Exhaustion
The journey had been too long, since the beginning of its maturity, already almost 70 decades away.
On top of that, it was cold, and the sky was grey.
In his small apartment, which he had managed to reach four years ago, a hard achievement at the time, so longed for; a week ago he was unable to handle all the most necessary tasks; he had already left the urgent ones for tomorrow.
Making coffee as soon as he woke up, at least to help him to smoke; making food, pushing food down the throat, washing dishes, cutlery, bowls … Wash at least the minimum amount of clothes, take them to dry … self-impose a bath in that cold. All dull, meaningless.
He disguised to himself that there was nothing on reading, reading a lot. Disguised and filling the time, waiting for, what? And the cigarettes he was consuming while reading was no longer funny; tasteless, innocuous, but he consumed them, it was better than nothing. What? What is it?
Intelligent, I know that he was more tormented by his extreme lucidity; ignorant do not suffer from this, brutes do not love, it’s said; he never believed in all these buzzwords, never gave them importance: the important thing was what he knew and felt.
The real loneliness was mitigated by the times he spent connected to the Internet, in his poor 5 Megabytes connection, but connecting with real friends in virtual messages, with virtual friends in virtual networks likewise.
He went to his bank’s website to see what pittance was left.
He went to the market to buy what he could. Ah! How nice it would be to buy a national Brazilian whiskey, the cheapest, it didn’t matter!
Without medication and whiskey, he could not sleep fast.
He wandered through nights and dawns on water, coffee, and cigarettes; until when could he buy them?
Sometimes he slept on the keyboard.
He told me, once I bought him dinner, that he remembered a Mr Lucky (it was his own name), a friend of his grandparents, celibate, who did not dress with the least attention, who smelled old odours for his child’s nose, always sullen, just enjoying a good meal. Due to his thinness, according to him, he shouldn’t have anything to eat. He was terrified that he would become a “Mr Lucky”.
Exhausted, around early mornings, he lay down, in warm clothing and sweatpants, under sheets and a cheap blanket; he was agnostic, converted from his early Christianity; so a convinced agnostic, I think.
But, involuntarily or not, he told me that he made the sign of the cross by turning off the lights …
He also said that he slept like a nail for 8 to 10 hours straight; he dreamed beautiful dreams, colourful and joyful; he woke up at one or two o’clock in the afternoon, exasperated with himself for having lost so few hours of sunshine in the season.
And, he said, everything would be repeated tomorrow as in Chico’s song[1]: “She always does everything the same …”.
I lost contact with him.
He is, or was, a person of solid emotional structure, a warrior; he would never commit suicide.
One day we will still run into each other.