Literary magazine «Ágora». 2004. Illustration: Víctor Mógica Compaired.
You can already find the best cardboard; Once the effect of the wine is diluted and you feel the ice sticking to your back again, that cardboard that you so eagerly sought stops passing through a comfortable blanket to become the refrigerator door. And you are inside the refrigerator, your defeated body is a lonely hake kept frozen in the dark night.
Although I also tell you one thing, once you survive your first freeze you never die, not even what you want the most. Normal people wonder how we survive on the streets in winter. It is the law of the strongest, the strongest among the weak.
I would never have thought of getting here, I belonged to the good side of this capitalist world. Living on handouts was not one of my plans for the future. I think my situation has to do with the fact that I never knew how to choose the right person. I never chose a good friend; I never chose a good partner; I did not meet with the best partner either; Hell, I didn't even pick a good son.
Now, I know that children are not chosen, they are due to providence. Well, even worse, not even the most infamous of demons would have granted me such an offspring. Perhaps this modern world would rot him. Let's leave it, I don't like to remember or talk about my loathsome family.
Now I'm here right? What a paradox. I could never have imagined it. All this time that I have lived on the street I have thought of hundreds, thousands, millions of things. Imagination becomes your only friend out there. You think about the people you see go by, in their lives. You get into the role of any of them for a few moments and you invent that you are one of those passers-by busy in their daily life. I usually pick one of those young men in suits who talk on their cell phones. I think that is how I play that I am a kid again, I give myself a second chance.
I'm sitting on any street corner and I love to get away. Yes, it is very funny, the imagination develops so much that at times I convince myself that I am like a spirit. I rise from the ground to one of the walkers and for seconds I own their lives, I take over their mind and I forget the misery that surrounds my little world of cardboard, bottles of wine and crusts of bread.
My mind wanders so much that there come times when I get tremendously optimistic. I think that everyone is wrong, that only I possess a crude truth, a tormenting truth in the midst of the general farce. I laugh in the middle of the street, waving the flag of my freedom or my madness. I am the ecce homo from Nietszche, laughing at everyone. They do not realize that they are living in the delusion of capitalism.
But that hilarious invention only lasts a little while. When the truth teaches you its most painful side, you see that your perspective is of little use if you are alone, sunk, prostrate in a street, enduring the hypocritical glances of the warmed souls that walk their cowardly bodies through the big city.
Sorry about the roll, but now it is clear that things change. From today on I will remember my life on the street as a vital experience. I may even tell my testimony in interesting lectures on poverty; I will reveal my odysseys in brainy gatherings. I was "homeless", yes, it sounds good. My new friends will applaud me, I will feel their palms of admiration and understanding on my back
So long ... Ten, fifteen, twenty years and for me everything is the same. The street happens like an endless chain of bitter days, traced ad infinitum. Except the temperature, nothing changes. Indeed, I may be quite a few years older, but for me it has only been days. Similar days of a great city where I have made a home in any of its corners, in all its corners.
Out there all my friends from homelessness are going to stay. Sooty faces, jagged teeth with which I hardly ever exchanged a word. We beggars really only have one thing in common: the shame of the disinherited, and that is not a pleasure to share. Of course, I assure you that I will remember each of your looks for life; Manuel's sad look, Paco's sad look, Carolina's sad look. Each of them has a different shade of sadness that is perfectly differentiable.
Well ... don't think I'm crying for them, rather it will be they who will cry with rage for me. He does not believe?
Manuel, Carolina or Paco could have spent half a euro of their alms to bet on this same winning lottery ticket. Any one of them could be here now, throwing the tag on you while they open a five million euro account at your bank.
And you may wonder: After having gone through what you have been through, don't you think about helping other poor people?
Honestly no. All I've learned on the street is that, in this world, no one does anything for anyone anymore. I will let the miracles continue to be done by God, as it always has been.