Flying kites

The door closes. The street is silent. Sundays are slow days. The cherry trees are blossoming. We walk and laugh. We walk and laugh again. Up that hill they are flying kites. “I want to get one” I whisper to  her ear. It is windy and I can see the carcases of my words go away. They are floating around us, threaded to our kissing mouths only by the silence that lingers between us. The hill is steep and the city shines beyond the park.

 

Longings

The trees cast a long shadow over the road. It is a tiny road that curves along the quiet facades of old houses and ancient walls, hops over the arch of a bridge and plunges into the yellow night and into the trees. The night is yellow, yellow as the gas lights that pour their jelly of gold, and tinge the intimacy of night with a dust of old.
We walked a few steps over the bridge and stopped as we reached the middle of its hunch. There was a swift kiss. One. Two. Our lips pressing tight against each other and the arch of our backs bending in an untied knot.
It all smells of old. The lazy arch of the river coils around the same turn that it has seen for centuries, and the faces of these walls wet their noses into the black water as they have always done.
There is something fiery about the noises that escape from the hidden corners of the night. The untamed past shouts from the pavement stones. The echoes of gone steps fill the empty space that stretches beyond the intimacy of our play. The past with its tentacles of foam and its vast shores of pebbles dwells out there. It is alive in the murmur of the trees. It lives in the yellow lights of the gas lamps. It whispers with the echo of a long gone cart, rolling slowly through the street, leaving behind it the clapping of a horse’s shoes. It is there, reverberating with the sound of cannon voices and the fading shouts of a commander to his battalion of iron suits. The past and its stories of love and death, flesh, bones, and dust, swirls around us as the taste of our mouths fuse.
What am I searching for when I kiss your lips? What are we searching for in the hidden shores of our skin? What are we looking for in this colliding, this implosion of our bodies if not only a tiny relief from the looming presence of death? It is in the past, deep in the night of the world and the big blanket that surrounds it all and stretches around us like a cocoon where we exist. Inside it there is only the two of us, our bodies, our kisses, and nothing else.
Over there the contours of light raging in a craze of colour invite us to unravel the ribbon of our kiss. The music pours from the tents and crosses the night in swift flight.
The purple liquid pours from a vast cup and a fountain of black lava flows down into a pond of chocolate. The lamps shine on top of us, and their yellow lights pulse in front of the black of a starry night.
When we look up, a few nightly flies hover around the lights’ golden nape and beyond them, the moon looks down upon us with its immovable and pallid gaze.

A portrait of the distance

The table is empty.

The window is open. There is a patch of blue.

An open book lies besides a glass of wine on a side shelf.

A golden light pours out from a door. A candle burns in another room.

The air is clean. The sails inflate and deflate with the breathing of the breeze.

The sea is cold, and its waters shine clean and blue under the sail boats.

Her body sits, straight on the chair. She wears a white hat and a blue dress. Her lips are half open as if a smile had just flown away from her mouth.

A seagull cuts the air with its silvery wings. It flies away slowly, and its distant cries fade as its wings take it far away.

My fins

I jumped into the river and swam to the other shore.

When I left the water a pair of fins had emerged on my back.

The pedestrians looked at me with fear. I didn’t know where to go, where to walk. I fainted. ‘

When I woke up, there was a light on top of me, and I could see nothing but its bright rays of white.

I touched my back with my left arm. There was a long scar running down my spine.

The hospital sheets where white, but the room had blue curtains dividing me from the others.

I went by the water. The wind was calm, and the river flowed down its course with a steady stream of green liquid.

I jumped.

Some note

Why do I write? The act of writing, is that of leaving a mark of ink on the page. The page that glitters, white and empty, gets filled with the images, the emotions, the colours, the ideas that populate my imagination and give shape to the landscapes of my inside.

I write to forget, to empty the vessel of my soul of the ghosts of its memories. I write because I feel. And I feel. I write, I shout, I feel. There are lips and sights, and eyes that looked at me with a smile and those who looked at me with a faraway glance. And I write to capture them all, to lock them on the white of the blank page. And when I succeed, when the letters carve a prison of words, I am free. I am free.

The dirt. The grass that moves, in tiny inflections of its shape with the soft movement of the breeze. The landscape is wide. A few trees scattered in the distance move from one side to the other. Their colour is dark green, and they form a circle of deeper greens that surrounds the fields.

I call my name. The sound bounces on the walls of the grotto and bounces again and again on the walls of the cave. I hear my name repeated, magnified, amplified and finally scattered into pieces reaching back to me. The water is cold. The cold permeates through my skin.

The dirt falls on my head. I have been lying in this coffin for a few days, and the leakage lets pass a constant flow of sand into my box. I can’t move. The sand doesn’t let me move my head. I try to shout, but my throat says nothing, and my lungs, dead, cannot pump the little air that stands between me and the ceiling of my crypt.

