I have a friend who must be the sweet­est, shyest per­son in the world. His name is brit­tle and an­cient (Luke), his age mod­est­ly in­ter­me­di­ate (forty). He is rather short and skin­ny, has a thin mous­tache and even thin­ner hair on his head. Since his vi­sion is not per­fect, he wears glass­es: they are small, round and frame­less.

In order not to in­con­ve­nience any­one, he al­ways walks side­ways. In­stead of say­ing “Ex­cuse me”, he prefers to glide by one side. If the gap is so nar­row that it will not allow him to pass, Luke waits pa­tient­ly until the ob­struc­tion — be it an­i­mate or inan­i­mate, ra­tio­nal or ir­ra­tional — moves by it­self. Stray dogs and cats panic him, and in order to avoid them he con­stant­ly cross­es from one side of the road to an­oth­er.

He speaks with a very thin, sub­tle voice, so in­audi­ble that it is hard to tell if he is speak­ing at all. He has never in­ter­rupt­ed any­body. On the other hand, he can never man­age more than two words with­out some­body in­ter­rupt­ing him. This does not seem to ir­ri­tate him; in fact, he ac­tu­al­ly ap­pears happy to have been able to utter those two words.

My friend Luke has been mar­ried for years. His wife is a thin, cho­ler­ic, ner­vous woman who, as well as hav­ing an un­bear­ably shrill voice, strong lungs, a fine­ly drawn nose and a viper­ous tongue suf­fers from an un­con­trol­lable tem­per and the per­son­al­i­ty of a lion tamer. Luke — you have to won­der how — has suc­ceed­ed in pro­duc­ing a child named (by his moth­er) Juan Manuel. He is tall, blond, in­tel­li­gent, dis­trust­ful, sar­cas­tic, and has a fringe. It is not en­tire­ly true that he only obeys his moth­er. How­ev­er, the two of them have al­ways agreed that Luke has lit­tle to offer the world and there­fore choose to ig­nore his scarce and rarely ex­pressed opin­ions.

Luke is the old­est and the least im­por­tant em­ploy­ee of a dis­mal com­pa­ny that im­ports cloth. It op­er­ates out of a very dark build­ing with black-stained wood­en floors sit­u­at­ed in Alsi­na Street. The owner — I know him per­son­al­ly — is called don Aqueróntido — I can­not say whether that is his first name or his sur­name — and he has a fe­ro­cious mous­tache, is bald and has a thun­der­ous voice. He is also vi­o­lent and greedy. My friend Luke goes to work dressed all in black, wear­ing a very old suit that shines from age. He only owns one shirt — the one he wore for the first time on the day of his mar­riage — and it has an anachro­nis­tic plas­tic col­lar. He also only owns one tie, so frayed and greasy that it looks more like a shoelace. Un­able to bear the dis­ap­prov­ing looks of don Aqueróntido, Luke, un­like his col­leagues, does not dare work with­out his jack­et on and in order to keep this jack­et in good con­di­tion he wears a pair of grey sleeve-pro­tec­tors. His salary is lu­di­crous­ly low, but he still stays be­hind in the of­fice every day and works for an­oth­er three or four hours: the tasks don Aqueróntido gives him are so huge that he has no chance of ac­com­plish­ing them with­in nor­mal hours.

Now, just after don Aqueróntido cut his salary yet again, his wife has de­cid­ed that Juan Manuel must not do his sec­ondary stud­ies in a state school. She has cho­sen to put his name down for a very cost­ly in­sti­tu­tion in the Bel­gra­no area. In view of the ex­tor­tion­ate out­lay this in­volves, Luke has stopped buy­ing his news­pa­per and (an even greater sac­ri­fice) The Read­er’s Di­gest, his two favourite pub­li­ca­tions. The last ar­ti­cle he man­aged to read in The Read­er’s Di­gest ex­plained how hus­bands should re­press their own over­whelm­ing per­son­al­i­ty in order to make room for the ac­tu­al­i­sa­tion of the rest of the fam­i­ly group.

