THE CUSTODIAN

 

 

In the background, behind glass, are the plants as if in a huge box. And here in front, also in a glass box (armored), is the custodian. It has something in common with plants, a certain secret that comes from the earth. And between one glass cage and another, the young, aging assistant managers strive, so dapper with their impeccable suits and their exact smile. It is true that they are less circumspect than the custodian but, like young assistant managers of a financial company, they are not trained to kill and that redeems them a little. Not too much. Just enough to grant them the grace of imagining them - as our custodian usually imagines them - making love on the carpet. In unison, yes, to the syncopated rhythm of electronic calculators. Below them, the secretaries are also sadly beautiful, almost always with light eyes, and the custodian contemplates them not without a certain lust and thinks that the blonde assistant managers - almost all of them also with watery eyes - are in better conditions than him to seduce the women. young secretaries. Only he hasthe Parabellumand he also has - hidden in his executive briefcase - a telescopic sight and a silencer of the best foreign manufacture. In an inside pocket of his jacket he carries his permit to carry weapons, the card that accredits him as a guardian of the law. In the other pocket you have to know what he has, not even he usually wants to find out: one time he found a lipstick and stained his hands red as if it were blood, another time he found seeds, unidentified; On one occasion he got lost in the lint of his pocket among strands of tobacco and other herbs, and now he no longer wants to even think about that pocket while he watches the clients who enter and leave the vast offices. He knows that the assistant managers may have light eyes, but his glass box has three round eyes (one for each useful side, the fourth is attached to the wall) and they are stranger eyes, not to mention more practical and eventually more lethal. From there he can shoot anyone looking for him and from there he can feel safe: that box is his mother and contains him.

From his glass box he sees the most absurd beings parade, with the faces of dwarfs, for example, or women with shapes that contradict all the laws of aesthetics and little girls with hair dyed egg yellow. At times our custodian thinks that the company hires them to highlight the physical beauty of its employees, but very soon he discards that crazy idea: it is a financial company, made to make money, not to spend it on absurd projects.

And why is he there? He is there to defend the money and he would be there to water the plants if only they allowed him to.

It would be good for him to be able to move from time to time to the other glass box, the one at the back; It is much wider than yours even though it is not armored, it has more air, and the transition from the silver to the plants is just a matter of a single letter. A step that would make him so happy, especially because the money belongs to others, will never be his, and on the other hand the plants belong to no one. They have a life of their own and he could water them, caress them, even talk to them softly as if they were a friendly dog, like that guy who spent his days taking care of his people with the greatest tenderness and was a hunting dog and a carnivorous plant. He doesn't need to love so much to kill others, he doesn't even need to have a certain amount of affection for the people in that office even though he is there to defend them, to risk his life for them. Only nothing ever happens there: no one enters with a threatening air or attempts an assault. Sometimes a suspicious package on a seat catches his attention, but the person who had forgotten it immediately returns and walks away as casually as possible with the package under his arm. Therefore, assuming there had been a bomb in the package, it will explode away from the sacrosanct offices. And his duty only consists of defending the company, not the entire city and even less the universe. His duty is simply that: to act in defense and not in the line of attack, although if he had half a brain he would know that the alleged aggressor could very well be one of his own (a man like him, without going any further) and not something foreign like the safe can be. But my life is going to cost them dearly, it is often said, repeating the phrase heard so many times during training, without realizing that every mortal thinks the same, with or without permission of the law (a life is not something that can be give away just like that, and even less his own life, but he has a license to kill and he feels calm). That's why he sleeps peacefully at night when he's not on duty, and sometimes he dreams of the little plants in the background. That, of course, when he doesn't have to dream about the beautiful naked secretaries, who are somewhat stuffy but always exciting. Dreams that are more of a waking dream, daydreams where the beautiful men and women of the financial company roll around naked on the carpet that silences their movements. The carpet as a silencer. He too, there in his glass box - Snow White, damn it! - He has a pistol with a silencer and he also remains silent as a plant. Vegetable, almost. He is silent in his glass cage, caressing his silencer while he imagines those outside in positions completely at odds with good customs.

And there he is, immersed in his daydreams, defending with all his humanity what does not belong to him at all. Not even remotely. A perfect cretin's life. Defending what?: the safe, the honor of the secretaries, the confident air of managers, assistant managers and other employees (their dapper presence). Defending clients. Defending the money that belongs to others.

That idea occurred to him one day, the next day he forgot it, he remembered it a week later and then little by little the idea settled forever in his head. A touch of humanity after all, a spark of idea. Something that warmed him like her affection for the plants in the background. Something called anger.

He began to go to work shuffling his feet, he no longer felt like such a man. He no longer dreamed in the mirror that his job was the job of brave men.

