go there every year and you never invite me,’ she said. She said that I always say I’m not coming and then I always come. That’s why I’m afraid she might surprise us and show up with a bouquet of flowers and a box of chocolates. She gets more and more melancholy every year, and she wants someone to put up with her gloom, and, frankly, I just can’t do it any more. Not only that, why should I be the one to get stuck holding her hand when Marino’s gone. She should call him. I can’t stand her dependency. And not only that, but I wouldn’t like her to know that you and I . . . can you imagine? You didn’t like Tiziana at all, did you? But the party was a lot of fun. Didn’t you think so? Marino didn’t like her much at the beginning, either, and now look at them . . . Everyone changes. Even him. He’s a strange guy. Not because he changes. He’s strange for lots of reasons; he goes off on these tangents. You artists are all a little strange, no matter what field you’re in, or at least you all pretend to be. And not just artists, either. I used to get along so well with him. Now it’s as if he weren’t interested in me at all. I used to study (have I told you this?) in a school of bel canto. I wanted to sing in the opera. Have you ever sung, opera or anything? Or done anything onstage, like acting? I really love the feeling of being onstage . . . I know what it’s like, because I’ve been there, in the chorus, and I know the feeling of being alone before the abyss of the audience. (‘The abyss of the audience . . .’ that’s pretty good, isn’t it?) I’ve never been up there alone, of course, but I know what I’m saying. You feel alone all the same, no matter how many people are up there with you. Tiziana used to sing with me. We met at the school. I met Marino in my last year, before I sang in the chorus. He was the one who got me into the chorus, because he was really pursuing me back then. Not any more. He’s such a great singer, and he always has so much work that he doesn’t have any time for me. I don’t know what I stopped liking first: him or the opera. I’ve come to realize that opera is not what I thought it was, what I dreamed of. Do you think I’ve become disillusioned because I married an opera singer? (Perhaps I shouldn’t just say a singer, but the best singer, but I don’t want to brag; though it isn’t really bragging if I’m not talking about myself, is it?) There was a time when I wanted to write. (I’ve already told you that, haven’t I?) I was a teenager . . . The other day I heard a piece I really loved. No, it was jazz. Now I’m starting to like jazz. It was called Blue Rondo à la Turk, and it’s by the Dave Brubeck Quartet. You’ve heard it? Oh, since I don’t know much about jazz yet, I didn’t realize it was very well known . . . You have the record? With Take Five? What’s Take Five? Oh. Would you lend it to me? Oh, I’m so thrilled. Please lend it to me. Don’t forget. Maybe some day . . . No, forget it. No . . . well, maybe some day . . . I’d like to try jazz. But I don’t know which instrument would be best for me. No, no, it’s out of the question. Painting is the thing that totally absorbs me now, ever since I married Marino and abandoned opera. I think I should try having a show. Contact with the public is essential, isn’t it? How can a body of work evolve if it doesn’t come into contact with the viewers it’s meant for? I’m not hinting around, but we’ve known each other for a while now . . . No, I don’t want to show you my paintings, it’s too embarrassing. Anyway, I don’t know if I’m still interested in painting. But I’ve been saying I’m not interested any more for a couple of years now, and I’m still at it. No, no. I’d be too embarrassed, you’re too good. Give me a kiss. Mmm. All right, if you promise not to make fun of me, I’ll show them to you. Really. We can arrange it some other time. But you have to be very honest. If you don’t like them, say so. I don’t want you humoring me. I couldn’t bear it! Are you in a hurry? I’ll drive you into the city. I have to go home, too; I have so much to do . . . I’ve had a wonderful time, though, all these days we’ve spent together. It was nice to start the year with you. Do you think it’s a good sign? For you or for me? Don’t you have anything to say? Give me a great big hug. We’ll get together soon, won’t we? I’ll let you off at the subway stop, okay?”
In the subway, sitting between a woman thin as a bag of bones and a man sleeping with his head between his knees, Heribert thinks that usually by this time of day he would already have been at work in the studio for three hours. Then he finds it strange to have thought “usually,” since lately he is there less and less, and he finds it easier and easier to come up with excuses, again “usually,” not to be there.
Across from him, a man is moving in syncopated time: he is drumming on the ground with his feet, as if following the rhythm of a song, but he isn’t wearing earphones and there is no radio on. At the next stop, this man and the man sleeping with his head between his knees get off with Heribert. The man moving in syncopated time stays on the platform, waiting for the express, and Heribert goes out into the street.
He walks into the bookstore and, as he goes through the turnstile, realizes that at no point had he been aware where his steps were leading him. Going in there was always dangerous; an afternoon might go up in smoke, as it could very well be (and, in fact, always is) several hours before he goes out again. That bookstore, divided into two enormous spaces on either side of the street, with two big splendid floors in each of the spaces, draws him like a circus show. He has always found libraries and bookstores more seductive than the books themselves. He likes to look at the rows of bindings. He likes to run his hands over the covers of the encyclopedias and dictionaries, open a volume at random to see the illustrations, stroke the glossy coated paper, peer closely at the letters till they reveal their hairy edges, their distortions. Ever since he decided, two months before, never to attend another art exhibit (they were all so mediocre), he sees everything around him as if it were an art exhibit and discovers unsuspected facets to every object.
The children’s books were on the ground floor. Children’s books bother him. It bothers him precisely that they are for children. He has never understood by what rights someone decides there is a dividing line that makes some books for children, some for adults, others erotic, still others porno, and, finally, those even farther beyond, romance. And it also bothers him that a whole line of shelves should display the title poetry. What do they mean by “poetry”? Or “romance”?
As soon as he sets foot on the escalator, he turns around so as to go up backwards and watch as the ground floor gets farther and farther away: the entrance, the turnstiles, the cash registers, the two immense tables of bargain books. When he realizes he has thought bargain books, his stomach turns. Isn’t that definition just as presumptuous as one that attributes amorous, poetic, or mysterious qualities to books while—nevertheless—he finds the former to be quite reasonable? At least until now. He feels like a child, playing at discovering already discovered things. When he turns around to get off the escalator and step onto terra firma, however, he realizes (as one enlightened, not knowing why) that the really childish thing is to refuse to admit that it is good for things to be classified; despite the imperfections of the labels, this is the only way to delimit them, understand them, control them, grasp them. (And to have designated that thought as childish is equally childish: no doubt about it; and the fact that he has to resort to another adjective in order to dismiss the first series of adjectives as stupid confirms it.) When he reaches the top, and lets his eyes wander over the signs in the different sections (cooking, home improvement, pocket books, textbooks, mysteries, art, fiction, new releases, bestsellers . . .), he feels that the most logical thing in the world is precisely for them to be classified. If not, what chaos! Even the sign that says poetry seems coherent and logical. Everyone knows what is to be found under that caption, and it is precisely that which makes it not merely valid, but indispensable. He even understands that the books on the shelves labeled mystery must, of necessity, be far from the shelves of the bestsellers. And if the book is both a mystery and a bestseller, it must be found under bestsellers, as this is the characteristic (additional, and thus more evident) that distinguishes it quite beyond its intrinsic mysteriousness. Always and ever, the surface of things: the part that can be touched and seen without need of opening and destroying it to find out what its innards are like. How is it possible that until now he has not perceived the wisdom of these classifications? It is evident, moreover, that the books in the fiction department must of necessity be there, and by no means in literature. He feels as if a long time has elapsed since those classifications so annoyed him with their arbitrariness, and yet it isn’t so: he was still laboring under that absurd misconception when he stepped on the escalator. (But he isn’t entirely wrong: for three weeks now—or perhaps