Short Stories English Version

INDEX


Indecision
Beneath the visiting moon
Childhood´s Dream
Las Vegas
Margarita Forever
Nostalgia
Second of the eleventh
The Daughter
The Errant Dreamer
Freefall
Consummation
Feeling brand new
Naked
The history of a writer
The Monsoon
The woman of the rose
3D
Carom
Childhood dream
Farewell
The Daughter
Vernon
Wild fancy afternoon



Indecision

After several months, you ask yourself the same question. You hope that so many kisses, so many caresses mean something. But once again he evades the question, until he finally faces your silent challenge, stabbing it like a matador: I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know.

You think you should just end it, get off the merry-go-round as quickly as possible, end all of this that translates to: "you’re not the only woman on earth, and if you were, I might want to be alone anyway; I don’t know." You act as though it doesn’t matter, trying to erase the whole ugly scene as though you had written it yourself; but you can’t erase the wound because it not only hurts but infuriates. Even so, you think you’re sure that even though he might not be the only man on earth, you still want him more than any other.

It’s been a long time for you; for him, it’s barely begun. You don’t like the woman you see in the mirror. You decide to finish this, to take the decision that he’s been avoiding. You find more and more reasons to do it and finally when the time comes, when the last minute fragments into the ticking seconds that comprise it, you remember the failure of those who give up too early. You think of your own lack of commitment and persistence that has kept you from building in the past. You hear those inner voices saying: “You always run way” and that you’re about to do it again. The last seconds tick by. More and more reasons not to stream through your head, lengthening that last minute. You don’t want to run away but you don’t want to just accept what you have either. You keep quiet, confused by the knot of concepts you can’t unravel: flexible, submissive, persistent, desperate, tenacious, stubborn, insecure...

Are your fears shielding you from commitment? Or is commitment the cage that, justifiably, contains you? Who are you?

You run to the mirror: the blurry image you can’t quite focus stares back at you.






Beneath the visiting moon


Antony,

I agree on my betrayal. I accept it. I accept I betrayed you by word: the Word was at the beginning and is always the beginning, with out the Word I could not tell my story; I betray you of action, because I will make you think I am dead; and of omission too, for I would not tell what I have forgotten and other things I don’t want to recall.
“Beneath the visiting moon”, I confess that I will not tell your story but mine. Memories of the life I’ve shared with you altered by the nostalgia and the discreet grief caused by the pass of time.
I confess Antony that the word has implicit deceit: its inseparable baggage of desires and frustrations. That is why, my biggest betrayal will be not telling you I love you. And to write you, to describe you, altered by the whim of my perception.

Cleopatra




CHILDHOOD’S DREAM

Even though far away, I felt it coming, so speedily, that as it put up a twister compounded by fear particles that my body absorbed quickly. It was a multiform mass, which molded with my energy transforming in any abominable specter that my mind could create. I saw it every time closer and as time passed by it took possession of me. Fear, I called that hurricane, which had in itself a liquid of dread and as it turned it became denser. It flooded my grandmother’s garden, that of Chachalacas. The ivy, sheath of the four walls let fall a leaf, which began going around in the center of the whirlpool, now slowly, a cause of its heavy consistence. I was sited on top, all damped of this same liquid which paralyzed me and menaced with swallow me completely, continued that endless circular movement with a despairing slowness and no possibilities to escape. The night came and the mass turned darkness. Its multiform appearance began to pursue me. I couldn’t open my eyes, not see the road. Even though I made an effort, I couldn’t cry. I felt its wet claws scraping my ankles. I tried to escape but I couldn’t see. I couldn’t see anything. So it didn’t took long before it reached me. It entered myself. Becoming the lord and master of my imagination, materializing every monster it created while I was hiding, always with my eyes opened big, with the ears alert to every sound, every movement. But that which scares me so much. Was inside my body. In order to take it out, I had to open. I couldn’t think of other way, so feeling my way, I walked to the kitchen. I felt the steps appeared and disappeared, the walls interposing, the furniture hitting my shins. Finally I arrived, opened almost ten drawers. Then I found the knife. Once I had it on my hands, without thinking about it, I stabbed myself in order to kill what was inside. I fell to the floor conmotioned. If the dripping sweat had not waked me up, of that terrible nightmare, I would have died there, bleeding in the kitchen’s floor.




