Mr. Gwyn by Alessandro Baricco

Author:Alessandro Baricco [Baricco, Alessandro; Goldstein, Ann]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781940450551
Publisher: McSweeney's

49

Since human nature is surprisingly petty, in the taxi Jasper Gwyn thought mainly of how many people he would have to see at the hospital—colleagues, editors, journalists, quite a few extremely tiresome encounters were to be expected. He imagined the moment when they would ask what he was doing. Horrible, he thought. But when he reached the ward, only Lottie came to meet him, in the deserted corridor.

“He doesn’t want anyone, he doesn’t want to be seen like this,” she said. “He asked only for you, a thousand times, luckily you’ve come, he’s just asking for you.”

Jasper Gwyn didn’t answer, because he was looking at her, disconcerted. She was wearing spike heels and a breathtakingly short skirt.

“I know,” she said. “It’s Tom who asked me to. He says it keeps him in a good mood.”

Jasper Gwyn nodded. Her décolletage was also of the type that keeps one in a good mood.

“He gets mad if I cry,” Lottie added. “Do you mind staying here for a while? I’m dying to go somewhere and have a good cry.”

In the room, Tom Bruce Shepperd was lying amid tubes and machines, as if shrunk, under sheets and blankets of a nonexistent color—hospital color. Jasper Gwyn sat down in a chair beside the bed. Tom opened his eyes. Disgusting, he said, but softly. His lips were dry and there was no light in his gaze. But then he turned a little and recognized Jasper Gwyn, and then it was different.

Softly, and slowly, they began to talk. Tom had to recount what had happened to him. His heart, somewhere. A complicated business. They’ll try an operation in two days, he said. But try isn’t much as a verb, he pointed out.

“You’ll come out of it,” said Jasper Gwyn. “Like the other time, you’ll come out of it flying.”

“Maybe.”

“What do you mean maybe?”

“I think I’d prefer to change the subject.”

“Okay.”

“See if you can say something that doesn’t depress me.”

“That outfit of Lottie’s was something.”

“A pig as usual.”

“I? You’re the pig, you’re the one who wants her to dress like that.”

Tom smiled—for the first time. Then he closed his eyes again. It was evident that speaking tired him. Jasper Gwyn ran a hand through his hair, and for a moment they stayed like that, simply together.

But then, without opening his eyes, Tom said to Jasper Gwyn that he had wanted him to come for a particular reason, even though he’d give anything in the world not to be seen by him in that nauseating state. He caught his breath, and then he said it was about that business of the portraits.

“I don’t want to go without knowing what the fuck you’ve invented,” he said.

Jasper Gwyn shifted his chair a little closer to Tom’s head.

“You’re not going anywhere,” he said.

“Just a manner of speaking.”

“Try repeating it and I’ll sell my whole backlist to Andrew Wylie.”

“He wouldn’t take you.”

“That’s what you say.”

“Okay, but now listen to me.”

Every so often he stopped to catch his breath. Or a thread he’d lost, damn.

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