hurrengoa
our mother used to call it henry harkaitz cano   I  elhuyar Things used to be alright. I was just your... how should I put it so as you understand... your average hat collector. That was until it came.
The plant was in the kitchen and my mother called it Henry. She called it Henry for no special reason, I mean my mother doesn’t watch films, so she doesn’t know much about cinema iconography or film names. If she’d ever been to the cinema, there’s no way she would have chosen that name. I personally would have preferred it if she had left it out on the balcony, out there beside the gas cylinder: two dangers beside each other, as if the two risks could cancel each other out. Observation and fear are contagious. Let them work it out between themselves, let them form a closed-circuit of fear and leave us alone. But the plant was in the kitchen. It was a colourful and beautiful thing. That is to say, it was beautiful by western standards of beauty. It had absolutely nothing in common with the only other reference I had: the big, blind, ugly, coconut green, meat-eating plants I knew from comics.
Ever since that plant had made its appearance, I’d started to feel the threatening presence of flowers seeping out of everywhere. I’d always thought that the mat in the shower was just plain white, but after the plant turned up, I noticed that there were some softly drawn flowers on it in relief. I thought it was an omen of something. Don’t ask me of what.
There used to be lots of flies in our house. There’s not even a mere mosquito to be found now since that plant turned up. And I mean turned up because I couldn’t imagine for a second that my mother brought it home of her own free will. I think it was the plant that brought her.
The most frightening thing about it was its silence. Its vegetable stomach, or whatever you want to call it, didn’t make a sound when it gulped down mosquitoes. The fact that it was planted in a pot didn’t make me feel any more at ease either. It had just the opposite effect: it unnerved me even more. As with its silence, you could sense a kind of arrogance in its stillness. There it was at the start of the kitchen with its big all-seeing single eye, dominating the whole house in its insulting mafia-style presence. Like any one of the Corleones, it didn’t have to leave its seat to do its work. I tried putting on one of the hats from my collection and staring it in the eye. Not a hope. The post- war survivors of everyday life stood very little chance against it. Henry was like a black hole in space.
He didn’t have to move. The world moved, and sooner or later it would have to pass by him.
I’m strolling along the street and all these women dressed in purple and lilac and attention grabbing reds make me think of Henry. I’d behead the lot of them. I just might do it some day too. I lost all sense and notion of time ages ago and all I want is the Summer to end as quickly as possible and Winter to start.
I can’t carry on like this for much longer. Mother went into the kitchen to make soup weeks ago. She still hasn’t come out. I haven’t gone into the kitchen since. The strangest thing about all of this is that there are no flies, there’s no smell of rotting. Considering the position I find myself in, who would ever have said that all I could think of saying now would be the following: I wouldn’t be so worked up if there was even just a hint of a nasty whiff coming from the kitchen. I’ve even come to hate hats. I can’t get the image of the boa in The Little Prince out of my mind. And all of this because we didn’t leave the plant out on the balcony, beside the gas cylinder.
I’d gladly make some sort of a gesture to my mother, even though she is where she is, just to let my her know that I still think of her. But the worst thing is that I don’t know where to bring the flowers. I don’t even know if, in a case like mine – the kitchen closed, total silence – taking flowers is the best thing to do.
I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it before, but our mother’s name was Deborah. She used to call it Henry.