Varamo Read Online Free

places. Strange creaking noises leading up to thuds so
familiar they bypassed his consciousness, and far beneath them all, the whisper
of his own breathing. Something loose, rattling in its tin case. At that hour of
the day, the light indoors consumed itself. Th at
made a noise as well. Th e silence created little
“befores” and “afters” in the sequences of light. Noise itself made a noise of
its own: subtle, doubled over. It is possible to have a nightmare without
actually having a nightmare, as Varamo had discovered that afternoon, thanks to
the counterfeit bills. You only need to find yourself in a certain
situation.
    When the impact of the watch made the doors swing open,
stacks of boxes that had been pressing against them, crammed into the top
shelves of the wardrobe, began to fall out onto the floor. Th e brightly painted boxes traced garish arcs in
the air, punctuated by the dull thumps they made as they hit the floor one after
another, the stacks above tottering more precariously with every successive
collapse. Th e boxes contained instant food:
mashed potato flakes, dried shark fins, blocks of powdered meat, vegetables,
dried pasta, even fruit-juice pills. Th e
contents were indicated by crude caricatures on the cardboard packets, which
flashed past in a rapid cascade, like a flip book, before the astonished eyes of
the reclining man reflected in the background. He had bought the boxes a while
back, as an investment. It had seemed the safest placement for his savings.
Panama was one of the first countries to manufacture and package ready-cooked
food because of the large numbers of single men who had come to work on the
canal. Although the products were of excellent quality, the companies that made
them went bankrupt overnight because they launched their new lines too late:
they had to wait until the requisite technology had matured, and by that time,
one way and another, women had arrived, and the workers had wives to cook fresh
food for them. In the subsequent liquidation, Varamo bought up as much as he
could and stored it. Luckily, the use-by dates printed on the boxes were a long
way off.
    Th e Great Wall of History
reflected every little eccentricity in the life of an individual. Th e point of reflection was always the same; it
constituted the personality or the destiny of the subject in question, and since
the point was single and unique, despite the wealth of intersecting and
superimposed perspectives, life itself, in the end, was strictly
one-dimensional. So it was in Varamo’s case. Why had he never married? If the
question was asked the other way round, it answered itself: Why was he a
bachelor? Because he hadn’t married. For this too there was a historical
explanation: the proportion of virgins in Panama had fallen abruptly with the
influx of men, and by the time the virgins reappeared, they were already married
with children. Demographic imbalances, whether caused by immigration, as in this
case, or by other factors, always end up affecting private life. Not just
because of sheer numbers, but also because of the social tone they set, which
lingers on even after the numbers have reached a new balance. All through
Varamo’s life this process had been under way, and he had not known any other
situation. He couldn’t even imagine a different set of conditions, as one cannot
imagine living in a world whose space-time manifold comprises an extra
dimension. And yet it’s not so difficult. Bachelors contaminate the world,
creating a perspective of their own, and their particular solutions generate
other realities, which may last only a day, but leave their traces all the
same.
    Our hero had a hobby. It was his means of escape from what
was, on the whole, a melancholic and unsatisfying existence. So when he finally
decided that there was no point trying to take a siesta, he got up and went to
his work table in the corner to see if he could find some distraction. He had
nothing to do, after all. Th e