Today is Christmas. The city is empty, there’s almost no one in the park. I went for a bike ride and cycled around it a few times. The winter light projects the treetops onto the ground; the leaves move in the breeze and their shadows move on the concrete. You could see it as a film where nothing happens. I rode around the park a few times, as if watching, over and over, the film of the leaves’ shadows moving on the ground.
On the way home, a stranger smiled cheerily at me. It brightened up my afternoon.
Sometimes I miss talking to my granddad. What would he say about this? Am I getting closer or further away?
Sometimes I feel sure I’m getting further away.
But do these stairs go up or down?
I had a good time at dinner. We ate, we drank. I chatted to everyone. In the early hours, my brother and I booked flights to the beach for a few days. The sea, at last. Perhaps there I’ll manage to work out if I’m getting closer or further away.
20
20
Tania on the phone: ‘I feel so guilty, honestly. I’ve been sitting in this armchair all day. I read a few pages, watched a film and then fell asleep. Maybe I’ll spend the rest of my life like this.’
A while ago, Jonás put the Beckett questionnaire to Antonio and Olivia when they came over for dinner. They’re here on a visit now, I just met them for breakfast. They gave me three little stones their daughters found in the sea. One white, one grey and one black: ‘When they brought us these stones, which look like sweets, we thought they’d be perfect for someone to keep in their pocket and suck on now and then, like a Beckett character.’
Carolina and I arranged to meet in a café to edit a text. The background music gradually took centre stage. At first it was annoying and we couldn’t concentrate. After three or four songs, Carolina started to dance in her seat, moving with difficulty, holding onto her belly. She raised one hand, took off her glasses and said: ‘This is great, it’s the kind of song we should be dancing to at three in the morning, wasted.’
I don’t know what having a child is like, but if this notebook were a dwarf planetary system, the planets’ centre of gravity would be the mother. Jonás’ mother who took him far away, my mother to whom I’ve got closer, my friend who’s about to give birth, and us, the children. Including our parents and siblings, Jonás.
A shooting star: a mother taking out her anger on a taxi driver who insulted her recently-deceased mother.
The black hole: the mystery of femicides and violence against women.
A headline in today’s paper: ‘Daughter of journalist decapitated’.
What’s your worst nightmare?