WHY I’M NOT WHERE YOU ARE (2)

5/21/63

To my unborn child: I haven’t always been silent, I used to talk and talk and talk and talk, I couldn’t keep my mouth shut, the silence overtook me like a cancer, it was one of my first meals in America, I tried to tell the waiter, “The way you just handed me that knife, that reminds me of –” but I couldn’t finish the sentence, her name wouldn’t come, I tried again, it wouldn’t come, she was locked inside me, how strange, I thought, how frustrating, how pathetic, how sad, I took a pen from my pocket and wrote ”Anna” on my napkin, it happened again two days later, and then again the following day, she was the only thing I wanted to talk about, it kept happening, when I didn’t have a pen, I’d write “Anna” in the air – backward and right to left – so that the person I was speaking with could see, and when I was on the phone I’d dial the numbers – 2, 6, 6, 2 – so that the person could hear what I couldn’t, myself, say. “And” was the next word I lost, probably because it was so close to her name, what a simple word to say, what a profound word to lose, I had to say “ampersand”, which sounded ridiculous, but there it is, “I’d like a coffee ampersand something sweet,” nobody would choose to be like that. “Want” was a word I lost early on, which is not to say that I stopped wanting things – I wanted things more – I just stopped being able to express the want, so instead I said “desire”, “I desire two rolls,” I would tell the baker, but that wasn’t quite right, the meaning of my thoughts started to float away from me, like leaves that fall from a tree into a river, I was the three, the world was the river. I lost “come” one afternoon with the dogs in the park, I lost “fine” as the barber turned me toward the mirror, I lost “shame” – the verb and the noun in the same moment; it was a shame. I lost “carry”, I lost the things I carried – “daybook,” “pencil,” “pocket change,” “wallet” – I even lost “loss.” After a time, I had only a handful of words left, if someone did something nice for me, I would tell him, “The thing that comes before ‘you’re welcome,’” if I was hungry, I’d point at my stomach and say, “I am the opposite of full,” I’d lost “yes,” but still had “no,” so if someone asked me, “Are you Thomas?” I would answer, “Not no,” but then I lost “no,” I went to a tattoo parlor and had YES written onto the palm of my left hand, and NO onto my right palm, what can I say, it hasn’t made life wonderful, it’s made life possible, when I rub my hands against each other in the middle of the winter I am warming myself with the friction of YES and NO, when I clap my hands I am showing my appreciation through the uniting and parting of YES and NO, I signify “book” by peeling open my clapped hands, every book, for me, is the balance of YES and NO, even this one, my last one, especially this one. Does it break my heart, of course, every moment of every day, into more pieces than my heart was made of, I never thought myself as quiet, much less silent, I never thought about things at all, everything changed, the distance between the wedged itself between me and my happiness wasn’t the world, it wasn’t the bombs and the burning buildings, it was me, my thinking, the cancer of never letting go, is ignorance bliss, I don’t know, but it’s so painful to think, and tell me, what did thinking ever do for me, to what great place did thinking ever bring me? I think and think and think, I’ve thought myself out of happiness a million times, but never once into it. “I” was the last word I was able to speak aloud, which is a terrible thing, but there it is, I would walk around the neighborhood saying “I I I I.” “You want a cup of coffee, Thomas?” “I.” “And maybe something sweet?” “I.” “How about this weather?” “I.” “You look upset. Is anything wrong?” I wanted to say, “Of course,” I wanted to ask, “Is anything right?” I wanted topull the thread, unravel the scarf of my silent and start again from the beginning, but instead I said, “I.” I know I’m not alone in this disease, you hear the old people in the street and some of them are moaning, “Ay yay yay,” but some of them are clinging to their last word, “I,” they’re saying, because they’re desperate, it’s not a complaint it’s a prayer, and then I lost “I” and my silence was complete. I started carrying blank books like this one around, which I would fill with all the things I couldn’t say, that’s how it started, if I wanted two rolls of bread from the baker, I would write “I want two rolls” on the next blank page and show it to him, and if I needed help from someone, I’d write “Help,” and if something made me want to laugh, I’d write “Ha ha ha!” and instead of singing in the shower I would write out the lyrics of my favourite songs, the ink would turn the water blue or red or green, and the music would run down my legs, at the end of each day I would take the book to bed with me and read through the pages of my life:

I want two rolls

And I wouldn’t say no to something sweet

I’m sorry, this is the smallest I’ve got

Start spreading the news...

The regular, please

Thank you, but I’m about to burst

I’m not sure, but it’s late

Help

Ha ha ha!

