“A good watch is like a good novel, it contains time and beauty”

He titles his latest novel Nosotros: who are we?.

Oliver Thansan
Oliver Thansan
04 June 2023 Sunday 04:22
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“A good watch is like a good novel, it contains time and beauty”

He titles his latest novel Nosotros: who are we?

Those of us who live

We sixties.

Fucking six! Out. I feel twenty!

We the happy ones.

I am in love with life, I am happy. Did your parents want you to be happy?

Yeah.

Well, you honor them: be happy, be joyful!

We atheists?

Since I reread My Last Breath.

The memories of the hand Luis Buñuel.

I reread them when I turned 60 and whenever I go through a delicate trance, as was the case.

Wasn't he an atheist before?

He was agnostic. I am now a joyous atheist.

Joyful?

The beauty of life does not need a creator.

Since when do you taste beauty?

As a child I used to hear that my parents were handsome: that's when I entered the order of the beautiful.

Let's follow the thread of the beautiful, then.

If we follow him... we get here.

Here? It is the sideboard of a jewelry store.

Look what beautiful watches!

Of gold...

Gold remains, it is heritable.

Hands: hours, minutes, seconds...

They contain time and beauty, like a good novel.

I see luxury.

I see beauty: I value it more than the rich man who frivolizes it. And that is my tragedy!

Which?

I have good taste and I have no money. Ah, the gold Cartier! Look at it, how precious!

Square case, Roman numerals...

They invented the hours, the Romans.

...blue needles...

They are heaven. And the very fine second hand enters each second and goes through it, because it is wind-up. He does not advance by leaps, like the democratic quartz clocks...

...bevel screws...

They screw up time. This gold Cartier is the watch I want! It's 17,000 euros...

Prices come up a lot in his novels.

I put them up for a militant act of precision. The price is accurate to describe, more than an adjective! It's hypocritical to cover it up.

We capitalists?

Your money gives you independence and freedom.

There are watches more expensive than Cartier.

Yes, Rolex from 30,000 euros... but they are heavy, ostentatious: they are far from beauty.

Would you dare to compare those watches with literary works?

A Rolex is a Proust: overwhelming heaviness. A Cartier is a Scott Fitzgerald: enchanting lightness, elf.

He started as a poet: value some.

Vicente Aleixandre and Federico García Lorca have a mysterious spell: it is easy to feel and difficult to explain.

Now he mentions Lorca, before he mentioned his colleague Buñuel...

From Lorca I learn mystery and from Buñuel I learn to see the world as a great comedy. Nothing light, but very deep.

We, the drinkers?

A divorce and the death of my mother overlapped me: I got drunk, there I abandoned the reins of my life.

We, the ex-alcoholics?

Until June 9, 2014, I drank alcohol: I haven't had a drop since that day.

And was he born again?

Between drinking and living, I chose the v: I refounded my psyche. And I can count it. Anything you can count is fine.

And tell what you will tell, Ordesa devastated.

He connected with the Spanish lower middle class, their daily odysseys, their car models... My father's patriotism consisted of always driving a Seat, without giving up. First a 600, then an 850...

My father the same! Then a 124, then a Seat 1430...

Exactly! And then a Seat Málaga, which was my father's last car.

And mine the same! He just died.

Did he die well?

Sweetly, without suffering, in peace.

In suffering there is no beauty. I will want euthanasia, to die without agony, without sordidness, without disrupting anyone's life. With elegance, let's go: I have every right.

We, the ones with the kisses?

The erotic, deep kiss, with tongue, changes your life: you enter another dimension.

We, the lovers?

You fall in love and feel euphoria, an urge to live: it's addictive, like alcohol. It is tempered so that we can stay alive.

We, the teachers?

As a teacher, I used to put Berlanga's executioner on my students and I would die laughing when I saw it. And they looked at me. The good teacher infects the student with joy, faith in life.

We, the writers?

The great good is life. Literature is just that little light with which to be able to see something of life to tell it, to celebrate it.