28
17 March
92
Hello
again, my journal. I am not used to opening you so soon after the last time,
only two days. But there was a call from Daniel as I was making dinner, and
this time I was able to talk to him. Or rather listen, since he did most of the
talking. I have never known him to be so voluble and so excited.
He talked
about how beautiful Catalonia is, or what he has seen of it: the town of
Sitges, the city of Barcelona and the seaside country between them. He
emphasized Catalonia, not Spain, saying that it would be the same for Québec
rather than Canada. He explained that the people of Catalonia are much more
bilingual than we Québécois, that everybody seems to speak both languages and
they switch from one to the other with ease. I told Betty about that at dinner,
and she got quite excited. Alors cest possible, she said.
D has not yet
had a chance to get to know Mauricio very well, because Mauricios girlfriend
Vicky, who is of Ds age and is half-English, insists on speaking English even
in Mauricios presence, and Mauricio doesnt speak it well. For the past two
days, in fact, D has been in Barcelona with Vicky, except when she was taking
classes, while Mauricio has been busy with his psychiatry practice in Sitges.
Tomorrow, according to the original plan, the three of them were supposed to go
Valencia for the celebration of Saint Josephs Day, but D just found out from
Vicky that Mauricio cant make it because of an emergency with a patient. So
only D and Vicky will go, by train. Vicky is a great tour guide, she has actually
studied tourism though her actual major is linguistics. And here Daniel
switched to French she is une fille formidable, and he is afraid that
he might be falling in love with her.
Daniel, in
love!
He went on to
say that this would be very inappropriate, both because they live separated by
an ocean and because she is his cousins girlfriend.
I reminded
Daniel that I fell in love with his father when he was still legally married to
Brigitte and also living mainly in Europe. Love is what it is, I told him, and
I quoted Carmen: Lamour est enfant de Bohème, il na jamais, jamais connu de
lois.
I am not sure
how he took my sage advice. He laughed and said that he knew that I would
always have a quotation from an opera. Then he said that it was midnight and he
needed to go to sleep.
Daniel, in
love!
Well, he is
20½. I was 21½ when I fell in love with Miki. But by then I had gone through
several infatuations when I thought that I was in love, and when I met Miki I
knew that it was the real thing. I was 20 when I met Jean-Marc and I
thought at first that I was in love with him, and before him there was Albert,
and before him Frank
But for Daniel it seems to be the first time that he
even imagines himself to be in love.
So, my
journal, as I was saying good night, I said Bienvenu au monde des amoureux.
He laughed and said Bonne nuit, maman.
Bonne nuit, mon journal.
Amoureux
The two days went by as planned, with scarcely a free
moment. Both nights they got back to the apartment after two oclock. The first
night, with Vicky especially elated because of Barcelonas 3-0 victory over
Dynamo, she said, Wed better get a good nights sleep, and they did, in
their respective rooms. The second night, with Daniel still feeling feuertrunken
from the burning of the fallas, his mind reeling from the historical and
cultural information that Vicky had given him, and his body sweaty from intense
dancing to the music of bands playing rumba flamenca, he could only say,
as they were standing uncertainly in the hallway of the apartment, Ive never
had so much fun in my life.
Me
too, Vicky said. The best Fallas Ive ever been to.
Really?
Not
because the Fallas were better than before, but because of you. Youre fun.
I
like you too.
She
began to move into the living room, and he followed her. I dont generally
fancy guys my age, she said after a pause. When I was fifteen I liked them in
their twenties, and now Im twenty I like them in their thirties. I spent a
year in England, for lower sixth, when I was sixteen, and I thought it might be
different there, but I found even the university chaps too young. She paused
again before going on, more softly. But youre different. I could almost fall
in love with you.
I
think Ive already fallen in love with you, he blurted out. He scarcely
believed his own words as he said them, but not their truth value, only the
fact of having uttered them. Yes, Daniel Wilner was in love at last. With his
cousins girlfriend.
She
took his hands in hers and smiled at him.
What
are we going to do about it? he asked uncertainly.
You
mean, after tonight?
No,
starting tonight.
Tonight
were going to shag our brains out, she said as she kissed him.
But
their lovemaking was quiet and gentle, with none of the frenzy that her words
might have implied. Vicky seemed surprised, as though she had never experienced
such a thing; and Daniel was in turn surprised by her seeming inexperience with
non-frantic sex.
