We traveled all night in a bus that took my mother and me far enough away.
Far from D.
Far from Kramp products.
Far from ghosts.
And the list of things that were now distant affected me profoundly. So much so that on two occasions I tried to take my life by holding my breath. I failed and, at nine years of age, understood that the self-preservation instinct really was something else.
I explained this to two of my new classmates with those two words: “something else.” And then I urged them to eliminate themselves; they only had to concentrate and stop breathing.
I didn’t want them to die, I just want to verify that what had faltered in me wasn’t my own determination (which was all that was needed to stop breathing), but that of the entire human race. And I verified it because they, like me, survived.
My mother was called, and she asked my teacher, in front of me, to please forgive me, that I was going through a rough patch because of a family breakdown.
I could have explained to my mother and my new teacher that breakdowns of other kinds could be added to the family one: a spiritual breakdown (when I spoke to him from this new city, the Great Carpenter couldn’t hear me); a financial breakdown (I no longer had quid pro quos or envelopes); a vocational breakdown (I was a traveling salesman assistant, and in this new city there were no traveling salesmen).
Would they have understood?
Not likely, so I didn’t say anything.
I decided to let life run its course and it did so with such ease that the following year I had a new father, was soon to have a sister, and we even bought a dog.
“Flaco,” that’s what we named the dog.