Winter Journey

The Trace

'd never felt so desolate as at that very important moment in my life when the subway train had racketed down the tunnel and the passengers had made for the exit like nervous ants, and 1 was alone on the platform in Majorstuen station with nobody around me, and 1 started to hear somebody whistling. At first 1 didn't catch it, but pretty soon 1 recognized one of the themes from Finlandia, by Sibelius. Sibelius in the subway? Whistled? 1 took the first exit, the ant one. Nothing, completely empty. Just those white tiles, like in a bathroom, in a pointlessly lighted tunnel. Where was the music coming from? I took a few steps, completely forgetting that I had an appointment in ten minutes for the interview that was supposed to get my life on track, if that was possible. Three years ago 1'd run away from home when 1 realized that if 1 didn't do something about it, in a week 1 was going to marry a woman who didn't give a shit about me. 1 got on a train, holding my breath, without looking back, without even thinking about my mother, and when 1 let out my breath I was in Copenhagen feeling envious of how organized those people were and learning first-hand all about the high cost of living. Maybe that's why 1 took the ferry to Norway, 1 don't know. 1 had to get away, friends, far away from complaints and curses from the family and from Sonia. Norway. The first taste was Oslo. 1 got off the ferry, found a very expensive and crummy hostel in the center of town, and have stayed there ever since. It's not easy to arrive in Oslo without knowing a word of Norwegian, or Danish, or Swedish, or English. You feel like retreating into your shell. In other words, 1 had to live off charming smiles and a kind of Latin-lover thing that a lot of women seem to like. And a lot of men. Two months washing dishes in a Pizza Hut and then three months as a cook's helper in a sort of Italian restaurant. I didn't do it for the money. I did it to keep from retreating into my shell. After those jobs I spoke really bad Norwegian, which made the natives like me even more.

Norwegians are really something, friends. They're innocent in this kind of charming way. They think everybody's like them. They believe that nobody would ever invade anybody else's privacy, or harm his neighbor. They hadn't met me. It's not that I'm dishonest, but if 1 see thirty purses lying around in the entrance to the Munch museet, full of wallets and IDs and keys just crying out to change hands, first 1 think, Don't do it, Quiquin. And 1 don't. But, come on, you see the purses every day, and every day you think, Don't do it, until finally you've had enough and one day 1 did it and found out that stealing, in Norway, is a piece of cake. 1 didn't steal for the money; let's say 1 did it for art's sake, to get inside those Norwegian heads, where their brains are half frozen from living so far up north.

And, hey, how about the day that Pere Bros, that ass kisser, came to the Universitetets Aula, just before he packed it in? He did the Spring (saccharine), the Kreutzer (self-indulgent) and the Franck (perfect), with that idiot Gidon Kremer on the violin, and I made out like a bandit. Literally, friends. Because the Norwegians are so Norwegian that instead of a cloakroom, the Universitetets Aula just has some hooks in the hall. I'm not kidding, friends. So they can't complain, because when Kremer and Bros were working their way through the andante of the opus 24, 1 said to myself, Quiquin, go take a piss because this is getting boring. So 1 go out and there's all these coats saying, Come on, Quiquin, do it. 1 went back in the middle of the Kreutzer happy, because when it comes to providing employment to thieves, the Norwegians are real professionals.

