It was December 24th at 6:30 p.m. The Sun at dusk no longer covers the West and says goodbye to its admirers in a very touching way. I maintain my wife´s photo, who died ten years ago, to fraternize together the occasion and to try to pass on to that lifeless being the colors of my nearly wiped out aura. I didn’t reach my 70th birthday even so I can hardly leave the bed, which has turned into a very close and welcome object. I know the furniture of this apartment and each supporting beam. The walls hide achievements, joy, defeats, and cries, concealed by time emotions highlighted by the unequalled repainted blue and the golden and pearl frame pictures. My bedroom is my hideout, and I like it. It is my reference on this end of Century. However, just an apparently lifeless object, frightens me, it tortures me.
With some difficulty, I get out of bed feeling sad with what expected me. The target was few meters ahead of me. I picked up my crutch that was leaning against the bedside table; I get up and walk towards my enemy. I try to convince myself that I shouldn’t be worried. However, I know that it will be an inevitable and astonishing impact.
Here I am facing the mentioned object so desired by women and scorned by men. Its majesty and beauty doesn’t call my attention nor does it shake my commotion as during my youth. I just look at them trying to remember of my minced emotions of the last thirty one years, eleven months and twenty four years, which I count them as money that suffered corrections by the unreal past economic plans.
With an abrupt and courageous movement, I see my eyes, it´s a confrontation: an apology for the many I have hurt and cut out of my life on earth, for those I have overridden, or the honest ones I have cheated or I have deceived the unfaithful ones. I am an admitted culprit. I start to remember everything….
It was Christmas of 1979, and I was still in my law office located on Avenida Rio Branco, a very singular and coveted area of Rio de Janeiro. The telephone is ringing.
- Good morning, is that Mr. AurélioCondes de Toledo?
- Yes.
- Sorry, my interrupting you, but your wife would like to know at what time you´ll be home?
- I don’t have a fixed time – and I hung up.
My arrogance was called Bárbara, a blond woman 5 ft 8 tall with 42 inch hips, and 24.4 inch waist – a Dali sculpture fed by the lyrics of Tom Jobim. I knew that Cândida and my three children were anxious to see me, and I was conscious that I was in the mysterious illusion of the pleasures of the flesh. The day before, it was Christmas Eve and Justice had just seized a poor soul´s asset, a father, an innocent before God, but not for society. I had my share on this process, and it was worth a lot – I wanted more and more (the ego to the extreme).
“Admitted culprit and so what?” – I thought.
On December 25, at 8:30 p.m, I was still on the voluptuousness of the flesh, and I went so deep that I lost my way back. Sex and drinks dominated and consumed me.
After midnight, Bárbara asked me to take her home, at the Rio´s suburb.
- My parents are waiting for me;, they must be worried – she said, nervously.
“Well, she is just 19” - I thought.
I left her in front of her house, gave her a warm kiss and left burning rubber and making a turn towards Visconde de Pirajá Street in Ipanema. On my way, I went through many “favelas” (slums) and I remembered the ones I had harmed – a flash of thought that just came unnoticed to my mind. In the past, people used to say that justice arrives galloping, but now it arrives in most modern comfortable airplane.
I got to my building´s gate two hours later. It was raining, and I caught some heavy traffic and lots of beggars whom I muddled ´by weaving across clogged manholes water puddles.
- THIEVES! – I screamed wrathfully.
After parking in the garage, I took the elevator, and it stopped on the ground floor – it seemed that it was on purpose, and the doorman was looking and laughing at me. I didn’t mind. I pushed the button to the penthouse. I was hesitating and dizzy. On getting to the door, I turned the key, and turned on the light, and I had a great shock.
Cândida wasn’t there. Nor she or my children or the whole furniture were there. They disappeared. Justice arrived much earlier than I had thought. She took our imported furniture, our famous painters’ pieces of art, her jewelry, her hope, my heart and my redemption. Everything was over.
I walked to our bedroom, and the telephone was on the floor. I tried to talk to Barbara, to explain to her what had happened; however, she didn’t answer. Cândida had already told me that this would occur; however, I didn’t listen to her. I laughed and teased her.
“She wouldn’t dare” – I thought, then.
Here I am, alone as a cactus in the middle of the desert.
“It´s an invitation to suicide” – I reasoned.
I picked up the newspapers, returned to the bedroom, sat down and tried to link together my sober ideas mixed with alcohol. A complete emptiness was all that came to my mind. It was an endless loneliness without return. It was so disturbed that I thought I had seen a form. I lifted my head and turned to the left, and I saw, I viewed everything I didn’t want to; I saw the reflection of my inhumanity, my sins and my worldly errors. It was half past six a.m. and the sun was on its way.
Close to the turn of the millennium, the following day of my reflection about life, I died. And I took with me the image that annoyed everybody, but it was what I had conquered.
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O autor Milton Roza Júnior, lançou seu livro "A Semente" na bienal do Rio de Janeiro (estande M33/pavilhão VERDE). Uma conquista feita por trabalho, empenho e talento. O escritor só tem a agradecer e nada a pedir. NAMASTÊ. E-mail: semendereç[email protected] | Mais artigos. Saiba mais sobre você! Descubra sobre Autoconhecimento clicando aqui. |
