Free Gasoline by Quim Monzó Page B

room . . . Over and over, for the space of a minute, for minutes on end, for an entire hour, all morning and all afternoon, every day of every week of every month. For how many years?
    In time, Heribert has come to recognize all his sweaters. He has one very loud one, yellow and blue, and he seems happier on the days he wears it. In the summer, Heribert has seen all his t-shirts. Once, at the peak of August, he saw him in a bathing suit. He often smokes a pipe as he paces. Sometimes he pretends to read a book. Once he stayed at the window for a long time, hugging a record cover to his chest. Often, when the window is open, he shouts things down to people on the street. Heribert has only seen him outdoors once, on his way home with two older women. He was on the corner, arguing with a lamppost. Now he is at home, going through his daily paces. How many miles must he clock in a year? “Crazy as he is,” thinks Heribert, “any minute now he could take a shot at me. Maybe even the next time around!” He can see him now, approaching the window as he always does, but this time he’s not holding a book, or a pipe, or a record cover, but a revolver, which he aims at Heribert. As he pictures this, Heribert closes his eyes, the better to imagine that perhaps at this precise moment the guy is aiming a gun at him. “What will I do if he shoots and misses?” Would he throw himself to the ground? Could he go on living there, knowing that the madman might attack again? Would this finally force him to look for a new apartment or, more to Helena’s liking, a house in the suburbs? How exhausting, though.
    Heribert opens his eyes again and sees the guy pacing the room, coming up to the window, and looking out, as always. He hears the phone ring, hears Helena pick up the receiver, hears her say it’s for him. He picks up the phone. Helena hangs up the other extension. Heribert leans up against the window, certain that, as always, nothing will happen. It’s starting to snow. Herundina is apologizing for having been late for their date the day before. A meeting. Do twenty-year-olds have meetings? Herundina says it had to do with school. She asks if he waited long.
    “Two minutes. When you didn’t show up after two minutes, I left.”
    “You could have waited a little longer.”
    “What for, if you didn’t get there for another hour and fifteen minutes?”
    “How do you know, if you weren’t there? I don’t get it.”
    If he were a writer, he would write about fear of the blank page . . . Maybe he could paint something like that. A painter in front of an easel with an empty canvas? An empty canvas painted white?
    “I don’t think you’re listening to me,” Herundina breaks in.
    “Sure I’m listening.”
    “You’re very strange.”
    Heribert hears Helena say she’s going out. He thinks, “Who did she think this was on the phone?” He starts making excuses into the receiver. Says he has to leave right away, promises to phone, accepts her apology for being late the night before, agrees to her being the one to call, on Wednesday, hangs up the phone, picks up his coat.
    •
    This time, the wait is more tedious. It doesn’t amuse him to count the parked cars, the time elapsed between the passing of two cars, the potholes, the windows of a house, the windows of all the houses on the street, the trees in the yards, the trees that grow on the sidewalks, the number of the house Helena went into . . . And the children aren’t there, either, perhaps because snow is falling softly the whole time. With his lapels up high and wearing a wide-brimmed hat (when he saw that the snow was sticking, he picked up a hat; could that bit of precaution be a sign of recovery?), Heribert sits on the curb, thinking that if he’s there much longer they’ll find him under a good layer of snow, turned into a snowman, a sculpture for the show that will be opening on the twenty-second. From the time Helena goes into the house until the time she comes