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Chapters (14)
  1. Salt Crystals
  2. I. THE DAMNED CIRCUMSTANCE
  3. II. NOTEBOOK OF A RETURN
  4. III. DIVISIONS
  5. IV. LICKLE GOUGH
  6. V. BOWIE GULLY
  7. VI. THE PAPERS OF TIME
  8. VII. NORTH END
  9. VIII. SALT CRYSTALS
  10. IX. IGUANAS ON THE ROOF
  11. X. THE SOUTHWESTERN CARIBBEAN
  12. XI. CREOLES AND RAIN
  13. XII. OTTO
  14. TRANSLATOR’S NOTE

The first thing I remember about Bogotá is public transportation, too: a coincidence. The main part happened outside: a homeless man shitting on the traffic island on Avenida Caracas and Calle 23. I even remember the shape of the turd, the indifference I saw in his face. Nothing mattered, as he crouched with his arse in the air; it didn’t matter that people were looking because he didn’t matter to anyone, either, and he knew it. I never would have seen such a thing on the island, which had around 80,000 inhabitants at that time. Not that, not the prostitutes on Calle 22, and so on: the stuff of my daily commute to the centre. I can’t imagine how things went for the rest of my class…

Most of them have never been to Colombia. I have: I’ve been to the mainland. I was especially impressed by the streets like slides and the huge stores in Barranquilla, when we’d take my dad to his medical appointments. And the buildings. Any building over three stories strikes me as curious, worth noting.

I had some blurry images of Bogotá by then, from when I was eight and my parents took me to my grandmother’s funeral. She died there after a long exile; she never wanted to come back. As a child, I remember being amazed by the fruit and vegetable section in the supermarket, the scent of it, and I remember the cemetery, too. The tombstone-riddled plain was the largest expanse of land I’d seen until then.

The mosquitos will be out soon. The bottle’s running dry and I can hear the coco loco stand playing reguetón in the distance. We’re making the best of these final afternoons to tan and drink. Water presses in on us from all sides. All I want is to see pine forests and do whatever I feel like before we resort to mass suicide here.

If I hadn’t read these words, I might have sworn I was happy before diabetes. I wasn’t. There were things I couldn’t have predicted, of course. Like being the last surviving member of my family. But I made it back before mass suicide – or just in time? Not a single person has greeted me with anything but complaints. Now I think complaining must be an essential part of our island nature. I’m still at a point when any approach to a problem feels useless. I’d better give myself my shot and go downstairs for something to eat. Tomorrow night, the stars will be out again, and I’ll be back with another full glass of whisky, reflecting again on the fate prescribed by isolation, on how much or how little I’ll be able to do with my life from now on, when everything has yet to be said once more.

II. NOTEBOOK OF A RETURN

II. NOTEBOOK OF A RETURN