Gasoline (12 page)

“Would you like to come to the opera?”

“What’s got into you?”

“They’re doing
Madame Butterfly
.”

“What a bore.”

He phones again and reserves one ticket. He puts on his tuxedo. In front of the mirror that takes up an entire wall of the room, end to end, he combs his hair and, unhappy with the results, musses it up again. He puts on a white scarf, picks up his coat, makes sure he has the little notebook in his pocket, gives Helena a kiss on her left cheek, opens the door, closes it, goes out to the garage, takes out the car (a Chevy Malibu, full of dents), and, before going to the theater, stops at the gas station to fill up the tank.

•

The performance leaves him cold. He finds the scenery (the only thing he was really interested in) very unimaginative. He does take a lot of notes, though. He wouldn’t mind designing scenery, perhaps not so much for the opera as for classical theater. How can he tell if DelNonno has sung well or poorly? What’s it to him if he sang well or poorly? He had almost fallen asleep and had only stayed awake by sketching a view of the stage, the figures of some of the singers, a few profiles of the ladies and gentlemen surrounding him—whose expressions, on seeing him scribble so dutifully, lead him to think they must have taken him for a critic. He remembers it with amusement as he leans on a wall by the door Marino DelNonno will be exiting through.

Finally he comes out, escorting a slim woman with red lips, well-defined eyebrows, and a raincoat that hangs open to reveal an impeccable black tuxedo. She is wearing shoes with stiletto heels, an enormous black bow tie with her white shirt, and she is clinging to DelNonno with joy. They get into the black sedan that is waiting for them. Humbert is already in his own car, following them at a prudent distance. That woman must be Hildegarda. The black sedan drops them off in front of a luxury building in Midtown. Humbert doesn’t even consider waiting around. If this is where they live, they might not come out again until the following day, unless they are going to meet up later with friends. But at that time of night, if they are going to meet up with friends somewhere other than their own house, maybe they weren’t going home, and this is precisely the house of the friends. Before leaving, he takes down the number of the building and the street.

•

When Helena gets in, Humbert calls out to her from the studio. He has finished up a few canvases that he had left off in the middle weeks ago, and he’s painted two more, from the notes he took at the opera. Helena gives him a kiss, looks at the paintings, and asks him what he’s doing up at that hour.

“I was so engrossed in the painting that I didn’t realize what time it was.”

They go to bed, and, even though at first Helena isn’t quite sure at the beginning she’s in the mood, they have passionate sex. They turn out the light, and four hours later, Humbert has breakfast, gets dressed, picks up the car, drives around, and parks in front of the building DelNonno went into the night before. He buys a sandwich and a newspaper at a deli and eats and reads in the car.

Towards noon, Marino DelNonno leaves the building and stops a cab. Humbert writes in his little notebook: “Series of photos: on someone’s trail.” He thinks that trying to go up to the DelNonnos’ apartment would be fruitless because they live in one of those buildings where the doorman announces the name of each visitor over the internal telephone. He spends an hour and a half trying to come up with a ruse, unsuccessfully. What he does do, though, is fill up the little notebook with notes, and if that doesn’t exactly offset his failure to come up with a scheme, it is gratifying, at least.

At 1:15, the woman appears at the door of the building: she is wearing a black raincoat (shiny, very tight in the waist, with a very full skirt), a black hat, great big round earrings, black gloves, black stockings, and black shoes, shiny and high-heeled.

The girl takes a bus; Humbert follows it methodically, trying not to miss her stop. When she gets off of the bus, close to the cathedral, he parks the car in the first space he finds and fills the parking meter with coins.

He watches her walk in front of him. He finds her attractive. He imagines her in Heribert’s arms, soft and warm. He gets an erection. He takes out the little notebook. He takes notes as he walks.

He has no doubts about how to approach her. Using the most common, cheesy approach of the neighborhood guys from his teenage years, without more ado he asks her where they’ve seen each other before.

