LatinosUSA

Among my own memories of Jane Bowles, the most satisfying revolve around a month we spent in adjoining rooms in a pleasantly neglected hotel […] during a frigid Parisian winter: January 1951. […] Long evenings listening to the phonograph and drinking lukewarm apple brandy. (p. 9 Two Serious Ladies / Jane Bowles, prologue by Truman Capote).

We have spoken little of Dis-exile. The spaces in which we leave for another society, but are still within the previous one. From 1974 to 1976 I lived in Spain, the United Kingdom, Greece, Italy, and Mexico. Sporadic jobs, furtive loves, dreams squeezed into empty squares or sublet apartments (called «pateras» in Spain). When one detaches oneself from one’s reality, one walks prepared for anything. And in that life, hidden lives emerge that cling to us in rich and fleeting moments. One does nothing, or almost nothing. One simply lives through an inescapable series of encounters with destiny, which we accept and participate in.

And how do they arise? You, dear reader, simply need to be in that precise moment, waiting, and you will see that someone appears. Then the story unfolds at great speed until we say goodbye again, she or he and this accountant of emotions. Let me quote a few examples so you understand what this un-exile is: You see a train station bar, make a friend, and this story stretches on, including soup, sex, and conversation. Then she boards her train, and you board yours. And all in the same day, without knowing what your life is or will be like; or you hitchhike, and the person who gives you a ride through the south of France tells you that you can sleep at their place, and you accept, but the catch is that it’s a family castle, and they leave you alone all night in that vastness, and you think: it’s not a castle, it’s just this room where I sleep. In the morning, they find him at the station, he has breakfast with you, and pays for your trip to Barcelona.

You’ll never see him again. Between us, we share a conversation and some confidences; and I’ll add one more, so as not to bore you, but I have many. You (that is, me) are going to take a plane from Brussels to Mexico, and you miss it, and they don’t reimburse you anything, and you have no money. Well, an elderly gentleman gets you a place in a community and sues the airline. In four days, a respectable citizen gets his ticket back, and I leave for Mexico. Between this gentleman and myself, we have those four days of conversations.

In the afterlife, life accelerates. The days are unique experiences built on respect and the exchange of solitudes, which receive some inner meaning transcribed to the traveler who takes notes, and whose invisible pen vanishes once we part. Can one remain in this afterlife for long? No, otherwise he risks becoming a deranged terrorist, one of those born in the slums of the Third World who emigrate fleeing state or societal violence.

Do you watch TV? Yesterday, 500 sub-Saharan Africans arrived in southern Spain and began their return from exile.