His mother had gone downstairs to spend some hours gossiping with the neighbor lady. Normally they would just lean out their windows throughout the day and shout unimportant sentences back and forth, my husband this, my daughter that, I received a card from, did you know that she was ....; but lately, each time they shouted into the courtyard, that new American boy living on the second floor would turn his wild electronic music quite high and then they simply couldn't think for the duration; finally they changed their customs, sitting across from one another in the kitchen and shouting over cups of coffee, face to face, my niece’s husband this, did you hear what happened to, well, it's a scandal, I'll tell you, I know it.
His mother had begun defrosting the Cointra that morning and told him that if he wanted, he could empty the water out of the drip tray if she hadn't returned in an hour or so. She made it sound as if it were a grand honor and responsibility, and he was not quite of the age to realize that it was merely another chore she intended for him to acquire, and so he promised to be quite careful transferring the drip tray from the fridge to the sink, not to spill on the floor on the way.
And so, two hours having passed, he suddenly remembered that he had forgotten the drip tray. He ran to the kitchen and found the tray completely full. How would he ever get it to the sink without a spill? Well, he would just have to try -- he did, and he spilled most of the water on the floor. The phone began to ring, but he was standing in water to his ankles and did not want to risk electrocution to answer it. He wondered how he would clean up all of this water before his mother came back upstairs, she had a talent for arriving in the thick of any troublesome situation.
This was when he noticed the drain under the counter -- in the floor, had it always been there? It did not matter, for now the water was drained away. The phone rang again, he answered on the second ring, his mother said
--What's going on up there, there is water coming through the ceiling down here, that drain is a disaster!
He looked around and indeed, there was even more water on the kitchen floor, he looked into the living room and saw water gushing from the floor like a waterfall over the steps, what was happening?
He had climbed to the roof, out onto the roof, through a small attic window, onto the red-tiled roof, there was nothing to hold onto and the building rocked and tossed like a boat in a tempest, but the sky was sunny and clear, there was no wind, this was not a boat but the roof of his building. A drunken man, crazed with fear, lurched across the roof towards him, was he looking for help, what kind of help could the boy offer him? The roof pitched again, folded onto itself, he tried to push the drunken man off the roof but did not have the strength. One final tilt and crash and suddenly it's all over, how long had it lasted?
He climbed down from the roof, like down a rough mountainside, he saw a father and mother and their children where there had once been a wall, hanging clothes on a makeshift line, doing something familiar in the hope of coming back from their shock.
He figured his mother was dead, he had not at least, encountered her as he walked the streets alone, calling out to her.
