II. CHANCE
1. I asked him how old he thought I was. He said sixty, although he knew I wasn’t that old. Do I look that bad? I asked. Worse, he said. And you think you’re in better shape? I said. How come you’re shaking, then? Are you cold? Have you gone crazy? And why are you telling me about Commissioner Damian Valle anyway? Is he still the commissioner? Is he still the same? The old guy said Valle had changed a bit, but he was still a prize son of a bitch. Is he still the commissioner? He might as well be, he said. If he wants to do you harm, he will, even if he’s retired or dying in hospital. I thought for a few minutes and then asked him again why he was shaking. I’m cold, he said (the liar), and my teeth hurt. I don’t want to hear any more about Don Damian, I said. Do you think I’m friends with that pig? Do you think I associate with thugs? No, he said. Well I don’t want to hear any more about him. 2. He reflected for a while. What about, I really don’t know. Then he gave me a crust of bread. It was hard and I said if he ate food like that it wasn’t surprising his teeth hurt. We eat better in the asylum, I said, and that’s saying something. Get out of here, Vicente, said the old guy. Does anyone know you’re here? Well, good for you. Make yourself scarce before they realize. Don’t say hello to anyone. Keep your eyes on the ground and get out of here as fast as you can. 3. But I didn’t leave right away. I squatted down in front of him and tried to remember the good times. My mind was blank. It felt like something was burning in my head. The old guy pulled his blanket tighter around him and moved his jaws as if he was chewing, but there was nothing in his mouth. I remembered the years in the asylum: the injections, the hosing-down, the ropes they used for tying us up at night, many of us anyway. I saw those funny beds again, the ones with a clever system of pulleys that can be used to hoist them into an upright position. It took me five years to work out what they were for. The patients called them American beds. 4. Can a human being who is used to sleeping horizontally fall asleep in an upright position? Yes. It’s difficult at first. But if the person is properly tied, it’s possible. That’s what the American beds were for, sleeping vertically as well as horizontally. Not, as I originally thought, to punish the patients, but to prevent them from choking on their own vomit and dying. 5. Naturally, there were patients who spoke to the American beds. They addressed them politely. They confided in them. Some patients were also afraid of them. Some claimed to have been winked at by a certain bed. One patient said that another bed had raped him. A bed fucked you up the ass? You’ve really lost it, pal! The American beds were said to walk along the corridors at night, straight and tall, and gather to chat in the refectory—they spoke English—and all of them attended those meetings, the beds that were empty and the ones that weren’t, and naturally these stories were told by the patients who for one reason or another happened to be tied to the beds on meeting nights. 6. Otherwise, life in the asylum was very quiet. Shouts could be heard coming from certain restricted areas. But no one approached those areas or opened the door or put their ear to the keyhole. The house was quiet, and the park—tended by gardeners who were crazy too and not allowed to leave, but not as crazy as the others—was quiet as well, and the road you could see through the pines and the poplars was quiet, and even our thoughts, as they occurred to us, were enveloped in a frightening silence. 7. In certain respects, the living was easy. Sometimes we’d look at each other and feel privileged. We’re crazy, we’re innocent. The only thing that spoiled that feeling was anticipation, when there was something to anticipate. But most of the patients had a remedy for that: ass-fucking the weaker ones or getting ass-fucked. Did I do that? we used to say. Did I really do that? And then we’d smile and change the subject. The doctors, the lofty physicians, had no idea, and as long as we didn’t bother the nurses and the aides, they turned a blind eye. We did get carried away a few times. Man is an animal. 8. That’s what I used to think sometimes. The thought formed in the center of my brain. And I concentrated on that thought until my mind went blank. Sometimes, at the beginning, I could hear something like tangling cables. Electrical cables or snakes. But as a rule, especially as those scenes receded into the past, my mind would go blank: no noises, no images, no words, no breakwaters of words. 