This Translation Tuesday, we present an extract of Marta Jiménez Serrano’s “We Have to Quit”, translated from the Spanish by Colleen Noland. The story follows the relationship of Marcelo and Eloísa, two Madrid twenty-somethings who meet while smoking outside a bar. Although they don’t know it yet, they will go on to spend four years together, after which there will be a hard break up. The cautious hang-out phase of their proto-relationship is described with lashings of portent, the doom and pathos underscored by gossipy asides from a catty chorus watching the tragedy unfold. You can almost picture popcorn on their laps.
The cigarette may burn, but it is our mouths that blow smoke.
—Julio Ramón Ribeyro
She’s been smoking ever since she was seventeen. Always Golden Virginias, always with the silver Zippo inherited from her Grandpa Juan, who smoked both because he liked it and because it pissed off her mom. She started smoking because she wanted to be like Grandpa Juan. And because she wanted to piss off her mom.
He’s been smoking ever since he was twenty-one. He started during his Erasmus exchange program because a girl at a party offered him a cigarette and he had to say yes. At first, he smoked Lucky Strike cigarettes until he switched to Pueblos around when everyone started rolling their own cigarettes. He then went back to Luckys for a while—it seemed more hygienic—and now he smokes black label Drums, which he rolls beforehand and carries with him in a cigarette case. Rolling tobacco is a lot cheaper, after all.
This story starts with a simple gesture: she holds her arm out, offering her lit Zippo without letting it go. He bends towards the flame and cups his hand to light his cigarette. It’s almost midnight on a Friday. They’re on Valencia Street, and she’s wearing black under a denim jacket. He’s wearing jeans, sneakers, and a sweatshirt. He straightens and takes a puff.
“Thanks.”
She closes the silver Zippo, puts it in her jacket pocket, and leans against the wall.
“You’re welcome.”
For a moment, that feels like the end of it: the conversation, the night, the possibilities. Because that’s how romances form in movies and some books. How else? They ask for a light, and that’s it. Reality’s never like that. In reality, she looks off into the distance while he looks at the ground, and they both wonder why no one else came out for a smoke. But then, a voice calls out from inside the bar.
“Elo! We’re getting another round—want me to get you one?”
They both turn their heads toward the door and shout yes. They then turn toward each other, confusion on his face, amusement on hers.
“Is your name Elo?” She arches her eyebrows and tosses her head, inhaling smoke.
“My name’s Marcelo. But yeah. Everyone calls me Elo.”
“You’re kidding,” she says. “Me too.”
“Your name’s Marcelo too?”
She smiles.
“My name’s Eloísa.”
So, needing a light was not enough but the coincidentally shared name is. Eloísa and Marcelo assume it’s inevitable for them to go back into the bar to find out together whose friend—it was hers—had ordered another round. Then inside, they feel almost obligated to share the beer, which technically belongs to both of them. The friend groups merge, one round follows another, and five hours later Elo and Elo are lying together naked, staring at her bedroom ceiling, and sharing a cigarette. He lights it with her silver Zippo, and when he says it’s a beautiful lighter—Don’t we all go quiet after sex and run out of things to say?—she just answers that she knows, and it belonged to her grandpa.
On the same night, Eloísa’s best friend, Javi, ends up sleeping with Pablo, Marcelo’s roommate. She will find out a few hours later from Javi’s three minute and forty-second-long voice message, followed by a text saying, Just call me. Marcelo will find out ten days later, when he wakes up one morning and finds Javi in his kitchen, wearing nothing but boxers and making coffee.
*
After that, everything we might expect to happen does. Perhaps even more. Marcelo sends her a WhatsApp message every morning during his subway ride, saying things like How was last night and What are you up to tonight and I’m leaving early today. Eloísa doesn’t answer until about noon, during her coffee and smoke break, texting something like, Sorry, mornings are so busy.
Eloísa works for a company that deals with global sustainability and ecology, though Marcelo will never know exactly what she does. One day she’ll get upset with him.
