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Fiction

Ne Me Quitte Pas

By Cristina Peri Rossi
Translated from Spanish by Megan Berkobien
Uruguay's Cristina Peri Rossi lets us in on a psychologist's thoughts on love and fading youth.

“I can’t seem to remember her,” the man said in anguish. “I can’t remember her face or her body or her voice—that voice that I once adored. I have this mental image that her voice was pleasing, but the sound isn’t there. Do you understand? How can you be in love with someone whom you can’t seem to remember? We’ve only been separated for six months.” (The psychologist jotted something down in his notepad that passed unnoticed by the man who couldn’t remember. Igor Caruso, a famous psychoanalyst during the ’70s, wrote a lucid and heartbreaking essay about the separation of lovers; he observed that separated lovers cannot remember the face of their beloved ones.)

“When I want to remember her I have to look at her photograph,” the patient added. Client? Why not say customer outright? What does a client buy from a psychologist? He buys time. He buys attention. Self-control. He buys an audience. He buys a tolerant and compassionate ear, someone who will listen to him like a self-sacrificing mother, at the age when mothers aren’t around or need to be heard by others, not by their children.

“Do you gaze at her photo often?” the psychologist asked with apparent indifference.

“I took hundreds of photos of her—of her standing, lying down, on one side of the bed, on the other, laughing, naked, dressed, in the street, in the bathtub, caressing a child or a cat. I photographed her breasts, her pubic hair, her armpits, the nape of her neck, and her legs,” the client answered, suddenly delighted. He seemed to have dispelled his anguish. “Those photos are my treasure, my private museum.”

“Have you noticed how the world has changed since we’ve been able to take photographs instantaneously with our cell phones?” he asked.

The psychologist thought about Javier. Where was Javier? He was seventeen years old and still in high school, although he hated studying. Javier wanted the psychologist to teach him; it seemed more enjoyable than going to school and that way he felt privileged. Seventeen years old: a terrible age for studying. A terrible age for anything other than fornicating. Testosterone levels surging, raging hormones pumping through his body, that glistening body so lustrous from sweat—how he loved that body—rolling about with other bodies glistening with sweat on a sports field green with grass. Sweat nourished those fields; the sweat from seventeen- and eighteen-year-old boys forced to study by some perverse cultural supremacy against instinct. And he—forty-three years old—loving a body much younger than his own, more perfect and more beautiful, as one can only love what one has lost. This is why he would never leave him: so that he could remember him, unlike his client, who, upon separating from the woman he loved, couldn’t seem to remember her.

“She complained a bit about me taking so many photos: in the street, in bed, in restaurants, while she showered, while she dressed . . .”

“Why did you take so many photographs of her?” he asked.

Now, the client seemed about to make a serious effort to analyze his own behavior.

“I wanted to hold on to her, to keep her from escaping . . . Everything escapes us inevitably, right? I think that I took the photos in anticipation, like a premonition of what I feared would happen. Have you ever wanted to hold onto something fleeting?” he asked the psychologist.

He wasn’t accustomed to answering his clients’ questions. It was a way to maintain power. After a while, he responded with another question.

“Do you find this happening to you?”

“As if I both knew and feared what might one day happen.”

“Still,” the psychologist pointed out, “you were the one who left her.”

Igor Caruso had also observed that the person who leaves his beloved often feels abandoned. Perhaps he leaves because he once feared that they would leave him, or because he feels that he will be abandoned, or because he grew tired of being afraid.

Javier often told him, “I won’t ever leave you, ever,” with the confidence that one can have only at that age. And he smiled with a sadness that remained imperceptible to the boy. “You study and then we’ll see,” he answered, for a moment assuming a fatherly role that he didn’t like, one that didn’t sit well with him but that seemed to emerge from the age difference. The boy had his own father, he didn’t need another. And Javier wanted to say this to his real father, although he seemed anxious about challenging him, telling him, “I’m in love with a forty-three-year-old psychologist who’s intelligent, cultured, and a bit bald, and who I fuck every day.” Three times a day, as all adolescents at that age should, with their hormones pumping, aroused; and if they closed their eyes, their hormones, in red circles, represented volcanoes ready to explode.

Instead, they hole them up in high schools like zoos, where they are restless, and act up and spit at their professors—math and history don’t interest them. The only thing that does interest them is satisfying the urgent desires of their bodies, which is another kind of wisdom, like that of lions and tigers. He wouldn’t be able to keep up with the kid’s sexual rhythm much longer, but he didn’t want to surrender so soon, like the herd’s alpha male surrenders to the young pretender that wants to occupy his place. He was going to fight a bit more. Where was Javier that he hadn’t been able to call his cell phone yet?

To the psychologist’s surprise, Javier was bored by kids his own age. He was bored by other seventeen- and eighteen-year-old bodies.

“They only talk about soccer and girls, or about beer and mainstream music,” he had said with evident disdain. They, on the other hand, spoke about other things. And did other things. They watched old black-and-white movies with an eagerness that could only be born of extreme greed. Javier wanted to know everything, and not by his own effort: he liked it more when things were explained to him. Who was James Stewart and how many movies did Roberto Rossellini make? What caused the expulsion of the Jews in Spain and how did dragonflies reproduce (with a penis much longer than the male dragonfly’s body, a type of aspirator that can extract the semen of past males, and remains attached to the female for as long as possible, sometimes lasting several hours, so as to prevent other males from penetrating her)? What vocal register did Ella Fitzgerald have and when was D-Day during WWII? How was Che Guevara killed and why was Keith Jarrett’s Köln Concert named Köln (for the city or for the minister)? All while reading Baudelaire and Rimbaud together, or watching Casablanca, Gilda, and The Night of the Hunter together. Javier seemed aroused by having acquired all the information he had lacked in such a short period of time just as he, the psychologist, was anxious to keep him by his side, knowing, however, that one day he would lose him.

