Quite some time later, he realizes he doesn’t know what’s happening onscreen. He has seen the picture from the beginning, but now he wouldn’t be capable of explaining the plot. He decides to try: on the screen, two heterosexual couples (Heterosexual? he asks himself. Maybe it would be better to say of different sexes.) are arguing about he’s not sure what at a table in a restaurant. He uses the remote control to distort the colors: the people’s skin turns a reddish pink, like plastic, and the green of the tablecloth is practically fluorescent. It all seems so unreal, with that nervous drizzle that the color casts on actors and objects alike that, in the end, he feels better about it and is able to continue looking at the film without concerning himself with the plot or the actors’ gestures.
Two hours later his own snoring awakens him. He turns off the television and drags himself to bed.
•
He hears the rustling of sheets and asks himself if it is the rustling that has awakened him or if, a few moments before, he heard shoes hitting the floor, or if it’s just that, since he heard the rustling of sheets, he thinks he ought to have heard the sound of Helena undressing. Even if she folded her clothes carefully, shoes (in the quiet of the night) usually make noise when they hit the wood floor, and it is this sound that always awakens him. But what about earlier? Had he heard the floorboards creak under Helena’s feet? It worries him not to be able to tell exactly which sound has awakened him. It worries him that, little by little, he seems to be losing his previous auditory sensitivity; he used to have total awareness of the sounds around him, even when he was fast asleep, right down to the movements that had produced them.
His back feels cold. In a few minutes, Helena’s body, which is cold at the moment, will be warm, and it will be nice to turn over and put his arms around her, as if in his sleep. He thinks the scene would make a beautiful painting: a double bed, with a man sleeping on one edge and on the other a woman lifting the covers to get in. How would you know, though, whether she was lifting them to get in or out? This thought makes the image dissolve, and since he is absolutely certain he will not be able to retrieve it, he doesn’t even try. He continues to pretend to be sleeping, as if he weren’t aware that Helena had arrived. He opens one eye, and since from that position he can see neither the numbers nor the luminescent hands of the alarm clock on the night table, he shifts, as if he were dreaming, and (with his back still to Helena) positions his head in such a way that, by opening one eye, he can see the time: 4:15. He wonders whether to turn over and embrace her or wait for her to do it. Why is it that lately she doesn’t?
He hears her breathing regularly. Is it possible that she has already fallen asleep? All those endless meetings to set up the summer shows . . . He had always thought that even summer shows were programmed years (or at least many months) in advance. Helena, though, has such a nose for the new, such an ability to capture the pulse of the moment, that she can’t plan her shows more than a few months ahead. He has a nice long yawn and tries to go back to sleep. The image of a cockroach appears to him and, as hard as he struggles to erase it, it persists, leaving him more and more wide awake. Then he hears Helena breathing deeply, fast asleep. Before dozing off again (or waking up, as for days now—and, above all, since the night before—it is as if he were sleeping awake or as if he were living asleep) he opens an eye one last time to look at the clock: it’s 5:30.
•
Lately, he enjoys sleeping late more and more. Before, whenever he wasn’t out carousing the previous night, Heribert would get up about 9:00 (neither too late nor too early, he would tell himself), shower, have citrus juice for breakfast, and, around 10:00 or 10:30, go up to the studio, turn on the radio or the record player (now it tended more and more to be the radio, since having to choose which records he wanted to hear put him off), and paint until 2:00. Then he would have lunch—at home if Helena was there, at a restaurant if she wasn’t, since cooking for himself was a bore. The problem is that, tired of always going to the same restaurant, for some six months now he has been having lunch at a different place every day, and so, every time Helena isn’t home for lunch, he has to go farther away since (even counting the times—not frequent—that he’s cheated and gone twice to the same place) he has been to all the restaurants in the neighborhood and in the neighboring neighborhoods. Once or twice he has even taken the subway, crossed the river, and had lunch outside the city. But this isn’t his usual pattern, since it prevents his returning in the afternoon to start painting again (particularly now that he was preparing a double show which, according to Hug and Helena was to be the definitive proof that his triumph of the previous year is irrevocable), and it is imperative that he work in the afternoon because things are not proceeding at their usual pace. This is why he has abandoned his old routine (or lack of one) of doing nothing in the afternoon. Before, on occasion, he would go home, read, or watch TV or a video; or sometimes he would go out and have a look at the art shows. Other times (but definitely only once in a while) he did none of those three things and instead would go to the movies. Now, in his haste to do the paintings for the show, he goes back home and shuts himself up in the studio, to paint or to plan possible paintings (except on weekends and holidays, unless for some reason he considers it imperative). These last weeks, even though he’s been taking notes, at most he’s finished a couple of paintings he considers mediocre; and the date on which they would have to begin hanging the paintings in the two galleries is approaching at a rate that increases daily.
In the evenings, he meets up with friends. Mostly with Hug and Hilari, for dinner. Afterwards their schedules are anything but predictable, and even though he tries not to get home too late, so he’ll be able to get up early and get back to work, he still finds it equally hard to get up. Lately, what he likes best of all is to stay in bed and stare at the ceiling.
•
At nine o’clock sharp, the telephone rings. Helena stirs, buries her head in the pillow so as not to hear it, and goes on sleeping. Feeling his way, Heribert picks up the receiver. It’s Hilari, proposing dinner that evening. Hilari will bring along some girls he knows. They make arrangements. He hangs up. Heribert feels the sleep in his eyes, like fists, but he is too wide awake to go back to sleep.
Ten minutes later he is sitting with a half-grapefruit in front of him, which he is eating, section by section, with the aid of a serrated spoon. When he’s finished, he goes up to the studio, sits before the easel, prepares the paints, and continues painting black sections on the canvas of the man sitting on a stool. He is so tired that it is an effort for him to finish working on the man’s suit and the wood of the bar. A half hour later he hears noise in the kitchen, assumes it’s Helena who’s gotten up, and goes downstairs. While she spreads blueberry jam on a piece of rye bread, he opens a bottle of white wine and pours himself a glass.
“You look sleepy,” she says. “Give me a kiss. It’s the first one this year, you know. Mmm . . . That’s nice. First of all, Happy New Year, okay? How’s it going for you? Mine’s been just perfect. I had a great time. You know how much I like that city. It’s small without being depressing. It’s a shame you couldn’t come. One New Year’s Eve Hannah and I went to eat at a German restaurant, just gorgeous, where the waiters wore black vests and long white aprons all the way down to mid-calf. It was like being back at the turn of the century. And her house is just beautiful, a half hour outside the city. Did you get a lot or work done? You must be just about finished. I’ll be up in a few minutes to see what you’ve done. No? You’ve got to get a move on, sweetheart; there are only three weeks left. And at this rate . . . Did I say three? In two weeks they’ve got to be setting it all up. I’m tired of always running ragged at the last minute. At least you (you of all people) could have