MARGARITA FOREVER

Her real name: Margarita Cansino.
Not the right name for a New York actress, but he liked it.
Margarita.
He called her.
She had become an obsession. He no longer liked the working hours, locked up in the computerized monotony of the fifth floor. It was sure that there he would never find her. At least his new desk was beside the window. He was able to look out on Broadway and imagine how she crossed hurriedly through Fulton.
“She is beautiful”, he thought. Even before he heard her voice, he thought of her as “the Women”.
The big cities are always full of strange places, everything you might be looking for you can find it there, as strange as it may seem. He got there because of his curiosity. And it was there, in a photography store where he first saw her.
There was so much material; it was impossible to have it all in reach of the customers. Everything was kept away. You come in, ask for what you are looking for, they show you the catalog, you choose, pay and once they have your money, they bring the stuff and you can neither return nor exchange it.
Days passed by. He began to talk to her. He told her about his work, his new desk neighbor, who complained to the boss about him receiving too many personal phone calls, and many other irrelevant things, which for the moment he had no one to tell them to. “What would you think if I prepared for dinner the traditional sandwich, Margarita?” “But you eat that every night, doesn’t it bothers you to eat the same always? That same question Clemencia asked me the other day, he thought.
With his forehead leaning on the window, elbow on the desk and his hand on his chin, he kept on staring outside. At the office his yield wasn’t the same as before. But that afternoon something extraordinary happened. The stock market was going down and worried people making phone calls, were running from one desk to the other and typing on the computer. He had no time to think of Margarita. In his mind she vanished completely. He left the office late that night. Two trains were the distance to get home. He had trouble even carrying his jacket. Everything was too heavy. His sight began to fool him. The letters, on the signs were not as clear as usual. The bulbs were surrounded by a circle of light, which he normally never saw. Finally the second train arrived. Like a puppet he felt the strings that took his body to a cold seat. He supposed that being so late every wagon should be empty. But his head had no will to take a look. His sight was fixed to immortality. The train slowed down. Still one stop more. Someone shook the foul air around him. He wouldn’t have turned but the exquisite perfume he felt made it inevitable. He was then paralyzed.
At his side, was Margarita Cansino, better known as Rita Hayworth. He strongly closed his eyes, hoping that when he opened them, the phantom of the actress who should be in another life since eight years ago, would disappear, but it was not so. Beautiful as in the pictures, that dress let him caress with his sight her shoulders and her gloves, kept in secret not only her hands, but the whole arm.
Gilda was by his side. Flesh and bones. His obsession was leading him to raving. The pictures he had bought, the films, he always thought it was something natural. Well, those are not the things you tell to people. But he imagined everybody did things like that. From time to time almost everybody speaks alone. After all he was not the only client of the antique picture’s shop. Anyway, this seemed to be the confirmation of his madness. It was not a mirage she was there. Astonished, he stared at her. “Excuse me”, she asked. “Do you have a cigarette?” Definitely that was Rita Hayworth’s voice. I am definitely delirious,” he thought. He couldn’t answer the question. The train stopped as if it wanted to rescue him from his nightmare. Without saying a word, he pulled out the strings, which took him from his place and with self will, he left the station hurriedly. He got home took the pictures, the book and a couple of films and threw them into the trash, swearing he would never think of his dear Margarita any more. As much as this rupture will hurt, he had to forget her.
One day after, on his way to work, he thought with love that he was still carrying in his wallet the lady’s picture, but he pretended to himself not to remember.





NOSTALGIA

The four bouquets were hanging upside down. Each one with its eighteen withered flowers, symbolizing the passionate love which lasted only seventy-two days.
In the beginning, when Julia used to look at them, she remembered with a sigh, the anxious hours of that idyll. Jealousy stuck in the abdomen and then the hands, which calmed everything.