As the client had known—sensed—that one day he was going to lose the woman he loved.

“She asked me to give her back the photographs,” he said, “but I’m not going to. No way. I took them, they’re mine. She seemed happy when I took them.”

“Did she always?” the psychologist asked.

“No, sometimes she complained a bit, but it was a game, a flirtation.”

“Did you photograph her because you had a feeling that you would one day separate?” he pointedly asked.

“I wanted to trap her in some way, I wanted to keep her. I think that photography is a way to battle against all fleetingness. And if she wants them back it’s because she knows, she has a feeling, that there’s a part of her life in those photographs that no longer belongs to her.”

“Who do they belong to?” the psychologist asked. Sometimes, he employed the Socratic Method—maieutic—which seemed more dialectic.

“To death,” the client declared sententiously, yet in a neutral voice. Surely the pain of this affirmation had already passed; he had felt it before, while taking the photographs. We forget the pain; not all of it, but a large part of it. If we remembered it, we wouldn’t be able to continue living.

“Do you look at the photos often?” the psychologist asked.

Why hadn’t Javier called him? They had a code for when he was working. Javier would leave a missed call, and then he would know that he was already at home, reading, watching old movies, or cooking. Javier liked surprising him with a homemade meal—full of calories and cholesterol—that he shouldn’t eat, but that he consumed with great relish to please the boy. “I’m scared of losing him,” he thought in a moment of self-analysis.

“Sometimes I feel a horrible sensation of emptiness,” the client said. “Emptiness, do you understand me? It’s worse than pain. Pain occupies so much space; it takes up the entire nervous system; it’s all-consuming, sharp. Yet, emptiness is an odd sensation of estrangement, a hollow. When I feel this hollowness I pick up the photographs.”

The psychologist thought it a type of museum. A museum that the client had erected for her, but that, in reality, was the only thing keeping him from going insane. A loving sanctuary. Of the sort where women, in olden times, would keep their religious stamps, little embroidered altar cloths, and the tiny scissors used to cut the umbilical cords of their children or grandchildren.

“When I look at her in the photographs, I get something back. Don’t ask me what, but I feel a bit fuller again.”

“You only look at them?” the psychologist asked. He imagined Javier in the gym, with those little white shorts so clean, so well-ironed—he was a bit obsessive, his love, obsesivito—his little white sports shoes, white socks against golden legs, strong, shapely, and completely waxed. Like many boys of his generation, he liked to have a pristine body, free of hair. He kept some hair on his chest and near his belly button, unpleasant, those hairs had always seemed unpleasant, but it had never occurred to him to get rid of them.

“I look at them, yes, until I’m filled with her once more. I suffer a bit, it’s true,” the patient said, “but it’s another kind of suffering. Then, for a few moments, I remember what I felt. I remember her and I remember us.”

The man had resisted forgetting, at least until he had something else to keep him occupied. He traversed his sorrow with the images in hand, as if they were the terror that inspired the emptiness within him.

“Oblivion is a defense mechanism,” the doctor explained. “If we were to remember, we couldn’t keep on living.”

“I don’t want to defend myself for having loved her,” the client protested. “It’s true; we’ve separated. Our relationship was no longer good. We fought a lot. But I loved her. And I think she loved me as well.”

He was in no condition to accept oblivion yet. But he defended himself against it heroically, as if he were dealing with his only possession.

Would the same thing happen to Javier? No, he had taught him well. He had said, “When you part from me, forget me immediately. Not one memory, no emotions. Don’t have mercy on me or on yourself. You’ll quickly find another man to love. Or another woman. Don’t keep fetishes. Forget the music we heard, the movies we watched, the cities we visited. Forget the sofa, the comforter, the lamp. Don’t be scared; don’t think it painful or unjust. To keep living, it’s necessary to forget what you’ve lived. And to keep loving, it’s necessary to forget what was loved.” Javier had objected, as his age dictated. “I’m never going to leave you, never, ever,” Javier had said, and he smiled with heavyhearted satisfaction. “You’ll leave me when you grow tired of me,” he had responded. “And I will die of sadness, of emptiness, and of melancholy,” Javier thought.

To love someone much younger was a completely solitary act, but if love was not a solitary matter, what then?

“I know,” the patient said, “that one day I will look at the photos differently. Will I recognize her in those photos? Or will it be like now, that I can’t remember her face if I’m not staring at the photographs? I’ve split with other women before, you understand. Sometimes, at a party or in some bar, a woman might come up to me and greet me as if she knew me and I might ask myself, ‘Have we made love?’ But with her it was different. She’s the only woman I’ve ever loved in my life. Do you understand what I’m trying to say? I’m trying to say that I didn’t only want to make love to her; I wanted to watch her get dressed, I wanted to hear the water fall as she showered, I wanted to go to the movies with her, eat pizza at night, laugh—I wanted to watch her get old. When she spotted a wrinkle, she got scared and complained; she rejected that wrinkle. On the other hand, I felt a gush of love. I loved that wrinkle, I liked looking at it.” The psychologist thought that the client was using the sessions in order to invoke her. It was possible that the client didn’t have any friends with whom he could speak about her. Modern life was quite dynamic, active, and swift; he didn’t have the time to recall anything on his own. Everything was consumed so quickly and this poor man was making a concentrated effort not to forget, to cheat death for one more day—recovering from death what he had once felt.

He heard his cell phone. He breathed a sigh of relief. He wanted to know that Javier was already at home. He would have already showered, put his gym clothes in the washer while separating the lights from the darks, he would have put the laundry soap in one slot and the softener in the other—he was very careful, obsesivito—and now he would be consulting some recipe that would await the psychologist, some food that was difficult to digest, full of calories, but that he would eat with an immense love, because Javier loved him and wanted to please him. And he loved Javier.

