Work Text:
Te encuentro y te acompaño
de negro y oro por caminos ajenos
Me está dado mirarte con amor
en la ausencia:
Déjate amar en tu rincón, en tu quietud
de muérdago silvestre
(Susana Thenon, La Morada Imposible)
Hyde has an unusual obsession: he touches up his mascara after the concert as if he would find a rare tranquility that the end of the show does not grant him in such perfectionist gesture. He looks at himself in the mirror of the shabby room he shares with the other band members; he gazes shamelessly, deeply, trying to define himself from the impassive image the glass reflects back. He likes his large, round eyes, rare on the streets of Kitaku; he likes the invisible line that harmonizes his childlike features; he likes the cautious subtlety he deliberately imparts to his androgynous portrait movements. He knows that the enormous crowd (it seems enormous to Hyde) cheering him on just a few meters from the stage also appreciates his unique characteristics. He dares to think what many artists have decreed about their own work: “They only like it because it’s different; they don’t value it, they don’t understand it. They like it because it makes the everyday dimensions of what they see seem strange.” Hyde judges himself as if his body were an object; a tribute to the unreachable gods of music, the representation of a cluster of false beliefs that the band’s followers have ennobled in their favor. “They don’t understand my lyrics,” Hyde says as if his lament were more than just a theatrical and melodious phrase. Another band member mocks him, laughs with a knowing grin and hands him a plastic cup containing a small portion of imported wine that the motel owner brought them just a few hours ago when a boy that looked lost handed them the bottle on behalf of a lover. Hyde declines the wine and looks for his cigarette pack; he finds it empty and curses slowly, ignoring the happiness that fills the rest of his bandmates, who are high-fiving, clinking utensils, laughing, and indulging in irregular substances. He crosses his arms, irritated, squints, and barely bites his lower lip; someone brushes the tip of his nose with a paper tube that smells of tobacco, and Hyde quickly lifts his gaze, throwing a mix of questions at the figure who preempted this crisis. He then takes the cigarette abruptly, dryly, silently indicating to the drummer that he has no desire to thank him for his unusual kindness. He suddenly stands up and steps out onto the motel's porch, awkwardly leaning against the wooden structure that encloses the row of rooms. He sighs in anguish. Only then does he realize that he has no fire and that his light clothes are too thin to keep him warm in the cold of the night. He plays with the cigarette between his fingers until he forgets the chilling air, and his gaze hides in the distant lights of the city of Tachikawa; he closes his eyes and still captures the yellow glow of that landscape, which in his mind only has a two-tone correspondence. Thus, Hyde breathes the forest air, looks at his nails, and thinks about abandoning his inaugural life as a singer. With desolation, he contemplates an imaginary world that knows nothing but a grotesque facet of the truth, which turns subjects into objects of fetish, and, a terrible thing, does not attempt to decode the syllables of his songs. With disdain, he listens to that small, unhealthy world made up of his own travel companions; they find, Hyde thinks, the coveted happiness in the money resulting from a handful of frivolous performances. He loses control of his outburst, and tries to shout something at the revelers inside the room, but soon discovers that his rage is nothing but envy. It would be too unfair to also be entitled to exultant happiness. From one moment to the next, Hyde, not quite sure why, rejects the possibility of borrowing a lighter from Sakura (he always carries one; he keeps a small, burnished, and worn lighter in his Argentine leather coat solely to light the rolls of heroin from the Golden Triangle more quickly). Hyde smiles stupidly as he recalls his vague attempt to resist consuming more of that fickle, light, whitish powder; he evokes the sweet and violent trips he occasionally longs for, on evenings dressed in colors like these, on afternoons prefigured by canvases overthrown, in turn, by the hand of that cruel abnormality that, tenderly, is innate to him. He holds onto the fleeting seconds in which adrenaline harasses him until it sprays against the tiny particles of the capital poison. Maybe, Hyde thinks, maybe a trip would calm me; and then he gives up, enjoying the idea of being the cautious emperor of his own vices. He anxiously looks at the half-open door and focuses on that lighter, on the cold of the night, on the movement of the creaking wood in the adjoining rooms. Something bothers him and forces him to frequent that thoughtless and warlike space he traces in his dreams; he begins to question existential matters, dissolving into his silent replies. He wants to find a reason to hold on in the sea of vanity and promises that he sometimes glimpses, not far from the path he walks. He opens his eyes, yearning with all his soul for the warmth of a lit cigarette. The disjointed laughter grows and fades within fifteen seconds, and Hyde suddenly perceives a strong foreign perfume, the remnants of alcohol among a fragrance like bergamot. Before turning his head to give substance to suspicion, he realizes that his mind has already identified the presence, that his immobile gestures accepted long ago the companion's vigil. Sakura says few words; Hyde doubles his silences. He gets tangled in the childish certainty of knowing he's being understood in that denied ellipsis, smiling at times, waiting impatiently for his opponent to be the first to give up in the duel of withheld messages. Unintentionally, he discovers that he has left behind the violent fury towards the world: it no longer bothers him to remain another quarter of an hour in front of the desolate forest, he has completely forgotten his capricious desire crystallized in a cigarette. But Sakura sees the cylinder between his fingers and hands him the lighter Hyde had speculated (or, if you prefer, fantasized) about, without making that quick, expert gesture the other longed for, and that unsettles him. Hyde blinks several times, looking at him dismayed; then he composes himself. Sakura asks if he wants a light, and Hyde crudely confesses his small victory happiness; he nods, inhales the tobacco, and realizes too late that the other man is eliciting in him a delayed response to a drug that was never administered. Hyde feels uneasy but gradually despairs; he loses control with the sweet cadence of an arpeggio, interpreting with his eyes the crescendo of the climax. He moves his lips when the inevitable end kills the echoes of his fluctuating voice. He writes in his mind the syllables of that haiku: "Were you not here / the forest would be / too vast." He wakes up when he notices Sakura's fingers on his mouth: "It was about to fall," he says, pointing to the cigarette. Hyde whispers something inaudible that the drummer doesn't bother to guess. Sakura takes a drag from that cigarette and hands it back to its owner. Hyde hides a smirk in the prevailing temperature; he doesn't want to admit he is partially smiling. He understands, in a cracked and blurred way, that he now retains the taste of his companion's lips. He looks at him intently and wonders, what else has been captured? The night no longer seems incomprehensible.