I said, trying not to smoke, there is another, sometimes, to adhere to fashions. Many people had stopped smoking and cigarette butts found it was becoming difficult. I heard about a free course and I enrolled. We had to write why we would stop smoking. I thought, I thought, that I turned from side to side of the sidewalk, got out and climbed the stairs to the subway a lot of times and could not find a completely valid reason. Until I found two. But I thought it was really important, and I said so in the course: it would be able to reveal the absence of cigarette butts. I do not think
captured neither the doctor nor the fellow students the seriousness of my sentence because they laughed as if he had, me, a good joke. I liked to laugh. When he was a joke did not get the laughter of others but the point is that the time had come jasmine. I looked at the bouquets, the smell, not to mention the phrase the girl next door, and then slowly without being seen, he took a piece of petal and chewed as a gum, swallow it like candy. Entertained me so that I forgot to smoke. However, it was December, and so I thought at first, heat, intense heat, began to wrap me in a kind of sleep, drowsiness, mist. I slept.
I told a friend:
"I sleep anywhere.
- You think you're depressed?
I do not know, "You think I am?
"I'm worried, and began the other, other.
- And?
He committed suicide.
I imagined a huge table. No, better a huge park bench, even a kind of global bank where the exhausted, overwhelmed war, secrets, despair, homelessness, incurable injury, stayed still, sitting or even suicide.
"But I did not think about suicide, I just want to sleep.
- Do you do some weird stuff? "Different?
I did not say he ate jasmine petals.
I think not.
- Do you dream?
"Almost no, but the other day I woke up counting syllables in words famine, exodus, and addictions as I laughed.
"Sounds serious. If I were you I call the suicide hotline number.
And that just gave me a phone number.
Having a toll free number, a number to call without worrying about the pulse, is actually one of the many gifts of the system. I liked that word and tried to use it every chance possible. As soon as I was alone, I found a pay phone and dial 0, 800 and those who followed. I waited. A voice said, I do not remember if "hello" or "good afternoon", did not give him time to ask something because I said my phrase repeated many times this last time: I want to sleep.
From the other side who listened to my two words meant that they made a detour, he thought I spoke of eternal sleep.
- How will you sleep? He asked, neutral, serious.
was not very comfortable speaking from this phone now that it had started raining.
- Do you think they will let me speak from a booth?
"Sure. He said the bomber called to help.
But I did not call. I was encountering a lot of acquaintances who, like me, wanted to protect all the rain.
I called the next day. It was the same voice, then cut.
For days, at different times, tried at the toll-free until the voice reappeared.
's me, "I said you want to sleep.
-You are not the only one. We
amused. Anyway, the recovered neutral-tone serious and insisted:
- How will you sleep? -Emphasized the "you."
He still believed that I was the action causing sleep. I wanted to taste.
"So I said. And I closed my eyes.
"Wait, do not. Call to speak, not to sleep. Would
reason? Were you looking for that voice to speak or to listen to my dream?
I lowered my eyes and call center space in that little space where smoking was prohibited, I found half a cigarette. I hid under my foot.
The silence was long.
- Are you there?
Why should we phrase this together? I was in this area without jasmine. Would landscape in the place of help?
- Are there windows where you work? -
"Yes, you see a piece of heaven. It seems that there are no clouds.
I was sad that someone would be so alone for hours watching a part of the sky without any certainty of rain or sun. It was logical that the aid would also like to sleep.
had to invent a landscape.
"From here we see a very green tree, if it continues to look very far reached an all purple jacaranda. There was a bird, a lark, I think. He sang for days on the green tree, an ash, until another bird approached him. They love their game. And the singer, stopped singing. Silent stand there as if waiting, and the other bird arrived, the wings of the two on display. Although since the big rain left the tree. They went well, without warning.
Then I realized I had started with the best intentions, to help invent a landscape of film and now he was telling a little sad. But he was not scared.
"The birds do not talk," he said.
"Sure, but would warn me somehow. Any noise, any movement for me.
-you did not know that the looked.
His reasoning I was irritated. The parlor of looked at me, abusive, use a cab for free.
"I have to go," I said.
"So, until tomorrow.
's voice was neutral, I would like slumber. I had forgotten half a cigarette in the parlor. I did not dare to return. I decided not to seek butts for a while. I went to the Silvia, you might have something to eat. In this way threshold to threshold, I was born a big laugh, I like listening laugh. Had wanted to call help to give some of that sound. But he preferred to linger, have something to miss. And maybe he had begun to wonder.
I had to laugh thinking that we would die excess smoke. A few would say starving. No, nobody would say anything. No talk, no talk. No goodbyes, like birds.
I came into the macdonald. This was the bathing place was closer to Silvia. There we could cool, be calm. There was this horrible sign "bath for exclusive use of customers." But people who walk into a bar and a coffee, are the customers?, Are they not, for a while, people in that place? Talk, read, write on paper napkins, look through the windows, some even carry a bouquet of jasmine.
The tour around the macdonald up the bathroom, I found a balloon loose, lost. I looked for the owner of the balloon. Nobody seemed to find it. I was taking with his foot.
was Silvia. And there was the Romanian with his son. The balloon was perfect. The Romanian wore beautiful dresses she had brought from there, sometimes lent us clothes and wore their best. We knew little about it. She taught at home. We had nothing else. Sometimes we read poems, read them first in Romanian. To listen to music, he said. Then, with a special tune, changed the language. I had my choice, I had memorized: "The dream and the awakening" Nichita Stanescu. The next day I told the help:
"We confessed facing each other / the most hidden secret: that we exist ... / But it was night and, alas, in the morning, terrible discovery, / I had woken up with temple on you, / yellow sheaf, wheat. / / And I thought: My God, / what kind of bread I'll be / I / and for whom? / /
I liked him as much as me.
Susana Szwarc Quitilipi born in the province of Chaco, in 1952. Published:
sleep Artist (1981)
separate As (1988)
Braids (1991)
steppes Bailen (1998)
received the "Award for Unpublished Poetry Municipal Single" (1994-1995).
In 1996, part of the cycle Poetics Stevenson; to hear it read, click here .
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