Читать книгу The One Before - Juan José Saer - Страница 20

Anonymous Biography

Sometimes we think about nuclear explosions or this used-up planet dangling in the black expanse because God is great, and a shudder runs over our entire body and makes us want to scream, but in a moment we forget and we go back to imagining all the things we could do if one day we received a laconic letter from California informing us that an unknown relative had just bequeathed us a million dollars. In winter we impatiently await the summer, but when we find ourselves at last beneath the January sun, bronzing slowly, doing nothing, we begin to feel as if our mind were circling around a retracted pinhole, a tiny whirlpool winding inward and downward, an implacable spiral. Then come the unchanging days: work, school for the kids, the possibility of a promotion or a subtle change of direction in our life that we discuss cautiously with our wife in bed, before we fall asleep, or maybe a new house, a memory, some party where the first few cups of alcohol excited us and made us say crazy things that puffed us up because everyone else thought they were funny. Our body changes. Nothing happens if we bathe in the morning, because we have to go immediately to the office and what’s more we’re still half asleep, but sometimes, later, home from work, having plunged into the bath because we will be going out to the movies with our wife or going for dinner at a friend’s place, we remain awhile under the tepid water and then look attentively at our naked body in the bathroom mirror or in the one in the closet, as we dry off. All things considered, we keep ourselves up. One day when there was a protest we decided not to go to work and followed the bulletins on a transistor radio, arguing over them. We remember distinctly how we would get worked up, especially over a new guy, a young man whom we didn’t much like because his yellow teeth had half rotted away, and how one day, all of a sudden, he disappeared without giving the least notice or saying goodbye to any of his friends. Now we don’t even remember his name. Next year, if all goes well, we’ll go to Brazil or to Punta del Este in Uruguay. When we are melancholy we take the car and drive alone in circles around the city—if we can, we even like to go out past the checkpoint and get into the countryside, and once we got all the way to Esperanza. It was a summer night and people were sitting on the sidewalks drinking beer in the bars spread out around the plaza. Coming home we saw how the moon bleached the endless, motionless fields of wheat so that they looked almost metallic. We sleep well and never dream. In another time, before we got married, we used to suffer bouts of insomnia and we would watch the green and red lines of a neon sign slip through the intermittent cracks in the blinds and project onto the white bedroom walls. Other than that, we’ve never had problems with our health, thank God, either because we don’t smoke or just by chance, and we’ve managed to keep ourselves safe from the terrible things that happen to other people. When our wife is pregnant, we entertain ourselves, in the last month, by putting our ear against her belly to hear what is moving inside, the movement of the child that is beginning to prepare to break away and fall into this multiple marvel, the world. Instinctively we close our eyes, throbbing, terrified, because it seems that from one moment to the next we can hear, clearly, the roar of that terrible crash.