And while Javier cooked, he would look for one of those Jazz CDs that the psychologist collected, listening to it attentively, and then he would make a list of questions: who was Duke Ellington? How many movies did Michelangelo Antonioni make? Can we go to Santa Margarita Island this summer? Who won the World Soccer Championship in 1951? After, they would play Trivial Pursuit for a bit. Then, at some point—by dusk or as darkness fell—Javier would begin to kiss him, the corners of his lips, inside his ears, the nape of his neck. He would lick his nipples, until the psychologist, a bit tired but quite turned on, flipped him onto his back on the long, wide leather sofa and carefully, with extreme care (inversely related to his desire), lowered him onto the narrow gray blanket (he had a collection of them in every color, “To change them throughout the day,” he said with apparent ingenuity) and begin to kiss him delicately, nothing violent, but rather devotedly. There was the almost imperceptible trace of hair that he had waxed from the tip of his coccyx, the small gap between his seventh and eighth vertebrae, his buttocks tense and well-toned, and extremely gently—nothing violent, or was it that the violence was contained?—he would insert the tip of his member, feeling like he was committing one of the oldest acts in the world, the initial act, the act repeated from prehistory on by bison, elephants, crows, giraffes, chimpanzees, dinosaurs, and butterflies. And he would begin to tremble epileptically and to breathe heavily, the forty-something male imposing his seniority, the alpha male not ready to give up, who would rather die before ceding power, the older male who loves and envies lost youth. (He had never been handsome, he had never been attractive, yet the young male, handsome and attractive, let himself be sodomized by him, as often occurs between lions and tigers.)

And when they finished, Javier would sleep on his shoulder, happy and satisfied, trusting that he was in good hands; one day he could leave him without a pang of regret.

It seemed to him that he had to tell the patient that he shouldn’t go too far in looking at the photos of the woman he had loved. Sometimes, the result could be more painful, but each of us is a measure of our own pain and perhaps the emptiness he would feel upon not doing it would be worse.

“I’ll see you next week,” he said, ending the session.

When the client left, he called home. Javier answered.

“I’m making breaded chicken with lemon sauce,” said a cheerful Javier.

He hated lemon sauce, but he wasn’t going to say it.

“You’ll never guess what song I downloaded from the Internet tonight.” (He couldn’t hold in the news any longer.)

The psychologist made an effort. It was useless; he was tired. Did this boy not know that he worked seven hours a day with other people’s sorrow? Seven exhausting hours.

“Tell me, darling. I know that it will be a most pleasant surprise.”

Ne me quitte pas,” responded Javier enthusiastically. Edith Piaf’s version.

Ne me quitte pas, ne me quitte pas. A hit from another time, thought the psychologist.

© Cristina Peri Rossi. By arrangement with the author. Translation © 2012 by Megan Berkobien. All rights reserved.

English Spanish (Original)

“I can’t seem to remember her,” the man said in anguish. “I can’t remember her face or her body or her voice—that voice that I once adored. I have this mental image that her voice was pleasing, but the sound isn’t there. Do you understand? How can you be in love with someone whom you can’t seem to remember? We’ve only been separated for six months.” (The psychologist jotted something down in his notepad that passed unnoticed by the man who couldn’t remember. Igor Caruso, a famous psychoanalyst during the ’70s, wrote a lucid and heartbreaking essay about the separation of lovers; he observed that separated lovers cannot remember the face of their beloved ones.)

“When I want to remember her I have to look at her photograph,” the patient added. Client? Why not say customer outright? What does a client buy from a psychologist? He buys time. He buys attention. Self-control. He buys an audience. He buys a tolerant and compassionate ear, someone who will listen to him like a self-sacrificing mother, at the age when mothers aren’t around or need to be heard by others, not by their children.

“Do you gaze at her photo often?” the psychologist asked with apparent indifference.

“I took hundreds of photos of her—of her standing, lying down, on one side of the bed, on the other, laughing, naked, dressed, in the street, in the bathtub, caressing a child or a cat. I photographed her breasts, her pubic hair, her armpits, the nape of her neck, and her legs,” the client answered, suddenly delighted. He seemed to have dispelled his anguish. “Those photos are my treasure, my private museum.”

“Have you noticed how the world has changed since we’ve been able to take photographs instantaneously with our cell phones?” he asked.

The psychologist thought about Javier. Where was Javier? He was seventeen years old and still in high school, although he hated studying. Javier wanted the psychologist to teach him; it seemed more enjoyable than going to school and that way he felt privileged. Seventeen years old: a terrible age for studying. A terrible age for anything other than fornicating. Testosterone levels surging, raging hormones pumping through his body, that glistening body so lustrous from sweat—how he loved that body—rolling about with other bodies glistening with sweat on a sports field green with grass. Sweat nourished those fields; the sweat from seventeen- and eighteen-year-old boys forced to study by some perverse cultural supremacy against instinct. And he—forty-three years old—loving a body much younger than his own, more perfect and more beautiful, as one can only love what one has lost. This is why he would never leave him: so that he could remember him, unlike his client, who, upon separating from the woman he loved, couldn’t seem to remember her.

“She complained a bit about me taking so many photos: in the street, in bed, in restaurants, while she showered, while she dressed . . .”

“Why did you take so many photographs of her?” he asked.

Now, the client seemed about to make a serious effort to analyze his own behavior.

“I wanted to hold on to her, to keep her from escaping . . . Everything escapes us inevitably, right? I think that I took the photos in anticipation, like a premonition of what I feared would happen. Have you ever wanted to hold onto something fleeting?” he asked the psychologist.

He wasn’t accustomed to answering his clients’ questions. It was a way to maintain power. After a while, he responded with another question.

