If I had had a mother and father, everything would have been different. But my only family was a maternal grandmother, and a maternal grandmother isn’t adequate for anything. Furthermore, she was missing almost all of her teeth and every time she spoke you thought she was going to spit out her remaining tooth. That probably signaled the beginning of her hatred toward me. She realized how terribly repulsed I was by her exposed and babbling gums. But I couldn’t avoid it, any more than she could avoid her hatred.
Nevertheless, in a town like this, that had never been too welcoming, we represented such an exemplary grandmother/grandson combination that mothers would point us out to their children and their own mothers in an effort to steer them towards a mutual understanding among themselves.
It was truly moving to see us, my grandmother and me, go out in the afternoon, my hand in her hand, smiling and pleasant, stopping in the plaza to greet the shoemaker who was talking about crimes while he mended, and also going into the pharmacy so that the pharmacist could fill my right pocket with honey or peppermint candy. It was moving to hear my grandmother asking me if I wanted to take a ride on the only bus in that area, thereby offering me the pleasure of listening to her tell me, just before the last bend, that she always felt bored and sleepy. And it was moving to hear me say no, that today I didn’t want to, when in reality everyone knew that I was making the sacrifice so that she could save ten cents. Then, she would smile at me understandingly, without her dentures, and invite me to the upper footpath. I didn’t refuse, because it didn’t cost any money and it would have been a ridiculous sacrifice to do so. Besides, the upper footpath was my best source of enjoyment at the time.
The upper footpath was near the mill. I know that it had a bright red brick border and it was about two meters above the dirt road. Whenever there was a very prolonged dry spell lasting for many days, the muddy road would become dusty. On those occasions my grandmother didn’t want to take me because the dust would get into her ears. As for me, the dust would enter into my nostrils, but I would remedy that with a couple of sneezes.
Today I still don’t quite understand the nearly unexplainable attraction I had to that footpath. I remember that there, on the dirt road down below, four or five boys were learning not to have pity on each other and would throw whatever object they had at their immediate disposal at each other, whether it was a piece of debris or a barrel rim. Once, one of the boys threw an object and it hit my grandmother’s bun. After hesitating for a moment, he decided to overtake her, ultimately ending up at her feet after attempting a series of quick, expressive hugs. Me and the rest of the boys down below laughed after seeing this surprise gesture, and afterwards didn’t fight any more for a while.
When something like that happened, my grandmother would punish me for my inappropriate mischief and deny me the footpath for a couple of days. That time the same thing happened. That was when I officially began my meditations. I had had them before then, but only as an enthusiast. I had frequently thought about my role as an orphan and about the advantages and disadvantages that would cause me to perform it. It was clear that I had not chosen this, but I didn’t completely understand it either. Nevertheless, when I decided to meditate seriously I had to select a major subject containing sufficient doubtful material to fill the hours without the footpath.
So, when I finished reflecting on open subjects (the flies, my knee, the speaker), I would sit in front of the henhouse to eat crackers and think about death. That was indeed a subject, too vast for reflection, so intense that it always left me a little pale. I would close my eyes. The day would also close its own eyes and the henhouse would remain quiet. Then, one could begin to meditate. Since the subject was death, before anything it was necessary to conceive it. In order to conceive it, there was nothing better than not thinking about anything. By not thinking about anything, one would become nonexistent, which was death. It was obvious. Like that, at least I believed it. But when I seemed to be reaching the complete void, my complete disappearance, I discovered that, finally, I was thinking about not thinking. And even if my only thought was about nothing, that was the sole reason for everything. Of course, this is only an approximate translation of that kind of infantile dialect after which my feelings would take hold. But in essence, it wasn’t much more than that.
It was after the ninth or tenth meditation that I convinced myself of two very important issues. The first was that death couldn’t be complete and total Nothingness. The second was that the only way of knowing this was by dying. Actually, I thought this was a very good arrangement, because if I were to die and then it turned out that Nothing didn’t exist, it would matter very little to me that I had lost against myself, and I would not, moreover, be in a position to regret it. If, on the contrary, there was Something, not only would I win, but I would know it. And in the end, this was more important to me than all the other arguments. I knew. I was much more curious than cowardly. Therefore, I decided to die in a short period of time.
One night, my grandmother kissed me with her customary drooling and because I behaved myself and didn’t wipe off her kiss with my sleeve, she informed me that the next morning we would go to the upper footpath again. I was determined to die and one walk more or less wasn’t nearly enough to move someone who was going to embark on the longest, or the shortest—it would soon be determined—of all trips. Nevertheless, at that moment it occurred to me that it wouldn’t be a bad idea to enjoy the footpath. After all, it was what I loved the most, even more than a record of Offenbach’s Barcaroles that had belonged to my father, even more than a box of lead, unpainted soldiers, which I would place on parade in the kitchen and whose monotony finally turned me into a antimilitarist.
The next day I woke up early. I didn’t feel melancholy about any of it. One doesn’t cry over or dismiss an experimental death. Before going out, I gave myself the pleasure of reflecting on the subject of The Grandmother.
We left at ten o’clock. I patiently tolerated the visit to the shoemaker and even sucked on one of the usual candies in the pharmacy. So that later, the fine man had reason to say “Just think, the poor boy left the pharmacy sucking on one of my candies.”
The upper footpath was prettier than usual. Because it had rained the night before, the mud was cool and the bricks were striking. Down below, the usual boys were playing their usual war game. A barrel rim cut through the air and although my grandmother’s bun shook, it landed very far away from us.
She let go of my hand without me having to ask her to do so. I took a few preliminary steps. I looked down and I was surprised that I didn’t feel vertigo. After several protracted looks, I chose the rock onto which I thought I would land on my head.
My grandmother was muttering some kind of warning when I pretended to make a false move and threw myself. Thrashing images battered my eyes and I immediately felt a tremendously intense pain.
Naturally, it resulted in a broken leg and a scratch from a brick. But at that moment I thought I was dead; that death was Something, that that Something was horrifying. And that from the very highest footpath to my muddy and painful death my grandmother’s hatred was reaching me in slaps.
(1947)