What a revelation the day when he knew (deep inside, in that area of ​​himself whose existence he did not even suspect) that his profession of bravery was the profession of idiots! That balls well placed are not necessarily those placed in defense of others. It was as if they had given him the famous kiss on his sleeping forehead, as if they had woken him up. Illuminated.

All these things that were impossible for him to convey to his bosses. Of course he was used to keeping his mouth shut, to keeping to himself as a treasure the few feelings that were surfacing throughout his life. Not many feelings, little notion that something was happening in him despite himself. And he had endured without saying a word that long course on first-hand torture called training: it was not then a question of sitting down to talk - and since when have you sat down, in front of your superiors? -, to talk, exposing doubts or presenting complaints . That's how little by little he began to nurture a very illuminating fight and he was able to spend the afternoons standing inside his glass cage occupying his thoughts with something more concrete than erotic daydreams. He stopped imagining the young assistant managers rolling around with the secretaries on the soft carpet and began to see them as they were, performing their specific tasks. A coming and going in silent respect, a very astute management of money, of stocks, bonds, bills of exchange, currencies. And all of them so insultingly young, attractive.

It was good for months to strip those bodies of all their ghosts and see them only in their purely work functions. Our custodian became realistic, systematic. He decided to get out of the cage and walk his elastic figure through the rooms full of desks, he began to exchange a few sentences with the most accessible employees, he smiled at the secretaries, he chatted for a long time with one of the stockbrokers. He became intimate with the goalkeeper. He even mentioned to some his attraction to plants and one time when he noticed them wilting he asked permission to water them after hours. When the offices closed, they began to leave him tending to the plants, fumigating them, cleaning them of soot so that they could breathe comfortably.

One evening he took his passion to the extreme of spending two hours mating peacefully among the plants. The night guard couldn't help but mention it to his superiors and everyone feared that the guard was becoming a poet, something very harmful in a job like his. But there was no need to fear such deterioration: he carried out his surveillance conscientiously and he was extremely active during his hours on duty without letting any detail escape. He even managed to thwart a dangerous assault thanks to his very fast reflexes and a sense of smell that earned him the applause of his bosses. He knew how to receive the reward with great dignity, aware that he had done nothing but take care of his own interests. His hierarchical superiors and also the company directors present at the simple ceremony understood the custodian's humility as a noble feeling, a true satisfaction for the duty fulfilled. They then doubled the amount of the reward and retired calmly to their respective homes knowing that the financial company enjoyed unbeatable surveillance.

Thanks to the double bonus, the custodian was able to equip himself as desired and only needed to put into practice the patience learned from the plants. When he finally considered the time had come to strike, he did so with such cleanliness that it was impossible to trace him and find his whereabouts. That is to say that in the eyes of others he managed to realize his old dream. That is to say that he was swallowed by the earth.

 

END

 

2008 edited by Paya Frank @Blogger

The Geniuses {Stories}

 

 

                                       

He hadn't been walking for long. Just twenty minutes. But she already noticed the fatigue in her legs and a certain weight in some unlocated part of her back. His muscles refused to execute the movements necessary to continue advancing, and the sound of his own body became immense, all-consuming: his breathing, the rubbing of his hair and the skin of his face against the hood of his raincoat, the thoughts that They did not stop generating in her head like water in constant birth and fall from the stream of an open pipe... She knew that if she stopped, even for a moment, and dedicated herself to contemplating what was around her, stopping listening to herself , she would immediately perceive, in an almost invasive way, the authentic reality of a landscape foreign to her. An autonomous landscape, that she did not need to exist, and that would continue there, with its gradual transformations of color, of texture, according to the greater or lesser arrival of sunlight, whether she was there to analyze it or not. So she did it. She stopped moving and looked more consciously, more attentively, at the presence of the oaks, the junipers, the wire fences that defined the borders between one property and the next despite being the same constant and constant land. identical. The same bright green moss clinging to the same rocks. The same inclined trunks of trees similar to each other. The same wet leaves scattered on the ground. "All this is of no use," she thought as she took off the hood of her raincoat. «The human activity that draws limits. So much effort. “So much measuring and planning and signing up and bragging.” She felt the rain on her hair, so far untouched, and she appreciated the freedom of being able to move her head as she pleased, left and right, without the protective restriction of the knot with which she secured her hood to her neck. her. The water soaked her face and hands, and she breathed deeply, realizing that the scent of the air there was a virgin scent, so pure that it almost hurt.

It was starting to rain harder. So he put the hood of his raincoat back on, and then he saw, not far away, in one of the meadows delimited by stone walls and new fences, how behind a white cow that was walking slowly, in search of grass, his horse was also advancing. young, hungry, stalking the bearer of its food. She wasn't going to be able to stay much longer. It would take her another twenty minutes to return, and the rain was getting worse. But he stood there for a while, motionless, watching as the cow finally stopped, solid and shiny, looking in front of her, looking at her, so that her little pursuer could eat. The milk that could not be swallowed flowed from the baby's mouth and ran down its neck, in thick threads, until it fell to the ground, where it formed a puddle of liquid that lost its color as it mixed with the grass and scattered leaves. on the soaked ground. Meanwhile, the enormous white cow remained standing with its undaunted gaze, without fear or impatience.