They
managed to get perhaps an hour or two of sleep before hurrying to the station,
rolling their bags behind them, for the Barcelona-bound Talgo. After a quick
breakfast in the dining car they returned to their seats and, lulled by the
smooth, gently rolling motion of the train as it tilted along the hillsides,
fell asleep with their arms about each other, Vickys head resting on Daniels
shoulder. The conductor awakened them just before their arrival in Tarragona.
While
waiting on the platform for the regional express train they talked confusedly
about how and when they might see each other again.
Ill
be in Sitges most of the summer, Vicky said, working at the hotel. Were
already booked solid, because of the Olympics. What about you?
I
intend to go to Israel for a part of the summer, he said slowly. Some day
Ill explain to you why its complicated.
Has
it got to do with your dad getting killed there?
He
was taken aback. How do you know about that? Did Mauricio tell you?
Yeah.
Our first conversation was about you, you know.
But
but I dont think I told him about it.
He
told me that he found out all about you from your
your great-aunt, I suppose. Su
tía abuela, he said.
Tía
abuela, Daniel repeated. I like that. She really has been like both an
aunt and a grandmother for me.
But
obviously he didnt know all about you. He knew that your dad had
married a Canadian girl, but not that she was French Canadian. Or at least he
didnt mention it when he first told me about you.
There
was a pause. Anyway, he said, the answer is yes, it does have something to do
with my father. I havent actually made any plans yet, but I dont intend to go
for the whole summer. Ill make sure Ill spend some time here.
Suddenly,
just as their train arrived, Vicky said, I know. Ill go to Philadelphia for
my Ph.D. Next year. Im interested in sociolinguistics, and the greatest
sociolinguist in the world teaches there, at Pennsylvania University. No point
in correcting her, Daniel thought. That isnt far from New York, is it? she
added.
No,
its an hour or an hour and a half by train, maybe two hours by bus. Besides,
he said to himself but not to her, theres a journalism program at Temple. But
arent we getting ahead of ourselves? he asked weakly as their train arrived.
Of
course we are, darling, she said as they were boarding the train. Isnt that
what being young is about?
Darling!
No one had called him darling before except Fela, and his mother on two or
three occasions. But never a girlfriend. Was Vicky in the habit of calling her
boyfriends querido or corazón, or whatever the Catalan word might
be? Did she say it to Mauricio?
Should
I tell Mauricio? Daniel asked as they sat down.
About
what?
About
us.
What
do you mean?
That
Ive fallen in love with his girlfriend?
Vicky
laughed. Im not his girlfriend. Were just having a fling. You know, a
fortnight ago we had Carnival in Sitges, and its a time and the time leading
up to it thats conducive to flings. Besides, hes got a girlfriend in
Poland. He goes there quite often, you know, to visit his mum and his sister.
He
told you about that?
Yes.
So I wouldnt get my hopes up, I suppose. She laughed again. Hes got a bit
of an ego, your second cousin has.
Once
removed, Daniel said, and they laughed together. He was holding on to his bag
with one hand, and Vicky took the free one into hers and kissed it tenderly.
The
third stop from Tarragona was a station with a long name: Sant Vicenç de
Calders Coma-ruga El Vendrell. This is where you get off, Vicky said,
helping him move his bag toward the door. Make sure you take the train towards
Vilanova, not Vilafranca, she reminded him. After a quick kiss he got off. She
waved at him as the door closed, and then again through the window.
Alone on the platform, he suddenly felt that he understood
what being in love meant. It was not the sex: as physical pleasure, it had not
been any better with Vicky than with Audrey or Claire, let alone Megan or Cici.
But with every previous girlfriend, the moment of physical separation, the
good-bye-until-next-time, was also a moment of alone-at-last relief. Not so
with Vicky. He had now been in her company uninterruptedly for more than
twenty-four hours, six days if you counted nights and classes and the presence
of others, but not for one moment had he felt even a twinge of desire that she
not be there. Now he already missed her.
A
train came by, but he heard Vilafranca among the list of announced
destinations, and so he let it go by. Six minutes later another train came, and
this time he heard not only Vilanova but also Sitges. He boarded it, and
twenty-five minutes later he was in Sitges.
John
Renshaw was at the desk when he entered the hotel lobby. Did you have a good
time? John asked as he handed Daniel his room key.
Fabulous,
Daniel answered. He thought of adding Im in love with your daughter but
refrained. And exhausting, he said instead.
Yes,
a bit of rest will do you some good. Cheerio, then!
He
took the elevator up to his room, dropped his bag on the floor, removed his
jacket, brushed his teeth that salty water again! and lay down on the bed.
