a couple of axes he had gotten ahold of from somewhere or other and kept hidden so as to be able to defend himself properly when the time came. When I questioned him, he said that this was just in case, that there were plenty of scumbags out there, and that he felt safer this way. For a moment, I thought he was about to offer a more concrete explanation for that fear and that makeshift arsenal. I watched him hesitate over whether or not he ought to fill me in on a story of hatred and persecution that must have struck even him as beyond belief. No doubt he was afraid that I might have taken real fright on learning further details and would have had no wish to keep him company that night, and so he preferred to keep his lips sealed in the hope that I’d put such changes down to a worsening of his state of mind. Which is precisely what happened. I didn’t wish to make any further comment, but at that moment it seemed to me that Jacobo was truly beginning to hit rock bottom. He couldn’t concentrate on any reading that night and had no desire to put on any music, so as not to muffle the sound of footsteps on the staircase or landing. He doubled his usual dose of tranquilizers and spent most of the time peering out the window, all of the lights in the living room switched off, alert to every movement in the street, struggling like a guard on sentry duty to keep sleep at bay.
6
(a stroll)
The following day, on my evening stroll, I was struck out of the blue by a sudden thought: What if it turns out I’m seriously ill and the whole world is in on the secret except me? Just like that, as I cast my mind back over the previous weeks, I began to clearly see certain details that I had not fully grasped at the time: questions I had not quite understood, phone calls apropos of nothing, sideways glances as if of commiseration for no apparent reason. On the other hand, my shattered state was no great mystery to me—my pounding heart, my palpitations and, in general, the all-round toll that, for some time now, being alive had been taking on me. This became all too clear whenever I had to climb a few steps on any staircase. At the mere sight of an uphill slope in the distance, I’d begin to feel a shortness of breath, gasping for air like a fish on the sand. Meanwhile, the feeling that something inside of me was rotting away as I slept was a hard one to shake. I could sense my own skeleton as something increasingly green and watery, and the presence of a seaweed-like substance in my lungs. But the fact is I had spoken to no one. Might someone in my family have gotten their hands on the X-rays I leave lying around in envelopes here and there, or the test results that not even I could bring myself to look at? Had my siblings taken it upon themselves to consult one of my doctors? Had he informed them of something other than what he had told me? Did they phone one another every night to weigh up the options and debate the pros and cons of filling me in on the situation? Perhaps, right now, there are people agonizing over whether or not I ought to know, whether or not I would be plunged yet further into gloom, whether or not I would take the opportunity to settle some old score, or devote my days to squeezing every last drop from what little time I had left. Even I can’t answer that. The idea of disappearing has always made me think of the sea at night, of a silence filled with black vessels. At times I think I would have no objection to slipping away if I could be sure of feeling nothing more than the murmur of my strength as it ebbs away, while breath abandons my body and fatigue slowly comes to rest, like a deadweight, on my various organs—my eyelids, my guts, my worn out muscles. But at others I start to doubt whether the suffering will cease after death or there will ever be any real end to this time of nerves and debris. In other words, though on paper I know that it cannot be any other way, at the same time I find it hard to
6
(a stroll)
The following day, on my evening stroll, I was struck out of the blue by a sudden thought: What if it turns out I’m seriously ill and the whole world is in on the secret except me? Just like that, as I cast my mind back over the previous weeks, I began to clearly see certain details that I had not fully grasped at the time: questions I had not quite understood, phone calls apropos of nothing, sideways glances as if of commiseration for no apparent reason. On the other hand, my shattered state was no great mystery to me—my pounding heart, my palpitations and, in general, the all-round toll that, for some time now, being alive had been taking on me. This became all too clear whenever I had to climb a few steps on any staircase. At the mere sight of an uphill slope in the distance, I’d begin to feel a shortness of breath, gasping for air like a fish on the sand. Meanwhile, the feeling that something inside of me was rotting away as I slept was a hard one to shake. I could sense my own skeleton as something increasingly green and watery, and the presence of a seaweed-like substance in my lungs. But the fact is I had spoken to no one. Might someone in my family have gotten their hands on the X-rays I leave lying around in envelopes here and there, or the test results that not even I could bring myself to look at? Had my siblings taken it upon themselves to consult one of my doctors? Had he informed them of something other than what he had told me? Did they phone one another every night to weigh up the options and debate the pros and cons of filling me in on the situation? Perhaps, right now, there are people agonizing over whether or not I ought to know, whether or not I would be plunged yet further into gloom, whether or not I would take the opportunity to settle some old score, or devote my days to squeezing every last drop from what little time I had left. Even I can’t answer that. The idea of disappearing has always made me think of the sea at night, of a silence filled with black vessels. At times I think I would have no objection to slipping away if I could be sure of feeling nothing more than the murmur of my strength as it ebbs away, while breath abandons my body and fatigue slowly comes to rest, like a deadweight, on my various organs—my eyelids, my guts, my worn out muscles. But at others I start to doubt whether the suffering will cease after death or there will ever be any real end to this time of nerves and debris. In other words, though on paper I know that it cannot be any other way, at the same time I find it hard to
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