I look over the balcony. The sun goes down and gilds the highest branches of the chestnut trees on the avenue. A bus stops at a traffic light, a father vigorously shakes hands with his two sons, a mature woman, treading the pavement in unbridled stilettos, nonchalantly drags her huge dog, perhaps a collie, towards the park
I see that my neighbor Jaume has gone out to get some fresh air. Cross the avenue with the help of a walker. He does it so little by little, that the bus and the cars that had stopped at the traffic lights, even though they already have the green light, have to wait for him to just get to the other side. He settles under one of the chestnut trees, sits in the tiny little chair built into the walker; and look
Cyclists in tight-fitting jerseys pass like arrows. Black teenagers pass by. They laugh showing very white teeth. Some runners pass by, wearing shorts and bare torsos. Sweaty torsos that the twilight light makes shine with a copper reflection. Some girls pass by on scooters, with flowing hair and miniskirts, amazons of postmodernity.
Jaume was my father’s friend. He always reminds me. He was a mechanic at Renault in Girona, during the first van boom. The father, who had first had a second-hand gray Seat Sis-cents, bought himself a cobalt blue Dauphine. Later, he had an R-8. He was loyal to the Renaults, perhaps out of sympathy for Jaume, who accurately evokes the conversations they held and explains them to me as if they had happened just yesterday.
The father has been dead for 23 years. Jaume retired. He also had to leave the garden he used to lead in the village where he was born. Now he can only take these few steps. He makes an effort, despite the weakness of his bones. He touches the air of the street and observes how the people and the days go by.
Today’s world has changed a lot, but it is still possible to be friends with the mechanic, the pharmacist, the barman, the hairdresser. Many classics have written about friendship. In a cynical way: “The association of interests”, as La Rochefoucauld called it. Or to the idealist of Horace and Cicero: Friendship is “half of one’s soul”. Not enough has been said, however, about these minor and circumstantial relationships that are like the salt of the hours, like the pepper of the days.
