I never imagined I’d have the opportunity to be back on the same terrazzo tiles that my feet trod as a boy, in this corner, my back leaning against the wall that I threw balls at for hours, fighting off weariness, dreaming of the glories of baseball and basketball players. My unexpected return to this place helps me measure the weight of my burdens. Once, I was that boy, and once, my cousin was one of the people I loved most in the world.
The mobile-shelf magnate hands me the newspaper, probably figuring he should fill the five minutes of conversation time he’s set aside for me by mocking some protesters:
“A group of sympathizers encouraged them not to come down from the tree, at least two exchanges of words arising with the superintendent of police. A third protester opted to climb to the highest point of the tree, and two rescue squad members were sent up in the basket to make him come down. The ambulances, which had been late in arriving, were in place, and nearby, the mayor of San Juan even made an appearance, and farther away, three statehood sympathizers shouted terrorists and potheads at the protesters.”
I meet the smile of my cousin’s husband when I lift my eyes from the page. Apart from the inept prose, what we have here is the usual vacuity. The undeveloped drama that won’t get past the first act and will end in the customary outcome: the ancient tree felled by unknown hands in the predawn hours some Mother’s Day or Good Friday; a superintendent and a mayor representing the interests of those who have always won, steamrolling sensitivity, intelligence, and courage, convinced simultaneously that they embody morality and that this will get them the funds for retiring in a US city where they might even feel solidarity with the people who protect the trees. But not here, here it isn’t worth it, here we deserve this atrocity.
In a filthy bathroom, I see graffiti, scrawled in English, that says, “The Panty Sniffers.” It boasts the usual inanity of these toilet writings, supplemented on this occasion by the falsity of its expression of desire, for in the next line it adds in Spanish, “Not because I want to, I do it to please you.”
I returned home while night was falling this rainy Friday night. As I walked in, my eye was immediately drawn to the blinking red light on the answering machine. Few people have my number, and still fewer call it. My pursuer took the trouble to record a female computer-generated voice (those generic, spectral voices with extravagant vibrations at the end of the syllables) with the following message: “FROM WHICH REMARKABLY ENOUGH NOTHING DEVELOPS.” I’ve written it in all caps because that’s how it sounded. At this point in the game, I hardly needed to worry about how my pursuer got my number.
I grow befuddled every day in trying to discover a hint that might reveal the identity of the message writer, and I suspect it must be someone I know. But I hope it isn’t, hope that his hiding behind words and stratagems might finally be the good news that this society with no surprises is giving me.
Nevertheless, lurking in this message is life’s abomination: nothing will come of this. The matter will remain incomplete, like a frustrated hope. Perhaps one day, as mysteriously as they appeared, the messages will disappear. I should expect nothing. That is what good sense and experience tell me, but I cannot bow down before my conclusions.
This Sunday, I saw Máximo Noreña looking like the devil, on his way out of a crowded shopping center. He stood with two children who must be his sons, waiting, holding a bag from K-Mart, while they finished eating a pretzel. He seemed totally fed up. He is an author who matters to me, but none of the hundreds who surrounded him had the slightest idea of his work. I crossed the street slowly, feeling the asphalt yield under my footsteps, softened by the sun on this hateful summer afternoon. Looking at him, I could see myself a few years from now. He knows nothing of my admiration. We’ve never been introduced. Seeing him there, so miserable, I felt my appreciation and fascination grow. Seeing the banal and terrible despair of an afternoon like this, you can begin to understand the demons of this city and this country. He has not stopped writing about them, as if he had nothing else to hold onto if he wants to survive.
Under my office door, I found a little flyer for a rock band called Los Pepiniyoz. Their symbol is a big question mark drawn in a thick stroke circled by a delicate line. The flyer contained the usual information: date, time, address of the concert venue. It sat on my desk all afternoon without my realizing there was a message on the back. It must be a quote; I’d like to assume that it’s a quote because it would be scary if my pursuer could read my mind so well.
“You write because you like to, because you do not know how to do anything else, because you are unable to get your revenge by any other means. But in no way does this weakness for the text make you blind to the superfluity of your labors.”
There is a diner in Río Piedras that already has the tables set at eleven in the morning, with red plastic tablecloths and paper napkins held down by the weight of the silverware. Entering, I find an extraordinarily large surface surrounded by chairs. I realize it is the pool table and that people also sit here to eat.
Years ago I spent one summer afternoon gathering the mangos I found lying on the pavement in Luis Muñoz Marín Park. In the end, I filled two shopping bags that I found discarded there. I was with my girlfriend, a woman I had lived with for some time before our relationship fell apart. This was the last time we went out together. I remember the futility of that afternoon: running all over the park picking up overripe fruit. We filled our bags with mangos much as we might have filled them with paper smeared with bits of food or with empty cans. It was better than having to talk. It was our mute good-bye.
A few days later, I would set out her last belongings (the ones my girlfriend didn’t want to take with her) for the garbage truck, along with the bags full of mangos, which had rotted. We hadn’t even bothered to taste them.
I’ve been told that a group of friends (lawyers, accountants, shopkeepers with literary inclinations) get together in a coffee shop every Sunday to discuss the newspapers. I am told that they roar with laughter.
I’ve totaled up all the places I’ve lived in. No doubt I missed a few, but there’s only so much you can ask from me. Nevertheless, I remember perfectly well the ritual I went through every time I time moved out. With each apartment, I assumed I’d be staying in place for a long time, but I never did. When I was all packed up to move, just before I shut the door and turned in the key, I’d go inside for a moment and say good-bye to the walls. Sometimes I thanked them; frequently I cursed them. In any case, it was always a farewell, as if the apartments had been witnesses.
Julia invited me to her house. After lunch, she had to go out, and she asked me to babysit Javier for a while. We watched cartoons and then played hide-and-seek. I’m hiding behind the sofa when I come face-to-face with the child, who’s holding a photo of his mother in front of himself as if it were an icon. I ask him to show it to me. I don’t recognize it; it’s a photo from before we met. Julia is smiling into the camera, and her hair is very long. Javier takes me by the hand to the bedroom. He’s gone under the bed and taken out a shoebox full of photographs. I sit down to look at them with him. I recognize some of them because Julia had shown them to me when we were together, but apparently, there are many others she didn’t want me to see. She appears with people I’ve never met, sitting in apartments I knew nothing about, wearing haircuts and makeup that reveal a side of her I never glimpsed. In some of them she radiates an irrefutable beauty and looks straight at the camera, convinced of her power.