Selected Cronicas

RACING AGAINST THE TYPEWRITER

The world is so enormous, dear God, and to think that one day I shall have to die. How many moments have I left before death comes? I plead for more than moments. Not because those moments are so brief but because they are so rare and loving them can kill. Do I love you, precious moments? Reply, for life is slowly killing me. Do I love you, precious moments? Yes or no? I wish others to know what I shall never understand. I prefer to understand rather than be given explanations. Shall I have to spend my entire life waiting for Sunday to pass? And what about the charwoman from Raiz de Serra who gets up at four in the morning to work all day in the city before returning late at night to Raiz de Serra, where she falls into bed to be up at four next morning to go through the same exhausting routine. I shall tell you my mortal secret: living is not an art. Those who made such claims were lying. Ah! there are certain days when everything becomes so dangerous. But the typewriter goes faster than my fingers. The typewriter writes inside me. And I have no secrets apart from mortal ones. Those are all I need in order to become a creature with eyes, who will die one day. How can I explain what has just occurred to me? For I can now see that there is a price to be paid for everything, and that life is so costly it can even bring about death. To stroll through the countryside with a phantom-child is to walk hand-in-hand with what we have lost and, for all their beauty, those unending fields are of no help: hands clasp like claws for fear of getting lost. Perhaps it would be better to kill the phantom-child in order to be free? But what would then become of those great fields where no flowers have been planted other than that cruel little phantom-child? Cruel, because a child and demanding. Ah! I am too much of a realist. I walk alone with my own ghosts.