Marina put her hands to her lips to try to warm her fingers with her own breath, and then she rubbed her eyes. That same morning, very early, she had watched from the windows of her house how the fog triumphed over the thickness of the nearest mountain. She had watched its descent through the trees, like sugar spilled on a dark green, almost black, dessert, and she had come to the conclusion that the stuff had to taste like something. He couldn't taste it or touch it or get any of it inside a metal box. And yet, there she was, royal and majestic, sliding over the submissive trees, completely resigned. She took another deep breath and thought that the dignity of nature was greater than that of the human being. In that place there was no room for lies, nor for infidelity, cowardice or greed. The events followed a seasonal pattern, I could even say logical, but in no case unfair. Vanity, pomp, arrogance were heroic actions reserved for men.

He had lost the heat accumulated during the walk, and with the feeling of cold now came also that of strangeness. What was she doing standing there, almost hypnotized, in the increasingly fierce rain? Had she transformed back into the obfuscated being she already knew? The being that ran, that asked inappropriate questions and that let itself be dominated by the rhythm of her own interrogations. She had to turn around and go back. With her hands buried in the pockets of her raincoat and her gaze fixed on the ground, she had to take the same path. The same feeling of suffocation. The known relief. The stones. The bare trunks. The distant barking. The same need and the same street that led to her own house.

The trees would stand firm in the rain and the rocks would show their isolated, permanent shapes.

 

When he arrived, he discovered that there were people inside. He wanted to leave. Not entering and not having to see anyone. But she knew Caesar would be there, with his most vulnerable expression in her eyes and the same desires she harbored not to listen, not to know. César, sitting in the living room, in his armchair in the corner, under the lamp that he had not yet turned on, would be receiving the voices of the women who had entered his house like blows against his body, and he would be returning them with silences or with some sporadic, very sad smile, with which he intended to nod and show that yes, that he agreed with everything, that things were happening just as the others said they were going to happen... That he would not cause problems because everything was, always, as it was. the others said. But please let them go. He wouldn't refuse anything, but please let them say goodbye now. No more visits. No more information from outside. No more words. Please.

She wanted not to have to go in. But Caesar was there, pretending to possess abilities that he did not possess and trying to show a nature that was not his own. With his book open on his knees, waiting to be able to resume the line he was on when those women arrived who asked him for more information about the distribution of the inheritance, and who intimidated him and cornered him in that corner of the room in that he sat down to read. With no other aspiration than to be able to read.

-If you want advice... -they said.

"In your case..." they said.

-We'll have to talk about it with Marina... -they said.

And when Marina entered, they fell silent. They stood up to approach her, one after the other, and offered her compassion, looking sad and whispering that they were so good, both of them, so good, that this meant an enormous loss. An irrecoverable loss.

-Such a big shame...

Marina moved away and approached her brother, who spoke little to visitors as his father had spoken little, and who looked so much like him. She bent down and placed a kiss on her forehead.

-If you don't mind... -he began-. We need to rest. It's been a long few days. If you do not mind…

And they cared. But they left.

They left the house with new grandiose phrases, with new attempts bordering on insolence to find out more, to give more opinions. But they left, and Marina returned to César with the idea of ​​asking him if she wanted him to prepare an infusion for her. Maybe a lime tree. There were still a few hours before she could take the pills.

He shook his head, and sank into the pages of his book.

"How impertinent," she said.

-Yeah.

-Has it been very horrible?

-A lot.

-They will feel satisfied…

Caesar did not answer, and she sat at the other end of the room to stoke the fire.

"I don't think they'll come back," he whispered.

-They will return. You will see. And there will be more and more.

Marina stoked the fire again. Sparks of a familiar red flew from between her logs, and she thought that soon she would have to light the lamp so that her brother could continue reading without burning her eyes, out of danger. Far from reality. Like a young Don Quixote who did not want to save anyone, nor for anyone to save him, or like a monk in his retirement who only longed to be left alone, in the only company of his stories from years past, so painless and aseptic. . So perfect and closed in their flat state of flat letters printed on endless flat paper. Throughout those endless days.

"I don't think I can bear this," Caesar continued.

She didn't comment. But she smiled because she tried to smile often. And she also often nodded at Caesar's statements. She then dedicated herself to observing the drawings on the carpet that, spread under the central table of the room, covered a large part of the floor, until it reached her feet. That rug had always been there, she thought she remembered. Since her childhood. With the geometric figures that unfolded across its surface, giving rise to impossible, unfinished shapes, almost trompe-l'oeil without any vocation to be so. She was trying to decipher the labyrinthine meaning of one of those structures, when she heard again:

-Have you heard what I told you? I don't think she can handle this.