“Did we meet at
. . . ?
Were you at the Yacht Club on a motor
. . . ?
No. Then at that quiche place on
. . . ?
No, no. Were you at the Paquito D’Rivera concert last week? No, not there. At the opera. That’s it. I’m sure. I know you from the opera. You were at the Met last night, weren’t you?”

The woman smiles, and in that moment, Humbert is certain he will never know if she did so out of politeness or because the line had amused her.

“Why did you smile just now? Where are you going? What dumb questions, I’m sorry. Am I bothering you? Do you mind if I walk along with you?”

It doesn’t matter to him that she doesn’t answer. On the sidewalk a silver-painted bald man is imitating the movements of an automaton to such perfection that the group of rubberneckers gathered there gives him an ovation. Humbert would like to be capable of performing in public, doing something like that man is doing. He takes out the little notebook and jots down in the last remaining corner: “Silver-painted man moves like a robot. Reflect upon this. Body art?” He adds another line: “Hildegarda’s face, watching him: joyful.”

“What are you writing down?”

“I take notes so I won’t forget what I have to do.”

The woman smiles at him. Humbert thinks it is the prettiest smile anyone has ever smiled at him. He would like to kiss her on the spot. He wants to embrace her, feel the warmth of her body. He wants to kiss her from her toes to her eyelids. He wants to caress her, make love to her (make love to her?) without even undressing her. He would have gone to the ends of the earth with her, traversing deserts and streams, glacial crevasses
. . .
Note in notebook: “Review (and, if necessary, recover) romantic symbolism.” He takes her hand and kisses it.

“Are you crazy, what are you doing?”

•

“Are you crazy, what are you doing? We don’t even know each others’ names.”

She laughs with her white teeth, gossamer lips, and brilliant eyes, dark as the night. He feels he has never met a woman like her. They kiss and caress each other. Humbert has successfully undone her bra without taking off her sweater. They are in the car, close to the docks and meatpacking houses, parked on a silent and deserted street. Humbert isn’t entirely sure whether the possibility of some guy’s showing up with a knife adds excitement to the moment or not. She takes off her hat. He kisses her again, and her lips open like a shell. He tells her his name is Humbert.

“My name is Alexandra.”

Was this some kind of joke
. . . ?

“Alexandra?”

“Yes. Don’t you like it? You made a face. It’s not such a strange name
. . .
”

“You’re kidding.”

“What do you mean?”

He knows by the way she looks at him that she isn’t kidding. Her name is Alexandra and it has never been Hildegarda, and never will be, and she will never be the Hildegarda he thought he had in his arms. All at once those supple lips, those legs wrapped in black, that tiny skirt that Humbert has slowly been pushing up, make no sense at all
. . .
He tries to visualize a scene that will keep him from losing interest in the woman, at least sexually. He tries to forget that her name is Alexandra, he tries firmly to believe that this is Hildegarda and that Marino himself, dressed as if he were onstage in
M
adame Butterfly
, was offering her, Madame Butterfly herself, to him personally: “Here. Do as you wish with her. See how soft she is. She’ll do anything you ask.” But it doesn’t work. The woman is not Hildegarda, and only with his eyes closed is he able to go on, follow the ritual, undress her partially, allow her to undress him partially, and finish up in a hurry, murmuring trivial excuses, leaving her at her door, taking out the notebook to write down a number he will never use, giving her a fake number, not even waving goodbye when he drives away.

He
looks up the name DelNonno in the telephone book. He calls a few numbers that could be Marino DelNonno’s, but aren’t. He puts on his tuxedo.

“Since you don’t like the opera, I’m not going to ask you if you want to come along,” says Humbert, not unaware that, having formulated the offer in this way, Helena might just decide that she would like to come along.

“You’re going to the opera again? What’s gotten into you?”

“It intrigues me.”

“It must. No, I’m not coming. Give me a kiss when you get home. And another one right now.”

•

This time Marino DelNonno leaves the theater with a man. They go for martinis at a bar by the opera house that’s strung with Christmas lights.

