Fame Page 9

  The sun had set, flames of red dissolved themselves in the water, the mountain peaks glinted with an icy light, and between the hovels of the favelas he could see the snaking lines of unpaved streets. Miguel Auristos Blanco stood up, reached for the four letters his secretary had selected from the day’s mail (every day he received innumerable pleas for advice and help, along with tearful life stories, offers of marriage, prayers, and manuscripts of novels which were about either the search for life’s meaning or UFOs, plus invitations to conferences in dozens of cities, where there were directors of libraries, meditation centers, and bookshops who knew that this man was so busy he had no time to make personal appearances but didn’t want to give up hope that he would make an exception for them just this once, and extracted the first out of its envelope, which had already been slit open for him.

  It was written on handmade deckled paper, with the letterheading of the United Nations, under which was the inquiry as to whether, if the jury decided in his favor, he would accept the Dialogue Between the Nations Award and be prepared to address the General Assembly. He smiled. The second letter was from his biographer Camier in Lyons asking in his respectful tiny handwriting for a further interview to discuss his time in a Japanese monastery thirty years ago, his study of the koans, the wisdom of the East, and of course his first, second, and third marriages; as always, Camier assured him, he could rely on the discretion of the authorized biographer that nothing that he didn’t want would end up in print. Miguel Auristos Blanco paused. He didn’t believe Camier, but what could he do other than agree to the interview?

  The third in the stack, without an envelope, was a postcard from Tenerife, where Aurelia was now living with their two children. The house, formerly belonging to both of them, was now hers exclusively, and it was almost a year since the last time he’d seen Luis and Laura. He had wondered all that time why he didn’t miss them more, and to explain it to himself, he had added a whole chapter to Ask the Cosmos, It Will Speak about how we only suffer the absence of those whose souls are not in harmony with our own. Whereas those closest to us who are part, as it were, of our very being, arouse no need in us to have them at our side, for what they feel, we feel, regardless of how far away they are, and what they suffer, we suffer, and every actual conversation with them is no more than a superfluous confirmation of the self-evident. He spent thirty seconds contemplating the photograph on the front (bay, mountains, flag, swarm of seagulls) and the two little signatures, then he set the card aside.

  The fourth letter was from Sra. Angela João, the abbess of the Carmelite Convent of the Holy Providence in Belo Horizonte, who asked him in the name of that old friendship (either his memory was failing or hers was, because he couldn’t remember ever having met her) for some words on theodicy for her edification and that of her sister nuns: why did suffering exist, why did loneliness, why above all was God so utterly distant, and yet why was the world so perfectly organized?

  He shook his head irritably. He would soon need a new secretary. This one was obviously suffering from overload. No letter as tiresome as this one should ever have reached his desk.

  The boats were casting enormously long shadows, the water shimmered blood-red, and dark fire flared in the sky. He had watched countless sunsets from this window, yet every one of them seemed like the first to him, and he felt he was witnessing a complicated experiment that could go horribly wrong from one evening to the next. He put the letter down pensively and took the pistol, his fingers searching instinctively, as they had the last time, three days ago, for the safety catch, until he realized that Glocks don’t have one and that on this particular model the trigger itself was the safety catch. He pointed the weapon at himself and looked into the mouth of the barrel. He’d often done it before, of an evening, usually around about this time, and as always he could feel himself begin to sweat. He put the pistol down, switched on the computer, and waited for the machine to laboriously boot up. Then he began to write.

  But why? He himself didn’t really know. Perhaps it was mere politeness, because a question demanded an answer, perhaps also because old women in their religious habits had filled him all his life with a mixture of respect and absolute terror. Dear Abbess, venerable and blessed Reverend Mother, God cannot be justified, life is atrocious, its beauty amoral, even peace is filled with crimes, and no matter whether He exists or not—I’ve never made up my mind about that—I have no doubt that my miserable death will evoke no more pity in Him than the deaths of my children or, some day may it be long distant, Reverend Mothers, yours.

