The Same City Read online

  Contents

  COVER

  THE SAME CITY

  COPYRIGHT

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR

  Hispabooks Publishing, S. L.

  Madrid, Spain

  www.hispabooks.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing by the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  English translation of Cavafy’s poem “The City” by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard. Collected Poems, by C. P. Cavafy, edited by George Savidis. Revised Edition. Princeton University Press, 1992.

  Copyright © 2013 by Luisgé Martín

  Originally published in Spain as La misma ciudad by Anagrama, 2013

  First published in English by Hispabooks, 2015

  English translation copyright © by Tomasz Dukanovich Copy-editing by Cecilia Ross

  Design © Simonpates - www.patesy.com

  ISBN 978-84-943496-8-3 (trade paperback)

  ISBN 978-84-943496-9-0 (ebook)

  Legal Deposit: M-6009-2015

  Esta obra ha sido publicada con una subvención del Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte de España

  THE SAME CITY

  For Antonio Prol,

  For the everlasting debt of affection

  Sky, not spirit, do they change,

  those who cross the sea.

  HORACE

  Without stirring abroad

  One can know the whole world;

  Without looking out of the window

  One can see the way of heaven.

  The further one goes,

  The less one knows.

  Tao Te Ching, 47

  Almost all schools of psychology, from classic psychoanalysis through to Gestalt psychotherapy, concern themselves with that melancholic or despairing state of mind that usually rears its head in people approaching the halfway point in life, that state which in somewhat unscientific vernacular we are in the habit of calling the “midlife crisis.” At approximately forty years old, human beings cast their minds back, recall the dreams they had when they were young, then take stock of their achievements since that time and the possibilities they still have of attaining the wonderful life they had imagined. The result is always distressing. The man who had dreamed of being a movie star, for example, often finds himself performing slapstick at children’s parties or doing commercials. And if by chance, through talent or sheer luck, he has managed to end up starring in films and has become an idol of the masses, thus fulfilling his aspirations, he immediately discovers some disadvantage or major downside to the profession—the servitude of fame, the frivolousness of artistic circles, or the envy of other actors—that casts a shadow over his victory. The man who had imagined he would experience passionate relationships and powerful emotions sooner or later becomes acquainted with betrayal, cheating, loathing, or, more commonly, tedium. And the man who had thought that at least he would always possess youthful vigor and enthusiasm is suddenly struck down by sickness or sees death looming imminently before him. Life, in reality, is a nightmarish trance, and when we reach that taciturn season of middle age, at forty or forty-five, we understand with acute clarity that it is also too short, just as we always used to hear our parents or elderly people say, and that as a result, it doesn’t give any of us time to put right the mistakes we made or to set sail on courses different from the ones that were decided upon at some point in the past.

  At this crucial and sensitive age, we usually think we’ve made a mess of everything we’ve done. We come to believe that the lack of enthusiasm with which we approach our work, the nonchalant or lukewarm composure with which we love our spouse or our children, and the apathy that we feel toward almost everything that used to stir up excitement in us are the result of our errors and not the irreparable consequence of the years that have gone by. Contrarily, other people’s lives seem to be ever more remarkable. We look around ourselves and always come upon people who live in houses like the ones we would love to own if only we had the money to buy them, friends who hobnob in the social circles we would relish joining, work colleagues who still love their spouses with a fiery passion we aren’t even able to remember anymore, and neighbors who travel to some faraway, idyllic corner of the planet every three months to visit its temples or beaches. If they are similar in age to us, those same people look at us in turn with corresponding envy and think that we’re happy because we have time to read the books that are piling up and gathering dust on their own shelves, because we do undemanding jobs, or because almost without lifting a finger, we have women falling at our feet. What is more, sometimes the causes of the envy are identical—we want from the lives of others what they want from ours. In short, at the age of forty, happiness becomes an issue that only pertains to other people.

  I met Brandon Moy at a writers’ congress held in Cuernavaca in March 2008 and then developed quite a close rapport with him when he moved to Madrid in spring the following year. He was born in the Brooklyn area of New York in 1960 and from a young age had been a successful man. He’d graduated from Columbia University with flying colors, immediately afterward started working at a prestigious law firm, and married a girl he was madly in love with. Before turning thirty, he was renting an apartment in Lower Manhattan, where he’d always dreamed of living, and had fathered a child.

