Chapter Thirty-Four Luis’s Return #2
Accepting his cue, Luis began by stating that he had arranged a period of extended leave from work, an unprecedented request in his long career.
Since arriving in London Luis’s singular goal was to be made partner at a top law firm.
Achieving this position had taken on a mythic significance in his mind.
It would prove that coming out hadn’t limited his ambitions – that he had overcome the obstacle of his sexuality.
On the threshold of this goal, to take two months off would appear to his colleagues to be the worst of weaknesses – vulnerability and sentimentality.
We always knew it about him, they would claim, with a knowing glance.
He could only appear to be like one of us, but never truly be one of us.
Skimming over the severity of these consequences, Luis explained that he didn’t have a clear plan for his time in Spain beyond reconnecting with his past but, once there, he had set out on a tour of his country, visiting the towns he had always wanted to visit but never found the time, starting at El Escorial, close to Madrid, before travelling by train to ávila, Salamanca, Zamora, La Coruna, Lugo and León.
The list sounded so specific that Danny asked about it and Luis was pleased at the question.
‘Out of nowhere, I remembered an obscure fact about the playwright Federico Lorca. I must have read it at school. How he went on a tour of Spain during his formative years. I decided to follow in Federico’s footsteps, visiting the same sequence of towns.
I admit, it is a little late for my formative years, but that is the nature of our story, Danny – we are doing these things out of time? ’
There had always been an intrepid quality about Luis.
There was a restlessness in his soul that could only be soothed by a constant stream of accomplishments, either professional or personal, even his holidays needed summits, yet this tour seemed different, following in the steps of a gay playwright, someone whose works were encoded as queer, because Lorca could not write openly at the time, using repressed female sexuality as a proxy for his own.
Luis said, ‘I stayed in simple guest houses. I would wake up early, eat a breakfast of bread and cheese, then walk through every square and down every avenue. I visited museums, parks, galleries and markets. At each church I would stop, light a candle and pray. At night I’d find the oldest restaurant in town.
I never looked at a menu. I’d ask for whatever the chef considered to be their best dish.
For weeks, that was how I lived. A pilgrim in my own country. ’
Briefly Danny tried to imagine what it would have been like to go on this trip together before supposing that Luis didn’t want to play the role of a guide. He wasn’t showing off his homeland, he was rediscovering it – searching not for a place on a map but somewhere inside of himself.
Luis observed, ‘My Spanish sounds strange to other native speakers. Stiff. Like I learned it from a dictionary. A few asked where I was born, supposing I was born abroad.’
Luis indicated the Nordic martini.
‘May I?’
As though it were a chess piece, a rook, Danny slid it across the tabletop. Luis took a sip, giving no reaction to the combination of flavours before returning the glass to Danny’s side.
‘I met many interesting people along the way. There was a literature professor at Salamanca University. He had recently been travelling through South America on a sabbatical in much the same way as I was travelling through Spain. He told me a story. And I saw myself in it. You know how it can be with stories? You hear them, and you want to stop, stand up and tell everyone that character is you.’
At this point Luis paused.
‘I know you have a lot of questions, Danny, and I’m taking the scenic route.’
What a cute phrase, Danny thought, appreciating that Luis didn’t want to sound lawyerly and business-like, but lyrical and loose. He leaned forward, placing his hand on top of Luis’s.
‘Tell me anything you want, any way you want to.’
The truth was that Danny was quite delighted by the way Luis was talking.
After speaking Spanish for such an extended period Luis’s voice had changed, the way he spoke English sounded faster and more fluid, the words rolling into each other rather than standing on their own.
Danny had always loved the sound of Luis’s voice, but now even more so.
‘The professor was visiting a town called Cali, in Colombia, where there’s a festival called the Cabalgata which derives from the verb cabalgar – “to ride”.
Residents bring their horses onto the street.
Since the land around Cali is mountainous with farms, many people own horses, not only the rich. The professor—’
Danny dared to interrupt, ‘What was his name?’
Luis nodded at the question, acknowledging there was an intimacy between them.
‘His name was André. He was staying with relatives who loaned him one of their horses in order that he could experience the carnival as a participant rather than as a spectator. On the day of the festival, he was one among many thousands of riders. And it’s a carnival, not a parade.
He was drinking viche, a spirit brewed from sugar cane, mixed with fresh mango juice or pineapple pulp, sweet and strong, and in the sun, you’re drunk in an instant. ’
Danny quipped, ‘How about we order two?’
Luis nodded.
‘You know, when I was young, I used to ride horses. Wild ones, which roamed the countryside outside of town.’
Danny had no idea. He pictured young Luis riding horses in the wild.
‘My grandfather taught me. We would head into the countryside. He would catch them, and I would ride them. He said I had a gift. They were always calm around me. I was never scared. I miss that young man, without fear.’
Conversations had always been this way between Danny and Luis, tangents and diversions, sometimes so many the pair forgot the initial subject of their conversation.
Danny would happily have talked about wild horses and sugar cane for the rest of the evening, but he gently returned Luis to his original point.
‘So – this literature professor who I’ve never met was drinking viche, a drink I’ve never heard of, in a town I’ve never visited.’
Luis smiled at the summary.
