UN MINUTO DEL SUO TEMPO

«Aspetti. Rimanga un minuto».

L’uomo la guardò stranito; aveva finito di vestirsi e tirò una boccata nervosa alla sigaretta, come se la richiesta fosse qualcosa di stravagante. «Ti ho già pagato, no?».

«È solo un minuto». Era la prima volta che chiedeva una cosa del genere a un cliente e ignorava il perché lo stesse facendo. Un impulso, l’ultimo tentativo di una persona che stava annegando.

Neanche l’uomo sapeva perché acconsentì, ma si sedette sul bordo del letto e trascorse il minuto a guardare il proprio orologio da polso. Era un orologio economico.

«È già ora?», disse quando il minuto fu trascorso.

«È già ora», disse lei. «Può andarsene, se vuole».

Il quinto cliente volle sapere. «Perché lo fai, ragazza?». Parlava in modo strano, con un accento duro, rispettoso e diffidente allo stesso tempo. Ma non l’aveva trattata con delicatezza; era rozzo e maldestro.

«Non lo so ancora, signore. Con questo sono cinque».

«Cinque minuti, ragazza?».

«Sì». Non ritenne opportuno aggiungere altro.

L’uomo rimase in piedi, in silenzio; non guardava l’orologio, non lo portava. «È già ora?», disse quando credette che fosse trascorso il minuto.

Quella era l’unica cosa che li accomunava tutti. Tutti chiedevano: «È già ora?». Non importava se avessero o meno l’orologio.

«Grazie», disse lei.

Il ventitreesimo – su questo non ci sono dubbi, perché lei contabilizzava scrupolosamente ogni singolo minuto ottenuto – era un esperto lanciatore di frecce, un arciere che partecipava a competizioni. Si sorprese più degli altri, ma si mostrò generoso.

«Un minuto? Potrebbero essere cinque o dieci. È molto piacevole».

«Dieci?». A lei brillarono gli occhi; non si aspettava che qualcuno le regalasse dieci interi minuti volontariamente.

«Dieci, venti, quanti ne vuoi; niente e nessuno mi aspetta».

«Dieci vanno bene», disse lei, stordita.

«Immagino che vorrai saperlo. L’arciere, l’arco, la freccia e il bersaglio sono una cosa sola…».

Lei non era interessata. Ma l’arciere voleva raccontarglielo e continuò con la sua precisa, minuziosa spiegazione non richiesta.

Grazie all’arciere e a un anziano molto raffinato ed elegante riuscì a completare la prima ora. L’anziano non era all’altezza delle circostanze, ma le regalò comunque mezz’ora intera, in silenzio. Le chiese solo di rimanere nuda, immobile, e lei acconsentì senza fiatare. L’uomo passò la mezz’ora a guardare un neo che lei aveva tra i seni: non i capezzoli o la vulva, l’anziano guardava il neo. Fu la prima volta che fu lei a dire «È già ora», e non era una domanda.

L’ora intera che aveva ottenuto era un’ora vergine e assolutamente sua; non doveva condividerla, né tantomeno mostrarla, sebbene fosse quasi certa che nessuno, tra le persone che la circondavano, sarebbe stato capace di percepire la sottile consistenza di quei sessanta minuti, la fragile trama che formavano i secondi, intrecciati come cristalli di neve. Si chiedeva anche se fosse prudente continuare ad accumulare tempo o se, al contrario, dovesse spenderlo prima che scoppiasse, come una bolla di sapone.

Il ritorno fu doloroso, come sempre. Ad attenderla c’era la stessa trama di urla e rimproveri; il denaro, l’unica cosa che contava in quella casa, passò ancora una volta dalle sue mani a quelle degli altri. Ma era irrilevante, e decise di non spendere il tempo accumulato in quella dimensione appassita della sua vita. Guardò i monconi di papà e annusò l’acerba ubriacatura di mamma come se entrambi fossero gli attori non protagonisti di un pessimo programma televisivo. Uscì sbattendo la porta. La mamma barcollò, cercando di trattenerla; papà nemmeno quello.

Per una strana coincidenza completò un intero giorno con il cliente numero mille. Gli ultimi minuti le furono regalati da un marinaio liberiano con cui non riuscì a scambiare nemmeno una parola. Ma l’uomo capì di che cosa lei avesse bisogno, come se una contiguità naturale con le cose primordiali gli permettesse di fare a meno dei segni. Furono undici minuti esatti e lei ottenne un giorno intero, il suo trentadue di gennaio; un lasso di tempo fuggitivo catturato grazie a un artificio, a un tranello. Le apparteneva, era suo, privato, e l’inquietava solo il sapere quando avrebbe avuto il coraggio di spenderlo.

«Grazie», disse.

Lui scosse la testa, gli brillarono gli occhi e si inumidì le labbra con la lingua. «Grazie», ripeté, senza sapere quello che diceva. Sarebbe stata una misteriosa meraviglia conoscerla senza che il denaro entrasse a far parte del gioco. «Grazie», ripeté ancora una volta. Era una bella parola che rotolava e schioccava come un pesce intrappolato in un amo.

Lei sorrise e gli aprì la porta. Ma lui non se ne andò. Tirò fuori dalla tasca banconote di diversi paesi e tagli e con esse scrisse parole dolci che significavano più o meno la stessa cosa in qualsiasi lingua.

«Non posso», disse lei scuotendo la testa. «Ho completato il mio giorno. Non lo farò più».

Lui raccolse il denaro formando un mucchietto e se lo rimise in tasca; aveva capito.

Lei gli prese la mano e lo costrinse a toccarle le palpebre umide.

«Thomas», disse il marinaio indicandosi il petto.

«Samantha», disse lei; storse la bocca e scosse la testa. «No. Non è vero; mi chiamo Rosa».

«Rosa», ripeté lui trascinando le sillabe fino a trasformarle in un suono ventoso e aspro, secco come il soffio del fiato in una canna vuota.

«Devi andartene; vattene», disse Rosa indicando la porta.

Thomas annuì tristemente. Fece due passi strascicando i piedi e afferrò la maniglia; spinse verso il basso e girò la testa. In quel momento vide l’intero giorno girare tra onde e spirali di colori intorno a Rosa. Lei cercò di nasconderlo tra le pieghe della blusa, ma scoprì di essere nuda. Troppo tardi per qualsiasi cosa, mosse le braccia come pale, come una farfalla intrappolata nella marmellata.

Thomas sbatté le palpebre. Vedeva chiaramente il giorno che lei era riuscita a ottenere. Era una variopinta fusione di pizzi e ricami; ai lati, vicino ai punti in cui ogni minuto precipitava nel successivo, si vedevano rivetti dorati, con rilievi simili a uncini e dischi appena percepibili che giravano alla massima velocità. L’insieme sembrava una bestia maligna o per lo meno tortuosa, pronta a far rispettare la propria volontà inesorabile.

«Rosa?». Cercò di avanzare ma fu fermato dal braccio alzato della ragazza.

«Non toccarlo!».

«No?». Thomas, che oltre all’affinità con le essenze possedeva l’intuizione dei viaggiatori, seppe che quel luogo gli era precluso; un marinaio conosce i porti proibiti o da quale taverna uscirà con un taglio in faccia. Un no è un no. Prima si fermò e poi fece un gesto indefinito, di sconcerto o di prevenzione.

