andar por ahí | martin patricio barrios ago. 2012 | Page 102

I, far from being the gypsy who took a bear with a little rope, the bear that took little steps like a fat lady who has just varnished her nails and takes little steps with her toes bent upwards so the varnish doesn´t come off her freshly painted nails, the black bear that followed the gypsy through the Thar desert and in times when mustard blooms and the men who crossed the desert proudly wore turbans over huge moustaches, like those of that English friend of Alan in Zeballos Cué, who slept with a moustache protector on and for me his bow tie was funnier than the ridiculous moustache that protruded quite a lot from his jaws; far from being the gypsy who took his black bear and an early morning little fire some days before I went to Jhansi to look for Baloo bear or just to see what Mr Kipling saw or just to look for that child that I might have been once, he taught me how to sit down, he taught me the fine and complex difference between the sitting pose and the shitting pose, the gypsy took his bear and I thought about the many things I took with rope that are not dogs, because he was taking a bear and that little Bengali soldier was taking an inmate he had to shoot with a jute rope (what would the man with just a jute rope tied to his neck be thinking?, a rope thinner than the one that is used to tie parcels and only one soldier in canvas shoes with holes in them was taking him to the wall and the man does not show himself…) Kite… what else would I have taken with a rope besides a dog or a kite, which things do I take tied? (p. 55) Or rather looking elsewhere and not letting it happen again? Better to believe than to be exposed, is it dangerous? That it is not true that people fly without paying attention to the poor law of gravity and fly around, through the skies of the world at the top of their voices? They shout things like the words come on or hurray, they shout the word hurray and they fly. They fly, little girl, they fly over an earth which is still plane despite Galileo, Copernicus and Miss Susana. The fly over the observatories in Jaipur and they stick their tongues out. They fly over all places playing trombones and they curse the asexual angels that ask for moderation. And you? I thought you also could open your arms and fly and leave trails of little stars. I was trying to find the bottom of your eyes and I felt the same fascination as that afternoon when I went down to the caves of Andaman Sea and saw the mountains on the coast of Prateth Thai get lost in the oceanic trenches and I almost drown because I wanted to follow the call of magical abysses rather than the survival instinct. And that is what happened to me with you. (p. 56) I played The Köln concert and Dark intervals, in that order and that order is rare because it is rare that I listen to two concerts in a row, but I felt like listening not two but a lot of piano, I felt like listening to the percussion of hammers on the strings, the wood vibrate, that nostalgic and almost genetic sound of the pianos, as if that brought the pianos from my childhood, my mum, serious, playing Schumann, as if that could bring me to myself, lying on the green sofa, looking at the braces in the living roof, dreaming, dreaming about the time I would be a grownup, dreaming about huge adventures, incredibly romantic. I had prepared mate knowing that there is no point in preparing mate to read or write, I never drink mate when I read or write. I looked for the damned book by Oesterheld that I can’t manage to read. I did a bel