“Do you find this happening to you?”

“As if I both knew and feared what might one day happen.”

“Still,” the psychologist pointed out, “you were the one who left her.”

Igor Caruso had also observed that the person who leaves his beloved often feels abandoned. Perhaps he leaves because he once feared that they would leave him, or because he feels that he will be abandoned, or because he grew tired of being afraid.

Javier often told him, “I won’t ever leave you, ever,” with the confidence that one can have only at that age. And he smiled with a sadness that remained imperceptible to the boy. “You study and then we’ll see,” he answered, for a moment assuming a fatherly role that he didn’t like, one that didn’t sit well with him but that seemed to emerge from the age difference. The boy had his own father, he didn’t need another. And Javier wanted to say this to his real father, although he seemed anxious about challenging him, telling him, “I’m in love with a forty-three-year-old psychologist who’s intelligent, cultured, and a bit bald, and who I fuck every day.” Three times a day, as all adolescents at that age should, with their hormones pumping, aroused; and if they closed their eyes, their hormones, in red circles, represented volcanoes ready to explode.

Instead, they hole them up in high schools like zoos, where they are restless, and act up and spit at their professors—math and history don’t interest them. The only thing that does interest them is satisfying the urgent desires of their bodies, which is another kind of wisdom, like that of lions and tigers. He wouldn’t be able to keep up with the kid’s sexual rhythm much longer, but he didn’t want to surrender so soon, like the herd’s alpha male surrenders to the young pretender that wants to occupy his place. He was going to fight a bit more. Where was Javier that he hadn’t been able to call his cell phone yet?

To the psychologist’s surprise, Javier was bored by kids his own age. He was bored by other seventeen- and eighteen-year-old bodies.

“They only talk about soccer and girls, or about beer and mainstream music,” he had said with evident disdain. They, on the other hand, spoke about other things. And did other things. They watched old black-and-white movies with an eagerness that could only be born of extreme greed. Javier wanted to know everything, and not by his own effort: he liked it more when things were explained to him. Who was James Stewart and how many movies did Roberto Rossellini make? What caused the expulsion of the Jews in Spain and how did dragonflies reproduce (with a penis much longer than the male dragonfly’s body, a type of aspirator that can extract the semen of past males, and remains attached to the female for as long as possible, sometimes lasting several hours, so as to prevent other males from penetrating her)? What vocal register did Ella Fitzgerald have and when was D-Day during WWII? How was Che Guevara killed and why was Keith Jarrett’s Köln Concert named Köln (for the city or for the minister)? All while reading Baudelaire and Rimbaud together, or watching Casablanca, Gilda, and The Night of the Hunter together. Javier seemed aroused by having acquired all the information he had lacked in such a short period of time just as he, the psychologist, was anxious to keep him by his side, knowing, however, that one day he would lose him.

As the client had known—sensed—that one day he was going to lose the woman he loved.

“She asked me to give her back the photographs,” he said, “but I’m not going to. No way. I took them, they’re mine. She seemed happy when I took them.”

“Did she always?” the psychologist asked.

“No, sometimes she complained a bit, but it was a game, a flirtation.”

“Did you photograph her because you had a feeling that you would one day separate?” he pointedly asked.

“I wanted to trap her in some way, I wanted to keep her. I think that photography is a way to battle against all fleetingness. And if she wants them back it’s because she knows, she has a feeling, that there’s a part of her life in those photographs that no longer belongs to her.”

“Who do they belong to?” the psychologist asked. Sometimes, he employed the Socratic Method—maieutic—which seemed more dialectic.

“To death,” the client declared sententiously, yet in a neutral voice. Surely the pain of this affirmation had already passed; he had felt it before, while taking the photographs. We forget the pain; not all of it, but a large part of it. If we remembered it, we wouldn’t be able to continue living.

“Do you look at the photos often?” the psychologist asked.

Why hadn’t Javier called him? They had a code for when he was working. Javier would leave a missed call, and then he would know that he was already at home, reading, watching old movies, or cooking. Javier liked surprising him with a homemade meal—full of calories and cholesterol—that he shouldn’t eat, but that he consumed with great relish to please the boy. “I’m scared of losing him,” he thought in a moment of self-analysis.

“Sometimes I feel a horrible sensation of emptiness,” the client said. “Emptiness, do you understand me? It’s worse than pain. Pain occupies so much space; it takes up the entire nervous system; it’s all-consuming, sharp. Yet, emptiness is an odd sensation of estrangement, a hollow. When I feel this hollowness I pick up the photographs.”

The psychologist thought it a type of museum. A museum that the client had erected for her, but that, in reality, was the only thing keeping him from going insane. A loving sanctuary. Of the sort where women, in olden times, would keep their religious stamps, little embroidered altar cloths, and the tiny scissors used to cut the umbilical cords of their children or grandchildren.

“When I look at her in the photographs, I get something back. Don’t ask me what, but I feel a bit fuller again.”

“You only look at them?” the psychologist asked. He imagined Javier in the gym, with those little white shorts so clean, so well-ironed—he was a bit obsessive, his love, obsesivito—his little white sports shoes, white socks against golden legs, strong, shapely, and completely waxed. Like many boys of his generation, he liked to have a pristine body, free of hair. He kept some hair on his chest and near his belly button, unpleasant, those hairs had always seemed unpleasant, but it had never occurred to him to get rid of them.

“I look at them, yes, until I’m filled with her once more. I suffer a bit, it’s true,” the patient said, “but it’s another kind of suffering. Then, for a few moments, I remember what I felt. I remember her and I remember us.”

The man had resisted forgetting, at least until he had something else to keep him occupied. He traversed his sorrow with the images in hand, as if they were the terror that inspired the emptiness within him.

