Free Mr. Gwyn by Alessandro Baricco Page A

supposed to sell: pipe organs.
    Then he went on to Descartes.

27
    But the next day he was there when Rebecca arrived.
    He was sitting on the floor, leaning against the wall. In the studio David Barber’s loop was playing. A slow river.
    Rebecca greeted him with a cautious smile. Jasper Gwyn nodded. He was wearing a light jacket and had chosen for the occasion leather shoes, with laces, pale brown. They gave an impression of seriousness. Of work.
    When Rebecca began to undress he got up to reposition the shutters at one of the windows, mainly because it seemed to him inelegant to stand there watching her. She left her clothes on a chair. The last thing she took off was a black T-shirt. Under it she wore nothing. She went to sit on the bed. Her skin was very white; she had a tattoo at the base of her spine.
    Jasper Gwyn sat down again on the floor, where he had been before, and began to look. Her small breasts surprised him, and the secret moles, but it wasn’t on the details that he wanted to linger—it was more urgent to understand the whole, to bring back to some unity that figure which, for reasons to be clarified, seemed to have no coherence. He thought that without clothes it gave the impression of a random figure. He almost immediately lost the sense of time, and the simple act of observing seemed natural to him. Every so often he lowered his gaze, as another might have come back to the surface, to breathe.
    For a long time Rebecca stayed on the bed. Then Jasper Gwyn saw her get up and slowly pace the room, taking small steps. She kept her eyes on the floor, and looked for imaginary points whereshe could place her feet, which were like a child’s. She moved as if each time she were assembling pieces of herself that were not intended to stay together. Her body seemed to be the result of an effort of will.
    She returned to the bed. She lay down on her back, her neck resting on the pillow. She kept her eyes open.
    At eight she got dressed, and for a few minutes sat, with her raincoat on, on a chair, breathing. Then she got up and left—just a small nod of goodbye.
    For a moment Jasper Gwyn didn’t move. When he got up, he did so in order to lie down on the bed. He began to stare at the ceiling. He rested his head in the indentation in the pillow left by Rebecca.
    â€œHow did it go?” asked the woman with the rain scarf.
    â€œI don’t know.”
    â€œShe’s good, the girl.”
    â€œI’m not sure she’ll come back.”
    â€œWhy not?”
    â€œIt’s all so ridiculous.”
    â€œSo?”
    â€œI’m not even sure I’ll go back myself.”
    But the next day he returned.

28
    It occurred to him to bring a notebook. He chose one that wasn’t too small, its pages cream-colored. With a pencil, every so often hewrote down some words, then he tore out the page and fastened it with a thumbtack to the wooden floor, each time choosing a different place, like someone setting out mousetraps.
    So he wrote a sentence, at a certain point, and then he wandered around the room until he chose a point, on the floor, not far from where Rebecca was at that moment, standing, leaning against a wall. He bent over and fastened it to the wood with the thumbtack. Then he looked up at Rebecca. He had never been so close to her, since they started. Rebecca was staring into his eyes. They remained staring like that. They breathed slowly, in the river of David Barber’s sounds. Then Jasper Gwyn lowered his gaze.
    Before she left, Rebecca crossed the room and went right over to where Jasper Gwyn was huddled, sitting on the floor, in a corner. She sat down beside him, stretching out her legs and hiding her hands between her thighs, with the backs touching. She didn’t turn to look at him, she just stayed there, her head leaning against the wall. Jasper Gwyn then felt her warm closeness, and her perfume. He did so until Rebecca got up, dressed, and went out.
    Left alone,