-Of course you can. You have me here. For whatever. Now you know.

-But it's not about you. It's about me. And I don't think she can. It's too much. This weight. It's excessive. Not…

At the moment he wasn't crying, but Marina knew he would. And she would have to talk to him, and she would listen to him, and he would try to turn her way of putting things on its head, so stinging and distressing, and she would offer him a new perspective for every argument, for every pain.

-Let the days pass.

-So that?

-So that this affects you less. So you know how to assume it. It's still very early.

-I don't want time to pass. I don't want it to affect me any less. How is it going to affect me less? Our parents, Marina… This is not like a wound on your arm, which you forget about and one day you say: “Wow! "There used to be a wound here that has disappeared." This is not like this.

She already knew it. But what could she tell him?

-I already know it.

-Now you know.

-Of course. But we have to…

-We don't "have to" anything. Nothing is forced. Not even necessary. They are gone, and so can I go.

-Oh my God! Stop saying those things.

He got up from the chair and began to walk around the room.

He had always thought that his brother's way of being was the right one. So quiet and reserved. So methodical… Tireless when it came to studies. He was always willing to learn, to investigate and delve deeper into issues that others went unnoticed. She had been more scattered. She knew how to acquire a couple of fairly basic strategies to pass exams, to pass the course, even during her university years. But Caesar did not want tricks nor did he look for systems to pretend that he knew what he did not know. He wanted to concentrate, to know, and he also wanted to understand. But now he didn't understand anything. His order had collapsed. His entire balanced logical system had fallen apart without reason and without warning. And it was very possible that something like that would succeed in destroying him because it destroyed the basis on which he stood. From the root.

"I'm sorry," he said.

-You do not need to apologize.

"I'm sorry," he repeated.

And he turned his head towards his book as if he were preparing to read again. Although she Marina she knew that she wasn't going to do it.

He watched him for a few minutes, and could see that he certainly was not reading. She let his eyes rest on her brother's, and she tried to imagine what he might be imagining. Despite appearances, despite what an impartial observer might think, Marina was quite aware of what was happening in there and what Caesar was trying to do. The faintness of her eyes, the faint features of her face... Everything seemed to indicate that the only thing she wanted was to disappear. She wanted - with all her strength - to distance herself from the tormenting feeling that oppressed her when she considered that she had let slip away all the opportunities that events and others had been offering her.

-What I am going to do…? -she murmured then-. What do we do? she asked as he turned his head to look at her. What is the smartest thing? The most prudent thing. I can't make a decision under these conditions... In a normal environment, with less tension, I could find the answer. But now. Like this… With this uncertainty, I am unable to think. Do you want to stay here? Do you want us to stay?

Trailing behind him an implacable terror, Caesar engaged in reasoning that branched off in so many directions that, having reached its end (an end caused, generally, by the sudden intrusion of a new reasoning that demanded his attention), it was almost impossible to remember. the beginning. She had gotten used to noticing the astonishment in her eyes. Those eyes with a lost and sanguine look. To watch how he stopped, petrified, static, to watch any unimportant point in any room. The door or the thick frame of a picture. Concentrated on what seemed like an urgent reflection or an unusual vision.

“What do we do…” Marina repeated to herself.

Let time pass. Few days. Or a few months.

Be patient.

And drink fresh water from meandering streams that would soon freeze over. Observe the inconceivable brilliance of the stars in the darkness of a clear sky. Check how early the confusion of the night arrives and how wonderful it is when it dawns again every morning. Getting soaked by the rain and walking under a misty sun. Withstand powerful gusts of wind in the eyes. Walk into the snow. Make exceptional efforts. Suffer disappointments and scream. Attend those prodigious spectacles of nature that are so rare and impenetrable. Admire the texture and color of two different stones for hours.

Build small huts with small sticks.

Come to the conclusion that the wind is a creature endowed with life; a being that screams and sobs and mocks the fragility of men.

Discover the violet glow of the harshest mountains, where rocks and nameless grasses dominate everything and where the articulate voices of human beings do not prevail. A place where there is no talking. Where nothing is asked. Where the only sound is that of the wind, inextinguishable and maddening...

Knowing that they would soon begin to feel dominated by a kind of increasing passivity, a paralysis of their arms and legs, even mentally, that would lead them to remain motionless for long hours, in an eternal contemplation of what was in front of them, without thinking about anything. At least without consciously thinking about anything.

 

César was right: more women arrived with the intention of offering new condolences and asking for more explanations. They entered his house, sat in his living room and talked. They talked... But César did not want to see anyone nor did he want to feel the presence of anyone nearby. He did not want to hear any more empty words or engage in conversations of circumstances. He just wanted to continue reading and find himself far away. Not being there.

