The policeman does not speak, does not relay anything. The only disclosure he has made is that he replays, by himself and based on his notes, all of our games-once during the afternoon in his office, once again at home that night. I asked him if he was married and he replied with a shrug, "Married? Me?"
The bookseller relays nothing either. She says she has nothing to say, that she has raised two children and that she has been a widow for six years, that's all. When she asks me questions about my life in the other country, I answer by saying I have even less to tell than she, since I have raised no children and have never had a wife.
One day she says to me, "We're about the same age."
I protest: 'I'd be surprised. You seem much, much younger than me."
She blushes. "Come on, I'm not fishing for compliments. What I meant was, if you grew up in this town we must probably have gone to the same school."
I say, "Yes, only me, I never went to school."
"That's impossible. School was mandatory even then."
"Not for me. I was mentally retarded at the time."
She says, "It's impossible to talk seriously with you. You're always joking."
I am seriously ill. I have known this for exactly one year today.
It began in the other country, in my adoptive country, one morning at the beginning of November. At five.
Outside it is still night. I am having trouble breathing. An intense pain keeps me from inhaling. The pain starts in my chest and spreads to my sides, back, shoulders, arms, throat, neck, jaws. As though a huge hand were trying to crush the upper part of my body.
Stretching out my arm slowly, switching on the bedside lamp.
Gingerly sitting up. Waiting. Rising. Getting to the desk, to the telephone. Sitting down on the chair. Calling for an ambulance. No! No ambulances. Waiting.
Going to the kitchen, making coffee. Not hurrying. Taking no deep breaths. Inhaling and exhaling slowly, softly, calmly.
After my coffee, showering, shaving, brushing my teeth. Returning to the bedroom, getting dressed. Waiting eight hours and then calling not an ambulance but a taxi and my regular doctor.
He sees me on an emergency basis. He listens to me, takes an X ray of my lungs, examines my heart, measures my blood pressure.
"Get dressed."
We are now face-to-face in his office.
"Do you still smoke? How much? Do you still drink? How much?"
I answer truthfully. I don't think I have ever lied to him. I know that he doesn't give a damn, neither about my health nor my illness.
He writes in my file and looks at me. "You're doing everything you can to kill yourself. That concerns only you. It has been ten years since I formally forbade you to smoke or drink. You keep on doing both. But if you want to live another few years, you have to stop immediately."
I ask, "What do I have?"
"Cardiac angina, probably. It was to be expected. But I'm no heart specialist."
He hands me a piece of paper. "I am referring you to a well-known cardiologist. Take this to his clinic for a more in-depth examination. The sooner the better. Meanwhile, take these in case of pain."
He hands me a prescription. I ask, "Will they operate on me?"
He says, "If there's still time."
"If there isn't?"
"You could have a heart attack at any moment."
I go to the nearest pharmacy and am given two vials of pills. One of them contains ordinary painkillers; on the other I read, '"Irinitrine. For cardiac angina. Active ingredient: Nitroglycerine."
I go home, take a pill from each vial, and lie down on my bed. The pain quickly disappears and I fall asleep.
I walk through the streets in the town of my childhood. It is a ghost town; the doors and windows of the houses are shut and the silence is complete.
I reach a wide older street lined by wooden houses and tumbledown barns. The ground is dusty and it feels good to walk barefoot through the dust.
There is, however, a strange tension in the air.
I turn around and see a puma at the other end of the street. A beautiful animal, khaki-colored and golden, whose silken fur shines under the burning sun.
Suddenly everything is on fire. The houses and barns burst into flames but I must continue down the burning street because the puma too has begun to walk and follows me at some distance, with majestic slowness.
Where to turn? There's no way out. It's either fire or teeth.
Maybe at the end of the street?
It has to end somewhere, this street, all of them do, flowing into a square, another street, fields, the open countryside, unless the street happens to be a dead end, which must be the case here and is.
I can feel the puma's breath very close behind me. I don't dare turn around but I can go no farther; my feet are rooted to the ground. I wait in horror for the puma to leap onto my back, ripping me from shoulders to thighs, clawing my head, my face.
But the puma passes me by; it walks on complacently and lies at the feet of a child at the end of the street, a child who wasn't there before but is now, and it strokes the puma lying at its feet.
The child says to me, "He isn't mean. He belongs to me. Don't be scared of him. He doesn't eat people, he doesn't eat meat. He just eats souls."
There are no more flames; the fire has gone out and the street is only soft ashes cooling.
I ask the child, "You're my brother, aren't you? Were you waiting for me?"
The child shakes his head. "No, I have no brother and I'm not waiting for anyone. I am the guardian of eternal youth. The one waiting for his brother is sitting on a bench in Central Square. He's very old. Perhaps he's waiting for you."
I find my brother sitting on a bench in Central Square. When he sees me, he stands. "You're late. We must hurry."
We climb up to the cemetery and sit down on the yellow grass. Everything around us is decaying: the crosses, the trees, the bushes, the flowers. My brother scratches at the earth with his cane and white worms emerge.
My brother says, "Not everything is dead. Those are alive."
The worms writhe. The sight of them gladdens me. I say, "As soon as you begin to think, you can no longer love life."
My brother raises my chin with his cane. "Don't think. Look- have you ever seen such a beautiful sky?"
I look up. The sun sets over the town.
I answer, "No, never. Nowhere else."
We walk side by side to the castle. We come to a stop in the courtyard at the base of the battlements. My brother climbs the rampart and, when he reaches the top, starts to dance to a music that seems to come from underground. He dances, flailing his arms toward the sky, toward the stars, toward the full and rising moon. A thin silhouette in his long black coat, he advances along the ramparts, dancing, while I follow him from below, running and shouting: "No! Don't! Stop it! Come down! You'll fall!"
He comes to a halt above me. "Don't you remember? We used to climb over the rooftops and we were never afraid of falling."
"We were young, we didn't feel the height. Come down!"
He laughs. "Don't be scared. I won't fall; I can fly. I fly over the town every night."
He raises his arms, jumps, and crashes onto the courtyard stones at my feet. I lean over him, take his bald head, his wrinkled face into my hands, and I cry.
His face decomposes, his eyes disappear, and in my hands there is now nothing but an anonymous and disintegrating skull that flows through my fingers like fine sand.
I wake up in tears. My room is lit by the dusk; I have slept for most of the day. I change out of my sweat-damp shirt and wash my face. Looking at myself in the mirror, I wonder when I last cried. I cannot remember.
I light a cigarette and sit down at the window, watching night settle on the town. Under my window is an empty garden, its lone tree already leafless. Farther away are houses, windows lighting up in greater and greater numbers. There are lives behind those windows, calm and normal and peaceful lives. Couples, children, families. I also hear the faraway sound of cars. I wonder why people drive, even at night. Where are they going, and why?