Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Suicide

Suicide

So last week Beni and I were sitting down at the point just beyond the cemetery, which sits atop a 150 meter cliff and offers a spectacular view of sol ta txi na mar (the sunset). We’d been there about an hour and the sun had just dipped below the horizon when Manu, a neighbor of Benvinda’s showed up behind us. We said hello, but he didn’t say anything to us and looked sort of annoyed that we were there, and left just as soon as he got there. We didn’t think much of it.

The next night, at around 4AM, I was awakened by the sound of screaming and shout-ing and a lot of commotion in the street below my window. I dressed and went outside, where Thoma told me that Manu’s mom had discovered his crumpled body laying in the cane at the bottom of the cliff beyond the cemetery. Apparently she’s heard him leave the house around midnight and when he didn’t return she went looking for him. I don’t know how she knew to look for him at the bottom of the cliff, but that’s where she found him. Terrible. She was understandably distraught, and is even now under a doctor’s care in Povocon.

He had recently been left by his girlfriend, who just moved to Portugal after securing a student Visa. He was 25 years old. A suicide is a terrible thing under any circum-stances, but it’s impact in a twon of 400 people is immeasurable. It’s all anyone is talking about these days, and people are obsessed with the cliff beyond the cematary and the cane below. The littler kids from town, possessed with a morbid sense of curiosity I suppose, have been trekking down to the cane and scaring each other.

So obviously I’ll never know, but I feel certain that when Manu came upon Beni and I the night we were there watching the sunset, he had come to do exactly what he did the following evening, and it sends a chill down my spine to think about it. I can’t imagine ever going back there to watch the sunset again.

No comments: