Autor:    Julián Silva Puentes

THE NIGHT

Recommendation: Read while listening to the song “Round Midnight” by Miles Davis. 

THE NIGHT

It´s cold tonight and I have to go out to work. It´s very cold, and yet I can´t stop thinking about the heat a few days ago (the hills of Bogotá caught fire). I also think about death, because under the cover of night is when the most terrible things happen.

If I didn´t work tonight I would be at home with the covers up to my neck watching movies. There´s no better place than a warm bed when the world is on fire outside your window.

―The best part of the day is when we go to bed ―I tell Diana every night without fail.

―Night is the only time of day when we don´t owe the world anything ―she answers.

The night is the respite that life gives us to forget about the dangers that await us out there.

The world out there can be so brutal. It´s not every night that I manage to hide away eating pizza and watching movies in bed. Some nights I must listen to the most terrible insults and threats anyone can imagine. I´ve been talking about the same thing for three years, so I won´t say more about it. I will say just one more thing about it: at night, when people get drunk listening to their horrible Antillean music, generally, at least in the sector where I work, they are able to light the world with all of us in it.

While some make the only truly transcendent thing in the world at home with their wife, others look to buy or sell that same thing and go crazy because it was not what they expected once they got it.

That is the night of the perverse souls.

“Strangers in the night” is a song by Frank Sinatra that says: “Strangers in the night. Two lonely people. We were strangers in the night. Up to the moment. When we said our first hello”. If I mention Sinatra with his “Strangers”, it is because I just read Gay Talase´s article “Frank Sinatra has a cold”, published by Squire Magazine in April 1969. The story behind the writing it says that Sinatra refused to talk to any media because of a painful previous experience with television. Talase tried to talk to him several times without getting anything clear. “Frank Sinatra will not speak to any reporters”, Talase told his editor. “Observe him from a distance and write everything you can about him”, the editor responded. Some say it was the opposite, but Talase did it anyway:

“Frank Sinatra, holding a glass of Bourbon in one hand and a cigarette in the other, sitting in a dark corner at the bar between two attractive but blurry blondes, who sit waiting for him to say something. But he says nothing; he´s been silent for much of the afternoon, except now, at his private club in Beverly Hills, he seems even more distant”.

In those days, Frank Sinatra was fifty years old and a star in every sense of the word (cecidit de caelo stella magna). That was Frank Sinatra back then: celebrated, forgotten and once again, almost in the first half of his own century, the star who had done everything from singing to acting, as well as running his own commercial airline.

Squire Magazine in the 60´s. Once you were inside you could write a profile of the most famous man in the world without exchanging a word with him. Before the internet, the digitization of printed media and the hundreds of distractions that make literature a profession in decline.

Being a writer these days is like studying to become a telegrapher. “It is what it is,” Allan Watts would say with that whiskey and cigarette voice that sounds so good in the hundreds of hours he recorded for the fortune of humanity. Hearing such a voice at night before going to work is similar to when I was 20 years old and drank a double brandy before presenting for the Colombian constitutional class at the university. It gives you courage, is what I mean, since you need it so much when you need to find a sliver of light in the darkness of the night.

“Sic luzeast lux” (let the light shine), seems to be what we all long for when what drives us is lost. Or they take it away from you. Or worse: you yourself forgot that you had it in the first place.

“Lawyer, we have two Killed. It will take us two hours to arrive."

That was the police. My operation was supposed to start at 9 pm and now I will have to wait who knows until what time.

It´s hard to stay optimistic when I know I´ll be through the night. At this rate I will arrive home with the first rays of the morning. In any case, I try to be cheerful when I tell Diana that my operation is going to be delayed because of the police, which is difficult for me because I´m not good at encouraging anyone. With Diana it is different. The few times I find her in low spirits, I put together everything I have to show her that life is better than we ever expected. Life, our life, this incredible experience that we share, is the only thing we have to show the world that you can be a dreamer without much pretensions and still achieve what so many others would get themselves killed (and do kill). That your only ambition is to learn things for which no one would pay a cent, for the sole reason of putting one more stone in the cathedral that comprises your inner world, is what gives meaning to your world.

―The world outside our window is in pieces, but our everyday life is beautiful! ―I say to Diana on those rare occasions when the darkness of the night takes over everything it once held sacred.

―I would like us to live here locked up forever ―Diana answers.

