take this shotgun, come on, I’m going to teach you properly so that nobody will ever hurt you, you see that tin can over there?, yes, go on, fire at it, go on, my love, push a little more I can see him, and I closed my eyes, I didn’t want to see how that bullet shot out on its path to destiny, and pierced the tin we had placed among the branches, my father smiled, I’m very happy, I shouted with my wife’s voice which repeated I’m happy with my stolen voice, just a moment, the doctor instructed one of the nurses, just a moment, I said, looking at my father’s smiling face with his shotgun slung over his shoulder, just a moment, and then I saw it was smoking, that his big shotgun was smoking the same as mine and I saw the beer can with the impeccable hole right in its center and I wasn’t sure, I could barely lift the gun but the bullet had sped straight toward the tin and my father was smiling mischievously and stroking my head, and the nurse stretched the opening on my glans, a perfect, warm hole in the center of the tin can, almost like a navel, my sex stood up and then fell back beneath my navel and I understood that pain was another habit, that in pain a hint of pleasure is also beating as it is split into two halves so that a nameless love can flourish, there, it’s there, and the wound her unpainted nails made at my wrists was a blessing, and night enveloped my wife’s blurred mouth, crying out, come on, and the bed turned to water and we were sinking, I love you so much, so meanly, and as I was passing out I felt how one of the young nurse’s triangular breasts brushed against my leg leaving a furrow of white, nourishing light on my thigh, and my loins gave a start and were recast in another, redder flower, in a flower with the petals pulled off, and that was the last thing I saw because all of a sudden the torrent swept me away, it had been so beautiful, so cruel, to carry him inside me like someone hiding a secret that little by little has to be shared, he’s coming out, he’s coming out, to have him weaving strands along my inner walls, perhaps brush his fingers through the membrane, listen to his submarine complaints, his impatient diving, his kicks against the world, you see, that’s how they treat you, son, said my father on the day of my first fight, always with a few kicks, and my mother said be quiet, let him be, and my father replied what do you know, the boy must know what the world is like, that’s how they will always treat you, but perhaps those kicks in the stomach, I think, were the first steps of a future timid man who would like to learn to dance, to be strong in a different way like that urgent beauty pouring in through the windows, let’s call them slits in the walls of the clinic, move, sir, move, son, you’ll see what a great place this is to dance in, of course there are also shotguns and kicks, you’ll see that later on, but for now give yourself, offer your mouth to the air, feel your mother clasping our wrist to go with us to see fear, that sweet cliff, she has worked so hard, son, while you were spinning yourself, while you made me a man turning and turning between my heart and lungs, now it really is time, take a deep breath, and something also slid out of my sphincter, something like a smooth streamer, I had nothing else in me, I was emptying myself, and so for a while I was still, dead, enormous, with all my entrails and life hanging in the air until yes, my member exploded amid the knots of sheets, more so even than when we opened the canal that night, more than the morning exploding in at the window, or a shotgun claiming to defend itself by firing first, Doctor Riquelme took his hand away, dazzled by the flood of light and the festival of cries and the concert of blood which resounded like an organ throughout the room over to where my wife was telling us, we have abandoned innocence, and a sobbing that did not come from us stirred the sheets, the pain, the membranes, the walls, going through everything only to surge from the channel of my veins to brush against the expectant bulk of my testicles and spill into Doctor Riquelme’s hands, who looks at him and looks at me and understands that this child is the same one I will be, the one I have not yet been, the one I could not be, and that it is my face, identical and different and that I have just given birth to myself, and that is why the woman I loved and who loved me to the depths of a quickening night is crying with me, today or tomorrow, embracing the nurses.
I entered the hospital filled with hatred and wanting to give thanks. How fragile is anger. We could shout, hit, or spit at a stranger. The same person whom, depending on their verdict, depending on whether they tell us what we are desperate to hear, we would suddenly admire, embrace, swear loyalty to. And that love would be a sincere one.
I went in not thinking anything, thinking about not thinking. I knew my mother’s present, my future, depended on the toss of a coin. And that that coin wasn’t in my hands, perhaps it was in nobody’s, not even those of the doctor. I have always thought that the absence of god relieves us of an intolerable burden. Yet more than once, when going in or out of a hospital, I have longed for divine mercy. Multitudinous, full of seats, corridors, hierarchies, and rituals of hope, silent on their upper floors, hospitals are the closest thing to a cathedral we unbelievers can step into.
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