Mr. Gwyn by Alessandro Baricco Page B

the only time in my life we met.”
    â€œYou said that it would suit me very well. Copying people, I mean. You said it with an assurance that had no nuances, as if there were no need even to discuss it.”
    â€œSo?”
    â€œI don’t think this idea of the portraits would have occurred to me if you hadn’t said that phrase. In that way. I’m sincere: I wouldn’tbe here without you.”
    The woman turned to him and she had the face of an old teacher who hears the doorbell ring and it’s that coward from the second row who has come to thank her, the day he graduates. She made a gesture like a caress, looking in the other direction, however.
    â€œYou’re a good boy,” she said.
    They were silent for a while. The woman with the rain scarf took out a big handkerchief and blew her nose. Then she placed a hand on Jasper Gwyn’s arm.
    â€œThere’s one thing I never told you,” she said. “Do you want to hear it?”
    â€œOf course.”
    â€œThat day, when you brought me home… I kept thinking of how you didn’t want to write books anymore, I couldn’t get it out of my mind that it was a damn shame. I wasn’t even sure if I had asked you why, or anyway I didn’t remember if you had really explained why in the world you no longer wanted anything to do with it. In other words, I felt something was still not right, you understand?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œIt lasted several days. Then one morning I go as usual to the Indian downstairs and see the cover of a magazine. There was a whole pile of that magazine, just arrived, they had put it under the cheese potato chips. In that issue they had interviewed a writer, so on the cover there was his name and a statement, his name nice and big and this statement in quotation marks. And the statement said: ‘In love we all lie.’ I swear. And, note, he was a great writer, I could be wrong but I think he was even a Nobel winner. Also on the coverwas an actress not quite undressed, who promised to tell the whole truth. I don’t remember about what stupid thing.”
    She was silent for a while, as if she were trying to remember it. But then she said something else.
    â€œIt doesn’t mean anything, I know, but you moved your hand a few inches and you could grab the cheese potato chips.”
    She hesitated a second.
    â€œIn love we all lie,” she murmured, shaking her head. Then she shouted the next sentence.
    â€œWell done, Mr. Gwyn!”
    She said she had begun to shout right there at the Indian’s, with people turning. She had repeated it three or four times.
    â€œWell done, Mr. Gwyn!”
    They had thought she was mad.
    â€œBut it’s happened to me often,” she said. “To be thought mad,” she clarified.
    Then Jasper Gwyn said there was no one like her, and asked if she would like to celebrate somewhere together, that night.
    â€œExcuse me?”
    â€œWhat do you say to having dinner with me?”
    â€œDon’t talk nonsense, I’m dead, restaurants hate me.”
    â€œAt least a glass.”
    â€œWhat sort of idea is that?”
    â€œDo it for me.”
    â€œNow it’s really time to go.”
    She said it in a gentle voice, but firm. She got up, took her purse and her umbrella, which was still wet, and went toward the door. She dragged her feet a little, in that way of hers, so that you couldrecognize it from a distance. When she stopped it was because she still had something to say.
    â€œDon’t be rude, take those seven pages to Rebecca, and make her read them.”
    â€œYou think it’s necessary?”
    â€œOf course.”
    â€œWhat will she say?”
    â€œIt’s me, she’ll say.”
    Jasper Gwyn wondered if he would ever see her again and decided that he would, somewhere, but not for many years, and in a different solitude.

42
    He was in a new Laundromat that some Pakistanis had opened behind