Antwerp (2 page)

The Calabria Commune campground, according to a sensationalistic article in PEN. Harassed by the townspeople: inside, the campers walked around naked. Six kids dead in the surrounding area. “They were campers” . . . “Not from around here, that’s for sure” . . . Months before, the AntiTerrorist Brigade paid them a visit. “They were out of control, I mean, screwing all over the place: they screwed in groups and wherever they felt like it” . . . “At first they kept to themselves, they only did it at the campground, but this year they had orgies on the beach and right outside town” . . . The police questioning the locals: “I didn’t do it,” says one, “if somebody had set fire to that place, you could blame me, it’s crossed my mind more than once, but I don’t have the heart to shoot six kids” . . . Maybe it was the mafia. Maybe they committed suicide. Maybe it was all a dream. The wind in the rocks. The Mediterranean. Blue.

To name is to praise, said the girl (eighteen, a poet, long hair). The hour of the ambulance parked in the alley. The medic stubbed out his cigarette on his shoe, then lumbered forward like a bear. I wish those miserable people in the windows would turn out the lights and go to sleep. Who was the first human being to look out a window? (Applause.) People are tired, it wouldn't surprise me if one of these days they greeted us with a hail of bullets. I guess a monkey. I can't string two words together. I can't express myself coherently or write what I want. I should probably give up everything and go away, isn't that what Teresa of Avila did? (Applause and laughter.) A monkey looking out a putrid window, watching the daylight fade. The medic came over to where the sergeant was smoking; they gave each other a slight nod without making eye contact. It was clear at a glance that he hadn't died of a heart attack. He was face down and you could see the bullet holes in his back, in his brown sweater. They emptied a machine gun into him, said a dwarf who was standing to the left of the sergeant and whom the medic hadn't seen. In the distance they heard the muted sounds of a protest march. We'd better go before they block the street, said the dwarf. The sergeant didn't seem to hear him, sunk in contemplation of the dark windows from which people were watching the spectacle. Let's hurry. But where do we go? There aren't any police stations. To name is to praise, said the girl, laughing. The same passion, taken to infinity. Cars stop between potholes and garbage cans. Doors that open and then close for no apparent reason. Engines, streetlights, the ambulance reverses away. The hour swells, bursts. I guess it was a monkey at the top of a tree.

There are no police stations, no hospitals
,
nothing. At least there’s nothing money can buy. “We act on instantaneous impulses” … “This is the kind of thing that destroys the unconscious, and then we’ll be left hanging” … “Remember that joke about the bullfighter who steps out into the ring and then there’s no bull, no ring, nothing?” … The policeman drank anarchic breezes. Someone started to clap.

I dreamed of a woman with no mouth, says the man in bed. I couldn’t help smiling. The piston forces the images up again. Look, he tells her, I know another story that’s just as sad. He’s a writer who lives on the edge of town. He makes a living working a riding school. He’s never asked for much, all he needs is a room and time to read. But one day he meets a girl who lives in another city and he falls in love. They decide to get married. The girl will come to live with him. The first problem arises: finding a place big enough for the two of them. The second problem is where to get the money to pay for it. Then one thing leads to another: a job with a steady income (at the stables he works on commission, plus room, board, and a small monthly stipend), getting his papers in order, registering with social security, etc. But for now, he needs money to get to the city where his fianceé lives. A friend suggests the possibility of writing articles for a magazine. He calculates that the first four would pay for the bus trip there and back and maybe a few days at a cheap hotel. He writes his girlfriend to tell her he’s coming. But he can’t finish a single article. He spends the evenings sitting outdoors at the bar of the riding school where he works, trying to write, but he can’t. Nothing comes out, as they say in common parlance. The man realizes that he’s finished. All he writes are short crime stories. The trip recedes from his future, is lost, and he remains listless, inert, going automatically about his work among the horses.

With instructions in an envelope, I left the city. I didn't have far to go, maybe ten or twelve miles south, along the coast highway. I was supposed to start my investigation on the outskirts of a tourist town whose edges had gradually begun to house workers from elsewhere. Some actually had jobs back in the city; others didn't. The places I was supposed to visit were the usual spots: a couple of hotels, the campground, the police station, the restaurant, the gas station. Later I would probably visit other places. The sun beat on the car windows, unusual for October. But the air was cold and the highway was almost deserted. I drove past the first string of factories. Then an artillery barracks, through the open gates of which I could see a group of recruits smoking, their bearing far from military. Six miles further I entered a sort of forest broken up by houses and apartment buildings. I parked the car behind the campground and walked a while as I finished my cigarette, unsure of what to do. Two hundred yards away, just ahead of me, the train appeared. It was a blue train, four cars long at most. It was almost empty. I turned back. I sounded the horn several times but no one came to raise the barrier. The drive was gravel, shaded by tall pines; on either side there were tents and RVs camouflaged by the vegetation. I remember noting that it looked like the jungle, though I had never been in a jungle. At the end of the road, where it turned, something was moving, then a trash can came into view, wheeled along by an old man. I waved to him. At first he didn't seem to see me, then he came over, pulling the can after him with a look of resignation. I'm with the police, I said. He swore he had never seen the person I was looking for. Are you sure? I asked, handing him a cigarette. He said he was absolutely sure. It was more or less the same answer I got from everyone. Twilight found me in the car, parked on the Paseo Maritimo. I took out the instructions. The overhead light didn't work, so I had to use a cigarette lighter to read them. A couple of typewritten sheets with handwritten corrections. Nowhere did it say what I should be doing there. With those pages there were some blackandwhite photos. I studied them carefully: it was the stretch of the Paseo Maritimo where I was now, maybe earlier in the day. "Our stories are sad, sergeant, there's no point trying to understand them"... "We've never hurt anyone" ... No point trying to understand them"... "The sea"... I balled up the papers and threw them out the window. In the rearview mirror I thought I could see how the wind swept them away. I turned on the radio, music, a program from the city; I switched it off. I lit a cigarette. I closed the window, still staring ahead, watching the lonely street and the boardedup houses. I was struck by the idea of living in one of them during the winter season. They must be cheaper, I said to myself, unable to suppress a shiver.

