With each step he takes, it seems that he is going to lose
his balance, and yet when he takes the other, he returns and recovers it.
"How cold he feels, the friend tells me." It was really cold. With
what the money lasted us, we had a few beers. We talk about his profession. He
was a doctor. Doctor of the National University. It ended a few years ago.
Right now he is working at the San Juan de Dios hospital. He's the head of the
psychiatry department. That said. Talk about medicine at all times. That his
father did not want him because he was born on December 24, and because he was
very Catholic, he never accepted that his son was born on the same day as
Jesus. "Waht a silly, he kept
saying." He was - according to him - very dedicated to science from a very
young age, so much so that he made the smallest instruments that man has
imagined. But the great industry stole part of his inventions, and here he is
as an employee in one of the best hospitals that Colombia has. I do not know
what to think. I met him at the Capablanca chess club where he goes every day.
Perhaps it has been one of the few places where students from the early hours
of the morning separate chairs and tables to dedicate ourselves to studying all
day. There are emeralds, detectives, gamblers of all stripes, merchants and
employees of different official organizations, and many other characters. There
are also intellectuals and politicians. he reads and reads. Sometimes you spend
endless hours flipping through a single page. It is slower than the same time.
He think. His writings are from psychiatry. He has them in a bag that he
carries it everywhere he goes. According to him, he owns a house.
-I'm renting you a room, he tells me.
-How value is it, I answer him.
-when you see it we will negotiate.
We were going to see her the moment she remembered some
papers that she had to take to a place she didn't want to say. "See you
tomorrow, he says again."
Here I am still waiting for it.
Before he left he told me a secret. In the hospital, because
it is for the jai (aristocrats, oligarchs and deceitful smugglers; or whatever
they want) they do not allow doctors or students to go without ties. Because he
is very stubborn, he wears a bow tie. He showed it to me. He had it tucked away
in one of the pockets of his jacket, threadbare from the old, discolored from
grime, caked. He's not a believer because of the dad. But if he is found in
heaven, he goes to hell. Swear and swear that he will. Yes sir. To say goodbye,
he searches his pockets and does not find a single weight.
-Brother, loan me for the bus, he says.
Then I see him
walking away with the paper bag in one of his armpits. Go quick. Little hops.
He reaches 10th avenue, and boards a bus that goes to the north of the city.