Cockroaches with Chanel

Santa Cruz de Tenerife · Category: Literature · Subcategory: Literary fragments · Year: 2011 · Authors: J. Ramallo

Unclassifiable novel written from the most hidden holes of urban space, its author, J. Ramallo, describes the city where it takes place as: Santa Pus. Although it could have been Santa Cruz, it does not matter. Each cockroach can choose the name it likes best, with which it feels most identified. On my night walks I always find something new, because that is how I want it and how I need it. This Cross is no longer Holy; raped in shifts it is now despised. Beautiful woman with dirty feet. But I do not mind washing those feet, kissing them and reinventing them. (El Perseguidor, Diario de Avisos, 02/05/2012)

In the following fragment we will find the area around the Mercado de África and the cemetery:

«Tall trees low palm trees.

Pedestrian street and cobblestones with marks of fast wheels.

Children playing ball against the wall. Six, seven, eight years old.

A bar and a local with a hoarse voice who speaks, who shouts at a black man with a shaved head: rubbish!

Small motorcycles with big engines.

To the right the shopping centre full of local tourists, urban hikers.

To the left the bars of beautiful people and expensive drinks.

In the centre a ravine, the tram and us: The Parenthesis.

They do not want to pass through here, dirty buildings that greet each other through the windows, a square with empty swings and a closed cemetery. Dead without flowers.

Melted chocolate. Discount cocaine. Small children going around, running and shouting among smoke, sunflower seed shells and cockroaches. Among unemployed fathers and mothers with money. Between viagra sex and premature ejaculation.

I like the Bearded Ones, I talk to them while they drink carton wine dressed in Mercadona, open bread and cut onion and sardines. They live and sleep there, in the square of broken booths, they do not bother. They cross their legs, smoke and sometimes sing and sometimes not. Not now.

The market clock rolls on its tower.

An expensive car stops, lowers the window and a tie moves: two hands shake: class union.

The Parenthesis, a neighbourhood in the centre of Santa Pus , small city. Garbage trucks at all hours and silence at none. A space between the sea of the poor and the mountain of the rich. Between the sky of the bats and the ground of the lizards. A hole of sand and wind, of joy and sadness in equal parts. A desert. An oasis.

Life.»

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