Reunion (Reencuentro)

     For Medardo Soria it was a lovely surprise when four of his old friends wanted to meet up with him. Hit hat been a long time since they had fallen out of contact, and he regretted it because they shared many common memories,some good and some worse, but they marked all the same the beginnings of their respective adolescences. He arrived at the Prometeo cafe with his usual punctuality, but they had got there before him. There they were, on a reserved table, and were gesturing to him from it.

     First of all came the hugs and the physical recognition. "Gabriel, you've got fat." "Bah, after you pass fifty a belly is a sign of wisdom and experience." "You on the other hand, Felipe, are more skinny than a cyclist in the Tour de France!" "Did you not know that skinnyness shows good health?" "Mariano, are your grey hairs real or is it a wig?" "More real than the pope's." "Juan Pedro, how have you managed to preserve your pianist's hands?" "I had to pawn my beloved Pleyel." And all of them, almost in unison, asked, "How have you kept yourself so youthful, Medardo Soria?" "Look, I won't bore you with my tales of small, medium and massive maladies, because otherwise a stone sadness would sit here with us and ruin this lovely reunion. What would be better would be for you all to tell me what's happened with all of you since we took our separate paths into the wide world."

     "Well, I," began Mariano, "set myself up in a house in the country. It wasn't mine; it was my uncle's. But he died soon after I moved in and left me the land and the sheep. I must confess that the only nice thing about those large estates is the sunsets, when the sun distractedly vanishes and leaves us in the dark with only our pains. The rest is very tedious. I have never been as bored as when I was counting sheep. They must be, second to beggars, the least entertaining animals in the world. In the end I got a dog, Verdugo, who accompanied me for a time with loyalty and almost love. But he too got bored of the sheep and the sunsets. One evening he barked twice in a hoarse voice, and stretched out his paws. When I went out to look at him, the poor Verdigo had acquired the face of a sheep."

     "I went North,” interrupted Felipe. “To Rivera?” “No, to Miami. My incentive was that over there loads of people speak Spanish. Cubans, of course. They are also called worms. They never let me into their group. They all suck up to the Americans and kiss their asses, they rip them off when they can, but they always look down on other Latin Americans, almost look at them with fear that they’ll oust them from their North American shelter. In a way I justified their apprehensions, since the only woman who managed to curb my sexual needs for a while, and who did it willingly and even more ardently than I, was a native of Nashville, who also resented the Cuban invasion. After a few months of having fun, I came to the conclusion that the best thing would be to go back to paying. We parted with no ill-feelings, and swapped details, but the truth is that neither of us has looked for the other.”

     Gabriel asked to speak and everyone else let him, but he had to sit for a few minutes in silence first. “The thing is that I don’t know where to start. I don’t know if you remember that I was an orphan. In spite of that, I did pretty well. I studied architecture and nearly finished it. I was three classes away. I took the tests twice and failed both times. Without dwelling on it for too long I abandoned that ship and started life as a terrestrial wreckage instead. I bought a taxi, and then another, and then another. Taxis have been the sole reason of my bloody life. I should add that I’ve been married three times, once for each taxi. Each one differed from the other. The first was blonde; the second, dark; the third was very black. Although it may seem a lie, the darkest one was the best, but by bad luck it died during orgasm. That is to say that I was widowed by famished excesses. It occurred to me to write an autobiography, but after seventy-three pages I realized that that monstrosity wasn't going to interest anyone. Not even me. It was then that I sold my last taxi and rented an apartment that was tiny, but it had a window from which I could speak to the moon. When there was no cloud, of course, and I came to the conclusion that the moon was my forth and final love.”

     Finally it was Juan Pedro the pianist’s turn.  “I lived with music, for music and through music. More than once I was a soloist in some piano and orchestra concert. Well, we’ll say piano and small orchestra. But when Rock and other unrefined genres started to invade the radio, the venues, the televisions and the discos, I had no choice but to sign on the dole. For a while I survived thanks to the sale of my piano, which, as it was a Pleyel, allowed me to get by for one year, five months and nine days. And then? Well, I managed to get my hands on a fairly decent cart and devoted myself to picking up rubbish in the more wealthy districts. It’s another sort of music, but there we go.”

     From this height, Medardo Soria seemed to see that the four old and dear friends were looking at him in exactly the same way. The eight eyes were soon enough black, harsh and distant.

     Mariano spoke on behalf of the four of them, “Medardo, the time has come for you to see things for what they really are. We four have been dead for a long time. The ‘Beyond’ is repetitive, soporific and boring. For that reason we decided to come to see you to tell you our stories. Please, don’t look so dim-witted. We are not ghosts; we are dead.”

     Medardo could not handle his surprise. He felt himself lose consciousness and begin to fall. And he fell. The next thing he saw was the four defunct friends receiving him with open arms.