B0040702LQ EBOK (28 page)

`Call me the minute you have some news,' he replied, and
she rang off with a promise that she would.

He did not go out after lunch. He was seized by a pressing
need to continue the story he had begun so many months
before. He discovered that his character was trapped in a
remote city on the other side of the ocean. The winds were
rising, his plane could not take off, and flight after flight was
cancelled. Amidst that wind with its burden of dust and sand,
snatching up pieces of newspaper and plastic, the traveller was
filled with a sense of deep confusion and had to make an
effort not to lose consciousness. He had gone up to the old
quarter, but the houses, uninhabited or ruined, only increased
his unease, so he made his way back to the airport.

Sitting on one of the seats, with a small, dark suitcase placed
carefully at her feet, and her handbag on the seat next to her,
was the woman he had noticed earlier in the queue of passengers. The traveller joined the group of people standing by the
check-in desk listening to the explanations of the airline representative. He was talking about a phone call that would
come shortly from Spain, to say whether the last flight of the
day could take off, but it was clear that the verdict was unlikely
to be favourable.

He hesitated for an instant, though his first impulse had
been to go back outside, where the bushes around the glass
building were bending in the wind. Finally, he went over to
the seats, took the empty chair nearest to the woman, and
stayed there gazing at her profile as she sat motionless with her
hands around a closed book. Her legs were pressed together,
and her posture was slightly forced, possibly a sign of her
impatience.

He was staring at her so hard that the woman felt it and
turned her head. When her eyes fell on the traveller, she gave a
start, as if something in his face had surprised or even alarmed
her. In her apprehension, she suddenly stood up and the book
fell to the ground. The man disguised his own confusion by bending down to pick it up, but she was quicker. There was a
suggestion of displeasure in the woman's attitude, as though
she felt threatened. The man stood up too, and, making a
tremendous effort to remain calm, he spoke to her. Although
his words referred to the storm which was delaying all of
them, he attempted, by his particularly respectful tone, to
apologise for the alarm his presence had caused her, and also
to initiate a conversation which, however trivial the pretext,
would distract him for a time from his anguished wanderings.

He carried on writing till very late, waiting for Berta's phone
call, which never came. He tried hard not to worry, blaming
the lack of news on various trivial causes. Eventually he went
to bed - the sofa again - and lay awake for a long time. When
he fell asleep, he dreamed he was back again sheltering from
the rain in a doorway and that the same passer-by, drenched to
the skin and carrying two pieces of luggage, came over to him
and repeated the same questions. However, just as he was
about to answer - in his dream the scene did not seem like a
memory, so vivid was it, and so real the sound and the metallic
gleam of the rain and the feeling of dampness - Berta
appeared. He tried to speak to her, but Berta did not even
look at him: she was speaking solicitously to the traveller,
urging him to take shelter under an awning covering the
doorway, and she was drying his face, his neck, his hands, with
a white cloth she had taken from her handbag, and with evident care and fondness. He could discern in Berta's eyes and
in her movements a loving tenderness which he believed she
had never shown to himself. He could feel sadness paralysing
his body and he was sure that he would be stuck forever,
motionless and alone, in that doorway, looking out at the rain.

He awoke at dawn and immediately sat down to continue
the story.

At the airport, the lost traveller has met a woman, forced, like
him, to wait until the wind dies down. Some initial remarks
on the problem affecting them have opened the gates to a
long conversation. After a while, they are told that the last flight of the day has been cancelled. Together the two travellers leave the airport and walk around the city, absorbed in
their conversation.

That strange distant city and all the circumstances of their
peculiar shipwreck conspire to awaken in each of them a
frankness that grows as the hours pass. At first, the traveller
talks about his job, recalling the early days when all that nonstop travel held a promise of adventure, and he arrived in each
city eager to discover some of its secrets. In turn, she told him
about her first years in her job when she saw each new project
as a story, always with the promise of a happy ending.

Later, he tells her all the details of his progressive anxiety,
how as the years and the journeys have passed, he has begun to
fear that one day he will forget his name and will become
irredeemably lost in the streets of a city like this one, surrounded by shops selling kimonos, tape recorders and quartz
watches. She then tells him about her struggles in the company over the last year, her growing weariness with the
infighting.

They both rejected the crossing in the boat that was to
leave at eleven. They hoped that the wind would die down in
the night and that flights to Spain would be resumed in the
morning. They had dinner together and, later, they sat in one
of the cafes near the plaza, where they stayed till closing time.
The wind had died down.

On one side of the huge circular plaza, built as a backdrop
for military ceremonies and parades, was the park with its tall
palm trees, its ghostly walls, its deserted white paths along
which only they now strolled. They walked and chatted for
another hour, then went back to the hotel where they were
both staying. The sleepy night porter handed them the keys.
They had both been drinking and were talkative and wide
awake. She remembered that she had in her room a couple of
bottles of whisky that she had bought in an Indian shop as
potential presents, and invited him in for a drink.

So they went on till dawn, drinking and talking. The sky
was growing light over the port when she told him about her
various disappointments in love, and spoke about her present partner, with whom she stayed mainly out of friendship and
the fear of loneliness. `Yet I'm still lonely,' she confessed. He
moved closer and told her how he had lost his wife in an
accident, in the winter rain. `I'm haunted by the memory,' he
said. `I can't forget her, I can't forget what happened. I carry it
around inside me all the time, like a demon that won't let go.'
Like a beast gnawing at his imagination, constantly opening
fresh wounds.

They separated after breakfast, to catch a few hours' sleep
before going out to the airport. However, with morning the
wind had regained its strength and was gusting over the city,
veiling in dust the outline of the distant mountains.

