I’m so comfortable that I’m going to get a book. Now I’m back, with who else but Little Flower, the smallest woman in the world, from Clarice Lispector’s story: ‘In the Central Congo he indeed discovered the smallest pygmies in the world. And – like a box within a box, within a box – among the smallest pygmies in the world was the smallest of the smallest pygmies in the world, obeying perhaps the need Nature sometimes has to outdo herself.’
Today I saw the other dwarf again, walking down the street. I saw her go into a pharmacy. The one who was in the Japanese restaurant the other day. I noticed her flowery dress. A very feminine look. A modest neckline, but it left her collarbones visible, and the beginnings of her breasts. The cut showed off her figure, she looked very beautiful. A woman’s dress but in a small size, a child’s size?
As a girl I never wanted a dog; I was more into cats. I remember waiting ages until I was allowed to have a cat at home. I had to wait until everyone agreed, until my brother was on board, until the vet would let us adopt one. The whole thing took so long that, by the time the cat arrived, I had a list of names ready. My first cat had three names.
It feels like we’re always waiting for something. However small, however trivial it might seem. An endless wait, the carrot always ahead of us. And the names ready for when it comes. If it comes.
While I’ve been waiting, perhaps Jonás, like the dwarf, has stopped looking like Jonás. Perhaps now he’s an idea. An ideal. Which is what they both are for me, what everything is for me.
Waiting. It never starts, never ends. We never arrive. We arrive somewhere, somewhere like Lisbon, but never at a conclusion. Or we arrive, no matter what, at these words: ‘All is truth and way.’
Everything begins once something else has already begun. My name and my story don’t begin with my birth. A story doesn’t end with death or a farewell. The other people are still there, the ones from before, the ones who carry on, the ones who are here now. Like Jonás, like me, the two of us on the way, at the end of something and the beginning of something else.
Like me, now, waiting for Jonás to come back from his trip. But even if he does come back, it’s possible his journey will continue. Charon clearly doesn’t just take the chosen one; for every trip to Hades, several planes take off from the airport. That journey in search of someone, of something that’s not there. Or that journey without flying. Like this one here, in the chair.