Adios -English Version-

Adios –English Version-
“Knowing when to say goodbye is learning how to grow”
                                                                    Gustavo Cerati

And one day, when it could be less expected, when the daylight seemed to infiltrate through the pores of his once impermeable skin and 'in a little while' no longer played in his iPod, no more; then without preamble, without warning, with no mercy, without having asked for anyone else’s consent, as a boomerang that returns to its starting point powered by the inertia that pulled it away, she, who prided herself on being who she was, by her own initiative and not thinking about anyone else, just returned. She did it with the cross marked on her back and her front as high as ever, showing no remorse, pledging no apologies, believing not that something could have been wrong. Simply returning; with all her simplicity; with all her complexity. Simply returning, once again. When he descended from the elevator, which seemed to take more than ever before to cover the 29 floors, he could not avoid seeing her. Immaculate, unchanged, as if it was yesterday, as she looked today, as never before.

He dragged his feet with anxiety but sparingly in a fast forward slow run towards an unreachable end. And he stopped far. But perhaps too close. There was she, in front of him, motionless, almost inert, seemingly mute, but penetrating with her eyes through him to the center of his brain, like the time when they first met, submerging into to the marrow of the most hidden insecurities, her insecurities, which in a somehow frightening telepathic manner, were always reflected in his memory. Hawking, she said: <<it’s been a long time>>. Him, not knowing what to answer, unable to discern whether it was because he could not actually see her or listen to her, as his heart dictated, with both arms closing in on her back, posing each hand on the opposite corresponding shoulder blades covered by the red thin linen jacket, with rage, full of anxiety, overflowed with satisfaction and hate, brimming with insecurity and torment, without more, gave her a hug. He wanted to spit a word but the water missing from his dry mouth did not allow him to unstick his lips. He wanted but could not either cry. The lack of water in the drought of his eyelids did not allow him to open his eyes. He suddenly felt as if a truck oppressed his chest, as if the center of the universe, with all its forces of attraction and repellency, was placed in the gap between his nipples. He did not know where to go. His mind travelled through roads never before travelled. He walked streets he had never named, virgin road trails without paving. He thought he could go crazy in the mere blink of an eye. If a particle moved in a non-coordinated manner, if a neighbor opened the door, if the elevator bell announced that someone else had returned, the entire balance of a totally unbalanced moment could explode.

Time slowed. The atmosphere turned heavy and with foresight he could see everything in the shape of zeros and ones. He smiled. And letting his hands off the back of her shoulder blades, he placed them on the shoulders standing still before him. He thought, for an ephemeral second, he would ask her to stay. But he did not. He stared at her features, with the expression of someone who makes an effort to record every single particle floating in the air, as someone who knows that the end of the end is approaching at a speed that no one else can perceive. He distanced from her with the arms still in her shoulders and, for some reason, thought of elementary school. Again he smiled.

Then, without any preamble, without words, without notice, without anyone’s consent, like a kite which reel is released to let it fly free in, for and where the wind would guide it, he mercilessly turned off the acoustic resonance of 'in a little while', turned around, opened the front door of his house and closing it with caution, once and forever, he left her behind. He did not ever hear anyone knocking on the door, or sighing on his back. He seemed to have lost the ability to turn around. He walked in, bathed, dried himself and while he finished dressing, he began hearing ‘Pasos’. Once he had finished that unprecedented ritual, fearlessly and without the reflection of those insecurities recorded on the B side of his heart, he opened the door and found nobody. It did not come as a surprise to notice that it was his mind that had imagined every detail of her standing on the entrance carpet, wearing the same red linen jacket that she had worn the day that she swore to never return. He stared at the empty space, at the nothingness inserted into the scene, at her absence of presence fulfilling her eternal promise of leaving forever. And without any kind of despair he tapped twice with his right knuckle on his head giving back the wink to his mind. He then thanked the impenetrable maze of his intelligence, which now echoed by the sound of the knuckles hitting its very own case, for helping him to close that last remaining open door, the one that since the day she had left, had, until now, in a systematic absurd way, led him (and not her) to return in memories, to the door of their former house.