  He hesitated, blinked into the last fiery rays of the sun, tilted his head back, and took a deep breath. He listened to the silence. The air conditioning was humming quietly. Then he went back to writing.

  He wrote while the sun was sending its last glow across the water; he wrote while the air slowly filled with darkness as if with some fine substance; he wrote while the lights down there glittered more and more distinctly and the smooth black expanse of the sky blended into the mountains; and when he looked up, his shirt wet and his moustache covered with drops of sweat, it was night. Dear Abbess, there are no grounds for hope, and even if God’s existence were to be justified by something other than His flagrant absence, every intelligent argument would still pale before the scale of suffering in the world, before the very fact that suffering exists, and that everything always and eternally, think about this, Reverend Mother, is stained with imperfection. The only things that help us are consoling lies such as the dignity incarnated in your sainted person. May you remain in this state for many years and in fond memory I remain yours, etc.… He double-clicked on the mouse and the printer began to hum. A sheet, another sheet, a third, and then a fourth filled up with letters. Miguel Auristos Blanco picked up the tiny pile and began read.

  He got to his feet. How had he written this? These pages were the absolute retraction of everything, the annihilation of his life’s work, the clear, concise apology for his ever having claimed that there was an order in the world and life could be good.

  But it wasn’t until he reached a tanned hand out for the pistol that he understood what he’d done, and that the time when he’d thought he still had a choice was over. What had been a quasi-game before was suddenly real. If he really did squeeze the trigger, he would make history. All the world’s believers, all the optimists, and the prayerful who had his books in their bookcases and his example in their hearts—how could he resist the temptation to deliver such a blow to them! This, and only this, would make him a great man. The corners of his mouth twitched in a mixture of laughter and panic. What he had just written wasn’t even his own opinion. It was simply the truth.

  His knees were suddenly weak; he leaned against the window. The winking lights of a plane drew a curve in the firmament, a boat fired off a flare that soared and burst silently in a whirl of sparks. In the room next door, with a poor sense of timing, the cleaning lady turned on the vacuum cleaner.

  He picked up the last sheet one more time and asked himself if he really had written it, and how after so many years of being emollient he could have come up with these words. He had a vision of the Church congresses and their tables of books from which his would be banished, he had a vision of bookshops with gaps in their shelves, he had a vision of shocked priests and blanching housewives, bewildered doctors’ wives and all the middle-ranking employees on five continents, to whom there would be no one left to say that their suffering had meaning. He dropped the piece of paper, and before it could float to the floor on the draft from the air conditioner that carried it gently this way and that, he picked up the pistol. No safety catch. You only had to pull the trigger. He opened his mouth and clenched his teeth around the polymer barrel, which to his surprise wasn’t even cold.

  His fingers groped for the trigger. Eyes wide, as the sweat ran down over his forehead, he saw the city below, the twinkling lights of the boats, the expanse of the night. The bullet would pass through his head and hit the window—as if
to strike not just the glass but the universe itself, as if the cracks would run through the sea, the mountains, and the sky, and he grasped that this was the truth, that this was exactly what would happen if he and only he branded the world with the sigh of his contempt, once and for all, if only he had the strength to pull the trigger. He heard himself panting. In the room next door the vacuum cleaner droned. If.

  A Contribution to the Debate

  Here I have to back up. Sorry: perfectly clear that lithuania23 and icu_lop will flame this posting for being too long; so will that troll lordoftheFlakes, just like he flamed on MovieForum, but I can’t do it shorter, and whoever’s in a hurry can just skip it. Meeting celebrities? Heads up!

  Must signal that I’m a huge hardcore fan of this forum. Platinum idea. Normal types like you and me who spot famous people and report on their sightings: chill, no? wicked idea, really well worked out, interesting to everyone and besides it acts like control, so they know they’re being scanned and can’t just goof off. Wanted to post here forever, only where to get the stuff. But then came last weekend, the whole load.