It was now about ten-fifteen. Vickys just arriving in Barcelona, he thought.
He had been apart from her for an hour. Yes, he missed her. Im in love, he
told himself again. Whom would he tell about it? Betty, of course; he was not a
mutant, after all. Je ne suis pas un mutant, he would say to her. Jsuis
pas un mutant, he repeated to himself. And, without his noticing it, his
thoughts now came to him in French. Je suis amoureux, he said to himself
as sleep overcame him.
Freed from the intrusions of Vickys English, Mauricio,
during the three hours that he and Daniel spent together on Friday afternoon,
was back to his loquacious self. His talk was marked by that tone of
good-natured condescension that was due from a doctor to a mere student, a tone
that Daniel remembered from the way his mother had spoken to him in his early
teenage years. That tone disappeared, he remembered, once English became the
family language. He wondered if English served Vicky as a similar weapon in her
relationship with Mauricio.
He
reflected on his meeting with Mauricio while looking out of the airplane window
at the clouds over the Atlantic. They had lunch together, finished off with
coffee, and then walked along the beach. At last they walked back to the Hotel
Marisol. Mauricio then said good-bye to him, John and Marisol Vicky had not
returned from Barcelona yet and took his leave. Daniel was not to see him
again.
Friday
evening, then, his last in Spain, was destined to be spent in the company of
the girl that he was in love with. The girl Im in love with, he repeated to
himself. La fille dont je suis amoureux. La chica de la que estoy enamorado,
he added to himself for good measure.
Their
evening was quiet, much of it in the company of John and Marisol, and their
second night together was even sweeter than the first.
It
was a lovely memory to dwell on, but it was the memory of his session (he
couldnt help thinking of it as a session) with Mauricio that was crowding his
mind.
Doctor
Mauricio Rozowski, it seemed, had decided that on the basis of his conversation
with Fela Rozowski he knew all about Daniel Wilner. And so while the
conversation was mainly about Daniel, there was not much questioning of Daniel
by Mauricio, except perhaps to confirm what Mauricio had already concluded. It
seemed to Daniel that Mauricio was treating Daniel not even as a patient or
client but as the subject of a study.
The
crux was that Daniel felt guilty of his fathers death. Te sientes culpable
de la muerte de tu padre, Mauricio said.
Daniels
protestations were of no use. The fact that Miki chose not to stay in Montreal
with his wife and son meant that Daniel necessarily felt rejected by his
father, a feeling that led to hostility and ultimately the desire for the
fathers death. And when the desire is fulfilled and the father dies cuando
el deseo se cumple y el padre muere the son cannot help feeling guilty.
Mauricio pronounced the result with the certainty of a mathematician presenting
the proof of a theorem. When Daniel asked if this was a part of the Oedipus
complex, Mauricio smiled and acknowledged that there was a connection, but a
complicated one, the way a physicist might answer when asked if there was a
relation between lightning and electricity.
Now
that he was alone in the airplane, Daniel amused himself by mentally
psychoanalyzing the analyst. Did Mauricio unconsciously wish his ailing father
dead because he wanted to be in Europe, closer to his mother and sister? And
did he feel guilty over his fathers death? Was he projecting his feelings onto
Daniel?
He
now remembered that on the eastbound flight he had thought of getting
Mauricios advice on how to deal with two girlfriends. Now it was all moot, of
course. He had only one girlfriend, una sola novia, and that was Vicky,
just as Mauricio had a girlfriend in Poland. In Spain he had flings, like the
one with Vicky. Well, then, there was no reason why Daniel could not have
flings with Audrey and Claire and anyone else who came along. But like Mauricio
he would be honest. He would tell both Audrey and Claire that he had fallen in
love with a girl in Spain. If they took that as a reason for breaking up, then so
be it.
As March ran its course and the spring semester ever so
gradually began to live up to its designation (the previous years burst of
summerlike weather, a fortnight after the equinox, was not to be repeated), a
young mans fancy that of the young man named Daniel Wilner turned to love
whenever he thought of the young woman named Vicky Renshaw. What troubled him
on those occasions was that they did not come as often as he had anticipated.
And when they came, they were sometimes trivial, as for example about her
predilection for high heels. Was it due, he wondered, to the year she spent in
England, where she was probably shorter than the average girl?
