Espacios

Jonás was his name and, like everyone or like no one, the whole of him was an enormous cetacean due to all he carried within. Pondering were all of the meaningful figures that wandered inside his stomach. Memories, wounds, recalls, beautiful moments. We can't go on being stuck in here, said all to each other. All of them agreed on this, however none could simply go away. There was a memory of her lost mother that kept clinging there trying to heal his stress-related heartburn. The images of his wedding and his first happy days with his wife smoothed the pain caused by his stomach ulcer. And so on. Jonás himself sometimes talked with his organs and apologized for the work overload or thanked them for their always punctual and efficient duties. His heart seemed particularly praiseworthy to him. Always in a constant struggle with the nervous system. Blood flowing and electricity thundering here and there.

Sometimes, Jonás realized that he -meaning his essence- was not in any of his organs. It was in those moments, as he floated in air without looking back or without allowing any physical sentiment, that he felt truly Jonás. He flew then. Suddenly a whole new series of ethereal appendixes like enormous rows sprouted from within his whale fins and everything turned into simply pure. He forgot nothing, but nor did he remember. His body was at peace: the ulcer, the small clots in his veins, the hereditary inkling from arthritis that would never develop fully just because he was a man, the callus that was turning into stone underneath his left food, the recurrent pain in his ears. The whole of him was a weightless little paper in the shape of a sperm whale.

When Jonás was at one, some of his memories managed to get one-way tickets to oblivion. They raised their tiny little thousand-shaped and varied-smoothed hands as if they were old-fashioned single virgins hopping and jumping to reach for the just-thrown-to-the-air bride's bouquet. They said "me! me!" And in the end some of them went away, leaving empty spaces for the others to fill at will, and others remained there sunk in envies and unevenness. They sent then messages to the brain that said "we're still here!" And the pain started once again. Jonás then went back to his litany of ailments and unprescribed medicine, and peace was then missed, longed for as beauty is needed when it's not there.

Then some day, cancer arrived and all, all of the organs without exception, started to fear a coming invasion. The stomach died and along died the rest of the organs and it was like so that Jonás died. With nothing else to say. Like everyone or like no one. His last thought was in fact a feeling. A moment of communion of his body in which all of the moments, memories, experiences, schemes, feeling and images of his life gathered together just to say " "

Spanish version