  From that moment, his life was untroubled. Thanks to his professional reputation, he was able to change jobs three times and achieve a comfortable financial position. With the inheritance from his father-in-law, who had died in an accident, he and his wife decided to move to a more spacious apartment, beside Central Park, and later, in 1999, they bought a small vacation home on Long Island. They tried to have another child before age took its toll on his wife’s body, but were unable to do so. Instead, they bought a Mastiff puppy that grew a few months later into a giant and deafened the household with its barking. With that, Moy’s life quickly became a serene, banal passage of time. He had almost everything a man in his position could wish for, but now that he had acquired it all, he was doubtful as to what the benefits actually were. He loved Adriana, his wife, and never had any embarrassing arguments with her, but he often got bored when they were together, so if they went out for dinner or to the theater, he did everything possible to ensure that other husband-and-wife friends accompanied them. The love he felt for his son Brent was even greater and somewhat strange, one might say atavistic, but despite that, he couldn’t help reflecting sometimes that in order to take care of him, he’d had to sacrifice many of the activities that used to make him happy when he was young. When Brent was born, he and Adriana stopped going to parties and clubs, the tent they used to take with them on weekend getaways to the Catskill Mountains near New York was stored away, and they canceled the plans they had made to travel around the parts of Europe they had never visited, and the south of India, to which, having a hippy older brother, he had always dreamed of making a pilgrimage. He didn’t find his job, which involved resolving legal matters for a financial services company, fulfilling anymore, and in his eyes the boss he had to work under had, over the years, turned into a kind of bloodthirsty, dimwitted ogre who tormented him. To achieve professional success and make a killing with his career in law, he had long since given up his literary activities, which had been his greatest passion during his college years, when he met Adriana. He had also been gradually losing interest in his hobbies; he no longer played the saxophone, except on occasion at some special, formal event when asked to do so, or took part in the meetings of a Brooklyn political debate society of
which he was a member. So his life now consisted only of experiences devoid of sensation, and comfortable routines.

  Every Monday, when he left the office, he went to a heated swimming pool on West 51st Street and swam for almost two hours to loosen his muscles, which, after the inactivity of the weekend, were usually stiff and painful. Then he walked home, ate dinner with Adriana, and lay down to read a book until he fell asleep. On Monday, September 10, 2001, he had to go to a litigator’s office for an emergency meeting that ran considerably late, but despite that, he went to the pool and swam for two hours as always, until the thoughts disappeared from his mind and, exhausted by the effort, his body felt soothed. It was later than usual, but he didn’t want to take a cab home. He called Adriana to let her know he wasn’t going to arrive at the normal time and calmly headed north along Lexington Avenue and then along 60th Street, where he lived. This route, which he took every Monday, though at a slightly earlier hour, took him past the Continental restaurant, which at that time was apparently one of the most highly regarded restaurants in the city, or at least it had an exclusive reputation among a particular group of elegant, trendy clients. When I traveled to New York in June 2011, I walked along those streets, following the route Brandon Moy took, and I looked for the Continental, to see what it was like, but it was no longer there. According to Moy, who had never actually gone in, the premises had two wide, bare windows on both sides of the doorway, and one could gaze through them at the diners reveling inside. The light was dim, and the atmosphere, despite the pervading air of formality, always seemed lively and festive. Sometimes, when passing by, Moy had thought he could take Adriana there as a surprise, but then he never found the occasion to do it.

  That day, when he was on his way home, some of the customers were already finishing their dinners. Moy stopped for an instant at the window, glanced inside absent-mindedly, and saw one of his best friends from his teenage years standing beside one of the tables. He hadn’t heard from him since he’d been expelled from college in his first year, at the age of twenty, for being too rebellious and bohemian.

  Moy stood there, disturbed, watching him, and suddenly recalled the dreams they had nurtured together, the afternoons lost in conversation or philosophical debates, the girls they had shared, the almost mystic visions they would relate to each other when they experimented with drugs, the science fiction tales they wrote together, and the midnight baseball games they played with a group of classmates at a field in Brooklyn. He felt a slight chill and a sudden desire to cry for everything that had been falling into ruin since that time.

  His friend, whose name was Albert Fergus, was standing close to the door and holding open the overcoat of the woman who was with him. She had just risen from the table and was laughing at something Fergus had said. He carried on talking eloquently, pulling faces and gesturing as though he were cheering someone on. While the woman donned her overcoat and was putting some things away in her purse, Brandon Moy gazed at them, hypnotized, from the street. The image of the restaurant as seen through the window was like a silent movie. What the customers were saying, the hubbub, and the music playing inside could not be heard. Therefore the only way to interpret what was happening was by observing gestures, body language, and the décor of the premises, and with that mix of ingredients, everything always seems wonderful. Moy examined the characters’ cheerful expressions and imagined that the words they were saying were full of emotion and importance. In the time it took for Albert Fergus and his companion to head toward the restaurant door and step out into the street, Brandon Moy had already fantasized a complete reconstruction of his old friend’s life.

  When Fergus saw him there, on the sidewalk, he hugged him excitedly. His eyes were gleaming, as though he, too, felt the desire to cry. Almost without stopping for breath, he told Moy everything that had happened since those college years when they’d stopped seeing each other. He’d traveled around the United States and Mexico for several months, experimented with hallucinogenic drugs, lived among native people and beautiful women, spent some time in a desert cave, joined a commune of Buddhist monks in San Diego, and worked as a boxer to pay off some debts he’d accumulated. He’d continued to write science fiction stories in these notebooks he always carried around with him, and one day, quite by chance, one of the executives of a production company who worked for Metro Goldwyn Mayer read them. He was offered a job as a scriptwriter in Hollywood and moved to Los Angeles, where he’d lived ever since. Over the years, he’d given up writing. Now he was responsible for coordinating scriptwriters on a few successful television series and scouting for young talent. He’d been married, but his marriage had gotten stuck in a few mires, and they had to divorce. Then he’d had various romantic relationships, some more serious than others, although he preferred—he said with childish mischievousness—the chaotic, single life. Then he introduced Moy to Tracy, who remained at his side, listening to his words in amusement.

