18 Suddenly, the Cliff #2
I would have liked to tell her: “Nothing new, my love, I love you madly. Nothing new. You already know.” I would have liked to tell her I was fine, not to worry about me, that hearing her voice for ten seconds was enough to live on for ten more years.
I would have liked to tell her: “Don’t worry if what happened in Paris made you feel guilty.
Don’t punish yourself, my love. Infidelity to another is often a return to fidelity to oneself.
There is nothing wrong in finding your own feelings again.
” I would have liked to tell her so many things, Julie, but I knew I couldn’t play her like that.
I couldn’t make her weak. I couldn’t allow that, when she hung up and returned to her family life, someone might notice that she was shaken by the call.
It was her. Thankfully, it was her. Her Hello?
opened my heart. It’s me, Pauline. Don’t say anything.
“But—” Don’t say anything. “Who are you looking for?” We were silent for a few seconds, listening to each other breathe, the receiver pressed into our ears.
And then I said what I had to say, quickly: Tomorrow, I’ll be in Girona before lunch.
I’ll go to Llibreria 22. Butterflies, you know the drill.
The 22 in Girona. It’s a new bookshop. I heard about it, and I want to see it.
I’m doing well. “I think you have the wrong number,” she answered, in her language.
And she hung up. And I hung up. I didn’t even say goodbye.
I didn’t want to weaken her. I couldn’t make her emotional.
I couldn’t tell her how much I loved her.
You can imagine, Julie, the kind of night I had before getting up at dawn and catching the first train to Girona.
And Girona, what a city, what a discovery.
My memories of that day are blurry, like a dream, but it felt like it was like Florence, with houses hanging over the river, and a singular bridge—Eiffel too—and right there, on a quiet bend, was the bookshop where I’d arranged to meet your cousin.
I had no delusions she would show up. But the spark of the “perhaps,” of the “maybe,” that it would be a sign if she appeared, kept me in a restless state I couldn’t control.
If I had put my pipe to my mouth, my teeth would have chattered with nerves.
I’d already had two coffees in the square in front of the bookshop before noon.
By one I had walked all of Llibreria 22, shelf by shelf, from A to Z.
The owner knew his trade—he had ambition.
He was a young man with shiny black hair, a center part, and a proud mustache.
I liked how he treated customers. He spoke as readily about movies as he did about poetry, always with passion, a cigarette between his fingers.
Guillem was his name. Like my father’s, I thought.
It sounded nice in Catalan, Guillem, better than in French, which sounds more pretentious.
He showed me, patiently, everything he had on butterflies, an interesting rare book about American monarchs that I paid for and they put in a bag I still keep.
Then I went on waiting, pretending to browse a novel here and an essay there.
Never had time on my watch run so fast. I looked at it constantly, and as the minutes passed, my hopes slipped away.
I distracted myself by leafing through an enormous volume on Salvador Dalí.
On every page, a reproduction of Gala, his wife and muse.
The book was called something like that.
As I held it, it sounded like someone was whistling the first notes of a sirtaki inside the shop.
Was it real or a dream? It was Zorba’s song that she and I had danced to one night in Paris by the river.
In that moment I heard it with perfect clarity.
I turned, fully moved, and there was Pauline, standing there, breathtakingly beautiful, more radiant than ever, eyes surrendered, smile nervous.
Like mine, I suppose. After so long, after wanting it so much, she was only four steps away, and she had put on the perfume from the day of your wedding, the Chanel she saved for unique occasions.
Everything happened in tenths of a second, and as I went to embrace her, a child appeared behind her, holding her hand and her skirt.
She had come to Girona. Pauline had managed it and come to see me.
But she had come with Gina. Our eyes met.
I said her name. She said mine. Gina asked, “Mama, who is that?” And Pauline answered that I was a friend of Aunt Júlia’s.
And we stood looking at each other in silence, in a lovers’ agitation, the passion of those who, in a cruel instant, want to embrace and cannot.
I stepped closer. We didn’t even exchange three kisses.
Not two. I took her hand. She didn’t pull away.
And when both our eyes filled with tears—whether from joy or frustration—we spoke.
Little, in French, so the child wouldn’t understand.
“You came,” I said.
“Yes. I was dying to see you.”
“Me too.”
“Are you well? You look very well.”
“You too. Beautiful as always.”
“I needed to see you.”
“Me too.”
“Know that what I feel for you has never diminished. Never.”
“I’m glad to hear it.”
After what felt like a long pause, Pauline continued, “I’m always with you too, on rue du Trésor, on rue de Seine.” The girl had discovered the children’s books and was going toward a giant Babar the Elephant book. “How’s the gallery?”
“It’s going.”
“I came in to buy Gina a book.”
I sensed the conversation was ending, that I could afford only a brushstroke or two.
“Can we grab a coffee, even just one?” She said yes.
We left the 22 and went back to the bar in the square.
Across from me sat Pauline and Gina, who began drawing with paper and pencils the bar gave her.
As you can imagine, we continued speaking in French.
In fact, she spoke. Softly, rapidly, as if she were being chased.
She told me my call had moved her, that she had had to come up with a convoluted story to come up to Girona, and she admitted she’d spent the night shaking, unable to sleep.
She had sensed it was our last chance, and she knew at the same time that our meeting carried enormous danger.
The moment she heard my voice on the phone, her emotions had been stirred in every direction.
She felt that in a single night she had to gamble her life on a heads or tails.
And she wavered between anxiety and desire, between temptation and continuing as before.
“Manuel is a good man,” she told me. Those were her words.
And the two of them, with Gina, the three together, were a family.
At times she was sure she shouldn’t come to Girona at all.
But then she realized how much she needed me, how much she wanted to see me, and the fervor with which she loved me.
She imagined—again, her words—that she could take out two changes of clothes, pack a suitcase, come find me, run away, begin a new life.
She confessed she had thought it over endlessly, and that what mattered most of all was that she had come.
Everything flew by, Julie. When I was about to ask if she had the suitcase in the car, if I had any chance of .
. . Gina tugged at her arm to show her mother the drawing: a little figure sketched in a couple of scribbles.
Pauline said, “Very nice, Gina,” to brush it off, but the child insisted, demanding attention, and then Pauline asked, “Who is it?” and her daughter, almost like she was connecting dots, like she understood what we were talking about, like she knew French, bright as she was, answered: “Daddy. It’s Daddy. ”
Pauline bit her lip to hold back tears. Seeing her so moved, frankly, broke my heart.
Neither of us could contain the agitation, the passion of that moment.
Never had silence said so much. I understood at once what our future was, what Pauline had decided.
I saw it in her eyes. I read there too that time was slipping away, that she wanted to leave. I asked her only one more thing.
“Are you happy, Pauline?”
And do you know what she answered?
“Now, very happy.”
“Are you happy?”
“Now, very happy.”
That’s all. And before her daughter could see me cry, before she could notice the makeup running down her mother’s eyes, Pauline said au revoir, stood up, put her hand on my shoulder, and walked out of the bar with Gina clinging close.
I followed her through the window with my eyes, watching her disappear across the square.
What a distinguished way of walking, how elegant. What sadness.