La niña de la diadema roja.

Llevaba una diadema roja. La vi a través de la lluvia y los cristales, la diadema sobre el pelo corto y negro, emulando a blancanieves. Apenas llegaba a la mesa, apoyaba los codos en posición de escalada, más que de reposo. Inmóvil, dos coloretes rojos prendiendo fuego a una piel blanquísima, leía.
Leía sin levantar la vista, sin moverse, sin pausas, en una habitación amarilla. No era un libro de colores y formas, de los que esconden dragones y príncipes de hojalata, bajo castillos que se levantan al tirar de una flecha roja.
El libro era el Principito y era Veinte mil leguas de viaje submarino, era el Libro de la Selva y era Peter Pan. No los firmaba disney y tenían mas palabras que dibujos. Los ojos, aunque estaban muy lejos, en otros mundos, mecidos por las palabras y la brisa de los sueños de nuncajamases y planetas lejanos con corderos, no estaban ausentes. Brillaban mucho más que las farolas, y las primeras luces de navidad colgadas en las casas vecinas, iluminaban el cuarto y el mundo si cabe, si el mundo era listo y estaba mirando.
Leyó muchas horas, y yo la mire desde otra casa, veinte años mas vieja, tomándole el pulso a sus sueños. Las pocas veces que levantaba la vista no salia de del libro, sólo buscaba espacio para imaginar la historia. Pasó todas las paginas. Todas. Y al llegar a la última cerró el libro despacio, levantó la cabeza y me vio, a dos ventanas de distancia. Y yo sentí vergüenza al ver sus ojos y no saber sostenerle la mirada, después de tantos años sin vernos, sin verme. Quizás hubiera sido mas fácil si me hubiese convertido en la mujer que esa niña soñó ser.

Niebla

Todo tiembla, las manos, la casa. Las miradas tiritan como luces de navidad, intermitentes, dispersas. El se sienta lejos esta vez y tu sientes las corrientes de electricidad cruzar la habitacion sin anidar en el. El aire se llena de yo-mi-me conmigos y tu temes los silencios, porque sabes que las unicas verdades que jamas habeis intercambiado se quedaban quietas en los silencios, en las palabras no dichas.

Y las manos que no te tocan, la respiracion que no tantea tu nuca, las bocas que no se encuentran te apunhalan despacio. Cogeras las cosas y te iras, emigrando a tierras donde la soledad es inevitable, no escogida, donde prudencia y cobardia no se confunden en los limtes de la gramatica y el autoenganho. Pero todavia no. De momento llenas de humo la oscuridad compartida y mientes. Al no decir nada mientes, y la mentira os cubre a los dos como niebla. Niebla inglesa.

Todo cabe en una cancion

Suena la armonica y se te cae el alma como un peso muerto, arrastrando la oscuridad de los dias. La armonica siempre te mata, te hace recordar cosas que nunca viviste, que te persiguen recordandote todo lo que nunca tendras, todo lo que no eres, todos los recuerdos robados de las bocas de otros, escuchados tras una puerta entreabierta.
La armonica se apaga y te imaginas a ti misma estallando, el cuerpo abriendose como un dia nublado, dejando caer al suelo lagrimas y recuerdos y porqueria.
Te preguntas si algun dia oiras los primeros veinte segundos de esa cancion y tu corazon resistira el envite, sin agitarse incomodo en el pecho, buscando aire, batiendose contra los muros, las costillas.
Hay dias en los que escuchar canciones como esa es un atentado contra la vida y el buen juicio. Pero sabes que siempre, en ti, las canciones que te matan son las mismas que te salvan.

Breathless

“It’s beyond my control, it’s beyond my control, it’s beyond my control,” he said imitating John Malkovich impassive voice tone, “Dangerous Liaisons. That’s the only break up scene that counts.”