“Oblivion is a defense mechanism,” the doctor explained. “If we were to remember, we couldn’t keep on living.”

“I don’t want to defend myself for having loved her,” the client protested. “It’s true; we’ve separated. Our relationship was no longer good. We fought a lot. But I loved her. And I think she loved me as well.”

He was in no condition to accept oblivion yet. But he defended himself against it heroically, as if he were dealing with his only possession.

Would the same thing happen to Javier? No, he had taught him well. He had said, “When you part from me, forget me immediately. Not one memory, no emotions. Don’t have mercy on me or on yourself. You’ll quickly find another man to love. Or another woman. Don’t keep fetishes. Forget the music we heard, the movies we watched, the cities we visited. Forget the sofa, the comforter, the lamp. Don’t be scared; don’t think it painful or unjust. To keep living, it’s necessary to forget what you’ve lived. And to keep loving, it’s necessary to forget what was loved.” Javier had objected, as his age dictated. “I’m never going to leave you, never, ever,” Javier had said, and he smiled with heavyhearted satisfaction. “You’ll leave me when you grow tired of me,” he had responded. “And I will die of sadness, of emptiness, and of melancholy,” Javier thought.

To love someone much younger was a completely solitary act, but if love was not a solitary matter, what then?

“I know,” the patient said, “that one day I will look at the photos differently. Will I recognize her in those photos? Or will it be like now, that I can’t remember her face if I’m not staring at the photographs? I’ve split with other women before, you understand. Sometimes, at a party or in some bar, a woman might come up to me and greet me as if she knew me and I might ask myself, ‘Have we made love?’ But with her it was different. She’s the only woman I’ve ever loved in my life. Do you understand what I’m trying to say? I’m trying to say that I didn’t only want to make love to her; I wanted to watch her get dressed, I wanted to hear the water fall as she showered, I wanted to go to the movies with her, eat pizza at night, laugh—I wanted to watch her get old. When she spotted a wrinkle, she got scared and complained; she rejected that wrinkle. On the other hand, I felt a gush of love. I loved that wrinkle, I liked looking at it.” The psychologist thought that the client was using the sessions in order to invoke her. It was possible that the client didn’t have any friends with whom he could speak about her. Modern life was quite dynamic, active, and swift; he didn’t have the time to recall anything on his own. Everything was consumed so quickly and this poor man was making a concentrated effort not to forget, to cheat death for one more day—recovering from death what he had once felt.

He heard his cell phone. He breathed a sigh of relief. He wanted to know that Javier was already at home. He would have already showered, put his gym clothes in the washer while separating the lights from the darks, he would have put the laundry soap in one slot and the softener in the other—he was very careful, obsesivito—and now he would be consulting some recipe that would await the psychologist, some food that was difficult to digest, full of calories, but that he would eat with an immense love, because Javier loved him and wanted to please him. And he loved Javier.

And while Javier cooked, he would look for one of those Jazz CDs that the psychologist collected, listening to it attentively, and then he would make a list of questions: who was Duke Ellington? How many movies did Michelangelo Antonioni make? Can we go to Santa Margarita Island this summer? Who won the World Soccer Championship in 1951? After, they would play Trivial Pursuit for a bit. Then, at some point—by dusk or as darkness fell—Javier would begin to kiss him, the corners of his lips, inside his ears, the nape of his neck. He would lick his nipples, until the psychologist, a bit tired but quite turned on, flipped him onto his back on the long, wide leather sofa and carefully, with extreme care (inversely related to his desire), lowered him onto the narrow gray blanket (he had a collection of them in every color, “To change them throughout the day,” he said with apparent ingenuity) and begin to kiss him delicately, nothing violent, but rather devotedly. There was the almost imperceptible trace of hair that he had waxed from the tip of his coccyx, the small gap between his seventh and eighth vertebrae, his buttocks tense and well-toned, and extremely gently—nothing violent, or was it that the violence was contained?—he would insert the tip of his member, feeling like he was committing one of the oldest acts in the world, the initial act, the act repeated from prehistory on by bison, elephants, crows, giraffes, chimpanzees, dinosaurs, and butterflies. And he would begin to tremble epileptically and to breathe heavily, the forty-something male imposing his seniority, the alpha male not ready to give up, who would rather die before ceding power, the older male who loves and envies lost youth. (He had never been handsome, he had never been attractive, yet the young male, handsome and attractive, let himself be sodomized by him, as often occurs between lions and tigers.)

And when they finished, Javier would sleep on his shoulder, happy and satisfied, trusting that he was in good hands; one day he could leave him without a pang of regret.

It seemed to him that he had to tell the patient that he shouldn’t go too far in looking at the photos of the woman he had loved. Sometimes, the result could be more painful, but each of us is a measure of our own pain and perhaps the emptiness he would feel upon not doing it would be worse.

“I’ll see you next week,” he said, ending the session.

When the client left, he called home. Javier answered.

“I’m making breaded chicken with lemon sauce,” said a cheerful Javier.

He hated lemon sauce, but he wasn’t going to say it.

“You’ll never guess what song I downloaded from the Internet tonight.” (He couldn’t hold in the news any longer.)

The psychologist made an effort. It was useless; he was tired. Did this boy not know that he worked seven hours a day with other people’s sorrow? Seven exhausting hours.

“Tell me, darling. I know that it will be a most pleasant surprise.”

Ne me quitte pas,” responded Javier enthusiastically. Edith Piaf’s version.

Ne me quitte pas, ne me quitte pas. A hit from another time, thought the psychologist.

