To Walk Alone in the Crowd Read online

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  Um andar solitário entre a gente.

  —LUÍS DE CAMÕES

  Un andar solitario entre la gente.

  —FRANCISCO DE QUEVEDO

  A book should not be planned out beforehand, but as one writes it will form itself, subject to the constant emotional promptings of one’s personality.

  —JAMES JOYCE

  I.

  OFFICE OF LOST MOMENTS

  LISTEN TO THE SOUNDS OF LIFE. I am all ears. I listen with my eyes. I hear what I see on advertisements, headlines, posters, signs. I move through a city of voices and words. Voices that set the air in motion and pass through my inner ear to reach the brain transformed into electrical pulses; words that I hear in passing, perhaps if someone stands beside me talking on their phone, or that I read no matter where I turn, on every surface, every screen. Printed words reach me like spoken sounds, like the notes on a musical score; sometimes it is hard to unscramble words that are spoken simultaneously, or to infer those I can’t quite hear because they’re whisked away or lost in a louder noise. The varied shapes of letters give rise to a ceaseless visual polyphony. I am a tape recorder, switched on and hidden away inside the futuristic phone of a 1960s spy, the iPhone in my pocket. I am the camera that Christopher Isherwood wanted to be in Berlin, a gaze that must not be distracted by even the merest blink. The woods have ears, reads the title of a drawing by Bosch. The fields have eyes. Inside a dark, hollow tree glow the yellow eyes of an owl. A pair of large ears dangle from a burly tree as from an elephant, nearly grazing the ground. One of Carmen Calvo’s sculptures is an old wooden door studded with glass eyes. The doors have eyes. The walls have ears. Electrical outlets can hear what we say, according to Ramón Gómez de la Serna.

  * * *

  PERFECTION MAY BE CLOSER THAN YOU THINK. I go out as soon as it gets dark. It’s the late dusk of the first night of summer. I hear the rustle of trees and ivy from neighborhood gardens. I hear the voices of people I can’t see, eating outdoors on the other side of fences topped with creeping vine or mock orange, sheltered from the street by thick cypress hedges. The sky is dark blue at the top and light blue on the horizon where the rooftops and chimneys stand in silhouette as on a garish diorama. I don’t want to know anything about the world, I only want to be aware of what reaches my eyes and ears at this very moment, nothing else. The street is so quiet that I can hear my footsteps. The rumble of traffic is far away. In the soft breeze I can hear the rustle of leaves on a fig tree and the slow, swaying sound of the high crown of a sycamore, like the sound of the sea. I hear the whistling of swallows flitting through the air in acrobatic flight. One of them, swooping to catch an insect, touched the surface of a garden pond so pristinely that it didn’t cause the slightest ripple. I hear the clicking of bats finding their way through the air by echolocation. Many more vibrations than my crude human ears can detect are rippling simultaneously through the air at this very moment, a thick web of radio signals spreading everywhere, carrying all the cell phone conversations taking place right now across the city. I want to be all eyes and ears, like Argos in the ancient myth, a human body covered in bulging eyeballs and blinking eyelids, or perhaps in the bare, lidless eyes on Carmen Calvo’s door. I could be a Marvel superhero, the Eye-Man, or a monster in a 1950s science-fiction film. I could be a random stranger or the Invisible Man, preferably the one in the James Whale movie rather than in the novel by H. G. Wells. It is the film, more than the book, that really attains the height of poetry.