The nostalgia of those moments faded-away as time passed. Julia no longer looked at them. They were now lost on all of details decorating her home with a special touch. From time to time someone noticed them and remarked: "How lovely!" Then she would look at them again (no longer recalling the story, but as charming dear things ornamenting her daily life for so many years, preserving a timeless beauty).

It is said that the years bring nostalgia. And the old ones live off memories. Julia felt again that tension on her stomach, a knot in her throat. Her legs no longer supported her and she fell down on a sofa, where, surprised, she kept on watching how one of the antique roses, hanging on the wall, revived.

Feelings of the past awakened, as she hurried every morning to observe the wall and a new flower come back to life. She lay herself on the sofa, without moving; her mind went through every place, her body felt each caress, her entrails perceived the spasmodic emotion of an adolescent love. Day by day the dim, dried, violet-color transformed to an intense red. Little by little, the antiquated room was filled up with light.

The day the last rose revived, Julia dressed herself in a much more profound gray than that which once had shaded her youth. Everything withered again. She received a call, announcing that after seventy-two days in a coma, her antique love had passed away.




SECOND OF THE ELEVENTH

Her weeping gave her a color of sorrow, as the moon, over the cempasuchil, painted in orange the cemetery. My time there was almost over. If I hadn’t seen her, I would have gone to sleep. But I wanted to stay. Observe her. I knew she was a witch because of all the branches she had, the candlesticks and other stuff whose names I don’t know, but I have seen where they read the Tarot. She threw sand over the tomb. On top some shells. Something was revealed to her and she cried. The lighted candles made the night more pumpkin-like.
Her crying began to bother me. Also the so lonely place. Some cats accompanied her, or probably were complaining. I felt the noise of her moan would awake the corpses. Two hands came out of that tombstone. I rubbed my eyes incredulous. They grabbed her slender ankles and pulled her inside, blotting her presence from my sight. Making the laments deaf. Taking her bitter life, away. Letting me be witness to something I am incapable to explain.


In the cemetery, over a tomb, a witch was working.
Her abilities: Love and Weeping.
She tried, with them, to revive her beloved.





THE DAUGHTER

The disgrace, which surrounded her, was a big contrast to her personality. Like a heron, she walked crafty through the hallway of the pesty hospital. That uniform mirror of her insides was impervious to the disgrace where she was submerged. Her life, one more story of all those which elapsed there, inside, with no more care than the one of those people who wandered in that swamp.
It is said that there is not a love so big as a mother’s. I would say that there I not a love so big, as that of a woman, who loves like a mother without being.
Even before Dorita was born, her mother had already taken the decision of abandon her. That idea was reinforced at her birth when it was detected her possible mind illness.
The nurse took the child in her arms, and felt her owner of all the care her frustrated years had accumulated. So began Doritas life, showered by the love she daily poured on her. Her fiscal appearance was the reflection of the hatred her mother had felt for her, and the repulsion of all those who looked at her contrasted by the whiteness of she who adopted her.
On her first years, her illness diagnosed was not so obvious. But as she stopped being a baby her normality began to disappear. Making the same step she learned to walk her physical appearance impaired. To all these changes the nurse seemed blind. Her love was so intense, that enabled her to see the each day more miserable destiny of the child.
Dorita was beginning to realize many things. Even though she didn’t count on a developed intelligence, her sensibility was (a flor de piel). She perceived people’s rejection. Also the beauty of the arms who lull her. Instead of absorbing all that care, she accumulated obscure sentiments that people deposited on her. These fed her horrible image, creating a vicious circle that went round and round each time faster in the hate.
One of those rainy afternoons, the nurse carelessly left a bottle of acid and in al accident occurred by the dullness of Dorita she burned her arm. Since then, the girl kept on staring the scald identifying herself with the disgusting aspect.
Another rainy afternoon came. The girl invaded for a feeling of love, needing to identify herself with that woman, and be a part of her. In a glare of her poor intelligence, she looked for the acid’s bottle and poured it over the nurse’s head while she was sleeping. It was then, she felt the nurse as her mother.




