He said his name was Jesus, that he was from France, that he mixed with sinners and prostitutes, and that he was a healer of men. “A sort of magician,” he added, but he laughed when he said it, speaking in that strange language of his, more akin to Catalan than French, which figured when I found out he lived in the Languedoc.
Languedoc. A land I passed through on my journeys to Spain, so I had to accept his comment that it was the most beautiful place in the world. Give him the benefit of the doubt, so to speak, simply nod into my beer, as I did when he told me that he lived for most of his life in a cave. “Near Foix,” he said.
At a glance he looked about 35, though his eyes said more, were timeless, mellow, heavy, black, tinged with melancholy, and his dark hair fell long down the right side of his face, the left side of his head being shaved, revealing a pointed ear, pierced at the lobe with a large golden ring clasping six smaller rings fastened one under the other, each a different colour, the bottom ring holding a green quartz-like stone object, shaped as a fish. And as he talked, moved his head, the quartz flashed and danced across the metal table where we sat, the reflection dazzling and hypnotic. It was all I could do to tear my eyes away from the table and settle back to his narcotic gaze.
He was tall, over six feet, slim, of Middle Eastern appearance, with a Roman nose and a mouth that curled down at the corners, giving him an air of perpetual gloom, which, I assure you, was not a sign of his character, for he was the most contented of men. He dressed well, jeans and white muslin shirt, black velvet jacket, red leather sandals, and had the trace of a limp, his right leg slightly dragging the ground where he walked. And he liked his whisky, gulping down a dozen quart measures in the time it took me to drink my six brandies, but it was I at the end of the evening who half-staggered out into the night, Jesus calmly saying his goodbyes, unaffected by the booze in his belly.
It was pure chance how we met, one of those rare occasions that shapes ones life, his face bright among the grey faces in Bobbies Bar who stood at the counter staring at the optics. At first glance I thought he was a guy called Gav whom I had known years back, same kinda of hair, same look, same kind of easiness. So I just stood next to him, tapped him on the shoulder, put out my hand, half-expecting Gav to turn and smile that smile of his, but it was the stranger called Jesus who clasped my arm. Then after the usual embarrassed preliminaries…’sorry, I thought you were someone else,’ that type of thing, and after I made to leave, he then spoke in that strange dialect, telling me he didn’t mind my company, and that, anyway, he needed conversation and could I sit with him awhile.
So we found a table in the alcove at the far end of the bar. Drank. Talked. Ate the cheap-shit sandwiches that Bobbies was famous for. Two slices of stale bread holding sliced cucumbers and tomatoes. No butter. No pepper. No salt. That is how we met and that is what happened.
……………..
We saw each other as arranged the following day. A Saturday. Two in the afternoon, a good hour, and the day was bright, warm, the air filled with the smell of diesel fumes spewing from the maroon coloured double decked buses as they sped down The Walk.
The Walk. If now the cosmopolitan feel which paraded itself in colour, it was still the street of winos and beggars and baseball capped bums, but it was where we arranged to meet when we parted company in Bobbies, Jesus telling me that he felt comfortable with thieves and beggars, that ‘the world is sometimes a shed, sometimes a palace, and anyway, remember, I was born in a byre.’ I liked that, ‘born in a byre’, liked his joke, but as I waited for him outside The Border Post, I pondered his choice of words, thinking too that maybe his choice of bar was way out of my favour.
We entered The Post, as it was known locally, a sawdust-hewn dump where the common denominator was anger and bitterness, and misery, and where the whisky was the cheapest in town, mixtures of the inferior brands bottled in bulk and sold to those wretches to keep them in misery. We ordered our drinks and found a table by the window. Surprisingly for me, no one gave us a second look, not even so much as a brush of arms, used as I was to the aggro that went with the territory.
Two youths, baseball-capped, thin lipped, were playing the fruit machine adjacent to our table, cursing their bad luck and mouthing obscenities, while in among the crowd at the counter, two drunks were arguing, pointing at each other, their liquid eyes inflamed with rage and drink.
“You know,” said Jesus, nodding in the direction of the counter. “There are countless guys like them around the world passing the hours away from the crap of their lives.”