Marina watched how, during those meetings, her brother sighed long while letting his head fall back to stare at the ceiling. Then, sometimes, when the situation became unbearable, he would get up, leave the living room towards the kitchen and, once there, sit on one of the two wooden stools that had been placed on either side of a small table. , very narrow and also made of wood. And she didn't do anything else. Just plunge into the depths of that curious behavior, so harsh and elusive, that she knew how to display with such great skill from time to time.

-It is not necessary for them to come. Needless…

Marina listened to him and understood that she also wanted to disappear. Leaving that house and not returning for weeks.

"We will not admit any more visitors," he said. She's done.

So when they heard the next knock on the door, they decided it was the furious sound of the storm and did not give up the books they were reading. They did not leave them on the table, they did not close them, and they remained between the lines of the page on which they were found, as if by remaining in the sheltered world of their books they could make those who had had the audacity to stand in front of them leave. from his house. They heard new knocks on the front door after a few moments, and Marina sighed and looked up over the perfect protection of her novel. She had put on a striped wool sweater and a long brown skirt that went down to her ankles. They were in the living room and the fire was burning brightly but, nevertheless, despite knowing that she had enough warm clothing on her, she felt terribly cold.

 

 

He repeated fragments of King Lear.

Because you have begotten me, I must obey you. Because you have begotten and raised me, I must love you. Because you have raised and loved me I must, above all, honor you.

 

 

The blows became more resounding, more obvious; blows that not even the most violent downpour could cause and that showed human intentionality. Marina then remembered the abandoned look of the cow that she had allowed herself to be pursued by her dependent calf, until she gave in, stopped and prepared to deliver the food that was demanded of her. She remembered the stillness and imperturbability of a peaceful and almost melancholic being. The limpidity. And it was at that moment that she decided that they should get into bed and pretend to be sleeping. Turn off the lights and maybe shout that they didn't want to see anyone. They had to make it clear to whoever she was calling that they were not welcome. Because the two brothers had the same purpose. The two shared a desire that was stronger than any other circumstance or idea: the desire to escape the systematic contemplation of a second that slides circularly next to another second until forming a minute that would lead, inescapably, to another minute. Each of them had outlined their own methods in this regard. They had been learning for years, each in their own way, to save themselves from destruction. Both struggled to avoid the torment of waiting, despite being aware that their only option was to continue waiting until, at the right moment, without delay and without giving any explanation, they risked running away and fleeing, wishing vividly that everything could have a different ending. A slightly less distressing ending.

 

 

END

 1989 Edited by Paya Frank @Blogger

THE DINOSAUR .- {Stories}

 

 

 

When Julio saw that the ground was rising in the yard of his house, forming a mountain, he let go of the tricycle and the red bear and ran to the kitchen to look for his mother.

"Mom, mom," he shouted, "the Andes mountain range is coming!"

The lady rinsed her hands, dried them on her apron and went to see.

The dog Thor had already been digging and on the mountain you could see something white covered by the earth.

-My God! -exclaimed the mother and called the grandfather who was reading the newspaper in the living room.

With picks and shovels they all got up and started digging.

After a while an egg appeared. A huge egg.

"It's a cow's egg," said Julio.

Or elephant.

The three of them remained attentive, very still, in silence, in case the egg made any suspicious movement. But since nothing happened, they brought the kettle and started drinking mate cebado while they waited.

In the afternoon, the egg began to crack until a piece broke and the head of a horrible bug emerged with a disoriented look.

-Can we stay with him? - Julio asked immediately.

-He's a Martian! -said the scared mother. He is invading us!

The grandfather looked at him serenely smoking his pipe.

"No, sir," he said at last. It's a dinosaur.

-A what? -Julio and his mother asked at the same time.

-Dinosaurs are animals that lived a long time ago. They no longer exist - explained the grandfather.

-Are they from your time, grandpa? -Julio asked.

-Its alive! -the mother shouted-. He Moves! I'm going to look for the insecticide.

But he stopped when he saw that the baby dinosaur was observing them all with great curiosity. Maybe he thought it was his family. He had very big eyes and his head shook from side to side because his neck was skinny and weak.

-Guri! -he growled excitedly.

The dog got scared and started barking at him.

-Thor! -Julio called to silence him. Thor returned panting to where the family was.

"Well," said the mother. What are we going to do with this horrible animal?

"We can raise him," Julio proposed. I would build a little cage in the bottom.

The mother did not agree and wanted to throw him out on the street; but grandfather said that he was very small and defenseless and he would not know what to do or how to survive in a city.

"He can wander around and eat anything out there," said the mother, who did not want to have him in her house. At night people will confuse him with just another dog.

Grandfather decided that it would be best to take care of him until he grew up, because there was also the danger of him being caught by paleontologists.

Julio asked who the paleontologists were.

"They are men who collect dinosaur bones," the old man explained.

