poem resembles me better.
A seven-hour time difference and the sea in between keep me from sleeping at his side. My ideal notebook, which can do anything, will let me sleep by his side in the land of dreams. By the side of the golden tree which isn’t the one I planted as a girl, though it looks a bit like it.
I’m writing this to make it official. My notebook: my guitar.
You carry a notebook identical to this one, you jot down numbers, addresses, the name of a restaurant, the title of a song. I know because, when we don’t have them open, your notebook communicates with mine; they’re connected by a string like two styrofoam cups.
What made Jonás do a PhD in maths? Was it something to do with his parents, with their jobs – she’s a chemist, he’s a physicist – or with the fact they met in the seventies, at the piano recitals in the university physics institute? I feel like Jonás is following proudly in his parents’ footsteps. Now, for example, he’s in Madrid, perhaps walking down the very streets where his mother used to walk. I feel like I’m wandering aimlessly, or in the opposite direction to my parents’ footsteps. My parents begot two children: No and No.
My brother lives in London. He’s twenty-seven, the age some rock stars died. Jonás’ sister lives with their father. She’s thirty-three, the age The Rock Star died. I’m in between their ages, but I’m with you in Rockland.
An ideal notebook should be waterproof, like the books children read in the bath. You can’t have a notebook getting wet as you wash, like Ulises Lima’s books do when he reads in the shower. An ideal notebook should be able to go underwater. Whether it floats like a rubber duck or swims in the deep like a whale, it needs to be waterproof.
Is this glass of water the dwarf-scale sea between us?
4
The dwarf on the block has a three-piece suit, a black bowler hat and a cane. Black shoes polished until they gleam. You could say he’s also the most elegant man on the block.
The dwarf, who’s a different height, who can sit in a chair and not touch the floor with his shoes. Who lives on a different scale. Who lives in a strange sort of margin. Who has the same abilities as you. Who walks down the same pavement as you. And yet.
Are there dwarf animals? Dwarf giraffes? A panther, a hippo, a bird? A dwarf landscape? There are dwarf planets. You told me that, Jonás. Maybe now I can tell you a story.
Once upon a time there were seven dwarves who sang in the forest. Doc, Grumpy, Happy, Sleepy, Bashful, Sneezy and Dopey. The seven dwarves in a row, from Doc to Dopey. Dopey is a little dwarf. Maybe he’s just a little dopey.
Meanwhile, deep in the thick, dark forest, a voice thunders from the top of a castle: ‘Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?’
The seven dwarves arrive home and ask in unison who’s asleep in the bedroom. They think a monster has got in. The monster is sleeping across three beds. They want to kill it before it wakes up. Grumpy says: ‘Ha, she’s a female and all females are poison! We have to get rid of her.’ She wakes up, and the seven dwarves duck out of view. ‘I wonder if the children are back,’ says Snow White. She’s scared when she sees the seven little faces. ‘Why, you’re little men!’ ‘We’re as mad as hornets,’ one replies. ‘Can you make dapple lumplings?’ ‘Apple dumplings!’ the other six shout back at him. ‘Yes,’ says Snow White, ‘and plum pudding and gooseberry pie.’ ‘Gooseberry pie?!’ the dwarves cry in unison. ‘She stays!’
Not unlike tramps in a stage play, with that jolly little dance as they walk, draped in rags, the smudges on their faces meticulously added with make-up: that’s how they are in the cartoon. The seven dwarves have hats, white beards and red noses. They’re tubby, they sing in unison. The dwarf on the block has a cane, a sober demeanour. Grumpy’s anarchy consists of not washing. I imagine the dwarf on the block has voted for the left for as long as he’s had a voting card, in the hope that the path we’re on might change.
What would the ideal politician be like?
Instead, we’re stuck with cartoons. And they do so much harm.
I remember there’s a point in Waiting for Godot when the characters swap hats again and again. A bit like politicians.
I wonder. What do I wonder?
I miss you, Jonás. I’d sleep with you tonight on those three little beds.
Today, among other things, I bought a kilo of red apples at the market, thinking of Snow White. I thought I spotted the same Fernando Pessoa I saw a while ago at the fruit stall.
Jonás said he broke up with his ex because she didn’t like him not having an office job. ‘But you teach, you’re doing a research project at the university, doesn’t that count?’ ‘It wasn’t really about the office,’ he went on. ‘It was her way of implying she wanted to be with a different sort of person.’
Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?
In the first months of our relationship, I was plagued by the idea that they might get back together. That she might turn up again, that he might want her back. I had no basis for thinking it, I just didn’t want things with Jonás to end. I think it’s the first time I’ve ever got on so well with anyone. You could say that, as well as the sex, I’ve discovered a good friend. I don’t know if one is more important than the other. I don’t think so.
I like you so much, Jonás, that if you give me the first letter of your name I’ll do a magic trick. Pass it over; I’m going to shrink the first letter of your name. Look. A small letter in the world of capitals, and yet it’s still a capital. In small caps, a capital letter the same size as the small letters – a dwarf letter?
It’s five in the morning. I’ve just come back from Tepepunk and Nina’s. They’ve been awarded a residency in Tokyo and we were celebrating. We started in a cantina. Now I’m wasted. We were drinking mezcal. Damn mezcal, that cursed happiness. I want to whisper in your ear that I love you. I don’t want to go to sleep. I’ll give you a letter of the alphabet. Whichever one you want. Kiss me. I love you, choose any letter you like: dkrisncpolñsmciryaxnlñpqoesj.
I’ve realised that the ideal notebook, like a 7-Eleven, never closes its doors.
I’ve also realised that when I talk about you, the things I write are like a craft project. I could write this with glue and alphabet pasta. Will it be long before you come back? I hope not. I hope the whale lets you go soon, my Jonah, because I miss you. I’ll say it with blue glitter.
Jonás and I are about the same height. Our notebooks are the same size. This makes it easier for the notebooks to have sex.
Tall people who need made-to-measure clothes. Fat people who need double seats. Neurotic people who need positions of power. Stupid people who need someone even more stupid next to them. Insecure people who need the approval of strangers. Loyal people surrounded by traitors. People who don’t fit, people who live on another scale.
So what would be a normal scale? What’s the median, what’s the average, what’s 1:1?
A job, an apartment with a mortgage, a car with a payment plan, a family, two boxes of cereal (one high-fibre for mum and dad, and one with chocolate for the kids). A dog needs a lot of looking-after, a kitten would be better and never mind if it gets run over, honey, because we have each other, now go on, put the dwarves to bed because there’s school in the morning.
Meaning that being thirty-one and waiting for Jonás to come back from his trip, plus a cat, some plants, some books and an apartment aren’t the average.
Let’s open the phonelines instead. The ideal notebook is inclusive, with you, and you as well, sir. In this gameshow, A Hundred Mexicans Said, here in my ideal notebook. Good evening, we asked a hundred Mexicans if they’d prefer reading or a hamper containing two bottles of cooking oil, tins of tuna, rice, beans, packets of soup, a good selection of biscuits, four bottles of table wine, a delicious cake and none other than the Golden Membership: a