each other. Identity—which, as they both knew, was one of the most difficult things to discover, obey, preserve, and understand—pulsed erratically within them, moving from one body to the other, shuffled in among names, memories, and beliefs: a commingling only heightened by the friendship. They were equivalents. Sergio , for example, meant one and the other at the same time; so did Miguel . Experience was shared. The four parents, relegated to a diabolical world by the adult memories of their children, became increasingly diffuse, distant, and imprecise figures. Had they existed? On the other hand, both—each imperceptibly puritanical—had their own theories and conclusions about certain memories of family get-togethers.
They looked back over the past and found only one essential moment. By baptizing themselves in jest, by exclaiming in the sharp and unwitting voice of a child, Ciao, Sergio and Ciao, Miguel as they left the schoolhouse, a ritual whose outcome their immature minds were unable to grasp, Miguel and Sergio did nothing less than create themselves. Everything that followed would be secondary to this. Yesterday, when everything was positive, black and white, didn’t matter; what mattered was today, the invisible present in which differences were erased and everything seemed unreal. Like those charmed lives which were able to mitigate failures and thereby free themselves from a precipitous downfall, Miguel and Sergio held on to the hope of restoring the plenitude they had lost in the prehistory of their youth. But they were unable to resist the slow collapse—the true operation of time—that added a sense of ambiguity to their mutual indistinguishability.
In the end they took to walking. They would choose a street and follow it from one end to the other, navigating changes in its name, and even changes to the street (if the one they had chosen came to an end, they would follow the nearest one that ran in the same direction). To return, they would cross the street and follow the same route all the way back. Seeing them together one would almost think they were siblings, yet something did not quite fit. In their movements, in the distance they kept between themselves, and in the monosyllables they used to communicate, one could sense an unfulfilled promise; a promise that sustained them, yet did not unite them completely. As though they were indeed siblings, but were brother and sister. That was their problem: a slight but radical difference. What could they do now to regain their autonomy? The streets offered no solution: it was only the truly desperate, those given over to the mercy of God, who searched for answers in the streets. Still, they had no choice. The solution was neither in their homes nor inside them, nor could it be found in the past; in fact, that was where the drama began.
Sad, bewildered, and powerless against their luck, as they walked along avenida Garay one day waiting for the afternoon to end, they would come across a beggar resting against a wall that surrounded a municipal building. From far away he looked like a bundle of clothes; drawing nearer, he appeared to be asleep. It was only from within a few meters that his alert stillness became visible. Before, in the past, the human form used to be more clearly defined, thought Miguel and Sergio; heaps like that were never thought to be anything but people, due in part to the fact that one didn’t tend to find bundles of clothing or fabric left out in the street. (The mass of cloth only appeared to be defenseless, within it breathed a life on guard within its nest.) It was an old man with pale skin and thick eyebrows, into the shadow of which his eyes, gazing out as though from the greatest depths, seemed to recede. Miguel and Sergio froze at the sight of his face, which was veiled by short, sparse stubble discolored by tiny flecks of silver that caught the light. One of them realized that he was not asleep and immediately thought that
They looked back over the past and found only one essential moment. By baptizing themselves in jest, by exclaiming in the sharp and unwitting voice of a child, Ciao, Sergio and Ciao, Miguel as they left the schoolhouse, a ritual whose outcome their immature minds were unable to grasp, Miguel and Sergio did nothing less than create themselves. Everything that followed would be secondary to this. Yesterday, when everything was positive, black and white, didn’t matter; what mattered was today, the invisible present in which differences were erased and everything seemed unreal. Like those charmed lives which were able to mitigate failures and thereby free themselves from a precipitous downfall, Miguel and Sergio held on to the hope of restoring the plenitude they had lost in the prehistory of their youth. But they were unable to resist the slow collapse—the true operation of time—that added a sense of ambiguity to their mutual indistinguishability.
In the end they took to walking. They would choose a street and follow it from one end to the other, navigating changes in its name, and even changes to the street (if the one they had chosen came to an end, they would follow the nearest one that ran in the same direction). To return, they would cross the street and follow the same route all the way back. Seeing them together one would almost think they were siblings, yet something did not quite fit. In their movements, in the distance they kept between themselves, and in the monosyllables they used to communicate, one could sense an unfulfilled promise; a promise that sustained them, yet did not unite them completely. As though they were indeed siblings, but were brother and sister. That was their problem: a slight but radical difference. What could they do now to regain their autonomy? The streets offered no solution: it was only the truly desperate, those given over to the mercy of God, who searched for answers in the streets. Still, they had no choice. The solution was neither in their homes nor inside them, nor could it be found in the past; in fact, that was where the drama began.
Sad, bewildered, and powerless against their luck, as they walked along avenida Garay one day waiting for the afternoon to end, they would come across a beggar resting against a wall that surrounded a municipal building. From far away he looked like a bundle of clothes; drawing nearer, he appeared to be asleep. It was only from within a few meters that his alert stillness became visible. Before, in the past, the human form used to be more clearly defined, thought Miguel and Sergio; heaps like that were never thought to be anything but people, due in part to the fact that one didn’t tend to find bundles of clothing or fabric left out in the street. (The mass of cloth only appeared to be defenseless, within it breathed a life on guard within its nest.) It was an old man with pale skin and thick eyebrows, into the shadow of which his eyes, gazing out as though from the greatest depths, seemed to recede. Miguel and Sergio froze at the sight of his face, which was veiled by short, sparse stubble discolored by tiny flecks of silver that caught the light. One of them realized that he was not asleep and immediately thought that
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