  * * *

  TECHNOLOGY APPLIED TO LIFE. I read every word that meets my eyes as I walk by. Fire Department Only. Premises Under Video Surveillance. We Pay Cash for Your Car. There is a kind of beauty, an effortless fruition in the gradual approach of night. The word Libre, lit in bright green on the windshield of a taxi, floats above the darkened street as if clipped and pasted on a black background or a page in a photo album. A glaring, empty bus rushes from the mouth of a tunnel like a ghostly galleon in the high seas. Its entire side is taken up by a large ad for gazpacho. Enjoy the taste of summer now. Words fall into a rhythmic sequence. We buy silver. We buy gold. We buy silver and gold. Donate blood. We buy gold. At every bus stop there is a glowing panel advertising a new film. Gods of Egypt: The Battle for Eternity Begins. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows. There are invitations, commands, prohibitions that I never noticed when I walked down this street before. Do not leave plastic containers outside the trash bin. No pedestrian traffic. Enjoy our cocktails. Celebrate your event with us. Long before you walk past the sidewalk tables outside a bar you are met by a murmuring choir of voices, tinkling glasses, the sound of silverware and china. I go through the thicket of voices and smells without stopping. Roast meat, animal fat, fried fumes, shrimp-shells, cigarette smoke. Try our specialties, lamb cutlets, grilled meats. Try our lobster rice. The lavish verbal succulence of the lettering on the signs is not unlike the splendor of a Dutch still life. Croquettes. T-BONE STEAK. Gambas al ajillo. Callos a la madrileña. CHEESES. Eggplant and gazpacho. Grilled sea bass. Tuna fritters. Paella. Entrecôte. On a June night, the sidewalks of Madrid have a languorous seaside calm like a beach filled with families on holiday. As I drift along, I realize this is the last night I will live in this neighborhood where I have spent so many years. A man and a woman, white-haired but youthful, press their faces together and smile in the window of a store that sells hearing aids. Old people in advertisements smile with a certain optimism. Young people laugh and laugh, opening their mouths wide and showing their gums and tongues. I never noticed this particular sign before, its invitation or command, the white letters on a blue background, the joy of retirees wearing invisible earbuds: Be All Ears. Hear the genuine sounds of life.

  GO AS FAR AS YOU CHOOSE. I close my eyes so that the sounds can reach me more clearly. On the Metro I sit down and close my eyes as if I’d fallen asleep. I try to keep them shut all the way from one station to the next. I notice the weight of my eyelids, the faint quivering touch of my eyelashes. When I finally give up and look around, the faces around me are even stranger. There’s a book in my satchel but I don’t read it. I only read the signs I come across, each in turn, from the moment I hurry down the stairs and push open the swinging door. So many things that I never noticed or that I read without paying conscious attention. Entrance. Shorn of articles and verbs, the phrases become crude robotic indications. Estación Cobertura Móvil. Some subway official believes in bilingualism and in literal translations: Station Coverage Mobile. No smoking anywhere on the subway system. Insert ticket. This is a Public Announcement from the Metro de Madrid. Don’t forget to take your ticket. A group of grinning, multiethnic, multinational youths in an advertisement. Join the largest design network in the world. One of them is Asian. He’s wearing glasses and looks at the camera. Another is Black, with a pierced nose and his arm around the shoulders of a
girl who is clearly Spanish. Turn this summer into something unforgettable. Use it or lose it. Exclusive opportunities for those who act quickly. Going down the escalator I close my eyes though not completely. For your own safety, hold the handrail. An emergency intercom addresses me with an almost intimate suggestion: Use me when you need me. The city speaks the language of desire. Instead of instantly turning to my phone while I wait on the platform, or searching for something else to read, I stay on my feet and squint at nothing for a few moments. “Use Me” was the title of a song I used to like many years ago. You are being filmed. Over a thousand cameras are watching over your safety. At each step there’s a new instruction or command. Break only in case of emergency. Don’t be afraid to use me, the song said. Commanding voices join the written injunctions. Next train approaching the station. The lack of an article or even a verb heightens the sense of imminence. This is a public announcement. The ground shakes a little as the train approaches. Do not enter or exit subway cars after the signal sounds. I look at people’s faces and listen to their voices. I am all ears. I move closer to a man who is talking on his phone. Nearly every person in the subway car is absorbed in a cell phone screen. A tall, serious girl is reading a Paulo Coelho book. Her choice in literature is a discredit to her beauty. “I’ll tell you everything,” someone says, right behind me. He leans his head against the glass and lowers his voice, so I can no longer hear him over the automated message that begins to announce the next station. “All right, perfect, okay, all right. See you soon.”