THE ERRANT DREAMER

Two days ago, I took a different route and I came across the errant dreamer.
There right in front of my eyes. Bones and flesh.
Such an impression, unraveled an endless chain of reflections which kept my mind from focusing on something else.
Recalling in the mean-time my origin. A glimpse of the molcajete on that morning in my infant’s house appeared. Dark, as the woman with long braids, who caressed it. Strong, creator of imaginary whims, took me back to that tale of a Sunday breakfast.
As well, I remembered the poodle, which, like everybody at home, had his own territory and according to his whims, identified himself with one or another. Finally, reflected the ambiance of a familial instant. With sunglasses and T-shirt he had a role in the performance of that warm morning when he, my brother and I, woke up my parents with a show we prepared a few minutes before.

“Those are the bricks which sustain my past”. I thought while sitting in front of my boudoir. Through the window I observed the dark sky, and some moon light dripped through my hands, which yearn for their childhood, when frightened by my mother’s scolding, danced in ivory and ebony, giving some music to the slow moving hands of the clock, anxiously waiting for the end of the boring piano practice.

Putting aside the memories. I thought of my present, a continuation of a peaceful and happy life, to which is added the constant frolic of friendship dripping green as she walks by. Fresh, sparkling with life, decorating space with uncombed fantasies and vibrating in a peal of laughter of bouganvillea.

With maturity, we come to this place which I call “Paradise”. This new house, one secret corner after another, testifies to a glorious present. Warm refuge of the lonely. Jail of the errant dreamer.
I understand my sedentary life. But disregard the origin of that man who came across my path. I envy his unlimited freedom.
The errant dreamer is Greece plastered in an American comic strip. The Arts materialized in a Homeric ad with a flag of stripes and stars. No doubt it was he. The same one I commune with in that dream of my childhood, still alive, where I am a wanderer who travels, inspired, by that idealistic knight who paints walls, sings poems and makes the crowds dance. Always standing by his side, I take him as a teacher and learn his philosophy of aloofness.

Dazzling it was to face he whom only in dreams I had seen, made of flesh and bones. My fictional character’s embodiment into this new reality caused me a dramatic shock.
I realized how my happiness imprisons me. Even if my gypsy spirit resolves to fly and leave everything behind to be the dream’s globetrotter, facing the real truth, the memory of my warm harmonious life, will take me back again. The contrasting difference of imagination and substance blocks my vision. What was infinite, here has an end. In this land I could never follow the errant dreamer, because by no means I am a wanderer.
I am hungry to color my encounter with another tone, one in which absence recaptures the empty space. I will undertake a trip that will take me away from this mundane concept.
On my return, the memories will overflow the hollow I left in my farewell, erasing the errant dreamer from this scene and keeping him in my dream, where there is no disappointment or weariness. Where the adventurous life by his side has no end.
I will tell him “Errant dreamer, I exile you from this reality. You must not exit again my dream, otherwise I will no more be your partner: the wanderer”.





FREEFALL

I see your sugared face. My eyes go beyond your soft features and penetrate the thoughts. I see a file. My life entirely written by my own hand. Your body is nothing but an archive I would like to destroy. I recover my senses when you look at me and smile. So sweet! I imagine you with hate, doing things you’ve never done. Never will. Laughing with my enemies. Those who persecute me. Your show them my life. What I have in you written.


Every thing takes place in my mind. Some things just there, in the last step of “The Church” where it might seem you have misstepped into the emptiness.


There is the house we have in our future. With the rustic, wooden figures, two Mexican-painted walls, the talavera with the sunflowers. The sober living room, the “Estelas Mayas” (reproductions, not the ones I, just a minute ago, dreamed on stealing from this archeological zone) sofas painted like tigers and my llama skin rug covering the floor of clay.


There is our vacation in Coba, overflowing with smiles, of eyes looking at each other and saying everything. Hands that squeeze instead of words, reactions. Nights that match.


You begin to fall slowly. Too slowly. In a landscape of jungle that stays static while it observes you.


