Death in Venice

This confinement is allowing me, on the one hand, to catch up with my friends and acquaintances; some of them with a relationship that had grown cold or intoxicated over the years.

Thus, I´ve spoken with Edwin that when he separated he undertook a wild search for women at the national level; also with Fran who —before being my friend— found my mobile on the Manta Rota beach and tried hard to find me and tell me which pastelaria in he had left the device; and with Catarina, from here in Portugal, whom I occasionally see when I can attend one of her Santa Rita percursos. Or, why not, with my cousin Ian, who displays a vision of society typical of a bitter right-wing.

I hadn´t realised until now that when one has been confined at home for a couple of weeks, in a robe and slippers, the socks begin to demand their corresponding shoes to go out and they insist on turning around. Stubborn them in that the seams, which are naturally on the top of the garment, become addicted and remain on the bottom, on the sole of the foot. Not less than five or six times I have to take off my slippers and put them on their site.

Another activity that gives me this retreat —bloody virus— is the rereading of some books.

The first time I read this novel, I was just a youth and had just started working at the cement factory; that is, 19 years old. The second time was when, already married and the initial fury of the first years of marital life appeased, I found more time for reading; 33 years old. At that time I had the itch to take it out on what I had not read until then. And today, with my sixty-something years a piggyback, I reread that masterpiece that impressed me so much when I saw Visconti's film.

Ironic coincidence of situations. If in the work of that tormented German writer the characters are surrounded by the cholera plague that is gaining lives and destroying ideals, here and now we are constrained to postpone dreams and to be frightened if we hear that a nurse or a doctor lives in our community.

From the three references to my age that I just gave I can suppose that will show off his glowing Halley hair again before I read Gustav von Aschenbach's last days a fourth time. By then, neither cholera nor Covid-61 will have killed me; it would simply been a long time since I have turned to dust.

295 people have already died in Portugal. In my country there are 4932 dead.

From my Borstal.

LDR