He peruses the art books. He leafs through one on Tamara de Lempicka, one on Hopper (which brings back snatches of the dream . . .), one on Matisse (that shows red flowers with violet spots that seem to move), and one on Magritte. Were there cockroaches there, too? He looks at the legs of the tables where the books lie, expecting to find termites. There aren’t any. He goes back to the book, turns the page, and sees the drawing of a pipe bearing the legend Ceci n’est pas une pipe. “It most certainly is not,” he thinks, feeling vaguely content.
He puts down the book on Magritte and picks up a few more books at random from another table, without looking at the titles. He sits in an armchair in a corner of the room. He watches the people who walk by. From time to time he leafs through one of the books, then another, pleased at being capable—despite his leafing-through—of not knowing what they are about. It is the books he’s interested in, not what they say. What they say awakens no passion at all. (Amazing to have felt this way for so long, only to be reasoning it through now for the first time!) Perhaps reasoning it through is a step backwards, though, because, in fact, feelings lie more on the surface of things. It is easy from him not to know what the books say. It is just a question of not noticing, of making an effort not to notice. It’s strange what’s happening to him: attitudes he would previously have considered stupid now delight him, and he finds honest and worthy those which at any previous moment he would have considered idiotic. Maybe he is evolving, becoming more mature. In an on-the-spot application of the ideas fluttering in his head, he sees that leafing through those books comes down, in the end, to a series of arbitrary gestures; and he finds it quite fine to be making arbitrary gestures. Why is it quite fine to be making arbitrary gestures? He doesn’t feel like responding and even considers it stupid to have posed the question. He finds thinking to be a bore. He finds this boredom to be another symptom of maturity. He lets his eyes wander over the shelves, trying not to register anything. He sees a girl leafing through a book and looking from side to side. He realizes right away that she wants to steal it. The girl looks behind her and meets Heribert’s gaze. The sudden flash of her eyes confirms Heribert’s impression that she wanted to steal the book that now, quite flustered, she is quickly returning to the shelf. In spite of his irritation at having realized what the girl had in mind (and therefore at not being able to continue running his eyes over things without registering them), he considers getting up, approaching her, and telling her to take the book without a second thought, as she’s mistaken if she’s taken him for a guard, or if she has taken his expression of curiosity for one of reproach.
When Heribert gets up, the girl has already disappeared behind some bookcases. He searches all over the room for her and only discovers her when, from the handrail, he casts an eye over the main floor: she is at the cash register, paying, waiting for the cashier to put a paperback in a bag, and darting quick glances at the escalator.
Heribert finds it illogical to leave without a book. It isn’t exactly illogical: it is somehow suspect. Suspect? In what way? The question also seems stupid to him. To punish himself, as he runs toward the table of art books and picks up a copy of the one on Tamara de Lempicka, he pinches his left arm with the fingers of his right hand. He is still running (and feeling upon his skin the stares of all the salespeople and customers), when he goes down the escalator. For a moment it seems strange that no one thinks he has stolen anything, but by the following moment it seems evident that no one who had stolen anything would run; so it wasn’t even necessary for him to buy a book: breaking into a sprint was quite enough. As he puts on his coat after paying at one of the cash registers, he sees the girl far away, across the street, walking south.
He crosses the avenue (so suddenly that two taxis collide in order not to hit him) and follows her, quickening his pace until he’s close enough not to lose sight of her. Then he slows up. He is all set to approach her and say: “I’m terribly sorry. I’m not a guard at that bookstore. I know you decided not to steal the book on my account: when I looked at you, you must have thought it was a reproach, but it wasn’t at all.”
He watches her walking in front of him. He thinks she looks like an Anna and doesn’t feel like trying to figure out why he thinks her name should be Anna and not Judith or Cynthia. Maybe Anne or Ann, or perhaps Carmen or Barbara; not Mary, though. He doesn’t know why, but he’s sure a girl who walks like that can’t be a Mary.
He falls into step with her and walks right by her side. After a while, though, he reflects that he can’t address her without conveying an intention quite extraneous to the pure and simple message he wishes to deliver. From close up, her face seems familiar, and from more than one occasion. He sees it against a backdrop of paintings or sculptures . . . At some exhibit? He starts to feel embarrassed, or shy, or scared, and he keeps looking at her, determined to say nothing even before her glance (surprised, both angry and frightened), makes him decide to diminish his speed, just as she accelerates. “Lately, I just seem to ruin everything,” he thinks. And, right after that, “It would have been more compelling to think ‘Lately, I just seem to ruin everything’ with tears in my eyes.”
•
He takes a quick look in all the rooms. As usual, Helena isn’t there. He thinks of preparing lunch, but at that point in the afternoon he decides it is more appropriate to skip lunch and prepare dinner. What, though? He opens the refrigerator and checks off the contents: ice cubes, a bottle of vodka, two bottles of white wine, butter, shrimp, chicken, beef, jams, several kinds of bread, tomatoes, string beans, corn, orange soda, grapefruit juice, tomato juice, sparkling water, onions, potatoes, olives, capers. The mere thought of figuring out what he could do with all that makes him dizzy. Perhaps only to avoid any more such musings, he decides that, precisely because it is so late, he can take advantage of these last moments of daylight: he goes up to his studio, prepares his paints, and turns on the radio. Without much enthusiasm, he continues filling in small strips of black on a canvas with a charcoal sketch of a man sitting on a stool with his head propped up on a bar.
Since this gets boring, he picks up the book he bought. He examines it, he touches it. He is so sure he’ll like it (both the book and every one of the plates, including the ones he’s never seen) that he puts off opening it. The longer he delays in opening the front cover and looking at the first page, the longer he puts off the pleasure of beginning to read it, the longer he will postpone the end. He also realizes that the sooner he begins to read it, the sooner he will finish it. (He quickly sees that this is just the same thing said backwards. For a moment he is surprised that one can say the same thing by saying it backwards. He perceives immediately that this is painfully obvious. Being surprised at self-evident things makes him feel corroded.)
For a while, he halfheartedly mulls over the thought that everything goes by (or everything has gone by him) too quickly in life. Then he wonders whether he isn’t putting off starting the book because, in fact, he’s not in the mood. Or is it this long line of thought he’s not in the mood for? More than a long line: an interminable line. He goes down to the living room. He turns on the television, goes to the kitchen, opens the refrigerator, takes out the bottle of vodka,