The mother was very impressed thinking that someone could remove the bones from that bug that was ugly, but that she was beginning to like.

"It's okay," the mother approved. She will stay until she grows up. Then we will release him into the mountains.

Thus, it was decided that the dinosaur would remain in the house for a while.

At first, since they didn't know what to feed him, they brought him several things: a celery from the garden, the half watermelon that was left over from lunch, the freshly made errand for the empanadas for dinner, a worn-out truck tire, an old scarf. , two broken porcelain cups and a chair without legs. The little animal opened its mouth and began to chew and swallow. He ate everything and what he liked the most were the fringes of the scarf, because they were blue.

As the days passed, he became friends with Thor. They played together with a ball that their grandfather threw them.

After three months the dinosaur had grown so much that it stuck its head out over the back wall.

They had to put two more rows of bricks so people wouldn't see it. If the secret was known, it could reach the ears of some paleontologist.

The mother had become impatient and thought that the time was approaching to take the dinosaur to the mountains so that it could fend for itself.

-This bug is going to cause us problems - he said.

But since Julio was crying and his grandfather claimed that it wasn't time yet, his mother had to grant... two more years.

In those two years, the dinosaur grew a lot. The back wall was already as high as an apartment building and the neighbors wondered why they added two or three rows of bricks every week.

One night, when everyone had gone to bed, a thief entered the house. With a lot of work, he scaled the wall and went down to the patio. The poor man believed that the family only had a small dog that barked but did not bite.

Thus, when Thor saw him and wanted to warn him, the thief sprayed him with a spray bottle and left him asleep. He confidently crossed the garden to go to the rooms and suddenly, he discovered that something enormous was coming towards him. In the moonlight he could clearly distinguish the head of a hideous animal, full of teeth as big as bottles.

-Guri! -he heard the monster say.

He started running shouting:

-Help! I just wanted to commit a simple robbery.

But the dinosaur grabbed him with the mouth of his pants and lifted him into the air. The thief stayed there, unable to escape, until his grandfather, his mother and Julio went to see what was happening.

"Please tell him to let me go," the man asked. I'm going to confess everything since I stole my aunt's change from the store.

It had turned out to be a guardian dinosaur.

The neighborhood lights had turned on. People wanted to know what was causing so much noise and shouting and gathered at the door of the house.

There was such a scandal that the police and fire department came to restore order.

In the end, the secret could no longer be kept. Everyone learned that in the courtyard a horrible monster had caught a thief.

There were detectives who took statements and journalists who took photos with flashes and reported on the family. The firefighters climbed the stairs to rescue the thief, who was still hanging by his pants; Neighbors came and went with glasses of water to help those who were fainting. Thor had woken up and was barking happily, thinking it was a party. The boys asked Julio if he would lend them the dinosaur for an afternoon in exchange for two ball bugs, a difficult figurine, and a light-up yo-yo.

The grown-ups wanted to know where they had him train.

Finally, like all things in this world, that night also passed. At dawn, the police took the thief away, the people left and the grandfather, the mother and Julio went to sleep. They were exhausted and woke up at noon, startled by a knock at the entrance.

The grandfather went to answer and when he opened, a man in shorts appeared, with a magnifying glass the size of a frying pan in his hand.

He was wearing a safari hat on his legs and three-quarter length socks on his head, sorry, a safari hat on his head and three-quarter length socks on his legs. It's just that anyone gets nervous when he arrives... Do you know who this man was? This man, do you know who he was? Who was this man, do you know? He was a paleontologist who had heard the news the night before on the radio.

With quite a bit of distrust, the old man let him in and the dinosaur, as soon as he saw him through the window that overlooked the gallery, began to tremble with fear like a leaf.

Julio and his mother had also gotten up.

-Are you going to remove the bones? -Julio asked scared.

"You should be ashamed," the lady grumbled. Trying to harm an innocent animal.

The paleontologist laughed and assured them that he did not want to bother the dinosaur at all.

Calmer, they invited him to lunch and he told them that a museum had sent him and that he only needed to take some photos and do some x-rays with a little device he had in his suitcase. Furthermore, if they allowed him, he could visit them once a week and write notes about the little animal's habits.

The family accepted the scientist's proposal and thus began a new friendship that especially benefited Julio, the dinosaur and Thor, because the man, every time he went, gave them each a lollipop.

With the help of his grandfather, the paleontologist wrote down observations as interesting and revolutionary as this one: “The dinosaur, if someone throws a ball at it, will go look for it and bring it back.”

In this way, without fear, there was no need to hide anything anymore and the whole family could often be seen walking along the neighborhood sidewalks, carrying their two pets on a collar and leash.

Since then, grandfather, mother, Julio, the paleontologist, Thor and the dinosaur lived happily and ate partridges, although some of them preferred scarf fringes; blue, of course.

