Captain Kostka's Monologue
Autor: HUGO GIAZZI SENHORINI | Publicado: 2013-10-19T19:08:00-03:00


I’ve become a
different person since I saw my mother beat up another woman. In my hometown,
life was tough. I was too young to remember where my father was, or maybe I
didn’t really know. In fact I was too young for anything, and this is probably
my oldest memory – I’m not sure if it’s this one or the sunny day I played in
the backyard, running in circles around small, especially green bushes; sunny
days were such rare things back at home. The day I saw my mother beating up
that woman was not a sunny one. I’ve become a different person, but the days…
It was a day just like this, of surprisingly (even for us, cold creatures of
the north) cold weather, with the trees frozen to the last branch and leaf. As
a kid, I was afraid that even the sea would freeze over and turn into one
great, static piece of dark-blue rock, and that the menacing waves would become
gigantic, towering sharp edges of an evil continental-sized crystal. It was
little after twilight. Walking outside, holding hands with my mother, we met
the woman that my mother and grandmother, who was our neighbor, had been
talking about on the morning of that same day.


I’m not exactly
talkative, but back then I talked a lot. I remember, I could talk so much and
so fast that probably a seller of fish in the market in town would envy my
vocal skills. Today, it seems like I’ve lost my breath, and my articulation. I
guess I was annoying, but mother wouldn’t mind. She wouldn’t ask me to stop.
Tough as life was there and then, she would never be tough to me. That day we
were walking together, holding hands, and I was into some sort of childish,
rhetorical monologue. Then we stopped. Actually, mother stopped, interrupting
my speech, and then I stopped. I remember looking at her and completely
absorbing her bad mood, printed on her face. She looked ahead, and I looked
with her to the sea beyond every detail, and then the usual fear of freezing
came to me. I remember telling mother I was afraid, knowing that she was aware
of my fear, many times already declared. She took a while to break her focus
and look down at me, because she was looking at the woman, who was coming
towards us. I remember her usual, and I reckon that it was at that moment that
I absorbed her calm tone, to accompany me through the rest of my life. She said
calmly: no, the sea won’t freeze over.


I’ve been a
different person since the moment mother said that, let go off my hand, took a
few steps ahead and punched the other woman in the face. I had never seen such
violence, and as the woman fell down on the street, and mother over her,
beating and beating, the dull sound of each falling arch of arm came into
harmony with the growing beating of my heart, which eventually seemed about to
break out from my chest. Even though mother never asked me to, I stopped
talking. I watched it quietly. Now I understand, of course, but the interesting
thing is how it composes a memory inside my head, never to fade. Now I know
some parts of the sea do freeze over, but here, deep as it is, it can’t do so.
You see, I’m not exactly communicative, but I’ve been different. I’ve already
had fears, and today I live searching for them. I do not remember this, but
probably that day my mother’s hands got just like mine are used to do now. I do
not remember much else of her. I guess sometimes mothers can be really tough.