filled with blood, that it must’ve been one of those gangs. They say he was a regular at the strip clubs, that he rubbed shoulders with underworld types, that he had racked up debts in almost every store on his street. They say that there’s some bleached-blond Russian girl who’s young enough to be his daughter. They say that that friend of his who came here with him did him no favors; we all know his sort, a dismal character if ever there was one, a regular ray of sunshine. They say that aside from the blood and all that, his apartment was a shithole—dust everywhere, the dirty dishes untouched, that goes without saying, the bucket where he put his dirty laundry filled to the brim and overflowing, smelling like a pirate’s lair. Filth and rum. They say that he lived like an animal, the poor guy, that that’s no way to live, although by all accounts he had his moments and he clearly sometimes realized the error of his ways, for he’d call people up in the early hours of morning, even his in-laws once in a while, only to fall silent, all you could hear was his heavy breathing on the other end of the line, before hanging up all of a sudden, without even bothering to pick up if his call was returned. They say that pride is a very bad thing, that no good can come of all that pride, that it was in fact that pride, more than anything else, that was his undoing, They say he took his medicine however he damn well pleased. They say all of that. They say he didn’t even own an iron.
9
(alone on stage)
I’m not quite sure why I went to Jacobo’s apartment or what I was looking for when I began to search his shelves and open all of the drawers, one by one. I pulled the door firmly shut behind me, donned his slippers, brewed some coffee, and got ready to stay there all afternoon long, taking my time, in the very place we had so often stayed up till dawn, discussing this, that, and the other. On my last visit, we had gotten bogged down in a conversation about the meaninglessness of it all, and he had asked me to change the subject, when, apropos of nothing in particular, we began riffing on the idea of the black infinity in which our planet floats, like a rudderless ship sailing on an ocean of anguish. He preferred more earthbound subjects and had lately been harking back to the past more than was usual in him, recounting the odd episode from his rural childhood—part picaresque, part nostalgia, and part horror—and his years spent at a Salesian boarding school, and his first brushes with love, which arrived without prior warning with all that hitherto unknown trembling, the first panic attack, an aching as incomprehensible as it was real, your skin torn off in strips by the love that has just savaged you minutes after the girl of your dreams first appeared on the scene like a carnivorous plant. The trap sprung by the pink dress, the ribbon in the hair, the gentleness that, when you least expect it, leaves your heart fraying at the edges and bearing tooth marks. Desire like a whiplash, the prie-dieu in the darkest corner of the chapel. The knees red and raw from all that kneeling and praying. The knees red and raw also from all those falls, from the thorny bushes on the flatland that looked from afar like a garden. We were discussing all this, somewhat in the abstract and without getting down to the specifics, the girls who plucked us from our childhoods without the slightest compassion, and the fear that hovered in the air, though always left unspoken, when the time came to take her hand in yours under an almond tree in bloom, and all that innocence that cuts through you like a rusty sword, the pale hands that daintily place in your chest, forevermore, a sorrow that is there to stay.
There was the battered leather armchair in which he liked to lounge and read and from which, just four days previously, he had held forth on Proust, waving airily with his glasses in one hand, and the yellow- and orange-hued checked blanket
9
(alone on stage)
I’m not quite sure why I went to Jacobo’s apartment or what I was looking for when I began to search his shelves and open all of the drawers, one by one. I pulled the door firmly shut behind me, donned his slippers, brewed some coffee, and got ready to stay there all afternoon long, taking my time, in the very place we had so often stayed up till dawn, discussing this, that, and the other. On my last visit, we had gotten bogged down in a conversation about the meaninglessness of it all, and he had asked me to change the subject, when, apropos of nothing in particular, we began riffing on the idea of the black infinity in which our planet floats, like a rudderless ship sailing on an ocean of anguish. He preferred more earthbound subjects and had lately been harking back to the past more than was usual in him, recounting the odd episode from his rural childhood—part picaresque, part nostalgia, and part horror—and his years spent at a Salesian boarding school, and his first brushes with love, which arrived without prior warning with all that hitherto unknown trembling, the first panic attack, an aching as incomprehensible as it was real, your skin torn off in strips by the love that has just savaged you minutes after the girl of your dreams first appeared on the scene like a carnivorous plant. The trap sprung by the pink dress, the ribbon in the hair, the gentleness that, when you least expect it, leaves your heart fraying at the edges and bearing tooth marks. Desire like a whiplash, the prie-dieu in the darkest corner of the chapel. The knees red and raw from all that kneeling and praying. The knees red and raw also from all those falls, from the thorny bushes on the flatland that looked from afar like a garden. We were discussing all this, somewhat in the abstract and without getting down to the specifics, the girls who plucked us from our childhoods without the slightest compassion, and the fear that hovered in the air, though always left unspoken, when the time came to take her hand in yours under an almond tree in bloom, and all that innocence that cuts through you like a rusty sword, the pale hands that daintily place in your chest, forevermore, a sorrow that is there to stay.
There was the battered leather armchair in which he liked to lounge and read and from which, just four days previously, he had held forth on Proust, waving airily with his glasses in one hand, and the yellow- and orange-hued checked blanket
Similar Books
