Over the radio came the news of an accident at Artigas street and the railroad. There were no traffic lights or barriers that would lower at the crossing, where a truck had been run over by the freight train that would pass by, ever since the trains carrying passengers had gone defunct, at no fixed day or time. Death of the three occupants. The fact by itself was routine, but the thing was to listen for the names. And they turned out to be as unknown as if they were from some other city.
He turned back to the paper to look over what he’d read yesterday about an overturned car and two crashes. The total: four dead and two injured. He carefully reread the names. Only one he knew, and it was only vaguely familiar, just barely.
He recalled a time when he’d found out, some years ago, that his neighbor across the street had fallen from the fourth story. It had seemed he was going to be able to taste that satisfaction, drawn by the desire to visit, as part of the irreproachable train of mourners, one of those houses that were the first thing he saw when he looked out into the street. (He didn’t know his own housefront half so well as he did those three or four which seemed to stick their tongue out at him from across the way). But he was overcome suddenly by a long instant of disappointment and wrath when he’d found out that the emergency room at the hospital ended up confirming the neighbor miraculously unhurt. The fallen man, who had been taken off in the ambulance, was back walking two days later.
The news reports unfurled the daily obituary; the only thing sounding noteworthy to him was the fact that once again, ever since an unthinkable span of years, no one in the whole block had died. The radio was an enslaving center of attention for another reason, too. Asencio religiously played the lottery, whose drawing was transmitted every other day, and he would note down the twenty numbers methodically and at great length in a notebook. He didn’t remember any prize greater than double the bet, and he interpreted that as a personal issue. Someday, without a doubt, probability would favor him. The announcers, the numbers and even the lottery drum would tire and would have no other option but to let his number come up. Perhaps, if fate had forgotten his existence…He noted down his dreams and those he managed to get people to tell him, the dates of birthdays and deaths, the license plates of the wrecked cars, the numbers of the coffins and the family mausoleums. But none of these lucky numbers had any result.
Asencio made himself comfortable in his recliner by the window, where at the same time every day people went by in the embrace of their habits, their health, their histories. There was nothing that would move them, nothing that would break their routine and bring the whole neighborhood together in one house. Because there was nothing like a funeral for entering with an unimpeachable excuse into the intimate parts of the houses one knows by heart from the outside, but of which one knows nothing from within. Houses are like other people’s faces. If there were a death it would become possible to go in by their orifices.
A program of popular music and another of folk music, news and society notes. The hours passed to the rhythm of the radio. Three times per week the drawing for the lottery. And so it had been for about the past thirty years, since he had gone to work for the first and only time, leaving the block and the neighborhood with a sure and confident step, like the one his acquaintances from back then were still using.
Asencio recalled the imperious and accusatory tone of a voice repugnantly familiar: And you, didn’t you have a perforated ulcer? He told him he’d had it treated and the neighbor hung his head, crestfallen. So it wasn’t just him—the whole world was hoping someone else would die. Not out of hatred, it must be understood. But so that work and the accustomed rhythm might be suspended and let a different perspective be discerned; so that a window might be opened, so that one might keep feeling alive. Death is a deepening of the feeling of existence, a chink into an unknown dimension. Others will say whatever they want, parroting books—Asencio thinks for himself and thinks himself no less than any of them. Neither was he a case study of some psychological condition, hoping for news of dead acquaintances. He didn’t wish the death of anyone in particular. He just wanted to know those who died.
The lottery is never suspended and someone, somewhere, always wins. He alone is stuck with his useless bets. But the day will have to come when first one and then a few hours later another on the same block will die, and then the winning numbers will be their ages or birthdays; the day can’t be far off in which the number of a house will be announced, where accidents befell, or the license plates of the cars in the accidents, without having to go around mucking with zeros and digits. Asencio will be ready to speak, manifestly alarmed and with an air of importance, about the pair of tragedies and their numerical coincidence.
Too many years had gone by without anyone dying in the neighborhood. He had already lost count. Asencio imagined for a moment being able to leave his chair to begin patient inquiries into the state of health of those who, by now, would have to be playing in life’s stoppage time. Elderly people who counted out slow steps—not enough—the inconceivable operation case who bore before his arms a baby carriage to go around leaning on: they all welcomed him or said hello in the midst of some chore in which they were enthusiastically engaged, with the same swiftness as those little kids that daringly ran between cars and always managed to come out on the other side unharmed. Years and years hearing about illnesses, keeping count of the broken bones, to finally find that everyone was still there, as if nothing had happened, without appearing in the least consoled by the newspaper or the radio.
