In Times of Fading Light

After two or three hours the film began. Some run-of-the-mill action movie. People hit and kicked each other to the accompaniment of sounds that he could hear even from his neighbours’ headphones. Nothing particular, really, except that suddenly he couldn’t stand it. Why did they show something like this? Human beings hurting one another?

He put on the sleep mask and his headphones, and ran through the audio programs.

Handel. One of those famous arias, restrained, dangerously melancholy. He listened cautiously, ready to turn the music off at once if it went too close to the bone for him.

However, it did not. He leaned back, listening in wonderment to the unearthly sound of the aria—or no, not really unearthly, on the contrary. Unlike Bach, it was earthly, of this world. So much of this world that it almost hurt. The pain of farewell, he suddenly realized. A look at the world in full awareness of its transience. How old would Handel have been when he composed this miracle? Better not to know.

And the man allowed himself so much time! And it all was so simple, so clear!

His mind went to the last production he had staged in the town of K. Of course, he could reassure himself, if he wanted to, by reflecting that the reviews hadn’t been as devastating as he had feared. He remembered sitting in the tiered seats at the premiere. Dying inside as he watched the actors scrambling and shouting onstage, doing their tricks… He saw the elaborate, colorful stage set. The expensive lighting concept (a special floodlight with a daylight effect had been bought especially). All too much. Too far-fetched. Too complicated.

Was that it? That far-fetched, complicated factor? Was that his cancer?

Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma… And then that doctor had explained the disease to him: reluctantly rocking back and forth in his swivel chair, a plastic ruler in his hand—had he really been holding a ruler? Had he really drawn images in the air of funny little marbles as he told Alexander something about the T-cells that would slowly kill him?

The absurd thing was that they were defense cells. Part of his immune system, designed to reject foreign tissue, but now, so far as Alexander understood it, themselves turning into giant hostile cells.

Even the night before his diagnosis, after he had lain awake for hours, with the rattle of the old man’s ventilator getting on his nerves as it implacably made its way past his earplugs, even that night, somewhere around 3:00, when he had asked himself all the questions, gone throughall the possibilities, after he finally got out of bed, went into the corridor, and tried in vain to locate the problem on the anatomical chart there—even after all that he had finally thought: never mind what it was, never mind where it was, they’d cut it out and he would fight, he had thought, fight for his life, and at the word “fight” he had instinctively seen himself running around Humboldthain Park in Berlin, he’d be running for his life, he had thought, running the disease out of himself, until there was nothing left of him but his core, his essence, no room left at all between his skin and his sinews for any kind of hostile tissue…

There was nothing to cut out, nothing to locate. It came from himself, from his immune system. No, it was his immune system. It was him. He himself was the disease.

The voice in his ear rose and fell a couple of times. Hopped, clucked. Laughed…

He took off the sleep mask. Looked to see if anyone had seen his face flushing. But no one was interested in him. The fat man hung about with gold chains (fat, but all the same a man who had managed not to get cancer) was staring at his screen. The wan mother was trying to get some sleep. Only the child was looking at him with bright, cola-colored eyes.

Mexico, the airport. A blast of warm air. As he sets foot in the city—in the country, on the continent—he notices in passing that it doesn’t smell like the nitrate fertilizers in his grandmother’s conservatory.

A taxi ride. The cabby drives like a scalded pig, perched in his seat at an angle, half hanging out of the open window. A roller-coaster ride. Alexander leans back. The car races down avenidas with multiple lanes, the driver swings the wheel around, drives in a circle with squealing tires, has gone wrong somewhere, threads his way through narrow gaps, the traffic outside is noisy, he turns sharply right, then the street narrows, people on the sidewalks left and right, the driver jumps the lights on red, and now, for the first time, moves his head to see if the road is clear.

The Hotel Borges, as recommended by the Backpacker. It’s in the centro historico, thirty-five dollars a night. At the reception desk, a callow youth in a blue suit explains something that he doesn’t understand. El quinto piso, he gets that much: fifth floor. The room is large, the furniture all looks as if it had been painted Bordeaux red with a spray-gun, not too tasteless really. Alexander lets himself drop on the bed. Now what?