Ne Me Quitte Pas

-No consigo recordarla –dijo el hombre, con angustia—. No consigo recordar su rostro, ni su cuerpo, ni su voz, esa voz que me gustaba tanto. Tengo el recuerdo mentalde que me agradaba su voz, pero no tengo el sonido. ¿Comprende? ¿Cómo se puede estar enamorado de alguien a quien no se consigue recordar? Sólo hace seis meses que nos hemos separado. (El psicólogo hizo una breve anotación en su bloc que pasó inadvertida para el hombre que no recordaba. Igor Caruso, famoso psicoanalista de los años setenta había escrito un ensayo muy lúcido y desgarrador sobre la separación de los amantes; había observado que los amantes separados no consiguen recordar el rostro de la persona amada.) 

-Cuando quiero recordarla tengo que mirar su fotografía -agregó el paciente. ¿Cliente? ¿Por qué no decir claramente cliente? ¿Qué compra el cliente de un psicólogo? Compra tiempo. Compra atención. Contención. Compra escucha. Compra una oreja tolerante y compasiva que lo va a oír como una madre abnegada, a la edad en que las madres escasean o necesitan ser escuchadas por otros, no por sus hijos.

-¿Contempla a menudo su fotografía? –preguntó el psicólogo con aparente indiferencia.

-Le hice cientos; ella de pie, ella acostada, ella de un lado de la cama, del otro, riendo, desnuda, vestida, en la calle, en la bañera, acariciando a un niño o a un gato; fotografié sus senos, el vello de su pubis, sus axilas, su cuello, su nuca y sus piernas –contestó el cliente, repentinamente regocijado. Parecía haber conseguido ahuyentar la angustia. Esas fotos son mi tesoro, mi museo privado. 

-¿Ha observado cómo ha cambiado el mundo desde que podemos hacer fotografías de cada instante con el móvil? -le preguntó. 

El psicólogo pensó en Javier. ¿Dónde estaba Javier? Tenía diecisiete años, todavía iba al instituto, pero detestaba estudiar. Quería que él le enseñara. Le parecía más divertido que ir al instituto y lo hacía sentirse privilegiado. Diecisiete años: una mala edad para estudiar. Una mala edad para cualquier cosa que no fuera exclusivamente fornicar. La testosterona a tope, las hormonas bulliciosas hirviendo en el cuerpo, el cuerpo brillante y lustroso de sudor –cómo amaba ese cuerpo- revolcándose con otros cuerpos también brillantes de sudor en un campo de deportes verde por la hierba. El sudor alimentaba esos campos; el sudor de los jóvenes de diecisiete, de dieciocho años obligados a estudiar por una supremacía perversa de la cultura sobre el instinto. Y él –cuarenta y tres años- amando un cuerpo mucho más joven que el suyo, más perfecto, más hermoso, como sólo se puede amar lo que se ha perdido. Por eso él no lo iba a dejar nunca: para poder recordarlo, no como su cliente, que al separarse de la mujer que amaba, no conseguía recordarla.

-Ella se quejaba un poco de que yo le hacía muchas fotografías, en la calle, en la cama, en los restaurantes, mientras se duchaba, mientras se vestía…

-¿Por qué le hacía tantas fotografías? –le preguntó.

Ahora, el cliente parecía a punto de hacer un gran esfuerzo por analizar su comportamiento.

-Quería retenerla, no dejarla escapar… Todo se nos escapa inevitablemente, ¿verdad? Creo que hacía esas fotos como una anticipación, como una premonición de lo que temía que sucediera. ¿Alguna vez le pasó que quiso retener lo pasajero? –le preguntó al psicólogo.

No tenía por costumbre contestar las preguntas de los clientes. Era una manera de conservar el poder. A lo sumo, respondía con otra pregunta.

-¿A usted sí le pasaba?

-Como si supiera y temiera, al mismo tiempo lo que iba a ocurrir un día.

-Sin embargo –precisó el psicólogo- fue usted quien la dejó.

Igor Caruso había observado también que quien abandona a la persona a la que ama se siente muchas veces abandonado. Quizás abandona porque alguna vez tuvo temor de que lo abandonaran, o porque presiente que va a ser abandonado, o porque se cansó de temer. 

Javier le decía “No voy a dejarte nunca, nunca”, con la firmeza que sólo se puede tener a esa edad. Y él sonreía con una tristeza imperceptible para el muchacho. “Tú estudia y ya veremos”, le contestaba, asumiendo por un momento un rol de padre que no le gustaba, que no le sentaba bien pero que parecía ser fruto de la diferencia de edad. El chico tenía su propio padre, no necesitaba otro. Y quería contárselo al verdadero padre, parecía ansioso por desafiarlo y decirle: “Estoy enamorado de un psicólogo de cuarenta y tres años, un poco calvo, inteligente, culto y con el que follo todos los días”. Tres veces por día, como deberían hacer todos los adolescentes de esa edad, cuando tienen las hormonas a tope, excitadas, y si cierran los ojos, las hormonas, en círculos rojos, sólo le representan volcanes a punto de estallar. En cambio, los encierran en institutos como zoos, donde se inquietan, se manosean, escupen a sus profesores, no les interesa ni la matemática ni la historia… sino satisfacer los deseos imperiosos del cuerpo, que es otra sabiduría, como la de los leones y los tigres. Él no iba a poder seguir el ritmo sexual del muchacho mucho tiempo más, pero no quería rendirse tan pronto, como se rinde el macho alfa de la manada ante el joven macho que quiere ocupar su lugar. Iba a combatir un poco más. ¿Dónde estaba Javier que todavía no lo había llamado al móvil? Inexplicablemente para él, Javier se aburría con los jóvenes de su edad. Se aburría con otros cuerpos de diecisiete o de dieciocho años. “Sólo hablan de fútbol y de chicas, de cerveza y de música enlatada” le había dicho con evidente desprecio. En cambio, ellos hablaban de otras cosas. Y hacían otras cosas. Miraban películas antiguas, en blanco y negro, con una avidez que sólo podía nacer de una extremada codicia. Javier quería saberlo todo y no por cuenta propia: le gustaba más que él se lo explicara. Quién era James Stewart, cuántas películas había hecho Roberto Rosellini, por qué se produjo la expulsión de los judíos en España, cómo se reproducían las libélulas (con un pene mucho más largo que el cuerpo entero del macho, una especie de aspiradora que consigue extraer el semen de los machos anteriores, y permanece agarrado a la hembra la mayor parte del tiempo posible, a veces durante varias horas, para impedir que otros machos la penetren), qué registro vocal tenía Ella Fitzgerald, cuándo fue el Día D en la Segunda Guerra Mundial, cómo mataron al Che Guevara, por qué el concierto de Koln de Kay Jarrett se llamaba de Koln, por la ciudad o por un ministro, y leer juntos a Baudelaire y a Rimbaud, y mirar juntos Casablanca, Gilda y La noche del cazador. Javier parecía tan excitado por adquirir rápidamente toda esa información que le faltaba como él, el psicólogo, estaba ansioso por retenerlo a su lado, sabiendo, sin embargo, que algún día lo iba a perder.

