Leaving the Atocha Station - Ben Lerner [12]
We entered the gallery and I saw Teresa and Rafa, Arturo’s boyfriend, standing next to a table with tapas and wine. I was heading in their direction, considering breaking my rule and speaking English to Teresa, asking her to explain to Arturo that I would not read and why, when I recognized, to my horror and surprise, María José from the foundation among the people perusing the gallery walls, which featured glossy black-and-white photographs of idle industrial machinery. I had met her only twice, once upon my arrival to fill out paperwork and once to turn in a brief report in English about my activities so far, a report upon which my stipend’s continued disbursement depended; both encounters were sufficiently uncomfortable to have rendered her image indelible. I had been convinced that she could see through me, that my fraudulence was completely apparent to her, which wouldn’t have required too much perspicacity on her part given the state of my Spanish, and given the fact that each time she recommended, as a way of making small talk, a poet or authority on the Spanish Civil War, I blinked and said something about the name sounding familiar, although I wasn’t sure I used the right word for “familiar.”
She saw that I saw her and approached me smiling and we exchanged kisses far from the mouth and she said something about the opportunity to hear my work, an opportunity I thought she said was particularly welcome because she hadn’t seen me at any of the foundation’s social events. Then she indicated some other Americans who I assumed were also foundation fellows; they were speaking very competent Spanish, much better than mine, but speaking it too loudly, and I managed to ask how she had heard about the reading. Apparently the gallery had added the foundation to its e–mail list starting with “my” reading.
I managed to disengage from María José and kissed Teresa and embraced Rafa and stared as coldly as possible at Arturo while I tried to figure out an escape. Arturo patted my shoulder and said everything would be fine and started flipping through his own notebook, which I assumed contained the translations, and asked me which poems I planned to read. I thought about claiming I was too ill to continue, surely I looked sufficiently pale, but I was worried that failing to appear in front of María José would somehow constitute the breaking point of my relationship with the foundation, that the total vacuity of my project would finally be revealed and I would be sent home in shame. My mouth was dry and I poured myself a glass of white wine and said I didn’t care which poems I read but that I would only read one or two. Teresa said to read the one about seeing myself on the ground from the plane and in the plane from the ground and I said, in my first expression of frustration in Spanish, that the poem wasn’t about that, that poems aren’t about anything, and the three of them stared at me, stunned. I said I was sorry, drained and refilled my glass, noting that Teresa seemed genuinely hurt; I found that to be a greater indication of her affection for me than the fact that she had favorites among my poems. We’ll read it, I said.
Everyone began to take their seats; the gallery was long and narrow with high ceilings and white walls and it was full; there were probably eighty people. There was a podium with a lamp and microphone and a small pitcher