1 didn't spend a single night, friends, thinking about home. Despite the fact that my mother would still send me money every month, on the sly. Mother love. Even my father didn't know 1 was in Oslo. One day 1 called home when 1 knew my mother would be alone, and described as much of my life as 1 could and asked for my allowance, as if 1 were still in Barcelona. I said 1 had to go to concerts and live, 1 don't know, like an educated person. Pretending to cry when she asked me why I'd left Sonia when the Quadras were such nice people was probably a bit much. But what was I supposed to say? Was I supposed to say, Mother, l don't want to marry somebody who laughs at me because my thing is too little? Was 1 supposed to say, Mother, I don't want to marry a pig who says she doesn't like the Stones or Jethro Tull or Monteverdi or any kind of music? Crying was the best option. Well done, Quiquin, because since we had that awful conversation, Mother puts out every month. Result: 1 allow myself, once in a while, to think about my mother. And only about my mother. Because if 1 start remembering Sonia or my father or the rest of the family, if they show up in my head all by themselves, 1 just look north, as if threatening to go to Lapland or even the North Pole to freeze out those family memories forever. This tunnel had a bend at the end where maybe… No: at the end the same antiseptic white tiles all lined up with nobody there. Brad Pitt was looking scornfully down from a billboard and refusing to tell me where the mysterious music was coming from, but Sibelius sounded the same, neither closer nor farther away, down there in the subway. Next to Brad Pitt, a picture of a beach that could've been Salou informed the citizens of Oslo that Israel was the perfect place for a vacation, with personal safety absolutely guaranteed by the trademark Israeli efficiency. 1 took a good look, because it really did look like Salou. You could practically see the Segarra tower! Can you imagine passing Salou off as Israel? According to those swindlers, Salou was a charming Israeli tourist town called Dor, with little boats, nets, happy fishermen, starfish and a casino. Beautiful scenery, beaches, a port where the environment and its traditional fisheries and gastronomy strill thrive. Discover the friendly face of Israel. You'll love it. 1 turned away from this fraud and found myself on the same platform where 1'd gotten off. Finlandia was still bouncing off the tiles, almost mockingly. Until the arrival of another train covered up all the melodies in the world, and the doors opened to vomit out a hundred imprisoned citizens who, probably, couldn't care less about Sibelius. it isn't that 1 was particularly interested in Sibelius; it's that 1 have a musical gift that's a pain in the ass: l hear any kind of music and 1 absolutely have to listen to it. And I memorize it and remember it forever and ever. There's too much music inside of me, and I try to keep it confined to my stomach. But when it decides to play inside my head, there's nothing 1 can do except go crazy. So 1 waited until the station emptied out, but then the enfuriating thing was that the music was gone. It seemed like, I'm not completely sure, but it seemed like in some rugged corner of that labyrinth somebody, like the Phantom of the Opera, was stifling a snicker. My mind was so far away with that shadowy apparition that 1 wasn't even shocked when 1 looked at my watch: 1 was already shamelessly late for my interview with Dr. Werenskiold, friends, and there 1 was thinking about Sibelius deep underground. Half confused, half embarrassed by the snicker but not by being late, 1 headed for the exit and the government building where 1 was supposed to find the solution to all of my material and spititual problems. I'm not kidding, friends, 1 felt like strangling that snickerer.

Outside, even though it was August, it was goddam cold. Looking at the huge ministry building made me feel very small. It made the same impression on me that, in more magical times, cathedrals had made on the faithful. Or the paralyzing feeling that I'd had when I went to the Nasjonalgalleriet (four purses plundered, 38o crowns, a very nice tamagochi with whose interior 1 became quite intimate, and three drivers' licenses that turned into kroner a few days later) to look at paintings. 1 was particularly impressed by a non-painting. In gallery 34, and I'll always remember that it was gallery 34 because 1 could hear through the window that faced the street, rising up like sour and unwanted bile, the disgusting sarabande from Bach's second partita played on a violin with an out-of-tune D string. 1 was about to demand that the woman who was the guard for galleries 30 to 36 explain why such sounds were allowed to penetrate that temple. But 1 didn't do it; 1 just gave her a dirty look and she smiled back. It was that Latin lover thing again. Gallery 34 and the non-painting. 1 stood for half an hour in front of an undirty shadow on the wall behind a not-verylarge painting by Rembrandt van Rijn, which was traveling around Europe somewhere. Contemplating a non-painting is good for your soul. The difference in tone between the wall ad usum and the patch of wall that was protected for years by Rembrandt reveals the passage of time, the tempus fugit, the tempus edax rerum, the glances of many, many pasty Norwegians, fumes from the street that have stuck to the wall like onion skin — if any Norwegian car or Norwegian furnace produces fumes, which 1 doubt. The wall was greenish, completely unartistic. In contrast, the color of the hidden and now uncovered wall was brave, vivid, a little lighter, optimistic, kind of Stand aside, it's my turn. And the line, the border between the two greens showed the exact outline of the Rembrandt. Bravo. Magnificent. 1 don't remember the paintings that were on either side of the non-painting by Rembrandt. After this fabulous experience, 1 went to every museum in Oslo looking for more nonpaintings. 1 found three or four that made me very happy.

As 1 entered the huge lobby of the ministry with all of its escalators, the air conditioning took my breath away, because the Norwegians think that if the sun's out it must be sweltering. After consulting with the bored civil servant who was directing traffic, 1 headed for the longest escalator. The one next to it was going down, so that the citizens who were on their way out, satisfied or mortified, passed by me. That's when 1 saw her.

