Many years ago, at a Sant Jordi party at the Alma hotel, Rodrigo Fresán told me about the plot of a book that hadn’t been translated here. It was the story of a policeman who, in the last days before the end of the world, decides to continue doing his police work. That is, to prevent crimes, arrest criminals, maintain order in an absurd way because that order and everything else will disappear in three days due, I seem to recall, to the impact of a meteorite. I loved the plot. He told me the title and author. I forgot them. Every time I see him, I think about asking him, but I don’t. I know why.
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At those parties before Sant Jordi, those where Rodrigo Fresán and I meet at the Alma hotel, we greet each other and talk about anything, there’s a moment when we fall silent. Seconds, almost a minute, uncomfortable and mysterious, during which I could ask him about that title, author, and the whole plot. I encourage myself to do it, telling myself that perhaps, when he answers me, I’ll find that what he explained is different from how I remember it and, then and only then, I could write it. But I don’t dare because I remember the plot perfectly and I believe that, in those moments when we fall silent, he also remembers it or perhaps is about to forget it. As if we were both accomplices, and he was dying to shout the title, author, and plot to me, and I was dying to beg him not to because someday I want to write that story as if it were my own.
Someday I want to write the story Rodrigo Fresán told me as if it were my own
I hope that the more years pass, the more likely it is that Rodrigo will forget the story of that policeman who wanted to do his job when it no longer made sense to do so. Out of a sense of duty or to avoid going crazy. If I could write that plot, I don’t know why I would choose one reason over another, but for that, Fresán would have to forget or I would have to ask and he would have to tell me he doesn’t know what I’m talking about.
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The night before last it happened again. That silence. I hesitated to ask him who wrote it, what that story was called, and he, hopefully, apologizing for having invented that about the policeman and the end of the world, telling me that novel was written when it isn’t. But time passes, silence arrives, a cowardly minute, only for us to end up saying goodbye until the next end of the world.
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