“I would like us to live here locked up forever.” It´s not something she say literally. Obviously, we like to go out and have fun. Going to the movies and then eating is the most fun we have. Also traveling, even though we haven´t done much in the last seven years. We prefer to stay locked up in our house, is what she means. The same happens to me. I get to the point of bordering on agoraphobia, especially when I have to face that night of the world that terrifies me so much.

On one occasion, during my life in Melbourne, I had to cover the night work schedule for more than two months. What I took away from all this is that working at night is not as bad as spending the next day sick from sleep. It doesn´t help much when you share the house with two Chinese and a Frenchman. I´m not saying that the Chinese or the French are particularly loud, because if there´s one good thing that can be said about the Chinese, it´s that they are as silent as shadows and avoid any interaction with you. With you who are not Chinese.

At that time, I felt like I was levitating while I was awake and working when I was asleep. A perpetual state of fatigue and ecstasy allowed me to be in the “now” in a painful but so clear way that, if it weren´t for that unbearable drowsiness, I would have taken the opportunity to learn something about myself.

It was not the case. When I finished my shift at 6 am and waited for the tram to go home, I felt great joy and the security of being able to achieve everything I ever set out to do. The sun was shining brighter and the people waiting with me looked radiant and full of life. They seemed friendly and full of good intentions. “I love everyone!”, I said in the solitude of my thoughts as soon as I got on the tram. Then I would sit down and think about all the fun things I would do when I got home: have breakfast, watch a movie, fix a paper. Five minutes later I was nodding off and suffering from a terrible headache.

As soon as I got home I was so tired I could barely eat a bagel with peanut butter and tea. Then I would go to bed so tired that I could barely lose myself in the delicious unconsciousness of the night. But it was not night, and definitely for the Frenchman there were no traces of the night. How I hated that guy! I hated him because, unlike the Chinese, he made noise in everything he proposed. He also screamed on the phone. He turned to music. He put on a movie in the living room: “ha, ha, ha!” he suddenly laughed. 11:00 am! I was like a light bulb. Only two hours passed? I had been asleep for two hours until the Frenchman let the world know that he had to make noise in every miserable aspect of his filthy morning. I not only had anger towards him, but also a lot of sadness. It´s what excess at night does to a person during the day. It makes me irritable, sad and gives me a headache like “I´m going to get an injection”, except that, in Australia, to get an injection you must have, no matter what, a medical order that does so.

So, considering that a headache injection was not an option, nor was going to the hospital (my head hurt, but not as bad as going to the emergency room), I had to do what anyone else in my position would do: call in sick.

Australians have a saying for almost everything they do: “no worries.” “No worries,” my boss told me.

I felt so happy that I couldn´t sleep from excitement. God! How tired I was! My eyes were blood red and my head was pounding. And the French? He was gone. I was alone at home. Totally alone and unable to sleep. What could I do to distract myself from all the ailments that afflicted me? Go to the movies! So that´s what I did. The cinema was in Melbourne Central, a block from my house. “Interstellar”. I watched it from start to finish with seconds of microsleep between scenes. I remember opening my eyes without knowing where I was. “The cinema!”, I told myself scared. It scared me because I didn´t know where I was. A few seconds ago I thought I was lost. Then I was happy because I had the whole day ahead of me and at night I could sleep like a normal person. Which I did. At around 8 pm I closed my eyes and slept like I hadn´t in a week. Eleven straight hours of restful sleep. “Anything is possible!”, I thought. Even the noise that Chinese people make when slurping noodles seemed interesting to me. So much so, that I asked my housemates what they were eating so I could go out to China Bar, my favorite restaurant, and order the same thing. “…” Not a word of response. I could yell at them that the house was on fire and they would look at me with their mouths open without saying a word. “Their silence is 3,000 years old!”, I told myself with the capacity for reflection that comes with a good night´s rest, and I went out to China Bar to fill myself with energy and start a new shift at night. In the night that was made to rest.

…

Last night there was a robbery in a restaurant near my house. It is the seventh in less than a month. Going out to eat at your favorite restaurant on Friday night doesn´t prevent you from being robbed. This is Bogotá now. Taking your wife on your anniversary to the Patio to have a bottle of wine and eat steak pepper is an act of bravery these days. Just as it is to work at night in a sector of the city where two people have just been murdered and you must go to that same sector to close bars and clubs where people are so drunk that they don´t mind telling you in person what they thinks of you and your mother. From your entire family. Even from your wife and your grandmother who left this world more than ten years ago.