1 could care less about Norway. It's been a tool, that's all. The thing is, my friends, that to keep from having to go back to Barcelona, it was a good idea to become a Norwegian citizen. Especially if my mother kept putting out. And Dr. Werenskiold was the man who had to decide, after a number of complaints from citizens who were unjustly irritated with me, what to do with the charming Quiquin. Because even if 1 could care less about Norway, 1 want to stay here. 1 just went into business with this Bosnian hardass, smuggling cigarrettes, and we could get so rich that it makes me dizzy just to think about it. And then, with my shorts full of thousand-crown bills, Sonia wouldn't say it was little.

And there in the lobby of the ministry I saw her for the first time in my life. She was coming towards me, as I was going towards her, on the magic belt of the escalator, and she looked at me with glade-colored eyes and let her hair fly, just for me, as if she were on a magic carpet. She had on a short dress, very simple, that set off but did not misrepresent her perfect figure. And she was looking at me, friends, with the same intensity with which I was examining her, amazed. The first Norwegian 1 was really attracted to. What a woman. What a goddess. Until we were next to one another and immobile, we passed one another by; and that was when 1 sensed the fragrance of her perfume, her skin, her clothes, and the subtle aroma of her memories. A fleeting sensation, a couple of seconds, but it's lasted all my life. 1 didn't see if there were other people on the down escalator or if the goddess was by herself. 1 fell, openmouthed in admiration, possessed by that urgent call, as 1 flew up the stairs in search of the decidedly un-epic Dr. Werenskiold, who'd been drumming his fingers on the table for the last quarter of an hour and thinking bad thoughts about me, because this was the last and definitive meeting. She'd turned too and was looking at me with the same intensity, it seemed, as I was looking at her. She looked like a valkyrie. And both of us experienced that irreproducible sensation of knowing we were alone in the world, with no thieves, no Norwegians, no bad guys to hurt us, no witches, no boring arguments, no cruel Sonias. And because both of us had the same feeling at the same time, we had the same idea, and at the end of the escalator, 1 was about to go down and she to come up. I'm impulsive and 1 didn't realize how ridiculous it would have been if we'd passed one another again in the same place. But she, who's Norwegian, was the smart one, because she stopped and got off the escalator. She waited for me, as faithful as Penelope, for all the days, months and years it took for me to go down, friends, surrounded by all those people that didn't matter to us. Once we were face to face, 1 could see that she was tall, maybe a few inches taller than me, and that she did indeed have eyes the color of a river glade in which, if 1 wasn't careful, 1 could drown. 1 smiled and said, My name is Abelard. What's yours?

"1 finally found you."

We stepped into a corner and she ran her fingertips over my hand as she repeated, Abelard, as if trying out a new name on a new person, and she seemed to think it was fine.

"You're gorgeous."

"Have you had the interview with Dr. Werenskiold?"

"Sure! Norway is huge, but 1 knew 1'd end up finding you."

She smiled and pointed at my face as if to say that she'd never seen eyes like that. With her velvet voice, coming up close:

"1 can't do anything else for you, Mr. Masdexaxart. It's up to the Ministry."

"I've never seen anything like yours either." 1 grabbed her tenderly by the arms. "You're the most important thing that's ever happened to me. Why haven't we ever met before?"

"If you don't let go of me, I'm going to have to call the police, even if 1 am your lawyer."

"Don't, I'm not Italian," I said ungraciously, letting her go, a little confused.

"It might be a week before they decide. I'll be there."

"It's not necessary."

"1 know you speak Norwegian very well, but if you want…"

"Thank you," 1 interrupted her. "You speak it very well too." And I brought the conversation back to basics. "It doesn't matter where I'm from."

She probably thought it was stupid of me to turn my back on my roots, because she did nothing but cast her eyes serenely downward. 1 felt afraid and loved her even more. Of course it's important if it's important to her! So why the hell wasn't 1 Italian? Why did 1 have to be born in Barcelona? 1 damned my father and mother to hell (no, not my mother, 1 saved her right away) for not having had me in Montescaglioso. 1 was so deeply in love with the valkyrie for so many centuries that 1 forgot all about the Italian problem. 1 took her hand and let go of it right away, because it was burning, and she touched my skin again, as if tasting it, with the tips of her fingers. And she smiled:

"There are going to be some problems." In a lower voice, "Your case isn't simple. They even want to bring in the medical records."

