I didn’t feel I was Eddie until I got to Michu’s pad. Her door was half open: it seemed to me that the walls draped with characters rolling around, smoking a cigarette under the reddish light of the fire detector or leaving bottles of vodka resting on the cat mat brought from a biannual market in Marrakech, all emanated from that mysterious apartment. Mysterious and cozy. I recognized a couple of actors from the troupe Michu designs the costumes for: the Dutch girl obsessed with finding the right tone for her Ophelia haunted by a heroin addiction, with her cheekbones that look like ravines, draws attention even if one tries to resist; that’s saying nothing of Franz, who insisted on going on and about as a healer since an incense changed his life, in spite of the fact that we insist that his is more of a cultural appropriation than a late awakening of Afrocentric persuasion.
To enter the pad, I had to dodge the caresses of two enormous plants, their leaves reclined by the whims of the cats of the mistress of the manor: Turin, the grey and fat angora with the whiskers on one side lighter than those on the other, and Nefertitis, the Svelte Siamese in whose heavenly eyes you can find out how you perished in your past life. They say that whenever someone calls Michu by her real name, the cats stare at that person, embarrassing him for his insolence. And that if you say her middle name (nobody knows it), the cats will go for your throat.
In the middle of the lounge, receiving consultations like a porcelain oracle of Delphi, was Michu. She tried hard not to lose sight of anyone, so that no one could approach her without her knowing. As soon as we made eye contact, she called me to her side. I crossed the room dodging the modern dancers, those odalisques with plastered ankles and dreamy aspirations that were fresh meat for the showbiz lawyers, those who discovered a new route to their orgasms when they noticed they could get on their electric bikes without having their suits wrinkled. Michu told me about the dilemma that afflicted her even before we began to speak: she had been asked to dress someone who was incapable of standing still, to make the wardrobe noticeable despite being subjected to the constant blurring of inertia. She felt so overwhelmed by this that a tear glanced at the edge of her eye as if it were a thief. Wiping it with my index finger, I told her everything was all right. That we should talk on Monday. Together we could find a solution to that and any other problem. Michu hugged me, and then led me to the terrace, where Sharon was waiting for us.
Sharon has the ability to completely change her appearance with every frame she inhabits. There are no two portraits, two scenes or two moments in which she looks the same, a skill towards which she has pointed her professional life: every song, record, video clip or musical splinter is focused on wasting her gifts for visual manipulation. If I had to choose a Sharon to describe, I would go with the woman of bleached youth, raven-colored feathered hair and pale arms furrowed by the claws of the men who tried to capture her. Completely different from this woman whose embrace brought me to the brink of a dramatic downfall from the terrace. Sharon shifted colors as usual, her diamond voice keeping my attention in line, as she described the riddle she had gotten herself into with a visual artist who discarded both the Artist label (for ideological reasons) and the Visual label (for environmental reasons). Emotionally he had captured her completely, but there seemed to be no way for this to translate into worthwhile music. Every wonderful afternoon spent reinventing the cosmos next to him, reappeared maimed the next morning in songs plagued with beaches, pink unicorns and shopping malls. The dissonance between expectation and reality wasn’t anything new for Sharon, but the fact that her response didn’t manage to shake off those synthetic elements made her consider an aesthetic suicide, channeled into a thunderous synth pop album. My advice was simple: she should capture the (non)visual (non)artist inside a magnetic tape and incarcerate him in a place to which only she had access. Sharon took the form of a little girl who had just been cooed. She thanked me without resorting to words or gestures: she must have understood that my advice was a copy of the copy with which she exorcised the nightmares that our already mythical affair had left her.
I came back from the terrace with the need to find something to drink. I took a juice of freshly squeezed pink oranges from the refrigerator and mixed it with the last remnant of a vodka so manhandled that it could no longer find its balance point. My choice of appetizers caught the attention of such an eccentric character that everything around him seemed out of place. It was the notion a director of Japanese television commercials would have about circus clowns. On his shoulder sat a tiny poodle, with a necklace and cap of matching colors, that started filling the clown’s ear with whispers moments before he had said anything. They asked for my name and occupation. I replied something halfway between what they wanted to hear and what I wanted to say. The poodle seemed dissatisfied: grinning a grin, he began to whisper a monologue about integrity that the clown repeated like the echo in a cave. I took advantage of each pause or inflection to throw my objections, which accumulated like poisoned arrows until the character began to lose control, a moment that was seized by Turin and Nefertitis to hurl themselves at the wicked poodle. Free at last, the clown thanked me, as well as handing me an invitation to the show he would put on to celebrate his independence. I replied that I would try to make some space for it as I wandered back into the pad when…
—Excuse me… Eduarda? Jesus Christ, Eddie, it really is you!
The long fingers, the rough palm with the scar that rises by the index finger of when he cut himself with the saw, the yellowish nails stained with the dust, earth and mud of the south, Jose’s hand touched my forearm, going on to gently caress my skin as if it were asking for my permission to read my luck. His contact sent me back to where it had taken me so much effort to get away, to my region, to my village, to my house, to all those places that are no longer in tune with my life. What was my school boyfriend doing at the party is something I didn’t had the strength to find out. The memories kidnapped me completely. It didn’t matter if I opened or closed my eyes, I couldn’t see anything but those torn clouds that looked like the wool of a calf, resting upon the peaks of the hills that grew among the bushes. The blue sky. The pale greenery beneath our bodies, infinite thorns of grass and weeds gently stabbing our bare arms and legs, while we enjoyed one of the few summer days that we get to have in this most southern region of the world. My white skin, emaciated by the lack of sun, his tanned, shimmering in its patience. The immensity of not having anything to do. And my tragic certainty, heavy as a volcanic stone hardening in my chest, that this Eden didn’t correspond me and I didn’t correspond to it either. I moved my foot of bluish veins and too short toes close to his. Jose didn’t notice: he was sleeping soundly. Whispered my plans to leave the south into his ear. I wanted to change my name, spend the rest of my life living under another person’s identity, looking for the belonging I have never felt. I left my message among the whistles that came out of his sleepy nose and left.
Seeing him in that place was like catching a nightmare trying to sneak into my dreams. I feared for the existence that I had woven for myself, the web of photoshoots, castings and filming that separated me from the rains, plants and estuaries of my origins. Jose smiled, shining beautifully from the joy he felt at having found me. If I didn’t do something quickly, I would be run over, so I took him by the arm, a contact that weakened me so much that I almost fainted. I led him to the terrace, now completely deserted. We leaned on the railing, the asphalt under our bodies howling of pleasure by the traffic that crossed it without pity. I approached him. His chest was swollen and strong, probably chiseled by the rural work and seared by the sun when it passes through the raindrops. I closed my eyes for a moment, feeling the pulse of the past, the disgusting promise of a simple life at the eaves of the earth, and pulled it away with a single stab. Jose looked at me with wide open eyes, more surprised than frightened. Life began to abandon him, but he was still trying to understand how I could have done something like that to him. I was already three steps ahead of him, my glamorous fantasies filling every nook and cranny of my permanently vacant agenda. When I felt him lose the will to fight, I pulled my dagger out of his guts and led his body into the streets down below. I spent only a second of my time watching him fall. To my left appeared Sharon, the multifaceted diva, covering her ears, to my right Michu, drinking from a glass that was never full, and behind her, the clown, leading a parade where the infinity of characters that I decided will populate every moment of my life jump and play, hoping to saturate it completely.
Tres páginas y media 