Asencio caressed the idea of helping destiny along, speeding things up, so that the lives on the other side of the glass wouldn’t continue indefinitely in their eternal naptime, without any alternative, without taking part in the obituary. To pass around a poisoned wine. Everyone would drink with great confidence and the police wouldn’t investigate him because they would not suspect a relative of the targets. He always had people over for wine. Years since anyone had helped with the grapes, buying, crushing, bottling, only asking if he would give them a bottle to sample. He stayed awake all night sitting next to the glass of the window. Not just out of stubbornness, but simply because now the bed held its own terrors. Things would happen like a drum rattling in his memory and give the sensation of having come from far off, pushing towards him. Come morning, some trash-pickers he thought were dead would appear with their same carts, their dogs, and their absentminded stare.
None of the nighttime acquaintances died, either.
The world by my side isn’t dying, he concluded. I must be the one who is always by my side.
The time seemed to bite its own tail. The houses and fragments of the street whirled before the window, like when the wind lifts spirals of dust, and they say that it’s the devil twirling his tail through the street. Handling the possibilities another way, he would resolve to do it by fire. He would sprinkle a few cars with gasoline, leaving the gas tank lying by the front doors so that the houses would also be affected.
The days tumbled like round numbers in the lottery drum. For all his attention to all sorts of speculations, nothing happened to break the order of each neighbor boxed into his schedule, inside his clothes and above his legs.
Daydreams and machinations have short span, and he was left waiting without losing hope, in the midst of that eternal time in which people he knew passed by and passed by, like in a kaleidoscope, swift as sparrows, even the cripples. He could do nothing but console himself with the thought of multiple funerals to attend which would pile up, and him attending a moment at each one and when the impact diminished at one, he would move on to another where they were at the peak of mourning.
But, while he was at it, it wouldn’t be too much to ask than that those who died should be the unpleasant ones. Death could be the judge. One by one falling in the scintillating gaze of Asencio. The days lasted hardly the blink of an eye. Life appeared small, with little happening, like a spun top, an implacable whirlpool of turbulent water. The radio programs repeating their themes; the voices of the announcers with their expected intonations. And the neighbors forgetting that he was there, beside the glass of the window, not even stopping to say hi or showing any sign of recognition.
In the calendar with the picture of a floppy-eared dog lying on the hood of a shiny car, the year appeared blotted with blurry red names of people whose birthdays had passed, family and neighbors. The calendar served to save the dates, the birthdays. If someone he knew had to draw the prize, he would draw it too.
There was a time not so long ago when birthdays were celebrated in the neighborhood and the times to get together came by surprise: tonight we’re doing something, hope you can make it. The birthdays of little kids and wedding anniversaries of married people were like a summer downpour. No one thought then about death; there was another way to change the routine and monotony of the days. He awaited the parties and not the wakes. Now the people he knew kept on living, although their presences were dissolving like their names in the margins of the calendar.
Death must have a calendar like this one of mine, undone by the damp, and that’s why he has lost the addresses and the names of this area. He can never arrive. Just like my well-figured number got lost in the lottery. Someone took it out so it would never win. And if nobody dies, I can do it, so that they see I believe in the movement of time, in the majestic power of poison, in the union of all of them talking at the same time about the same thing, as if they truly wanted to.
I see how from the sidewalk across the street I go into the houses pulled by the infinitude of mourners. The whole block opens its mouth to let out a sigh. I see the faces of the dead I know; I see a few survivors embracing; I see the obituary notices in the newspapers. But all of a sudden they all lean over and talk about my death. Standing there among them, I listen. The neighborhood goes by in a march with an orange light. There are voices and gestures of dismay when they go out stampeding from the different doors where they were mistaken and come towards the door of my house. The people cross the street ceremoniously.
My body is still in its chair beside the glass. And it dreams of lifting its hands to bid farewell to them all. The notebook of the lottery results lies open with the wind turning its pages, full of results scrawled one on top of the other; the radio begins to sing out the new prizes, with numbers achingly strange, as if in another language. All I know for certain is I bet on numbers that aren’t going to come up. In the midst of a dizzying whirl of numbers, ranks and prizes, the radio says my name.
Trad. Wesley Schantz
Wesley Schantz nació 31 julio 1987 en estado de Maryland, Estados Unidos.
Estudió en Washington College, también en Maryland. Graduado en 2008 con BA en Español. Proseguirá estudiando por un MA en humanidades, en St John's College, en Maryland. Participa en el Programa Fulbright, visitando liceos públicos y profesores de ingles en formacion (en el CeRP y IPA) de Uruguay.