Just as there are bodies with headaches, there are houses that hurt in the hallway. People with headaches immediately recognize a hallway pain. I was having dinner at a friend’s house on Monday. I went because we had arranged a lot for him to show me his new home. Even though I woke up with an unbearable migraine that day, I went. Although I tried to hide my physical and mental state, I came to the appointment stunned by the painkillers and with little desire to speak. Despite my host’s insistence, I did not drink wine, because alcohol sometimes reduces the effects of drugs. My friend asked me if I was a teetotaler and I wanted to tell him the truth. Then he went to the bedroom and came back with some “magic” pills he had stolen from his father’s pharmacy.
I asked about its composition, but he chose not to inform me, even though he insisted that it was compatible with wine. I drank a few of them with a glass of excellent red wine, a Gran Reserva from Ribera del Duero, and the pain passed and we were able to talk about how spacious his new apartment was and how well planned it was. It was as if we were rereading the ordinary things that we had talked about and routinely disclosed for thirty years. Again, it calms us in a strange way, as if there is a religious ritual or a therapeutic ceremony in it.
The fact is that after dinner I went to the bathroom and when I entered the long corridor, since it is an old house, I noticed the presence of severe neuralgia. Returning to the living room, I reported to my friend that a great pain was floating in the hallway. He was aware, and the two architects had already seen the solution before they could find it. Days later he called me and said that when they carefully examined the area, they found an old wooden cabinet with a few dirty shirts in it. After the hole was discovered and cleaned, the neuralgia was gone and the house was much better. He said he had to come over for dinner one day to check in, but we haven’t met yet.