Pelayo Barrendoaín, Feria del Libro, Madrid, July 1994. First: here I am, doped, the antidepressants coming out of my ears, walking around this feria that's supposedly so nice, where Hernando García León has all kinds of readers, and Baca, the diametrical opposite of García León but just as revered, has all kinds of readers, and even my old friend Pere Ordóñez has some readers, and even I, why beat around the bush, why not just say so, even I have my share of readers too, the burnouts, the whipped, the people with little lithium bombs in their heads, rivers of Prozac, lakes of Epaminol, dead seas of Rohypnol, stoppered wells of Tranquimazín, my brothers and sisters, those who feed on my madness to nourish their madness. And here I am with my nurse, although instead of a nurse she might be a social worker, a special education teacher, maybe even a lawyer. In any case here I am with a woman who seems to be my nurse, or at least one might draw that conclusion seeing how quick she is to offer me the miracle pills, the bombs that go off in my brain and stop me from doing anything crazy. She walks beside me and her graceful shadow brushes my spreading, heavy shadow when I turn. My shadow seems ashamed to flow beside her shadow, but look again and you see it's perfectly happy that way. My shadow, the Yogi Bear of the third millennium, and her shadow, disciple of Hypatia. And it's precisely then that I'm happy to be here, more than anything because my nurse likes to see so many books all together and likes to walk alongside the most famous madman of so-called Spanish poetry or so-called Spanish literature. And that's when I realize I'm laughing mysteriously or singing mysteriously under my breath and she asks me why I'm laughing or why I'm singing and I tell her I'm laughing because the whole thing seems ludicrous to me, because Hernando García León pretending to be Saint John the Baptist or Saint Ignatius Loyola or the sainted Escrivá is ridiculous, and because the great struggle of all these writers for recognition and readers, hunkered down in their respective asbestos booths, is ludicrous. And she looks at me and asks why I'm singing. And I tell her it's my poems, that my singing is poems I'm thinking up or trying to memorize. And then my nurse smiles and nods, satisfied with my answers, and it's at times like this, when the crowd is enormous and the crush begins to seem faintly menacing (we're near Aurelio Baca's booth, she tells me), that her hand seeks and easily finds my hand, and hand in hand we slowly traverse the patches of blazing sun and icy shade, her shadow dragging my shadow after it but especially her body dragging my body. And although what I told her isn't true (I smile to keep from howling, I sing so I won't pray or curse), my explanation is more than good enough for my nurse, which doesn't say much for her skills as a psychologist but says plenty for her zest for life, her yearning to enjoy the sun shining on Retiro Park, her irrepressible desire to be happy. And that's when I think about things that from a certain perspective might not seem very poetic, like unemployment (my nurse has just been rescued from unemployment, thanks to me being crazy), and also the lost time rising before my eyes like a single red balloon that floats up and up until it makes me cry, Daedalus mourning the fate of Icarus, Daedalus doomed, and then I come back down to planet Earth, to the Feria del Libro, and try to give her a half smile, just for her, but she's not the one who sees, it's my readers, the whipped, the massacred, the madmen who feed on my madness and who'll end up doing away with me or my infinite patience, it's my critics who see me, those who want to have their pictures taken with me but wouldn't be able to stand my presence for more than eight hours straight, it's the writer-television hosts, those who love how crazy Barrendoaín is and at the same time gravely shake their heads. She doesn't see, she never sees, the fool, the idiot, the innocent, this woman who's come too late, who's interested in literature with no idea of the hells lurking beneath the tainted or pristine pages, who loves flowers and doesn't realize there's a monster in the bottom of the vase, who strolls around the Feria del Libro and drags me around behind her, who smiles at the photographers when they point their cameras at me, who drags my shadow along, and her shadow too, the ignorant, the dispossessed, the disinherited, who will outlive me and is my only consolation. Everything that begins as comedy ends as a dirge in the void.