  * * *

  PARROT COULD BE KEY WITNESS IN MURDER CASE. Wearily, a woman turns the pages of a free newspaper. Beyoncé unveils outfits for upcoming tour. The train is moving more slowly and more quietly and I am better able to hear the male voice talking on the phone behind me. He’s so close to me that I have no idea what he looks like, this man who now begins to laugh. “His mother is eighty-seven and she just went to the dentist to get braces.” I have Montaigne in my backpack but I don’t take the book out; I don’t even look for a seat. I am alert, waiting for whatever new instructions will be addressed to me in an imperious or enticing tone. Let passion be your guide. This seat reserved for people with disabilities. Beneath the noise of the train there is a murmur of voices, almost all of them talking on the phone. “You have no idea how many years I’ve lived in England.” The voices of people I’m not able to see seem especially near. “Neither you nor your siblings should sign anything until you’re sure.” A screen hangs from the ceiling. A young man with a shaved head and a black beard moves his lips and the words appear below. I am Gay. Then another man, younger, beardless, wearing eyeliner and also moving his lips. I am Trans. The face of the man with the shaved head appears again. They flicker back and forth so quickly that their features superimpose. I am me. And then a third face. I could be you. Live your difference. Then a purple screen. Another invitation. Another command. Someone must have measured the minimum time required for the faces not to become indistinguishable. A woman is speaking softly, very close to my ear, in a tone of warning or censure. “He says he’s changed, that he wants to come back. But it’ll all depend on how he behaves.” I try to inscribe in my memory the phrases I hear, the bits and pieces of conversation. Words flow together, blurring and disappearing as soon as I hear them. Forget-It-Fast, says an ad, though I’m not sure what it’s selling. Words are drowned by the noise of the train or by announcements on the intercom. “We’ll see if he’s really changed. I don’t even believe twenty percent of what he says.” Emergency hammer. I read everything, even the headlines on the pages of the free newspaper that the first woman holds right up to my face.

  * * *

  POLICE WILL KNOW WHEN YOU USE YOUR CELL PHONE EVEN WHEN THEY CAN’T SEE YOU. Salamanca man beheaded by eighteen-year-old son. Emergency exit. The great arctic adventure. I barely notice the faces, just the voices and the printed words. A ringtone. The sharp trill of a text message. Everyone is connected to something or someone who is somewhere else. “I’m on the subway. Just in case we get cut off.” When the train comes to a stop, the doors open in front of an advertisement that reaches up to the curved ceiling of the station. The best family holidays ever. First-time ocean dives. Find a new landscape at every turn. A group of young people is jumping off a cliff joyfully into the sea. Some are about to plunge fearlessly and others are already floating against a deep blue. The fun of summer can be yours. Click for incredible prices. Some reservations can’t wait. Book now. Find out more. Find out now. Buy it now. Try it now. All the different messages seem to come from the same voice, the same source, and to be addressed to the same person: me, you. It’s me, but it could be you. You, yes, you, says a lottery ad, as if pointing a finger to single you out in the crowd, a face that can see you and has chosen you from a TV monitor. You can be a millionaire. Master the elements with your fingertips. Find the perfect class for you. The woman who was reading the newspaper left it on the seat when she got off the subway, a mess of crumpled sheets. Join the leading brand in hybrid technology.

  * * *

  TRACK YOUR DNA. Get there sooner. Let nothing stop you. Don’t wait until you’re down. In just a few years, printed newspapers have lost all their material dignity. Madrid sets a world record in the hunt for Pokémon. They crumple and fall apart immediately, squalid and superfluous, especially now, in summer. An entire page can be scanned as quickly as a screen. Enjoy a fabulous gourmet experience by the sea. I close my eyes again to hear more clearly as I let myself be carried along by the train’s motion. The city makes a thousand simultaneous promises. Choose everything. Enjoy it whenever and wherever you like. One need not choose a particular thing anymore and forego what was not chosen. Save while you spend. No regrets. Lose weight by eating. Create your custom trip today. I have an old, irresistible addiction to cheap newsprint and the smell of ink. Cannibalistic fight between hammerhead and tiger shark videotaped at sea by tuna fishermen. We move heaven and earth to bring you the best.

