I accompanied her to the house, which was far, so far that I had to first take a bus, in which we traveled almost side by side, talking in each other’s ears, surrounded by an absent crowd, who did what they had to do – get on the step, pay the ticket, clinging to the handrail – with automatic gestures, learned by repeating them over and over again for years, then a train and he still had three or four blocks left on foot until he reached his destination. She guided me with a firm hand, as she had when I met her, that sunny afternoon on the beach, sitting on a lounge chair that was dangerously close to mine, and she asked me what I was reading. “Tokyo Blues”, Murakami. Practical, fast and precise response, without lapsing, without chamuyo. I realized that was all he wanted to know about me, that he was not interested in starting a conversation, that he had no ulterior motives and that he asked me the question only because the reflection of the sun did not allow him to see the cover of the book, even though he He had put his hand on his forehead like viscera.
I couldn’t handle my genius, I offered him my dark glasses -RayBan Risky or Wayfarer, whichever you like best, a classic of classics that I adopted as my own when I saw that Jack Nicholson used them in sun and shade and the Blues Brothers, when they broke my heart with “Everybody Needs Somebody to Love” – and she accepted them with a smile, the same smile with which she said goodbye to me when we got off the bus, she told me “that’s it”, she gave me a kiss on the cheek and, to my confusion -she had made a titanic trip only to have to give up before reaching her destination-, she excused herself by telling me that she had to shop for dinner and that she preferred to do it alone.
As if I hadn’t heard her, I asked her how she managed to endure making such a long trip every day, we were coming from the center and we were in Liniers or Versalles, better yet, in passing I thought I had seen the Buenos Aires bar, on the corner of Nogoyá. and Gallardo – I know this because I Googled him and because before the Las Bandas Eternas recital in Vélez there, at the window table, we had an ice-cold porrón with Juan Cruz Revello-. She took out from the bag she was carrying on her shoulder a yellow-covered book with four black-and-white frames of a thin man with an Errol Flynn mustache, a tailcoat and a coat, and half-closed eyes, as if they were hiding something, as if they were hiding something. a secret they kindly preferred not to tell. “The Book of Illusions”, Paul Auster.
On the way home, I watch Rosario pass by through the window of 218 – Buratovich Square, the Police Headquarters, the Cathedral – while I mentally repeat the title of the book, I do it mechanically, over and over again; I never had confidence in my memory, he had already betrayed me and I didn’t want him to do it again. I bought it at Ross, I read it in one sitting, walking quickly in the footsteps of Héctor Mann, the silent film comedian followed in the footsteps of David Zimmer, whom I imagine with his concentrated expression, his long figure and his gaze. sad by Paul Auster – and that I couldn’t help but have in my head the face of the thin man in tails and galley and a thin mustache, as if drawn with a 0.7 Rotring line, which appears multiplied by four on the cover of the book.
I thought about him, who was Argentine like me, when I first set foot on the streets of Brooklyn, which were nothing like those of the hipsters of Williamsburg or those of the orthodox Jews of Borough Park, and which I walked down looking to one side and the other waiting for a stroke of luck.
Behind your steps
The last time I saw her, during a brief visit she made to Rosario, she gave me an address, she told me that David Zimmer lived there; It was a wink, she knew that she was going to go to Brooklyn in her footsteps and I did it, I stood for a long time in front of the building that she pointed to me -I wrote down the street, number and apartment on the same paper napkin on which she wrote it down- and I waited to see if the silhouette of the man I was looking for would appear behind the curtains and I couldn’t find it.
On the landing of the stairs at the entrance door, I see how another man, who may be the same, lights a cigar that he takes out of a metal box that he keeps in the inside pocket of a coat that reaches to his knees; He is tall and lanky, his hair, curly, untidy, falls over his forehead. I see him briefly, wrapped in a cloud of smoke that stings my nose; In the blink of an eye he disappears, his face repeats itself in my head like flashes from a camera flash, one, two, three, four, his eyes are half closed.
Years go by, in Zeballos y Pueyrredón’s bar, Justos y Pecadores, I see a girl sitting alone at a table by the window, her back straight, platinum hair, transparent frame glasses that remind me of Andy WarhoHe – all of which reminds me of Andy Warhol, The Factory, black and white films – reads a yellow-covered book, a trademark of Anagrama, which seems familiar to me. I approach the bar just to walk by him and see what he’s reading. “The book of illusions”, Paul Auster. I can’t handle my genius, I ask her if she likes it, she looks up, looks at me surprised – perhaps with a certain contempt – and tells me yes, that she loves it, that she had wanted to read it for a long time and that she got it in El Pez Volador , used. I stay silent, she realizes that my silence is hiding something, that it is keeping a secret. “She has a dedication,” she tells me and I answer: “I know.”
It’s mine, or better yet, it was mine, I think and I don’t tell him, he doesn’t have to know. It’s one of the books that my mother sold when she got tired of keeping them in the storage room where I abandoned them when I moved and realized that they didn’t fit in the new apartment. Only two of Paul Auster’s survived, “Brookyn Follies,” which is still intact, I didn’t read it, and “The Invention of Solitude,” which I usually review from time to time, when I remember why it was saved from the shipwreck.
As I turn to leave, the platinum blonde girl, who now looks like she’s the queen of Righteous and Sinners, speaks again and forces me to retrace my steps. She tells me that the book has several pencil underlines, shaky lines, she says, perhaps excited, and she reads me one that says she didn’t understand and I don’t believe her. “Taking all that to the basement was like burying it underground,” he reads with a firmness that makes me uncomfortable, and in a very loud voice he continues: “It wasn’t the end, perhaps, but it was the beginning of the end, the first milestone on the road to oblivion.” I do understand it, but I keep quiet and leave, now forever.