“You don’t even know what I do!” she’ll say.
And he’ll be offended.
“I listen to your office’s drama every night, I know every single one of your coworker’s names, the whole hierarchy—and you’re trying to tell me I don’t know what you do?”
But we’re not quite there yet.
For now, Marcelo thinks Eloísa’s job is honorable and charitable. (You have to admit, Marcelo, that it is.) Eloísa feels herself glowing when she talks to him about her work.
Marcelo is getting a doctorate in philosophy. A little late in life to be a doctoral candidate, he knows, but it’s the second degree he’s pursuing. He didn’t get the FPU scholarship and missed the FPI by just a few tenths of a point. At first, he wondered if he wasn’t as dedicated or intelligent as the winners. Then he concluded that unlike him, they probably hadn’t needed to work while going to school. Now he’s writing his dissertation: The Concept of Evil in Hannah Arendt or Hannah Arendt and Her Consequences or something about evil, banality, contemporaneity, or language—Eloísa will never know exactly what it is—and works for a digital media startup writing roughly thirteen articles a week for € 474.32. On Sundays and some Saturdays, he has drinks at the bar José Alfredo.
“And what will you do after getting your degree?” Eloísa will ask impatiently, one rainy afternoon after Marcelo tells her he’s going to ask for another extension.
“I guess I’ll have a PhD,” Marcelo will say.
“Yeah, but you said there are no job openings at the university,” she’ll say. And facing Marcelo’s silence she’ll add “Look, I’m going for a walk.”
His only response will be, “But what if it’s raining hard?”
Like we said, we’re not there yet. For now, Eloísa admires Marcelo for accepting that journalism wasn’t something he loved, and although he had finished that degree successfully, he had gone on to study philosophy despite the obstacles, all while working and lagging behind. And besides, he seemed so intelligent (he was intelligent, Eloísa, let’s give him that) when he talked about the implications of Hannah Arendt in contemporary discourse.
Marcelo texts Eloísa at 8:01. She responds at 12:07.
MARCELO
good morning, gorgeous
had a fun night with your friends?
wanna grab a beer around five?
ELOÍSA
Hey
Sure!
I don’t leave til 7, but free after that :)
He hasn’t criticized her yet for being unaffectionate.
She hasn’t criticized him yet for being unrealistic.
*
In one of those WhatsApp messages, he suggests they go to the movies, and she says ok, choosing the movie. When they leave the theater, they feel the cold air on their noses and cheeks. It’s very cold, they say. The movie wasn’t bad, they agree, but it wasn’t great either. They decide to have a cigarette before they go, so they each take one out and Eloísa lights both.
“See you next Saturday?” she says.
“I’m hanging out with another friend,” he says.
“Oh.” Eloísa takes a puff and Marcelo looks at her with a slight frown.
“We could hang out on Friday,” he says.
“I have plans on Friday,” she says.
“Oh.”
In almost perfect choreography, they both take a puff at the same time.
They will hang out on Sunday.
They will hang out on Sunday, but first, Eloísa will hang out with Javi. She’ll watch him climb the Palentino hill with his bike, which they will lock to a streetlight. They’ll start with a few beers, then move on to sandwiches because they need to eat something, and then later order some cheap gin and tonics from their same table throughout the evening. They’ll go to the bathroom several times and smoke every so often, Eloísa talking, and Javi relaxed. Javi with his patient expression. Javi who already knows what’s coming.
“But what do you want from this French guy? Weren’t you crazy about him before?”
Eloísa snorted. French guy! she thought with exasperation, taking a deep breath before nodding. Yes, she was crazy about him, but it was starting to get tiresome.
“It’s a pain in the ass,” she says forcefully, “to change the sheets all the time.”
Javi looks at her like ‘come on,’ so she explains. (But let’s agree, Eloísa, that nobody’s too lazy to change the sheets when they’re in a position to be doing it all the time. And let’s also agree it’s not always terrible, between one time and another, if it wasn’t messy, not to change them. Admit it. Sometimes you pretend to but don’t.)
