Double Room

Luis Magrinyà, Allen Young

• Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781628972061
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literature General
• Index: Literature

Four pairs of stories—four "double rooms"—sit side by side in the latest work of fiction by one of Spain's most compelling writers. A publisher wonders about the voices that haunt her; a scriptwriter receives an unexpected gift; a dinner party is shaken by a mysterious guest; a father seeks to atone for his son's crimes. Ranging from Madrid to Milwaukee, and from prose fiction to drama to essay, the chapters of this "narrative installation" echo one another, revealing a carefully layered composition of humor and foreboding. Double Room is a subtle meditation on the bonds between parents and children, the burdens of illness and grief, and the places we make our home.

Winter Landscape

I

IT WAS THE first time the family wasn’t coming to Savonnières for the summer. Mme. Boulat’s health wouldn’t allow it. My mother’s wouldn’t, either, I might add. To a certain extent I was glad, even though I saw that the news saddened her. “Madame isn’t doing well,” she said, in a tone I’m all too familiar with, which usually follows terrible premonitions or tragedies confirmed. In this case, I suspect she felt the tragedy was hers, too—something which, as I noticed early on, my mother didn’t mind so much. She always worried about what would become of her once “Madame” was no longer around, and now she seemed to accept a bargain with fate whereby neither of them would be; in her way she found this outlook reassuring. Together, more or less, they would take leave of this world that no longer belonged to them. When she was told to wrap up the small winter landscape by Sisley—“very carefully, please”—because the two middle children, Corinne and Olivier, would be coming to pick it up, she felt a general sense of things being dismantled, and a more concrete sense that the end was indeed drawing near. She didn’t even ask why Mme. Boulat wanted to take the painting: her worries turned immediately to me. I’d come to spend a couple weeks with her, to help her get the house ready for the Boulats’ arrival, as a matter of fact; and I found her, once again, archaeologically combing over my prospects for a future in which she was “no longer around.” She thinks I’m “far too old” to be living off of fellowships, and the truth is that I too had entered, as I always do when waiting to hear about an extension, one of those periods when I stop mistaking the transient for the eternal. I suppose out of a sort of resentment, or just so she’d stop pestering me, I didn’t mention that I’d finished the screenplay and had made some plans.

When I heard that Olivier and Corinne were coming to pick up the painting, I told her I’d go back to Paris with them that same day. They arrived on a Sunday, around twelve; my mother had made their favorite dish, duck breast à l’orange, and we ate, dozed for an hour in the living room, and left. As if to reassure everyone that it wouldn’t be a good summer to spend in Savonnières anyway, it started to rain as soon as we got into the car.