Rosa non seppe interpretare quel gesto: credette che la mano alzata, come tante altre volte, si sarebbe abbattuta sul suo viso e si coprì con le braccia a croce.

«No!».

Un no è un no. Lui capì e girò come una trottola. Estese il corpo lungo i cerchi concentrici di una nebbiosa premonizione e si rannicchiò. Non poteva esprimere con parole, parole di un’altra lingua che Rosa non avrebbe capito, che anche lui aveva un giorno intatto, costruito con frammenti di maree, onde, tempeste. Che cos’è, in fondo, ciò che inseguiamo per tutta la vita? Ma non poteva neppure dirle che se li avessero uniti avrebbero avuto due giorni perfetti, due gemme che avrebbero potuto fondersi fino a perdere la loro identità e diventare molto più del doppio di se stesse.

Rosa intuì qualcosa di tutto ciò, sebbene non volesse rischiare; non doveva esporre il suo giorno intatto ai capricci di un respiro estraneo. Il complicato amalgama di spirali girò su se stesso per esporre gli accessi alla brezza che soffiava dal lontano mare, e diede un nome a ciascuno dei punti che pulsavano nella stanza. Un bagliore dorato brillò come le ali di un colibrì che sbattono alla massima velocità.

Thomas, non avendo più nulla da perdere, convocò i suoi amici delle ombre, si vestì con i bagliori di una giovinezza spezzata in un villaggio chiamato Soboe, rivisse i simmetrici infortuni di un padre ubriacone e violento, di una madre violentata dai soldati durante una delle tante guerre. Nascere in Liberia, è la stessa cosa che essere linciati da una folla assetata di sangue. Allora, non avendo più nulla da perdere, creò un fulgore flessibile, sotterraneo, saporito, la specie di materia che covano nei loro nidi gli uccelli invisibili, l’accolse nel cavo della mano e lo conficcò nel petto di Rosa. Disse qualcosa nella propria lingua, una parola di scusa, capace di esprimere tutto l’amore dell’universo. E mentre la donna dissanguava, lui trovò la forza di tagliarsi la giugulare con il filo di un’onda.

Il tempo, convinto che quello fosse il miglior finale possibile, sommò i giorni vinti da Rosa e Thomas e li moltiplicò per due, per quattro, per otto, per infinito. Più tardi, molto più tardi, uscì dalla stanza, chiuse a chiave e la gettò nelle fauci di un drago che passava casualmente di lì.

Traducción al italiano: Heiko Caimi

El cuento en castellano: 

https://microficcionesycuentos.blogspot.com/2026/08/un-minuto-de-su-tiempo.html

El cuento en italiano: INKROCI

Sergio Gaut vel Hartman – Un minuto del suo tempo - Inkroci Magazine

 

VLUCHTEN

De Nederlandse versie van dit verhaal is herzien door de schrijver Finn Audenaert. 

Na Jorges dood bracht ik een tijdlang mijn dagen door met herinneringen bijeen te rapen uit alle hoeken van het huis, als was het vuile was. Ik stopte ze in een rieten mand, in de hoop dat ik ze er ooit weer uit zou halen, wassen, in de zon drogen, strijken en misschien opnieuw gebruiken … zoals je doet met een oud overhemd, versleten maar vertrouwd.

Maar het was valse hoop.

Het werkte niet.

Het verdriet dat mij doordrong was zo overweldigend dat het huis in een gevangenis veranderde, en iedere minuut begon te lijken op die waarmee een levenslange gevangenisstraf wordt afgemeten: beklemmende ogenblikken die, opgestapeld, je doen verlangen naar het einde van de straf, naar het einde van de marteling.

Ik dwaalde van kamer naar kamer, mijn voeten slepend over de vloer. Ik nam een voorwerp op om het onmiddellijk weer op precies dezelfde plaats terug te zetten, erop lettend dat het zelfs geen millimeter verschoven was. Ik maakte verschillende nutteloze inventarissen en ontdekte dat keramiek en ivoren beeldjes soms meer leven bezitten dan een mens, vooral wanneer die mens gekwetst is, wanneer de pijn zich als een gif in zijn lichaam heeft vastgezet en hem volledig verlamt.

Maar ik moest iets doen om niet helemaal ten onder te gaan. Op aanraden van familie en vrienden dwong ik mezelf tot handelen. Ik maakte er een gewoonte van iedere dag door de wijk te wandelen, langs de straten waar Jorge en ik zo vaak samen hadden gelopen.

Ik liep maar door, terwijl ik gedachteloos tuinen en gevels bekeek, cafés, parken, winkels en monumenten.

Toch beleefde ik er geen enkel plezier aan.

Het was aangenaam, zelfs rustgevend, maar al snel ontdekte ik dat het minder gevaarlijk was binnen te blijven, want op iedere straathoek wachtten de herinneringen mij op als een vuistslag recht op de kaak – die gezegende en vervloekte herinneringen …

Dus gaf ik mijn wandelingen op en bracht ik mijn ochtenden, middagen en avonden voor de televisie door, met een leeg hoofd en zonder de minste belangstelling voor wat ik zag.

Wat moest ik doen?

Verhuizen?

Alleen al de gedachte mijn spullen in dozen te stoppen verlamde me. Elk voorwerp voelde als een enkeltje naar de nostalgie, een uitnodiging tot melancholie.

Een goede vriendin stelde voor dat ik naar een ontmoetingscentrum zou gaan. Misschien zou ik daar een man leren kennen met wie ik mijn leven opnieuw kon opbouwen.

Mijn leven opnieuw opbouwen?

Mijn leven lag niet in puin.

Het bestond eenvoudigweg niet meer.

Het was een leegte geworden.

Een enorme, holle leegte.

De herfst was somber en de winter afschuwelijk. Ik geloof dat ik een twintigtal romans heb gelezen, omdat ik de televisie beu was, en duizend idiote programma’s heb bekeken, moe van al die belachelijke verhalen waarin mensen veel grotere en pijnlijkere problemen hadden dan de mijne, maar ze oplosten met een gemak dat me angst inboezemde.

Ik had geen financiële zorgen, geen kinderen die mij nodig hadden en geen kleinkinderen om lief te hebben.

Dus bleef ik wegzakken in het moeras, vergeten midden in een onherbergzaam land waar niemand ooit langskwam.

Vragen jullie of ik gehuild heb?

Ik heb gehuild tot er geen tranen meer over waren, tot ik mezelf ervan overtuigd had dat huilen nergens toe diende, dat Jorge niet zou terugkeren en dat ik de moed niet bezat om hem achterna te gaan.

Toen voelde ik het verpletterende gewicht van mijn ongeloof.

Kon ik me tenminste maar een plaats voorstellen voorbij het leven, waar hij op mij wachtte.

September was niet beter dan augustus en oktober was erger dan welke maand van welk jaar ook. De uren rekten zich uit met een wreedheid die een monster uit een roman waardig was, en mijn verlangen om het huis te verlaten begon zich te vermengen met mijn onvermogen om er ook werkelijk een voet buiten te zetten.

Ik slingerde heen en weer als een pendel, verscheurd, verbijsterd, verdoofd als een haas die midden op de weg verstijft in het licht van koplampen.

Is er dan geen uitweg?

Nee, antwoordde ik op een vraag die eigenlijk geen antwoord nodig had.

Toch sloot ik, kort voor Kerstmis, het huis af en vertrok naar de kust.

