State of Mind

I actually like fog, with its grey hues. That’s not what’s making me feel so bored. True enough, I’m angry and morose, but the fog has nothing to do with that. Cold weather affects people, especially people like me who don’t have warm wool coats. Well, how’s anyone supposed to avoid feeling sad when his head is like a heavy bag stuffed full of scary talk and disconnected ideas?

I gulped down the hot coffee, realizing that it would burn the roof of my mouth and hurt a bit. Better to suffer a little now, I told myself, rather than the rest of the day. My wife used to love me and pretends she still does (although I don’t believe it), but every morning she complains, and then starts nagging and insulting me. She pretends that she loves me, adores me to the point of worship. But it doesn’t matter.

In the past she was a beautiful girl with long hair that reached as far as her knees. We fell in love. I asked her to cut it short, and she did. She used to love me, and her hair as well, but now she slaps me.

“What’s the use of a man with no job?” she says “and with no money?”

She’s absolutely right, of course. But how can I get a job? If she gets me a job, I’ll show her. In fact, if any of you give me a job, I’ll show you, too. I don’t care what kind of job: garbage collector, carpenter, anything—even toilet cleaner. I want to have a job, to use my hands, like this (he waves his hands). I want to get rich so I don’t have to listen to non-stop complaints that only manage to hurt and depress people.

I want a different coat. Mine is all ragged. Well, it doesn’t matter. Actually that’s not true, it does. The cold weather is definitely making me more depressed this morning, the way it has done every morning since November arrived with its freezing cold. I thank God for bringing me into the world in what they say is a country with a temperate climate. I’ve been told that in other countries, people can die of being too cold or too hot. I’ve never heard of that happening in my own country.

At any rate, cold weather can be a killer. If this choking feeling I have gets any worse, it may well kill me. For some time now I haven’t detected much movement in my body, and this condition may well consign it to a hole that’s large enough for me, my coffin, and my shroud. I may be moving, walking, and eating, but I feel as if I’m dead. Those activities don’t have the same meaning for me as they do for other people—even the idea of being sated or having had enough. . . .

That man may have been kind, but he was still shameless. There may seem to be a contradiction in what I’m saying, but in fact there’s none. Absolutely not! He emigrated to a distant land and left me without a job. Everything he’d paid me for my job (or whatever you want to call it) disappeared over years gone by. Potatoes, tomatoes, and bread, they all leave your hands empty. The bread-basket, that’s the real enemy of mankind. Yes, that’s right! You fill it up, then empty it again; fill it once more, and empty it once more. It’s as though you’re trying to sift water or trap it in your fingers as it cascades in a silver stream from above.

He owned a field in the city suburb. Truth to tell, for all those years he’d provided me with vegetables and even clothes, so I didn’t need to buy anything. He used to give me hand-me-downs, which I always managed to exchange for other things. This old coat I’m wearing is one of his donations; by now it’s very ragged. All of which makes it very easy to compute the number of years he’s deprived me of work since he left. When he handed it to me with a cordial tap on the shoulder, we realized that the coat was in fairly good condition. He asked one of his friends to look after me, but that person was crafty. He told me that I was going to work for him, and I told him that was fine, in fact very nice of him. I agreed, but then he hired someone else and totally ignored me without explaining why. I felt humiliated, as though my sense of dignity had been trampled underfoot in broad daylight—like a chicken that’s been run over by a shiny car and left flattened on the road.

“It’s not a problem,” my wife told me. “Just look for another job.”

I told her that I would try. In fact I did try, and I still am. To give her credit, my wife tried as well. Her cousin’s husband belongs to the class a notch above ours, so she asked her cousin to help. She promised to help and still does. While she waits for me to find a job, my wife is dying of anger. It’s as though some mythical fingers were transforming her mood from sorrow to tears and making her say things that sound like lamentations for the dead.

This morning she did it again. You don’t have a job, she told me. Go and look for one. What are we supposed to eat? If things keep on like this, I’m going back to my mother’s place.

She was in tears. I felt like crying too, but then I remembered that I’m a man; and men don’t cry. What they do is think, although actually they are crying inside, crying and crying. . . . It’s by no means the first time she’s told me she’s going back to her mother’s; in fact it may be the thousandth or even more. Perhaps I haven’t taken it seriously enough.

She used to show me her clothes. “Just take a look,” she’d say “They aren’t even worth mending.”

She was right, and I had to agree. She had every reason to cry.

I like fog with its grey hues. It’s just that this morning the cold weather’s bothering me while I’m enjoying the lovely fog.

My coat needs mending, and so do my wife’s clothes. I’ve no job, but I’m heading for the seaport warmth shining in my eyes. I’m reasonably content.