In Search of Klingsor. Jorge Volpi

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СКАЧАТЬ gender. Rational thought was fine for articulating laws and theories, for formulating hypotheses and corollaries, but it could never capture the infinite array of aromas, sensations, and pure intoxication swept together in a moment of passion. In other words: Because he was utterly incapable of relating to women of his own social class, Bacon had decided to invest his money in the world’s oldest profession.

      In a moment of weakness, he met Vivien. He rarely spoke with her. It wasn’t that he didn’t care about her life or what she had to say—there were lots of women he cared little about yet tolerated long conversations with them. He just wanted to hold on to the idea that there was something mysterious and terrible about this woman. Her eyes, framed by a little halo that shone like a moon in eclipse, had to be hiding some kind of ancient secret, or maybe an accident or a crime, that could explain her evasive nature. Perhaps it wasn’t that at all—he never dared to ask—but he liked holding on to that illusion of living with a difficult soul; he treasured the trepidation he felt whenever he was in her presence. He envisioned Vivien, and with her he felt he could lose himself in a new, unknown land.

      This was the closest he had ever come to love. Despite the passion he felt for her, however, Bacon took great pains to ensure that nobody ever caught sight of him walking through the streets of Princeton with Vivien. He always insisted on seeing her at his house, where she arrived with a ritual precision, as if offering up some kind of weekly sacrifice to the gods. Bacon, with the childish pleasure of committing a sin, of breaking an ironclad law, found himself in an emotional state the likes of which he had never known. He threw himself into proving this theory on Vivien between the sheets of his bed, with the tenacity that is the pride of the experimental physicist. Vivien, on the other hand, allowed herself to be manipulated with a serenity bordering on indolence; she had worked at a newsstand for a long time and, given all the alarming news she read daily, nothing could shock her. Vivien’s lovemaking was languorous and sweaty, like dancing to the blues. Her temperament reminded Bacon of that of a quiet little guinea pig or those calm, lazy caterpillars nestled in their moth-eaten leaves, indifferent to their predators lurking above.

      As soon as she was finished undressing, Bacon would place Vivien facedown on the bed on the crisp, white sheets and turn on all the lights so he could study that optical antithesis, unbothered, for several minutes. When he was done, he would rest his body on top of hers and cover her with kisses. Every step of the way his lips tested the perfection of those beautiful little spherical equations that he knew he could never resolve. When he was through, he would turn her over as if she were a rag doll, and only then did he undress. Carefully he would separate Vivien’s thighs, and he would then nestle his face in the warm, welcoming space between her legs. This prelude was a kind of axiom from which several theorems emerged each time they came together, and this was where his analytic prowess was evident: this prelude, or groundwork, occasionally led him to Vivien’s tiny feet and, other times, to her nipples, her eyelashes, her belly button. It was more than mere lust: Bacon was studying sex in all its different incarnations, and was observing his own pleasure as it grew and evolved. In the end, the orgasm was just the logical, necessary consequence of the calculations he had mapped out earlier.

      “I think it’s time for you to go,” he said to her, once he had recovered.

      Maybe he did truly love her, but he just couldn’t stand the idea of her staying in his bed for very long, or having to kiss her when it was all over. By then, the heat they had created and the droplets of sweat that dotted her skin like translucent eyes made him sick—a repulsion as strong as the ecstasy he had just experienced. Suddenly, inevitably, he would become acutely aware of the animal quality of it all, and he couldn’t help imagining them as a couple of pigs rolling around in their own filth. His theory proven, he allowed Vivien just enough time to put herself back together and then he would simply ask her to leave. With the same indifference that, in some way, he sensed in her as well, he would watch her gather up her clothes and dress in silence as if watching an inanimate object or a doll. Once he was finally alone, Bacon felt nothing but sadness, quod erat demonstrandum, and usually fell into a dreamless slumber.

      Despite having been raised with the proper manners of a New Jersey society boy, Bacon had made little contact with girls of his own age. The girls he always felt attracted to were, inevitably, the ones who ignored him: carefully coiffed, religious and austere, unattainably beautiful. At first, Bacon tried to act as though it didn’t bother him. To fend off potential rejection, he would tell himself, a priori, that they were all so stupid they probably thought a square root was some kind of orchid bulb. After many fruitless efforts at maintaining a conversation that lasted longer than five minutes, Bacon gave up on them, frustrated and depressed. He felt that he would never find someone who could understand, much less love him. This was the kind of thinking that led him, for the first time, to one of the non sanctos establishments that one of his loudmouth classmates had suggested he try. There he would never have to make small talk or feign interest in the weather, parties, or fancy designer dresses. According to his friend, at these places everything was reduced to a silent, discreet procedure, a release of pleasure that implied absolutely no obligations of any sort. The first time he tried it, Bacon was terrified: He tried to concentrate on mathematical formulas in an effort to hide his discomfort and to allow his body to respond the way he wanted it to. He selected a thin, timid girl—it made him feel better to think that she was even more nervous than he—who turned into an emotionless machine when she got into bed. She took her clothing off all at once, displaying a microscopic pair of nipples that seemed to protrude directly out of her chest, and which she allowed Bacon to lick briefly before she took over. When it was over, he felt no remorse, and no emptiness, either. In fact, he had rather enjoyed it. He had really enjoyed it. In fact, it had been even better than his fast-talking classmate had said it would be. This was the perfect thing for chasing away the demons of lust, for it allowed him to concentrate harder on more important things, like quantum physics. Whenever this bodily urge arose, all he had to do was lay out a few dollars. And like a true scientist—they all have a bit of the entomologist in them—he certainly appreciated the diversity. He was constantly surprised at the unbelievable variety he found from woman to woman. The smallest details became an inexhaustible source of arousal for him: a new beauty mark, a curve he had never seen before, a slightly misshapen belly button. They all filled him with a pleasure that, until now, he had only ever felt before when solving algebra problems. He explored those specimens with the eagle eye of the collector, and somehow this always prevented him from ever coming close to anything like tenderness.

      For some reason, Vivien was not like the other girls. It had been several months since Bacon had first laid eyes on her brave, sad face. Later he would try to remember the exact date of their first encounter, to identify the precise starting point of their relationship, but for some reason he never managed to mentally retrieve the information. He couldn’t even remember if it had been summer or fall, or if it had been before or after his twentieth birthday. All he could remember was the distant sound of his voice when he finally spoke to that young woman who seemed little more than a girl. That day, instead of grabbing the New York Times from the pile and leaving the coins on top of some women’s fashion magazine, as he usually did, Bacon looked straight at Vivien and asked her for the paper himself. As she handed it to him, Bacon noted a stifled expression of pain in her eyes. The exchange may have lasted only a few seconds, but it was enough time for her somber, delicate face, like a pin stuck into a piece of cloth, to pierce his imagination and remain imbedded in his mind. This woman possessed a certain kind of beauty that he had never appreciated until just then. From that day onward, he would go to the newsstand every Sunday hoping to find her there and, perhaps, learn a bit more about her.

      The way the young woman looked at him made him feel both uncomfortable and intrigued. One day he tried striking up a conversation with her, commenting on some aspect of current events—the war was always a good pretext—but she didn’t take the bait. All she did was smile wanly, without even opening her lips, and then returned to whatever she had been thinking about.

      “Cat got your tongue?” asked Bacon in a playful tone that he immediately regretted. “How old are you, СКАЧАТЬ