Aanvankelijk wist ik zelf niet waarom ik dat deed, al dacht ik misschien, diep verborgen in een afgesloten kamer van mijn geest, dat afstand nemen van de vertrouwde plaatsen en voorwerpen mij de kans zou geven alles vanuit een ander perspectief te bekijken.

Dat was niet waar.

Wat ik werkelijk zocht, was een ogenblik dat ik drie jaar eerder samen met Jorge had beleefd.

Ik zocht dat ene moment van betoverende onrust toen wij, gezeten op de treden van een geïmproviseerd openluchttheater, keken naar een jong acrobatenechtpaar.

Die zomer, gedragen door de volmaakte en weemoedige klanken van het Adagietto uit Mahlers Vijfde Symfonie, draaiden en zweefden die twee rond een metalen constructie. Ze verstrengelden zich in kleurrijke doeken, stortten zich naar de afgrond en stegen daarna weer op als rusteloze vogels.

Tijdens de hele voorstelling zaten Jorge en ik hand in hand, met het hart in de keel, terwijl we ons een liefdesverhaal voorstelden dat getekend was door ontberingen en scheidingen.

‘Het leven van rondreizende artiesten,’ zeiden we.

We gingen iedere avond naar hen kijken, tijdens wat later onze laatste zomer aan zee zou blijken te zijn, zonder ook maar te vermoeden dat de dood ons toen al op de hielen zat, bezig het geschenk voor te bereiden dat hij ons pas na vele maanden van lijden zou overhandigen.

We bleven terugkomen omdat we allebei een beetje verliefd waren geworden op die acrobaten, alsof we met onze vingertoppen bijna vijftig jaar konden aanraken die uit het weefsel van de tijd waren losgeraakt.

Noem me gerust een masochist.

Ik zal het je niet kwalijk nemen.

Ik wilde hen terugzien om tenminste één stukje terug te vinden van het verleden dat ik met Jorge had gedeeld.

Ook dat hielp niet.

Op het plein waren clowns, muzikanten met gitaren en mondharmonica’s, schakers en poppenspelers, maar zij waren er niet.

Wat ben ik toch dom, dacht ik. Waarom heb ik aangenomen dat ze drie jaar later nog altijd op dezelfde plek optreden, nog steeds vliegend en draaiend door de lucht, gedragen door Mahlers sublieme muziek? Er zijn zoveel badplaatsen!

Ik verliet het plein en liep naar de zee.

De zomer liep ten einde.

Binnenkort zou de uittocht beginnen; de leegte en de stilte zouden de overwinning behalen.

Op de pieren, waar slechts enkele vissers heen en weer liepen, leek alles mijn verlatenheid te weerspiegelen.

Ik volgde de boulevard richting haven, steeds verder van het centrum vandaan, terwijl ik de schemering afzocht in de hoop mijn verloren geest terug te vinden.

Maar Jorge was er natuurlijk niet.

Mijn fantasieën zouden altijd blijven wat ze waren: schaduwen, veroordeeld om opgesloten te blijven in hun kisten; halskettingen van niets; vogels van schuim die oplossen in de nacht.

Ik leunde met mijn ellebogen op de stenen balustrade van de boulevard en liet mijn tranen zonder enige schaamte stromen.

Niemand kon mij toch zien.

En zelfs áls iemand mij had gezien, dacht ik … wie maakt zich druk om een oude vrouw die huilt om de man van wie ze hield?

Het onherroepelijke van de situatie overviel me opnieuw.

Maar dit keer verzette ik me niet.

Zo zou het blijven tot het einde.

En voor het eerst wenste ik dat dat einde niet al te lang op zich zou laten wachten.

Na een tijdje merkte ik dat enkele meters verder een jongleur zijn knotsen met grote vaardigheid in de lucht wierp, maar zonder enig enthousiasme.

Niemand keek naar zijn optreden.

Toch bleef hij de knotsen opgooien en weer opvangen, opgooien en weer opvangen, als een mechanische herhaling van een eindeloze routine.

Toen hield hij plotseling op.

Hij raapte zijn knotsen op en liep recht op mij af.

‘Ik wachtte op u,’ zei hij.

‘Op mij?’

Mijn verbazing was oprecht.

Hij was die acrobaat, de jonge man die hoog in de metalen constructie zijn partner tussen rode en gele doeken de lucht in wierp, haar hand greep of juist losliet zodat ze naar de afgrond leek te storten; haar weer optilde en opnieuw losliet, in een waanzinnige choreografie die geen einde leek te kennen.

Hij was het.

Daar bestond geen twijfel over.

Maar had hij op míj gewacht?

We hadden nooit één enkel woord met elkaar gewisseld.

Hij kon zich mij onmogelijk herinneren.

Ik was slechts een van de vele schaduwen in het publiek geweest, betoverd door hun vlucht en door de muziek.

‘Ja, op u,’ antwoordde hij. ‘Waarom niet? Mahler is stil geworden, weet u. De muziek is verdwenen. Op het plein klinkt het Adagietto niet meer. Ik kon haar niet vasthouden … Ze viel van zeven meter hoog.’

Ik sloeg mijn hand voor mijn mond en onderdrukte een snik.

Ik wist niet wat ik moest zeggen.

Hij wel.

‘Ik ben ook alleen achtergebleven … begrijpt u?’

El cuento en neerlandés:

Sergio Gaut vel Hartman - Vluchten

El cuento en castellano: 

https://microficcionesycuentos.blogspot.com/2026/07/vuelos.html 

 

FLIGHTS

After Jorge died, I spent a while gathering memories from every corner of the house, as though they were dirty clothes, stuffing them into a laundry basket in the hope that one day I would take them out, wash them, hang them in the sun, iron them, and perhaps wear them again... the way you would an old shirt, worn thin but comfortable. But it was a false hope. It didn't work.

The sadness that soaked into me was so overwhelming that the house became a prison, and every minute began to resemble the kind that measure out a life sentence, sordid instants that, added together, make you long for the death penalty, for the end of the torment. I wandered from room to room, dragging my feet, picking up an object only to put it back exactly where it had been, making sure it hadn't shifted by so much as a millimeter. I drew up several pointless inventories and discovered that ceramics and ivory carvings can possess more life than a human being—especially when that human being has been wounded, when pain has lodged in the flesh like a poison that leaves you paralyzed.

But I had to do something to keep from sinking completely, so, urged on by relatives and friends, I forced myself to act. I got into the habit of walking through the neighborhood every day, retracing the streets Jorge and I had walked together so many times. I walked and walked, absentmindedly taking in gardens and façades, cafés, parks, shops, monuments. But I found no pleasure in it. It was pleasant enough, gentle enough, yet before long I realized it was actually safer to stay indoors, because every street corner ended up feeling like a punch to the jaw delivered by memories—those blessed and cursed memories...

So I gave up my walks and spent my mornings, afternoons, and evenings watching television, my mind completely blank, with no interest whatsoever in what I was seeing. What was I supposed to do? Move away? The mere thought of packing up the house paralyzed me. Every object seemed like a one-way ticket to nostalgia, an invitation to melancholy. A dear friend suggested I join a social club where people met one another. Maybe I'd find a man and rebuild my life. Rebuild my life? My life wasn't in ruins. It had simply ceased to exist. It had become nothing more than an enormous empty hole.

Autumn was bleak, and winter was unbearable. I think I read twenty novels, bored with television, and watched a thousand idiotic programs, weary of absurd stories in which people suffered problems far greater and more painful than mine, only to solve them with an ease that frightened me. With no financial worries, no children who needed me, no grandchildren to love, I kept sinking into the mire, forgotten in the middle of a desolate land no one ever crossed.