 

End

 

1998 Edited by Paya Frank @Blogger 

Lights and Shadows {Story by Paya Frank}

 

 

There must be some kind of meaning or What will come next? -It's things like that that I think about in the afternoons, standing here at this window, in front of the endless tin roofs where pigeons sometimes perch, and saying it that way you immediately imagine poetic doves fluttering, cooing. They are gray, the pigeons, and the noise they make is sinister like that of bats' wings. I know bats well, their high-pitched, strident cries. But I don't want to rush. I think that if I can give some kind of order to what I am saying there will, consequently, also be some kind of sense. And I think at the same time, or after a while, I don't know very well, that after that order and that sense something else must come.

What will come next? -I then ask the dirty afternoon behind the glass, and I feel comforted as if there was something like a future waiting for me. Just as if after tea I slowly smoked a menthol cigarette, looking into the distance, warmed by the tea, calmed by the cigarette, enraptured by the distant and mainly attentive to what will come after this moment. I haven't had tea in a while, and I control my cigarettes so much that, every time I light one, the feeling is one of guilt, not pleasure, do you understand me?

No, you don't understand me. I know you don't understand me because I'm not being able to be clear enough, and because I'm not clear enough, in addition to you not understanding me, I'm not going to be able to put any of this in order. Therefore there will be no meaning, therefore there will be no after. Before you make me understand, if I succeed, I at least wanted you to understand before, before any word, erase everything, pretend that we begin now, in this second and in this next sentence that I am going to say. Like this: it is a terrible effort for me. If I stay here, standing next to this window, I'm sure something serious will happen - and when I say serious I mean death, madness, which seem minor said like that. I need something to get me out of this window and right away, even afterward. Wanting a meaning leads me to want an after, the two come together, if you understand what I mean.

I was talking about the window. He could start with her, then.

It's a big glass window. From ceiling to floor, glass that does not open, compact. The room is very small, there is nothing in it except a moss green carpet, which disgusts me to the point of vomiting. And now something new occurs to me: I think it was to avoid vomiting so much or so frequently that I started looking out the window, turning my back on the carpet.

Then, the roofs.

Don't ask me how or why, but the window doesn't face a street, like most windows usually do. The window looks out onto those endless zinc roofs I already talked about. Yes, yes, I tried to get interested in the zinc stains, its little grooves, the undulations and all that stuff. And I really got interested, for a while. But the roofs are endless, you know. No, you don't know, you don't know how I tried to get interested in the most interesting. Then that nauseating feeling began again: the rooftops stretch to the horizon, like a huge green carpet. Before I started vomiting looking at the rooftops, luckily the pigeons arrived. But as I already said: they are gray, the noise they make is like bat wings. Their beaks frequently hit against the window glass. If there was no glass, they would touch my face. In order not to vomit, I try to look beyond the rooftops that merge into infinity. I don't see anything, only the heavy gray of the sky and the soot that slowly settles on the edges of the window. At dusk the soot takes on pink tones, and then, as darkness descends, it's time to curl up on the rug to finally sleep.

In the morning, every day, someone put a piece of bread through the crack in the door, a can of water, as if I were a dog, and a pack of cigarettes. I don't know who it is. I hear him constantly grinding his teeth, which may be just a way of smiling. I think at first I smoked a lot, at least the room is full of ashes, cigarette butts, since there are no ashtrays and it is impossible to open the window, are you listening to me?

It doesn't matter. On very hot days, I usually have a vision. I don't know if it's a memory or a vision. Either way, on very hot days, I see something clearly.

It's three o'clock on a January afternoon. I'm sitting on a cement step. There are three steps of packed earth and some noxious weeds, perhaps nettles, to the threshold of a very tall old door, with the brown paint half peeling. I'm sitting on the second step of that door. I know it's three in the afternoon because the shadows are short and the sunlight is very clear. I know it's January because it's so hot. There is no cloud in the sky. The street is deserted. The street is covered in a layer of loose, red dirt. On the other side of the street there is a stone wall. Nothing happens.

I can see the tops of some paradises across the street, but they are motionless. No wind. I know that beyond the stone wall, further down, there is a river. The afternoon is so hot and clear that I would like to go to the river. For that I would have to get up from this step. There is a slight shadow over my head, just enough so that the sun doesn't heat it up too much. I'm barefoot. I don't know how old I am, but I must not have even reached adolescence, since my bare legs are hairless yet. Because I am barefoot, perhaps, I do not dare to step on the loose, red earth in the middle of the street.

There are pieces of glass too, green pieces of glass in the middle of the dirt on the street, from which the sun brings out reflections that hurt my eyes. Sometimes I protect myself with my hand on my forehead. I'm fine. There is so much light that I have to squint a little to look at things straight on. The January heat warms my body. I cross my hands on my knees. That seems good to me. I'm pretty sure that on the other side of the brown door, someone is brewing something like a fresh bath or fresh coffee. And even though the street is deserted, I don't feel alone here on this step, this afternoon.