“Elo, don’t talk to me about sheets. What’s really going on with you and this cocky guy?”
Eloísa doesn’t know, but she knows she doesn’t want a fling.
“I know I’m tired of fooling around, but I don’t want to get married tomorrow either. Y’know?”
Javi knows.
“But he told me he had a date with another friend—another friend—if you know what I mean.”
Javi knows exactly what she means. When Eloísa says another friend, she really means another girlfriend.
“And I’m not interested in being just another friend,” she continues. “But I don’t want to go and tell him all that because I’m going to look intense.”
“But you are intense,” Javi says.
But Elo doesn’t want to seem it, and she doesn’t want to get married. And she doesn’t want Elo—the other Elo—to hang out with another friend. Suddenly she feels the need to clarify.
“It’s great he has friends, though, right? Actually, it seems important,” and Javi laughs because the problem is so simple it’s complicated, and so complicated it’s simple.
“Talk to him.”
Yes, obviously the reasonable thing would be to talk to him about all this, not Javi. But Eloísa doesn’t want to talk to him about it with him and seem, be, intense. But she doesn’t want to not talk about it either. She would like things to be normal, to just go with the flow, but she already knows she’s incapable of letting anything just go with the flow.
“I mean, when I like a guy, I don’t want to be with anyone else.”
“That’s ok.”
“But that’s also a cultural thing and it’s okay to explore other things.”
“Mulholland Drive is also cultural, and I love it.”
Eloísa feels she loves Javi very much—because she loves him very much—and then she makes a fundamental decision. The decision to be spontaneous. To see how it goes next time.
“I haven’t texted him all week.” There’s a gleam of pride in her eyes. And it’s true, she hasn’t texted him once, even though she’s looked at his Facebook profile three times a day, listened to the complete Nacho Vegas album he talked about twice, and Googled “Sepúlveda” and “Hoces del Duratón” three times, because apparently his dad’s side of the family is from Sepúlveda and he grew up swimming in the Hoces del Duratón. But she hasn’t texted him. Because she’s been doing her own thing, which is just as important.
They don’t get up until the bar closes and then head down the hill. They share the last cigarette, walking the bike on one side. It wasn’t like Eloísa forgot to ask Javi how things were going with Pablo. She did. But there was hardly anything to talk about. Javi just repeated really good, really good, really good three times. Then he didn’t say anything. Things must have been going really good.
*
Marcelo hasn’t texted Eloísa this week either. But while he’s finishing an outline for a possible chapter, he lights a new cigarette, ashing into an empty Coke can, and Googles “synovitis hip.” It’s a condition Eloísa had when she was seven, which is especially dangerous at that age because there’s a risk of the bone being filed down and leaving you permanently a little crippled. That’s how Eloísa put it, adding drama to the story. Permanently a little crippled. She spent two months on bed rest getting penicillin shots in her hip, or ‘painfuls’ as she put it. To this day she’ll sometimes remember in the middle of sex and stop dead in her tracks, then start moving her hip again, but slowly. According to Google, everything Eloísa said about synovitis is true. So he Googles the name of her company, Ecosystem, and looks her up in the staff directory. He sees her there in an ill-fitting white shirt and innocent expression, her medium-length hair parted to the side, and her round glasses.
He hears a key and pauses to listen. Pablo comes in with someone. He bets it’s Javi. Yep, it’s definitely Javi. Marcelo sighs, finishes his cigarette, and goes to the living room to be polite.
“Hey, how’s it going?” Marcelo says. “Don’t worry, I’ll let you be. Just wanted to come out and say hello.”
He feels Javi’s gaze examining him from top to bottom and moving beyond the living room to pause on the crack of his bedroom door. Marcelo makes a point of mentioning that he hasn’t been out all day and won’t be going out tonight. He’s focused on his dissertation. His days consist of reading and writing about philosophy.