Did I cry? I cried until there were no tears left, until I finally convinced myself that crying would accomplish nothing, that Jorge wasn't coming back, and that I lacked the courage to go looking for him. That was when the crushing weight of my lack of faith made itself felt. If only I could imagine some place beyond life where he might be waiting for me.

September was no better than August, and October was worse than any month of any year. The hours stretched on with the elastic cruelty of fictional monsters, and my desperate need to leave the house became entangled with my inability to step outside it. I swung back and forth like a pendulum, torn in two, bewildered, stunned like a rabbit frozen in the glare of headlights. Isn't there any way out? There isn't, I answered the question that didn't need asking.

And yet, shortly before Christmas, I locked up the house and left for the beach. At first I didn't really know why I was going, although perhaps, in some hidden corner of my mind, I imagined that putting some distance between myself and the familiar places and objects would allow me to see things differently.

It wasn't true. What I was really searching for was a moment Jorge and I had shared three years earlier.

I was looking for that instant of magical apprehension when, seated on the steps of an improvised amphitheater, we watched a young pair of acrobats perform. That summer, cradled by the perfect, desolate strains of the Adagietto from Mahler's Fifth Symphony, they spun and soared around a metal frame, tangling themselves in colorful silks, plunging toward the abyss before rising again like neurotic birds. Throughout the performance, Jorge and I sat hand in hand, hearts in our mouths, imagining a love story marked by hardship and separation. The life of wandering performers, we used to say. We went to see them every night during what turned out to be our last summer at the beach, though we had no idea then that death was already stalking us, preparing the gift it would hand us after many months of suffering. We kept returning because we had both fallen a little in love with those acrobats, brushing with our fingertips against almost fifty years unraveled from the fabric of time. Call me a masochist if you like—I won't be offended. I wanted to see them again, to recover one fragment of the past I had shared with Jorge.

That didn't work either.

The square was full of clowns, fools with guitars and harmonicas, chess players, puppeteers—but they weren't there.

How foolish of me, I thought. What made me believe they'd still be performing in the same place three years later, flying and spinning through the air to Mahler's sublime music? There are so many beaches.

I left the square and walked toward the sea. Summer was drawing to a close. Before long the exodus would begin; silence and emptiness would win the battle. On the piers, where only a handful of fishermen moved about, everything echoed my desolation. I followed the promenade toward the harbor, away from the crowded center, searching the gathering dusk for my lost ghost.

But Jorge wasn't there, of course.

My fantasies would remain exactly that—shadows condemned to stay locked away in their chests, necklaces made of nothing, birds of foam dissolving into the night.

I leaned against the stone balustrade and let my tears flow without the slightest embarrassment. No one could see me anyway. And even if someone did, I thought... who cares about an old woman crying for the man she loved? Once again the irretrievable nature of it all overwhelmed me, but this time I offered no resistance. This was how it would be until the end, and for the first time I wished that end would not take too long.

It took me a moment to notice that, a few yards away, a juggler was tossing clubs into the air with remarkable skill but no enthusiasm whatsoever. No one was watching him, and it struck me as odd that he kept throwing and catching them, throwing and catching them, mechanically repeating the same routine.

Then he stopped.

He gathered up the clubs and walked straight toward me.

"I've been waiting for you," he said.

"For me?" My bewilderment was genuine.

He was the acrobat—the young man who had once hung from that metal frame, sending his partner soaring among crimson and golden silks, catching her hand or letting go so she would plunge toward the void before lifting her once again into their mad, endless choreography. It was undoubtedly him.

But waiting for me?

We had never exchanged a single word. He couldn't possibly remember me. I had been just another shadow among the audience, hypnotized by the music and the flight of their bodies.

"Yes," he said. "Why not? Mahler fell silent, you know. The music stopped. There's no Adagietto playing in the square anymore. I couldn't hold on to her... and she fell from twenty-three feet."

I covered my mouth with my hand and stifled a sob. I had no idea what to say.

He did.

"I was left alone too, you see."

El cuento en castellano: https://microficcionesycuentos.blogspot.com/2026/07/vuelos.html

 

PARTNERS, DOPPELGÄNGERS, SOMETHING LIKE THAT

The rain was falling as if someone were sharpening knives against the sky.

I first saw the man at a quarter past eleven that night, beneath the awning of the Atlantic Bar. He wore a dark hat, a dark raincoat, and an expression as dark as the clothes and the night. But in this city, that didn't set him apart from anyone.

What caught my attention was that he had my face. Not similar features. My face. The same broken nose from the same long-forgotten fight years ago. The same scar beside the left ear. The same wrinkles carved by cheap whiskey, Turkish cigarettes, and the wrong women.

He stood staring at me from across the street. I stared back. Neither of us crossed.

Cars raised curtains of water between us. At times he vanished behind the headlights, only to emerge again like a photograph developing in a darkroom. I thought of a long-lost brother, a con man wearing a mask, a lunatic escaped from some institution. I even thought that someone had forgotten a mirror on the other side of the street.

The night invited foolish thoughts... and I'm a specialist in those.

Then the man slowly raised his right hand. I didn't move. He held up something between his fingers. A photograph.

Even from that distance I recognized the image. It was the dead woman I had found that morning.

And behind her, smiling for the camera, stood him and me. Together. Like old friends. Like partners. Like accomplices.

"Hey!," I shouted, determined to break the stalemate.

"We can skip the formalities," he replied. “Surely you realize that...”

"No!," I cut him off.

My outburst sounded disproportionate. I was aware that something about the man, the double, was flawed. Something essential escaped me. Some detail invalidated the copy and made it impossible to accept that any of this could be real.

"Let's accept the evidence of our senses."

It sounded ridiculous.

I had found Eloísa Murnau's body after tailing her for weeks at the request of her husband, a gangster named Marco Robotti. But my double had not been there with me.

So why was he in the photograph?

"If you know me that well," I managed to say, “then you know I haven't touched a drop of alcohol in six months.”

Half my words were carried away by the wind and rain, but that didn't stop my double from letting out a loud laugh, celebrating the clumsiness of my reasoning. Yet the laugh itself seemed proud of its own crudity, of my own vulgarity. I tried to think about something else, imagining that it might drive away the mirage. The opposite happened. Suddenly the guy was standing beside me, jabbing me sharply in the ribs.

"Where does this need of yours come from, this urge to turn every pattern into a story? Doctors want a pathological explanation. Journalists want a scandal. Readers want a solution. Cops want a killer. But nature is under no obligation to provide narrative solutions."

I instinctively stepped back and leaned against a peeling wall. A rat scurried between my legs, sending such an intense shiver through me that, for a moment, the image of my doppelgänger wavered like the flame of a candle.

But it did not disappear. Can there exist a real, observable, predictable phenomenon whose explanation remains inaccessible to human intelligence?

"At the end of the day," I said aloud, trying to steady myself, “a hallucination is a hallucination. Nothing more.”

"Of course," said my double. “The problem is that a hallucination explains nothing, either.”

He lit a cigarette. The match briefly illuminated his face, and I had the unpleasant sensation of seeing myself reflected in a photograph taken ten years in the future.

"Hallucinations don't know things the hallucinating person doesn't know," he added, taking advantage of my bewilderment.

