I left my cell phone on the counter, the same counter where my mother had often sat me to watch her and my grandmother make a delicious dinner.
I wandered through the two connecting rooms, only feeling cold as I looked at the three beds, staring at the old clothes of their previous inhabitants. Although I was not freezing, I felt the temperature below zero, even as I observed the capital through the windows of my new house, new to me, but old in many ways.
I went to the bathroom that was in the roofed courtyard of the house, a well-kept bathroom modernized in its final moments by my grandmother and its previous tenants. I contemplated the white tiles with their flower figures, they gave a cheerful look, but I only felt cold.
I sat in the living room, where several pictures of the city hung, as well as one of an uncle who died long ago. Looking at him was like looking in a mirror, both thin and with a serious look, both with the same shaped nose, the same pointed ears, the same slanted eyes. In no corner did I find a picture of my grandmother, only icy memories.
I remembered how I used to run at night through the corridors to the rooms to run away from imaginary ghosts. I also remembered how I used to take out all the magazines my grandmother collected and I would leaf through them to grate them, I never received any scolding, I was the favorite among all my cousins. That's why, after so many years, they gave up my grandmother's house. Some things had changed, like the paint or the refrigerator, as well as the cold that gripped me.
That's what my relatives said. The house has been very cold since my grandmother's death, after 30 years the cold has increased. I would not die, but I felt my soul freeze with every memory. Christmas was the focal point for all of us to get together, but when grandma died it was the point for all of us to leave for different destinations.
When I finished my studies I left for exotic countries, but I did not forget. I traveled exploring fantasy cities, had fleeting loves, and almost started a family, but the family was not for me. I was a traveler who could not stay in one place. However, don't forget.
And standing in the courtyard he contemplated from where he stood the imposing mountain of the capital. I had returned to my country and my relatives gave me the cold house. 30 years had passed since I had not set foot in that house. That house represented me with that abysmal cold that enveloped me. Everything that happened to me turned me into an iceberg.
So I went to bed to fall asleep, I dreamed of them. With all the women I loved and shared. The ones I had at some point feeding my inner flame. Among them was my grandmother sharing her hallacas with me, but they faded away, and my inner self was extinguished to any sign of affection.
Weeks went by and I was still in the capital. Wherever I went I left a trail of snow before the snowfall of memories that clumped on my retinas. My first kiss, my first sexual encounter, my first love, my first spite. In every corner or facade, I found different images of different women. I walked alone without caring if the streets were dangerous.
So much time being in other places wishing to return I didn't think I was going to do it that way. I thought I would feel the fire revive and embrace my loneliness with more affection. It only solidified it more.
That night, like all the others, I dreamed of more women. However, the one that prevailed among them all was my grandmother, she was crisp and glistening. She gave me cookies when she came to visit, she gave me my first books, she instilled in me the art of didactic learning. It became a habit that those evenings I woke up shivering from the cold, it seemed that every night I was about to freeze with the storm in the house.
This time I examined the windows of the house. There were three, in the first one I found my first blanket, in the second one a stuffed animal that one of my aunts gave me and in the third one, I found more cold. In the last one, I found the cookie boxes that my grandmother used to store her sewing things. I put the items away again.
The next night I slept with my first blanket, but I continued to crystallize my dreams. I dreamed of Aimee, I dreamed of seeing her leave with another amid my shattered heart. Then I dreamt of Sheila and the time she rejected me for being too young, she came back when she saw me as a businessman, but I rejected her. Lastly, my grandmother appeared on the stage, one of those many memories I kept in my drawer. In dreams and memories, she would tell me to save for myself. I saw her keep her money in one of the many shoeboxes.
I had been living in a cold house for two months already. Furthermore, I still could not make up my mind to go to the mountain, so it kept asking me to visit it. I was afraid that if I went, the ice block would melt. I feared that a mighty river would overflow, and it would not hold, or worse, the block would remain unscathed.
It was Christmas already. That night I saw rockets streak across the skies, I breathed in that smoke just as I once did as a child. There weren't as many as I expected. The good night was sad and cold. Not like in the old days, filled with family members toasting to a better future.
He dreamed of his relatives playing with rockets, he dreamed of the cold wrapping more and more around his little heart, he dreamed of a family he never had. He had several mixed dreams, but the cold never failed to give shelter.
The next morning I woke up determined to climb the mountain. It could be that its cold peaks could light the extinguished fire of my being.
