THE BASEMENT

I was a boy playing around the huge house, avoiding the basement where my widowed father forbade me to enter. He would go there at dusk and return with a worried expression, as if he were in charge of making the world go round.

I admired the solemn air and gravity of his every gesture, while imagining fantastic reasons for the noises and creaks coming from the cellar; maybe they would be monsters, ghosts maybe...

One day, as an old man, he said that I should be prepared, as I would soon assume enormous responsibilities. Then he went down to the basement and never came back. Afraid, it took me a while to go after him. Finally, I went downstairs and through the half-open door.

Now that I am a widowed man and have a young son, I have to go down to the basement every evening.

There I take care of and feed the matrices that are in eternal suspension, I unclog and realign each of the hoses that come out of their bodies and lead to the main ducts the vital energy, responsible for driving the immense rotor that makes the Earth spin non-stop.

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