sábado, 11 de febrero de 2012

15 / (THIS ISN'T) CHARLES DICKENS

(THIS IS NOT) DAVID COPERFIELD


Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show. To begin my life with the beginning of my life, I record that I was born (as I have been informed and believe) on a Friday, at twelve o'clock at night. It was remarked that the clock began to strike, and I began to cry, simultaneously. In consideration of the day and hour of my birth, it was declared by the nurse, and by some sage women in the neighbourhood who had taken a lively interest in me several months before there was any possibility of our becoming personally acquainted, first, that I was destined to be unlucky in life; and secondly, that I was privileged to see ghosts and spirits; both these gifts inevitably attaching, as they believed, to all unlucky infants of either gender, born towards the small hours on a Friday night.

According to these fateful expectations and as an appropriate portrayal, my general anatomy was developing, throughout the years of my childhood, a mystical gloomy air, fairly emphasized by the deep look of my dark eyes. When I was old enough to become conscious of my appearance, little could be done. My back had already grown a bit arched and my chest sunken; my head tend to be bowed and my hands hidden in the trousers-pockets; and all of myself was held up by long thin legs which insisted on creeping most of the time to my mother’s opinion, as she often expressed in her blunt manners: “damn boy!, do you want to kill me in a fright?”

Had those old hags failed in one of their ominous predictions, I would have consider myself lucky. However, the truth is that I have been carrying the weight of the questionable ability to get on well with ghosts, goblins, phantoms and other spectral creatures through my entire life. Being surrounded by this unusual company, you, kind reader, could easily imagine that my everyday matters get worse and worse. Never can I enjoy a single moment of tranquility and relax. Never can I follow the course of a simple conversation without some disgusting ectoplasm interrupting me.

A few years ago, I decided to turn the necessity into virtue founding a business on spiritual contacts. I prepared a welcoming office to receive my clients who were eager to ask or be answered by their loved deceased. But contacting with the right ghost and making him or her to behave properly was almost impossible, due to the typical essence of spirits. Obviously, they don’t care about human wishes, questions or anguishes.  When I invoked one of them, usually, a crowd of bored floating souls came to the meeting with their animated talk, silly requirements or sour discussions. Sometimes, the correct one answered my call, but most of the times, he or she had forgotten my client, or the things which my client was worried about. Often, a joker ghost, just to enjoy himself for a while, pretended to be the one I was waiting for, confounding me till desperation.  

Those awful spectral games finished with my business and my nerves. At last, my rare, and I have to confess, sometimes violent behavior during my spiritualism séances, caused my forced confinement in this mental hospital where I have been living until now. If living could mean this kind of existence. Here, time passes slowly in the company of mad men, who pretend to be Mozart, and the ghost of Mozart, who has forgotten who is who.

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