On the hot nights of those hot days, I usually have another vision. I am no longer on the step, but behind that same door, inside the house. Maybe years have passed, maybe it's just the night of that same day. There is no light. The floor is very cold. I imagine it is a room, there are mosquito nets suspended from the ceiling. I'm not sure if they are mosquito nets because I don't move. I also think they could be spider webs, but I prefer not to reach out and touch them - the tulle, the webs - to make sure. I prefer not to make sure of anything. Through some open blinds a fine cold blue light enters the room. There are voices out there. I imagine there are people sitting in front of the house on a warm summer night. Every now and then, I suppose, a star falls. I'm fine like this, as well as on the step.

I don't know how long it lasts, or how it all starts. Little by little my ears begin to separate the increasingly loud high-pitched screams from the voices outside, and then I feel the brush of wings on my face. Coming from I don't know where, the bats invade the room. Without meaning to, I think about the ceiling. I can't see it in the dark, but somehow I know that it is made of thin wooden beams, supporting white-painted bricks. The bats flutter around, I don't move. Some crash into the walls, then fall to the ground screaming shrilly, finite. Then I'm the one who starts screaming. Without moving, eyes closed, I scream and scream and scream until everything passes, and once again I find myself cowering on the green carpet, my face pressed against the window, looking through the glass at the endless rooftops.

At that time, the soot in the sky almost always has those pink tones. It is Sunrising. At the door, the bread, the can of water, the bundle of cigarettes. To pick them up, even if I look straight ahead or up, the green of the carpet invades my eyes and I always vomit. I am not always agile enough to, with a movement of the waist, prevent vomit from falling on bread, water, cigarettes. And when I vomit on them, I always hear the grinding of teeth behind the door. On those days I don't eat, I don't drink, I don't smoke. I just walk to the window and, from the moment the pink fades and the gray goes down again, and the pigeons peck at my face protected by the glass, I always repeat like this - there must be some kind of meaning or What will come next?

I don't cry anymore. Actually, I don't even understand why I say more, since I'm not sure I've ever cried. I think so, one day. When there was pain. Now there is only one dry thing left. Inside, outside.

At times I close my eyes and I have the impression that those endless rooftops are the only thing that exists inside me, do you understand me now? That? Yes, I feel like jumping out the window, but it was never possible to open it. No, I don't know what I'd like you to tell me. Sleep, who knows, or everything is fine, or even forget, forget. Can't. When I vomit on bread, I can't eat or vomit afterwards. I like vomiting, it's a bit like I could cry. Who knows, you could at least teach me a way to throw up without having to eat? Despite my grown nails, they are still not long or sharp enough for me to dig them into my own throat. Yes, I must have read that in some book. Even so, perhaps that is the only way out. I would like to avoid it.

Inside me, I can't help but think that there is some kind of meaning. And an after. When I think about that, it's like someone is dancing on those endless rooftops inside me. On the gray roofs someone completely dressed in yellow. I don't know why exactly yellow, but it shines. The wind made her clothes and hair fly. In a great open jump, that dancing someone would reach the window and open it with a light touch of his fingertips. I'm almost always sure that you are that someone.

No, don't say anything. I'd rather not know than not. Not even yes. Do you despise me for standing here like this? And again, don't say anything. I can't see clearly your face, which is completely covered by your clothes and hair, blown by the wind. I also know that, after the jump, you would hold my hand so that I could finally get up from that second step, and cross the street of loose hot red dirt to, who knows, immerse ourselves together in the fresh water of the river. I even know that you would take me out of that dark room, between veils and fabrics, and you would kill the bats one by one, so that we could sit in front of the house, without the others, spying on the vertical fall of the stars on the warm January night. .

I wanted to think that this is the meaning, that this will be the future. I do not know if I can. There are days, like today, when no matter how much I lie, I can't even see you, or your long limbs that the wind hides behind your clothes. I only hear the grinding of teeth and the internal noises of my own body. All that blinds me. Get me out of here, I pray. And he crossed both hands over his chest, as if he were feeling cold or warding off demons. I press my face against the glass. Two doves, each of them pecking at one of my eyes. Maybe one day they will manage to break the glass. Unintentionally, I remember an old fairy story: two doves pierced the eyes of two bad sisters, do you remember? There were fairies, in that story. There is no one dancing on the rooftops. Never was. To avoid seeing the gray that turns into green, I look over.

The day is too hot. As the afternoon progresses, I know you will find me sitting on the step. And after the gray has turned to pink and violet and deep blue and finally black, I know that I will be standing in the center of that room, listening to the shrill screeches and flapping wings of the bats. I'll scream, then. Very loud, with all my strength, for a long time. I don't know if in that order, if it will be like that later. But I know for sure that neither you nor anyone else will hear me.

 

END

 

 Edited by Paya Frank