"With you by my side 1 do not fear the night, Lord."

"Come on, you can share my taxi if you want."

1 was in the presence of happiness and 1 was drinking it in through my pores. Now 1 understood why fate hadn't let me stop, on my flight through the desert, until l got to Oslo, the city of peace and joy. Isolde was waiting for me.

"Take me into your bed, Goddess."

1 helped her out a little, because she'd gone quiet, with her mouth open, virginal, reticent and shy.

"Fine, Eloisa. You know where we can go on vacation?"

"The taxis are through that door."

"Dor. It's a quiet Israeli village, next to Salou, 50o kilometers north of Tel Aviv and twenty kilometers south of Haifa. Beautiful scenery, beaches, a port where the environment and its traditional fisheries and gastronomy strill thrive. Discover the friendly face of Israel. You'll love it. Shall l reserve two seats on El Al? We can spend the next millennium there."

She was listening intently and 1 tried to be sincere.

"Okay," 1 said. "We can go to Dor after they finally make me a Norwegian."

Then 1 had a brief vision of Dr. Werenskiold signing the papers and granting me a passport, and years of life in Norway in peace and harmony by the side of my valkyrie. All of a sudden, my blood ran cold: that bastard Werenskiold! He hadn't signed anything yet! And 1 started to sweat.

"You're going to have to wait a minute, Eloisa. 1 forgot 1 have to be somewhere."

"Didn't you say…"

"It'll just take a minute," 1 interrupted her. "Will you wait for me?"

And 1 was rude enough to look at my watch. She nodded as if to say, What choice do 1 have? and watched me walk away. 1 didn't realize until much later that the color of the water in the glade had gone cloudy. Fervent as a medieval knight, 1 ran up the stairs, pushing aside the poor devils who didn't know Eloisa and rushing to make it to the doctor, to meekly accept the conditions for changing my nationality and sign on the dotted line, get the thing over with and go back to happiness.

Things never turn out the way you want. Not even in Norway. Dr. Werenskiold didn't know the valkyrie Eloisa was waiting for me at the foot of the ministry-mountain with her glade-like eyes, did you, Dr. Werenskiold? So he made me wait seven confusing and humiliating minutes. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven indecent minutes that could separate me from my eternal love. And afterwards, when 1 was sitting in front of him with my flattering Latin smile, the doctor spent two hours cleaning his glasses and looking at me in silence, making the same face that my father makes to mean, What are we going to do with this boy, Mother, what are we going to do? I'm not going to give you a car or a horse or a shotgun; you don't deserve them. My father has always treated me as if 1 weren't a human being… Enough of that, it makes me sick and 1 don't want to throw up.

"We still can't say that you have a regular job, Mr. Masdexaxart."

Fine. Tatoo the serial number on my arm. Long live Norway. I'm in a hurry. I have to go.

"But I have a steady income."

"I'm talking about work, Mr. Masdexaxart."

If there weren't so many people around, 1'd take this letter opener and stick it in your fat priest's neck. I want to be Norwegian because 1 love Eloisa, period.

"1 have an interview tomorrow: home appliance repair."

"Well…" Half an hour's thought. "That might be right for you."

I like to tell lies, doctor. Especially if people are going to believe them.

"Ubi bene, ibi patria."

"What?" The priest was suspicious, in case it was a secret message.

"1 mean 1 love Norway with all my heart, Dr. Werenskiold."

"I'm not saying you don't, but there seem to be a lot of citizens who aren't very fond of you. You owe three months' rent and there are now sixteen official complaints about your behavior."

Assholes, unemployed Norwegians who want to give me a hard time because I'm not blond or tall and my thing is little.

"I'm sure it's a misunderstanding, Dr. Werenskiold."

"Sixteen misunderstandings."

The doctor's irony was insulting. But he was playing at home, and I couldn't give in to the taunts of the crowd. 1 smiled, in other words, and because 1 was like a love token in the hands of fate, friends, that wanted only to return to my glade, I gave up on the interview.