He slipped a hand into his raincoat pocket and pulled out a small black notebook. My black notebook. The same one that had vanished from my desk three weeks earlier. He opened it halfway.

"Page forty-seven," he said.

I didn't answer. Or perhaps I did. At that point, it was impossible to tell whether he was the one speaking or I was.

"I don't remember..."

"You wrote that Eloísa Murnau had been afraid of elevators since she was nine years old because she spent three hours trapped inside one with her aunt's corpse. You never told anyone that. Not even Robotti."

The rain struck the cobblestones with a mechanical stubbornness that was also somehow perverse. Could any conclusion be drawn from such relentlessness? Perhaps rain had discovered a way to be sentimental and pragmatic at the same time, while, like so many other things, leaving meaning outside the reach of human understanding.

"I could have found that out," I said, trying to crawl out of the philosophical swamp into which I had wandered.

"Of course you could have. But you didn't."

He turned a few pages.

"You also wrote that you intended to leave the city as soon as this job was over. Montevideo. A boarding house near the harbor. Fishing now and then. No more chasing unfaithful husbands, unfaithful wives, and mediocre murderers."

I felt a hollow sensation in my stomach. I had never written that. I had thought it. But I had never written it down. And that was far worse. My double closed the notebook.

"All right. Objective accomplished," I said. “Time for you to disappear. Fade away.”

My double ignored me or pretended to.

"Now I'd like to know something, my dear partner. If I am a creation of your mind... why am I the one who knows the secrets you're so determined to ignore? What filthy, foul-smelling enigma are you trying to bury in the deepest basement of your mind? You were at the motel where Eloísa Murnau was murdered. You ran like a rat when you heard the police sirens. Yet you couldn't resist the sinister impulse to take a photograph of yourself beside the corpse. I hope you'll explain that to me. I'm patient."

"I want to see the photograph again. These days images can be forged, and I..."

I never finished the sentence. My double was already handing me the photograph. I took it with my left hand. The rain had softened the edges, but the image remained perfectly visible.

There was Eloísa Murnau. Dead. Her neck twisted at an impossible angle. The motel lamp cast an oblique shadow across the bed. And behind her stood the two of us. Me. And me again. My partner. My doppelgänger. My double.

I did not hesitate to repeat the thought stubbornly, like the rain striking the pavement, not because repetition could change anything, but because repetition itself challenged the reason for that impossible scene. I studied the photograph for several seconds. Then I studied it for several seconds more. Something was definitely wrong. Not with the photograph. With my memory.

"Do you see it?," the double asked. I didn't answer. Because I was beginning to. The motel room had only one window. Yet the photograph showed two. One beside the bed. The other behind us. A window I didn't remember seeing. A window that, I was certain, had never existed. I felt something shifting slowly inside my head. Like a heavy piece of furniture being dragged across an empty room.

"Now we're getting to the interesting part," said my double.

And for the first time since he had appeared across the street, I suspected that he wasn't trying to convince me of anything. He was trying to make me remember something that had never happened. I slipped the photograph into my raincoat pocket, spread the fingers of my right hand, and tapped them one by one with my left.

"Eloísa's corpse. Robotti. The two of us. The photograph. What's this thing that's tickling the palm of my hand?"

"Thank goodness we only have five fingers on each hand," he replied with a smile." I'm afraid too much Hammett, Chandler, and Cain has rotted your brain. Without any malice, I suggest a healthy dose of Christie and Simenon. It might help clarify some of the dark images you've concocted. A decent photo-editing program wouldn't hurt, either. Hard-boiled fiction"please! Sometimes it seems you've locked yourself inside a bubble even more fantastic than science fiction. Reality, my friend, is something simple... especially if we set aside everything we neither understand nor ever will.

"Thank you very much for the lesson," I said. “Are you going to help me solve Eloísa Murnau's murder, or do you intend to keep insulting my reading habits?”

My double appeared to ponder the question.

"Robotti didn't hire you to find Eloísa."

"I never said that was the gangster's intention."

"Exactly."

The rain continued to fall between us. I could no longer remember whether I was soaked through or whether the water was simply part of the same nightmare from which I couldn't wake.

"Robotti hired you to follow his wife because he suspected she had a lover. That's true. What you never asked yourself was why Eloísa seemed so determined to be followed."

A small jolt ran through me. Not because the idea was brilliant. Because it was obvious. Too obvious. I remembered Eloísa entering cafés whose windows left her visible from the street. I remembered the taxis she hailed and abandoned a few blocks later. I remembered her abrupt changes of route. For weeks I had interpreted those movements as attempts to shake me off. What if she wasn't trying to shake me off?

"No," I murmured.

"Yes."

"That proves nothing."

"It proves that she wanted someone to reconstruct a route."

My double pointed to the pocket where I had slipped the photograph.

"And you still haven't understood the destination of that route."

For the first time since that impossible conversation had begun, I felt something worse than fear. I felt curiosity.

"Where are we?," I asked.

My double looked at me, perhaps surprised by my sudden change of direction. I had come to the conclusion that this was the important question. Not the what, the how, or the when… but the where.

I felt that I might be able to dismantle that obtuse, ramshackle structure if only I could determine the location of the dream, delusion, hallucination, or whatever it was that held me prisoner in such an absurd situation. And my doppelgänger realized that, for the first time, I was aiming in the right direction.

"Aiming in the right direction," he said, as though he could read my thoughts. “Aiming with a gun, or with a conjecture slowly evolving into a sound hypothesis.”

"And who's playing philosopher now?"

For the first time I believed I was taking the initiative, and a sustained initiative eventually bears fruit. At least that's what I believed until my double proved me wrong.

"Where are we?," I repeated, this time with enough force to make even the toughest man hesitate.

"In the same place where Eloísa spent the last three months."

"You didn't answer my question."

"Yes, I did. The problem is that you're still a long way from understanding the answer."

I wanted to reply, but something stepped between my thoughts. An image. Barely a flash. Eloísa sitting alone in the Venezia Café. She wasn't reading the newspaper. She wasn't waiting for anyone. She was looking around. That was what she was doing. Looking. For weeks I had followed her, convinced she was trying to conceal clandestine meetings. Yet now, as I rummaged through my memories, I noticed something strange. Eloísa watched doors. Windows. Mirrors. She watched passersby. She watched reflections in shop windows. She watched the world the way someone watches when afraid of being watched. Or when hoping to recognize something.

"You're beginning to see it," said my double.

The rain seemed to have eased. Or perhaps I had simply stopped hearing it, stopped paying attention to it. If one ceases to perceive something, is that the same as declaring it nonexistent?

"There's something else," I murmured.

And then I remembered. The last time I saw Eloísa alive. The motel. The room. The window. No. The windows. Before I found the body, before I even opened the door, I saw Eloísa through the glass. She was standing. Motionless. Looking out. Looking directly at me. And smiling. It was not the smile of a frightened woman. It was the smile of someone who, after a long wait, had finally found what she had been searching for all those months.

"Do you realize now that Eloísa's smile retrospectively transforms the entire investigation?"

"No, I don't realize it," he said.

But only to disguise the fact that he was beginning to discover the truth, written in blood on the reverse side of the plot.

"She no longer looks like a woman being hunted by a jealous gangster. She looks like someone who was waiting for the narrator to reach precisely this point. She was lying in wait, watching, waiting; setting a trap or preparing a revelation."

"Nobody needs to be murdered to prove they're right..."

