The world is not exactly crazy, just overly decent. There is no way to make it talk when it is drunk. And when it isn’t, it either abhors drunkenness or loves its fellow man.
But I honestly don’t know what the world is or what mankind is.
I only know that I must be fair and honorable and love my fellow man.
And I love the thousands of men within me who are born and die each instant and do not live at all.
Behold my fellow men.
Justice is a few ugly statues in city squares.
I don’t like any of them too much or too little — they are neither gods nor women.
I love the justice of women, who don’t wear robes and have no divinity.
As far as honor goes, I am not among the worst.
I eat my bread alone so as not to arouse envy in my neighbor.
I was born in a city, and I don’t know how to see the countryside.
I have been spared the sin of longing for it to be mine.
I do, on the other hand, desire heaven.
I am almost a virtuous man, almost a mystic.
I like the colors of the sky because they are definitely not German dyes.
I like to walk through the streets, part dog, part machine, not at all man.
I am not wholly convinced of my own humanity; I do not wish to be like others. I do not want to be happy with the permission of the police.
Now there is a little sun in the streets.
I don’t know who has taken it away, what evil man, leaving stains on the ground as if from a slaughtered animal.
A crippled little dog walks by: the only compassion, the only charity, the only love of which I am capable.
Dogs do not have Lenin, and this guarantees them a human though genuine life.
To walk through the streets like Pío Baroja’s characters (all a bit doglike).
To chew on bones like Murger’s poets, but serenely.
But men have an afterlife.
This is why they devote their lives to loving their fellow man.
They make money to kill useless time, empty time.
Diogenes is a myth — the humanization of dogs.
The longing great men have to be fully dogs. Little men want to be fully great men: millionaires, sometimes gods.
But these things should be said in a low voice — I am afraid of hearing myself.
I am not a great man — I am a common man who strives for great happiness.
But happiness is not enough to make one happy.
The world is too ugly, and there is no way to make it beautiful.
I can imagine it only as a city full of brothels and factories under the flapping of red flags.
My hands feel delicate.
What am I, what do I want? I am a man and want nothing.
Or, perhaps, to be a man like other men.
You do not have big circles under your eyes.
I want to be happy in a small way. With sweetness, with hope, with dissatisfactions, with limitations, with time, with perfection.
Now I can board a transatlantic liner. And during the crossing fish adventures like fish.
But where would I go?
The world is insufficient for me.
It is too large, and I cannot shred it into little satisfactions as I would like.
Death is only a thought, nothing else, nothing else.
And I want it to be a long delight with its own end, its own quality.
The port, full of fog, is too romantic.
Cythera is a North American resort.
The flesh of Yankees is too fresh, almost cold, almost dead.
The panorama changes at every corner, like in a movie.
The final kiss already echoes through the shadows of a room full of burning cigarettes. But this is not the final scene. That is why the kiss echoes.
Nothing is enough for me, not even death; I want proportion, perfection, satisfaction, delight.
How have I ended up in this forsaken and smoky movie house?
The afternoon will have already ended in the city. And I still feel the afternoon.
I now perfectly remember my innocent years. And all bad thoughts are erased from my soul. I feel like a man who has never sinned.
I have no past and an excess of future.
Let’s go home.
~ ~ ~
By the time Ramón died, he had been left with only the vile and spent pleasure of looking under seats in public places: movie theater, streetcar, et cetera. A single deep and empty day, when one rolls unconsciously from hour to hour, comatose, like down a cliff, from stone to stone, rock to rock. The dirty cup of the sky slowly filled with sugar, cold water, and lemon juice — a thirsty cloud licked its lips; Ramón died. Looking under seats. Ramón became a compulsive smoker. Put out the cigarette, flick off the ash, tease the wind, stretch out an arm, all of which, like a matchmaker, facilitated his enjoyment of surprising his shoes when they were almost in their underwear, or of an after-dinner conversation, or of frittering away a Sunday. Sunday of shoes, shadows under the armchairs, a Saturday behind you, a dim light under the table. The after-dinner conversation of shoes, a short nap: a bootleg shakes the shoelaces loose; a toe cap yawns; the afternoon wrinkles its hide, tired of walking all morning; the right shoe turns on its side and snores. Shoes in their underwear; the uppers, made of yellow fabric, hang out, intimately, like a shirttail. Shoes, silent old people, in couples, disappointed spouses, together at the heels, separate at the toes. Their past married life unites them forever and alienates them at the hour when they, he and she, would like to be twenty years old again, the right shoe and the left, the male and the female, the husband and the wife — to be twenty years old and marry badly or take a good lover. The children’s booties and slippers meet above, toe to toe, face to face, almost kissing, behind the folds of the nursemaid’s apron. Shoes that are adolescent, elegant, languid, crazy, always misdirected, never decently parallel. shoes going through the bad years, the awkward age, weak lungs and robust tendencies. Old shoes, one soul in two bodies and not even loving each other. Ramón left the above verses typewritten on the index of a book with uncut pages I inherited from him.
Old shoes, one soul — a dirty layer of glue between the sole and the insole — one soul in two bodies — two swollen and rheumatic bodies in a wrinkled hide — only one soul in two bodies. He and she don’t want to face each other.
~ ~ ~
Terrible days in which all women are one single woman in a nightdress. Terrible days between the lines of Zamacois, terribly serious. No, not Paul de Kock, Mister Kakison. Fifteen years old and wearing long pants.! No, life is very serious — nothing less than a woman wearing a nightdress. Don’t you understand me, Mister Kakison? It’s possible you will never understand me. Admirable!. What does one live on in London? That’s not the point, Mister Kakison. Every night Marina closes her window wearing her nightdress, but certainly that is not a sin. Why shouldn’t she? Marina, hairy legs, an eight-o’clock-in-the-morning bather. To bathe at eight o’clock in the morning in the sea is to bathe in the cold, in the sky, in the hour. A shower of fog, a massage of chills, sponges of indecision, and the nearby barge — a large marine bird with black, drooping wings of folded nets flies backwards. Hmmm. Mister Kakison, you must wash the stains of the night off your cinnamon-colored robe with gasoline. Night in the robe of an English accountant of the firm Dasy & Bully. What do you say to that, Mister Kakison? All right.? That is not an answer at this hour in this country. Say that I am right, and you will speak the truth. Yes, Mister Kakison, say something, something so sane you will never notice.