Read Online Divorce Is in the Air: A Novel by Gonzalo Torné - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Gonzalo Torné
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plates and glasses, straightened the lamps, we conjured spells against hangovers with cold water and amphetamines that we ventured down to the street to buy. It was all very “hail fellow well met”; when you have a comfortable couch and the caress of well-tailored clothes, it’s hard to convince yourself of life’s seriousness. It was too distant, off in a place I never planned to go, one not made for Vicente or for me: after all, someone had to benefit from our fathers’ efforts.
In a way those were still university parties (Vicente hadn’t quite finished), and names of students figured on the lists of possible invitees. So I suppose I heard about Helen before I ever saw her—something about the way she shook her mass of blonde hair when she laughed, her peculiar pronunciation, and her scandalous way of looking a person up and down. Her gaze didn’t creep along over skin and cloth like the eyes of those little English spiders. No, Helen’s pupils slurped down the world in gulps. She’d come to Spain on an athletic scholarship—hurdles, long jump, something like that. Imagine the kind of details that get tacked on when you add alcohol to intoxication: you let rip, box people up in a comic, improvised profile; no one is so respectable you can’t cut them down with words.
So I guess we invited her because we liked her way of savoring Spanish words and the way her pallid freckles danced when her expression changed; because she had caught my friends’ attention and now they wanted to talk to her far from the cafeteria and classrooms, in a territory foreign to Helen and familiar to them. Thanks to an annoying back sprain I got as I was leaving a dull meeting with Passgard, I missed the first evening that Helen spent among us. Vicente had told me about how she’d been unable to respect people’s personal space, but no one prepared me for the uninhibited relationship she had with her prizewinning anatomy, an ease on display every time she went for a canapé or another glass. In a country full of boys and girls defined by habits of expressive restraint (we were eager to get naked but didn’t know where to start), Helen could only astonish us.
When I imagine those parties where the furniture fades into the background, I see myself standing among people whose names and features blur together. Entire hours have vanished, and what a bore it would be if we ever had to relive the past in real time. But Helen was sure she had seen me one night while I was holding court, seated like a Chinese emperor (an odd association) and attended by two beautiful girls (she herself was feeling ugly that day), sipping my gin haughtily, my sunglasses still on (it was cool then not to take them off inside). She didn’t even notice the ironed handkerchief I’d tucked into my breast pocket (in imitation of and homage to Dad), nor the toasty shade of my jacket, nor the waves drawn in the cloth of my white shirt with a very fine blue thread—sartorial details I’d calculated with the meticulousness of a nightingale choosing branches, leaves, and plants for its nest: mating rituals.
So I guess she was already thinking about me when she leaned against the upright piano as if it were the arm of a couch, and I guess her defiant smile was meant for me. I caught her turning her head several times—she seemed fascinated by her image in the mirror. She was having one of those evenings (later I learned to recognize them by the vibration of the air around her) when she felt comfortable in her skin, when the contours of her body coincided with her spirit’s intentions. She seemed to harbor a patient fury—a girl with a mind boiling furiously. If she looked so relaxed it was because she’d granted herself some time to calculate what her ambitions were worth, and where she should channel the energy she generated with those healthy young thighs. She was after someone who would help her propel her life forward, and judging from the way she looked
In a way those were still university parties (Vicente hadn’t quite finished), and names of students figured on the lists of possible invitees. So I suppose I heard about Helen before I ever saw her—something about the way she shook her mass of blonde hair when she laughed, her peculiar pronunciation, and her scandalous way of looking a person up and down. Her gaze didn’t creep along over skin and cloth like the eyes of those little English spiders. No, Helen’s pupils slurped down the world in gulps. She’d come to Spain on an athletic scholarship—hurdles, long jump, something like that. Imagine the kind of details that get tacked on when you add alcohol to intoxication: you let rip, box people up in a comic, improvised profile; no one is so respectable you can’t cut them down with words.
So I guess we invited her because we liked her way of savoring Spanish words and the way her pallid freckles danced when her expression changed; because she had caught my friends’ attention and now they wanted to talk to her far from the cafeteria and classrooms, in a territory foreign to Helen and familiar to them. Thanks to an annoying back sprain I got as I was leaving a dull meeting with Passgard, I missed the first evening that Helen spent among us. Vicente had told me about how she’d been unable to respect people’s personal space, but no one prepared me for the uninhibited relationship she had with her prizewinning anatomy, an ease on display every time she went for a canapé or another glass. In a country full of boys and girls defined by habits of expressive restraint (we were eager to get naked but didn’t know where to start), Helen could only astonish us.
When I imagine those parties where the furniture fades into the background, I see myself standing among people whose names and features blur together. Entire hours have vanished, and what a bore it would be if we ever had to relive the past in real time. But Helen was sure she had seen me one night while I was holding court, seated like a Chinese emperor (an odd association) and attended by two beautiful girls (she herself was feeling ugly that day), sipping my gin haughtily, my sunglasses still on (it was cool then not to take them off inside). She didn’t even notice the ironed handkerchief I’d tucked into my breast pocket (in imitation of and homage to Dad), nor the toasty shade of my jacket, nor the waves drawn in the cloth of my white shirt with a very fine blue thread—sartorial details I’d calculated with the meticulousness of a nightingale choosing branches, leaves, and plants for its nest: mating rituals.
So I guess she was already thinking about me when she leaned against the upright piano as if it were the arm of a couch, and I guess her defiant smile was meant for me. I caught her turning her head several times—she seemed fascinated by her image in the mirror. She was having one of those evenings (later I learned to recognize them by the vibration of the air around her) when she felt comfortable in her skin, when the contours of her body coincided with her spirit’s intentions. She seemed to harbor a patient fury—a girl with a mind boiling furiously. If she looked so relaxed it was because she’d granted herself some time to calculate what her ambitions were worth, and where she should channel the energy she generated with those healthy young thighs. She was after someone who would help her propel her life forward, and judging from the way she looked
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