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
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