The Illogic of Kassel

12

Setting aside that torrid scene, I returned to the real world, where I confirmed once again that everything was monotonous, and poor Alka, as far as I could tell from her ridiculous gestures, was describing something she’d eaten the previous night in Kassel, which was quite possibly a hamburger, although it might also have been, according to the drawing her fingers sketched out several times, an ant.

I told myself the latter was true, that her story wasn’t as humdrum as I believed, but I had no way of knowing. I decided to turn my gaze toward the landscape framed by the train window: monotonous villages without church steeples to break the flat perspectives, all the houses the same height, a pure apotheosis of tedium. I remembered something Roland Barthes had written about his admired and later so reviled China, what he’d commented about the Chinese villages seen from afar: all so insipid, he said, because of their lack of steeples, all absolutely insipid, like Chinese tea.

“So, you’ve been eating ants,” I said. I knew that luckily she wouldn’t understand me.

Soon afterward, after arriving at the more modern of the two stations in Kassel, we took a taxi to the Hotel Hessenland, located at the top of Königsstrasse, an important thoroughfare in the city. I still find it difficult to forget the trip between the station and the hotel, because all along the way, it seemed like people in the street were stopping all of a sudden when they saw me go by, standing and following me with their gazes, as if saying: It’s about time you got here.

Were they expecting someone and confusing me with him? That was really weird. How could I think that passersby were staring at me when in reality the opposite was happening and nobody — I well knew — was expecting me in Kassel?

Now I know what was happening to me was that I felt so alone, I had to imagine people were waiting for me to arrive like a breath of fresh air. Still unhinged from thinking everybody might be waiting for me there, I crossed the threshold of the Hessenland. I thought the receptionist, who was brokenly speaking my language, received me as if she thought it was about time I got there. Answering one of my questions, she told me that Karlsaue Park, the forest, and the Dschingis Khan restaurant were more or less on the opposite side of the city.

“Muy lejos,” I heard her say. Very far away.

Then, she told me about the forest and explained that there was a great variety of birds and, for her taste, very few squirrels. That was what she said, and it struck me as so exaggeratedly trivial, I even suspected she’d received orders to be that way, that is, to be so banal. I decided to surprise her and ask if what she really meant to tell me was that in Kassel there were very few squirrels with a truly avant-garde soul. Alka laughed, as if she’d perfectly understood my question. But she hadn’t understood, that’s for sure. So it became clear that Alka was laughing because her job obliged her to laugh at everything I said. There is nothing more irritating.

“Desiring stupid women requires one to be understanding,” I said.

It was just a McGuffin, but Alka laughed and laughed and her whole belly trembled.

“Alka speaking,” I said to her in Spanish. “I am in the aeropuerto. And you?”

It was horrible because she went into such convulsions that she fell on the floor laughing. When she stood up with my help, I almost said “Alka speaking” again to see if she’d test out the cold floor of the spotless Hessenland reception area once more. But I resisted this malicious temptation.