‘In Languedoc too?” I asked.
“In Languedoc too,” he replied, drinking back his whisky.
“Strange. But usually in bars like this I feel intimidated. Uncomfortable. But it’s as if no one notices us.”
“It’s because we’re invisible.”
“What,” I gulped. “Invisible?”
“Yes. Invisible. Look,” and Jesus took from his jacket pocket a small wooden box, shaped like a treasure chest, opened it, the tiny lid a screen alive with moving people, the same square-jawed men congregated at the bar, their skin the colour of the beer they were drinking, the same two youths kicking the fruit machine next to our empty table, the same yellow haired, toothless old women nursing their half pints and glasses of whisky, the same wizened old men rasping and spitting. The same barman glowering at nobody in particular.
I studied the screen, much as I would view a crystal ball, though when I asked Jesus if it could foretell, he gently closed the lid and returned the box to his pocket. Unsure of where I was, I touched my face, the table, blinked, coughed, shook my head, drank back my whisky, all the gestures of a man uncertain of where the dream begins or ends, of who he really is. If I existed, even. It was madness, I knew, but on the other hand, probably the most natural of circumstances, particularly as I felt no need for any explanation as to the phenomena of our invisibility.
“Cheers,” Jesus said, lifting his glass, which I clinked with mine, and, relaxed, we sat back and watched the bedlam, the two drunks pushing each other, their curses and oaths turning to grunts, ending with the nearest man head-butting the other, blood spurting down the man’s face, all the while the barman serving the customers as if the attacker and attacked had fought their fight unseen, his only gesture a raise of his eyebrows and a shrug of his shoulders as he poured another beer.
But even I, invisible, could no longer escape the poisoned feeling, this air of violence, and I hinted to Jesus that perhaps we should leave. He nodded, drank back his whisky, and we got up from our table and headed for the door. Only then did I catch the look of hatred in the eyes of one of the youths, gesturing with a clenched fist towards me, his middle finger stuck arrogantly upwards.
“I guess I’m no longer invisible,” I said as we walked out of the bar.
“It depends.”
“Depends on what?”
“Depends if you feel intimidated. Do you?”
“Yes. Now I do. It was probably the fight.”
“Then you are not invisible,” Jesus answered, his ear-ring glinting in the mid-afternoon sun. “But patience, my friend. It is an art form.”
“An art form?”
“Yes. An art form. You can practice all the God-given hours, but unless you relax, unless you open your eyes, then invisibility is an impossibility. A paradox, no?”
“I guess.”
“Anyway. It was only an experiment. To show you everything is not as it is. From now on you will be completely visible.”
“No. No. I want to be invisible in places like that,” I said, pointing behind me.
‘Then as I said. Open your eyes. Relax.”
“Fine. Oh. Your box. Where did you get it?” I asked.
“In my travels.”
“But where? I’ve never seen anything like it before. Looks Japanese.”
“I was given it as present from an old friend many years ago,” Jesus remarked.
“Many years ago? But surely…….”
“Just trust me,” Jesus said, interrupting.
“Where to then?”
“Let’s visit an art gallery. Do you know any?”
“There’s the National. Old masters. That type of thing,” I replied.
“Good. Another lesson,’ he said, taking the box from his pocket, opening it, retrieving two small pills, one which he took, handed me the other, explaining that it would do me good. I swallowed it whole, and the taste was not unlike aniseed.
We grabbed a taxi and headed up The Walk and in ten minutes we paid off the driver and entered the gallery, the two uniformed attendants at the door eyeing Jesus suspiciously in that commonplace manner of theirs, as if he was a species from another world, a mistrust I too had to put with up in my association with those in power.
“It seems you’re style is not to their liking,” I quietly said to Jesus as we climbed the inner steps of the gallery.
“It is the way of people. I’m used to it. It does not bother me,” was his reply.
Perhaps I caught a faint hint of irony in his answer, a certain ambivalence, I don’t know, but anyway, I soon forgot his mood as we entered the large carpeted hall, full with the rich smell of musk and varnish, the atmosphere thick with that repressed silence common to museums and galleries. And the public purred…………..
TO BE CONTINUED…
juandecadaqués 