01.04 — Across from the Building

Mexico City · Ollin Yoliztli / Escuela Nacional de Antropología · Isaac, fifteen years old

Across from the building where we lived was the Escuela Nacional de Antropología.

All you had to do was cross the street.

On our side there were schedules. Hours for studying. Hours for rehearsing. Hours during which Roberto considered it unacceptable for me to still be asleep.

On the other side there was always someone sitting down.

That seemed to me an advanced form of freedom.

They had books open on their laps. They talked about things that had to change. Sometimes they had spent an hour explaining why things could no longer go on like this, and no one had got up.

I listened to them.

I was fifteen. Almost all of them were older. When I did not understand something, I smoked.

I had learned that this allowed you to take your time answering.

That day I found the Little Samurai in the hallway.

I was heading toward my apartment. He was in front of me.

I tried to pass on one side. He moved.

I tried the other. Again.

I thought he wanted to annoy me. It was a sufficient explanation. Sufficient explanations tend not to last very long.

“Let me through.”

He did not answer.

In the orchestra I knew where to put my eyes. The conductor. The score. My hands.

In that hallway I had too many places to look.

I looked at his shoulder. Then the door. Then his face.

He was still there.

“What?”

I do not know why I asked about the sneeze.

So much had happened since Bellas Artes. I had played. People had applauded. There were people who still talked to me about that concert.

And I wanted to know why he had sneezed.

“Why did you sneeze the first day I played at Bellas Artes?”

He thought about it.

That surprised me. Until then I had assumed that sneezes needed neither preparation nor explanations afterward.

“Because I hate you.”

I laughed.

I expected him to laugh too. Then we could go on.

He did not.

“Because I hate you and I love you.”

I stood looking at him.

“It makes me sad to see you.”

He lowered his voice a little.

“And it makes me furious.”

I had been waiting for months for him to say something to me. Now I wanted him to stop for a moment. I needed to catch up with what he had already said.

But he went on.

“And I was never as happy as I was just now, when I saw you come out.”

I do not remember what I did with my hands.

That bothers me. I remember his words. The door. A mark on the wall.

Not my hands.

They must have hung at my sides. A pianist’s hands can be fairly useless away from the piano.

“Do you like me?”

“What?”

“I’m asking if you like me.”

I had heard him. I wanted to hear it again.

I also wanted a few seconds during which it would still not be necessary to answer.

I thought of everything I had read. The Cypria. Paris. Helen. The Grail.

I had spent a great deal of time understanding desires that had destroyed cities.

Mine could not make it across a hallway.

“I left home and took the scholarship just to live next to you.”

I said it all in one breath.

I had not known he lived there when I accepted the scholarship. That was a difficulty. But at that moment it seemed a minor difficulty.

I was there. So was he. Everything that came before could be sorted out later.

The Little Samurai lowered his eyes.

I thought I had said too much. I thought I should add something.

For once I did not.

When he looked at me again, he said:

“You are so beautiful.”

I looked behind me.

There was no one there.

“Me?”

He laughed.

“Yes, you.”

He could have called me an idiot. I would have understood the situation better.

So beautiful was a phrase that required certain things to change places. My face, for example. Until then it had simply been the one I carried around with me.

Suddenly he was looking at it.

He came closer.

I stopped breathing naturally. I tried to correct this, and it got worse. Now, on top of everything else, I was breathing deliberately.

I thought he was going to kiss me.

I had imagined that many times. In my imaginings I never had to decide what to do with my nose.

He was very close.

I waited.

“If I touch you, my father would kill me.”

I did not know how much father and how much death there was in that sentence.

I wanted to ask him. I also wanted to tell him it did not matter.

It was just as well I did not say it.

His father did matter. I knew him well enough to know that.

The Little Samurai opened the door to his apartment.

“Wait.”

He turned around.

For a moment I thought he was going to come back. He only stood looking at me.

Then he closed it.

The door made a small sound.

It seemed insufficient.

After all that, closing a door should have required some effort. Some resistance. Something.

I put my hand on the wood.

I thought of knocking.

If I knocked, I would have to tell him what for. I could not simply ask him again whether he really thought I was beautiful.

Though that was exactly what I wanted to know.

I took my hand away.

I went to my apartment.

I do not remember whether I sat down.

I remember moving from place to place several times. The window. A chair. The door.

There were things I had to do. There always were.

I could study. I could look for Roberto. I could get things ready for rehearsal.

