Jesus can be born inside a cup
The men laugh in sync with the ice cubes in their glasses. They stir. They're in luck. A winning number comes up: another one! They laugh again, they drink again. It's that week before Christmas, when Christmas is like the calamitous storm that must inevitably arrive, and everyone prepares, with diving suits and defensive party gear ahead of time. Cheers!
Story. They've downed three short whiskeys. And they're already having conversations like a litany of a notary's will. The glass is long and life is short. The furtive drink had to come. One of them takes out his wallet, revealing a raffle ticket, and it's the one for these next few days. The ice kneels. And they stop laughing.
The three of them begin, in a random alphabetical order, introductions of babbling, childish tremors. The whole thing about going up in front of the whole class to speak. That nyigi-nyogi weakness of a body full of nerves, insecurity, fear, panic.
The first one swallows his words, explaining that it will be like every year for many years. The children don't come, nor does he. And he hasn't even smelled his grandchildren on his plate for a long time. They do playfully tease each other, wishing each other a Merry Christmas, a Happy New Year, and Three Kings Day, and… that's it. Before eating. The bureaucratic phone call. Yes, no, sometimes, maybe, mmm, pfft… Finished. In the end, it was all about filling out a form that doesn't tell the truth.
The second one repeats, stuttering, a cup of solitude. The dead woman. The absent children. And him, his body present at the empty coffin-table. Christmas, the day, the days, must pass as quickly as possible. He speeds them up by (re)watching movies from other eras that force him to see if it's true, if it's real, that he lived another Christmas. Fiction can also be the death certificate of reality.
The third one coughs, sorry. The house will be full, relieved: the children, the grandchildren, the boyfriends, his brother, her distant aunt… He can't even count them. He doesn't even know. He doesn't remember who he's talking to, or who he's saying what to, how, why… All the hours inside a bottle of cava, or two, or three… But it passes and he leaves. We are drunk. The empty glass and the silence of the crystal. Another one?
Life can be decided by a glass. "Boys, guys, guys –he toasts–. I'll pick you up at Christmas. I'll pick you up and come home with all of us." A "I'll pick you up" repeating itself, the ice cubes falling, like an unexpected snowfall. The third one announces that he will act as a taxi driver for the orphanhood of the first and second. Put a man alone at the table. Decided, come. They say nothing. And then there is that epiphanic moment. There is novelty, there is news, a birth. It might be a bar. And Jesus can be born inside a glass.
He goes to Barcelona, city of rubble and star. He goes to the fleeting path of melting ice: "A path! / How short to say! / How long to follow! / What a vulgar and strange sound! / A path!... / How full of sorrow and suffering, / what a promise of calm and gain! / A path! / or to know, he set out to walk… / Paths, enchanting serpents, / that made kind the bundle / of the one who wants to free himself, / from his own solitary sadness, / and wants to seek another smile, / another blood or another cry, / and even another, darker world / in order to live! The miracle, the miracle is always the birth of people.
