A Little Lumpen Novelita Read Online Free PDF

matter. It was all the same to me, though of course I knew that in the kingdom of crime there were many stages and levels and no matter how hard I tried, I would never reach the top.
    I was afraid of becoming a prostitute. I didn’t like the idea of it. But I sensed that it was all a matter of getting used to it. Sometimes while I was working at the salon, I clenched my fists and tried to imagine my future. Thief, assassin, drug dealer, black marketeer, con artist. No, probably not con artist, because con artists always have mentors and who would mine be? And I didn’t like the idea of being a drug dealer either. I don’t like drug addicts. I don’t have anything against them, but dealing with drug addicts all day seemed unbearable (not anymore, now it doesn’t seem so bad, now I think that in a way people who work with drug addicts are saints, and drug addicts are saints too). At moments of great exaltation I saw myself as a thief or an assassin. Deep down I knew it made most sense to be a prostitute.
    Be that as it may, at the time I sensed that I was heading inexorably into the realm of crime and its nearness made me dizzy, intoxicated me, I slept badly, I had dreams in which nothing meant anything, unfettered dreams in which I had the courage to do what I wanted, though the things I did in dreams weren’t exactly the things I would have done in real life, the things that appealed to me in real life.
    Deep down I’ve always been an innocent. I’m an innocent now, and back then, when the nights were as bright as day, I was too. I didn’t realize it, but I was. I looked at myself and I was blinded by the light from the mirror. My soul could find no repose. But I was an innocent, because if I hadn’t been I would have been out of there like a shot and everything would be different now.
    From here on my story gets even fuzzier.

VIII

 
    For a few days I lived on tiptoe, I think. I went back and forth from work to home trying not to call attention to myself, and at night I watched some TV, not much, since I was gradually losing interest in the shows I used to see.
    Sometimes the house was empty when I got home. Then I would eat in the kitchen, sitting on a white stool, staring at the white-tiled wall, counting the tiles from top to bottom, then counting the rows, then losing my place and starting over. I can say without irony that I was bored.
    Sometimes I went into my parents’ old bedroom. It still looked the same, and if by some miracle the ghosts (or zombies) of my parents had come through the door, they wouldn’t have found a thing out of place.
    But a few items provided evidence to the contrary.
    There was a suitcase half-hidden behind a chair, and the frame of a backpack just visible on top of the wardrobe. The suitcase was well made, of leather, and inside it were clean clothes that might have belonged to either the Bolognan or the Libyan. In the backpack were dirty clothes, just a small bundle, because if there was one thing that could be said about my brother’s friends, it was that they had an undeniable predilection for cleaning. I couldn’t find a single personal item among their belongings. Not a letter or an address book or a photocopy of their Social Security papers. I guessed that they always carried their important documents around with them. Or they didn’t have any. Or they didn’t exist.
    Around this time I remember a conversation with one of my friends at work. She was the same age as me, but she had a boyfriend, and one evening before we closed up the salon she started to talk about her future. For a second I thought I was losing my mind. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
    “Are you serious? Are you making this up?”
    She was serious, but when she saw how upset I was she stopped talking and went over to the other end of the room, where she said something to a stylist who was taking a break, sitting in a chair, smoking a cigarette and watching the sunset. There was an expression