The Fugitivities, стр. 56
Octavio wanted to take Barthes to the airport, but she refused. They helped her pack her things and carried her luggage down to the taxi waiting on the rua Gustavo Sampaio.
When the taxi was out of sight, the hapless Americans walked to the Avenida Princesa Isabel and stood with their bags on the corner. They were homeless, they had nowhere to go. Octavio peeled a banana. Jonah felt in his pocket for a lighter and lit a cigarette. To their left the beach stretched out to meet the waves. The crowds were coming out for the afternoon, and most of the people heading up the Copacabana strip were giving themselves to the sun. A light breeze rustled the awnings of the coconut-vendor stands. To their right the wide avenue of commercial banks and hotels on Princesa Isabel led to the ugly yellow mouth of a tunnel.
“What do you want to do?” Jonah asked.
“We follow the plan. We’ll go south.”
“What plan? South where?”
“Florianópolis. Porto Alegre. I’m not going to let this define me. I have come too far, and I intend to go farther.”
“Don’t you think we should go back? What’s the point of going on now?”
“You can go your own way if you want. I don’t need you.”
“I’m sorry, Octavio.”
“Cállate! I refuse to talk to you about that. Do you understand? In other circumstances I would have you tried like Che did the counterrevolutionaries at La Cabaña. But now is not the time for tribunals. Now is the hour for decisive action. We must go like Martí to the Battle of Dos Ríos. To meet our fate.”
“You mean we’re going to die?”
“No. I mean we still have a reason to live.”
“What—”
“Too many questions! We’ll need to conserve our resources. Or find a way to make some quick easy money. I’m running low on funds. An intolerable situation, especially in our precarious position, which you put us in!”
“Well, I can loan you some money if—”
“Excellent. Buy my bus ticket and we’ll call it even. For now.”
PART THREE
Nous avons goûté, aux heures de miracle, une certaine qualité des relations humaines: là est pour nous la vérité.
—ANTOINE DE SAINT-EXUPÉRY
I’m in Berlin, writing to you from my favorite café on Weichselstraße near the canal. My work meetings are dull and endless, of course; but as soon as they end, I become an enchanted wanderer in this city. I sail down the hushed boulevards of Kreuzberg. I stand in awe before the Gates of Ishtar, visit with Tiye and Nefertiti. Even the bone-headed students from all over Europe spending their Erasmus money on cheap beer and techno have a cheerful innocence about them. Everyone clicks along in a timely fashion like the yellow cars of the U-Bahn on their viaducts. And yet nobody ever seems rushed to get anywhere or do anything. There’s a kind of parallel time here, a gritty but lovable heart murmur that everyone agrees not to notice, like an underworld in daylight. A realm of libertine nights. I’ve been wanting to tell you about how I slept with another girl. Does it surprise you? I mean, my acting this way? I don’t even know her name. I met her at a new club they’ve set up in the old gasworks. We were both smashed. She had this wonderful deep voice, and she was saying all this stuff to me in German, which I was too out of it to really understand. She was cool with leaving together. We walked, I swear it felt like miles, and at one point we ran into some friends of hers. I thought they were her friends but then it seemed like she was going to get into a fight, and I realized it was because they were making fun of me. We stopped at this sausage place and I needed to pee, but they wouldn’t let me in, and she started yelling at them and we ended up getting thrown out and peeing between some cars. When we finally got back to her place it turned out to be gorgeous, full of plants and mirrors, and these big atelier windows that she nudged open, letting in the plush summer daybreak. I was thinking we would pass out, but she lit a cigarette and watched me and waited. Right away it was more intense and very different from what I’ve known with Mariam. In my mind it went on for hours—who knows how long it really was—but eventually I blacked out. When I finally came around, I knew I was going to be sick. Ran to what I thought was the bathroom but was actually the kitchen and heaved all over her sink. It was bad! I was shivering, trying to get it together, and all I could think about was Mariam. Trying to compose a text message to her in my head to send later. But for a split second I didn’t know at all who I was. I did know, but it also felt like I didn’t. And I stumbled around this apartment getting my things together, and there’s this stunning girl lying naked in her bed. I’m looking at her and I hate myself because I know I’m hurting Mariam even if she never knows. And I’m walking out on this girl I just met. Would you blame me? Did I screw up? I swear I’m ready to be in love. I used to think