I opened something. I do not know whether it was a book or a score.

I did not read.

Do you like me?

The phrase kept coming back.

You are so beautiful.

Then the other one.

If I touch you, my father would kill me.

I tried to put them in order. They were already in order. That was the problem.

If I took away the last one, everything became fairly simple.

I could not take it away.

I crossed the street.

There were people gathered at Antropología. I do not remember what for.

They made room for me.

“Maestro.”

Someone called me that.

At fifteen you can accept a title without asking what obligations it carries. I accepted several.

The boy pianist. The genius. The maestro.

Any of them would do, as long as I did not have to explain why I had crossed the street.

I sat down with them.

Someone was talking. Someone else interrupted. There was an argument that seemed to have begun before I arrived and could carry on perfectly well without my help.

That suited me.

Someone had something.

It was not marijuana.

I asked. They answered.

Later, in the emergency room, I would try to remember that answer with a precision I had not considered necessary when I heard it.

I looked toward our building.

I thought the Little Samurai might be watching me from a window.

I did not check which one was his.

It was enough that there were windows.

I took it.

At first nothing happened.

I waited.

Someone spoke to me again. I answered. I suppose I answered.

Then the voices began to reach me from farther away.

They were still sitting beside me. I could see their mouths. The distance was somewhere else.

I saw the Little Samurai.

I still say I saw him.

I do not know whether he crossed the street. I do not know whether he was on the other side. I do not know whether someone looked like him.

At that moment I recognized him.

I thought he was looking at me.

My heart began to go faster.

At first I liked it. It seemed to me that at last something was happening that matched the day.

Then it kept speeding up.

I no longer needed that much.

I tried to breathe slowly.

I counted.

I lost count. I started again.

It was strange not to be able to do something so simple. I could keep a rhythm with my hands. I could come in after a silence without making a mistake.

Now I could not wait for my next breath.

“I’m all right.”

Someone leaned over me.

Said something to me.

“I’m all right,” I repeated.

I was not reporting a fact. I was trying to make it happen.

I looked for the Little Samurai.

I could no longer see him.

My heart went on.

I thought I could control it.

I had been told so many times that I had an extraordinary ability that, for a few seconds, I tried to use it for that.

I did not know where to begin.

I clenched my hands.

The floor came closer in a strange way. Not the way it does when you bend down.

After that, things are missing.

A face above mine. Someone holding my head. A question I did not understand.

The street.

I remember thinking I was crossing it again.

I do not know whether that was true.

A ceiling. A siren.

Light.

“What did you take?”

I wanted to answer.

The word was there, but it no longer seemed certain.

They asked me again.

I said a name.

“How much?”

I did not know.

That began to embarrass me.

I had arrived somewhere where all the questions were simple and I could not answer any of them.

I felt the needle. Then something cold in my arm.

I looked toward a noise. There was a machine.

I wanted to know whether the noise was mine.

I did not ask.

I looked for a clock.

I had rehearsal.

That I did know. It was something solid. A time when I had to be somewhere else.

“I have to go.”

No one moved aside.

“I have rehearsal.”

A woman looked at me.

“Not today.”

I fell silent.

They could ask me again what I had taken. They could put another needle in me. I would have kept trying to answer.

But I did not know what to do with not today.

Rehearsal did not depend on how I felt. Until then I had believed that this was precisely one of its advantages.

You arrived. You sat down. You played.

Even if you were tired. Even if you had argued with someone. Even if the Little Samurai did not look at you.

Now he was going to be there.

I was not.

I tried to get up a little.

The woman put a hand where it was enough to make me understand.

I lay down again.

Later they told me the Carlos Chávez had rehearsed.

Of course it had rehearsed.

The conductor raised his hands. The musicians were in their places. Someone would have made some comment about my absence.

Then they began.

The Little Samurai had a score in front of him. He had things to play.

I found that hard to accept.

I had spent the whole day unable to get out of three sentences. He had managed to come in on time.

Or so I imagined.

I did not ask him.

Under the emergency room lights I kept thinking about the hallway.

Do you like me?

Yes.

Now the answer was very easy. I did not need Paris. I did not need to explain why I had accepted the scholarship.

Yes.

I could have said that.

The machine made a noise. I turned my head.

Someone walked past the bed and looked at something I could not see.

I wanted to ask when I could leave.

Instead I asked:

“What time is it?”

They answered.

Rehearsal had already begun.

For the first time I knew exactly where I ought to be, and I had to stay still.