The Bonsai
/ Fiction /
One morning, Juan decided he would never return to work. Just like that. Without picking up the things he left at his desk—a photo of him scuba diving three years ago, a portable fan, a bonsai tree that hadn’t grown an inch in the previous eight years. Without taking a lunchbox with leftover chicken and rice from the communal fridge. Without even notifying his boss or any of his coworkers.
That day, after turning off his alarm, Juan took a slow hot shower, had a slice of peanut butter toast with black coffee, dressed in dark shorts and a white tee, and went down to the street. Standing next to the entrance to his building, he observed the morning rush.
A man in a suit holding an attaché case ran towards a taxi, which stopped to let a woman in. The man opened the door and started to argue loudly, turning the heads of passersby, before the car sped up with the door still swinging open.
Before Juan, people were rushing left and right with the same tense expression on their faces. Café tables were empty as nobody had the freedom to waste their time simply sitting in the morning.
Juan filled his lungs with air and screamed, “I don’t want to work!”
This briefly slowed the pace of nearby pedestrians, only to make them walk faster away from the seemingly insane man.
Satisfied with the sound of his voice, resonating in the windows of his building, Juan screamed once again, “I don’t want to work!”
He made a melody out of it—a refrain good enough for a summer’s pop hit. Juan started walking while singing his tune. He moved without any particular direction in mind, but his legs habitually brought him towards the city business district. He recognized that upon approaching his office building.
By then, his throat had started to hurt, and he entered his usual coffee shop. The barista stared at Juan, shocked by his casual attire, but still nodded at him.
“A cup of tea. To go,” Juan said.
In response, the barista just slightly tilted his head.
After a quick rest, Juan resumed his way across the city, chanting, “I don’t want to work!” every five seconds.
Once he reached the riverbank, he continued westward along the flow of the water and then turned north towards his home.
That day, he walked 40,000 steps.
The next morning, not even a thought about Juan’s former job appeared in his head until he saw a message from his boss. He didn’t open it. Instead, he showered, ate, and, leaving the phone on the kitchen counter, got outside.
He walked the same route as the day before, only omitting the coffee shop. He didn’t stop to eat and walked at the pace defined by his meditative chanting, “I don’t want to work!”
The routine continued daily for about two weeks until one morning it started to rain. Juan didn’t leave at the usual nine in the morning. He watched the lightning brightening the sky far away, followed by the blast of thunder five seconds later, while sipping his tea. While waiting for the rain to lighten, Juan logged into his computer for the first time since he had stopped going to work. He checked his account balance, which, to his surprise, indicated a final payment worth roughly two months’ salary from the company. The money in his bank was enough to live for about four months without any income. Maybe six, if he kept cutting expenses on commuting, food, and clothing.
After six months, he still had some cash left. The days got shorter and colder, and Juan debated whether he could spend half of it on a new jacket and boots. Instead, he opted for layering sweaters and patching the holes in the boots with tape.
By then, the shop owners, waiters, and firefighters along his walk greeted him. Once, a delivery guy asked him to pass a message to a colleague several blocks away. Juan ignored the request, so as not to fall out of sync with the chant, “I don’t want to work!”
His voice became stronger and more melodic, reaching farther into the residential houses, office buildings, and hospitals. A newspaper ran an article about Juan representing the nation’s desire to quit working and retire early. On a morning TV show, a host joked that he set his watch by Juan’s arrival on the block.
Juan knew his funds had started to run low, but he fought the thought by refusing to check the balance. He learned how to survive on pasta and beans, and replaced his tea with boiled water, which he now preferred.
One evening, as he approached his building, a middle-aged, smiling man greeted Juan. The man was wearing a Burberry coat and a fedora, and had warm eyes behind round glasses. Without saying a word, he smiled and handed Juan a thick manila envelope.
Juan waited for the morning light to come before checking the envelope’s contents. It included a handwritten note on heavy, coarse paper and two thick stacks of documents stapled together.
The note introduced the man whom Juan had met the night before. His name was James, and he was an art curator, intrigued by Juan’s endurance performance. James wanted to support Juan financially so that he could fully devote himself to his art, not worrying about food and shelter. In return for a generous monthly payment, James would claim all rights to Juan’s act in order to mount an exhibition after 500 daily walks. In a nutshell, Juan had to continue his routine, for which he would now be compensated.
The remaining papers were two copies of a fifty-page contract, which Juan signed without reading. He didn’t count the walks he had made but figured that they amounted to roughly half of the 500 outings requested by the eccentric curator. As he went down the stairs for his daily walk, the smiling man wearing the same outfit as the night before was waiting to collect the signed contract.