Como el cliente había sabido, intuido, que un día iba a perder a la mujer que amaba. 

-Me pidió que le devolviera las fotografías –dijo- pero yo no lo voy a hacer. De ninguna manera. Yo las hice, son mías. Parecía complacida cuando se las hacía.

-¿Siempre?- preguntó el psicólogo.

-No, a veces protestaba un poco, pero era un juego, un coqueteo.

-¿La fotografiaba porque presentía que un día se iban a separar? –insistió. 

-Quería atraparla de alguna manera, quería retenerla. Creo que la fotografía es una forma de luchar contra la fugacidad. Y si ella quiere recuperarlas es porque sabe, presiente, que hay una parte de su vida en esas fotografías que ya no le pertenece más. 

-¿A quién le pertenece? –preguntó el psicólogo. A veces, aplicaba el método socrático, la mayéutica; le parecía más dialéctico.

-A la muerte –sentenció el cliente con voz neutra. Seguramente el dolor de esa afirmación ya había pasado; lo había sentido antes, al hacer las fotografías. Olvidamos el dolor. No todo, pero gran parte de él. Si lo recordáramos, no podríamos seguir vivos. 

-¿Mira muy a menudo las fotografías? -preguntó el psicólogo.

¿Por qué Javier no lo llamaba? Tenían un código, mientras él trabajaba. Javier le hacía una llamada perdida, y entonces, sabía que ya estaba en casa, leyendo, mirando viejas películas o cocinando. A Javier le gustaba sorprenderlo con algún plato casero, lleno de calorías y de colesterol, que él no debía comer, pero que ingería con fruición para complacer al muchacho. “Tengo miedo de perderlo”, se autoanalizó.

-A veces siento una horrible sensación de vacío –dijo el cliente. Vacío, ¿comprende? Es peor que el dolor. El dolor ocupa mucho espacio, ocupa casi todo el sistema nervioso, es absorbente, agudo; pero el vacío es una rara sensación de extrañamiento, de hueco. Cuando siento ese hueco busco las fotografías. 

El psicólogo pensó en una especie de museo. El museo que el cliente le había erigido a ella, pero que, en realidad, era su única manera de no volverse loco. Un santuario amoroso. Como las mujeres, antiguamente, guardaban las estampitas de los santos, los mantelitos bordados, las tijeritas con las que habían cortado el ombligo de sus hijos o de sus nietos. 

-Cuando la veo en las fotografías, recupero algo. No me pregunte qué recupero, pero me siento un poco más lleno otra vez. 

-¿Sólo las mira? –preguntó el psicólogo. Imaginó a Javier en el gimnasio, con los pantaloncitos blancos muy limpios, muy bien planchados –era un poco obsesivo, su amante, obsesivito-, sus zapatillas blancas de deporte, los calcetines blancos y las piernas doradas, fuertes y bien torneadas, completamente depiladas. Como muchos chicos de su generación, le gustaba tener un cuerpo impoluto, libre de pilosidades. En cambio él conservaba algunos pelos en el pecho y cerca del ombligo; desagradables, siempre le habían parecido desagradables, pero nunca se le había ocurrido quitárselos. 
-Las miro, sí, hasta llenarme de ella otra vez. Sufro un poco, es verdad –dijo el paciente-, pero es otra clase de sufrimiento. Entonces, por unos instantes, recuerdo lo que sentí. La recuerdo y nos recuerdo.

Aquel hombre se resistía a olvidar, por lo menos, hasta que tuviera otra cosa entre manos. Atravesaba el duelo cargado de imágenes, tal era el pavor que le inspiraba el vacío. 

-El olvido es un sistema de defensa –le explicó. Si recordáramos no podríamos seguir viviendo –le dijo, suavemente.

-No me quiero defender de haberla amado –protestó el cliente. Es verdad: nos hemos separado. La relación ya no era buena. Discutíamos mucho. Pero yo la amaba. Y creo que ella también. 

No estaba en condiciones de aceptar el olvido, todavía. Pero se defendía heroicamente contra él, como si se tratara de su única pertenencia.

¿Le ocurriría lo mismo a Javier? No, él lo había educado bien. Le había dicho: “Cuando te separes de mí, olvídame inmediatamente. Ni un recuerdo, ni una emoción. No tengas piedad por mí, ni por ti. Enseguida encontrarás a otro hombre a quien amar. O a una mujer. Y no conserves fetiches. Olvida la música que oímos, las películas que vimos, las ciudades que visitamos. Olvida el sofá, el edredón, la lámpara de noche. No tengas miedo, ni creas que es doloroso o injusto. Para seguir viviendo, es necesario olvidar que se vivió. Y para seguir amando, es necesario olvidar que sea amó”. Javier había protestado, como correspondía a su edad. “No voy a dejarte nunca, nunca, nunca”, le había dicho, y él sonrió, con una triste complacencia. “Me dejarás tú cuando te canses de mí”, le había dicho. “Y yo me moriré de tristeza, de vacío y de melancolía”, había pensado Javier. Amar a alguien mucho más joven era completamente solitario, pero ¿cuándo el amor no era un asunto solitario?

