drain

I am soaked. I dig into the drain with a stick; a mix of human hair, soot and who knows what else comes out at the end of the stick. It is not enough: the rain runs freely on the floor and down the steps, now shiny in terracotta red and reflections from the blue-grey sky from where the rain comes down like a biblical punishment. My granddad is getting a bit impatient, he'll have to unblock the drain himself, this boy doesn't know how to do this, huy no no, the drain downstairs is beginning not to cope and his rooms will flood.

Often I would have the feeling -not even the fear, it wasn't anything as strong as that, just the contemplation of the fact- that the rain would one day bring our crumbling old house down. One day, one of those enormous aguaceros would come down from the sky and wash us away down Avenida El Cristo.

Did I really not shower, not even dry myself and change after those deluges? I would just go back in my room, dripping, and carry on reading. Or drawing long comic strips on the margins of books, of magazines, of any paper that was at hand, in which the super heroes lived and they were my friends. I never was one of them, I knew as much, but they helped me in my small big adventures of thirteen years of age. They would help me put the world right. They would help me impress Her, she the princess of the class, the most beautiful woman in the world, who I loved but who would never, ever love me back. She would see me for who I really was underneath the clumsy teenager, the acne, the shyness, the never knowing the right thing to say or do. She would love me and the world would be right.

Outside, the drain was already not coping again, water was running above it and cascading down the stairs one more time. "Muchacho, vea que se tapó otra vez, destape eso pues, oyó?" the voice of my abuelo would wake me up from my reverie. Had to go out in the wet again, with the little stick and the little hand pump to try and unblock the drain. In the distance, a clap of thunder was slowly rolling across the sky, from 23 de Enero to Blandín.....

[ Edit ] Alas, it was normally my sister who would manage to unblock the drain -she was so much better at those things than I was. I lived in a different world, perhaps I still do and never felt quite at home on how this one worked.