If I could look at myself, let´s say, reflected in a mirror that for reasons of life was placed in front of me when I entered a bar, I would lose the little courage I have left after having heard and seen the terrible things that happen under the cover of night.

Have you ever dreamed that it is Saturday and you don´t have to go to work? That same thing just happened to me a moment ago. I decided to close my eyes to arm myself with a little of that courage that I no longer have, and now that I woke up I thought it was Saturday. I´m not entirely wrong. It is Saturday. Yes, we slept late in the morning (I had to work last Friday, too), but I´m not at home drinking gins and tonics with Diana because I have to work until five in the morning and my shift hasn´t started yet.

I get up to splash water on my face to see if the sleep will go away. I have red eyes and a pale complexion. The entity´s jacket is two sizes too big for me. “Papers!”, I must say as I enter the establishments with my shoulders back and the firm step “that handsome men have when walking”. I feel so alone, insignificant and ridiculous, that I start laughing at myself in front of the mirror. The guard knocks on the bathroom door and asks if I´m okay. “I´m in the bathroom,” I reply, as if it´s not obvious. It is not. In the bathroom you´re supposed to be able to do what you need to do without someone asking what you´re doing. The guard does not respond and returns to his post. We are both ashamed. He should stay at his post watching movies on his cell phone, and I should be looking at myself in the bathroom mirror feeling the way I want to feel.

―I was talking on the phone ―I tell the guard as soon as I leave.

I don´t have to give him explanations and he doesn´t need them. But I do it anyway. I don´t want him to think I´m crazy. I doubt he cares. The poor man will have to sit there in the cold until 6 am the next day.

―Are they scary here? ―I ask him to say something, to break the ice.

―What?

―They´re scary here.

―Sometimes ―he answers.

You can tell that he feels tired and wants to continue sleeping. Now I´m more awake because I love scary stories. I would like to have a thermos of coffee to offer him and for him to tell me everything about the horrors that live here.

―Do you want some gum? —I ask him to resume our conversation.

―Thank you ―he replies.

He doesn´t say anything else and I´m left in the company of darkness.

They are always scary in government houses. My grandmother´s house is not a government house, but the service employees claimed that it scared them. My cousins ​​and I would sit and listen to them at night during the holidays. They were talking about the rocking chair in the TV room and the noise a person makes when turning the pages of a newspaper.

―Grandpa! ―we said in chorus.

―We don´t know who it is ―they answered―, but when we go to look, there is no newspaper or rocking chair."

We grew up listening to a hundred stories of that style in the shelter of the night. Even today, after so many years, I remember with emotion the ghost stories from my grandparents´ house and marvel at my cowardice regarding the night. If it weren´t for Diana, I would sleep with the light on. I wouldn´t be able to watch scary movies either. “You don´t have to be afraid except fear itself”, I tell the guard even though he doesn´t seem scared. He also doesn´t tell me any scary stories because he fell asleep. His eyes are closed and his mouth is open. The way we adults see ourselves when we sleep is grotesque. The children, on the other hand, look like the angels they are. It must be pride and vanity that distorts our faces until we become a caricature of ourselves. Like when I walk into a bar and shout “papers!”, with a ridiculous falsetto. “I´m Batman!”, I would like to be able to say in the manner of Christian Bale, because my tone is more of an A major and certainly what I would like is an E major, or at least an F sharp. “It is what it is,” Allan Watts would say. What a great voice that man has! I can listen to it for hours thanks to YouTube. “The art of letting go” is the title of one of his talks, referring to the roles that we take so seriously so that the world knows how strong and intelligent we are.

“The art of letting go” or “wu wei” means swimming with the natural flow of life without resistance. I´m not sure I fully understand it. I like the voice of Allan Watts, and for some unknown reason it calms me down despite being, for a mind like mine, scrambled with so many things at the same time, and yet empty when it comes to acquiring true knowledge, an absolute mystery.

“Ever since that night we´ve been together. Lovers at first sight, in love forever. It turned out so right for strangers in the night” (Strangers in the night).