CORINNE:	(Waving back at my mother, who is saying goodbye from the gate.) Is your mom doing well? She looked fine to me.
ME:	Around you two, she puts on a good face, as always. On me, as always, she unloads her worries.
OLIVIER:	Early July and just look at this weather.
ME:	What about your mom? Is it really serious?
CORINNE:	Our mother is quite the actress. Until the operation, no one will know for sure if it’s cancer, and the doctor says the chances are very slim. But she’s putting her affairs in order …
ME:	That’s why she wanted the Sisley?
CORINNE:	Yes, she actually said she wanted to see it one last time!
ME:	I wrapped it up myself. (Noise from the trunk.) I hope it makes it all right.
CORINNE:	(To Olivier.) Hear that? Drive slowly.
OLIVIER:	(To Corinne.) But didn’t you tell me to hurry?
ME:	We’re taking the A10, right?
CORINNE:	I have to see Pascale. We made plans. (To me.) Do you remember Pascale?
ME:	I don’t think so.
CORINNE:	Sure you do. When was it, Olivier? Three years ago? She stayed with us for a few days.
ME:	Three years ago I think I spent the whole summer in Turkey.
CORINNE:	Really? I was certain you two knew each other. At any rate, I haven’t seen her in a while, either … (Pause.) Do you ever get the feeling you’re seeing someone for the last time? And that you could have done something to stop it?
OLIVIER:	Done something to stop what?
CORINNE:	Stop it from being the last time you saw them.
OLIVIER:	How can you know whether it will be the last time? What do you want, to see the future?
CORINNE:	No, not to see the future. Just some insight, some prescience.
OLIVIER:	That’s what seeing the future means.
ME:	(Interrupting maybe.) Is your mom really doing so bad that she has to spend the summer in Paris?
CORINNE:	She’s having surgery.
ME:	And that’s going to take all summer?
OLIVIER:	Are you worried about leaving your mom alone?
ME:	A little. In any case, I’ll probably go back for a few days, maybe around the middle of August.
OLIVIER:	Honestly, this summer none of us were going to go. I don’t have time off and don’t know when I will, Corinne declines to respond, Jean-Baptiste and his wife have already left for Spain, their kids are with her mother, and the youngest of the family has solemnly declared that, now that he’s back from his Interrail trip, he’s going to stay in Paris and go out every night. I think Mom’s convalescence is going to be my responsibility.
CORINNE:	I don’t think she likes the idea of being stuck in Savonnières alone. (Looking at me.) Alone with your mom, I mean.
OLIVIER:	I don’t think so, either. (Laughing.) She’s probably afraid it would turn out like The Maids.
ME:	(Laughing too.) I can’t imagine either of them trading places.
OLIVIER:	Neither can I! Ah… and the secret to life lies in trading places …
ME:	For as long as you can …
OLIVIER:	If you were there, it’d be different. You could direct the scenes.
ME:	Please.
OLIVIER:	Mom said so, right?
CORINNE:	“Since Paul won’t be there, either …”
ME:	I don’t get it. What about her attachment to the house?
OLIVIER:	What’s a house but the people in it?
ME:	You don’t need people to—
OLIVIER:	If only you were there! She really dotes on you, doesn’t she, Corinne?
CORINNE:	(Slightly uncomfortable, as though pressured.) Yes.
OLIVIER:	(To me.) When Dad died, she said from then on she’d have to be a father to us, just like she was for you.
ME:	She was a father to me?
OLIVIER:	You know what she’s like. She doesn’t need to be asked. She just steps in and takes charge, and that’s that.
CORINNE:	Or thinks she’s taking charge …
OLIVIER:	Yes … or thinks she’s taking charge … and that’s that! The important thing is the “that’s that.” Maybe she’s not cut out for trading places, but for replacing …
CORINNE:	Or for thinking she’s replacing …
OLIVIER:	Really, Corinne, don’t be so sour. (To me.) I hope you’re going to go see her before the operation.
ME:	Of course. And if you need me at the hospital, or afterward, I’ll be in town.
OLIVIER:	She can’t wait to see you.
CORINNE:	(Irritated, but trying to contain herself.) Olivier! (She turns on the radio. Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” is playing.)
OLIVIER:	No, not Michael Jackson! That’s all we’ve been hearing for two weeks!
CORINNE:	Fine. (She changes the station. Many of them are in fact playing Michael Jackson. She doesn’t seem to find anything she likes and switches the radio off.) One more tragic death …
OLIVIER:	One more? Who else died?
CORINNE:	Sorry … it’s just that thinking I have to see Pascale is setting me on edge.
OLIVIER:	Why? Is she about to die?
CORINNE:	It’s what I was saying before. How could you know?
OLIVIER:	Sis, you’re out of your mind. (My cell phone rings. It’s Emina. She wants to know when I’m getting in and whether I’m going straight to her place. I tell her we only just left and that I want to stop by my apartment to drop off my things. She asks if I’ve made a copy of the screenplay. I tell her I have. She tells me not to forget to bring it—“Emir” is eager to see it. We hang up.)
ME:	That was Emina.
OLIVIER:	That delightful Bosnian you introduced me to at Marcel’s party?
ME:	That’s right. But she’s Albanian, not Bosnian.
OLIVIER:	How are thing going with her? She was a delight!
ME:	It’s all really intense. She’s really intense. Too intense. (To Corinne.) I’m supposed to see her when I get in, and just thinking about it sets me on edge, too.
OLIVIER:	(Laughing.) Is she also about to die?
CORINNE:	(Angry.) Olivier!
OLIVIER:	(Goading.) Ah, the secret to...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Ten Minutes Later
• Luxor
• A Slightly Shameful Modesty
• Winter Landscape
• Notes
• Acknowledgments