Humbert double-parks in front of the bar and waits. When they finally come out, they say goodbye right at the door. DelNonno stops a cab and gets in. Humbert follows him. The street where the taxi drops DelNonno is not the same one as the night before. The building is small, but similarly sumptuous. He takes down the address in a new little notebook. He calculates the possibilities of spending the night waiting. From a nearby phone booth he calls information in case DelNonno’s number is listed, but not yet in the phone book. No new DelNonno. The phone must be listed under his wife’s name. What is Hildegarda’s last name? If only there were reverse listings, by address
. . .
After a while he calls information again. It’s a different voice. He requests the phone numbers for that building, claiming not to know the last name of the person under whose name the telephone is listed.

He calls all the numbers, asking to speak with Marino. If the number doesn’t correspond to the apartment where DelNonno and Hildegarda live, the response will be unsuspecting. If, as on the previous day, he is at a house that is not his own, Humbert might sense some hesitation on the other end. If nothing comes of it, he can opt either to spend the night or return the following morning, as he did yesterday. From the list of seventeen numbers he had gotten from information, at the ninth he notices a slightly uneasy response. It was a woman’s voice; she was not terribly convincing about Marino’s not being home.

“Who’s calling?”

“Who do you think? Put him on quickly, I have no time to waste. This is urgent.”

“
. . .
”

“Do you hear me?”

“But he’s not here. Well, let me go make certain.”

He doesn’t hear the sharp clack receivers make when they are left on a table, or footsteps pattering toward a fictitious inquiry, but rather the silence of a hand over the mouthpiece. Humbert considers the possibility of hanging up. This may not be DelNonno’s apartment either, but the home of another girlfriend. But what if it is, in fact, DelNonno’s house and that is Hildegarda’s voice, trying to screen their calls. They don’t leave him time to decide: the other end has gone dead. Humbert smiles. He could have some fun. Blackmail them. Would they be concerned about the press exposing DelNonno’s adulteries? He doubts it. These days of libertines and decadents weren’t exactly a golden age for blackmailers. He might even be doing him a favor, publicity-wise. Humbert leaves the booth. He is walking toward his car, lost in thought, when the solution opens the door to the building: Marino DelNonno is arranging his scarf and calling for a taxi. The telephone stratagem has produced an effect that perhaps, if it can’t exactly be qualified as unexpected, at least is not the one he had initially been after.

He follows the cab, which stops twelve blocks away. DelNonno goes into a new building. Humbert writes down the address. In light of the kind of life this Marino lives, it’s possible this is not his house either, but, according to the rules of chance, or intuitively (and right now he doesn’t feel like ascertaining which of these lines of thinking makes it clear to him), the probability of DelNonno’s living there is almost absolute. He decides to go home.

He opens the door. He finds Helena still wearing her raincoat and boots, looking over some files containing documents from the gallery. He takes them out of her hands, takes her in his arms, kisses her, undresses her.

•

The following morning at nine he has already parked by the corner and is standing in front of the building. He doesn’t think either DelNonno or Hildegarda tends to leave the building before nine with any regularity. He goes straight up to the doorman. He intends to ask for Mr. DelNonno, but at the last moment, not quite knowing why, but sensing that it is the right thing to do, he asks for Mrs. DelNonno.

“Whom shall I say is calling?”

He hesitates a second.

“Heribert.”

The doorman goes into his booth, unhooks the telephone, and presses a button, the number of which Humbert is unable to see.

“Good morning. Mr. Heribert would like to see Mrs. DelNonno.”

When the doorman comes out with a negative response, there’s nobody there. Humbert is in a deli, buying sandwiches and beer.

He sits behind the wheel of the car, positioned so as to be able to keep track of everyone who leaves the building. But how is he to know who she is if he has never seen her? Will he have to go after every woman who leaves the building? Recognizing someone he has never seen before is not exactly a task he can leave to mere inspiration.

