Selected Cronicas

MIRACULOUS LEAVES

No, miracles never happen to me. I sometimes hear people discuss them and that gives me hope. But it also makes me rebel: why do they never happen to me? Why do I only hear about them? For I have heard conversations about miracles such as the following: ‘He told me that if such and such a word were to be spoken, some valuable object would smash into pieces.’ The objects in my house are broken in much more humdrum fashion, usually by one of the maids. I have even come to the conclusion that I am one of those people who roll stones throughout the centuries. I mean rough stones, not the smoothly polished kind. Although I do have fleeting visions before falling asleep — could those be miraculous? But it has already been patiently explained to me that this phenomenon even has a name: cidetismo, which means being able to project unconscious images into the sphere of hallucination.

Not exactly a miracle. But what about certain coincidences? I experience them all the time, lines which keep coinciding and crossing one another, and as they cross they form a faint, fleeting point, so faint and fleeting, so subtle and elusive that simply to speak of it is like speaking of nothing.

But yes, I have experienced a miracle. Miraculous leaves. Walking along the street the wind deposits a leaf on my hair. The incidence of millions of leaves transformed into a single leaf, the incidence of millions of people reduced to one person — me. This has happened so frequently that I have modestly come to consider myself as someone chosen by the leaves. Furtively, I remove the leaf from my hair and slip it into my handbag, as if it were the tiniest of diamonds. Until one day, on opening my handbag, I find a withered leaf among the objects, shrivelled up and dead. I throw it away. I have no wish to keep a dead talisman as a souvenir. Besides, I know that new leaves will coincide with me.

One day a leaf grazed my eyelashes, and I thought to myself: God is being extremely delicate.