A spade breaks the seal. I cannot move. The sand has covered with a thin layer of silica the enamel of my bones.

Public death

They killed him.

The bullet pierced his forehead and he fell from the podium and into the mass of people that cheered below.

There was a silence. The crowd kept quiet.

And the TV monitors spat, to the dense air of a summer evening, the news of the assassination.

An acid cry escaped my throat. The TV shop was cluttered with people revolving around the few monitors that were turned on. I believed in him. I believed in his words and his speech. I believed, I cried, and someone pat my back.

He was a man. For his forehead bled, and his lungs stopped breathing. I thought, while walking out of the store; I thought he would bring change, and from thinking about it again and again, I thought he was change itself. I thought many things. I realized everyone thought many things. Then I remembered the bullet, the improbable bullet that pierced Keneddy’s skull in Dallas, and I felt scared. How was it possible that HE was killed. How could it be possible?

We all felt cold. We felt a big wave of chilled wind flow through the city. The next morning they brought the newspaper and his face was there, bleeding on the asphalt. He died instantaneously. I looked at the picture for a scarce second. “They caught one of the assassins” read the footnote. I felt my stomach turn around. The morning was bright outside. The street was full of the sound of cars moving slowly through the congested avenue. I took my briefcase and left for work.

Some note

Why do I write? The act of writing, is that of leaving a mark of ink on the page. The page that glitters, white and empty, gets filled with the images, the emotions, the colours, the ideas that populate my imagination and give shape to the landscapes of my inside.

I write to forget, to empty the vessel of my soul of the ghosts of its memories. I write because I feel. And I feel. I write, I shout, I feel. There are lips and sights, and eyes that looked at me with a smile and those who looked at me with a faraway glance. And I write to capture them all, to lock them on the white of the blank page. And when I succeed, when the letters carve a prison of words, I am free. I am free.

The dirt. The grass that moves, in tiny inflections of its shape with the soft movement of the breeze. The landscape is wide. A few trees scattered in the distance move from one side to the other. Their colour is dark green, and they form a circle of deeper greens that surrounds the fields.

I call my name. The sound bounces on the walls of the grotto and bounces again and again on the walls of the cave. I hear my name repeated, magnified, amplified and finally scattered into pieces reaching back to me. The water is cold. The cold permeates through my skin.

The dirt falls on my head. I have been lying in this coffin for a few days, and the leakage lets pass a constant flow of sand into my box. I can’t move. The sand doesn’t let me move my head. I try to shout, but my throat says nothing, and my lungs, dead, cannot pump the little air that stands between me and the ceiling of my crypt.

A spade breaks the seal. I cannot move. The sand has covered with a thin layer of silica the enamel of my bones.

Manos blancas

A mi hermana le decían que era muy bonita. Tenía los ojos azules y una piel blanca, lechosa y transparente. Yo nunca fui lindo ni guapo. Yo soy y era feo. Feo como una piedra. ¡Qué Chula es su hija señora!. Y yo sonreía, intentando acaparar la atención de su interlocutor con muecas y brincos. Nunca funcionaba.

Los fines de semana y los veranos en mi pueblo eran momentos mágicos. Cuando no había sesión en el colegio, jugábamos en la alberca del club del fraccionamiento. Echados como lagartijas al sol, o nadando como renacuajos nos quemábamos bajo un sol inclemente. Nunca usamos bloqueador porque esas cosas son para gringos pedorros de pieles sensibles.

Al cabo de muchos días de asoleado constante, notaba que la marca del calzón quedaba impresa como un pedazo de carne traslúcido y pálido en el área de mi piel que no había visto el sol. Decidí que ese color pálido del área que rodeaba mis genitales era el tono verdadero de mi piel y que la marca oscura que corría de mis manos a mi espalda baja era un artefacto apócrifo resultado del sol quemante de nuestras latitudes.

Así fué que comencé a ponerme bloqueador. Escurría una capa enorme de la crema blanca que mi mamá guardaba en el botiquín de la casa y que ostentaba, indicado en un cuadro naranja, de una protección de 75. Tal vez así el sol no me quemaría más y luego de un tiempo el color de mi toda mi piel sería como el color de mis nalgas.

Ese día le dije a mi mamá que saldría a caminar por el campo. Ella dijo que sí y yo salí a caminar por entre matorrales, zarzas y piedras. Me puse tanto bloqueador sobre la cara que el sudor le hizo caer a mis ojos y regresé a casa, a lavarme con un corredero de agua intentando deshacerme del exceso de crema que había caído sobre mis ojos.

Tenía miedo de parecer indio. Era un sentir injustificado. Al parecer mi piel no era tan oscura como para ser excluido del grupo de los blancos. Tal vez era eso, o tal vez crecí suficientemente alto, o tal vez mi apellido era una palabra en italiano, y no el común Pérez. En todo caso, yo no era suficientemente indio. No era tan indio como Pedro de la Cruz o José Ramón y nunca tuve problema alguno. Las niñas eran más inclementes. Las morenitas se juntaban en un lado del jardín, y las blanquitas al otro. Entre los niños, las consecuencias de ser indio se reducían a ser el último elegido para jugar futbol y uno que otro apodo haciendo referencia a Moctezuma o sus súbditos.