There is your father at the funeral. He feels by intuition it was not an accident. That you didn’t slipped from the pyramid. He remembers the times I said to him I loved you, that I would take care of you, that he shouldn’t worry. He knows I was in love. So much, I was beginning to drown, to stop loving you, to never be able to leave you. Because my life was in you. Because I, as well, have you inside.


I cry, breaking your paused fall. I cry; because I realize I am losing you; how much I love you; because I’ve forgotten the reasons I had to push you down; because your figure begins to vanish from my sight, moving away from my hands, taking away our new home on the beach, our trips, your parents and my mother carrying our children (your angel serenity, my roguish glance). My future words, that without your ears, will stay in the emptiness. Now the landscape is moving. It runs to your static body in the floor. I can’t see you because of the height. I imagine you disfigured. I come down running. The steep steps are not an obstacle. I am the architect of my own inferno. My punishment will be your absence. My emptiness. The pyramid seems endless. It takes me so many years to come down, that I repent. The hours I didn’t go over up stairs, pass quickly through my mind. My past. I purge my guilt ten times, eleven, twelve, many, many times.


There is the day we met. And that special feeling I had for you made me reveal to you my secrets. Our first date, a shower of pictures, laughter, Japanese rice and confessions. The days that followed I was the captain of the boat. I decided the course. I came back and forth. You began to take possession of the facts. My facts! Always so silent, cautious, soaked in my life.


Finally I come to your side.
I see your eyes opening.
You understand. I know you forgive me.





CONSUMATION

On every trip came the moment when the reflections began to flow from the mind, to the shoulder, to the arm into the hand and, through the fingers they spilled into a pen onto the paper. That way, no matter where I was, the liquid from my head began to overflow. Taking the pen discreetly I began to sot down words about the trip, the distance that makes people get closer, and the so-uncertain life.

The city is dense, I think while the taximeter goes on at a much higher speed than the wheels. We stop between two streets to let a car, larger than any train, pass by. People resign, and abandon themselves to traffic, and I, I am here, thinking of you. How long will this love I have for you, you have for me, last. At the same time I wonder if the taxi driver said the truth when he told me I should pay extra for the toll we just passed by.
Far away on 12th Avenue, are the skyscrapers, which I imagine as black holes in the darkness decorated with stars, because they are more obscure than the night itself.
To the left, some steel constructions over the water, carry airplanes, who would dream they float?
The city is dense, is not for me. I ask myself if you will be. I ask myself how much this distance has brought us together and where this need I have of your presence comes from.
I look up in the museums for some illustration of that garden with the fountain and the columns where you take a walk at night. I didn’t find it. It seems only you know it. That is why, when I look for you, I stay on the sea, surrounded by angels, and I don’t find you. Maybe one night I’ll get to your garden, but this city is so crowded, there are so many cars, buildings, that I can’t manage to see around me. Nor to the sky.


She got out of the taxi. The hemorrhage of ideas stopped with the meter, but she kept on thinking of Dario. Of his confessions. He didn’t know how to keep the truth for long. It escaped from his lips, which in frequently he kept closed.
“Tell me the worst thing you’ve done, for once”, she used to say with a serene voice and an inexpressive face.
“I have killed”, he answered.
She was then suspended in time, feeling how her insides were bleeding. Waiting for something.
“It is not true, how can you believe such thing?, he smiled.
But she was not very convinced. The injury recovered, but left a scar.

She was hungry. In the apartment, she began to prepare herself a sandwich. Then she took again the pen, which ran anxiously.


My life is clear, and I am at the threshold of darkness. Dario, where does my need to clean everything come from? On the floor there are some crystals, from a fragile confused soul. While I eat, I ask myself if they are here, in my path so that I will restore them, or if they simply belong to a masterpiece of the man who rented me this place. I don’t remember if I told you, but he is an artist. Any way how could I know if the crystals wish to be protected, or if they are happy to be modeled and converted into the creation of a mad man who calls this place his gallery and himself a sculptor.
I still think about you, in that day when you told me about the theft. I can imagine you planning it. Sitting, maybe, in your black bed, with those modern lamps, so slight, which only whispered light and the intermittent mirrors on the headboard, with hidden reflections of passionate nights. Then I imagine your happiness and excitement, when in that same bed you rejoiced and feared the possession of the money. You didn’t sleep knowing it wasn’t yours. That they where looking for you. In last the final scene, which had bee there since the very beginning: the bed was not huge, nor arrogant. The intermittent mirrors were steel bars. I feel myself more imprisoned, even though I am free, than you are in that jail. What are you thinking of? How is life inside? What do you see? What do you listen to? I send you this letter with all the anxiety of your presence of a skyscraper decorated with stars, believing I am the steel airplane carrier that doesn’t sink. Here, on the threshold of darkness, where hoping your brief bed will inspire you to free us.


