Read Antwerp for Free Online Page B

August, I write to understand stillness, not to please. A kind person! Whether it's art or a fiveminute adventure of a boy running up some stairs. "My departure escaped the author's eye." An ah, and an oh, and postcards from whitewashed towns. The hunchback strolls down the empty pool, sits in the deep end, and lights a cigarette. The shadow of a cloud passes, a spider pauses next to his fingernail, he expels smoke. "Reality is a drag." I suppose all the movies I've seen will be worth nothing to me when I die. Wrong. They'll be worth something, believe me. Don't stop going to the movies. Scene of an empty commuter town, old newspapers blowing in the wind, dust crusted on benches and restaurants. I have long had this war inside me, which is why it doesn't affect me internally, wrote Klee. Was it in Mexico City that I saw the hunchback for the first time? Was it Gaspar who told stories about cops and robbers? They put the gun to his mouth and pinched his nose ... He had to open his mouth to breathe and then they shoved the barrel in ... In the center of the black curtain there's a red circle ... I think the man said shit or mama, I don't know...

39. BIG SILVER WAVES
    The foreigner stayed here. That tent you see there was his tent. Go on in. He spent a long time under that tree, thinking, though it looked like he was dead. From where we're standing you could see his face covered in sweat. Big drops formed on his chin and dripped onto the grass. Here, feel, he slept for hours in the weeds here, like a dead man. The guy came into the bar and had a beer. He paid with French money and put the change in his pocket, not counting it. He spoke perfect Spanish. He had a camera that the police took as evidence. He walked on the beach in the evening. In this scene, the beach looks pale, pale yellow, with fading golden splotches. He dropped onto the sand, like a dead man. The only soundtrack was the dry obsessive cough of someone we could never see. Big silver waves, the guy standing on the beach, barefoot, and the cough. A long time ago were you happy in a tent too? In some corner of his memory there's a scene where he's on top of a thin brown girl. It's nighttime in a deserted campground, somewhere in Portugal. The girl is on her stomach and he moves in and out of her, biting her neck. Then he turns her over. He lifts her legs onto his shoulders and both of them come. An hour later he's on top of her again. (Or as a Conde del Asalto pimp says: "wham bam wham bam times infinity.") I don't know whether I'm talking about the same person. His camera is in some evidence locker now and maybe no one's thought to develop the film. Endless hallways, nightmarish, along which strides a fat tech from the Homicide Squad. The red light is off now, you can come in. The policeman's face relaxes into a smile. From the end of the hallway the silhouette of another policeman approaches. He crosses the space that separates him from his colleague and then both of them disappear. Empty now, the gray of the hallway quivers or maybe it swells. Then the silhouette of a policeman appears at the other end. He advances until he's in the foreground, pauses. In the background another cop appears. The shadow moves toward the shadow of the cop in the foreground. Both disappear. The smile of a tech from the Homicide Squad keeps watch over these scenes. Fat cheeks drenched in sweat. There's nothing in the photographs. (A stifled attempt at applause.) Nothing we can see. "Call someone, do something" ... "A fucking, cough echoing across the beach" ... "The tent full of spiderwebs"... "Everything is wrecked"... "Faces, stray scenes, kaput"...

40. THE MOTORCYCLISTS
    Imagine the situation: the nameless girl hiding on the landing—it's an old building, poorly lit, with an opengrille elevator. Behind the door a man of about forty whispers, in a confessional tone, that he, too, is being chased by Colan Yar. The brownandblack opening shot vanishes almost instantly, giving way to