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Lyrics
I had been bodiless for too long. It was time to obtain a body. I stealthily prowled the streets: dark night, dark universe. I was approaching the center of darkness hidden inside me. It was time to stop and to start anew.
I stopped and started anew.
I don't know where he was going, what had brought him out at this hour when the fog of loneliness fills the city, driving all unhomeless home; when the time is not now and never, not after and hardly before. Maybe this was the very reason I chose him: outside on a night like this, could he have been doing anything else other than waiting for me to approach?
I approached.
He didn't hear me. He seemed absorbed in his unfunny thoughts, the thoughts that must have driven him out of the house on a night like this, the Moon's night off, a handful of dispersed light swallowing the setting in a late impressionist attempt. He was walking slowly and steadily, like someone who knows exactly what is happening. I had to follow him.
I followed him.
He didn't hear me, no one does. He just walked, stooped, his back hopeless, his hair shuffled by a non-existent wind. He passed through the park, I behind him, then walked down a lonely street, I behind him, then turned into a smaller one, I behind him. Pathetic doomed symbol of eternal loss. I knew I had to do what I had to do.
I did what I had to do.
Now I knew more about him: more sad information, as an additional burden that came with the body. I walked further in the direction he had been heading in. I knew where to go. His past became my past. His future became my future, up until that time when it would again separate and float freely like a breeze, unable to find its place under the sun. Until then. But then hadn't happened yet: the time was now.
I walked. It felt strange to walk: something I hadn't done for such a long time. And yet, his muscles still remembered how to do it, and so did his brain. It made me wonder just how much of me was me, and how much was him. Maybe he was more than I? Or was I in the center of he, invisible to the outside world as a masterpiece of mimicry?
Finally I approached his house. The lights were on. Apparently, his wife was home. With his memory, I remembered his wife: on the mental screen inside his brain, I could see her images, which generously offered to me hints of acceptable behavior.
The outside door was locked: a discovery that puzzled me only for a second, since his hand was already on its way into the pocket, and before I could even analyze what it was doing, the key was in the keyhole, turning counterclockwise.
"Stop!" I said to myself. "I need to prepare." But his hand had already pushed the door, rendering my caution useless, and suddenly the cloud of light coming from the living room enveloped me, snatched out of the twilight of the street – it was unexpected, and it felt strange to finally see the room, after I had seen the stolen images of it in his memory. His memory was quite sufficient, apart from several little details, and a slight distortion in proportions, as though he had been always wearing glasses.
I made a few more steps forward, into the living room, now prepared to meet his wife and to be him for her. But who could tell whether or not it would work...
She was sitting in a chair, watching television. I remembered about television. He didn't like television as much as she did. A face of another person was on the screen, saying something, something that I failed to discern through his ears used to disregarding this source of information. But my hands – his hands – knew what to do, and so did my mouth (his mouth), and so I approached and used them the way he usually did. His hands on her shoulders, light and tender, as a double greeting, since his mouth said:
"Hi, dear. How was your day?"
"All right," she responded without turning around, her stare glued to the square of the screen. "And yours?"
"Fine," he replied.
There wasn't much more to say: I knew that they never spoke much, not after all those years they had been together. Exchanging a couple of words here and there, now and then, about this and that, the words that were on the tip of his tongue already, the words that were said without my slightest participation. The words of emptiness in the language of gradual death...
He was dead, and yet his brain was alive, completely at my disposal. I was all that was left of him: ironically, I was he and more. And on the other hand, he was me, and in that respect he hadn't died. Every part, every feature of him had remained.
"Why are you still living with me after all these years?" I asked, moving his lips – not without effort, since it was the first time I spoke.
Apparently, the question surprised her: she turned her head for a moment, with a visible effort detaching her eyes from the surface of the screen.
"Why are you asking?" She said.
"No reason...I guess I just felt like asking," he replied.
"Well, why do you live with me?" She asked.
"I don't know..." He responded.
"I love you," she said. "I know you. I feel comfortable with you. I always know what to expect. Everything is always the same. You are the same. Nothing changes."
She turned back to the TV-set, bound by the chains of curiosity to the unsophisticated twists of her favorite mental anesthetic.
I was safe. A long life lay ahead of me. I felt comfortable. I knew what to expect. Everything would stay the same. I would stay the same. Nothing could possibly change.
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