-Sé –dijo el paciente- que un día cualquiera miraré esas fotos de otra manera. ¿La reconoceré en las fotos? ¿O me ocurrirá como ahora, que no consigo recordar su rostro, si no contemplo las fotografías? Me he separado de otras mujeres, entiéndame. A veces, en alguna fiesta, o en algún bar, alguna mujer se me acerca, me saluda con familiaridad y yo me pregunto: “¿Hemos hecho el amor?”, pero con ella ha sido diferente. Es la única mujer a la que he amado en la vida. ¿Entiende lo que quiero decir? Quiero decir que no sólo quería hacer el amor con ella; quería verla vestirse, quería oír el agua de la ducha cuando se bañaba, quería ir al cine con ella, comer pizza a la noche, reírme, quería verla envejecer. Cuando le salía una arruga, ella se asustaba, protestaba, rechazaba la arruga. En cambio, yo sentía una corriente de amor. Amaba esa arruga, me gustaba verla. El psicólogo pensó que el cliente usaba las sesiones para evocarla. Posiblemente no tenía amigos con quiénes hablar de ella;la vida moderna era muy dinámica, muy activa, muy veloz. No había tiempo para evocar nada. Todo se consumía rápidamente, y este pobre hombre estaba haciendo un esfuerzo denodado por no olvidar, por ganarle un día más de vida a la muerte. A la muerte de lo que había sentido.

Escuchó la señal del móvil. Respiró, aliviado. Quería decir que Javier ya estaba en casa. Se habría duchado, habría puesto la ropa del gimnasio en la lavadora, separando la blanca de la oscura, habría echado el polvo de lavar en la ranura, y el suavizante en la otra –era muy cuidadoso, obsesivito-y ahora estaría consultando alguna receta a esperarlo con una comida indigesta, llena de calorías, pero que él comería con inmenso amor, porque Javier lo amaba y quería complacerlo. Y él amaba a Javier. Y mientras cocinaba buscaría uno de esos discos de jazz que el psicólogo coleccionaba, lo escucharía con gran interés y luego le haría una lista de preguntas: ¿quién fue Duke Ellington? ¿Cuántas películas filmó Michelangelo Antonioni? ¿Podríamos ir a la isla Santa Margarita este verano? ¿Quién ganó el Campeonato Mundial de Fútbol del año l951?Luego, jugarían un rato al Trivial. Y en cualquier momento –al atardecer, o a la noche- Javier comenzaría a besarlo, las comisuras delos labios, detrás de las orejas, la nuca, el cuello, lamería sus tetillas, hasta que él, un poco cansado pero excitadísimo, lo volviera de espaldas en el largo y ancho sofá de cuero negro y con cuidado, con extremo cuidado (inversamente proporcional a su deseo) le bajara el estrecho sleep gris (tenía una colección de sleeps de todos los colores, “para cambiar varias veces al día”, le había dicho, con aparente ingenuidad) y comenzara a besarlo delicadamente, nada de violencia, pero con devoción: la casi imperceptible huella de los vellos que se había depilado de la nuca al cóccix, la pequeña hendidura que tenía entre la séptima y la octava vértebra, las nalgas tensas y bien torneadas, y con extrema dulzura –nada de violencia, ¿o la violencia estaba contenida?- introdujera la punta de su miembro en el ano de Javier, sintiendo que cometía uno de los actos más antiguos del mundo, el acto inicial, el acto que repetían desde la prehistoria los bisontes, los elefantes, los ciervos, las jirafas, los chimpancés, los dinosaurios y las mariposas. Y comenzara a sacudirse epilépticamente y a resollar, macho cuarentón que impone su veteranía sobre el macho joven, macho alfa dispuesto a no darse por vencido, a morir antes que ceder el poder, macho viejo que ama y envidia la juventud perdida. (Nunca había sido hermoso, nunca fue atractivo, y, sin embargo, el macho joven, hermoso y atractivo se dejaba sodomizar por él, como ocurre entre los leones y los tigres.)

Y cuando acabaran, Javier se dormiría sobre su hombro, alegre y satisfecho, confiado, estaba en buenos brazos, un díapodría abandonarlo sin remordimientos.

Le pareció que tenía que decirle al paciente que no se excediera mirando las fotografías de la mujer que había amado; a veces, el resultado podía ser muy doloroso, pero cada cual es la medida de su dolor, y posiblemente, el vacío que sentiría al no hacerlo iba a ser peor. 

-Lo veo la semana próxima –le dijo, y dio la sesión por finalizada.

Cuando el cliente se retiró, marcó el número de su casa. Javier contestó.

-Estoy haciendo filetes rebozados con salsa de limón -le contestó un Javier risueño. 

Detestaba la salsa de limón,pero no se lo iba a decir.

-¿A que no sabes qué canción he bajado de Internet para esta noche?- (No podía aguantar más tiempo la novedad.)

Hizo un esfuerzo. Era inútil: estaba cansado. ¿Este chico no sabía que él trabajaba siete horas diarias con el dolor ajeno? Siete agotadoras horas.

-Dímelo, querido. Sé que será una sorpresa de lo más agradable.

-Ne me quitte pas -respondió Javier, entusiasmado. En la versión de Edith Piaf.

Ne me quitte pas, ne me quitte pas. Un éxito de otros tiempos, pensó el psicólogo.

 

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