9. Anyway, I’ve never assumed that I’m smarter than anybody else. I’ve never been an intellectual show-off. If I’d been to school, I’d be a lawyer or a judge now. Or the inventor of a new, improved American bed! I have words, that much I humbly admit. But I don’t make a big deal about it. And just as I have words, I have silence. You’re as silent as a cat, the old guy told me when I was still a kid, though he was old already then. 10. I wasn’t born here. According to the old guy, I was born in Zaragoza and my mother had no choice but to come and live in this city. One city or another, it makes no difference to me. If I hadn’t been poor, I would have been able to study here. It doesn’t matter! I learned to read. That’s enough! Best not to dwell on that subject. I could have got married here too. I met a girl who was called, I forget, she had a typical girl’s name, and at one point I could have married her. Then I met another girl, older than me, a foreigner like me, from somewhere in the south, Andalusia or Murcia, a slut who was always in a bad mood. I could have started a family with her too, made a home, but I was destined for other things, and so was the slut. 11. Sometimes I found the city stifling. Too small. I felt as if I was locked in a crossword puzzle. 12. Around that time I made up my mind to start begging at church doors. I would arrive at ten and take up my position on the cathedral steps or go to the church of San Jeremías, in the Calle José Antonio, or the church of Santa Barbara, which was my favorite, in the Calle Salamanca, and sometimes, before settling down on the steps of Santa Barbara to begin my day’s work, I would go to the ten o’clock mass and pray with all my might—it was like laughing silently, laughing, laughing, happy to be alive, and the more I prayed, the more I laughed—that was my way of opening myself to divine penetration, and my laughter was not a sign of disrespect or the laughter of an unbeliever: on the contrary, it was the clamorous laughter of a lamb trembling before its Creator. 13. After that, I would go to Confession, recount my mishaps and misfortunes, take Communion and finally, before returning to the steps, I would stop for a few moments in front of the picture of St. Barbara. Why was she always depicted with a peacock and a tower? A peacock and a tower. What did it mean? 14. One afternoon I asked the priest. Why are you interested in such things? he asked me in turn. I don’t know, Father, curiosity, I replied. You know it’s a bad habit, don’t you, curiosity? he said. I know, Father, but my curiosity is pure, I always pray to St. Barbara. That’s good, my son, said the priest, St. Barbara is kind to the poor, you keep praying to her. But I want to know about the peacock and the tower, I said. The peacock, said the priest, is the symbol of immortality. As for the tower, did you notice it has three windows? The windows are there to illustrate the saint’s words; she said that light poured into her cell and her soul through the windows of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Do you understand? 15. I didn’t get an education, Father, but I have common sense and I can work things out, I replied. 16. Then I went to take my place, the place that was rightfully mine, and I begged until the church doors were closed. I always kept one coin in the palm of my hand. The others in my pocket. And I endured hunger, while people ate bread and pieces of sausage or cheese in front of me. I thought. I thought and studied without moving from those steps. 17. And so I learned that the father of St. Barbara, a powerful man named Dioscurus, shut her up in a tower, imprisoned h
er because she was being pursued by suitors. And I learned that, before entering that tower, St. Barbara baptized herself with water from a tank or a trough or a pond in which farmers stored rainwater. And I learned that she escaped from the tower, the tower with three windows to let the light in, but was arrested and brought before a judge. And the judge condemned her to death. 18. All the teachings of the priests are cold. Cold soup. Cold tea. Blankets that don’t keep you warm in the depths of winter. 19. Get out of here, Vicente, said the old guy, his jaws working all the while. As if he was chewing sunflower seeds. Get some clothes to make you blend in and go, before the commissioner finds out. 20. I put my hand in my pocket and counted the coins. It had begun to snow. I said goodbye to the old guy and went out into the street. 