I should mention, since the subject may not be very clear, that yo soy un pesado, or at least that’s what people tell me. Roughly translated, this means that I am a type of small, tropical fish that lives off one of those so-called beautiful islets west of Galicia, the playground of stunted men. I woke up as this pesado, or small, tropical fish, one morting after an unrelenting dream about an old, fat ex-friend named Hana.
Hanička had lost her corporeal being. I’ll mention once again that she was weighty, so the act of dissolving her body surely did the universe no harm. Was she just a floating entity afterwards? Maybe she became the preta that waits to haunt Christián Newman’s pleasure room for eternity. What happened in the quantum universe of my dream was much more just for Hanička. Obviously, as her name is Hanička, she was a cotilla of enormous proportions. I suppose the enormity paralleled her corporeal proportions. From the moment I met her until the moment I deleted her from Facebook friends, she was the delta of a raging river of gossip. That river was fed by innumerable tributaries. She sat the goddess on a plinth, watching every current scurry around her, and indeed examining every one in detail as it did, rushing to the sea. The overtly salty Mediterranean is surely fed by riachuelos of dense cotilla vomit. I just know it.
In the quantum universe of my dream, as lucid and brief as it was, Hanička’s retribution was to have her personality imprisoned in an espresso machine in a cabaña in the woods. I smile thinking of it! I laugh out loud! My eyes stream tears of joy! Her disembodied voice filled the kitchenette. Her job was to create tasty beverages. In fact, I could use one now. I repeat - her job was to create tasty beverages. But, like all cotillas, her self-assigned role was to enrich her personal database of information about the outside world. Well - outside world. I’m using the term outside world much too broadly. Better to say that her self-assigned role was to enrich her personal database of information about individuals with whom she had relations and their particular networks of interaction with other individuals.
One might imagine that Hanička’s fate was not so desperate as to warrent self-immolation. The cabaña was frequented less and less as weeks, months and years went by. The disembodied mind of Hanička lived on, unsleeping, forever making coffee for the mice and spiders. I was one of the last visitors before the incident. Before the fire. I was there with a companion. Who that companion was, I can say only that it was not a goat, as I would have liked. Therefore, my spirits were not as high as they could have been.
The preta of the espresso machine accosted me time and again as she prepared my morning beverage. I shared my stories, but to her dismay, they were not stories about webs of intrigue between individuals. I had no morbid tales of cheating spouses at hand. I could not speak of ruined professional lives or once brillant poets lying naked and homeless under the bridge at Táborská in Nusle.
Day after day, her anima weakened. I could not feed her restless soul. On my final evening, before I crawled under the covers with the rats and mites, she requested a favour. Were I to unscrew a stained panel on the back of the machine, insects would nest. The buildup over days, weeks, months and perhaps years would short the system. She would be released. As I lay with the critters of the night, I thought about her request. I decided I could rationalize this sort of passive murder and not let in weigh on my soul. Come the morning, I did as she asked.
I heard about the fire months later. It had taken out over twenty hectares.
Where is Hanička now? She is awaiting the pleasure room that Christián will construct. I will have to find a new way to murder her, possibly one less subtle.
