He wanted to weep. He knew that somewhere inside him the barriers that held back lamentation were cracking and that at any moment the stout walls erected against all that anguish would give way. But he couldn’t weep. He despaired at that knowledge; it was like trying to breathe without lungs, gulping vast quantities of oxygen that went nowhere. He wanted to shatter into pieces. He wanted to die. But there he stood, immobile as a statue and incapable of locating within himself the key to open the chamber where his pain was locked away.
Then he noticed álvaro’s hand, visible at the edge of the sheet. He studied the long dark strong fingers. The hands of the dead do not change. They lie there full of their caresses, half-open and inert, as if in sleep. Manuel took that hand in his and felt the chill that had wicked up from the slab, up through the hands and fingertips to leave them icy. But it was álvaro’s hand. A focus of their love. He felt the smooth outer surface, so different from the surprisingly rough palms. “You must be the only marketing man in the world with the hands of a lumberjack,” he used to tease álvaro. And as he lifted that hand toward his lips, he felt the walls that restrained his grief yield violently in so many pieces that he’d never be able to put them back together. The rush of his desolation, like a tsunami of mud and rock, swept everything before it, ravaging the narrow confines of his soul. He touched his lips to the icy skin but then noted a band of lighter skin where álvaro had worn his wedding ring for so many years.
He turned to the technician. “The wedding ring?”
“Excuse me, sir?” The technician stepped forward as if to hear better.
“He was wearing a wedding ring.”
“No, sir. I inventory everything during registration. He wasn’t wearing any personal item except a watch. It’s with his belongings. Do you want to see them?”
Manuel carefully put down álvaro’s hand and covered it with the sheet so he wouldn’t have to look at it. “No.”
He moved past the two men and left the room.
A HOSTAGE TO FATE
Manuel was thirty-seven years old and had published six novels when he first met álvaro. He was promoting The Man Who Refused each of the last three weekends of the Madrid Bookfair, which ran from the end of May to the middle of June. He was autographing copies.
He paid no attention to álvaro the first time he saw him. He autographed the novel on a Saturday morning, and during the afternoon session he gave a routine smile when álvaro came to the head of the line. He opened the book to the page where he usually placed his signature. “But look—I’ve already signed it!”
The young man smiled but said nothing. Manuel took a closer look. The fellow looked to be in his late twenties. Chestnut hair that was long enough to hang like a curtain to either side of large eyes that shone like those of a mischievous boy. The little smile was polite, the expression was contained. Manuel autographed the book again and extended his hand for a handshake. The other’s tanned hand was firm. Manuel was captivated by the murmured Thank you mouthed by those moist lips rather than spoken, the words lost in the cacophony of the PA system and the chatter of other readers waiting impatiently in line. When the same visitor returned Sunday morning, Manuel looked at him in surprise but didn’t say anything; but when the young man turned up again in the afternoon to place the novel in front of him, Manuel began to suspect something. This must be some kind of joke, a hidden camera trick to make fun of him. He autographed the book with a serious expression and held it out, studying the man’s face for some sign of deceit.
Mornings and afternoons he was assigned to sessions at the stands of different bookstores, and álvaro turned up at each of them with his book under his arm. Manuel’s reaction progressed from his initial surprise to suspicion to curiosity to amusement. The game kept him in suspense, making him look forward to the man’s return and wonder if he’d ever see him again. During the long intervening week Manuel occasionally found himself wondering at that fan’s insistent enthusiasm, but by the following Saturday he’d forgotten about it.
Then he found the man in front of him yet again. He was bewildered. “Why?” he managed to ask as he accepted the book held out to him.
“Because I want you to autograph it for me,” the young man answered patiently.
“But I’ve already signed it for you,” Manuel replied in confusion. “This is the fifth time.”
álvaro leaned over so the others behind him in line wouldn’t be able to hear. Manuel felt the young man’s lips brush against his hair. “I’m back!” he said. “So you’ll have to sign it for me one more time.”
Manuel pulled back, disturbed, and peered at his face, trying to remember whether they might have met somewhere else.
“You?” he asked, disconcerted as he looked down and read the dedication. “álvaro?”
álvaro nodded with a smile and left with the latest autograph, evidently content.
Manuel was no monk. He’d sworn he’d never let anyone become important enough to make him fear loss, but that was no obstacle to getting laid. He’d had acquaintances who were one-timers, men who never stayed over and would never think of moving in.
The following day he scribbled his telephone number after his autograph.
He waited all week for a call that never came. Meanwhile he imagined all sorts of possibilities: perhaps the young man had felt somehow offended; maybe he never bothered to examine the dedicatory notes written each time; perhaps it was just a game and the boy shut the book and paid no further attention to it.
Manuel couldn’t get the man out of his mind as he anxiously waited for Saturday to arrive. The session began at noon and was scheduled to last until two. Readers came one after another. He wrote notes and signed them, posed for photos he’d never see, and he waited.
In the closing minutes he looked up and spotted álvaro. His heart almost skipped a beat. Manuel had trouble concealing his agitation when álvaro reached the front of the line. He’d decided to say something, maybe invite him for coffee or a beer after the signing, right there in one of the crowded bars of the overheated enclosure of the fair. But when álvaro stood in front of him, he had trouble maintaining his calm, and so Manuel just looked at him instead of saying anything. álvaro wore a white shirt and had rolled the sleeves halfway up his forearms, further accentuating his tan and his muscles. Manuel took the book from him and sluggishly turned it to the usual page to inscribe it again. He caught sight of his note with the telephone number and saw álvaro’s decisive, confident handwriting for the first time with the reply: Not yet.
Without caring if anyone overheard him, he looked up into álvaro’s eyes and asked in anguish, “When?”
álvaro stood there meeting his gaze and said nothing. Feeling defeated, Manuel looked down, scrawled a signature, and held out the book. He was disappointed and a bit annoyed.
He liked games as much as anyone. The exquisite tension of anticipating seduction heightened pain and pleasure and imposed a self-discipline almost Confucian in nature. He found it extraordinarily alluring. But álvaro’s attitude confused him. Nothing the man did suggested a willingness to go further. Each morning and each afternoon he limited himself to standing in line, waiting patiently like any other reader to get up to the author with no other goal than to get an autograph.