The Expelled by Mois Benarroch Page B

reproaches my lack of interest about money. I say it's time she learned Hebrew, after more than twenty years in Israel, twenty-five, or twenty-seven, I don't remember what number I said. She gets very upset, she finally yells, finally something other than that nervous apathy that makes me crazy comes out of her. I drink the apple tea that I brought a few months ago from Turkey, almost a year ago and that I forgot in the cupboard. In Turkey, you spend the entire day drinking glasses of apple tea and then you buy a package to bring back to Israel and you never drink that tea. I love Turkey.
    She leaves, and when she does Gabriele junior calls me, she asks me again about my wife's cooking.
    “It feels like a déjà vu, didn't you ask me that yesterday?”
    “I don't remember. Why are you still with her?”
    “I don't know. Sometimes I think that the only thing we have left is the past.”
    “And isn’t it enough?” She hangs up.
    Isn’t it enough? Good question, It's what I've been asking myself for years before the past began, isn’t it enough? I could ask myself that same question a thousand times, isn’t it enough? Isn’t it enough? Isn’t it enough? Isn’t it enough? It's not a repetition exercise, I just can't stop asking myself that same question, it's like a song in which Van Morrison doesn't stop repeating the same line. Luckily he doesn't sing in Spanish.
    I realize there is a problem with tenses throughout the story. But the problem is its own solution. When one tells what has happened he is already in another present, and in that present the events happen again, and for the first time.
    For that reason, and therefore, I get up and I go downtown to sell five books. It's been ages since I've sold a book, I always tell my wife and kids to do it because I can't get rid of books. I even take one of mine to see how much I get for it, I hop on the bus, line 18, which goes slowly. I arrive at the bookstore in Yaffo street, a nice cashier is talking to a buyer who buys about five books including a Bible, I wonder why someone would buy a Bible if right across from here they actually give them away, in all colors and sizes, with or without the New Testament and in all languages. In the end, he pays by credit card. When my turn comes and I ask if they buy books, the cashier tells me that the owner is not there and that she doesn't have the authority to do so. I go to the house of cigar and buy two boxes of Partagas Cuban cigars, I support Fidel Castro. At the station I see a new kiosk selling falafel and cappuccinos, I buy a falafel and before taking the first bite the bus arrives, number 21, the one that takes me home, but before I pass by the post office, there are three more books waiting for me there, more because I no longer have room for books, one by Fernando Vallejo, short stories by Reinaldo Arenas and another by Esther Bendahan.
    I have made up my mind to read everything that is written in Spanish, or at least browse a maximum number of books. With six pages you know a lot about a book, and even with less pages, with its title, the cover, the face of the author, the publishing year, the number of pages, you don't have to read them all. But I read a lot. This year I have read a lot and I have written a lot, and I still have a few days left until the end of the year. With books, I get rejection letters, publishers still enjoy that luxury, but they will have time to regret. You can say that I answer to the description of the wicked writer, I am almost fifty, I'm fat, bald, I have published in small agencies, bad distribution, eulogistic criticism, few sales, attacks, indifference, self-publishing and a hundred rejection letters. But all this is going to end, right? What do you think, Gabrielle? Is it going to end or not? Or is it just a small break? That's what scares me, and filling pages because I already know how this story ends and it has a happy ending, at least for the reader, but not for me, I'll still