The day after his return
he wrote letters to family (Mireille, Betty, Fela) and friends (Harvey, Megan,
Roxane). He also write Vicky a passionate if concise love letter, mailed to her
Barcelona address, which he concluded with a quadrilingual declaration: I
love you / Je taime / Ich liebe dich / Te amo. Before writing the last one
he hesitated over whether to write Te quiero. There seemed to be a
slight difference between the two that he had not quite grasped, but he had
noticed that in telenovelas people were more likely to say te amo,
while in songs it was usually te quiero, but that might be because it
was easier to rhyme.
As a farewell gift,
Vicky gave Daniel a package that, as he found on unpacking it at home,
contained a compact disc called 16 Grandes Exitos by Joan Manuel Serrat.
She had mentioned to him that Serrat was her favorite musical artist, not least
because he wrote and sang in both Spanish and Catalan. The problem was that
Daniels 1980s stereo had neither a built-in CD player nor an input jack for a
separate one. Maybe, he said to himself, its time to get a new stereo system.
He resolved to buy one on the day that he received Vickys reply to his letter.
Meanwhile he got busy.
There was schoolwork, in the form of papers waiting to be written, and soccer
practice, which began on the Tuesday after his return. He also made weekend
dates with both Claire (Friday evening) and Audrey (Sunday afternoon). He left
Saturday free so that he could work while listening to Parsifal, all six
hours of it.
At the first meeting of
Team Canada, after telling his friends that he had met a girl who looked like
Greta Scacchi, he mentioned the CD problem. Alan Silver said that his system
had a CD player with a recording cassette deck, and he would make Daniel a
cassette of the disc.
Karen Litov, though she
was back from Israel, would be busy until some time in April. Daniel, in the
meantime, should study the information that she had sent him and choose a
program that he might be interested in. He promptly began doing so, while
speculating that Karen had been at Mossad headquarters perhaps for a
debriefing and was now carrying out a secret mission of some sort.
The following Monday he
became aware of not having told either Claire or Audrey about Vicky. He
rationalized the omission by telling himself that Vicky wouldnt become a real
part of his life until he got her letter.
By the end of the week
no letter had yet arrived. The cassette was ready, though.
Once he began to play
the music, the feeling of love overcame him. As Serrats compelling voice
progressed from the first song, the poetic Cantares, with the insistent
reading recited, not sung of Antonio Machados verses, passing through the
boisterous La fiesta, the humorous La aristocracia del barrio,
the lyrical La mujer que yo quiero (not amo perhaps he
shouldnt have written that, Daniel thought), the stirring Para la libertad,
the sardonic Señora, the ironically wistful Penélope and others,
the feeling grew until he came to the last song, Tío Alberto, a jaunty
minor-key waltz about someone by that name. A name that inevitably evoked the
apartment in Valencia where love first came to Daniel Wilner.
That weekend he once
again had dates with Claire and Audrey. Once again, he didnt tell them about
Vicky.
Her
letter came on Monday. It too was brief but affectionate. She asked him to send
her his telephone number; she knew of a phone box with a broken coin mechanism
from where she could call him for nothing. The letter ended with I love you
too / Yo también te quiero (in Spain we dont say te amo, its a South
American thing). South American seemed to be a Spaniards way of saying
Latin American; when, during his last evening in Sitges, Daniel told of his
trip to Mexico, Marisol responded by regretting that she had never been to
South America. John corrected her in Catalan, which Daniel understood
perfectly, Mèxic no és pas Sudamèrica, and then said to Daniel,
Geography teaching is appalling here in Spain. Vicky then said, Yeah, dad,
almost as bad as in England.
Then there was a
postscript: Mauricio gives us his blessing.
He was still holding the
letter and thinking about it when his phone rang. It was Karen Litov. Can you
come over tomorrow? she asked. Noon would be the best time, he thought,
between his morning classes and soccer practice. Sure, he said. Can I take
you out for lunch? She seemed unprepared for the invitation. Yes, that would
be very nice, she said after a pause. He remembered the nice little restaurant
where he had stopped the last time he had been at her office, and suggested it.
She agreed to meet him there at a quarter to one.
As he picked up the
envelope from the table in order to put in the recycling bin, he noticed that
it felt stiff between his fingers. He looked inside and found a
three-and-a-half-by-five photograph. It had evidently been taken by someone in
the bar in Sitges during the soccer game and featured, from left to right,
Daniel, Vicky, Mauricio and John. With Mauricios implied blessing he got a
pair of scissors from his desk and cut a clean line between Vicky and Mauricio.
After cutting off some more on his left he had a wallet-sized picture of
himself with his beloved. He wouldnt leave home without it, he decided.
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