Bad Light by Carlos Castán Read Free Book Online

other words, it was as if between those four walls there languished a ghost whose facelessness was precisely my facelessness. The sight of that footwear tipped the balance more than the sight of empty closets with bare coat hangers, barren drawers, or bookshelves covered in nothing but dust. In Auschwitz, so Jacobo had taught me, shoes were piled up at the entrance and can still be seen in the camp quarters that now house a museum. A huge heap of loafers, boots of all types and sizes, children’s sandals. Contemplating that colossal pile, you think of the barbarity, of numbers and facts and the horror of history, of the pajama-clad skeletons filing past in black and white that we’ve seen in so many documentaries, all those trains screeching to a halt at the gates to hell; but if you pause awhile to observe one single item of footwear, one shoe in particular or a pair tethered together by a knot, then you see the dead child. You see a boy struggling to tie the laces in order to keep the boot from falling off with every step he takes or from swallowing up his socks. You picture him seated on the ground, tugging firmly on the tongue of his shoe, you see his snot, you hear his breathing, the sound of his lungs compressing the frozen air of a Polish winter. Just as I saw myself in that apartment. When I closed the door behind me, the shoes stayed where they were, empty forevermore, foolish, bereft, filled with air getting staler with each passing minute. My life, from that moment onward, was something else, something hard to pin down, the exploits of a being who moved outside of myself, and barefoot. At that moment, my mood was abject. The streets, the world, any room in which I might find myself, had become pure exposed terrain.
    I’ve had that same sense of my own death on returning to cities or neighborhoods from my past, any of the places from which I’d vanished without a trace and which have carried on regardless, the everyday hustle and bustle, bars that change owners, stores that shut down, streets that are widened, neon signs where before there was nothing. It’s no stretch to see yourself as a ghost among neighbors who no longer recognize you, the handful of storekeepers who remain behind their counters, affable and grown old as if by magic, the groups of kids who appear out of nowhere, making their way home from school amid a clamor of shouts and snacks wrapped in tinfoil and soccer balls and schoolbooks with homework for the following day, the clusters of women chatting on the sidewalk, and the pitiful cries of the lottery vendors. That pair of shoes lying on the floor brought home the fact that, for all intents and purposes, I had just died for many people. Without the grieving of others, without the slightest ritual, but with the exact same outcome of dark solitude and absence stretching out as far as the eye could see. My thoughts turned to the names of all those I would never again see, save some freak occurrence, all those individuals who, without my ever having been truly close to them, had nevertheless formed the human backdrop against which my days unfolded. Without the spotlight of their gaze on me, everything took on a nightmarish air. What becomes of a life when no one is watching anymore, aside from a nonentity who comes and goes, eats dinner or doesn’t, squirms or laughs? If, when all is said and done, every life is a story, then every story needs a reader. Otherwise, the world around us runs the risk of fading to nothing, leaving behind nothing more than disjointed perceptions, moments like islands, brief snatches. True destitution arises when we exit the stage and the eyes that followed our movements vanish or explode or simply take to the air like tiny balloons fleeing to the skies of other worlds. Certain parallels can be drawn between the newly abandoned and that classmate orphaned in primary school with whom we all wished to share part of our sandwiches during recess, trying to make sure he