When he woke up, he hadn’t been able to solve the task. I had fallen asleep in anguish and hope that deep sleep would reveal the shape of the script to me. But I woke up empty and confused like all previous days.
Two weeks ago he had agreed to write a story for television containing “a few saturnine ducks”. When I accepted, I was happy. I thanked God for a new job. I trusted my memory, my childhood, my creativity. He even trusted the saturnine duck. Two weeks later, he wanted to disappear from the planet. Nothing came to mind.
Why haven’t there been more shows about talking animals, or at least with animals as protagonists? I didn’t have the answer, let alone the alternative. My pen was supposed to fix that absence. Not only was it not fixed, but there was a discrepancy instead of a wonder: failing to get any animal to speak, I was speechless.
Absolutely bewildered, lost of desire and sense in general, a friend suggested we spend a few days at his house in the countryside, while he traveled with his new girlfriend to the Caribbean. I pictured myself as Jack Nicholson in The Shining, but with no one to kill, so maybe it was a change of scenery.
He had never applied the expression, but at the moment he didn’t understand anything else either. I let myself be carried away by a remis in that comfortable house – in the center of a pretty private neighborhood – empty and intelligent. Much smarter than me. Maybe the house could write Saturnino’s new duck.
A septuagenarian neighbor, much nicer than me, recognized me and invited me to play golf. I thanked him, but I declined his offer.
-But I’ve come to play – he insisted, apparently my friend had imposed it on my pitiful situation-. You will relax, you will rest, it is like meditating.
“I don’t need to relax,” I replied. Neither meditate nor be happy. I just have to get an idea.
“That’s why, that’s why,” argued gently my neighbor, whose voice, by a startling coincidence, shared tones with that of Saturninus’ unforgettable duck.
“No, I won’t play golf,” I planted.
A sketch-like exchange ensued between Pepe Biondi and his real-life son-in-law, in which one proposes and the other denies, ad infinitum.
“We’ll go to dinner with the boys later,” the neighbor ignored. and they give the movie The glow in the House.
– WhatThe glow? by Nicholson? I reacted embarrassed, without even clarifying what the “House” was.
“I accept”, I gave up.
The golf course was an endless plain. We were not accompanied by a caddy or any other human being. The neighbor urged me to take a stick and practice a stroke. Apparently, he had to insert the ball into a hole. It was supposed to be a sport. I was afraid that at any moment someone else’s ball would fly through the air and hit my temple.
He hasn’t seen another player within a hundred kilometers, but the incidents occurred before man appeared on Earth. Finally, after countless explanations, I took the stick and tried my shot. I put all my effort, my little strength, my inanity. The ball soared into the air and was lost in an unknown spot on the well-trimmed, even endless pasture.
I addressed my teacher, whom I could now regard as my lord Miyagui, with a joy worthy of a greater undertaking. With great pain, indeed terrified, I found him slumped on the ground. A trickle of blood flowed from his right temple. One shot? No, swinging the stick back, for reasons I don’t know, had dealt a fatal blow. Daniel san had killed Mr. Miyagui.
I decided to go to the House and turn myself in, or confess, or explain. None of the verbs satisfied me. I also wondered if I should have carried the guilty stick with me.
I’d say I’d refused countless times to play golf; there were no witnesses, it was true: but maybe there was a security camera, or a drone.
Do I have to know how to play golf? I was faced with a presumed accuser, perhaps the Almighty himself. Do I need to know how to play golf? Probably the function of The glowAnd they will hate me for it too.
After the explanations of the case, and although my judicial situation was convoluted, I attended the funeral of my neighbor, in the House, with an open drawer. I approached what I thought was her daughter, with her husband – the deceased’s son-in-law – who I didn’t perceive as particularly dismayed.
My friend, rushed back from the Caribbean, with his new girlfriend, He clarified that the woman was not the daughter but the widow; and her partner, a new boyfriend. They would not press charges, she added. I did not know the meaning of the expression, but at the time it was supposed to be favorable to me.
Suddenly I conceived the idea of a hen, surrounded by chicks, each with their respective contemporary conflict, and the hen itself seeking a form of parodic emancipation. This could be the renovating effect of the saturnine duck on today’s television.
I promptly called the producer, in the interregnum between the house and the golf course, and narrated the plot. He loved it and gave me free rein. Obviously, never made it to the screen. But I spent the next fortnight writing with conviction. On the 16th, just before leaving the country, they finally screened The glow.
Source: Clarin