When 1 headed for the lobby, 1 was about to shout that 1 was the happiest man in the world. There was a crowd of people and nobody could get to the escalator. So 1 stuck my head up in the direction of the blessed wall where she was waiting for me and put on a smile a perfect happiness. But after a few seconds my smile melted. Eloisa wasn't there. Okay, she had to be… Maybe over there… Maybe she was looking for somewhere to throw… Or she'd gone out to see if… By the time I got to the lobby I'd invented two thousand plausible explanations for Eloisa's disappearance. I looked around: lots of indifferent faces, but the countenance of my valkyrie was not among them. Then 1 felt afraid and my soul said, Eloisa, my glade, ubi es?

I don't know if it took two or three hours, but I looked everywhere. Everywhere. I asked hundreds of people, I went out on the street fifty times thinking, Shit, shit, shit, what if somebody's run over her, or kidnapped her, or simply killed her. 1 checked the neighborhood, 1 went through everything, even the trashcans, looking for any sign of the girl with the river-glade eyes. But the world had ended and the evidence pointed to my never seeing Eloisa again. In the middle of the afternoon, tired, famished, sweaty and parched, 1 left the Ministry wanting only to get inside the deafening world of King Crimson so they could blow you all away. Not you, friends: them. And 1 wanted some Crim so bad that 1 thought the best thing would be to go to the little record store on Osterhausgate and act like 1 wanted to buy In the Wake of Poseidon, for example. And after an hour, smile my Mediterranean smile and tell the Sigrid on duty, No, I guess not. I went down into the metro wondering if the store on Osterhausgate was the best place to listen to Crim and forget about my problems. In spite of everything, the white tiles in the tunnel reminded me of the hidden melody from a few hours before, and all of a sudden I was done with Crimson and wanted a quick dose of Sibelius. I was sad, friends. Very sad. Quae solitudo esset in Metropolitano, quae vastitas! As Saint Stephen, the first martyr, exclaimed in a situation similar to mine. 1 let three trains go by hoping to be able to hear the whistled music in that impossible place, but, no luck. Worse, an imposing-looking woman with black hair and blue eyes set up a speaker and a diabolical machine right next to me, threatened me with a smile and started singing, to a taped accompaniment, an ignominous selection of the best known and most strenuous arias from the operatic repertory. While the fake soprano filled the air with arias, 1 was trying to decide whether to crack open her skull or cut her vocal cords. But I remembered that 1 was playing away from home, and chose to abstain. When I'd had enough, 1 decided to get away on the first train that came by. As soon as the train arrived, the woman fell silent in honor of my departure. The car was almost empty. Just as the doors were closing behind me with a sigh, I heard the same melody from Finlandia, clear, precise and almost mocking. It came from the platform. 1 tried desperately to keep the doors from closing by trying to stick my hand between them, but, indifferent, they guillotined my plea as the train started up, and against my will l left all my hopes and dreams behind.

When 1 got to my hostel, 1, Quiquin of Barcelona, had fallen from my horse in Osterhausgate. The Sigrid on duty was going to give me Poseidon, but there on the counter was a pile of The Last Recital of Pere Bros and that made me wonder because if it really was his last recital then he must've checked out, and it wasn't very long ago that he and Kremer had made me rich in Oslo. 1 was curious and asked to listen to the disc. Schubert, as usual, crying in B-flat major. But that damn what's his name, Fischer. That's one weird, Fripp thing. So 1 put it on five times and 1 decided to steal one of the CDs because it was only right that I should have that fantastic music. Coming back from my Damascus with the CD in the pocket of my jacket, 1 found a smiling Dr. Werenskiold outside of my hostel flanked by two hefty uniformed civil servants. He asked me where on earth 1'd been all that time and informed me that he was then turning me over to one of the gorillas, who was in fact a fairly well-known police commissioner whose name 1 couldn't remember. It seems that my lawyer had filed a complaint against me for attempted valkyrie abuse and my hardass Bosnian friend had given evidence that 1 was the head of an illegal web of distribution of contraband tobacco. Both of these outrageous lies made me angry, but the friendly civil servants made a gesture that meant, Don't even try.

if 1'd been able to write all this down, friends, it would have been the First Letter of Quiquin to the Barcelonans. But 1 can't, because the police van is bouncing around in a very un-Norwegian way. Enough dreaming, Quiquin, you need to start thinking in practical terms. Right now I'm going to tell these Vikings stuffed with milk and cheese that I won't make any statement unless my mother is present.