Brick Boxes
We came home late at night, joking and calmly laughing with my girlfriend, when we noticed some policemen in front of my building; I asked the doorman if something had happened.
— A neighbor tried to suicide — he said, — ¿Remember Jaime, the long-haired guy that lives on the 19th floor? he shot himself around three —
Despite the doorman being perfectly clear my head couldn’t process the information. Maybe he noticed my confusion and continued the tale, surely told many times that day — He shot himself in the mouth. The bullet came out here ( he turned his head, showed the trajectory with his finger, marked a point in the left cheekbone and then made a swift shooting gesture with his thumb), he´s better now, in the hospital, his parents had to come from Pamplona…
We talked for around five minutes. He asked if I knew the guy, and I said yes, I think I know the man: early twenties, tall, pale, long black hair, a thin mustache and goatee, an almost achingly timid smile. I saw him walking around the neighborhood so many times; we shared a taste for night walks, when the sounds dim, the lights hit the asphalt with a wet golden glow, the night flowers shower their perfume and the city is yours. 8:00, 10:00 12:00 pm, three or four of the morning… all are perfect hours for a walk. We saw each other many times in the night, but we never said hi, not even shared a nod, yet, he always smiled, that shy, childish smile.
The last time I think I saw him he was talking to one of the doormen of the building some late night. I have seen some other neighbors doing that, not just some polite chatter while passing by, but actually visiting the building’s lobby, the kind of visit you pay to some family member or to a friend you haven’t seen in a long time, an almost intimate kind of meeting, warm and awkward. The other neighbors I have seen doing that are at least 65 years old, but this guy was barely 25, and you could tell he was happy to have someone to talk to.
Every time I saw him I knew that we could have talked, sometimes you just know those things, but I also saw in him some things that kept me from saying hi, a certain kind of fragility, an unrooted idealism that denies reality, a deep sadness, cracking like a glacier just beneath the smile. He reminded me too much of a dear friend who hurt me and disappointed me greatly in the past, (A friend who after months of silence had just called me when I was writing this paragraph).
I always knew my neighbor was alone, too alone.I don´t know if he´s coming back to the building or going to his hometown, If we ever meet again, and I see a scar on his face and shame in his eyes, I don’t know if I could not say hi.
We all live in our little brick boxes, sometimes we share them with others, love, tire, laugh, and fight within them. Sometimes we live in them too alone, and when we are lucky, the bullet goes through our cheek leaving us scared but breathing.
