cover over all your old drawings, out of spite and fear and anger at being abandoned.
I could empty your cans of paint down the toilet, stop your allowance.
I could weep. Prove my parents right and leave you.
I could sit quietly and hope that it’s only a fleeting passion. That in the end you’ll choose me.
II. I am Not a Witch
What do you want me to write? What news, when I haven’t seen you for all these years?
I will describe for you people you have never seen, streets you will never walk. This is my life now. I leave work, and as I walk I greet familiar faces, acquaintances whose worries trouble me more than yours because I know their relevance, and they spit at my feet.
Their spit settles the dust that would otherwise dirty my white shoes. They bring their children for me to vaccinate. I’ve learned to love this and I barely remember what it’s like to live in a country with running water; television is a myth to me. But I’ll tell you how malaria develops, how the scabs on wounds have a special smell that attracts more flies than shit. I want to tell you that I’ve got tougher. I see young women who’ve been raped. Women who poison their husbands then regret it come to me asking for antidotes. I’ll tell you just what I say to them: I am not a witch.
You want me to write a diary for you, not about my day-to-day life but about the ideas that come into my head. I’ll tell you one thing: I learned to sew. I make mosquito nets. I buy metres and metres of gauze; I sew it into big tubes, with a frame for hanging the nets above sleeping mats. When I’m struggling with those metres of white gauze, my mind wanders. My thoughts are random. And with so many metres of white gauze I end up thinking, as well, about brides all dressed in white, about purity and innocence. Above all innocence. Well, I think about the past, too.
Last night, when I was putting the finishing touches to a mosquito net, I was remembering my journey to Spain. I don’t know why I decided to disembark there, when I was actually heading back to Portugal. I’d just lost you. The days were like Everests that I had to climb, becoming more and more breathless towards evening, which was when I had to be on my feet, at the restaurant, serving drinks. I never confessed to my supervisor that I felt ill; that I always felt seasick. And what with the pain of having lost you . . . I went ashore at Barcelona and didn’t go back on board, not at 6 p.m., nor when the ship’s horn sounded.
I spent the days crying. I saw streets I’d never seen before. I imagined us walking in the shade of peach trees. I used paper napkins that I took from the bars where I went to use the toilet. By now, I regretted having spent my savings on you. I had barely any money left. I stole food, too. And the rest of the time, I wandered. The little money I had was for buying batteries so I could keep listening to ‘Where is My Love’ over and over and over again on my Walkman. And I cried. I wanted to die, but I couldn’t summon up the courage to throw myself under one of the cars that passed me by, indifferent. On a park bench, where I’d collapsed, unable to look at the peach trees, a man sat down beside me, took my face in his hands. I saw him through the mist that had fallen over my eyes and thought he had a face like Jesus. He said to me in a thick Catalan accent that he’d seen me wandering around his block for days. What was wrong? I cried even more, I never could stand people pitying me. He hugged me and it didn’t even occur to me to think it strange. I slumped into his arms; I cried so much that after a while I was just numb, quite still, doggedly snatching breaths. He said to me: ‘Do you want to come to my place for a cup of tea?’
I don’t know if I walked or if he carried me, I don’t know if I climbed the stairs or hovered over them, until we reached a single person’s flat, with books, blank walls, mismatched furniture. A huge fish tank, with the
I could empty your cans of paint down the toilet, stop your allowance.
I could weep. Prove my parents right and leave you.
I could sit quietly and hope that it’s only a fleeting passion. That in the end you’ll choose me.
II. I am Not a Witch
What do you want me to write? What news, when I haven’t seen you for all these years?
I will describe for you people you have never seen, streets you will never walk. This is my life now. I leave work, and as I walk I greet familiar faces, acquaintances whose worries trouble me more than yours because I know their relevance, and they spit at my feet.
Their spit settles the dust that would otherwise dirty my white shoes. They bring their children for me to vaccinate. I’ve learned to love this and I barely remember what it’s like to live in a country with running water; television is a myth to me. But I’ll tell you how malaria develops, how the scabs on wounds have a special smell that attracts more flies than shit. I want to tell you that I’ve got tougher. I see young women who’ve been raped. Women who poison their husbands then regret it come to me asking for antidotes. I’ll tell you just what I say to them: I am not a witch.
You want me to write a diary for you, not about my day-to-day life but about the ideas that come into my head. I’ll tell you one thing: I learned to sew. I make mosquito nets. I buy metres and metres of gauze; I sew it into big tubes, with a frame for hanging the nets above sleeping mats. When I’m struggling with those metres of white gauze, my mind wanders. My thoughts are random. And with so many metres of white gauze I end up thinking, as well, about brides all dressed in white, about purity and innocence. Above all innocence. Well, I think about the past, too.
Last night, when I was putting the finishing touches to a mosquito net, I was remembering my journey to Spain. I don’t know why I decided to disembark there, when I was actually heading back to Portugal. I’d just lost you. The days were like Everests that I had to climb, becoming more and more breathless towards evening, which was when I had to be on my feet, at the restaurant, serving drinks. I never confessed to my supervisor that I felt ill; that I always felt seasick. And what with the pain of having lost you . . . I went ashore at Barcelona and didn’t go back on board, not at 6 p.m., nor when the ship’s horn sounded.
I spent the days crying. I saw streets I’d never seen before. I imagined us walking in the shade of peach trees. I used paper napkins that I took from the bars where I went to use the toilet. By now, I regretted having spent my savings on you. I had barely any money left. I stole food, too. And the rest of the time, I wandered. The little money I had was for buying batteries so I could keep listening to ‘Where is My Love’ over and over and over again on my Walkman. And I cried. I wanted to die, but I couldn’t summon up the courage to throw myself under one of the cars that passed me by, indifferent. On a park bench, where I’d collapsed, unable to look at the peach trees, a man sat down beside me, took my face in his hands. I saw him through the mist that had fallen over my eyes and thought he had a face like Jesus. He said to me in a thick Catalan accent that he’d seen me wandering around his block for days. What was wrong? I cried even more, I never could stand people pitying me. He hugged me and it didn’t even occur to me to think it strange. I slumped into his arms; I cried so much that after a while I was just numb, quite still, doggedly snatching breaths. He said to me: ‘Do you want to come to my place for a cup of tea?’
I don’t know if I walked or if he carried me, I don’t know if I climbed the stairs or hovered over them, until we reached a single person’s flat, with books, blank walls, mismatched furniture. A huge fish tank, with the
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