Ava took off the ballerina shoes, slipping them out of her feet with her toes, and laid down in their Ikea’s Kalstard sofa, at least two metres away from him. In the background, Jean Paul Belmondo was making faces on the TV, the French dialogues filling the room with familiarity. They could reproduce the words from Breathless by memory, one by one. They actually did, the first time they slept together. They sat down in his bed, in a house in south London, very far away from any place she could recall having heard about in Time Out and watched Breathless in silence, moving the lips along with the actors, creating a new language, a secret code for them only to use.

It was on BBC3 now. They were watching the scene in Champs-Elisees, the most important one. Four years ago Owen started undressing her slowly for the first time while Seberg was selling New York Tribunes in the street. She didn’t shiver now at the memory of him unbuttoning her dress without taking his eyes of the screen. They had watched it a thousand times since then. In anniversaries, open air cinemas, and old theatre in Paris without subtitles (no need for them). Owen would imitate Belmondo for her, like the day they met (he had a big mouth too). Ava looked at him now, across the living room: he didn’t look like Belmondo anymore.

“I can’t stand that scene”, Ava said grabbing a blanket from under the sofa.

She could smell her perfume on it. It was everywhere, it was on him. Ava tried to identify the label, but she couldn’t. It was expensive (Ava used baby perfume: 6 pounds a bottle)

“Come on, why? You love John Malkovich”, he smiled.

“It’s just that damn phrase, repeated over and over. I would have killed him then and there if I were Michelle Pfeiffer. I would have grabbed a dagger, or whatever they used back then, and stabbed him”, she said lifeless. “It’s beyond my control. I’m bored, it has been already four months,” she paraphrased, “it’s like saying: I’m a man, I can’t do anything about it, it’s just in my nature”

“That’s honest”, Owen shrugged his shoulders.

“That’s easy”

“Does it always have to be difficult, Ava?”

She thought there wasn’t any movie quote for what was coming. She couldn’t think of any.

“Tell me a good one, then. A good break-up scene”, he asked, trying to lighten up the mood.

“I just can think of one: Closer”, she whispered with a bitter smile.

“I have never really liked that movie, the dialogues are unnatural, so forced…,but there is a great scene, you’re right”, he admitted condescendingly. “Julia Roberts is confessing to his husband, Clive Owen, she cheated on him. He asks her all those sexually explicit questions. How did you do it? Where? She tells him and then he has that killer line¬--“

“That’s the spirit!,” Ava quoted interrupting him, “thank you for your honesty! Now fuck off and die you fucking slag! I remember that one”

He looked down, a bit paler, a bit shakier. “That’s a good quote”

“Yeah, just not my style”

Owen lighted a cigarette.

“Which scene did you mean then?”,

“Jude Law says I love you, Natalie Portman shouts Where?”

Silence. Smoke.

“Do you wanna choose one, Owen?

“Choose what?”

“A movie quote to finish this”

“The conversation?”, Owen smiled.

“Us”

On the background Belmondo was putting his arms around the girl’s fragile neck. “I’ll count to eight. If by 8 you haven’t smiled I’ll strangle you. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven...seven and three quarters...”. Jean Seberg smiled.

She & Him

She

She was carrying a big bunch of dried flowers and a cup of cold coffee; three different books, a request for a Nina Simone’s song and dark circles under the eyes. The coffee was always cappuccino, an awful English cappuccino that had nothing to do with the sharp taste of the Italian fest of foam she used to have in Rome every morning. The song was “My baby just cares for me”and was always played by a pink-cheeked polish girl and an off key guitar at Ezra Street, the heart of the Columbia Flower Market.

She was young and tall, dark eyes, dark hair, dark sense of humour. She had being wearing dark circles under the eyes for 6 years now. Every Sunday she took them for a walk, along with her hangover, her guilt and the leftovers of her weekly allowance to the entrance of Columbia Road. She always walked in the same direction, looking for peonies in every stall and knowing that they were already out of season, and she would end up with a damn bunch of dried flowers that would last months, staying still, indifferent to time and weather: never losing a petal, or withering, or dying.

She just resigned and bought them one more time, before making one last stop by the near-by shops to search through the old cameras and the used porcelains, stained with lives and teas of others. She had always love used things: vintage clothes, second hand cars, library books…She could still smell the smoke of past lives, burning like hers, extinguished fires leaving confused ash tracks to be followed.

