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