He arrived in this corner of Chile and adapted quickly. Adapting had always been his strength.
He became part of it. He was accepted by the people of the town.
He still retained something of that spirit of those who arrive—often by chance—at an end of the world: a shadow of adventure, a distance.
That aura of his attracted some—mostly men—who, seeing in him an uncommon figure, a mixed soul, someone who had learned as much from silence as from books, who knew how to bring together the dust of an oriental bazaar and the delicate murmur of a Tibetan monastery, finding kinships where others saw only differences…
A man always attentive, who knew how to listen—or at least seemed to.
To him—or to the idea they had of him—they told their lives: their sorrows, hopes and disappointments, their failures and brief victories.
They ended up confessing—confessing! truly confessing.
At times he felt they spoke to him as to a priest; or at least as to a psychologist, perhaps even a psychiatrist.
They said they had come to these places fleeing, escaping, hiding.
In all of them—and in some of the women—it was easy to recognise that familiar air: one he had observed at different ends of the world.
Self-centred characters, boastful, a little arrogant, eager to stand out in the way they were and the way they grasped life.
Those walkers of the world’s edge came to his Literary Café to talk with him.
Surrounded by books and memories of his travels, listening to his eclectic selection of world music, drinking a good coffee—or better still a hot chocolate (the recipe his mother made for him when he was ten)—they talked, and talked…
And before long, they no longer appeared.
They might have moved on to another end of the world.
Very rarely has he seen them again.
Those who do return are the ones who dream of travelling.
They have told him:
To enter here is to enter another universe. It is to travel.
He invites them to do what he likes people to do:
to enjoy the present moment.
In his Literary Café, he offers what he has always wished to find when he sits on a terrace for a coffee.
Café terraces, books, and cigarettes…
Will those three things be what people remember of him?
Will that be his epitaph?
A terrace—he has that at home.
Books—they are his daily companions.
Cigarettes—no longer.
Something is missing, something so much a part of him that he almost forgets it:
music.
In the morning he wakes and, as soon as his children have left for school, he plays a song that lingered in his mind during the night and that he hummed, remembering only a few words:
“I’m sittin’ on the dock of the bay
Watchin’ the tide roll away…”
— Sittin’ On The Dock of the Bay, by Otis Redding.
With that music, that voice, that rhythm, a cascade of photographic memories comes over him.
The photographs exist, but they are in albums. He does not look for them: he remembers them.
A white terrace on a Greek island: a small table, a small glass of coffee and one of water (to drink a little water with coffee has always seemed to him the most civilised way to enjoy it), and his cigarette.
A square in Rome: the same.
Facing the desert in Australia: the same.
On the top floor of a skyscraper in Shanghai: the same.
On the pier of a fishing village in Chile—“sittin’ on the dock of the bay”—: the same.
His gaze turned towards the distance.
His right leg crossed over the left.
One hand holding the coffee.
The other, the cigarette.
His quiet smile lost in his beard.
A delicious moment.
What more could he have wished for then?
And what does he wish for now?
He lets himself be carried by the music as it follows on.
They say one remembers melodies more than lyrics.
And they create associations, sonic snapshots:
a grey, cold winter evening,
a gathering with friends,
a luminous morning,
a mountain road,
a clear horizon,
a game of chess…
Or this song by Jevetta Steele:
Calling You
“A desert road from Vegas to nowhere…”
And Nowhere is the name of a village in the United States.
He passed through it.
That song awakens his desire to travel, without direction.
Better said: with the sole direction of the next step—
and the next,
and the next…
He has mentioned it to his daughter.
She wants to go with him.
But he does not want to.
That journey will be his return to life.
He smiles.
He imagines himself…
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