Sometimes when I visit Montevideo, the last few days before departure are obscured by an almost pestilential sadness. The disease corners me as I shuffle through sun-dappled streets in a daze.
This sadness is, of course, a testament to the happiness my time here, always too brief, bestows on me. I could be Adam pacing his garden just before the helicopters arrive and the evacuation takes place.
Having said which, I realise that Montevideo is no paradise. The harshness of life is more evident here than it is back in London. Last night I took a walk by the riverside at sunset. In a nook between Playa Ramirez and Pocitos I came across a small beach, scattered with a litter of weather-worn concrete blocks. Two white waders plucked at the water’s edge. Deciding to explore I took a couple of steps across a piece of concrete and then stopped, and immediately turned back. A dead dog, small, brown, it’s spine curved round on itself, teeth grinning, stomach bloated, lay foetal in amongst the rubble, abandoned.
My Montevideo could never be a paradise. Rather, it belongs to a parallel universe, evolving alongside my own. In this universe I rediscover the unpredictable, the beautiful and the tragic. When I arrive here it is with the elation of a homecoming. When the final days of my trip are upon me, the reality of reality, the separation of reality, hits; everything begins to seize up, a mechanism grinding to a slow, barely noticeable halt.
+++
The fact that my marriage to Helena is now over heightens these feelings. This is the first time I have been back since. Our marriage was the product of a delirious year, working and playing here. I discovered her city; she rediscovered it through my eyes, as well as opening her eyes to the possibility of escape from its confines. (For in this regard a city is like family as opposed to friends: the latter you chose yourself, the former chosen for you.)
We never lived here again. Never put the delirium of that year to the test of something more measured, along the lines of the lives ordinary Montevideans live. All of that living, the prosaic, was done within the jurisdiction of London, my antithesis to Montevideo, a place of work and stress and deberes.
In my fortnight here now, with my former in-laws up the road, the pale ghost of my marriage and its abrupt conclusion has haunted me. Any reader worth their salt might conclude that the love I feel for the city has a connection with the love I felt for Helena; just as the love she felt for the idea of escaping the city had a connection with the love she once felt for me. When our marriage ended, I often felt I would never return here, that this city would also be lost to me.
As one day, indeed, it might be. (As I write Ana interrupts to say that the theatre she had in mind for the play next year now seems to be booked for the time we wanted, throwing everything up in the air again.)
However, a marriage has nothing to do with place or time - the things which alter in the course of a marriage’s natural lifespan. It has to do with how the two people themselves connect, above and beyond circumstances, crises, failures, changes. Whether those two people still retain any kind of imperative to continue in the face of alteration.
We, evidently, did not. It’s only upon returning to Montevideo, after the event, that it’s possible to see how little our respective cities had to do with anything. Montevideo and London, it transpires, have as much significance as a favourite flavour of ice-cream.
This sadness is, of course, a testament to the happiness my time here, always too brief, bestows on me. I could be Adam pacing his garden just before the helicopters arrive and the evacuation takes place.
Having said which, I realise that Montevideo is no paradise. The harshness of life is more evident here than it is back in London. Last night I took a walk by the riverside at sunset. In a nook between Playa Ramirez and Pocitos I came across a small beach, scattered with a litter of weather-worn concrete blocks. Two white waders plucked at the water’s edge. Deciding to explore I took a couple of steps across a piece of concrete and then stopped, and immediately turned back. A dead dog, small, brown, it’s spine curved round on itself, teeth grinning, stomach bloated, lay foetal in amongst the rubble, abandoned.
My Montevideo could never be a paradise. Rather, it belongs to a parallel universe, evolving alongside my own. In this universe I rediscover the unpredictable, the beautiful and the tragic. When I arrive here it is with the elation of a homecoming. When the final days of my trip are upon me, the reality of reality, the separation of reality, hits; everything begins to seize up, a mechanism grinding to a slow, barely noticeable halt.
+++
The fact that my marriage to Helena is now over heightens these feelings. This is the first time I have been back since. Our marriage was the product of a delirious year, working and playing here. I discovered her city; she rediscovered it through my eyes, as well as opening her eyes to the possibility of escape from its confines. (For in this regard a city is like family as opposed to friends: the latter you chose yourself, the former chosen for you.)
We never lived here again. Never put the delirium of that year to the test of something more measured, along the lines of the lives ordinary Montevideans live. All of that living, the prosaic, was done within the jurisdiction of London, my antithesis to Montevideo, a place of work and stress and deberes.
In my fortnight here now, with my former in-laws up the road, the pale ghost of my marriage and its abrupt conclusion has haunted me. Any reader worth their salt might conclude that the love I feel for the city has a connection with the love I felt for Helena; just as the love she felt for the idea of escaping the city had a connection with the love she once felt for me. When our marriage ended, I often felt I would never return here, that this city would also be lost to me.
As one day, indeed, it might be. (As I write Ana interrupts to say that the theatre she had in mind for the play next year now seems to be booked for the time we wanted, throwing everything up in the air again.)
However, a marriage has nothing to do with place or time - the things which alter in the course of a marriage’s natural lifespan. It has to do with how the two people themselves connect, above and beyond circumstances, crises, failures, changes. Whether those two people still retain any kind of imperative to continue in the face of alteration.
We, evidently, did not. It’s only upon returning to Montevideo, after the event, that it’s possible to see how little our respective cities had to do with anything. Montevideo and London, it transpires, have as much significance as a favourite flavour of ice-cream.
+++
No comments:
Post a Comment