‘By late afternoon André was drunk. Of course, no one organizing the festival was concerned about safety. And by the evening André was so drunk he was in danger of falling off his horse. To stop this from happening he slumped forward and wrapped his arms tight around the horse’s neck, which startled the animal.
The horse broke into a gallop. All André could do was hold on to the mane.
The horse bolted through the town, through streets André had never seen.
It ran and ran until eventually, exhausted, the horse came to a stop and André slowly sat up, with no idea where he was.
There were three young kids staring at him from a window, laughing at him. ’
Luis tapped the table.
‘That is me, Danny, clinging to a career, galloping faster and faster, trying not to fall with no idea where I was going or why. When you proposed to me – I stopped. And I looked around. I asked myself, where am I? What am I doing? Who am I?’
Danny asked, ‘What was your answer?’
Luis sighed. ‘You were right to say that part of me has remained in the closet. At first, I bristled at the idea that I wasn’t “gay enough”.
That I hadn’t marched enough or signed enough petitions.
But I realized that wasn’t what you meant.
I haven’t been myself enough. I haven’t given you all of myself because I didn’t have all of myself to give.
I am a well-crafted presentation of a man because I was told I could never be a real one. ’
The orange cloudberry sitting in the clear spirits of Danny’s glass recalled to his mind the brightly painted hammers in glass boxes on trains or the tube. Break in an Emergency. Using his fork he fished the berry free, putting it in his mouth. And waited.
Luis said, ‘I quit my job.’
Danny felt a sense of panic, that instead of creating something beautiful with his proposal, he had broken everything, including Luis himself.
‘Luis, I never wanted you to quit your job. It was never a choice between us or your career.’
Luis agreed.
‘That’s not what this is. I was a man for other people. I’ve always been a man for other people. But to marry someone, you need to offer yourself. You cannot do that if you don’t know who you are.’
Having listened for almost thirty minutes, Danny sat up straight and explained, ‘Luis, before we go any further there’s something I need to tell you. On New Year’s Eve I kissed Matt. The nurse. From the Olympics. There was a party. We were high. I was lonely and I fucked up.’
Luis stared at the fern on their table.
‘This is the question, no? Do we change together or change apart? Do we change with each other or with someone else?’
Danny managed to ask, ‘What’s your answer?’
Luis mused. ‘I’ve spent this time away thinking how much I want to change my life. But the only part I don’t want to change is you.’
Danny had done well so far. He had been stoic and measured but at hearing this he wept. Luis moved his chair around the table, wiping away his tears.
‘Danny, you’ve always been this way. You understand feelings by acting on them. You didn’t ask if I loved you – you asked if I wanted to live with you. You didn’t say that you were unhappy – you suggested a garden. You didn’t point out something is missing from our lives – you proposed.’
At this inopportune moment the waiter returned.
‘I’m sorry for interrupting but the kitchen will be closing soon so I need to take your order.’
Danny didn’t bother hiding his tears. Copying Luis’s method in Spain he said, ‘Why don’t you choose for us? The chef’s best dish?’
To lighten the mood, Luis asked for two glasses of viche. The waiter had never heard of the spirit and so, improvising, Luis suggested light rum as a substitute spirit, mixed with pineapple juice. Once the waiter left, Danny asked, ‘What now?’
Luis made a proposal of his own, as consequential as the one Danny had attempted.
‘How about we try to change together? I don’t know if it’s possible, but I wanted to see if you would be open to the idea.
My entire life I’ve been translating myself.
Growing up, I was translating myself into a straight man.
Respected and respectable. When that fell apart, I moved to London and began translating myself into a career man.
I don’t want to be in translation anymore.
I’m missing part of myself. And I can’t find it here.
I want to go home, Danny. If we had been husband and wife, the chances are we would’ve combined our lives from the beginning, our families and cultures.
Instead, we’ve been exiles in London in our different ways.
We shared our loneliness and isolation. It’s time we shared everything which is, I believe, what you were asking me to do when you proposed. ’
At this point Danny reached into his pocket and took out the First World War compass – Luis’s Christmas present.
He wasn’t sure why he had brought it with him to the restaurant or why at this juncture in the conversation he took it from his pocket.
He placed it on the centre of the table and the two of them watched the needle find north.
‘I bought it for us. To help us find the way.’
Danny had promised himself that he wouldn’t drink or cry and now having broken both promises he was unable to hold back the tears.
‘Would it be easier to say this is the end? To raise a glass to all the great times we’ve had together, to be thankful for them, to say that I love you, I’ll always love you, and go our separate ways?’
Luis turned the question over.
‘That might be the outcome, yes. But, Danny, I’m suggesting that we build a new life and the only person I’ve ever built a life with is you. Could we do it again? I don’t know.’
Though Danny desperately wanted to say yes, he found himself asking, ‘Tell me, deep down, that this isn’t an elaborate way of breaking up and that after twenty years it’s too painful for either one of us to say it’s over.
I ask you to marry me. And you ask me to move to Spain.
Maybe we’re both saying the same thing – that it’s over? ’
In an unplanned moment, prompted by the gift of the compass, Luis took off his grandfather’s silver necklace and placed it around Danny’s neck. A proposal answered with a proposal. A platinum ring with a silver necklace. And neither of them knew what to say next.