21. I walked aimlessly. With no destination. Standing in the Calle Corona, I looked at the Church of Santa Barbara. I prayed a bit. St. Barbara, have pity on me, I said. My left arm had gone to sleep. I was hungry. I wanted to die. But not for good. Maybe I just wanted to sleep. My teeth were chattering. St. Barbara, have pity on your servant. 22. When they decapitated her, I mean when they cut St. Barbara’s head off, her executioners were struck by a bolt of lightning. And what about the judge who sentenced her? And her father who locked her up? The lightning struck, but first there was a clap of thunder. Or the other way around. Great. My God, my God, my God. 23. I didn’t go any closer. I was happy to look at the church from a distance and then I walked on, heading for a bar where in my day you used to be able to get a cheap meal. I couldn’t find it. I went into a bakery and got a baguette. Then I jumped a wall and ate it, out of sight of prying eyes. I know it’s forbidden to jump over walls and eat in abandoned gardens or derelict houses, because it isn’t safe. A beam could fall on you, Commissioner Damian Valle told me. Also, it’s private property. It might be a shit-heap, crawling with spiders and rats, but it will go on being private property until the end of time. And a beam could fall on your head and destroy that exceptional skull of yours, said Commissioner Damian Valle. 24. When I’d finished eating, I jumped back over the wall into the street. Suddenly I felt sad. I don’t know if it was the snow or what. Recently, eating gets me down. I’m not sad when I’m actually eating, but afterward, sitting on a brick, watching snowflakes fall into the abandoned garden—I don’t know. Despair and anguish. So I slapped my legs and got walking. The streets started to empty out. I spent some time looking in store windows. But I was pretending. What I was really doing was looking for my reflection in each pane of glass. Then the windows came to an end and there were only stairways. I hung my head and climbed. A street. Then the parish church of the Conception. Then the church of San Bernardo. Then the walls and, after that, the fort. There wasn’t a soul to be seen. I was on Cerro del Moro. I remembered the old man’s words: Go, go, don’t let them catch you again, you poor bastard. All the bad things I did. St. Barbara, have pity on me, have pity on your poor son. I remembered there was a woman who lived in one of those alleys. I decided to visit her and ask for a bowl of soup, an old sweater she didn’t need any more, and a bit of money to buy a train ticket. Where did that woman live? The alleys kept getting narrower. I saw a big door and knocked. No one answered. I pushed the door open and walked in: a patio. Someone had forgotten to take in the washing and now the snow was falling on those yellowish clothes. I made my way through the shirts and underpants to a door with a bronze knocker that looked like a handle. I stroked the knocker, but I didn’t knock. I pushed the door open. Outside, night was falling hurriedly. My mind was blank. The snowflakes made a sizzling sound. I kept going. I couldn’t remember that corridor, I couldn’t remember the name of the woman—she was a slut, but kind-hearted; she did wrong but she felt bad about it—I couldn’t remember that darkness, that windowless tower. But then I saw a door ajar and slipped through the opening. I’d come to a kind of granary, with sacks piled up to the roof. There was a bed in one corner. I saw a child stretched out on the bed. He was naked and shivering. I took the knife out of my pocket. I saw a friar sitting at a table. His face was covered by a hood; he was leaning forward, intently reading a missal. Why was the child naked? Wasn’t there even a blanket in that room? Why was the friar reading his missal instead of kneeling down and asking for forgiveness. Everything goes haywire at some point. The friar looked at me, said something; I replied. Don’t come near me, I said. Then I stabbed him with the knife. Both of us groaned for a while until he fell silent. But I had to be sure, so I stabbed him again. Then I killed the child. Quickly, for God’s sake! Then I sat down on the bed and shivered for a while. Enough. I had to go. My clothes were spattered with blood. I looked through the friar’s pockets and found some money. There were some sweet potatoes on the table. I ate one. Good and sweet. While I was eating the sweet potato, I opened a closet. Sacks of onions and potatoes. But there was also a clean habit on a hanger. I