Bonsai

by Alejandro Zambra

In the end she dies and he remains alone, although in truth he was alone some years before her death, Emilia’s death. Let’s say that she is called or was called Emilia and that he is called, was called, and continues to be called Julio. Julio and Emilia. In the end Emilia dies and Julio does not die. The rest is literature:

Julio knew he was doomed to seriousness, and he attempted, stubbornly, to change his serious fate, to pass the time waiting stoically for that horrible and inevitable day when seriousness would arrive and settle into his life forever.

Emilia did not keep having birthdays after thirty, and not because she at that point decided to conceal her age, but rather because a few days after turning thirty Emilia died, and so she no longer turned older because she began to be dead.

The relationship between Emilia and Julio was riddled with truths, with intimate revelations that rapidly established a complicity that they wanted to understand as definitive. This, then, is a light story that turns heavy. This is the story of two students who are enthusiasts of truth, of scattering sentences that seem true, of smoking eternal cigarettes, and of closing themselves into the intense complacency of those who think they are better, purer than others, than that immense and contemptible group known as the others.

Knowledge of a thing cannot impede it; but at least we have the things we discover, if not in our hands, at least in thought, and there they are at our disposal, which inspires us to the illusory hope of enjoying a kind of dominion over them.

It’s difficult to talk to Gazmuri, Julio thinks. Difficult yet pleasant. Immediately Gazmuri begins to talk entirely by himself. He talks about diverse political and literary conspiracies, and emphasizes, in particular, one idea: one must protect oneself from the cosmetologists of death. I am sure that you would like to put makeup on me. Young people like you approach old people because they like that we are old. Being young is a disadvantage, not a virtue. You should know that. When I was young I felt at a disadvantage, and now as well. Being old is also a disadvantage. Because the old are weak and we not only need the flattery of the young, we need, deep down, their blood. An old man needs a lot of blood, whether he writes novels or not. And you have a lot of blood. Perhaps the only thing you’ve got to spare, now that I’m getting a good look at you, is blood.

María goes to Madrid because she has to go, but above all because she doesn’t have reasons to stay. All your chicks go off to Madrid, would have been the joke from Julio’s uninteresting friends, but Julio has no uninteresting friends, he has always protected himself from uninteresting friendships.