The clock marked 2 pm when she walked past the candy shop, avoiding hydrangeas and sunflowers, familiar faces that would demand a conversation and a smile. She hid behind the sunglasses, and rushed towards the last stall of the street, the reason she had been coming to the market for 20 consecutive Sundays. She held her breath till she tracked him down through the bad quality porcelain and the faked silver spoons. There he was: the bent spine, the thin body, the lost stare. The wrinkled shirt and the stained trousers. The old man dressed in white. She couldn’t explain it. She thought of all the money spent by her dad trying to fix her, until everybody (the psychiatrist, her dad, herself) decided to give up, and knew that whatever it was dragging her in there every week, she would never be able to explain it. So she just walked towards him. Not brave enough to smile.


Him


He always wore white on Sundays and Nora liked that. She would wake up at 5 and iron the white suit and the matching shirt with exquisite care. Then she would prepare tea and toast, sometimes even scrambled eggs, and watch him eat them. In 45 years she never, not only once, had breakfast with him. She would steal a bite or two with her small bony fingers, and then spend 20 minutes doing her hair, before compulsively re-arrange again all the perfectly disposed flower vases and tablecloths around the house.

They were always the first ones arriving to the Columbia Flower market and the last ones leaving their stall. They would stop for a quick hot tea and start unpacking the porcelains before the sun was up. For years they spent every Sunday of their lives sitting in two plastic chairs, holding a book or a cup of tea, having the same well-worn conversations, smiling at the old familiar jokes, not making any money. Nora would always do all the talk with strangers, and he would just stand right beside her, the hands in the pockets of the white suit, the eyes in every move of hers.

He now could clearly feel the urine pattering the bladder again, forcing him to bend in the chair. He estimated 5 minutes till the thing would get ugly. He looked for her between the stalls; focusing on her favourite ones (she loved peonies and salmon bagels, so he started with that). He even left the stall unattended to stop by Joe’s (Nora had been innocently flirting with him for years), but couldn’t bring himself to ask him, so he hurried to the closest toilet, unzipping on the way.

Nora wasn’t back when he finished. He sighted the tired girl instead, with all that sadness surrounding her like black crows flying around; and a handful of broken tenderness contained in her small fist (she had small hands, angry hands, spoiled only child hands). She was a visibly uncomfortable, talking to a couple: a blond girl with masculine manners and a reflex camera hanging from the neck and a tall latin guy. The girl had been coming to the stall for months now, always alone and tired, two big dark circles hanging from her eyes. She never said a word, just looked at him in silence for a while and buy something at random, stretching the time of physical contact, the moment their hands met for the payment. He didn’t know what to do with that stare of hers that seemed to try to unveil some dark secret behind his white suit.

She was now holding an attempt of a Derby porcelain coffee pot.
“So how was it last night? Did you stay much longer after we left?", he could hear the blonde girl asking.
"I haven't slept"
"And still, here you are, buying flowers", the latin guy said, depreciatively.
"I always come to this stall"
"To this one? Why?", the blond girl asked, while photographing the faded blue shepherd in the Derby pot.
"I don’t know", she whispered, the eyes in her black boots, the defeat in her voice. "I can’t really explain it, there is something about him…that sad wrinkled suit maybe, or the way he seems to always be looking for something or for somebody…"

And then the blond girl said it, and it hit him. He felt the pain finding his way to the inside, to the entrails, till it knocked his core. Breaking the ribs, brushing the sternum, stealing all air.

“He looks like a widower”

He tried to breathe, the lungs searching for air towards the sky, towards the blinding iced sun…and let the lucidity overcome. It was just him now. He dropped like a snowflake, falling free to the pavement. The last thing he saw was the tired girl walking away. She was dressed in black.

Volveré de algún modo, en un envase distinto, con la sonrisa más cansada y más certera, y pediré a los vientos limosna y coraje, hambre de carreteras y de voces que susurren canciones de desarraigo…Y un alma. Un alma para llenar esta botella, esta botella vacía.