It wasn’t unusual for me to run out of blank pages before the end of the day, so should I have to say something to someone on the street or in the bakery or at the bus stop, the best I could do was flip back through the daybook and find the most fitting page to recycle, if someone asked me, “How are you feeling?” it might be that my best responde was to point at, “The regular, please,” or perhaps, “And I wouldn’t say no to something sweet,” when my only friend, Mr. Richter, suggested, “What if you tried to make a sculpture again? What’s the worst thing that could happen?” I shuffled halfway into the filled book: “I’m not sure, but it’s late.” I went through hundreds of books, thousands of them, they were all over the apartment, I used them as doorstops and paperweights, I stacked them if I needed to reach something, I slid them under the legs of wobbly tables, I used them as trivets and coasters, to line the birdcages and to swat insects from whom I begged forgiveness, I never thought of my books as being special, only necessary, I might rip out a page – “I’m sorry, this is the smallest I’ve got” – to wipe up some mess, or empty a whole day to pack up the emergency light bulbs, I remember spending an afternoon with Mr. Richter in the Central Park Zoo, I went weighted down with food for the animals, only someone who’d never been an animal would put up a sign saying not to feed them, Mr. Richter told a joke, I tossed hamburguer to the lions, he rattled the cages with his laughter, the animals went to the corners, we were determined to ignore whatever needed to be ignored, to build a new world from nothing if nothing in our world could be salvaged, it was one of the best days of my life, a day during which I lived my life and didn’t think about my life at all. Later that year, when snow started to hide the frontsteps, when morning became evening as I sat on the sofa, buried under everything I’d lost, I made a fire and used my laughter for kindling: “Ha ha ha!” “Ha ha ha!” “Ha ha ha!” “Ha ha ha!” I was already out of words when I met your mother, that may have been our marriage possible, she never had to know me. We met at the Columbian Bakery on Brodway, we’d both come to New York lonely, broken and confused, I was sitting in the corner stirring cream into coffee, around and around like a little solar system, the place was half empty but the slid right up next to me, “You’ve lost everything,” she said, as if we were sharing a secret, “I can see.” If I’d been someone else in a different world I’d’ve done something different, but I was myself, and the world was the world, so I was silent, “It’s OK,” she whispered, her mouth too close to my ear, “Me too. You can probably see it from across a room. It’s not like being Italian. We stick out like sore thumbs. Look at how they look. Maybe they don’t know that we’ve lost everything, but they know something’s off.” She was the tree and also the river flowing away from the three, “There are worse things,” she said, “worse than being like us. Look, at least we’re alive,” I could see that she wanted those last words back, but the current was too strong, “And the weather is one hundred dollars, also, don’t let me forget to mention,” I stirred my coffee. “But I hear it’s supposed to get crummy tonight. Or that’s what the man on the radio said, anyway,” I shrugged, I didn’t know what “crummy” meant, “I was gonna go buy some tuna fish at the A&P. I clipped some coupons from the Post this morning. They’re five cans for the price of three. What a deal! I don’t even like tuna fish. It gives me stomachaches, to be frank. But you can’t beat that price,” she was trying to make me laugh, but I shrugged my shoulders and stirred my coffee, “I don’t know anymore,” she said. “The weather is one hundred dollars, and the man on the radio says it’s gonna get crummy tonight, so maybe I should go to the park instead, even if I burn easily. And anyway, it’s not like I’m gonna eat the tunna fish tonight, right? Or ever, if I’m being frank. It gives me stomachaches, to be perfectly frank. So there’s no rush in that department. But the weather, now that won’t stick around. Or at last it never has. And I should tell you also that my doctor says getting out is good for me. My eyes are crummy, and he says I don’t get out nearly enough, and that if I got out a little more, if I were a little less afraid...” She was extending a hand that I didn’t know how to take, so I broke its fingers with my silence, she said, “You don’t want to talk to me, do you?” I took my daybook out of my knapsack and found the next blank page, the second to last. “I don’t speak,” I wrote. “I’m sorry.” She looked at the piece of paper, then at me, then back at the piece of paper, she covered her eyes with her hands and cried, tears seeped between her fingers and collected in the little webs, she cried and cried and cried, there weren’t any napkins nearby, so I ripped the page from the book – “I don’t speak. I’m sorry.” – and used it to dry her cheeks, my explanation and apology ran down her face like mascara, she took my pen from me and wrote on the next blank page of my daybook, the final one:

Please marry me

I flipped back and pointed at, “Ha ha ha!” She flipped forward and pointed at, “Please marry me.” I flipped back and pointed at, “I’m sorry, this is the smallest I’ve got.” She flipped forward and pointed at, “Please marry me.” I flipped back and pointed at, “I’m not sure, but it’s late.” She flipped forward and pointed at, “Please marry me,” and this time put her finger on “Please,” as if to hold down the page and end the conversation, or as if she were trying to push through the word and into what she really wanted to say. I thought about life, about my life, the embarrassments, the little coincidences, the shadows of alarm clocks on bedside tables. I thought about my small victories and everything I’d seen destroyed, I’d swum through mink coats on my parents’ bed while they hosted downstairs, I’d lost the only person I could have spent my only life with, I’d left behind a thousand tons of marble, I could have released sculptures, I could have released myself from the marble of myself. I’d experienced joy, but not nearly enough, could there be enough? The end of suffering does not justify the suffering, and so there is no end to suffering, what a mess I am, I thought, what a fool, how foolish and narrow, how worthless, how pinched and pathetic, how helpless. None of my pets know their own names, what kind of person am I? I lifted her finger like a record needle and flipped back, on page at a time:

Help

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Este capítulo está postado na íntegra, pois achei-o tão bom que não consegui excluir nada. ^^