Bad Light

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The two of us had recently moved to Zaragoza, in the space of a few short months, Jacobo first, then me, both newly separated, still bearing the imprint of a wedding band on our fingers, that ring of slightly paler flesh that serves as a sort of badge, announcing one’s newly unveiled, somewhat shameful solitude to the world. I guess we were each on the run in our own way. He, intent on starting afresh after his early retirement, and I perhaps somehow following in his footsteps, not so much out of relief at being able to call on his company from time to time as having been seduced, I believe, by the powerful lure that beginnings have always held for me, the blank page, starting over anew, any situation that can in my mind’s eye conjure up ships burning in distant bays or homes left behind without prior warning, just like that, without turning the key in the lock, leaving on the table the dirty dishes from the evening meal the night before. People, say, who are released from jail or discharged at last from the hospital after a harrowing detox and who, with a handful of belongings, rent out a room in some unknown place, far from everything that happened before, placing their toothbrush in a glass on the sink, tossing a couple of changes of clothing into the drawers, and perhaps also a revolver or a photograph of a woman in a picture frame that can barely stand upright, before opening the window to air out the room and let the show commence. Then they see the neon lights on the building across the street and the hustle and bustle of a hostile neighborhood in which they’ll gradually have to get their bearings.

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