Selected Cronicas

ENIGMA

She was dressed in her maid’s striped uniform but spoke as if she were the mistress of the household. She watched me climb the stairs laden with parcels, pausing to sit on the stairs because both elevators were out of order. The maid worked on the fifth floor, I lived on the seventh. She walked up with me carrying some of my parcels in one hand and the milk she had just purchased in the other. When we arrived at the fifth floor, she left the milk in her own apartment, using the servants’ entrance, and then insisted on helping me to carry my parcels up to the seventh.

There was something very odd about her. She spoke like the mistress of the household, and even looked the part in spite of her maid’s uniform. She knew that my apartment had caught fire, expressed her sympathy that I should have suffered so much and told me: Better to feel pain than nothing at all.

— There are certain people — she went on — who never even feel depressed, and have no idea what they are missing.

She then explained, to me of all people, that depression can be very revealing.

And — believe me — she finally added: ‘Life must have a sting, otherwise one is not really living.’

Those were her very words and I must confess that I like the word sting.