That's Life

 

Emboldened by a sense of life very much his own, they said that he set out to be nothing, nothing at all (a strenuous task if you will). He lived beyond days, weeks and months, and years were not of his concern. Some folks, always ready for those sightings, began to see him in a different light; maybe he was truly not of this world. But others, the jugglers and  jesters in town, said things with a smile and even asked for something of his body, just for the living room they said, or perhaps bedroom. All that and more, the daily fun and games never missing.

Then one day he got up feeling he had arrived, or so he said, because he spoke on the sidelines of tenses. The truth is that he moved like no one on the streets, and people noticed. Free at last. He was now nothing, nothing at all of this world.

When careless, in his euphoria (or who knows), stepping off the sidewalk, he got on the wrong trip with a delivery truck, dragged for what seemed an eternity. A horrid death.

That’s life, now people say. The worst they could say in his memory. But, then,  by saying so they are confirming the validity of his escape –or quest.   

 

 

     

 

Party

  

The guy came out of nowhere, as if lacking a true face, or so it seemed, with a certain whiteness of hands and gestures. Tight-lipped, he looked like the type reluctant to speak the words, the expected words, like those children who refuse to smile at the photographer's lens. But something about him, I don’t know, he couldn’t fool me (there, underneath, deep down, the scream was there). In his eyes, you could tell the intention, someone who kept some secret, the secret of the other who looks at him (his eyes in the mirror like those eyes in a painting that follow you). I wanted, what’s more, I would . . . But then, at that moment I heard my name. Back outside the bathroom, the crowd, the music; someone had crack-opened the door, Janet was calling me.

He disappeared from the mirror.

 

The dream (or movie)

The dream about a film, or the film about a dream, I can’t hardly tell anymore (as always happens, like a child grabbing on to the rest arms, trying to prolong the movie’s last gleams, before being splashed with light in the Lyceum, snapped out of the Sunday matinee and back to the alcoholic father stumbling home later tonight).

What remains with me is the end, something of a young lady whose incongruent face I can’t tell anymore if smiling, but nothing ironic, appears at the end talking about the characters, in what seems like a French New Wave film from the early 60s. In that last coda of a scene, the camera cuts to her boyfriend (I don’t remember the other characters) now sitting next to her, and the actor says that when he turns 60 he’ll start worrying about his final act, but for now life is rolling. At that point the young lady turns and looks at me, to the camera, and her face freezes on the screen. With that freeze-frame the movie ends. But it turns out they were all dead, all the actors, even she (the movie being so old).

I don’t remember if they knew it, that the movie would eventually come to a freeze, and hence the incongruity of the young lady who looking into the film from an outside perspective, she too was playing her role; as if actors could not escape, talking, smiling, dancing, kissing, making love scenes, as if those in that movie would always be walking the Paris postcard streets. And yet there was something about her face, about her eyes when she looked straight at the camera, something that stays with me to this day, as if deep down she knew (about the freeze frame).

Indocumentada

 

Me preguntaban si conocía a aquella mujer no tan joven. Su mirada insistente, como si dependiera de mi reconocimiento para salvarse, para tener vida en este mundo.

Había en ella, en sus ojos, luces de recuerdos ya inexistentes; me miraba como si penetrara esta vestimenta de tiempo, como si penetrara mis luces más sombrías por dentro. Engatusamientos, supuse, embelecos de mujer que no parpadea.

No obstante, hubiera querido decir que sí. Pero me arriesgaba. Al fin he dicho que no, y fue el gran pesar: sus ojos se humedecieron, reflejaban la mayor tristeza, la más pura desesperanza. Y desapareció en el hueco oscuro de la noche. Quise pero no alcancé siquiera a consolarla.    

Luego he sabido era mi hermana, según Mamá me ha confesado (aquel aborto  tardío y bochornoso).

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Undocumented  

 They asked if I knew the woman, not so young; something about her face, what exactly, I couldn’t tell. Her insistent eyes, as if she depended on my recognition to save herself, to have a life in this world.

Again, there was something in her, in her eyes, like glimmers of memories not unfamiliar; she looked at me as if piercing this new look of the times, these smart clothes, as if penetrating into my darker lights inside. Crafty lady, I told myself, deceits of a woman who doesn’t blink.

Even so, I wanted to say yes. But I was taking a risk, too much of a risk. I finally said no, and it was the greatest sorrow: her eyes filled with tears, reflecting the greatest sadness, pure hopelessness.  I wanted to comfort her, but it was too late. She disappeared into the dark hole of the night, as a reflection in a mirror.

Later I’ve known the truth. She was my sister, according to Mom’s confession (that late and shameful abortion).