Faces in the Crowd by Luiselli Valeria

Author:Luiselli, Valeria [Luiselli, Valeria]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3
Tags: Literary Fiction, Fiction
ISBN: 1566893542
Publisher: Coffee House Press
Published: 2014-04-21T05:00:00+00:00

The outcome was the one thing most capable of hurting Federico: no one even stopped to watch us, despite the Spañolet and I having learned our lines by heart and reciting them with more affectation than an elephant in heat. When I realized that no one was taking any notice of us, I sat on the ground, behind the stool, and started to read—to pretend I was reading—and to savor the letter I would write to Salvador Novo describing the small muscular spasms of the asslet of his adored Andalusian as his whole body and every ounce of charm he possessed strained to attract the attention of the most unmovable race on the planet. Perpendicular people.

Federico had a virtue, or I a defect. Or perhaps it was the other way around. He was not afraid of looking ridiculous. I dreaded it, ended up explaining myself. And there is nothing I abhor more. I get the story all tangled, trip myself up, lose my edge.

That’s the reason why I didn’t say anything to Federico when I saw the woman in the red coat pass us carrying a wooden chair—slender and a little fragile, like her—but I jumped up, as if someone had stuck a rocket up my ass. I abandoned Federico on the spot and followed her through the station toward the exit. But when she got to the stairs, she didn’t go up, didn’t go out into the street. She paused for an instant. I waved, but I don’t think she saw me, because she turned back into the station.

*

How does this thing about remembering the future work? I asked Homer one day while we were stuffing ourselves with chocolate-and-cocaine ice cream.

You’re an idiot, that’s what you are. (The expression he used was moron, but as I didn’t know the word the first time he spoke it, I wasn’t sure if it was a compliment or an insult.)

How come?

You’re a novelist, aren’t you?

I’ve written a couple of lyrical novels, sometimes in the light of, and others in the shadow of, André Gide.

Then you’re a bad novelist, but you are a novelist.

Given.

If you dedicate your life to writing novels, you’re dedicating yourself to folding time.

I think it’s more a matter of freezing time without stopping the movement of things, a bit like when you’re on a train, looking out of the window.

And it’s also not unusual that if you’re a novelist, you’re an idiot.

*

I walked very little in that city where everyone goes for walks. My days went by, bowed over a bureaucrat’s desk, composing reports. But one afternoon, while I was eating my sandwich in the kitchenette, I read a news article that put me in such a good humor that I dropped everything and went out to the street. A young husband was asking the Newark district court judge to grant him a divorce because his fiancée hadn’t told him until the wedding night that, instead of a right leg, she had a wooden prosthesis. He had stolen the false leg as evidence for his hearing, and she’d filed a suit for robbery.

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