got undressed. It was so cold. After checking each pocket, so as not to leave any incriminating evidence, I put my clothes and my shoes in a bag, and tied it to my belt. Fuck you, Damian Valle. That was when I realized I was leaving my footprints all around the room. The soles of my feet were covered with blood. While continuing to move around, I carefully examined the prints. Suddenly I felt like laughing. They were dance steps. The footprints of St. Vitus. Footprints leading nowhere. But I knew where to go. 25. Everything was dark, except for the snow. I started going down Cerro del Moro. 26. I was barefoot and it was cold. My feet sank into the snow, and with every step I took, some blood came off my skin. When I’d gone a few yards I realized that someone was following me. A policeman? I didn’t care. They rule the earth, but right then, as I walked through the luminous snow, I knew that I was in charge. 27. I left Cerro del Moro behind. On the level ground the snow was deeper still; I crossed a bridge, hanging my head. Out of the corner of my eye, I glimpsed the shadow of an equestrian statue. My pursuer was a fat, ugly adolescent. Who was I? That didn’t matter at all. 28. As I walked, I said good-bye to everything I saw. It was poignant. I quickened my pace to warm myself up. I crossed the bridge, and it was as if I had passed through a time tunnel. 29. I could have killed the boy, made him follow me down an alley and stuck it to him till he croaked. But why bother? He was bound to be some whore’s kid from Cerro del Moro; he’d never talk. 30. I washed my old shoes in the bathroom at the station, I wet them and scrubbed away the bloodstains. My feet had gone to sleep. Wake up. Then I bought a ticket for the next train. Whichever, I didn’t care where it was going.
Literature + Illness = Illness
for my friend the hepatologist Dr. Victor Vargas
Illness and Public Speaking
No one should be surprised if the speaker loses his thread. Let us imagine the following scenario. The speaker is going to speak about illness. Ten people spread themselves around the auditorium. The buzz of anticipation in the air is worthy of a better reward. The talk is scheduled to begin at seven in the evening or eight at night. No one in the audience has had dinner. By seven (or eight, or nine), they are all present and seated, with their cell phones switched off. It’s a pleasure to speak to such a well-mannered group of people. But the speaker fails to appear, and finally one of the organizers of the event announces that he will not be coming because, at the last minute, he has fallen gravely ill.
Illness and Freedom
Writing about illness, especially if one is gravely ill, can be torture. Writing about illness if one is not only gravely ill but also a hypochondriac is an act of masochism or desperation. But it can also be a
liberating act. It’s tempting—I know it’s an evil temptation—but all the same it is tempting to exercise the tyranny of the ill for a few minutes, like those little old ladies you meet in hospital waiting rooms, who launch into an explanation of the clinical or medical or pharmacological aspects of their life, instead of explaining the political or sexual or work-related aspects. Little old ladies who give the impression that they have transcended good and evil, and look for all the world like they know their Nietzsche, and not just Nietzsche, but Kant and Hegel and Schelling too, not to mention their closest philosophical relative: Ortega y Gassett. They could be his sisters, or rather his cronies, although actually they’re more like the philosopher’s clones. The resemblance is so striking that sometimes (as I reach the limits of my desperation) it occurs to me that Ortega y Gasset’s paradise, or his hell—depending on the gaze but above all the sensibility of the observer—is to be found in hospital waiting rooms: a paradise in which thousands of duplicates of Ortega y Gasset live out the various episodes of our lives. But I mustn’t wander too far from what I really wanted to talk about, which, in fact, was freedom, a kind of liberation: writing badly, speaking badly, holding forth about plate tectonics in the middle of a reptiles’ dinner party—it’s so liberating and so richly deserved—offering myself up to the compassion of strangers and then dishing out insults at random, spitting as I talk, passing out indiscriminately, becoming a nightmare for the friends I don’t deserve, milking a cow and pouring the milk over its head, as Nicanor Parra says in a magnificent and mysterious line.