The Best Thing That Can Happen to a Croissant by Pablo Tusset

Author:Pablo Tusset [Pablo Tusset]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Canongate Books
Published: 2014-01-24T05:00:00+00:00

MICROSCOPIC EYELASH SPECKS

I wish I could say the Holy Virgin herself appeared before me that night, but what I saw was not terrifically Marian, at least not in the Biblical sense. Let’s just say that a Feminine Deity did appear before me, but in a 3.0 version with an individual-use diving helmet and pressurised suit. For all intents and purposes, however, she was the Virgin Mary – one can recognise the archetype even if she isn’t wearing a gossamer gown. She poised her begloved hand on my temples and smiled through the helmet visor. Very young: so young and she was already the Virgin Mary, I thought. Not even twenty years old. I perceived a balsamic, fresh aroma. My breath fell into rhythm with the sound of her breathing apparatus – though it wasn’t Darth Vaderesque at all; it was more like an exquisitely perfumed breeze. The bed stopped moving, the room stopped its senseless oscillation, and everything was suddenly comfortable and calm. It must have been around dawn. After that, I was able to fall into a deep sleep. It was an intense experience, but I don’t want to be too annoying about it because it isn’t very polite to have privileged relationships with divinity.

At seven p.m. I opened my eyes. Plock: that was what the clock hands told me. My first move was to take a quick survey, evaluate the damage. With time and experience I have come to classify my hangovers in various categories: there’s the hammer-hangover, the heavy-duty hangover, the weird-hangover, and then there’s the non-existent-hangover. I cite them all individually, though they generally present themselves in combination form such as the dry-hammer or the strange-existent-heavy-duty hangover. Well, this one was a new strain, a rare and marvellous variant: clearly, the twelve or fourteen hours of sleep seemed to have diffused all the unpleasant aspects of my condition. I could even entertain the thought of digging up a mop and cleaning up the little puddle of alcohol with bits of txangurro, croutons and minced onions on the floor. My Magnificent New Shoes had received some extremely imperious mouthfuls and the sheets were also somewhat affected, so I decided this was a good moment to change the bed linens – something about their jaundiced appearance suggested the need for drastic measures. I actually did all this before wrapping my lips around the mouth of the tap. I prepared a pot of coffee, smoked a pair of joints and, resigned to my newfound obsession with hygiene, I showered and shaved, and when I was finally finished the kitchen clock read nine in the evening. Hunger, serious hunger. The idea that I was using up my reserves, burning the fat that is part of my innermost being, alarmed me slightly and I went running to the refrigerator in search of something that might stop the weight-loss process. I de-plastified a package of vacuum-packed Vienna sausages and ate half of them as fast as I could. As far as everything

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