Panic Signs

Other books by Cristina Peri Rossi

ness, the look of surprise that gave the impression he was maladjusted, a potential rebel. It was then that he went to bed. The room was filled with photos of ancient wars, former wars, survived wars. Wars out of books which had now come alive with macabre vividness. Charlemagne on the red walls of Paris and sweaty, thirsty paladins on sweaty, thirsty horses. Had he started with that picture? A long caravan was advancing. Titled photographs of the Second World War. Nagasaki full of smoke and a marine lighting up his cigar with his foot resting on the arm of a partially burnt corpse. The photograph had won a prize from Life magazine or something. They must certainly have given him a medal. Spectres of other days, spectres of these days. He straightened up a few books and clothing that he had in his room and dusted off the only chair. A soldier should be neat, even if he deserts. His friends would come to visit him. To ask him why he wasn’t going to the office anymore, what was keeping him away from the stadium. He would simply be quiet, stay quiet while they contemplated the titled photographs and legends, indifferently, the photographs of the wars that everyone had surely forgotten, except him. Napoleon and Charlemagne, since childhood, he had a wretched memory for everything, and how was he going to forget the soldier coldly pointing the gun at the girl—almost a child—falling in slow motion, slowly, leaning on a wall, and knowing, or not knowing ever again, understand: never know again, what became of her, if someone picked her up, if she was locked up in prison with so many others , if they left her to die, if she was carried in the arms of comrades, if a brother was looking after her, or a friend or a mother. And as for him—like what happened to Job—friends would come to give him false consolation, to dissuade him, to insinuate that all these wars—remember the Romans—had maybe gotten to him. They would tell him that always, always, it had been this way. They recommended patience and entertainment . Go for a walk, go on foot, spend more time with women, travel to some adventurous country where peace existed superficially. They would come to propose remedies and sonnets: resignation, hope, and charity. Theological virtues that he had lost in some battle field. Or maybe he had just lost them in the stampede. It was good that sometimes it was his turn to lose something in a war. He had painfully crossed the fields of Castile and had survived Auschwitz, he had fallen in Hué, and gotten up only to fall again; he had witnessed the slaughter of Blacks in Palmares and the extermination of the Indians in Potosí; he had fought in the south against the north and in the north against the south; he had been a blue soldier, a green soldier, and a red soldier. What more could be asked of him? He was no longer of an age to fight. So he went to bed and left some written —— 104 —— orders: for the paperboy, not to bother anymore to leave a newspaper under his door: he didn’t have to know what was going on in the east or the west anymore, nor did he have to read local news which was censored by the minister; for the milkman, not to leave milk in the hallway, next to his door, milk which would likely have become tainted, contaminated by the impurity of his lapsed memory, obliviousness, of the whole affair, of the derision. For the mailman, he left a note saying to return the letters addressed to him: he wasn’t interested in any contact with men there, or in the Hereafter. For the maid who came to clean his small hideout three times a week, he left a disturbing note, in which he relieved her of her domestic duties, and ordered her to withdraw from the other one, forever, which was to increase the number of human beings on the planet. He was convinced the woman wouldn’t understand a single word he’d written, and that’s why he enclosed a little money: with this advice, he felt he had carried out his last duty dictated by conscience, and with the money, the woman would stay quiet and not alarm anyone, nor notify the police. As for his boss...