By midday, Berta had still not called. The story had advanced
a lot, but as he re-read it he felt a detachment, even an
antipathy, towards what he had written and realised that he
could not go on; he did not like the way the story was developing; it was too much of a cliche; the enigma of the lost
traveller could not be resolved by an encounter with a
woman, however attractive, so he tried to reshape it completely from the point where the man begins to speak with
the woman in the airport lounge, attempting to substitute for
the relationship between them - after her shock at seeing that
face - events with a completely different meaning.

Instead of engaging in conversation with the traveller, the
woman would get to her feet, pick up her luggage and hurry
away. Thus the relationship between them could never arise;
the growing intimacy would be transformed into distance and
only a few brief interchanges would link them intermittently
over the course of a night in which she would flee while he
tried vainly to pursue her.

However, the story would not bend in the new direction he
had decided to give it. He changed the text numerous times,
but successive readings of the new versions forced him to
accept that, despite his dislike of the original plot, the meeting
between the two travellers and their subsequent intimacy was
no more melodramatic and cliched than keeping them apart.

Moreover, during the long conversation, some elements could be introduced which would give the whole thing a
sense of destiny, because it occurred to him that the traveller
might begin to suspect, behind the behaviour and appearance
of the woman, some mystery relevant to himself.

It was Saturday afternoon, and he felt resentful. `It's a
ridiculous tale,' he thought, knowing that he was enslaved to
the story, which was determined to develop in ways that
defied his will.

All he had eaten was some biscuits and fruit and he felt low
and sluggish, but he clung to the story as to a vow whose
abandonment might bring down on his head all kinds of grief
and misfortune. He felt very alone, on an interminable day full
of evil omens, and the story, though resistant to some of his
intentions, was at least a testimony to reality and coherence.

The two travellers remained for a further day in the city.
Their prolonged conversation had brought them closer and
they enjoyed each other's company. The wind continued
and flights were still suspended, so that night they bought
tickets for the boat, being obliged to share a cabin. With an
unease that was simultaneously frightening and pleasurable,
the traveller noticed that the woman was beginning to seem
eerily familiar to him.

They sat in the main lounge, where some people were
dancing under the fluorescent lights. Only an hour or so had
gone by when dancing became very difficult because of the
rolling of the ship amid the rough seas. One of the dancers fell
against a table, glasses shattered, there were hysterical shrieks
that marked the end of the evening and everyone went off to
bed.

The lights were dim and the cabin looked like some
ancient crypt recently uncovered thanks to luck and the skill
of the archaeologists. She sat on one of the bunks and took off
her shoes with a gesture in which the traveller found the
definitive key to his unease.

She had her head bent and her hair concealed her face, but
the traveller was sure now who she was: only some ancient
misunderstanding or the persistence of an incomprehensible delusion - unless it was a dream from which he was now
emerging, only to realise it was a lie - could have led him to
believe she was dead. When the woman looked up at him,
his hope turned to joy as he unhesitatingly recognised every
single feature of her face.

That twist in the plot, an unexpected flash of imagination, put
a sudden end to his efforts. In amazement he re-read the last
passage. For reasons he could not fathom, the lost traveller had
irrupted into places never suspected or foreseen by the author.

It was the middle of the night by now, and only the intermitten frenzy of Saturday-night drivers disturbed the darkness
of the streets. He decided not to write any more and went to
the living room, where he stood for a long time, immersed in
the bafflement induced by the way his story had developed,
apparently heading nowhere but into confusion and madness. His growing disappointment led him eventually to an
implacable sense of his own solitude.

It took him a long time to fall asleep and, at nine o'clock
the next morning, he was woken abruptly by the ringing of
the telephone. It was Berta, back in Spain after taking the boat.
Her voice was hoarse with lack of sleep and sounded vaguely
uneasy.

`Are you OK?' he asked anxiously.

`Fine,' she said, in an evasive tone.

`When will you get here?,

She told him that she would be taking the plane at midday.

'I need to talk to you about something,' she added finally.

He felt an obscure threat in her tone and could not think
what to reply. He simply said that he would be waiting at the
airport. He felt very restless, so he went out. It was Sunday and
the streets were deserted and quiet. He began to wander
around, oblivious to the brightness of the sun, just going
where his feet led him. He tried not to think about Berta, prey
to a gloomy premonition that echoed the feelings of his
dream of the night before last, when he had seen her lavish
such tenderness on a stranger. Nor did he want to think about
the story that lay in his office awaiting its ending. Yet he could not forget it either, as he strode on, with wide, staring eyes,
provoking surprise and even alarm in the few people who
crossed his path.

He had walked a great distance, when he became aware that
it was time to set off for the airport. Yet an obscure impulse
drove him back home. He turned on the computer, put in his
short stories disk, searched in the directory for the story he
had been writing for so many months and clicked the command that would make it disappear. When the story had been
deleted, he heaved a sigh.

Once again, he had been unable to finish a story and maybe
this time, too, the memory of the unresolved plot would fester
in his mind, preventing him for a long time from constructing
another one. But the plane would be landing soon and he
hurried out of the flat.

© Jose Maria Merino

Translated by Annella McDermott

Jose Maria Merino was born in La Coruna in 1941, but
lived for many years in Leon. At present, he is resident in
Madrid. Merino's first work of fiction was Novela de Andres
Choz (1976). His novel La orilla oscura (1985) won the Spanish
Critics' Prize and Las visiones de Lucrecia y la ruina de la Nueva
Restauraci6n (1996) was awarded the Miguel Delibes Prize.
`The Companion' is from Cuentos del reino secreto (1982) and
`The Lost Traveller' is the title story of El viajero perdido
(1990).