  Quick flashback. (My life has been the whole crazy load recently, but you have to cope, there are good days and bad days, yin and yang stuff and for you freaks who’ve never heard of that: it’s philosophy!) You know my username mollwit from other forums. I post a lot on Supermovies and also on TheeveningNews, on literature4you, and chat rooms, and when I see bloggers serving up bullshit I let them have it. Username always mollwit. In Real Life (the real one!) I’m in my mid-thirties, quite tall, medium build. During the week I wear tie, office regs, whole capitalist racket, you do the same. Has to happen if you’re going to realize your Life Sense. In my case writing analyses, observations, and debates: contributions to culture, society, political stuff.

  I work in the headquarters of a cell phone company and share an office with Lobenmeier, whom I hate, the way nobody’s ever hated anybody, you can eat lunch on that. I wish him dead, and if there’s worse than dead then I wish him that too. Logicalwise he’s the boss’s golden boy, day-on-day punctual, yes yes yes hardworking, and for as long as he’s at his desk, he does his work stuff and only stops to look at me and say something like “hey, back on the Internet again?” Sometimes he jumps up, comes round my desk, and wants to eyeball my screen, but I’m quicker and click off in time. Just the once I had to go to the water closet in a hurry and I left a couple windows open by accident, and when back, he was sitting on my chair with a huge smiley face. I swear to you, if he wasn’t a fitness freak, he’d have swallowed his teeth right then.

  Our boss seriously awful too. Totally unchill and majorly bad, none of your small stuff. I think he trusts me, but you can’t tell with him: he’s always thinking us through and hatching plans nobody can overview. Power plays totally above my head; for me, it’s about the universal thing and society and all the daily pig stuff … you know. Obvious that people who write for newspapers already bought, and people they write about in it with them. A huge conspiracy, everyone in bed together, coining money like mad, us okay people just waiting. Just one example: radio messages on 9/11, read it online, nothing will surprise you again!

  Back to topic. All began last Friday. Was about to post on movieforum of TheeveningNews, about Ralf Tanner and the slap. Bugclap4 said nothing going on any more with him and Carla Mirelli, while icu_lop thought still something to be saved. I was one who knew more again, had read something on another Web site, but when I wanted to go public, noticed I couldn’t post any more. Wouldn’t work! Whole load of error messages each time, and because it stank I just called up.

  Okay, okay, okay, okay, clear already. Didn’t think. I know. But evening before to top everything banged heads with mother again: you can cook for yourself, you can wash your own stuff, like that plus more, finally me back “So live alone, pay your own rent!”

  Then her: “Never wanted to move here! And you’d really rather be with some tramp!”

  Then me: “go back to flyspeckland, cow!”

  Around midnight, kiss-up scene in cinemascope, but next day I was still cross-wired and all down-side up, otherwise none of it would have happened.

  So, looked up number, dialed. So furious, could hear heart thump-beating.

  Voice answering man. Me: “my postings aren’t being posted! Already the fourth time.”

  Voice: How, what, postings where? No explanations there.

  Me: explanations, explanations, blablah, then him “connecting you now!”

  Then second and third technotype, and that’s exactly when Lobenmeier came back and smiled like a moosehead while the technotype asked for name and location and IP address and Ethernet ID. Then typed, yawned, typed, stopped. “Give me the IP again.”

  Me: “Problems?”

  He typed, stopped, typed, then asked if it’s possible I’ve already posted twelvethousandthreeehundredfortyone times on TheeveningNews.

  “And?”

  Him again: “twelvethousandthreeehundredfortyone!”

  “So?”

  Him, third time. This not going anywhere. I hung up.

  I know you’re uproaring with laughter. But no one is a hundred percent on alert, and shit occurs. When I tried again, the posting went through at once, and there was so much to do that I didn’t give it another thought. Discussion already far along, high time for someone to bring voice of reason. Ralf Tanner and Carla Mirelli, I wrote, it will never be anything again, he has sawdust in his head and is as ugly as an ox, you can forget it!

