Needless to say, his wife knew nothing of such mysteries casually tied up in Libardino’s life, while he, tired of moving about on the slack cord of doubt and constant uncertainty, was drawn to this girl who sounded so joyful and whom he met thanks to a silly radio show whose strident presenter would bring together a man and a woman on the telephone: Romantic Voice. His affection, however, was too short-lived and stingy for their holy matrimony not to turn into vile hell. Their union, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health – more on the downside than on the up – was a complete disaster, a gumboil filled with pus, all infected, in the midst of his soul, which had weighed so much.
Matilde was harsh and evasive, characteristics that could be seen in her face with its square, geometric features. A prominent nose she had got rid of some time earlier by means of a surgical procedure that cost Libardino more than 600 hours overtime over a period of four years. She wouldn’t stop importuning him: a new nose would bring about a change in her temperament, her taste for bossing about, for unleashing the imperative, was the result of ugliness, the concubirscence – that’s what she said – of her nasal appendage, she promised to stroke him, to make his breakfast, to cook meatballs once a week, the way he liked them, with plenty of ham, a physique that drills holes in self-esteem often leads to defects in the mental health of the one suffering from it, her friends at briscola, over saccharined coffee, didn’t stop making fun of her appearance. With arguments such as these, she managed to persuade Libardino to save up the necessary money so he could send her to Barcelona in the company of her voluminous parents, where a renowned specialist would diminish the hyperbolical size of her exacerbated respiratory organ. These features, the disappeared and disproportionate nose and square face, cubic head, were what really defined Matilde’s outer appearance and, according to Libardino Romero, they exactly reflected his wife’s impudent and mathematical soul. There it was, the soul again. Matilde would never write poems, she would never write novels, not even a couple of lines to express a tiny amount of emotion or beauty: only women who are capable of dreaming can do this. And she didn’t dream. She didn’t know how.
Impudent and mathematical. Impudent because she lacked the necessary modesty that is demanded by generosity, and mathematical, calculating, because it was obvious to Libardino he had coincided with her adolescent desire to come across a simpleton and marry him, entrap him, train him, lacerate him. As a girl, Matilde had wanted to be a tamer. To domesticate, to tame, to soften, verbs she used with unpleasant frequency. Horrible verbs. But she didn’t care, she wanted to be a tamer. All she needed was a puppy to curtail with her hurtful, soulless, concubirscent, cubic, invasive, fatal whip.
Libardino Romero managed to abandon her, to run away, to take to his heels like a bolt of lightning in the midst of a black, stormy sky, to inch his body through the crack of felicity, and for the first time, like a holm oak in the green clearing of April, he felt free. It was a relief to be able to walk without thinking about oily, tinned food, his boss spitting out curses every time something held up the monotonous, vulgar grind of office life, the blows that pulverized his brain and prevented him from sleeping past seven in the morning, when the meat industry located in the basement of his building started business. He could have lived in the attic, but she said no, climbing stairs was not a good thing, with the years cardiac complaints would require less brusque movements and minimum effort, her triglyceride and cholesterol count was already alarming enough, she had both lipids, something like that, a genetic inheritance, she could barely eat, drink or do anything to excess. “1B, Camellia Square, Matilde Sánchez Grande, Libardino Romero,” said a pale white card, as if what mattered was the apartment, the address, the place, not them. Camellia Square, of the Theaceae family. 1B was a far cry from paradise.
He was now a free man. Libardino the Free. Hence he greeted everybody he met, drawing a clear smile across his lips, content, joyful, happy. But he needed to decide on a direction. In life, he thought, it is essential to have a fixed direction: Beethoven wanted to be a musician from the age of three and used a spoon to accompany the words of his mother, a very refined woman who told him stories every night; Quevedo wrote verses on the walls with burnt sticks; Castelao portrayed the faces of his teachers with skill and immeasurable talent, accompanying the caricatures with pristine and convincing, poetic, sentences, and he, Libardino Romero, also needed a direction that would show him the way to adventure. In order to choose one, he decided to take up position at a set of traffic lights, next to a road that went four different ways, by the main square in the city. He would wait for twenty-six vehicles to go past and, without fear, would go in the direction taken by vehicle twenty-seven. There wasn’t much traffic, so he began to grow impatient. He was just lucky Matilde wouldn’t be passing that way: Fidel’s café, where she played her fascinating game of briscola accompanied by a cup of coffee with saccharined milk and several spitting bustards in make-up, great friends, was on the other side of town. Playing games, chatting away, passing comment, murmuring, taming him: her life held no other meaning.
