animal, and no one
would contradict me. I gave thanks for words and their superiority over barks. The
old woman was lifting her other foot onto the step; she was almost in. A burst of
barking deafened me. I looked out to the side. He was coming, quick as a shot, fur
flying, loud as ever. His stamina was incredible. Surely he must have had arthritis,
at his age, like all old dogs. Maybe he was firing his last rounds. Why keep
anything in reserve if he was closing the circle of his fate by venting his
resentment, having found me after all those years? At first (this all happened in a
crazy shattering of seconds), I didn’t understand what was going on, I only knew it
was strange. But then I realized: he hadn’t stopped in front of my window, he’d kept
going. What was he doing? Could he be . . . ? He’d already drawn level with the
front door and, agile as an eel, he turned, leaped and dodged. He was getting onto
the bus! No, he was on the bus already, and without having to bowl the old lady
over—she just felt something brush against her legs—he turned again and,
barely slowing down, still barking, ran down the aisle . . . Neither the driver nor
the passengers had time to react; the cries were rising in their throats but hadn’t
yet come out. I should have said to them: Don’t be afraid, it’s not about you, it’s
me he’s after . . . but I didn’t have time to react either, except to freeze and
stiffen with fear. I did have time to see him rushing at me, and I could see nothing
else. Close up, face on, he looked different. It was as if when I’d seen him before,
through the window, my vision had been filtered by memory or my idea of the harm I’d
done to him, but there in the bus, within arm’s reach, I saw him as he really was.
He looked young, vigorous, supple: younger than me and more alive (the life had been
leaking out of me all those years, like water from a bathtub), his barks resounding
inside the bus with undiminished force, his jaws with their dazzling white teeth
already closing on my flesh, his shining eyes that had not, for one moment, stopped
staring into mine.
MARCH 16, 2008
In the Café
A CUTE LITTLE THREE- OR four-year-old girl was running around among
the tables, laughing, playing on her own, hiding from her mother, who was chatting
with a friend, and responding to the greetings of the customers by smiling and
dashing off again. An old couple called her over; she went, and the man presented
her with a little boat that he had made by folding a paper napkin. She ran to show
it to her mother, who admired it and asked her if she had said thank you to the nice
man. The girl ran back to do that, and played with the boat, which was very flimsy
because of the fineness of the paper and soon came apart in her hands. But by then
another man, sitting alone at another table (he was reading the soccer pages of
Clarín
) had called her over and given her a little plane, also made
from a paper napkin. As before, the girl ran to show it to her mother, and then she
ran to show it to the man who had given her the boat, and her trills of pleasure
made faces at other tables turn and smile. A child requires so little to be happy.
So little, and yet, at the same time, so much, because the little thing that fills
the child with innocent happiness lasts no longer than a sigh and then must be
replaced by another. Sensing this, perhaps, a third customer, with eyes half closed
and a look of intense concentration, had begun to fold a napkin. He was an older
man, really old, in fact, and he must have been concentrating in an effort to
remember; no doubt he’d done this for his grandchildren many years before, but not
for his great-grandchildren, whose preference for electronic games had disheartened
him. Now, in the café, where he came to kill time, he could reuse that modest skill,
acquired so many years ago, to make another child happy; an unexpected opportunity,
handed to him on a platter, to employ a metaphor in
would contradict me. I gave thanks for words and their superiority over barks. The
old woman was lifting her other foot onto the step; she was almost in. A burst of
barking deafened me. I looked out to the side. He was coming, quick as a shot, fur
flying, loud as ever. His stamina was incredible. Surely he must have had arthritis,
at his age, like all old dogs. Maybe he was firing his last rounds. Why keep
anything in reserve if he was closing the circle of his fate by venting his
resentment, having found me after all those years? At first (this all happened in a
crazy shattering of seconds), I didn’t understand what was going on, I only knew it
was strange. But then I realized: he hadn’t stopped in front of my window, he’d kept
going. What was he doing? Could he be . . . ? He’d already drawn level with the
front door and, agile as an eel, he turned, leaped and dodged. He was getting onto
the bus! No, he was on the bus already, and without having to bowl the old lady
over—she just felt something brush against her legs—he turned again and,
barely slowing down, still barking, ran down the aisle . . . Neither the driver nor
the passengers had time to react; the cries were rising in their throats but hadn’t
yet come out. I should have said to them: Don’t be afraid, it’s not about you, it’s
me he’s after . . . but I didn’t have time to react either, except to freeze and
stiffen with fear. I did have time to see him rushing at me, and I could see nothing
else. Close up, face on, he looked different. It was as if when I’d seen him before,
through the window, my vision had been filtered by memory or my idea of the harm I’d
done to him, but there in the bus, within arm’s reach, I saw him as he really was.
He looked young, vigorous, supple: younger than me and more alive (the life had been
leaking out of me all those years, like water from a bathtub), his barks resounding
inside the bus with undiminished force, his jaws with their dazzling white teeth
already closing on my flesh, his shining eyes that had not, for one moment, stopped
staring into mine.
MARCH 16, 2008
In the Café
A CUTE LITTLE THREE- OR four-year-old girl was running around among
the tables, laughing, playing on her own, hiding from her mother, who was chatting
with a friend, and responding to the greetings of the customers by smiling and
dashing off again. An old couple called her over; she went, and the man presented
her with a little boat that he had made by folding a paper napkin. She ran to show
it to her mother, who admired it and asked her if she had said thank you to the nice
man. The girl ran back to do that, and played with the boat, which was very flimsy
because of the fineness of the paper and soon came apart in her hands. But by then
another man, sitting alone at another table (he was reading the soccer pages of
Clarín
) had called her over and given her a little plane, also made
from a paper napkin. As before, the girl ran to show it to her mother, and then she
ran to show it to the man who had given her the boat, and her trills of pleasure
made faces at other tables turn and smile. A child requires so little to be happy.
So little, and yet, at the same time, so much, because the little thing that fills
the child with innocent happiness lasts no longer than a sigh and then must be
replaced by another. Sensing this, perhaps, a third customer, with eyes half closed
and a look of intense concentration, had begun to fold a napkin. He was an older
man, really old, in fact, and he must have been concentrating in an effort to
remember; no doubt he’d done this for his grandchildren many years before, but not
for his great-grandchildren, whose preference for electronic games had disheartened
him. Now, in the café, where he came to kill time, he could reuse that modest skill,
acquired so many years ago, to make another child happy; an unexpected opportunity,
handed to him on a platter, to employ a metaphor in
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