  Only hours later did I begin to suspect I had done a really dumb thing. Real names, real addresses, the IP. I was now a whole load visible. Very bad feeling, and for real. Was chain-ganging again and no way to brainwave: major fight going on with lonebulldoggy on Thetree.com and at the same time I had to check through some Achtung from the technical department about mess-ups in the phone number bank that the boss had slapped on my desk. I’d had it for two days. Had forwarded it to Hauberlan, who obviously felt he had to send it on upstairs, probably just to darken me, the Überswine is in league with Lobenmeier. And suddenly the boss calls.

  Result: general brown-trouser alert and whole load of heartrace. Of course thought: must be the IP thing already. Stand up, go, tell myself to stay cool as a fridge. I’m not a No-gump, have already written things in the German Chancellor’s online Guestbook but they got all erased no one can just flatten me like that, I can dish it out to anyone when I have to.

  So am standing in front of the boss, and he’s looking at me. Piercingly. Like Saruman. Or Vorlone-Kosh from Babylon 5. Looking at me and me looking back. Fridgeorama. Two men, one look. Giant screen encounter.

  Blahblahing about Congress of European Telecommunications Providers, Startgo day after tomorrow. Wanted to go himself, couldn’t. Department had to be represented, also presentation made: National versus European frequency norms.

  Took me some time to figure out. Oh fuckingshit. What? You have to know I hate the travel thing a whole load. The seats in the trains are crazy narrow so that normal human person can’t get backside into them. And a presentation in front of strangers, I don’t think so.

  Me in sequence: no, and won’t work, and have other plans, but him: nonsense, you have to, you’re the best. So what to say? Me: “Okay boss!” And him: “You’re my man!” and me: “no, no stop!” and him: “but it’s true!” and so on back and forth and back again, then me back in my office.

  On the way home to tranquilize, the new book by Miguel Auristos Blanco. Writes that you shouldn’t take things to heart: learn to accept. Bingo! Which is better, to cover the earth with a carpet or to put on shoes? Must write that down. Wow. Where does someone like that find that stuff?

  Then more row with mother. Away whole weekend, oh really, and how would she spend her time, and if I don’t care.

  Me: “So go out. Go to a movie!”

  “Don’t know, don’t want to! And don’t believe you, you’re meeting a tramp.”

  Me: “Rubbish, nothing there�
�� and so on.

  Her: “Don’t pretend. You’re meeting one. And me alone at home. If only I’d known that thirty-seven years ago, you were such a darling, so little.”

  Me: “So move out if it doesn’t suit you!” What I always say to her, now you know.

  “And who will cook for you?”

  Okay. Point for her. So leave her standing, slam the door, lock myself in. Leaf through Auristos Blanco and try parallel move to get into Moviechat with DotB. No chance of course, server overloaded, everyone trying, logical outcome. Become one with things, one with becoming one, one with your oneness with them, one with your anger too, and if the atom bomb should fall, then become one with the bomb. Big Bang Theory. I know, I’m too busy, too much work, too much day-in-day-out, but the super-thoughts, recognize those asap, soon as I see them. Then distracted by lordoftheflakes, usual bullshit, and by proctor, zheligoland, and pearfriend who’ve got hits on his site, and two new posters I don’t know at all and have to bellyslash right there. (Could also be that lordoftheflakes had new Nicks. Sort of thing drives me nuts, disgusting. Have three other names, me too of course, but only use them when baddest bad guys leave me no choice.) Transparent that I ought to have prepared my presentation, but it wasn’t until the day after tomorrow and I couldn’t concentrate right now. Shortly before midnight, a couple more private sites. Sweet, if you understand one, none of those brutal ones, they’re not for me and then went to bed.

  Next day: train trip. Felt sick, seats too narrow— surprise—but not full-full so I could lift armrest and spread over two. Out there little house, roads, meadowswamp things, the whole view-from-the-train bit. Then exit, escalator down, escalator up, hard to breathe, sweating like a pig. But made my connection, more meadowswamps, farmhouses, fields of mustard. Six hours, already crazy-nervous could barely remember last time offline for so long. Finally arrive, driver with minibus to collect me and other Congress types. All ties and briefcases, the usual.