Alexander goes out into the street. Mingles with the people. It is eight in the evening. The streets are full, he lets the crowd carry him along as he inhales other people’s breath. Diminutive police officers, wearing bulletproof vests in spite of the heat, blow whistles. When he stumbles over a hole the size of a drain cover in the sidewalk, he falls into the arms of the people walking the other way. They laugh, set the tall, clumsy European on his feet again. Then he is in a park, where goods are for sale all over the place. Meat and vegetables braising peacefully side by side in gigantic pans. There are rugs and jewelry, there are old telephones, circular saws, alarm clocks, there’s salted pigskin, there are things he can’t identify, in fact there’s everything: feather headdresses, puppet skeletons, lamps, crucifixes, stereo systems, hats.

Alexander buys a hat. He has always wanted to buy a hat, as he knows, and now there are good reasons to buy one. Now he could say: I need a hat in Mexico because of the sun. But he doesn’t. He buys the hat because he likes himself in a hat. He buys the hat to disown the principles instilled into him in his youth. He buys it to disown his father. He buys it to disown the whole of his life so far, the life in which he did not wear a hat. And why didn’t he, when it’s so easy? He feels like laughing. He actually does laugh. Or no, of course he doesn’t laugh, but he smiles. He lets himself drift with the crowd. Only now does he really belong with it. Now, with the hat, he is one of them. Now he can suddenly speak Spanish: I would like to have… taco, tortilla?… How much… gracias, senor… senor! He bows formally, as you should in bestowing an honorary title. The old woman giggles. She has only one tooth. Alexander drifts on. Eats his tortilla. Walk, stop, traffic. Crowds of tiny police officers again, blowing their whistles for no reason at all, you might think, but now, suddenly, he understands. They are just whistling—that’s all it is. Like birds. They whistle because they exist. An amazing discovery. They beat their wings, flap their hands, obscurely, irrelevantly, while the traffic, in obedience to some natural law or other, regulates itself.

Then there’s music in the air. Not police whistles, proper music. Still indistinct, but now and then the sound of a violin or a trumpet stands out: violin and trumpet! Typical Mexican instrumentation, the kind on Granny Charlotte’s shellac record. His excitement rises, he quickens his pace. Now it sounds as if a huge orchestra were tuning its instruments. Singers seem to be getting themselves into voice. What’s going on? Alexander is standing in a brightly illuminated square. The square is full of people, among them—he can hardly believe his eyes—small groups easily identifiable by their respective uniforms. Hundreds of musicians: bands large and small, ensembles of ten and duos, with massive sombreros or light straw hats, their uniforms trimmed with gold-buttoned facings or silver braid, with epaulets and fringes, pink, white, or navy blue, and they are all making music! At the same time! An inexplicable event. Like the sudden appearance en masse of mysterious insects. A procession? A strike? Are they singing in protest against the end of the world? Is this square the only place where a god of some kind can hear them?

Alexander walks around, listens as if in a trance, wanders from band to band, listening for his music. Over there… or no. But there… that’s so like it! He stops suddenly in front of one of the singers. Pale blue suit, bright white shirt, pitch-black hair, and at his neck he wears an ostentatious bow tie.

“Mexico lindo,” says Alexander.

The singer says, “Si!”

“Jorge Negrete,” says Alexander.

The singer says, “Si!”

The musicians draw on their cigarettes once more, put their bottles down, hitch up their pants, adjust their sombreros, and suddenly Granny’s ancient shellac record is playing: Rum-tat-rum-tata…Voz de la guitarra mia… al despertar la manana .. .

Incredulous, Alexander stares at the singer. The crazy bow tie, the shiny, pitch-black hair, the white teeth flashing under the mustache and forming sounds exactly the same as the music on the shellac record that broke into a thousand pieces a thousand years ago…