I’ve been doing this for forty-four years, ever since my ninth birthday. I stood in front of my father and said, ‘From now on I’m not going to smile at anyone.’ My father laughed and didn’t take me seriously. When a boy of nine tells you he’s not going to smile from now on, you don’t believe him, of course. No one in this world can stop themselves from smiling altogether. You’d think it was just something the child said on the spur of the moment. But that wasn’t the case with me.
My father told my mother, who gave me a big hug and said some playful words of the kind that make children laugh. But I didn’t smile. That was the first time I acted on my decision not to smile. ‘Decision’ isn’t really the right word, though. It would be better to call it a ‘theme’. So that was the first time I put into effect my no-smiling theme: in my mother’s arms.
I now have the courage to say it was a good start. When you’re in your mother’s tender arms and you refuse to smile, it means you have the self-confidence not to smile at the whole world. I didn’t mean to offend my mother, or my father. But they were crestfallen and they started to argue. My first thought was that if I smiled, an ambulance would come and take me away. This was just a feeling and I couldn’t really explain it. I had decided not to smile and that was that. When some child asked me, I would say, ‘If I smile, an ambulance will come and take me away,’ and they would burst out laughing. Then my father died. And then it wasn’t long before my mother also joined the ranks of the dead.
My parents died without seeing me smile. I was a teenager by then. I remember that on her deathbed my mother begged me to smile. As she was breathing her last, she said, ‘Let me see you smile.’ But that was the last thing that was going to happen. At that moment, more than ever, I couldn’t smile. It’s true that I didn’t try, because I simply couldn’t in those circumstances; deep down, I knew it was impossible. I would have liked to borrow a smile from the face of some neighbour. I imagined knocking on their door; they would open it with a smile and I would snatch the smile off their face, slap it on my face and rush back to my mother. What could I say to her? I felt powerless and I started to sob. The neighbours hurried over and gathered in the room. There were about twenty people around the bed. They started mumbling prayers meant to help my mother’s soul on its way as it left her body. But my mother paid no attention to any of them. She mustered the last of her strength and managed to say, ‘Please, just one smile.’ But I couldn’t do it. My face was as rigid as a jam sandwich left over from yesterday. Since my problem was well known to everyone, the neighbours set their minds to helping me. They immediately stopped reciting prayers and started telling jokes they remembered. I was bombarded with dozens of jokes, one after the other, including some dirty ones. That was how the well-intentioned neighbours tried to bring a smile to my face. I leave you to imagine the scene – my mother about to die, asking me for a smile, the neighbours telling jokes around the bed, and me unable to smile. A few minutes later my mother did die and I got into an argument with the neighbours and threw them out of the room. I couldn’t control myself. I behaved like a maniac.
Days later I visited a psychiatrist, who took extensive notes and wrote me a prescription. After a few sessions he sent me away and said he would contact me, and I went home. The doctor still hasn’t contacted me and I haven’t heard anything from him. This happened a long time ago. There are plenty of details but I no longer remember them. Now I feel that I owe my mother a smile but I will never be able to repay the debt.
Long after my mother died I was still living in the same house. I didn’t feel I was any different from other people. My neighbours had grown used to me as a man who didn’t smile or say hello to anyone. And by now I walked with a pronounced stoop that even animals noticed.
I didn’t tell you what drove the psychiatrist to throw me out of his clinic. When he put his stethoscope to my chest, he didn’t hear a heartbeart. He heard, ‘Ha, ha, ha.’
‘What the fuck kind of game are you playing with me?’ he said angrily. That led to an argument, I ended up at home thinking about it, and he never called.
As time passed and I grew old, my back became as solid as the back of an old rhinoceros. My head was now level with my waist, so that I looked like this: 
. I looked as if I was staring at the ground as I walked, as if someone had told me off. But that’s not how it was in fact. You won’t believe what I’m going to say. My back had become as strong as a plank of wood and it had grown broad and flat, so I found myself a job, as a birthday porter. I would stand rooted to the spot and carry children’s birthday parties on my back. A session would sometimes last three hours and sometimes four. It would be wrong to call it a session. More properly it was a ‘standing’ or a ‘station’. I made sure I arrived on time and soon my back would be covered in children. They would climb up, shouting excitedly. The child, the friends he or she’d invited, his mother and father and siblings would gather together to celebrate the child’s birthday, but I couldn’t see anything. I could just hear the children’s voices coming from above. And their giggles. While I was staring at the floor. Pretty much like a portable shelf. Or a podium. If I were asked, I’d prefer the term shelf. Podium would be an exaggeration. And wherever the child’s parents chose to hold a birthday party, I would go.
You might see me standing in a park, on the beach, or even in a school playground. My appearance did provoke some strange looks. Sometimes people would flock to see me, stare and take pictures. But I didn’t care. I earned a reasonable fee. Then, when everyone had left, I went back home. I did face one problem, and that was how to wash my back, which was as solid as a piece of concrete, and which was bare when the kids climbed up. You know how children’s birthday parties can get very messy. So I had to sluice my back well. But the neighbours helped me. They took me to the garage and washed me with the fine spray from a hose. My massive body didn’t bother them. They were nice – they cared about my feelings and didn’t smile, share jokes or tell funny stories while they were washing me. But from my house later I could hear them roaring with laughter. Maybe they were making fun of me.
The joyful voices of the children should cheer me up and make me want to smile. But that doesn’t happen in my case. Even when a child hands me a sweet before climbing up onto my back, I don’t smile. I say, ‘Thank you,’ but the child thinks I’m not excited about their birthday, because I seem to be scowling.
I would like to say that there’s a difference between scowling and not smiling. But how can you convince a child of that? If you don’t smile at a child on their birthday, they’ll be confused. And then the child’s mother steps in to tell me off. And then I have to make an effort to convince the child that I’m not scowling and that it’s nothing personal. If I didn’t do that, I wouldn’t get my fee. ‘I’m not frowning,’ I tell the child. And from on top of me, the child replies, ‘Well if you’re not frowning, why aren’t you smiling?’
‘I just don’t know how to smile,’ I reply.