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A los dieciocho años el profesor de Cultura Alemana nos dio la Todesfuge. La leí. Mil veces. En voz alta, en voz baja, sin voz. Marcaba el ritmo de cada sílaba haciéndola parecer la más importante del mundo.
Con veintiún años escucuché a Celan leerla. Para entonces yo ya sabía español, inglés, francés, alemán y ruso. Seguí estudiando idiomas. Toda la vida. Con veinticinco años hablaba griego y portugués. Escribía. Publiqué tres libros de poesía y dos novelas. Y seguí estudiando y estudiando. Aprendí hebreo también. Cuando dominaba todos estos idiomas y era un escritor reconocido me compré un billete de avión a París.
Di vueltas por la ciudad hasta que encontré el cementerio en el que está enterrado Celan. Busqué la tumba como un loco toda la mañana.
Al final la encontré. Estuve un rato delante, mirando la tumba, perdida entre el resto de las tumbas del cementerio.
Después de pensármelo dije:
- Te jodes, Celan, ya soy como tú.
Me quedé dos días más en París, dando vueltas por el Sena.
Tomé el avión de vuelta a Berlín. Cuando llegué a casa, me senté en el suelo y me puse a llorar como un niño.
Me levanté y tiré todas mis copias de la Todesfuge por la ventana.

I’m asking myself at this point what the hell I am doing here in this stolen Cadillac at the edge of this abysm with a fifty year old ex hippy high on LSD and dressed up like a chicken. Yeah, I wanted to end up like Thelma and Louise (or something like that, I never saw that movie).
So, maybe I should look back and remember that I decided to kill myself after a terrible year, but I’ve run out of gas and I’m trying to decide whether jump or go walking to the highway for someone to give me a lift home. I don’t know what would be worse at this moment: I’m not so sure I’d die in case I jumped and, on the other hand, these high heels are killing me.
The LSD chicken opens his beaked mouth to squawk he needs to take a leak. ‘Ok’, I say, ‘but be careful with that green monster waiting behind the tree.’ Why the fuck did I say so? He starts weeping and saying that the Friskoliums from Kopergon have ordered him to kill all the green monsters but he finds them really cute and doesn’t have the guts. Fucking weirdo. I don’t know why the fuck I offered him to come along. I suppose it is funny when you’re driving past a little village in Tennessee and you find a two meter chicken standing at the door of the church.
I stopped the car and told him I was driving to Chickenland. He accepted without thinking it twice. He had a bag full of homemade LSD, and told me how to cook it. As if I didn’t know how: paper, milk, beer (Foster’s if possible) and a few things more. Nothing your mother doesn’t keep in the cupboard.
At first he amused me. The problems came every time we saw a farm. He started crying and shouting that the chickens were repressed and kept behind fences because they knew the meaning of life.
Every time we drove past a farm I muttered “Fuck you and your chickens”.
In fact, I had thought that by telling him my reasons to kill myself he would give me a stupid and convincing reason not to do it. It didn’t happen. He kept mumbling about the marvelous chickens there had been throughout history and swallowing a LSD every two hours.
After two days driving, I decided I didn’t want to kill myself anymore; I wanted to kill the chicken.
Every night we stopped somewhere to sleep. I tried to make myself comfortable in the back seat, but I couldn’t get to sleep because he kept the whole fucking night pretending to lay eggs. One time I slapped him with the road map and he wept for four hours. I never should have done that.
Though he annoyed me and I couldn’t stand him, I came to realize he was happy and I was not. And here we are now. A pathetic version of Thelma and Louise with beak, feathers and LSD.
I think about my life back in New York, trying to give it a sense: I had money, I had a career, I had a sister who fucked my husband, I had a Republican preacher son. All I wanted was to escape, but after living on the road with that chicken man… Well, I’ve come to think that there were more ways than killing myself.
Yes, the police might be after me, but it’s my boss’ car I stole, under menace of telling his beautiful wife and the press what he had done with me. Photos included. So he’s gonna be pretty much silent and the police won’t have to care about me.
The chicken takes out an LSD. I accept another. After a while I start to feel really sick. I wanna throw up. My tongue is dry. The sunset has strange colors and empty sounds, and curves, and that tree… that tree is moving toward us, and those distant points, and a gigantic chicken singing ‘Singing in the Rain’ in this desert that is melting like gold.
We are not too far from Las Vegas. I take the chicken by the hand and walk under the psychedelic sunset all night long. We take another. And another. More empty sounds. Feathers. Love and sweat and feathers. At 10 a.m. we reach a little mall. There’s a disguise shop. Lots of masks are staring at me. Don’t worry, come with us. I find a lovely hen disguise. It can even lay eggs. She stares at me and I buy it. Another LSD when I go out. We cross the road into a Road Chapel, where I’m marrying the high chicken for only 10 $. Be happy says the priest. Now you can kiss the chicken. I swallow another. After all, I decided to start a new life. No matter which.

Pues nada, una buena manera de comparar culturas.

Versión British (de 1994)



Versión americana