  TAKE A BIT OF OUR TASTE WITH YOU. First, all of a sudden, it was that word, REMEMBER, up on a traffic sign on a street I used to walk down every day, but now detached from its context by a chance shift in my attention which up until the prior instant had been busy with other things—not the things around me but the things within me—like a sleepwalker suddenly awakened by that visual knell, RECUERDE, forcing me to open my eyes and ears even though I had seen the sign many times before and though it is in fact quite common, a metal triangle with a pair of simple black silhouettes alerting drivers to a pedestrian crossing outside a school. Remember what, I suddenly wonder. Who is asking or ordering me to remember; what inaudible, printed voice is forcing me to look at something I have seen all my life but that I now perceive as if for the first time, on this sidewalk, this corner, this crossing, the triangle high up on a metal post with its powerful and simple color combination: red along the edge, white on the inside, black for the silhouettes and for the single word in large block letters. Two children holding hands and carrying satchels, a pair of antique children without backpacks, a boy and a girl who seem in a hurry, as if they were about to break into a run. I look more closely and they are indeed running. The satchels in their hands are nearly flying behind them. Children out of a fairytale, brother and sister, abandoned by their parents and lost in the woods; or children fleeing an airstrike on their way home from school in Aleppo.

  * * *

  ISN’T DISCOVERING NEW THINGS WHAT KEEPS YOU ALIVE? You can tell it’s an old-fashioned sign because it employs the polite form of address, recuerde, in a city where every other voice addresses you informally. In saying “recuerde,” it also brings to mind the first word of the first verse of Jorge Manrique’s Coplas on his father’s death: “recuerde el alma dormida,” let the sleeping soul recall, which is in fact an appeal to the soul to awaken rather than to remember. My eyes felt suddenly as though they’d opened wider, my ears too, as when they pop from a change in pressure, “avive el seso y despierte.” And I began to notic
e other things as well, momentarily forgetting the path I was on and the darkness seething in my brain: I saw a handwritten sign taped to a lamppost, “Reliable person available for housework and eldercare”; I saw a picture of a tanned blonde in a white swimsuit in the window of a drugstore, “This summer, lose weight when you eat”; I saw a chalkboard sign outside a bar listing the day’s specials, “squid, lentil stew, octopus salad,” with a steaming plate of stew skillfully drawn in several colors. A young woman went by just then, talking on the phone, waving her free hand so that a loud jingle of bracelets accompanied the imperious staccato of her steps. A woman transfixed by anger, who had no qualms about speaking loudly. “Mom, she’s your daughter. Are you listening, Mom? What do you care what her husband says? There’s no reason for you to pay for your daughter’s gym. Are you listening, Mom? When have you ever paid for anything for me?”

  WHERE YOUR FANTASIES COME TRUE. Ever since that day I’ve been on a secret mission when I walk down the street. I used to do it intermittently, if I happened to think of it on the way to some other task. Now those other tasks are disappearing. They are just an excuse to go out on the street. I don’t choose the quickest routes but those that are likely to be more fruitful. I almost never ride a bicycle and I never take a taxi. I either walk or I ride the subway. All my worries and obsessions are dissolved in ceaseless observation. I am no longer my own thoughts, the things that I imagine or remember, just what meets my eyes and ears, a spy on a secret mission to record and collect it all. I used to check my phone for messages every few minutes. I used to lower my head and scrunch my shoulders, caught in a toxic bubble of gloom, traversing an endless tunnel of mid-morning anxiety. Anxiety was my shadow, my guardian, and my double. It kept up with me no matter how fast I walked. It stood beside me as I went down an escalator, whispering into my ear. It turned the mild dizziness I got from my medication into vertigo and nausea. There was a morbid magnetism to the muzzle of the train when it came from the depths of the tunnel into the station. There was a voice in my ear, inside my head, far back at the nape of the neck, and in my throbbing temples. Now there’s no longer one voice but many, a flood of voices, coming always from the outside and as immediate as the things I see, the people going by, the noise of traffic. “Niña, two pairs of stockings for three euros, niña, look, two pairs, three euros.” Expert tailoring alterations and repairs. So that your business can run full speed. How can I have walked down this street so many times without noticing the river of spoken and printed words I was traversing, the racket, the crowds, the clothes in the window of a dingy store. Wool slippers, orthopedic footwear, shoes for sick children. Orthopedic shoes in the window of a store selling prosthetic supplies. Crab, shrimp, huge lobsters in a restaurant’s refrigerated display, Gran Cafetería los Crustáceos, and rows of silver fish with toothed, gaping jaws and glassy eyes. Try Our Lobster Rice, twelve euros per person. The nauseating smell of fish at ten in the morning blending with the nauseating smell of tobacco.