He realizes he hasn’t been taking notes for a while. This whole thing is so entertaining that he can’t put his mind to it. It’s fascinating to pull on a thread and follow it without knowing if he will find a ball of string or the end of a rope. From the building emerge: a woman dressed in pink, a man dressed in navy blue, a man dressed in gray, a woman dressed in orange, a man dressed in white, a woman dressed in red and black and a woman dressed in beige, a man dressed in pink, a man dressed in yellow, two men dressed in gray, a man dressed in blue and a woman dressed in blue and white, a man dressed in red, a woman dressed in black, and a man dressed in gray and black stripes.

•

At noon, when the sun is at its peak and Humbert has eaten all the sandwiches and drunk all the beers, and is thinking of making another trip to the delicatessen to buy more, Marino leaves the building with a woman. That definitely must be Hildegarda. He follows them with his gaze. They go into the garage next door. Humbert starts the car. When he sees them leave in a black Buick Park Avenue, heading in the opposite direction, he finds himself having to make a U-turn in the middle of the street. The man by the curb with a sandwich cart is forced to pull back in a hurry and backs into a passing ambulance, which doesn’t have time to brake and tips him over with a crash.

DelNonno’s car stops in front of a glass-and-steel building. Hildegarda gets out. The car takes off, crosses a double line, passes another car, and vanishes down the street.

Humbert gets out of the car and looks at the door of the establishment Hildegarda has gone into. A large neon sign proclaims in stylized letters that this is a Health and Sports Club, that is, a posh gym. The services offered by the club are detailed in a list on the glass door: swimming, tennis, sauna, gymnastics, dance. Dance? He takes out the notebook and makes a note. He never thought of doing anything on dance. He feels good: he hasn’t taken any notes in so long that, even though he knows that his lack of fertile ideas is due to his investigation, he was half worrying that his brain was rusting. He pushes the door open.

A very blond girl wearing a t-shirt with the name of the club and a short skirt informs him at length about the facilities the center has to offer. Humbert, who has always shunned all types of physical activity, signs up without even waiting for the girl to finish her promotional spiel.

“Can I start right away?”

“Naturally. We’ll be glad to give you a tour of the club.”

He has trouble losing his guide. He goes through all the rooms twice, no longer trying to go unnoticed. He goes into the gym, sees people vaulting the horse, flipping on the bars, stretching their arms on the rings. He makes his way through the steam of the sauna. Pretending to be lost, he goes into the women’s dressing rooms, eliciting shrieks and giggles. At the pool, he watches as a man dives off the board, twisting his body on its axis like a corkscrew. He wanders through the halls, checking all the tables of the small bar-restaurant on the top floor. He finally finds her in front of a mirror, one of the many women lined up at the wall, lifting one leg delicately behind them and thrusting it forward suddenly, as they double their trunks over
. . .
When he sees her face up close, the few doubts he is still harboring are immediately erased: this is Hildegarda, it is unquestionably she. This was the face that had filled all the canvases of Heribert Julià’s final period like an obsession, until he had started drawing himself, getting more and more lost in a maze of self-portraits and men seen from behind, exhausted and leaning on any surface they could find.

How should he approach her? With self-assurance, he could approach her any old way and make a success of it. But he wants his method to be so perfect that, for the first time, he decides to reflect on it. One by one, he discovers the defects in each of the plans he comes up with. His imagination is prolific, though, and he continually conjures up new ones. He imagines and, applying his fine critical faculties, rejects so many that, before he knows it, she is on her way out. Defenseless, he can’t find the wherewithal to follow her and launch right in without further ado. He decides to think about it some more, and more calmly, and puts off any action until the following day.

•

Humbert tells Helena that he roams around the city from one place to another, looking at buildings he has looked at a thousand times and discovering new facets to them. He follows people and watches where they go, how they sit on a bench, how they grab the handle to get onto the bus, how they open the newspaper, how they put their handkerchiefs away after blowing their noses, how they put one foot before the other, time and again, when they walk. Habitual behavior seems more and more strange to him every day, with careful observation.

“And what will come of it all?”

“All what?”

“All this observation?”