Vehicle number ten was just going by when an image upset his countable delirium: a man sitting on top of a red suitcase, in the middle of the square, like an apparition. It was the first time he’d seen this individual. He stopped for a moment to observe said person, who appeared unkempt, lean, unshaven, whose bones were more obvious than his flesh, dressed in a white shirt and black trousers, oblivious to the cold of early December, out in the open, his hair standing on end and with a look that was harassed by some inner demon.
“Place your coins in my hands, I am the reason you exist, sons of greed and envy, heirs of ignominy, fans of immaterial evil,” he kept saying. Libardino left off counting vehicles and approached the man with the suitcase. “What are you looking at?” “Nothing, I just happened to be passing, I’m an adventurer.” “You’re an adventurer if I want you to be.” “No, I’m an adventurer because I want to be, and nothing you say is going to influence my profession.” “You don’t understand, sir, you don’t understand a thing.” “Explain it to me.” “I am he who dreams everything humans can see, what will happen and what is happening, present and future, things, buildings, earth, sky, poems, feeling, bitterness, solitude, love and death, hail, ivy and goldfinches, without me nothing exists, nothing happens, nothing is.” “Well, you might think about dreaming up a novel whose main character is Libardino Romero – that’s me – adventurer with a dilated past and a Herculean future.” “I will, don’t worry.” “Or heaps of 5,000-peseta notes, that way you wouldn’t have to beg for money.” “I’m not begging for money, kind sir, I am demanding the tax owed to me by humans for allowing them to exist and, as for that other matter, the one about dreaming up legal tender, it strikes me as immoral, such trivial desires don’t deserve to be dreamed.”
An interesting character, that much was sure. Libardino fell silent and congratulated himself: not a bad start to his new life. The man, melodically accompanying his companion’s silence, spoke, “Don’t think it’s a joke, I was sent to earth, when this was just a limy and sandy desert, by the great Mephistopheles, lord of the abyss and all cupolas, unknown by the majority of beings that inhabit the universe, who are unworthily informed by sayings found in books that Mephistopheles is the devil, Mephistopheles is the one who keeps Faust company, Mephistopheles will grant this or that other desire, nonsense, all nonsense, Mephistopheles is my dear father and he sent me to put a bit of order in this galactic chaos, he ordered me to draw the visible and the invisible, to create objects and subjects that will fill this planet.” He paused. Then continued, “My principal function was to dream the appearance of protozoans and microzoans, the coming together of chemistries and elements, the arrival of civilization, I’ve been dreaming for 4,600 years and I begin to feel a bit tired, I need someone to take my place so the Last Judgement doesn’t happen, so the party can go on, humanity and all its reverses, you look like a dreamer, you could take my place for a while.”
Libardino couldn’t believe the sounds penetrating his wax-filled ears. He had forgotten, in the haste of flight, to pack some sticks with cotton on the tip for the cleaning of the sinuous auricular orifice. It would no doubt be advantageous if his intelligence were capable of making the most of this imponderable question of hygiene: perhaps he could make a candle or save up a kilo of earwax that would help to banish the cold of winter nights that could be felt, grey, on the horizon. He stuck his little finger in his ear and then, with a cloth, gently wiped off the brown matter. He picked up a cigarette box lying on the ground and quickly put the wax he’d taken out of his ear on it. He then stuck the cigarette box in the bag with his underwear. He thought with satisfaction, You never know what the future holds, ergo all inventions and devices are insufficient if the forces that control our destinies conspire against us, I must pay attention to everything around me, paper that will serve to light a fire, clothes abandoned in rubbish containers, food, plastic to keep off the rain and broomsticks that will help to lessen the distance and harshness of the road, it would be easy to pop back home and take some more money, or to rob a local bank, that way I wouldn’t have any problems, but no, I’m an adventurer and adventurers are meant to be beset by pressing needs.
