The Woman in Valencia by Annie Perreault (book recommendations website txt) 📗

in the Plaza de la Virgen, the bullfighting arena outside the train station. She writes almost nothing in her journal, barely takes any photos.

The ghost of the woman in Valencia looms large, but Claire delays her visit to the office of unclaimed bodies; she finds excuses, blames the time difference. The fog lingers. Instead of piecing together the woman in Valencia’s story, she finds herself stumbling over her own narrative, which is blocking the view. She’s become the main focus, everything here leading her right back to herself, her indifference, her fatigue. She thinks back to the Nicolas Bouvier quotation memorized from reading and rereading The Way of the World on all her travels; she’d inscribed it in red marker inside her very first backpack: “Travelling outgrows its motives. It soon proves sufficient in itself. You think you are making a trip, but soon it is making you—or unmaking you,” and she wonders what happened to that longing for far-off places that had once consumed her, before.

KILOMETRE 26

… what I’d like, now that I’ve caught my breath, is to go in search of what was broken and lost here, I know full well that this race, this trivial effort of running 42.2 km in under four hours, won’t save anything, won’t bring my mother back, won’t explain the inexplicable or console the inconsolable, yet I keep running, I run because, like my mother, I have a deep thirst, I don’t want to be held back, I’ve come here looking for the light that my mother never found, or that she lost, I feel the need to speed up, the urge to raise my arms, flip off the world, show how fast and how well I can run, it’s been a long time since I heard the concerned whispers—those kids, those poor kids—that no one dared utter in front of my brother and me, I’ll show them that nothing can stop me, not heartbreak or loss, I slice through the air without slowing down, fuelled by fire and light, I won’t falter, not me, I’ll defy the odds, I’ll fly in the face of tragedy, I’ll throw it in their face—my triumph, my sub-four-hour marathon…

KILOMETRE 27

Elegant, you were born at night

Sewn by soft hands

Oh the softest hands

Born in solitude

Born of painted eyes

Painted eyes

That always looked to the sky

Oh those eyes

Oh those eyes

They saw forever

… you always liked this song, were always playing it at home and in the car, I like it, too, I don’t know what there is about it, something funny about the rhythm that makes me feel light and bouncy, like I’m taking flight with each step, I find my fire again, I speed up, that kilometre flew by…

Oh those eyes

They saw forever

KILOMETRE 28

… as I’m running, I’m thinking about how you also ran in Valencia, not a marathon, but dozens of kilometres nonetheless, the day after that incident on the roof, you’d written in your journal: “I have to keep moving,” and when you eventually returned to the city, I have no idea where your steps took you, you were training for the Chicago marathon at the time, which you never ended up running, I wonder if you’re running still…

… I’m worried about my brother, you know, with all his manias and compulsions, he’s the one who suffered most when you left because he didn’t have the words, he also didn’t have the anger he would have needed to release the tension, he never accepted your disappearance, he’s still waiting for you, patiently, like the little boy who used to call out for a bedtime story from beneath the covers, do you remember that story about a civilization of tiny people who lived in a tree, the book we got for Christmas that I didn’t want to read because I thought it was boring, Toby who ends up on the run searching for his parents, that story that you read to him, and only him, one chapter at a time? I can picture you snuggled up next to my little brother, folded awkwardly on his narrow bed, your voice soft and gentle when really you must have already been falling apart, it was me who read him the second book after you left, Dad didn’t have the heart for it, after all the adventures and all the misfortune, everyone was reunited and lived happily ever after…

KILOMETRE 29

… Plaza del Ayuntamiento, I was near here yesterday, over there, I think, I drank an ice-cold horchata, this two-hundred-year-old square with the pretty ceramic, I have a picture of me as a kid in this same spot, I’m licking my fingers, the tip of my nose is dusted with powdered sugar, I’m sitting next to my mother who’s got one elbow propped on the white marble, head resting in her palm, staring off into space, somewhere off camera, her face creased with exhaustion, and that same shuttered expression that always made her look so mysterious—a patrician arrangement of features, an aristocratic countenance that always, in all circumstances, gave off the vibe of a woman impossible to read, on her wrist she’s wearing a twisted bracelet, which I claimed and now wear for special occasions…

KILOMETRE 30

… I spot the bullfighting arena on my left and the massive train station, Estació del Nord, straight ahead, headed in the opposite direction, the fast runners are already on their last few kilometres, just look at their form, like wild animals, as for me, I’ve still got a long way to go, a church and a few shops, finally some shade, a slanted building in the distance, the MuVIM gardens in the intersection, I have a better idea of where I am now, all those faces in the crowd, there’s no way she’s in there, how is it that after all these years I’m still hoping she’ll appear, I