prologue
Fioretti di Soror Niente
(Little Flowers of Sister Nothing)
Goodbye, goodbye, be well. She was a golden young girl as tall as an angel, with its very same eyes of implacable love; she pushed her down, a firm hand on her shoulder until she sat deep on the red plastic chair, and walked away, carried by her own conviction, not turning back, not once. But it was as if it were she, the buried one on the red plastic chair, facing a tv set as large as a Navy war frigate, as if it were she the one fading away, waving her handkerchief adventurously from the deck. Who was this blonde apparition? Someone very close to her, she felt that somehow they must be related, of the same blood. When the apparition disappeared, her ponytail still visible through the glass door, she missed her instantly. “And what about Quincas?”, she asked her neighbor, sitting in the waiting room. The woman shrank away, poked in her own pain. She was there to see about her pain. She was there because of her pain, it was her whole world. “You have to take a ticket”, this from the other bench neighbor, a husky voice, on the other side of her. She showed him the piece of paper, number 383. Are you in pain, where is this pain, does it have a name, does your pain have a name, do you have a colored bracelet, what color is your bracelet. “I can´t seem to find my dog”, she says. But not worrying anymore, Quincas would run away sometimes and running away he would stay that way run away. It was his right. She has no pain, nothing hurts anymore. She had had pain in her fifties, in her sixties, in her seventies. In her eighties she had given up suffering. She felt pain as if it were someone else´s, with the same polite indifference. Afterwards, or even during the ache, she would forget all about it. Prolonged countdowns have their own nature, lacking the alarm of acuteness, settling in with the experience of other people´s deaths, tortured, everlasting, medicated, supported, long inevitable agonies, turning into bedtime stories that were told one too many times. They don´t move us anymore. Death has come and gone, the only thing missing now is the actual dying. Her body was something that was just there, machina inter machinas, valves, rusting pipes, dust and excretory activities manifesting themselves every couple of hours. It was a sting. It was a pang. It was a daze. It was a fog. It was a fall. It was a hip. They didn´t go away, all these fragments of universal suffering, they just piled up and settled comfortably. She had known to the minute how everything would pass, she had recognized without actually knowing them all of the morticians´s faces, the hearse´s driver´s grey cap. She had survived funerals, she had taken tea and cream and cake on her way back from cremations. A few were left, then nobody was left.
Name? Theresa. Family name? She does not remember. Age? Fifty four? Seventy two! Eighty seven! No, ninety seven! Her shout rebounds off the walls of the empty waiting room as the announcement of the absolute world record for an existence in apnea. Everybody has relieved themselves of their complaints and has headed home mumbling and grumpy. She is alone in the room, red plastic chairs nailed to the ground and to one another, just in case. Questions coming from one in a white gown, scrawny sloppy little woman. Your place? The final resting one! Sex? Cant´ remember. Sons, daughters? God only knows where they are.
(Little Flowers of Sister Nothing)
Goodbye, goodbye, be well. She was a golden young girl as tall as an angel, with its very same eyes of implacable love; she pushed her down, a firm hand on her shoulder until she sat deep on the red plastic chair, and walked away, carried by her own conviction, not turning back, not once. But it was as if it were she, the buried one on the red plastic chair, facing a tv set as large as a Navy war frigate, as if it were she the one fading away, waving her handkerchief adventurously from the deck. Who was this blonde apparition? Someone very close to her, she felt that somehow they must be related, of the same blood. When the apparition disappeared, her ponytail still visible through the glass door, she missed her instantly. “And what about Quincas?”, she asked her neighbor, sitting in the waiting room. The woman shrank away, poked in her own pain. She was there to see about her pain. She was there because of her pain, it was her whole world. “You have to take a ticket”, this from the other bench neighbor, a husky voice, on the other side of her. She showed him the piece of paper, number 383. Are you in pain, where is this pain, does it have a name, does your pain have a name, do you have a colored bracelet, what color is your bracelet. “I can´t seem to find my dog”, she says. But not worrying anymore, Quincas would run away sometimes and running away he would stay that way run away. It was his right. She has no pain, nothing hurts anymore. She had had pain in her fifties, in her sixties, in her seventies. In her eighties she had given up suffering. She felt pain as if it were someone else´s, with the same polite indifference. Afterwards, or even during the ache, she would forget all about it. Prolonged countdowns have their own nature, lacking the alarm of acuteness, settling in with the experience of other people´s deaths, tortured, everlasting, medicated, supported, long inevitable agonies, turning into bedtime stories that were told one too many times. They don´t move us anymore. Death has come and gone, the only thing missing now is the actual dying. Her body was something that was just there, machina inter machinas, valves, rusting pipes, dust and excretory activities manifesting themselves every couple of hours. It was a sting. It was a pang. It was a daze. It was a fog. It was a fall. It was a hip. They didn´t go away, all these fragments of universal suffering, they just piled up and settled comfortably. She had known to the minute how everything would pass, she had recognized without actually knowing them all of the morticians´s faces, the hearse´s driver´s grey cap. She had survived funerals, she had taken tea and cream and cake on her way back from cremations. A few were left, then nobody was left.
Name? Theresa. Family name? She does not remember. Age? Fifty four? Seventy two! Eighty seven! No, ninety seven! Her shout rebounds off the walls of the empty waiting room as the announcement of the absolute world record for an existence in apnea. Everybody has relieved themselves of their complaints and has headed home mumbling and grumpy. She is alone in the room, red plastic chairs nailed to the ground and to one another, just in case. Questions coming from one in a white gown, scrawny sloppy little woman. Your place? The final resting one! Sex? Cant´ remember. Sons, daughters? God only knows where they are.