I can imagine Frank Sinatra singing his “Strangers in the Night” with a glass of bourbon in his hand on a Saturday morning. In the Talase article, Frank drinks a glass of bourbon in the afternoon/evening of a vague day. I like that image though. The self-confidence of someone who has nothing more to prove because he has done everything. Day drinking is just that, plus it´s a lot of fun when you don´t have to work at night. Personally, I don´t like bourbon or whiskey, but anything is better than stopping drinking during the day because you have to face the night with all its demons inside, filled with liquor and bad intentions from the moment you shout: “papers!”, until you thank them for the attention given. “You bastard!”, someone yells at me as soon as I´m about to leave (it happens almost every time). The police pretend not to listen, because apprehending a drunk for such a small thing is cumbersome. “A lot of paperwork,” someone, usually a coexistence manager, tells me when they notice that the police don´t give a damn if they insult a district official. “Of course”, I respond, pretending that I don´t care if they insult me. It is not like this. Each expletive diminishes my confidence to the point where, after three years, I must appear more than I feel, and yet, before beginning each operation, I am filled with emotion at the thought of closing one of those bars where they call me: “you four eyes son of a bitch”. “So you son of a bitch”, I say to myself, full of shame and fear, especially fear, because drunks can be aggressive and evil, and there is no worse combination when you have the devil inside.

When I was a child, I dreamed that I was on an island hiding behind some bushes, and all I could see were the legs of many devils shaped like goat hindquarters. It is one of the first memories I have in terms of dreams, and since then I have kept the image of the devil as a baroque caricature of a man with horns and goat legs playing the violin in the manner of Tartini.

In the sector where I work, no one plays the violin or carries goat hindquarters. People dress like you and me and combine brandy with whiskey. They call you “four eyes son of a bitch”, because the police will most likely close their businesses because you found the incomplete documentation. “Get all these people out of here!”, the police shout as soon as I inform them of my discovery. I hide behind the patrol car because the looks of hate really affect me even though I appear otherwise. I just messed with someone´s livelihood and that is unforgivable. “Someone has to do it,” the police say each time. “Exactly”, I respond, adjusting my glasses.

Adjusting my glasses is something I do when I feel uncomfortable. Some smoke, others drum their fingers against a table. I adjust my glasses and check the time on my wrist even though I don´t wear a wristwatch. I also carry a coffee in my hand to keep my hands busy. It´s not practical when I have to adjust my glasses and have the minutes table in my other hand. I used to splash coffee on my face and/or the scoreboard all the time. Now I put the glass of coffee on the floor to adjust my glasses and look at the time on the imaginary wristwatch. Such a state of evolution speaks very well of my capacity for adaptability. Adaptability regarding everything that is not right and that, however, I do because I am a coward and I would do anything to not be left without a job, even going against my beliefs (cutting off people´s livelihoods is one of the most hateful things that one person can do to another).

What do I believe in? What do you believe in? Whatever it is, it must feel very strange to act according to what you truly believe and feel. Right now, I think and feel like I need a Red Bull. It´s going to be 11 pm and I haven´t even started my shift. The guard has not started working either because with the drowsiness of sleep it is difficult to get anywhere. Perhaps he is not sleeping, but meditating, and knows many things that I do not know. “That all life is a dream”, said Calderón de la Barca, referring to our duty to see beyond apparent things. Perhaps the guard has read Calderón and can tell me if life is indeed an illusion and it would be better for us to know the world from the inside out, before trying to understand what our eyes see, but do not understand.

―Fire! ―the guard shouted at his post very suddenly.

―Which fire? ―I ask him back.

―You just shouted fire! ―tells me.

―I didn´t shout any fire ―I responded.

―Ah.

I remain standing waiting for him to say something else, but he stares at the camera monitor and says to himself “sometimes I smell burning and I hear someone shouting fire”.

―More than twenty prisoners were burned to death in this place ―adds the guard.

―Which prisoners? ― I asked.

―A hundred years ago a prison operated here ―he replied.

It´s hard to tell if his eyes are open or closed. I´m not saying he´s Asian, but he has slanted eyes like one. He has a very Filipino phenotype, as does the vast majority of Latinos.

―What are you looking at? ―he asks me suddenly.

―Nothing ―I reply.

I stared at him because I don´t know if he´s awake or asleep. It´s hard to tell the difference because of the pauses he takes when speaking.

―I thought you had seen a ghost ―I tell him even though I should stop talking to him.

Silence.

―My friend... sir... (I try to remember his name) Have you ever seen a ghost here?

I´m determined to know if ghosts really haunt this old house.

―WHO SCREAMED FIRE?

The guard just shouted “WHO SCREAMED FIRE?”. I certainly haven´t shouted anything. The only thing I wanted to know was if I had seen a ghost while we were talking. Now I don´t suspect it, but I know it and I couldn´t be more scared.

My grandmother used to say “be more afraid of the living than the dead”, which is clearly true, however, on one occasion a lady who was said to be able to notice presences (she never called them ghosts), asked me about how much that presence accompanied me.