I knew my argument was weak, and my double dispatched it with a few words and a handful of precise, flawless gestures.

"No. But some people need to die before someone else begins asking the right questions."

He slipped a hand into his raincoat pocket and pulled out something else. It wasn't a photograph. It was a key. I recognized it immediately. The key to Room 17 at the motel. The same key I had handed to Sergeant Molina that morning. Or thought I had handed to him.

"Eloísa wasn't waiting for you," said my double.

I looked at the key. I looked at the rain. I looked at my own face reflected in the features of that figure, a stranger, myself.

"She was waiting for you," he repeated.

And I understood. Not all at once. Not like a flash of revelation. I understood the way dawn arrives: slowly, almost reluctantly. Eloísa watched windows, mirrors, and shopfronts because she was searching for something impossible. Someone impossible. She had discovered the fissure before I had. The duplication. The invisible presence. That was why she smiled when she saw me through the glass. She wasn't recognizing me. She was confusing me. She was confusing us. My double tossed the key into the water pooled beside the curb.

"Who killed her?," I asked.

For the first time, he seemed tired.

"It does you no good to keep believing that's the important question."

Then he smiled. It was my smile. The one that appears in photographs when I don't know I'm being photographed. The genuine one. And then something simple happened. Something so simple that it took me several seconds to understand it. The opposite sidewalk was empty. I remained motionless beneath the rain for several more minutes, an eternity. Then I slipped a hand into my pocket to make sure the photograph was still there. It wasn't. Of course it wasn't. All I found was a small black notebook. I opened it cautiously, as though expecting a scorpion to crawl out from between its pages. On page forty-seven there was a sentence written in my own hand. A sentence I had no memory of writing.

"If the encounter with the other ever takes place, ask which of the two of you started the story." I closed the notebook. The rain kept falling.

Why should the rain stop in this story?

El cuento en castellano:

https://microficcionesycuentos.blogspot.com/2026/06/socios-sosias-algo-como-eso.html

 

 

COMMON FACTOR

 

The house wasn't bad. Perhaps it had more rooms than necessary and a gloomy character that could be corrected with flowers and plants and some children running through the hallways and the patio. I wondered if I would have the opportunity to find something better and also how many other cloying real estate agents they would have to endure before finding the ideal house, the dream place.

"What do you think?" said the salesman, rubbing his hands. He had fashioned a smile so false that it threatened to perpetuate itself on his face, condemning him to rigor mortis in life. "You won't find anything better," he insisted after reading my thoughts. Salesman's tricks, I suspected; I'm too childish in such matters. I was going to retort, I swear, but at that moment the guy's cell phone rang, and after muttering an apology, he withdrew to the adjoining room to answer the call.

I was left alone and dedicated myself to observing the high, white ceilings. Plaster moldings clearly marked the separation from the ugly, hastily painted walls. I thought it was an original, extravagant house, perhaps concocted by a snobbish architect. I took a few steps towards the next room, moving away from the salesman. The place seemed illogical in a way, and it reminded me of a story I had read some time ago. For a moment I thought I could get trapped in that singular geography, lost in spaces I was completely unfamiliar with, but I immediately dismissed those silly arguments. The salesman was still talking, perhaps arguing or receiving instructions to close the deal, so I refocused my attention on the house. There were too many rooms, I repeated to myself; the walls oozed dampness, the floors were uneven, and ventilation was scarce. These reasons led me to decide that I had enough to end the whole matter right there. I approached a door and opened it. It led to an empty room. I retraced my steps and opened another door. This smaller room was populated by moth-eaten, decrepit, foul-smelling furniture; I felt nauseous. Just about to emerge into a patio where a mass of golden light had accumulated, I noticed a door disguised behind a tattered, dirty blue curtain. I hesitated between going out to the patio, clearly the blind end of the line, since an unlimited number of rooms couldn't exist, or concentrating my attention on that door. The second idea won.

I fumbled for the doorknob behind the curtain and felt the coldness of the bronze; as I imagined, it wasn't locked; none of the house's doors were, after all. I opened it and faced the first surprise.

The natural assumption, I don't know why, had been to think that the room was empty and that the light from the patio was obliquely filtering through a window, illuminating dust particles and delineating a trapezoid of clarity on the dark floor. It wasn't like that.

The room had no windows. The stark white of several fluorescent tubes shone on the objects, denying them the right to shadow. But these details were nowhere near as extraordinary as the rest. Sitting in a high-backed chair, with his elbows resting on a wooden table and his fists under his chin, was a man of indefinable age, with graying hair and a network of wrinkles on his face that seemed to mimic the labyrinth of the house. He looked towards the door, as if he had been waiting for me, but upon seeing me, he didn't even blink.

"Good afternoon," I said. "I didn't know anyone was here."

"Evening. I'm Juan Salvo," he said, slurring his words. I mentioned my name and he shrugged. I remained rooted to the floor for a few seconds, paying attention to the noises, barely rustles, coming from an adjoining room that communicated with ours through a doorless opening.

"Is there anyone else?" I said, pointing to the opening.

"Yes," Salvo said, "Guevara; he's preparing mate. We're waiting for Rosa to start." He seemed to observe me more closely for a second, but immediately lost interest. "We weren't expecting you. Were you supposed to come? Who sent you?" The words denoted suspicion and distrust, but the tired tone belied any nuance in that direction.

I didn't know what to answer, so I put myself on the defensive, with my guard up. "Who are you people?" I asked, always attentive to what this Guevara was doing in the neighboring room; apparently, he was in no hurry. Two or three times I heard clinking, as if a teaspoon was hitting a glass.

"I already told you: Rosa, who will arrive any moment, Guevara and I, Salvo. Sit down, don't stand there. Are you sure no one sent you? Maybe Guevara knows."

I spotted a chair identical to Juan's and dragged it unceremoniously to place it next to the table. I sat to one side, with my back to the wall facing the patio and facing the archway through which, at any moment, Guevara would appear.

"You mention the names of these people," I said, "and your own, but they mean nothing to me. Should I know them?"

"Yours means nothing to me either," Salvo said. "What does it matter? If I told you that Guevara and Rosa are fighters, people who have imagined a better world and are trying to force things to make it happen, would anything change?"

I looked at Salvo disoriented, searching my memory for a logical reason to fit the nonsense the man suggested. "Wait a moment," I stammered. "If what you say were true, you'd be talking about people who died years ago. That Guevara died in Bolivia, in the mountains, a long time ago. And I don't even dare to think that the Rosa you mention is the revolutionary, the German woman from the early 20th century who fought..."

"She's Polish, not German," Salvo said.

"She isn't, she was. She's dead," I insisted. "Rosa Luxemburg." I savored the name, an epic name, like Dolores Ibarruri, like other quixotic ladies of history. The guy was crazy.

"Alive, dead," Salvo said, shaking his head. "What do you know?"

"You don't expect me to believe he's a ghost." I tried to laugh, but my lips twisted abnormally and formed a sneering grimace.

"For now, my friend," Salvo said, "I expect nothing." Salvo seemed at that moment overwhelmed by a weariness greater than any man could bear, as if a long and useless struggle had consumed him. I was going to retort; I am a rational person and that kind of superstition disturbs me beyond words, but things didn't turn out as I expected. A crash forced me to turn my head. The windowless wall opened as if it were the diaphragm of a camera. Click, clack. The patio was never seen, and in any case, what I could perceive was, like a flash, a dark volume crossing the iris with a firm step, as if the wall simply didn't exist.