Thus, Juan continued his daily walks around the city, chanting, “I don’t want to work!” Over time, he tried to change the tune but eventually came back to the initial melody, as if his throat muscles were forever tuned to it.
As the months went by, the public’s perception changed. At first, people greeted him. Then, one Sunday, a woman in a robe came down from the building across the street and stood in his path, so that he had to stop walking, though he did not stop the chant. She held a coffee mug. “My daughter works six days a week,” she said. “She is nineteen.” Juan said, “I don’t want to work!” simply because it was the fifth second. She splashed the coffee in Juan’s face. Another day, a man on a bicycle rode close enough to clip his elbow and called him a word Juan had not been called before. Juan kept going, paying little attention to the angry public and not noticing the camera crews that now accompanied his walks.
Once, upon returning home, Juan saw the smiling curator at the door. James handed him another envelope. Juan opened it immediately while climbing up the stairs. In the note, James congratulated Juan on his first fifty days of the project but lamented that Juan’s chanting had gotten quieter, and asked him to raise his voice in order for the sound equipment to properly record the act of him saying “I don’t want to work!” every five seconds. Juan never counted the days he walked as it had become his entire life, but still, he realized that the deal covered only the days after the contract was signed, and so far, he had completed only ten percent of the 500 days. It didn’t matter much to Juan, and the next day he remembered to scream louder about his intention not to go to work.
The seasons changed and the days got warmer and longer, with more green appearing on Juan’s route. He noticed tree leaves swinging in the wind and remembered his own bonsai tree left at his desk—he wondered if anyone had been taking care of the fragile plant and hadn’t exposed it to direct sun. He kept walking, only slightly delaying the next chime.
Soon after, he got another note from James. It was the 100-day mark, but James was concerned that the new sneakers Juan had bought made him walk much faster, thus reducing the duration of the act. To remedy it, James suggested changes to the route by adding new milestones, including several museums, city hall, and a jail. The change would increase the route by roughly six miles.
Juan realized that since he had started walking the same route for many months, he hadn’t set foot in other parts of the city, which he had begun to miss. He silently agreed to make the change and wasn’t bothered by the longer distance—his body had adapted to the high daily mileage and could manage the extra distance.
The new route passed more downtown, where larger crowds of tourists slowed Juan down. People stopped to film him on smartphones, briefly making Juan into a globally known meme.
The summer that year was unusually hot, and the workload made Juan thinner, revealing his wiry muscles. He still never stopped to rest, but now had to make more stops to drink from the water fountains, shouting, “I don’t want to work!” between sips.
The heat stopped as suddenly as it had started. It rained nearly every day throughout September, though it had never been an obstacle for Juan. In the middle of the month, he woke up with a headache, sweating in a wet bed. He tried to get up and immediately felt dizzy, then fell back onto the dirty sheets. Juan awoke two hours later to a loud knocking on the door. Coughing, he opened the door, where James stood, no longer smiling.
“What the hell are you still doing here?” James hissed.
“I’m sick,” Juan said.
“Not according to the contract you signed. You owe me 500 consecutive days of performance. Consecutive! If you skip even one day, the deal is over, and you need to pay me back all transfers, plus 200% compensation,” James said. “You have ten minutes to get back on the route. The crew is waiting.”
Juan took two ibuprofen and entered the rainy street. That day, he returned home at one in the morning, after completing the entire route in the pouring rain.
The next morning, he woke up coughing so hard he thought he would suffocate. After making hot tea, he checked the clock, which showed ten o’clock. Shortly after, someone started kicking his door.
“The final warning. Get out!” James screamed.
Juan took two pills with the hot tea, burning his swollen throat, and walked out. On the walk, his “I don’t want to work!” was nearly silent as he had lost his voice. As Juan approached the central square, a black car slowed beside him.
“Louder!” James screamed through the open window.
The car reappeared several times that day, with a cameraman taking rainy shots from inside.
“Faster!”
For five days, Juan fell into feverish sleeps of no more than four hours, as his weakened body moved more slowly through the wall of rain. The showers made his weak “I don’t want to work!” proclamation nearly silent.
The day the rain finally stopped, Juan collapsed a few blocks from the Contemporary Art Museum. The black car stopped, and a cameraman stepped out to film the crowd surrounding the body. A man in a coat elbowed his way to the front to take some close-ups with his phone. Then he unlaced and took off the sneakers with polished soles.
“I got him those,” the man said to a woman who grabbed his shoulder. “We should have dragged him towards the museum! What a pity,” he said to the crew upon returning to the car.
“What now?” the assistant asked.
“Get me the Paris footage by Friday. And tell Tokyo to start auditioning.”
