Routine

By Felipe de Oliveira

One more day begins. Night badly slept and without dreams. Got up three times to piss. Pissing like an old man these last two weeks. Two or three, not certain. Wake up with face bloated and enormous shadows around the eyes. If I were whiter and shaggier, I'd look like a panda.

Wash my face, piss again and make the bed. Empty the coffee pot and put on water to boil. Return to the room and, while getting ready, think of the little money left in the wallet, enough to buy bread for breakfast. Put on work clothes without tie or jacket, return to the kitchen and pour the hot water into the carafe to heat it. Put more water on to boil, close the carafe and leave for the bakery.

Funny how all these things became a solid routine. Barely notice what I do. Barely notice myself, to be honest. It's as if I were a robot, and these tasks items on an algorithm implanted in my memory. Pure repetition, simple and efficient.

I come back with the bread and set the table. Make the coffee, eat breakfast, grab my things and leave. Ten minutes walk to the subway station, half an hour on a packed train to the other station, ten more minutes walking and, ten floors later, I'm at the office. Good morning, everything's fine, I hear myself saying as I say every work day. It's the same old story every working day. Where is the real utility of the days between Monday and Friday? Work, annoyance, and that vague sensation of life passing as we wither away.

I languish from nine to six, with an hour break for lunch, in a traineeship that pays badly and demands much. By the way, I sincerely believe that traineeships are the modern regime of slavery. What better way within the law of having someone work more for less pay than an employee? Well, its no longer important. Have been in this one year. With time, we grow accustomed and end up arranging our own compensations.

Client collections, late product tests and reports, all this clogging my email inbox and my arteries. The heart comes to beat without rythym. Incompetence has no pardon. To err might be human, but incompetence is an unforgiveable thing. Nor does God forgive it. There go Adam and Eve: incompetence in resisting temptation. At least that is what the Bible says.

I don't believe in the Bible. I consider myself a free thinker. Like a sheep, I've already followed plenty of bullshit ideology and philosophy. Already fucked me plenty. Took punches. Was almost arrested. This all before I was eighteen. Today, I'm almost petit bourgeois. At least I have the caution and alleged impartiality of one.

Answers for the damned emails. Collect from one, threaten another, apologize to a third. My "chief" — a simulacrum bimbo who'd come on to you at a disco only to step aside and leave you in the lurch — spends her work hours watching YouTube. The office administrator barfs up a double entendre every five minutes. I feel like an alien. That's probably why we never made true contact with any: the human being is the major proof that there is no intelligent life here.

The chair is low and the support soft. I have to climb above the keyboard in order to write. Pangs of hunger. The air conditioning freezes me to the bone. It's ten thirty. I still have two working hours ahead, at least, before I can eat lunch. My back aches. I have no remedy. Don't know if I'll eat at the Subway in the shopping center or the self-service two blocks up.

From the open window I hear the sound of tires burning rubber. Someone braking. Something thuds. Somebody screams. And, bang, everybody in the office runs for the windows. I don't need to run, having one beside me. I stand and open the window wide. There below, stretched out on the ground, a body. A thick string of blood oozes with a snail's pace.

It's a man. I see him well. It is a man. He has gray hair. He has fallen on the ground in a strange position, kind of odd. It's a position of… of… all messed up, swear to God. A crowd has formed around the scene. Bystanders. Motivated only by the morbid curiousity of seeing a new piece of meat to swell the statistics. Soon it will become the news of the moment, no one will speak of anything else. Not for the rest of the day. Maybe for those close, fifteen, twenty minutes. Then, all forgotten.

He, the dead man, doesn't wear chic clothes. He wears a short checked flannel shirt, jeans and a pair of rough brown boots I imagine are well-worn. My mind travels. I see him with strong hands, crooked fingers and coarse skin. I imagine a tired appearance, ten or fifteen years beyond his real age. I imagine a thin wedding band, a bit bent, of gold spotted with time, on the left hand.

I imagine a woman, who, like him, also is weary. A woman who, like him, also has rough clothing, rough ways, rough soul. A woman who gave birth to two children, who takes in washing and ironing. I imagine this woman in the house, washing clothes by hand in a concrete tank while the children, a boy and a girl, take care of the house and the cooking before school. A small family, with a limited life. Rough. But, after all, a family.

I like family. I have a big family — father, mother, sister, brother-in-law and cousins, all in the same house. Many problems. But it is good. Is family. For real. It's cozy and noisy as a family ought to be. He, the dead man, didn't have a noisy family. I think not.

– What's going on?

It's Aristeu. He is the only other person in the office who doesn't act retarded — Yes, I have my moments of arrogance, and fuck those who don't. He was out, at the local office for licensed engineers, paying a fee. The office deals with electronic engineering. Reports and opinions.

I like Aristeu. He is kind of rough. Like me. Like that fallen man there. The blood still oozes. A military police vehicle soon arrives.

– I think they ran over him.

– When?

– Just now.

Silence. Another vehicle arrives. It's from the coroner's office. The evil-fated meat wagon, in rough terms. He sighs — Aristeu, not the dead man. We watch the body being collected. There are still people hanging around.

I think of the family. And when they receive the news? And the funeral? And the succession of days after that? Almost feel their pain. Almost. A woman no longer has a husband who warmed her at night beneath the covers. A girl no longer has a father to scold her and love her. A boy no longer has the man on whom he modeled himself and who guided him in lessons.

Man becomes statistic. Man becomes news. A good man dies. It would be comic if not tragic. Besides, it's neither comic nor tragic: it's ironic. Especially when there are so many sons of bitches who could have gotten fucked in his place. Like my boss.

Aristeu sighs.

– What shit.

I sigh.

– So it is.

I sit down again in the low chair with a soft back. It's nine past eleven. My back aches. I have no remedy. Soon I forget about the man. And me.

Translation Luiz Mendes Junior and Jim Chaffee

© Luiz Mendes Junior and Jim Chaffee 2008

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