TE22 Potpourri

Manuel Baixauli

UNKNOWN

commission that arrived via email caught me in that state, it was the opportunity to break out of my lethargy. The offer was to illustrate a series of articles. The person who wrote to me, somebody called Crisòstom, didn’t specify where or when they would be published, he asked me if I was interested and specified how much money I would receive: a considerably higher sum than I would have asked for. I said yes, and in the next email he asked me for my account number so he could transfer me the price of the first three drawings and asked me to meet him, in eight days’ time, at a café in Palmeres, a town on the coast. He also attached the first three articles, so I could bring the completed drawings with me. I still hadn’t finished the second illustration when the money showed up in my bank account. His diligence made me rethink and then redo the first drawing, which I hadn’t been entirely satisfied with. Crisòstom was sitting drinking wine on the café terrace, along the seaside promenade, when I arrivedwith the portfoliounder my arm. He was the only customer in the place and, fromwhat I could see, one of the few winter inhabitants of Palmeres. He didn’t look like a writer. What do writers even look like? There areendlessvariationsonwriters’ physiques throughout history, but almost all of them somehow fit with the word writer . Did it fit with Crisòstom? No. His appearance reminded me of a sinister doorman at a gated community, of a disorderly single guy who spends his free time at the bar.

Weshookhandsfirmlyand I satdown infrontof him. Crisòstom lifted one arm and gestured to the waiter, who sat blindly watching the TV. Crisòstom insisted, waving his hand, slightly ridiculous. A shout would have made the waiter react, but Crisòstom did not shout and was already standing up to head over to the bar when, finally, the owner saw him and indicated, with a shout, that he was coming.

“A tea,” I said.

“A tea?” said Crisòstom. “If we’re going to be partners, don’t stand on ceremony. Have some of this wine, it’s a top-notch Montsant.”

“Hot tea. My throat is irritated.”

Crisòstom arched his brows in a gesture of resignation or indifference that I would later, when I knew him better, recognize as typical, and which would become his most frequently evoked gesture as far as I was concerned. Crisòstom the indifferent. I would also later learn that when we met he was only fifty-one years old, only twelve years my senior, even though he seemed much older. Apart from his natural ugliness and his glasses for short-sightedness, he was gaunt, his skin was yellowed and his deep voice was weary. From the gleam in his eyes, I guessed that wasn’t his first glass of wine.

“Did you read my scribblings?” he said.

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