  “I’m the one who makes his life in New York chaotic,” she said, laughing.

  Brandon Moy studied Fergus that whole time with a vacant, wistful expression, as if all the phenomena being described to him were playing out before his very eyes. Suddenly, he experienced a feeling of unbridled admiration for Fergus, like that felt by small children for their parents or their teachers. While he listened to him, his attention was drawn to the details of his attire—the cashmere suit, its straight cut conforming to the demands of fashion; the steel watch with the dark strap; the highly polished, pointy-toed shoes; the rounded belt buckle; the green-framed glasses; the thick, copper ring; the loose tie. He thought it was possible to see the outlines of his old friend’s life in all those elements, the hallmarks of his adventures or of the prestige he had achieved.

  “And you?” asked Fergus, “What’s been going on in your life these past years?”

  Brandon Moy felt ashamed of himself and stammered a few incomprehensible words. Then he gave a toothy smile, an obsequious, sickly sweet expression that Fergus pretended not to see.

  “I bet you also have plenty of women making your life chaotic!” Tracy interjected to try and distract from the situation, which had become embarrassing.

  “Only one,” explained Moy, without keeping the joke running. “I married Adriana. You met her,” he said to Fergus, who screwed up his eyes as though he were trying to remember.

  “The girl with the blue teeth,” Moy added to prompt his memory.

  “The girl with the blue teeth,” Fergus repeated. “And you’re still married to her?”

  Brandon Moy nodded, averting his eyes and staring at the ground, as though the acknowledgement were humiliating. At that moment, Fergus looked at his watch and apologized, because that very night he had to catch a plane to Boston, where he had an appointment with a drama screenwriter to revise some scenes for his next movie, before traveling the following day to Los Angeles.

  “I don’t sleep much,” he said to Moy as he embraced him,“but I’ll have time to sleep when I’m dead.”

  They said a hurried goodbye, exchanged business cards, and arranged to have dinner together when Fergus came back to New York for a meeting with his producer two or three weeks later. Moy waited until Fergus got into the taxi that Tracy had flagged down and then stood there motionless for a long time, staring at the end of the street, the traffic lights, and the black sky with the same dumbfounded expression.

  As he sullenly resumed his journey home, he remembered everything that Fergus had told him about his life, but regarding every one of those events, he pictured only pleasurable and joyful moments. Thinking about his journeys around the United States and Mexico, he imagined the stunning scenery; about his time spent living with natives, the folk dances; about the boxing matches, the glory of his great victories; about his days in the desert cave, the inner peace nature gives us; about the beautiful women he had been with, the nights of wild sex; about his experiences with drugs, the celestial, psychedeli
c visions; and about his work as a scriptwriter, he considered only the creative allure and the glamour of cinema. As psychologists would rightly observe, Moy did not think about any of the painful, sad, or disastrous moments that had also formed part of those adventures. It did not occur to him to envisage the eternal afternoons of boredom he would have spent traveling straight, barren roads, or the humiliation he must have felt when the blow of an opponent knocked him to the mat in front of a rowdy audience, or the biting cold that would have frozen him to the bone during the nights in the desert, or the hunger or the fear of those days spent in the open air, the vulnerability he had to have felt waking up in the mornings without a woman at his side, or the sense of estrangement he would have experienced when betraying his creative spirit by writing shallow dialogues for teen flicks. Not one of those images crossed Brandon Moy’s mind as he recreated the fabulous life of Fergus in his imagination. He didn’t imagine a single moment of misfortune.

  On the other hand, his own life struck him as consisting of a host of trifling events, instances of modest self-denial and humiliation that were gradually extinguishing it. For example, he remembered the Bob Inkalis concert he hadn’t been able to go to the week before because Adriana had felt tired at the last minute. Bob Inkalis was a legendary saxophonist who had started to perform at the very beginning of his career with Art Blakey and Bill Evans. In the early eighties, he’d made some memorable albums and done a countrywide tour. Moy had gone to two of his concerts, and at one of them he’d tried to get backstage to express his admiration. Then Inkalis had plunged into the abyss of drugs and alcohol. Since then, he hadn’t recorded anything or performed on stage. When Moy had found out he was going to give a concert in Madison Square Garden, he felt a childlike sense of excitement. He immediately bought tickets and spent several days listening to old recordings he had of his. But on the day of the concert, Adriana, who had forgotten the date, arrived home exhausted. Moy, ready to go out, was waiting impatiently for her. She collapsed into the armchair beside him and looked at him imploringly.