When I could turn my whole body, I discovered next to me a young woman, about twenty-five years old, perhaps less; she was petite, with very white skin, and moved nervously, as if she lacked time to do everything she had planned.

"Hello, Rosa," Salvo said, as expressionless as ever.

"Hello, Rosa," I repeated; I could afford to be polite. I was fascinated by the idea that this woman was the mythical Rosa Luxemburg, the founder of Spartacism. But Rosa had been assassinated in 1919, how was that possible...?

The girl looked at me, surprised and irritated. Apparently, she didn't like an intruder occupying a place around the table, much less being treated with familiarity, as if I had known her before. She put her arms akimbo, in a pose so affected that it seemed like a movie heroine, and pointed at me by moving her chin.

"Where did this one come from, who is he?" she said with a strong German accent, which confirmed, in a way, what Salvo had stated.

"He must be someone visiting the house to buy it," Guevara said, coming out of the other room with a thermos under his arm and a leather-covered gourd in his left hand. He didn't look at me; perhaps he was looking beyond the wall, the patio, or beyond the house, a landscape invisible to me. Apparently, these people knew and could do things that were forbidden to me. Guevara sat down and gestured to Rosa to drop that austere gesture, similar to that used by a fanatic when with someone who does not profess their faith. Then he placed the gourd in a tiny wicker basket and poured the water in a single, precise stream, showing that his pulse was trained; he took three long sips without moving the container and refilled it, pushing the gourd towards Salvo.

"Is he useful to us?" Rosa said. Although her features had softened a little, the girl's hostility could have been caught in the air with a slap. I felt the urge to jump up and leave without saying goodbye, but the mystery was too precious, like a gem.

"Do you have a mission?" I said without thinking, a pure intuition like pure water; an absurd and unfounded intuition. But all three raised their heads and fixed their eyes on me. Even Salvo seemed to lose the skin of apathy that enveloped him, and Guevara put down the thermos, and Rosa leaned her small body forward, almost touching me.

"What do you know about all this?" Guevara said. "Who told you about us?"

"We all have a war to fight," I said, blindly, hoping that path would lead somewhere. "I'm looking for mine."

They all sighed with relief; it was almost comical. Salvo shook his head and I thought he smiled. Rosa put her hand on my arm and squeezed, as if wishing to erase all previous distrust with that gesture.

"I highly doubt this is yours," Guevara said. He poured water into the gourd again and offered it to me. Although I don't usually drink mate, I accepted. I sensed that if I yielded to these people's ways, my chances of understanding what was happening would increase.

"To know if we are in the same war," I said, at random, "we would first have to define who the enemy is."

Contrary to what I expected, none of them answered me. Perhaps my question had been too direct, and that put me under suspicion again. Was I spying on them? I knew I wasn't. Rosa released my arm; only then did I notice that she had been squeezing so hard that her nails had pierced the fabric of my shirt.

Guevara prepared himself as if he were about to lecture a group of anxious and ignorant young people.

"Do you know what happens?" he finally said, though without looking at me, after taking two long sips. "The enemy... it doesn't matter much who the enemy is. We can put our heads together and believe that the enemy is one, and in a way it is, but the struggle must take place at every point, at every intersection, do you understand? Then it matters less. You fight your own war and each of us will do something similar. We have met by chance; perhaps we don't even belong to the same time, we haven't been able to find out yet. In reality, we just get together to drink mate." He laughed strangely.

"It doesn't escape you that I don't understand what you're talking about," I said.

"No, it doesn't escape me," Guevara said. "It was a possibility. Do you know who I am?"

"Should I know? Are you someone... important? If you were the same Guevara... it would be impossible." I didn't want to say that that Guevara was dead; it seemed rude to me.

Guevara smiled. Then he patted his thigh.

"Juan knows much more about this than Rosa and I because he exists on another plane, independent, closer to central knowledge," he said. "He says that in some lines I am someone important, perhaps decisive, or at least influential. But lines are just that, lines. You walk down a hallway, open a door, and enter a room. Maybe I'm there, maybe not. Maybe I triumphed or was assassinated or wasn't born, do you understand?"

"No. Why doesn't he explain it to me?" I said, pointing to Salvo. "If you yourself admit that he knows much more than you."

"We're wasting time," Rosa said. She had regained her previous expression, though intensified by an urgency that came from fear, as if the whole scene risked bursting like a soap bubble.

"Time is not lost," Salvo said, "we are the ones who get lost in time." I was getting tired of those empty, deliberately enigmatic phrases, designed to impress me. I began to think that, beyond the trick of Rosa and the wall, of the mentions of war or whatever they intended to do, a terrorist act, an ambush, an assassination, these people were concealing a concrete operation: occupying the house to use it as a base for their activities, or something similar. The memory of the Process times suddenly came to me and I was afraid.

"Do you have authorization from the owner or the real estate agency to be in this place, or are you common intruders?" My phrase sounded insipid, and they, all three, even before I finished the paragraph, began to laugh.

"If you only knew how defeated your words sound," Guevara said when he could compose himself. "This is an inflection point, an anomaly. Do you think something as trivial as squatting in a house can prevail over the phenomenon that brings us together, here, now, all four of us?"

"You spoke of a war," I said, trying to regain my footing.

"You spoke," Salvo said. "For us, war, any war, took a back seat a long time ago. What kind of war do you imagine? One with soldiers, planes, tanks, missiles? I'm sorry to disappoint you; we don't have those kinds of wars in existence." Juan's words were accompanied by such a high degree of bitterness that for a moment I thought he was going to explode, splashing me, soaking me in blue, lethal poison.

"Is any of you going to tell me clearly why you are in this place?" I half-rose in my chair; I was determined to press them and define, even at the cost of leaving some shreds in the attempt.

"I already told you," Guevara insisted, "we just got together to drink mate." Rosa was even more eloquent: she drew her finger and pointed it at me, accusingly, although I suppose she didn't even know what she was accusing me of. She said two or three words in German, I suppose; they sounded like an insult.

"Rosa, please," Juan Salvo said wearily, "let's leave those silly things."

"If you explain the trick of the wall," I said, not paying attention to the girl who kept gesticulating, despite Salvo's reprimand, perhaps stuck for lack of words in our language, "I'll leave and let you be. I found you by chance and I'm not interested. I'd rather be in the library, reading a good book. Do you realize? Besides, the salesman must be looking for me."

Salvo looked at Guevara, as if asking for help, but he made an eloquent gesture, downplaying its importance.

"The salesman is dangerous, he is the enemy, since you wanted to know," Guevara said.

Then Salvo stood up and, placing his fists on the table, spoke like a political leader negotiating support for his worst adversary.

"It's time, sir, the greatest impostor, a fiction. Get out of here, while you can, before you get caught in the web of facts. Do you think I was always this pale shadow? I am a man of action and I await my opportunity. But you disturb me, you hinder me."

"Who are you?" I repeated for the umpteenth time, almost furious. I also had my fists clenched, and despite always having been a peaceful person, I felt like running them over, forcing them to explain the whole story to me.

"We already told you," Guevara said; he seemed to be very patient, a guy accustomed to complicated ventures.

"Names are not enough for me; I don't know who you are by knowing your names, which, by the way, could be mere pseudonyms. It's very common lately."

Rosa seemed, for the first time, at peace with herself, but she refrained from speaking.

