They are breaking my heart right now. I posted this article a couple of minutes ago, at the doors of the operating room. After several years of waking up at dawn with my heart in fibrillation, my cardiologists have decided for me and are burning my pulmonary veins. Apparently, in three hours they will have left my heart nickel-plated, smoking and still. What things!
I will take advantage of this phase between life and death to meet some of the literary characters I have killed without mercy: Emilio, Ottobre, Odisto… And I will hug the air looking for Marina while the narrator puts us in the background Irisby Wim Mertens. I won’t have time to see anyone else except one of my grandparents and Saramago. I will tell her that I want to go to Lisbon to get her profile tattooed on my right side, and that I hope Pilar will accompany me and hold my hand, since I don’t like needles very much, and at this moment, as I feel, a very long one is crossing the nasal septum: the central and poetic wall of the heart.
To be honest I have no intention of dying and it is almost impossible for that to happen today. I’m very dramatic. But since I hope not to have to see myself in another operating room soon, I must take advantage of this tension and express my last wishes, so that, from piercing the walls of my heart so much, the threads free my life. I tear up the will:
- I want them to drape my coffin with the Spanish flag that Sonia Monroy wore as a dress to go to the Oscars ten years ago.
- I want Juan Cruz to write my obituary. I like it too much.
- I want my books to be distributed in the cities of emptied Spain. My t-shirts, give them to Jordi Évole. And the mirror that I use to remove my frown, wrap it in a velvet cloth and give it to Santiago Abascal; Let’s see if, with a bit of luck, he can look in the mirror and recognise, clearly and forcefully, as Ian Gibson always points out, that his features are Arab.
- I would like the funeral to be held in the Almudena Cathedral and for more guests to attend than at the wedding of Aznar’s daughter. But don’t let Aznar’s daughter come. Not even Aznar, please.
- I would like them to build a model of the city of Madrid with fruit with my savings and deliver it to Ayuso twenty days later, when the rot will be such that not a single piece will remain inhabitable by any insect. I deduce what the president’s solution will be: she will hire hungry, bottomless vultures to devour her.
- I wish you to give my accordion to Sílvia Abril.
Finally, the only firm and serious will: if I die, I don’t want to be buried in a cemetery. I want them to do it in any pit in the country, and at midnight, so that no one knows what “break” I’m on.
Since we as a people have failed to ensure that the bodies of our relatives end up with dignity in a cemetery, it is easier to sanctify all the slums in the country. Strip them of dishonor and shame. And fill them with flowers, just like the earth itself has done since the last century. Have you ever wondered why dandelions and gorse grow in the hard, inorganic concrete of roadsides? Nature itself does the work that we don’t want to do. And she honors, and thus shows herself to be more human than us.
Let it be recorded.
Ah! And you don’t need to pray for me. Rosalía already does it for everyone.
I love you.
D.
