This piece is a creative piece. All similarities to people, living or dead are completely coincidental, and only a fool would think otherwise.
There I am sitting , a porcelain cup in my hand, a toothpick in my mouth. The small steel balcony seems to be a weak refuge against the thick, string-like blue clouds that have gathered overhead. My hair is being blown around by gusts of wind; far ahead, beyong the city, somewhere behind the asphalt-grey ocean, bolts of cruel energy pierce the sky with steady pulsation. As I watch the storm draw nearer, a weird kind of excitement fills my chest and my limbs. I like bad weather. I like it when bad things happen. There, I'm in my element. There, between the hammer and the anvil, I have made my bed.
For a second, I imagine the storm suddenly becoming a thousand times more viscous, its rage increasing hundredfold. I picture the waves towering over the shore like angry giants and then breaking, ripping palm trees out of their cosy pots and launching them down the street, each like a great big living battering ram. Then, the pavement will crumble and yield under the wrath of the monsoon, and steel poles of the balcony will bend and crumble, and then some massive wave will come down and - it'll all get silent all of a sudden, like in the movies. I blink. The storm is timid again, and I am still alive, still holding my porcelain beauty. What a shame.
Almost a year ago, on this exact balcony here in Lima, I have learnt that Luis Sepulveda is dead. I found it out by complete accident, in the middle of a phone conversation with a friend, whose face no longer lights up in my memory when I think of her name. The exact reason why I found it out then? Because I'm a fraud. I can't even memorise a title of a book that I supposedly like, but I sure do love to go on about my passion for the "South American writers". So, to keep up appearances, I inevitably do a quick Google search whenever Sepulveda's novels come up in a conversation. Well, there I was, smoking on my stupid balcony, boasting about literature to my stupid friends, when I found out that Luis Sepulveda, the old man who read love novels, had died a couple of months ago.
Now, you have to understand: there is literature, and there is LITERATURE. To tell you the truth, I'm happy so many delightful books go undiscovered. Because once they are, people will hold them in their sweaty palms, turn the pages with their fatty fingers which grow suddenly unoccupied after sneakily submerging a pizza slice in garlic sauce and, well, then it is no longer literature. Do you know what would happen to Mona Lisa if there was no protective glass around her? "It would get stolen", you say? Bah! That's a best-case scenario. No, it would be soiled with people's fingerprints, their bad breath, the smell of their burps and their fucking stench. And then, you'd be lucky if someone steals it then. Hell, you could pay someone and they still wouldn't touch it with a fucking stick.
So, Sepulveda's work is "literature" in all caps, and now he's fucking dead. And you know, what's especially funny about this whole thing, why this feels so much like a disgusting joke? Because he wrote about that. He wrote about my non-meeting with him. Well, he wrote about non-meetings. I still don't know exactly what he meant, but I think he talks about the feeling. That tightness in your chest that you get, when you finally see that what could have been. When something comes so close, extremely close, excruciatingly close to almost never happening. That's his "Non-meetings". And now he is fucking dead. How can I go see him and buy him a drink if he's dead? How can I ask him about the circus performer with a sword stuck in his throat, or about the house that is nowhere to be found no matter how long you wander the streets? There is absolutely no way to now. Because now, his body is lying in the ground and an army of hungry worms have peeled every bit of his muscle from his bones.
And see, my friend didn't fucking get it, just as none of you will get it. She went on talking about some miniscule thing that bothered her at the time, and I had to sit there and feign interest, and nod, and say "oh honey, you're going to get through this, just don't give up", but all I could think is how two months ago I was doing something insignificant, probably standing in a queue at the shop, maybe buying some fruit, and while I was there, they were thowing fresh soil on top of Luis's coffin. And that was it. And then the jungle moved in, and its fresh, hungry roots pulled him apart, and there he went. Into the forest, into its dark warm belly. But what's this to you, isn't it?
This is why I have to sit up here on this balcony day after day, from dusk till dawn. Because there is no better treatment for a broken heart than cold ocean air. Moreover, after a while you learn to ignore the cold and the car horns down below, and you can really sell yourself on the fantasy that there is no-one else in the whole wide world. Not a soul. Just meat and fat and bones, and hair and nails. No, it's better to let them roam the streets, to let them fill the air with their breathing. This steel square is where I am Cesar, and the filth that is ruling my city will never get up here.
So I drink to forget the coming storm. I place my cup on its little ceramic tray and its tsin bounces of the walls and the windows and the drops of the rain that is starting to fall. The lightning halves the sky almost right above my head. I want to weep, I want to scream in fury, but that would be an act. I only get emotional about places I've never seen and people i have never known. This is where the beauty lies - right in beween things that could be barely felt and things that could be hardly comprehended. Luis knew it. I know it. And so do the wind and the ocean. And that is enough for now.
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