Augusto Monterroso - Complete Works and Other Stories

On Sunday I went to the park. In the sun, surrounded by trees, a poet on a bench of indefinite color faced some fifty people who listened to him attentively or casually or courteously.

The poet was reading aloud from papers that he held in his left hand, while with his right he accentuated words when he thought he should. When he finished a poem the applause of his public was so tenuous and unwilling it almost could have been taken for disapproval. The sun shone on all of them with enthusiasm, but all of them had found a way to protect themselves by placing their programs on their heads. A little girl of three and a half pointed out this fact to her father, who also laughed to himself and admired his daughter’s intelligence.

The poet, whose clothes were somewhat out of fashion, continued reading. Now he used his body and extended his arms, as if he were sending from his mouth to his public not words but something else, perhaps flowers, or something, although the audience, carefully keeping their balance so that the programs on their heads would not fall, did not respond appropriately to his gesture.

Behind the poet, behind a long table covered with red cloth, sat the judges, looking serious, as they were supposed to. Nearby, on the sidewalk, you could hear the noise of cars passing, sounding their horns; even closer, you really couldn’t tell where but in among the trees, a band was playing the William Tell Overture. Both diminished the effect the poet was seeking, but with a certain amount of goodwill it was clear that he was saying something about a spring that dwelled in the heart and a flower that a woman held in her hand that illuminated everything and the conviction that the world in general was fine and only a few small things were needed for the world to be perfect and comprehensible and harmonious and beautiful.

It has the advantage of describing the employee closest to you, or yourself, or even the sales manager. “A muddled education, that is, an education full of holes.” Once again, as I have for years, I take out my notebook and write down a supposedly ingenious phrase in the hope of using it some day, certain the day will never come, but you can all calm down: This will not be yet another story about the writer who does not write.

Back in the café, a café filled with students and families. The usual matrons come in dressed in their green, yellow, blue blouses, accompanied by their children who are now greedily swallowing ice cream. That pretty lady also asks for pink ice cream for her children Alfonsito, Marito, and Luisito who, when it arrives, methodically smear it on their tongues, their lips, and a little on their hair and cheeks, though Mama gets annoyed and has to tell the oldest that he should learn how to eat because how will Alfonsito ever become a doctor if he doesn’t know how to eat and who will set an example for his little brothers if he doesn’t.

Outside, it is raining a little. Less. Inside, the panorama of empty tables calms me and makes me think that for a while I won’t be bothered as I am when they are occupied and the waiters look at me or it seems to me they’re looking at me in fury as if they were telling me to pay up or leave. Another tall, beautiful mother stands and walks decisively to the cashier and moves her hips powerfully and makes me imagine her life and her pretty head, empty but of course happy. I resist the temptation of moving in mente to her house and seeing her beside her husband whom she perhaps loves or whom she perhaps deceives or whom perhaps both or whom perhaps neither. The Muzak plays endless arrangements of popular songs that are never interrupted and always seem the same, and meanwhile the doctor comes in and sits down at any table, any table at all, without seeing anyone, distracted or pretending to be distracted. Covering his mouth with his left hand and his left nostril with the first finger of his left hand, as if he were meditating, he says yes when the waiter in the white jacket comes up to him and, as he does every afternoon, asks half seriously, half smiling, if he wants coffee. He has discussed it again with his wife and asked her to understand.

“What is there for me to understand?” she says. “Either you can’t or you don’t want to, in any case it’s all the same.” But the fact is that he wants to understand and tries to understand why when he can he doesn’t want to and when he wants to he can’t, as the vulgar joke says so brazenly about the very young and the very old, except that he is not exceptionally young or exceptionally old but there is something he simply does not understand, why sometimes what seems to be desire changes to repugnance or fear, or why the wise and learned psychiatrist with the fancy tie has to relate everything to his mother as if he were suggesting that he was in love with her (a little old lady!) or depended on her or was dominated by her, but she hasn’t lived with him for a long time, she lives far away with a man who isn’t his father and she probably never even thinks about him except once in a while at night when she is sad and hates her present husband who pays no attention to her and she tells him how different it all could have been if you had been different while he wipes away the perspiration and cleans, hour after hour, his collection of gold clocks that aren’t worth anything because where they live it doesn’t matter if time passes or maybe he just doesn’t care if it passes and he barely answers with a whisper or a grunt that means she bores him always saying the same thing, so she really is very far away, probably dying right now or dead and maybe right now the telegram is arriving or the maid is nervously answering the telephone and saying she’ll give me the message when I come in because I’m not home right now and neither is the Señora. So my mother is my mother, I don’t deny it.

“But what can I do?”

“We have to talk. It’s a serious problem and we have to discuss it.”

“I’m a woman.”

“We have to look at our problem.”

“Talking doesn’t settle anything,”

she says standing, reaching for a cigarette, lighting it, sitting down again, inhaling the smoke, exhaling it blue, looking endlessly at the ceiling while he thinks he has nothing else to say he’s already said it so many times and once again he decides to go out to the welcoming, liberating streets. He goes out. It’s cold but you still don’t need an overcoat, he walks several blocks until he reaches the avenue, eight or ten blocks, it’s eleven o’clock and cold even though he doesn’t need an overcoat, he walks several blocks and feels tired and takes a bus that goes downtown where he gets off and walks again among the car horns and neon lights and store windows full of shoes, shirts, hats, underwear, shoes, underwear, underwear, shirts, ties, underwear that the woman takes off with indifference in the hotel room revealing her legs, her belly, her sweet breasts that call to him sweetly and touch him while he lies down gently and touches them doing what he has to do with pleasure, thinking about his beautiful pink ice cream while far away someone thinks of him sadly or maybe has just died or is dying right now or while he is smoking someone wants to be with him while he cries with pleasure without being able to explain it to himself while he cries with pleasure without being able to explain anything or wanting to explain anything.