Los sábados por la mañana mi mamá y mi hermana prendían el televisor. Yo veía los infomerciales. De vez en vez anunciaban una crema milagrosa que rebajaría el color de mi piel en al menos dos tonos. Me fascinaba esa crema que luego de un mes de uso, podría volver mi piel del tono de una hoja en blanco. Aunque pensé seriamente en comprar un tubo del producto, nunca me armé del valor suficiente para hablar a la línea de teléfono que anunciaban. 01800 …

No poco después llegué a EUA y noté que mi piel se hacía pálida al cabo de unos meses de estar lejos de nuestro sol. Regresé a mi pueblo intentando ocultarme del ojo quemante de nuestro siempre presente astro, tratando de preservar la nueva palidez que había llegado a mi piel. Fracasé. Para las siguientes vacaciones no me escondí de nuevo. En gringolandia aprendí que a las güeritas les gustan los morenitos, y que el bronceado es más atractivo en estas latitudes de lo que uno podría sospechar.

Mis manos aún son negras. Las veo posándose sobre mi pecho y las encuentro quemadas y oscuras como un pedazo de carbón. Cuando las entrelazo entre esas manos blancas o las hago recorrer su cabellera rubia, exclamo. “Look. I am black” y ella sonríe y mueve su cabeza de lado a lado. “No, you are not black”

(Nombre)

Tiene una melena tupida que rodea unos labios llenos y carnosos. Muchos conocen esos labios que pronuncian discursos sobre la multitud en días de fiesta. Y son los mismos labios que aparecen en la TV o que vociferan en la radio todos los Sábados de 4 a 6. Siempre falto de tiempo, su mirada nerviosa se posa sobre las cosas sin fijarse en nada. Escucha sin escuchar y responde, ante el asombro del que habla, con perfecto conocimiento del tema de la conversación.
Prefiere los días nublados a las tardes de sol. Se le ve trabajar, escribiendo memorandos o atendiendo alguna embajada sentado frente al escritorio de su despacho. Encuentra particularmente placenteros los días en que, cuando el clima lo permite, puede ver el agua caer sobre las hojas del jardín de palacio.
Diez años atrás; cuando muró su madre, plantó una jacaranda frente a esa ventana. El árbol desborda de flores rojas en los meses de Junio a Agosto. Nunca le han gustado sus frutos largos y oscuros. Los manda podar tan pronto aparecen. Cuando la señora Mercedes Sosa murió decretó un día de luto nacional. Todas las banderas ondearon a media asta y la tropa desfiló por las calles a marcha de tambores y trompetas. En Panamá no cae nieve y las montañas se elevan apenas en suaves promontorios sobre el nivel de la costa. A (Nombre) le place cambiar esos veranos eternos por el dulce frescor de las nieves Alpinas. Es un esquiador de piés hábiles y mente ágil. Solo se ha roto la clavícula y el fémur en un accidente de poca importancia. Lo cual es impresionante si se considera que es un asiduo visitante de las pendientes heladas de las montañas Suizas.
Es moreno de tez, corto de estatura y de melena abundante. Mitad indio, mitad criollo. De sus ancestros mantiene una sola foto en su estudio, la del abuelo sevillano que habiendo despertado en medio de un sopor enfiebrecido cruzó el mar y murió ahogado en el limo verdoso del recién inaugurado canal de Panamá.
Prefiere se le fotografie en posiciones halagadoras que no revelen o hagan patente los centímetros que no tiene. Usa para ese efecto unos zapatos que él llama “gordos”, pero que no son sino un par de botas altas cuyo efecto es el de reducir ese débito constante que tiene con el creador. Nunca nadie ha hecho un comentario; burlesco o halagador, o tomado fotografía alguna de sus botas “gordas” porque ninguno quiere revivir la historia de Daniel Gutiérrez, su ex-secretario de hacienda.
A Daniel lo conoció en el colegio. Eran amigos, compadres del barrio. Crecieron juntos, bañándose en el río y ahogando tortugas a pedradas entre los juncos. (Nombre) mandó asesinar a Daniel Gutiérrez un martes 2 de Octubre. Lo agarraron esa mañana con el rosa del afeitado aún vivo sobre la cara. Lo fusilaron una hora más tarde y lo enterraron, envuelto en la bata de baño en que lo habían encontrado. (Nombre) no quiso ver el cuerpo. Le informaron de la muerte a las 2:31 pm del mismo día. Miró por sobre la sopa la cara de sapo constriñido del General Almeida y siguió comiendo. “Buen trabajo” dijo.