Even though we’ve been living on the euro for over twenty years, there are still people dying in pesetas. There is an insoluble mental tension between the times. I was, I am, I will be… The truth is, I was at the funeral of a relative who told me that his children died in pesetas with astonishment.
-Or with retroactive effects, which comes to the same thing – added one of the existing ones.
-A brother of my father -added another relative- died in French. He spent four years of his childhood in Bordeaux and the rest of his long life in Madrid but eventually chose to perish in French, we will never know why.
-How did you know that language does not exist?
-Because he said “goodbye” instead of “goodbye” at the time of expiration.
We spend our lives crossing thresholds one way or another. In bed, before we fall asleep, the mind becomes the crusher of ideas. some resist destruction. Just yesterday I thought there might be a body in the trunk of my car. I’m not in the habit of hiding corpses there (or anywhere else) but The more strongly he rejected the idea, the more strongly he came back., as if bouncing off an insignificant wall. Finally I got dressed and went down to the street to check if everything was alright.
-Where are you coming from? ‘ my wife asked, waking up on her way back to bed.
“To check for bodies in the trunk of the car,” I said.
-AND? he continued.
“As long as there’s nothing, no traces of DNA, we’re perfectly safe,” I finished.
There is nothing more effective than the truth in difficult moments. Anyway, I had a hard time sleeping because of the DNA traces. I was about to get back to the car with a bottle of bleach, but it was too much for me. That’s when I remembered my relative who died in pesetas. How hard it must have been for him to pretend to live in euros!