Dublinesque by Enrique Vila-Matas Read Free Book Online Page B

his second and most recent trip to New York. He went to this cemetery to see Herman Melville’s grave. He recognizes it by the style of the tombstones and because the place etched itself deeply on his memory, and also because visible in the background is the elevated train station he disembarked from to visit the place. Although he sees Celia is very absorbed in the burial scene, he intervenes to say he has been to that cemetery, that he recognizes it by the train station in the background and that it is very familiar to him. Celia doesn’t know what to say.
    “Are you impressed that you’re seeing somewhere I’ve been, or is the funeral scene making more of an impression?” he asks her in a somewhat provocative tone of voice.
    Celia chooses to remain absorbed in the film.
    He doesn’t know why he wants to go to Dublin. He doesn’t think it’s just because he’s fascinated by the idea of waiting around until June 16 to travel to a place where no one has invited him. He doesn’t believe it’s only because he thinks he should go there and then tell his parents about it, to make it up to them for not having said anything about Lyon. And nor does he believe he wants to go to Dublin simply because, if the premonition is true, it might be that he will find himself at the gateway to a great revelation about the secret of the world, a revelation that will be waiting for him in Cork. Nor does he think it’s simply because, if he goes to Dublin he will somehow get a little closer to his beloved New York, although this is another reason he wants to go there. He doesn’t even believe he wants to go to Dublin because he wishes to say a requiem for the culture of the Gutenberg age and at the same time say a requiem for himself, literary publisher very much in decline.
    Maybe he wants to go to Dublin for all these reasons and also for others that escape him and will go on escaping him forever.
    Why do I want to go to Dublin?
    He asks himself silently twice in a row. It’s possible there is an answer to this question, but also possible that he may never find out exactly what it is.
    And it is even possible that the very fact of not knowing the reasons he is going to Dublin in their entirety forms part of the meaning of the journey, in the same way that still not knowing the exact number of words of his requiem may help him to deliver a good eulogy in Dublin.
    He will go to Dublin.
    The following morning, an hour after waking up and with her time already minutely planned out, Celia is getting ready to go to her office at the museum where she works. Her face radiates peace, serenity, tranquility. It might be that these are a consequence of her imminent conversion to Buddhism.
    Celia always goes about things enthusiastically, with enviable drive. She appears helpless and at the same time possesses a frightening strength — both extremes are necessary. Occasionally, he is reminded of what his grandfather Jacobo used to say: “Nothing important was ever achieved without enthusiasm!” Celia is enthusiasm itself and always has an air of giving importance to what she does, whatever it might be, and at the same time of denying all this importance with a simple smile. She says she learned all this from the Oklahoma Theater, that theater whose stage, according to her, was directly connected to the void.
    Oklahoma and Celia seem to be inseparable. Buddha will be the third side to the triangle. Celia often says there is no better place for enthusiasm than the United States. And that life there — she once went to Chicago — is pure theater to her, permanently connected to the void. But she wouldn’t mind going to live in New York if he would only stop obsessing about it and finally decide to move to that place he so yearns for, to the supposed center of the world.
    Celia is going to work, but first she drops a hint by means of a terrifying piece of information. Sensing that it won’t be long before her dear autistic husband goes and