enough—without a doubt—to consider that there exists not a hectare of the earth’s surface that doesn’t conceal four dozen cadavers; but a big jump to think of oneself as no more than a carcass of microbes... and to have no other aspiration than to receive the title of skull...
Our daily routine might be regarded as a modest manifestation of pure absurdity, through which God—reincarnated as some low-grade molar puller—obligates us to place all our faith in toothpicks, but life, for all that, will never stop being a genuine miracle.
What do we care if cadavers decompose faster than automobiles? What do we care if entire families—full of young ladies!—succumb from their excessive fondness for wild mushrooms?
Doesn’t the mere fact that we have a liver and two kidneys offer ample justification for spending our days applauding ourselves and our lives? Do we have to do anything but open our eyes to be convinced that reality is, in reality, the most authentic of miracles?
For those whose senses are properly attuned, the most insignificant events—a woman who delays, a dog who sniffs at a wall—result in something so ineffable... it’s as if a hidden universe of accumulated coincidences and circumstances had ordained it—so that even in the presence of so slight a spectacle as that of two flies alighting and performing the act of reproduction on a bald head, one would have to have the impermeability of a crocodile not to experience a veritable paroxysm of admiration.
Hence that love, that tremendous gratitude for life that I feel, those constant cravings to lap it up, those impulses to prostrate myself before everything... before equestrian statues, before garbage cans...
Hence that bouncing-ball optimism that makes me laugh till I scream at the skeletons of bicycles, at the lemons attacking my liver; hence that happiness that incites me to rebound from every wall, from every idea, to go running—naked!—through the outskirts of town to tickle the gasometers... the gravestones...
Days, entire weeks, go by in which nothing disturbs me, not even the suspicion that women might be born with taxi-cab meters between their breasts.
Moments of such fervor, of such enthusiasm, that I find God everywhere, as I turn a corner, in the drawers of my nightstand, between the pages of books; moments in which, despite all efforts to control myself, I kneel in the middle of the street and shout in a voice virginal and ancient:
“Long live sperm... though I perish!”
TWENTY: A CATASTROPHIC MAN
OFTEN I GO to visit a relative who lives outside of town. While passing through one of the stations—it certainly did not happen by chance!—the train jumped over the platform, demolished the baggage, wiped out the ticket office and the snack shop. The cars stacked up one on top of the other. The boxcar coupled onto the locomotive. There were arms and legs everywhere: under the seats, along the tracks, up in the nets for the luggage.
Of my compartment all that remains is a splinter from the door. I shove to one side the cadavers that surround me. I straighten my tie and step outside, as cheerful as you please, without a wrinkle in my trousers or in my smile.
Although I foresee everything that will happen, I have embarked on more than one such journey in the hope that my premonitions will prove mistaken...
The passengers were the same as always. There was the adulterous husband with his pious, patronizing smile. There was the young lady whose charms are priced in direct proportion to your distance from the coast. There was the seal woman, the tuna woman; the manufacturer of rubber goods leaning on the guard rail and contemplating the immensity of the ocean, which seems to inspire him only with the thought of spitting on it.
On the third day of the voyage there was heard—in the middle of the night!—a metallic, intestinal screech.
Half-naked women! Men in their nightshirts! Tears! Prayers! Screams! As the
Our daily routine might be regarded as a modest manifestation of pure absurdity, through which God—reincarnated as some low-grade molar puller—obligates us to place all our faith in toothpicks, but life, for all that, will never stop being a genuine miracle.
What do we care if cadavers decompose faster than automobiles? What do we care if entire families—full of young ladies!—succumb from their excessive fondness for wild mushrooms?
Doesn’t the mere fact that we have a liver and two kidneys offer ample justification for spending our days applauding ourselves and our lives? Do we have to do anything but open our eyes to be convinced that reality is, in reality, the most authentic of miracles?
For those whose senses are properly attuned, the most insignificant events—a woman who delays, a dog who sniffs at a wall—result in something so ineffable... it’s as if a hidden universe of accumulated coincidences and circumstances had ordained it—so that even in the presence of so slight a spectacle as that of two flies alighting and performing the act of reproduction on a bald head, one would have to have the impermeability of a crocodile not to experience a veritable paroxysm of admiration.
Hence that love, that tremendous gratitude for life that I feel, those constant cravings to lap it up, those impulses to prostrate myself before everything... before equestrian statues, before garbage cans...
Hence that bouncing-ball optimism that makes me laugh till I scream at the skeletons of bicycles, at the lemons attacking my liver; hence that happiness that incites me to rebound from every wall, from every idea, to go running—naked!—through the outskirts of town to tickle the gasometers... the gravestones...
Days, entire weeks, go by in which nothing disturbs me, not even the suspicion that women might be born with taxi-cab meters between their breasts.
Moments of such fervor, of such enthusiasm, that I find God everywhere, as I turn a corner, in the drawers of my nightstand, between the pages of books; moments in which, despite all efforts to control myself, I kneel in the middle of the street and shout in a voice virginal and ancient:
“Long live sperm... though I perish!”
TWENTY: A CATASTROPHIC MAN
OFTEN I GO to visit a relative who lives outside of town. While passing through one of the stations—it certainly did not happen by chance!—the train jumped over the platform, demolished the baggage, wiped out the ticket office and the snack shop. The cars stacked up one on top of the other. The boxcar coupled onto the locomotive. There were arms and legs everywhere: under the seats, along the tracks, up in the nets for the luggage.
Of my compartment all that remains is a splinter from the door. I shove to one side the cadavers that surround me. I straighten my tie and step outside, as cheerful as you please, without a wrinkle in my trousers or in my smile.
Although I foresee everything that will happen, I have embarked on more than one such journey in the hope that my premonitions will prove mistaken...
The passengers were the same as always. There was the adulterous husband with his pious, patronizing smile. There was the young lady whose charms are priced in direct proportion to your distance from the coast. There was the seal woman, the tuna woman; the manufacturer of rubber goods leaning on the guard rail and contemplating the immensity of the ocean, which seems to inspire him only with the thought of spitting on it.
On the third day of the voyage there was heard—in the middle of the night!—a metallic, intestinal screech.
Half-naked women! Men in their nightshirts! Tears! Prayers! Screams! As the
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