The Planets Read Free Page A

reality needs no proof. As we know, there was no wind and that fence is just a collection of posts so thick you can barely tell what they are. The weather that day no longer exists, and the noises we heard have long since faded. We’ll keep these photos as talismans, but not as proofs. “Let’s keep these photos as talismans, but not as proofs,” I repeated, as though the words were a prayer or a line of verse, trying harder to convince myself than the occasion demanded. I could sense, in this insistence and excess, a religious undertone of guardianship. Something between protection and adoration, at least; if the figure in the photo no longer existed, and neither did the sounds of the street or that particular palette of light, as is the case in any place and time, that afternoon the secret value of the image, the photo, lay in its power of conservation rather than in the representation of an origin. Years later, my photo would lack the protective qualities he had tried to assign to both. But “my photo” was not my portrait, but M’s. Just like “his” was not his, but mine. Which of the four photos retained that power? His in his possession, mine in my own hands, the picture of me that he held on to, or his in my possession (which I still have)?
    After the abduction, I took refuge in the house of a friend who had the same name as M. I met my mother from time to time in a nearby café; she wanted me to leave, I didn’t respond. My mother would smooth her hair and ask how long I was going to go on like this. I remained silent. Then it would begin all over again; the same dialogue repeated two or three times in different words, followed by the same silence. Then, with a sudden movement, which in its swiftness conveyed both annoyance and concern, she would take out a little money and tell me that she would not be able to go on offering it for long. I am sure it was not easy for her to come by, but the supposed tact of calling “offering” what was so obviously “giving” seemed both unnecessary and inappropriate; it was the introduction of courtesy into a situation that rendered courtesy trivial, even insulting: the circumstance, as she herself acknowledged with her concern, simply did not allow for social graces or attempts at elegance. How, if not like alms or a tip, was that money handed over to me? I was in no position to turn it down, but she insisted on the word “offering” time and again; in a way, the care with which she tried to protect my supposed pride showed just how far apart we had grown, how divergent our paths had become. It was on one of those days—when I would walk from café to café, my mania fueled by fear, exhaustion, and boredom—after seeing my mother, that I read about the explosion in the newspaper.
     
    M lived on a street that was divided in two by the railroad. Whoever wanted to cross the tracks had to do so by following its old-fashioned walkways in the form of an S, which would force them, precisely, to slow down. The house was thirty meters from the tracks; cars hardly ever drove down his block, which was lined with trees and façades so similar they seemed indistinguishable, interchangeable. To get to M’s house, one had to walk down a long hallway that extended almost to the middle of the block. Every few meters a door would appear on the right—these were not only similar, but in fact completely identical. His family lived behind the fourth. The door opened on to a patio, which was the nucleus of the house. There were a few plants and large flowerpots in it, which at first glance seemed to be scattered about at random. M’s room was reached by climbing a narrow staircase that rose up from the patio next to a large sink and doubled back above it (so closely you had to stoop over to do the wash). I remember my surprise looking down for the first time through the steps of iron grating, just like the ones found on countless railroad bridges. M should feel lucky to have his