What was I doing at MIT, from the University of Massachusetts? It was a course on the newly appeared Internet. Miraculously, they had invited me with other journalists, writers, dilettantes. Ask is not the right verb, although that was what the organizers had proposed. I could not turn to see who it was, but they were the first phrases that I understood complete since that class pilgrim had begun, almost an hour and a half ago. The participant, instead of asking, anticipated that the radish market would reach its maximum exponential in a five years: the relative technology grew, offset, more than what the producers could anticipate. Betting with actions that plant or vegetable -I do not remember the exact term he used -would result in an immediate prosperity, individual or collective, for investors. I do remember perfectly that he referred to the radish, and not the palmit, or soy. I would not have registered it with such precision of not having referred to that vegetable -this I would go -, because “radish” was used, throughout my childhood and even my adulthood, to refer to something that was not of greater interest. In this case, to a topic without relation to the above. There could have been some confluence between radish and virtual trade, or internet scopes regarding the dissemination of knowledge. But by then neither of these two aspects rose to the fore in that class to which we had been generously invited, and both the speaker and the attendees were equally baffled as me. Literally demonstrated. No one answered him, and went to the next question. They passed the decades, I no longer remember how many. There are always more years that I have than those who passed. My sixties are like the eighties ten years ago. Diez years ago precisely, on a birthday of someone who curiously fulfilled them before me, a forty, recent girlfriend of a guest, commented in the middle of his arugula salad that, during a meeting for owners of pilates gyms, a comedy had raised his hand to state his opinions on the market of the radishes. about the beginning of that couple; But ipso facto took away half empanada of my mouth and screaming, without attending to the rudeness and the own ridiculous, I exclaimed: as between Farfullé and Escuíí, nobody paid me too much attention. But I left home reflecting on how such a contubernio could have been repeated between themes and participants, in the course of just sixty years of life. They passed ten years, as I said. We all inevitably approach sixty, as ten years ago had been fulfilled by that first sacrificial victim. The sixties are like the hare and turtle career: they arrive while one fell asleep. My friend without Ju invited me to his 60’s party at the Karaoke of Cobo Avenue, his property. I must confess that Karaoke is one of the few social saraos that I can participate without excessive modesty. Canto Julio Iglesias and Dyango, the easiest songs. I don’t tell you a Michael Jackson, but with the Latin songbook I take me. Honorably, I was one of the few western guests. The friendship between the Hebrew and the Asian had been woven over the years, at an intersection between my trip to Seoul and his interest in the Middle East. Repentinely another couple of Caucasian whites appeared, she of some resonant fifty -cabellera plates, sculptural body-, he of about 70 very well taken. Where did I know her? I won’t be able to remember it until I heard him talk. The traditional accent cloudying a classic porteño. Without Ju, he pointed it out and defined, before I could anticipate with a similar label: while the glowing couple left, without Ju detailed that the king of the radish distributed the vegetable throughout Cobo avenue, was responsible for the wonderful catering of spicy radish buñuelos that we enjoyed, and exporter to the world and the universe of the radish in equal parts. The woman, just then deduced, was the no less striking forty than ten years ago, in that other sixties party, had been overwhelmed by the irruption of the king of the radish in the talk of Pilates. I soon discovered that the King of Radish continued to venture into conferences from other lides. Strictly speaking, without Ju, like Kung fúg Master, he knew the secret of that entrepreneur. He was a hidden lecturer: he attended panels, book presentations, master classes, political debates, even union assemblies, to always broadcast the same speech about the radish. He was agreed to participate in the meeting, even consortium. I should have swell to me to participate in the conversation about the common boiler or roof losses. The King of Radish attended deliberately.-He had to bring the radish to its maximum performance-I commented. It must be satisfied.-In absolute, ”he replied without ju. The radish is just an excuse. His true motivation is to speak in public. But he never found a way they invite him to be part of a panel. It is one of the most wealthy vegetable exporters, it has that infernal girlfriend. But he does not give up: his next stop, as every year, will be the book fair. His vocation is the outstanding irruption among the audience, the speech, the proclamation. I did not take care of his impulse. I thought to ask something else, but he began to sound I forgot to live. Without Ju, obliged, the microphone passed me, and I ceded to my vocation, impudently, as the king of the radish.
Marcelo Birmajer’s new story: the speaker