"Let's suppose for a moment," Salvo said, "that we are independent avatars who met, who by pure chance found the common factor that allows them to coincide in a fictional space, is that enough for you?"

"Avatars? They talk as if this were a game. No, it's not enough for me," I said, and I was sincere; I was as much in the dark as at the beginning. Perhaps I am a limited person to understand the abstract or the fantastic, but I couldn't connect these three people; perhaps I wouldn't have been able to even knowing their motives and passions. "Okay, tell me your stories, one of the three stories, at least."

"No," Guevara said, breaking a silence of several minutes, "we don't have time left." He tried to pour water into the gourd and discovered that the thermos was empty. Without hesitation and without looking back, he headed towards the other room. As I watched him disappear, it occurred to me that he had the answer and was hiding it, or that he was provoking me. With a jump, I crossed the space that separated us without Rosa or Juan trying to stop me. I reached the archway and received a devastating impact: Guevara was walking towards a mountain of oxidized bushes, under an ashen, weak sun; beyond, by a stream, a kind of camp was visible where some men and women surrounded a bonfire. I called out to him, but he didn't even turn around, as if he were traversing a space without connection. I realized that I had lost a third of reality, perhaps forever, or perhaps it wasn't real at all, it never had been, how to know? I turned abruptly, prepared to discover that the archway leading to the house I had intended to buy had disappeared, but no: the archway was still in the same place; fortunately, I wasn't lost in an alternative universe, with no possibility of return. I hesitated for a second. I would ruin everything if I didn't make the right move, but I also couldn't continue living with the doubt on my shoulders.

However, when I looked back into the room, Rosa and Salvo had disappeared. The room was empty, like so many others in the house. There were no traces of the table and chairs, and a huge window overlooked a patio where the last vestiges of a coppery light wrinkled like the skin of a rotting fruit. The door opened and I heard the voice of the real estate agent.

"Sir?" he said hesitantly. "Are you here?"

It wasn't possible, nothing was possible. I went outside and looked towards the camp. Guevara had already gained a good hundred meters on me. But reality is tied to logical laws, I told myself; people can't just appear and disappear like that.

"Yes, I'm here," I said, entering the room resolutely. The salesman sighed with relief. "I was just looking around," I added.

"This leads to the park," he said, pointing to the archway through which Guevara had left. I adjusted the idea in my head. Calling a mountain of bushes with its own stream a park seemed absurd to me, but it was the real estate agent's logic, not mine or the others'.

"Beautiful park," I said for lack of anything better. I moved to get past the salesman, but he grabbed my arm.

"Did you see something you shouldn't have?" The guy's expression had changed drastically. The plastic smile gone, he looked at me harshly, brazenly, as police often look at a suspect. The pressure on my arm intensified; I thought of Rosa and how everyone seemed interested in keeping me restrained, not just in that house and at that moment.

"Are you going to let me go? What do you think you're doing?"

"No," the guy said, stubborn; now it was hard for me to think of him as a simple real estate agent; he was something else, no doubt, as Guevara had said; the salesman is dangerous, he said, he is the enemy. The salesman confirmed it immediately, with four enigmatic and conclusive words: "Who is the woman?"

"What woman? I didn't see any woman."

"Don't be an idiot." He increased the pressure on my arm even more and with a dizzying movement pulled out a weapon and pressed it against my forehead.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm not playing; neither are they. Didn't they tell you this is a war?"

I laughed as naturally as possible. "You're crazy! I came to buy the house."

"That was the original idea, but things changed since you met those three." The forcefulness of the statement shattered my scheme. He knew everything, it wasn't a trick; he could read minds with absolute efficiency. I decided to make a drastic change, a desperate move.

"Oh, those people, I was just going to ask you. Is the house occupied? How do I get them out of here? If I buy it, will I get involved in legal issues?"

The guy let go of me and stepped back, though without ceasing to point the weapon at me.

"What were they doing?"

"They're out there, drinking mate," I said as naturally as possible. "Didn't you know? Weren't you the one who reads minds?"

"Me? How do you know?" The hesitation lasted an instant, but apparently in free zones, that's enough. A wall opened again like a diaphragm, click, clack, not the same one, where there was now a window, but the one leading to the hallway, but this time I could see it without difficulty. Rosa jumped like a panther and grabbed the salesman's hand that held the weapon. But that wasn't all. There was another click, clack, on the ceiling, and Salvo descended in slow motion, as if sinking into a large volume of swan feathers. That slowness didn't seem important, as the salesman was paralyzed. His face had frozen in an expression of astonished terror, as if his brain was incapable of ordering anything else. Salvo brandished a wide-bladed hunting knife, and used it to open the guy from navel to neck.

"Watch out, it's coming out!" Salvo announced.

From inside the salesman came a monstrous creature, a saffron-colored spheroid, a being unlike anything that lived on Earth. The monster had no limbs and clumsily fell to the ground without making a sound. I didn't know whether to be surprised by what I was seeing or by the way Rosa and Salvo handled the situation. It seemed incredible to me that the creature was housed inside a human body and that, perhaps, I don't know, I conjecture, it had taken possession of it to manipulate it.

"Leave, if you're impressionable," Salvo said. "I'm not lying if I tell you that what follows is quite unpleasant." I was about to ask what he meant by that, when Guevara re-entered through the same place he had used to leave. He carried a black plastic bag and without any explanation poured its contents over the creature. A white cascade fell over the spheroid, which began to shrink, while it broke apart, turning gray and emitting a nauseating smell, the same one I had perceived in the room full of furniture.

"Is it salt?" I said, stupidly.

"It's cocaine," Guevara said. "It's not a cheap war. Each of these bugs costs us a fortune." The creature soon dwindled to a pile of ashes.

Salvo crouched to remove the remains with the knife. Rosa took care of the salesman, but I had to look away; it seemed as if the monster that had harbored inside him had devoured his organs. To say the guy was dead was an understatement.

"So this is the war," I said.

"One of the wars," Salvo said.

"They used me miserably," I protested. "They knew the guy would come looking for me; they were baiting the trap."

"Baiting traps, brewing mate," Guevara said. "What can you do? There are worse things. Do you know what would happen if these things managed to reproduce?"

"No, but I can imagine. I see a legion of real estate agents advancing on the great capitals."

"Are you stupid?" Rosa said. When she got angry, her German accent became very noticeable. For a moment I thought I might know who these three really were, although history was never my strong suit. Perhaps they were just the ones from the books, with full names and surnames and deeds.

"I'm not one to give advice," Guevara said, "but I'm going to give you one: don't buy the house if you don't want to live in the middle of a battlefield." He gathered what remained of the creature using the plastic bag in which he had brought the cocaine and wrapped it without touching it with his hands. Then he took out a roll of packing tape and gave it several turns. The whole package was not much bigger than a soccer ball.

"You took away my desire." I tried to smile and couldn't.

"Then I don't know if we'll see each other again," Salvo said, extending his hand to me. I shook it. Rosa shook her head and was the first to leave the room. Click, clack, you know.

"Mine is a bit more complicated," Salvo said. "It only works when no one is left." I didn't ask any more; surely the ceiling, converted into a large mouth, would swallow him. I saw Guevara leave through the archway, as all the other times, and a couple of pieces clicked: they could only meet in that place, at that intersection point, and that's why they had needed me to attract the salesman. I still felt like garbage.

I left the house and resolved to follow Guevara's advice to the letter.