“Want a beer?” he says. “Don’t worry, I’ll get it. And then I’ll leave you alone. Three’s a crowd.”
*
“We have to quit,” Eloísa says, closing her eyes as she exhales gray cigarette smoke. It’s hard to believe how much pleasure exists in that exhale.
“Yeah, we should,” Marcelo responds, taking out his cigarette case. They walk out of the restaurant holding each other’s waists with their free hand and languidly holding a cigarette in the other. They’re happy, and even though it’s the end of autumn, the weather’s nice. It’s warm, but pleasant. They’re happy and in love, or something akin to love. They’ve just started dating, after all.
The conversation went more or less smoothly between appetizers and the first course, or so Eloísa will tell Javi. It’s a statement that will obviously be a tremendous lie, a tremendous lie that Eloísa will tell her friends and herself.
“I don’t plan on seeing anyone else if we’re going to keep seeing each other,” she blurted.
He opened his eyes wide.
“Ok.”
There was silence. Eloísa’s eyes behind her round glasses. Her hair just reaching her chin.
“What about you?”
It was unclear whether she posed a question or a threat, but it didn’t matter. Marcelo wiped his mouth with a napkin and let himself be overcome by the words of a man in love (because he really was in love, Eloísa. You have to admit it.)
“Of course,” he said “Yes, of course. I really love you. I want everything with you.”
Eloísa tensed and raised her left eyebrow over her glasses. Well, she hadn’t said everything. She hadn’t said I love you either. She looked at him and considered quickly. She didn’t say I love you back, but she held out her hand. She didn’t say everything, but she smiled and kissed him. Marcelo’s unconditionality was both overwhelming and attractive.
Marcelo was surprised he needed to clarify. He watched her talking across the table and felt her nervousness, eyes dropping and hands fidgeting in her lap. It was obvious, he thought. They were serious. It was obvious he was in love. He really liked Eloísa and imagined himself with her forever. She was what gave meaning to his story. Marcelo had already played the role of a Don Juan. He’d been with lots of girls, let himself be loved, and now wanted his happy ending. His ‘with you it’s different’ story, his ‘It’s you I want to marry’ story.
They leave the restaurant happy and determined to love each other. They each light a cigarette and walk, holding onto each other. Marcelo inhales, knitting his brows. Eloísa exhales, closing her eyes. Marcelo coughs. Eloísa looks at the ash about to fall.
“We have to quit,” they say.
There—barely thirty minutes after becoming exclusive, after really becoming boyfriend and girlfriend, as we say—the breakup begins. Admitted and made explicit by both of them: they have to quit. But the breakup still has four years to form, grow, and settle down. Four years from today, they will have celebrated their anniversary for the fourth time in this same restaurant. Which is nothing special, except that it’s where they started officially dating. When Eloísa tells him on the day they break up to sit down and “We have to quit,” in the middle of their kitchen, she will feel like she’s only confirming what they both already know. What they both always knew. Because when she leaves him, the only thing that makes sense is to break up. Because it seems like they walked this road to get here, to prove that they shouldn’t be together at all. All the cards had to be placed so the house could collapse.
She was never affectionate, Marcelo will then think.
He was never realistic, Eloísa will then think.
For now, they’ll continue to walk arm in arm and happy.
Translated from the Spanish by Colleen Noland
Marta Jiménez Serrano (b. 1990, Madrid) is a writer. Her collection of poems La edad ligera (Rialp, 2021) was runner-up for the Adonáis Prize 2020. Her novel Los nombres propios (Sexto Piso, 2021) was translated into Italian and selected by El Cultural as one of the best debut novels of the year. Her latest book is No todo el mundo (Sexto Piso, 2023).
Colleen Noland is a literary translator pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing and Translation at the University of Arkansas. She is the nonfiction editor of The Arkansas International and has served as an assistant fiction and nonfiction editor for Moon City Review. Her translations and original fiction have appeared in LOGOS, Four Way Review, and Resistir, a Latin American poetry anthology.
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