Nippon began to think about his life, giving himself to his calculated confession with his conscience and subconscious, intertwining with those alternate voices, sitting still in that truck for hours, deliberated on his esteem, his release, his immunity from trial, or from being judged . In many ways, life had a silence, a deafening pain, he told himself, feeling as if he lived in a primeval forest and not in a modern city, with strong threats and stubbornness in the hearts of many, if not snobbery, As the. Of course, the Cro-Magnon man would have felt if he had had time to visit Lima, in his space and time for a month or a year or a decade: surely he would feel lodged, like in the iron works of the Eiffel Tower, unable to free himself But he had to live among what he called, ‘The Before’, the human ants, but never having understood them, life in the big city got moldy on him.
Thus he began to think, reflecting on: Lima: his, friendships, his nature, truths, mitomaine, etc.
He was not like the others, he did not need to learn to live, that was his way, he had learned everything at birth, like Adam, in the Garden of Eden, that was his life, he knew everything he knew. he needed to know at birth, he was in harmony with the universe: silent, talkative, free, capable, tireless, calm, fair with justice, gifted and satisfied with nothing. He liked music and dancing when he was young, and sometimes drunkenness. He even learned at birth the secret of the creatures and their world of weariness, they contented themselves without understanding.
Friends were something else. It is their duty, the duty of a loved one: let’s say that a relative, a friend or the like, had a duty to love you, along with their connections, but of course that is another matter. I can’t find the right word, he used it, but he told me once he had a friend, he was through the war, in 1971, he was in shock, he couldn’t speak for a week, they had to get him out of Vietnam. and sent to Japan for his recovery, when he came home after the war, he called him and his friend said, “Don’t bother calling again, it just reminds me of that awful day!” Perhaps the word he adopted later, the one I can’t seem to find, is that friendships are useless, or in vain, or pointless; Be that as it may, he had learned that only in death do we give due admiration to the beloved, and only for an hour or two. “We love the dead,” he said aloud in the front seat of his truck, looking toward his front door. Then I thought again: we love the dead because we no longer have obligations to them. This is man, he has many faces, he loves to receive love, and he returns love when he is loved, he loves when someone is kind, but when he or she is not, it is another story, and it is rarely unconditional. With the tragedy, love awakens, now the show.
As for man in general, what does he do but read newspapers, magazines, watch sports on television, news, drink beer, fornicate. He does all this to exhaust himself; and travel the world outside of a mythomine. And killing, killing people to liquidate them, like the carnivorous minnows of the Amazon, which when finished leave only the skeleton of man.
And as far as Lima went, it was simple for him: sidewalks, crossroads, an ocean on one side and mountains on the other, all surrounded by fog, day after day; a train that packed you like sardines, little shops and little shops everywhere, if you dared to eat in them you had to take your pills to cleanse your insides; everyone like everyone else. A city of neon, booze, drugs, everything pouring out like smoke, people drifting like funeral ducks, sleepwalkers, for all they cared, they could be in Bali or Java, or on the moon.
# 3-21-2016
Part of the story “Hormigueros de Lima”