The Faint-hearted Bolshevik by Lorenzo Silva Read Free Book Online Page A

playing forfeits and Paloma, who had skin like porcelain, was condemned to kiss me and I felt the combination of her soft cheek and her repulsion and afterwards I saw her go away forever. Perhaps when my mother died on my nineteenth birthday and I suddenly turned a hundred years old
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    I look for a parking place and head towards the Retiro. I go through the gate and hurriedly follow a path that leads me to a secluded spot in the park. I sit on a bench and stare at the trees. It is hot, I feel uncomfortable. I dodge the two questions for a while, but in the end I ask myself: What have I done to waste my life like this? How, of all the possible lives I could have lived, have I ended up living a life made up of nothing but shit and tunnels that don’t lead anywhere
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    In general terms, I don’t give a damn about all the things I can’t do or have: that’s the advantage of thinking that everything you see is a piece of shit or is well on the way to becoming it. What is bad is when you see something that obviously isn’t a piece of shit, and at the same time you realize it’s beyond your reach. That is the moment of humiliation, and nobody likes to be humiliated. A poor devil, in other words me, can get through life for a long while by playing the cynic, although he doesn’t stop being a poor devil. Until you are humiliated. Then you have to run and hide where nobody will find you and burst into tears, with snot and all the works. You rediscover in yourself the fragile, disappointed child on which every adult’s personality is built, and at the same time you recover the longing to fulfil your dreams, and the impossibility of doing so. It doesn’t matter how much you run or how tall you are: this feeling shatters you. There are very brave and clever people out there, but it’s too complicated to be a tough guy when you’re sniffling away
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    This afternoon I stayed there under the trees until it got really dark and I began to run the risk that some evil character might come and slash my guts open and take my credit cards (or rather the other way round, because if they slash you open first, they’ll have a helluva time finding out your pin number). Then I got the car and drove slowly under the city lights. Now here I sit, seeking solace from this stupid machine, but the machine only does what I tell it to, and can only reflect my astonishment back at me in fluorescent lines
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    I must explain why I accept my fate, which is the most shameful thing of all. I squeeze my eyelids shut and I see her, moving, smiling, her amazing blue eyes darting here and there. And I think: Is it remotely possible for me to get her? I ought to know that the answer is no, or worse, that even if this did come to pass, it would all turn into dust, into shit, into nothing. I ought to accept that’s how it is and draw the consequences. But if I’m writing, and not lying on the floor of the inner courtyard with my head smashed to bits, it’s because I haven’t accepted it. When I was still able to believe it, this restlessness meant being alive. Now it is something that offends whoever has decreed I must die. May my punishment, when it comes, not be too painful
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    And so, with this confession of guilt and even malice aforethought, I forgot the comfortable, petty stalking of Sonsoles and hastened my doom. To all those who, like me, find the ridiculous lyricism of the last few pages I’ve just written rather odd, all I can say in my defense is that at that time I was suffering a chemically induced melancholia which meant I was unquestionably quite vulnerable. After several years of doubt, I had ended up losing faith in psychiatrists and benzodiazepines. I don’t know if that can justify things, but perhaps it helps to explain it better. In those circumstances, and after having spent a couple of days toying with the gloomy idea of having some fun with Sonsoles, that young girl was too strong a temptation. I admit it’s possible that I’m nothing