andar por ahí | martin patricio barrios ago. 2012 | Page 99

If I am not going to say anything, I’d better say it. The sky is falling down because of fat clouds that bring nasty heat, and mosquitoes bring malarias of all kinds. And no wind at all. I know it is spitting at the sky. We spit at the sky because there is nothing else under our feet. There is nothing else under our feet and nothing more difficult to change than the past, but what if this time we leave it as it is, as it was? Horrible as it was… I know. Somehow I was there, I have been in so many “there”. Although I am here now and it will rain at any time and the sea is going to get a little rough and the fish will stay still, waiting for the rain to stop and the foam will shine like noctilucas, I know that, maybe because I don’t eat fish and I look at the sea and the sailors amaze me, the wrinkles on the sailors’ faces, the hands of the sailors used to praying, to walking on abysses of one thousand metres of water. Let’s pretend that it really happened what happened. It started to rain now. Not even the rain is going to wash anything away. (p. 28) I’m always leaving and that day I saw you arrive. I saw you arrive and I wanted to stay. I couldn’t do much more than bearing my body against gravity and I wasn’t looking for anything. Some get surprised, others already know it. I got surprised although I already knew it. Or I knew and that’s why I got surprised. I mean, I saw you arrive one day as I already knew you were about to come in, as if it were what had to happen and I stared at your long and nervous hands, your arched eyebrows, your tremendous eyes, I stared at you as it should be the case, as if it were like that, looking at what you are, all those women you are, as if it were inevitable, as if I had waited for that. I heard your talking voice, as if what mattered was what was being heard rather than what was being said. I stared at you as if I knew. I heard your talking voice and listened as if I was listening to the sea splashing millions of little winkles, oysters, squids, jellyfishes, morays, crustaceans, scallops, crabs, mermaids, dolphins, foam, plankton, molluscs, wood from ships that sank centuries ago, as if I was listening to the sea talk about those furious sailors that one day arrived at the Mozambique’s beaches and cried, as if I was listening to the sea of Southern China… I stared at your eyes and remembered having seen things of all kinds. (p. 31) What would that Bengali who used to sell me doughnuts in the Soho the day he saw the Twins collapse think? What would that old Lebanese who used to read me the Koran helping himself with the finger in front of the Morro Castle think? What would you think of a skinny bloke who talks to the moon and says ‘I hope’ to you? In my neighbourhood, the number was three; less than that meant to be a coward and more, to be stupid. (“All that is great stands in the storm,” Plato, The Republic) I seek the storm as surfers seek the wave, the gambler his day, or the idiot his muse. Don’t you ever forget that a skinny and bad-tempered bloke who talks to the moon, fell in love with you, maybe in a bad day or at the wrong moment, at the wrong time, at the wrong place, beyond the point of satiety and the water for his mate8 got cold. (p. 32) So I rushed to see you, I rushed to see you a lot, with all my strength, from behind your eyelashes like sunbeams on a holy card in which god floats in the clouds, but those were not clouds or god but your eyes, deep, tremendous, that almost always beat me. Always. Making time last, as you make your last cigarette last or calling the things, the trees, the frogs, the ladybirds, trilobites, bicycle valves, flowers of tobacco plants, uncorked bottles, anything that does not have a name, that which is not allowed to name, martyrs and heroes of prohibited loves, and everything that is called, all living beings and objects, even the nothingness, stand there in front of you and tell you: be interested in him. That is, I was looking at you and you were not, that is how it all started. I was looking at you because: 1. it is my task to look 2. you were facing forward 3. I liked you 4. I couldn’t stop looking at you 5. I wanted to keep looking at you for ever 6. (this part is hard to explain) 7. other reasons 8. actually, I was hoping that you would look at me, so I looked at you a lot, I looked at you with everything, everything is the usual: all skinny, all broken, all hoping that you would look at me, all irritated, all yes, all no, all excited, all that fits in everything and everything else too; I mean, I was looking at you hoping you would notice I was there, and not because I was in front of you, but because I was there, with my stuttering soul and my heart to love on the verge of a massive heart attack. So I would talk shouting, knowing that the world works with two things: rice and illusion. (p. 33) 8 Traditonal hot drink in Argentina.