the bushes in its enormous jaws. Among the slag, ash, pebbles, and plastic bags full of un-degraded tin foil, he sees the damp folds of the cardboard. The box has become a blackened, soggy mass bulging at the corners and invaded by mold and maggots. Inside, the boy imagines a sort of giant hair comb made of rib-shaped bones crowned with several brittle, worm-eaten triangles.