Mouthful of Birds

SLOWING DOWN

Tego made himself some scrambled eggs, but when he sat down at the table and looked at the plate, he found himself unable to eat them.

“What’s wrong?” I asked him.

His eyes lingered on the eggs.

“I’m worried,” he said. “I think I’m slowing down.”

He moved his arm from side to side, slowly, exasperatingly, seemingly on purpose, and he sat looking at me as though waiting for my verdict.

“I don’t have the slightest idea what you’re talking about,” I said. “I’m still too sleepy.”

“Didn’t you see how long it took me to answer the phone? Or to get to the door, drink a glass of water, brush my teeth…? It’s agony.”

There was a time when Tego flew through the air at thirty miles an hour. The circus tent was the sky; I dragged the cannon to the center of the ring. The lights hid the audience, but we heard them roar. The velvet curtains opened and Tego appeared in his silver helmet. He raised his arms to receive the applause. His red suit shone above the sand of the ring. I took care of the powder while he climbed up and loaded his thin body into the cannon. The orchestra’s drums called for silence, and then it was all in my hands. The only thing you could hear then were the packets of popcorn rustling and the occasional nervous cough. I took the matches from my pocket. I carried them in a silver box that I still have today. A small box, but so bright it could be seen from the highest of the stands. I’d open it, take out a match, and rest it against the sandpaper at the base of the box. At that moment, all eyes were on me. One quick movement and the fire glowed. I lit the fuse. The sound of sparks spread out in every direction. I’d take a few dramatic steps backward to give the impression that something terrible was about to happen—the audience intent on the fuse burning down—and suddenly: boom. And Tego, a red and shining arrow, shot out at breakneck speed.

Tego pushed his eggs aside and got up from his chair with effort. He was fat now, and he was old. He breathed with a heavy snort because his spine pressed on I don’t know what part of his lungs; he stopped every once in a while to rest, or to think. Sometimes he just sighed and went on. He walked in silence to the kitchen door and stopped.

“I do think I’m slowing down,” he said.

He looked at the eggs.

“I think I’m about to die.”

I pulled the plate to my side of the table; I knew it would make him furious.

“That’s what happens when you can no longer do the thing you know best how to do,” he went on. “That’s what I was thinking: then you die.”

I tasted the eggs, but by then they were cold. It was the last conversation we had; after that he took three stumbling steps toward the living room and fell to the floor, dead.

A journalist from a local paper comes to interview me a few days later. I sign a photograph for the article that shows Tego and me beside the cannon, him in his helmet and red suit, me in blue with the box of matches in my hand. The girl eats it up. She wants to know more about Tego. She asks if I want to say anything special about his death, but I don’t feel like talking about it anymore and I can’t think of anything to add. Since she doesn’t leave, I offer her something to drink.

“Coffee?” I ask.

“Sure!” she says. She seems willing to listen to me for an eternity. But I scratch a match against my silver box to light the flame of the stove, several times, and nothing happens.