―What presence? ―I asked her back.

―The one standing next to you ―she answered.

Not content with giving me a scare that haunts me to this day (night), she assured that perhaps it was due to this, to the presence, that my vision of the world is defeatist, dark... pathetic.

Now, it is true that I see the world worse than it really is. The worst of all is that I feel proud of my well-placed cynicism, as if wearing iron boots to climb a mountain was good for your character...

―Finally what happened to the shadow? ―the guard asked me.

―Which shadow? ―I asked him back, realizing that he was remembering the story of the lady and the shadow out loud. Ah, yes, the shadow. Well, the lady said that I...

―WE BURN, WE BURN! ―the guard shouts.

Not knowing what to do or how to react, I walk away from that crazy man to whom I can´t imagine how anyone could have given him a revolver to protect us from the dangers of the night.

In my office it is dark as night itself because the power went out. Fortunately, there are candles here and the guard has a lighter on his desk. Now, why are there candles in my office? There are them in all the offices because the electricity and water go out all the time. It´s something that happens in the south of this huge city and there is nothing anyone can (want) to do about it. So I take the lighter and light four candles. There is not a single noise in the entire house except for the snoring of the guard. It´s very cold in here and almost total darkness. “At this rate I´m going to finish at first light”, I say to myself. When I talk to myself I imagine I have the voice of Christian Bale´s Batman and I feel better about whatever I´m doing. My circumstances remain the same, but I feel I am stronger.

Nothing exists outside the glow of the candles, except my hands and the desk where I rest my arms. I wish the moon would rise again. A full moon capable of showing us that we are not alone in here. The snoring of the guard and the candles are all I have had for company since I arrived. What time was that? Or better: how long have I been here? With the lamp (the word candle does not have any synonym that exactly means candle) it is difficult to notice the passage of time. I might as well find myself in April 1925, which was the year when Fitzgerald and Hemingway met in a Paris that will never be again, especially now when Squire Magazine´s days are numbered as well as all the print media in the world, and guys like Guy Talase and Hunter S. Thompson couldn´t profile a singer they´ve never spoken to, or write a Kentucky Derby article that has nothing to do with horses or race results. The same could be said about this writing, which in no way relates to Frank Sinatra´s “Strangers in the Night” except for the “in the night,” and perhaps, in a small part, if I mentioned Talasi, it is because of the part in the one where Sinatra drinks bourbon while I work when I should be doing something else. But that´s what the night is like when you´re not resting and you´re not having fun either: depressing, cold and dark, except for the four candles that let me put one letter after the other in my notebook, which serves precisely to kill time in the moments like this, when you feel like you are the only person in a world embraced by fear and… “Hello? Yes, he speaks. How are you, police mayor? Oh, ok. Of course I understand. No problem; I´m canceling right now. You too. Good night”.

It was the police mayor. He just called me to say that people are killing each other more than usual and they won´t be able to guarantee my safety if I go out with them. “Perfect for me!”, I say to myself in my own voice (I don´t need Batman when I´m happy), and I say this to Diana a minute later when I calls her to give her the good news. “Go order the hamburgers”, I tell her, and on the other side of the line she screams with excitement, because tomorrow when dawn breaks and the sunlight defeats the despotism of this night that seems eternal, we will be able to see from our window the green of the trees outside, and the laughter of the children in the park opposite will remind us that it is Sunday and that we will be able to see things without the weight of fatigue, of the sleepless night and of the dangers of the street that loom over you when You find yourself alone in the world to face what you fear most.

―You´re coming yet? ―Diana asks me.

―The taxi just called ―she replied.

―When you arrive, a double hamburger with fries and Coca Cola will be waiting for you.

―Tomorrow, I want us to have breakfast at Archie´s and then go to the movies.

―We can also go downtown to look for second-hand music records.

―What if we go to the BBC on the 7th to have beer and eat nachos?

―We could also stay at home all day, watching movies and eating in bed.

I hang up before leaving because I don´t want to wake up the guard. He looks so peaceful in his little white vaniplax chair that it makes me tuck him in and tell him a scary story with a happy ending: Once upon a time there was a poor devil who had to work on a Saturday night, but thanks to the fact that the city in who lives is drowned in violence, he was able to fly like a bullet to receive the first light of the morning with his wife. Together they had hamburgers and Coca Cola and slept happily, but they didn´t eat partridges because they were full. They also didn´t know what a partridge was.

END