There is, how­ev­er, one re­mark­able as­pect to Luke: his be­hav­iour as soon as he steps on a bus. Gen­er­al­ly, this is what hap­pens:

He re­quests a tick­et and be­gins to look for his money, slow­ly. He holds up one hand to en­sure that the dri­ver keeps wait­ing, un­sure of what to do. Luke does not hurry. In fact, I would say that the dri­ver’s im­pa­tience gives him a cer­tain amount of plea­sure. Then he pays with the largest pos­si­ble num­ber of small coins, which he de­liv­ers a few at the time, in vary­ing amounts and at ir­reg­u­lar in­ter­vals. For some rea­son, this dis­turbs the dri­ver, who, apart from hav­ing to pay at­ten­tion to other cars, the traf­fic lights, other pas­sen­gers get­ting on or off, and hav­ing to drive the bus it­self, is forced to per­form com­pli­cat­ed arith­metic. Luke ag­gra­vates the prob­lem by in­clud­ing in his pay­ment an old Paraguayan coin that he keeps for the pur­pose and which is in­vari­ably re­turned to him. This way, mis­takes are usu­al­ly made in the ac­counts and an ar­gu­ment en­sues. Then, in a serene but firm man­ner, Luke be­gins to de­fend his rights, em­ploy­ing ar­gu­ments so con­tra­dic­to­ry that it is im­pos­si­ble to un­der­stand what point he is ac­tu­al­ly try­ing to make. Fi­nal­ly, the dri­ver, at the end of the last teth­er of his san­i­ty and in an act of final res­ig­na­tion, choos­es to throw out the coins — per­haps as a means of re­press­ing his wish to throw out Luke or, in­deed, him­self.

When win­ter comes, Luke al­ways trav­els with the win­dows wide open. The first to suf­fer as a re­sult of this is Luke him­self: he has de­vel­oped a chron­ic cough that often forces him to stay awake en­tire nights. Dur­ing the sum­mer, he clos­es his win­dow and will not allow any­one to lower the shade that would pro­tect him from the sun. More than once he has ended up with first-de­gree burns.

Be­cause of his weak lungs, Luke is not al­lowed to smoke and, in fact, he hates smok­ing. In spite of this, once in­side the bus he can­not re­sist the temp­ta­tion to light up a cheap, heavy cigar that clogs up his wind­pipe and makes him cough. After he gets off, he puts away his cigar in prepa­ra­tion for his next jour­ney.

Luke is a tiny, seden­tary, squalid per­son and has never been in­ter­est­ed in sports. But come Sat­ur­day evening, he switch­es on his portable radio and turns the vol­ume up full in order to fol­low the box­ing match. Sun­days he ded­i­cates to foot­ball and tor­tures the rest of the pas­sen­gers with the noisy broad­casts.

The back seat is for five pas­sen­gers. In spite of his very small size, Luke sits so as to allow room for only four or even three peo­ple on the seat. If four are al­ready seat­ed and Luke is stand­ing up, he de­mands per­mis­sion, in an in­dig­nant and re­proach­ful tone, to sit down — which he then does, man­ag­ing to take up an ex­ces­sive amount of space. To this end, he puts his hands in his pock­ets so that his el­bows will re­main firm­ly em­bed­ded in his neigh­bours’ ribs.

Luke’s re­sources are plen­ti­ful and di­verse.

When he has to trav­el stand­ing up, he al­ways keeps his jack­et un­but­toned, care­ful­ly ad­just­ing his pos­ture so that the lower edge of his jack­et hits the face or the eyes of those sit­ting down.

If any­one is read­ing, they are easy prey for Luke. Watch­ing him or her close­ly, Luke places his head near the light so as to throw a shad­ow on the vic­tim’s book. Every now and then he with­draws his head as if by chance. The read­er will anx­ious­ly de­vour one or two words be­fore Luke moves back into po­si­tion.

My friend Luke knows the times when the bus will be fully packed. On those oc­ca­sions, he con­sumes a sala­mi sand­wich and a glass of red wine. Then, with bread­crumbs and threads of sala­mi still be­tween his teeth and point­ing his mouth to­wards the other pas­sen­ger’s noses, he walks along the ve­hi­cle shout­ing loud­ly, “Ex­cuse me”.

If he man­ages to take the front seat, he never gives it up to any­one. But should he find him­self in one of the last rows, the mo­ment he sees a woman with a child in her arms or a weak, el­der­ly per­son climb on board he im­me­di­ate­ly stands up and calls very loud­ly to the front pas­sen­ger to offer them his seat. Later he usu­al­ly makes some re­crim­i­na­to­ry re­mark against those that kept their seats. His elo­quence is al­ways ef­fec­tive, and some mor­tal­ly ashamed pas­sen­ger gets off at the next stop. In­stant­ly, Luke takes his place.

My friend Luke gets off the bus in a very good mood. Timid­ly, he walks home, stay­ing out of the way of any­one he meets. He is not al­lowed a key, so he has to ring the bell. If any­one is home, they rarely refuse to open the door to him. But if nei­ther his wife, his son nor don Aqueróntido are to be found, Luke sits on the doorstep until some­one ar­rives.