Following people will enable him to learn things he will then make use of to advance even farther, to break with what he has created thus far, to take the leap that will put even more distance between him and the crowd, turning meters of separation into kilometers, atop all the tops, an aerostatic balloon soaring over the cupolas of all cathedrals. He realizes that, unthinkingly, he is taking the excuse he invented for Helena for the truth, and even elaborating a theory based on it. He takes out the little notebook and writes: “Tell a lie. Believe it. Elaborate a thought based on the lie, a thought which, brilliant though it might be, is of no use, based as it is on a falsehood.” He is about to add one more detail when he realizes that Helena is sound asleep and he turns out the light.

•

Bright and early the next morning Humbert is on his way to the club. He spends the morning doing simple exercises and checking out the dance studio from time to time, to see if Hildegarda is there. In the afternoon he does laps, drinks soft drinks at the bar, reads the newspaper, and fills a few pages of the notebook with notes.

Around 9:00
p.m.
he gives up on waiting. He goes home, has coffee and donuts for supper, gets right into bed, and when Helena gets in at 3:30, he turns over and gives her a hug.

In the morning, at the club, he has a sauna and plays tennis with a fat man with glasses who has asked him to play. Not only does he defeat him soundly, but with his final stroke he smashes the ball and leaves the lenses of his opponent’s eyeglasses in pieces. Once in a while, he goes to the dance studio, hoping to find her there. In vain. That afternoon, at a table in the bar of the club, he fills up his little notebook with a list of possible sports-related paintings. What if he based his January show on the topic? Would it be enough of a novelty, or was it better to pursue the idea of working out the dream series in iron? He makes a note: “January exhibit based on sports? Include allusions to George Bellows?”

At 8:30, he goes home. He has a chicken sandwich and orange juice for dinner. He goes to bed early. Helena is there, reading an
Art and Artists
from many years before. Scattered about the sheets are issues of
Artforum
,
Arts
, two months of
ArtNews
, one
Arts Magazine
, and the previous week’s
Arts Weekly
. For a moment he tries to suss out which articles Helena is interested in, but sleep quickly overcomes him and he falls asleep.

In the morning Humbert lifts weights and, from time to time, stops by the dance studio. Around noon he finally sees her, on the floor, twisted into a knot, spreading her arms and lifting her head. He goes wild with joy, his heart beating like a cuckoo clock.

When Hildegarda gets out of the shower (an hour and a half later, her dance session over for the day), she runs into Humbert (who, meanwhile, had also showered and dressed), who introduces himself straight off. Hildegarda says she has heard of him and, since she, too, is very interested in painting, she’s pleased to meet him. Humbert confesses that he has wanted to paint her since the very first time he saw her on the dance studio floor. Hildegarda asks him if he’s been going to the club for very long, because she’s never seen him before. Humbert says a couple of years, but he doesn’t go very often: work and all
. . .
Humbert thinks of a painting in which Hildegarda appears, languid and pallid, surrounded by trees and plants
. . .
What an effect that painting would have in January’s big show! Forget sports. Now he decides it will revolve around a single person: fifty, sixty, eighty, a hundred paintings of Hildegarda. How mediocre Heribert’s paintings of her would seem in comparison with the ones he, inflamed with a consuming passion, would do! He can already see the titles in the art reviews: “Toward a new romanticism?” To escape such labeling, he thinks, he could do each painting in a different style, forgotten or a bit out of vogue, which could be regarded as new: new cubism, new op (or new figurative perceptual abstraction), new Dadaism (Hildegarda dressed as the Mona Lisa with a landscape of factories in the background, with a mustache like the one Duchamp affixed to Leonardo’s), new neo-classicism (Hildegarda as a Homeric Helen out of a painting by Poussin), new pop (Hildegarda as Wonder Woman, destroying the face of the bad guy with a single blow, in a three meter by three meter comic strip), new baroque (Caravaggio’s Virgin with Hildegarda’s face), new romanticism (Hildegarda as one of the women at Delacroix’s death of Sardanapalus). Hildegarda says she doesn’t know what to say.