TE22 Potpourri

Manuel Baixauli

UNKNOWN

The apartment, covered in mountains of paper and dust, was entirely illuminated by a senile ochre sun, since there were no curtains and the blinds were raised. After Crisòstom visited the bathroom, I helped himfling himself onto an unmade bed. On the night table were a pile of books (crowned by The Yellow Dog , by G. Simenon), medicines, and a framed photo of himas a young man standing next to a tall man with long blond hair and beard.

embarrassment to me now if it had been published.”

“Was it that bad?”

He didn’t respond. He yawned again, closed his eyes.

I took a look around the apartment, particularly the living room, standing in front of the wall filled with notes pinned to it. On pieces of newspaper, on bar napkins, on bus tickets, on the backs of receipts or envelopes from the bank, there were handwritten phrases, ideas, questions, a few descriptions of places or people, some summaries of what might have been dreams, all written in haste, with some words incomplete. I hadn’t shown him the drawings. I went back to the bedroom. Crisòstom was having trouble breathing. I thought he might die right there, in front of me. Through the window I saw the sea. In the distance, the waves slid extremely slowly, matching the rhythm of Crisòstom’s labored breathing. I left him alone, as it seemed he’d always been, perhaps since he was twenty years old or even earlier. We didn’t see each other again until a month had passed. He asked me to meet him not at the café this time, but at his apartment, where he received me in stained, fraying dressing gown and with a gaunt face. We sat in the living room, the 99

“Your father?” I said, pointing to the photo.

He gave me a perplexed look, wrinkling his face, and laughed without opening his mouth, expelling air through his nostrils.

“Who is it, then?”

“A remarkable figure. Talent, intelligence, culture, charisma, women . . . He had it all.”

“Is he dead?”

Crisòstom yawned. He raised his eyebrows and shoulders and said, “ Chi lo sa ?”

“How old were you in that photo?”

Reluctantly, lowering his tone of voice, he said, “About twenty. I wanted to take on the world. I had written an eight-hundred- page novel, imagine! A fat brick! It would have been a real 98