The images set off down the road and yet they never get anywhere, they're simply lost, it's hopeless, says the voice and the hunchback asks himself, hopeless for who? The Roman bridges are our fate now, thinks the author as the images still shine, not too distant, like towns that the car gradually leaves behind. (But in this case the man isn't moving.) "I've made a count of airheads and severed heads" ... "There're definitely more severed heads" ... "Although in eternity it's hard to tell them apart"... I told a Jewish girl, a friend of mine, that it was sad to spend hours in a bar listening to dirty stories. Nobody tried to change the subject. Shit dripped from the sentences at breast height, so that I couldn't stay seated, and I went up to the bar. Stories about cops chasing immigrants. Nothing shocking, really, people upset because they were out of work, etc. These are the sad stories I have to tell you.

I remember she moved from place to place without staying anywhere too long. Sometimes she had red hair, her eyes were green. The sergeant came up to her and asked for her papers. She turned to look at the mountains, it was raining there. She didn't talk much, most of the time she just listened to the conversations of the riders from the stable next door, or of the construction workers or the waiters from the restaurant on the highway. The sergeant avoided her eyes, I think he said it was too bad it was raining on the plain, then he pulled out a pack of cigarettes and offered her one. He was really looking for someone else, and he thought she might be able to give him some information. The girl watched the sunset, leaning on the riding school fence. The sergeant walked along a path in the grass, he had broad shoulders and was wearing a navy blue jacket. Slowly it began to rain. She closed her eyes when someone told her that he had dreamed of a corridor full of women without mouths; then she walked away toward the woods. An employee, a tired old man, turned out the lights at the riding school. With his sleeve he wiped the windowpanes. The policeman walked away without saying goodbye. In the dark, she took off her pants in the bedroom. She tried to decide on a corner, the hairs rising on the backs of her arms, and for a few moments she didn't move. The girl had witnessed a rape and the sergeant thought she could serve as witness. But he was really after something else. He put his cards on the table. Fade to black. In a leap he was standing on the bed. Through the dirty windows you could see the stars. I remember it was cold, a clear night. From where he stood the cop could see almost the whole riding school, the stables, the bar that was almost always closed, the rooms. She looked out the window and smiled. She heard footsteps coming up the stairs. The sergeant said she didn't have to talk if she didn't want to. "My links to the Body are almost nonexistent, especially from their own point of view"... "I'm looking for someone who lived here a few seasons ago, I have reason to think you knew him"... "Impossible to forget someone who looked like that ..."I don't want to hurt you"... "Along the coast they found golden woods and cabins vacant until next summer" ... "Paradise" ... "The redheaded girl watched the sun go down from the stable in flames"...

The Englishman said it wasn't worth it. For a long time he wondered what the Englishman meant. Ahead of him the shadow of a man slipped though the forest. He rubbed his knees but made no move to get up. The man popped up from behind a bush. Over his forearm, like a waiter approaching his first customer of the evening, he carried a white sheet. His movements were slightly clumsy and yet he radiated a serene authority when he walked. The hunchback assumed that the man had seen him. With a yellow cord the man tied a corner of the sheet to a pine, then tied the other corner to the branch of another tree. He repeated the operation with the bottom corners, after which the hunchback could only see his legs, because the rest of his body was hidden by the screen. The hunchback heard him cough. Then he came around the other side and contemplated the knots with which the sheet was tied to the pines. Not bad, said the hunchback, but the man ignored him. He reached his left hand up to the top left corner and slid it, the palm against the cloth, to the center. Once he had done that, he removed his hand and tapped the sheet a few times with his index finger to test the tension. He turned to face the hunchback and sighed in contentment. Then he clicked his tongue. His hair fell over his forehead, which was damp with sweat. He had a long red nose. Not bad, in fact, he said. I'm going to show a film. He smiled as if in apology. Before he left he looked up at the darkening treetops.