She folded the paper and put it in an envelope. Afterwards she glued on the stamps and took the unfortunate letter to the post box of that mailman who will never pick it up, because he had passed away some time ago. Tired of his routine labor in the infernal city, the mailman took some vacation he wanted to enjoy in a celestial place. So he came to the end of his life, with a flowered shirt, white shorts and socks covering his very white calves. He was exchanging some dollars, when everything planned on the black bed came true. The mailman who thought to be far away from the city’s infamy saluted death after being injured in the robbery planned by Dario. He died disappointed, thinking that in this world there is no place clean of evil. Abandoning the mailbox where two weeks later the letter will be forgotten. But Dario paid for it when the trace of his love was consumed by humidity. With it, his own existence. Burning the candles, like a fortuneteller, he kept lighting the image of his own death.





FEELING BRAND NEW

Looking at the shop windows, the only thing that cheers me up, is to dream of the dresses. I see some to my left-hand side. Others reflected in the crystal. I like them all. I observe them one time and another, but I never decide. Each day I wear a different one and look at myself for long hours. I begin dreaming. My fantasy depends on the dress I am wearing. I’ve had of all kinds. A dark, daring one that showed the body. Another imitates a tutu. It was so tricky. It covered with ornaments everything that should be hidden. Just fantasy.
Looking out of the corner of my eye, I see in the nook a French one, which I wore some time ago. All women love it, but no one keeps it because it is too complicated. Now it seems worn out from so many times they’ve tried it on.
To its side there is one I’ve always wanted to put on, it is conservative. I would look so elegant with it. But it is dull, tasteless.
The clients come in and choose based on their own fantasies. Thinking it will always be the way it looks in the window, on my hard and slim body.
They pass by, and I am an alibi of how happy there are while it is brand new. Even their smile gets bigger. They look radiant. As time goes by, and they pass by again with their fantasy toned down. The dress has turned into an everyday life thing. Their mouth is fed up of keeping the ends up. The brilliance is gone.
Meanwhile, I am still here. In the same position. Dreaming I dance with one, dine with another. My smile never melts, and I always look radiant. Even though none is mine, I know they are all part of my endless wardrobe.




THE HISTORY OF A WRITER

In honor of Juan Carlos Onetti taken from his works “The Long Story” and “The Face of Disgrace”.

Sixteen years had already gone by. The story has moved from his heart to his mind. It’s such a vague memory, that on reading it, it seems so hazy, it makes him worry to lose it altogether. That’s why it was necessary to rewrite it in all its detail. Once and for all, without the fear of saying it. With the distance of time the gravity of the matter has vanished and remaining only the longing that, unless trapped in detail, would become lost cinders of the fire that so long ago consumed it.
I met him on the public beach where, every morning, he sat under the same palapa. The place was as full of silence and loneliness as he was. They were both a little neglected. The pier was history, as was the sunken boat that had become an artificial reef. I would run to the water’s edge. I liked to feel the soft, white sand, the water bathing my feet, the sound of my steps, the brilliance of the sun on the waves, the ducks on the pier. Surely, his mornings were not as sunny as mine were. Every minute things would change. Time passed for me, but not for him. He was caught in the same moment, trying to put it into words as a way to explain it. He wanted to understand. His presence moved me but I didn’t turn around so as not to make him uncomfortable. I treated him the same way I did the pier, the boat, those ducks; not making a sound so they wouldn’t fly away. At that time, I didn’t even know he was a writer. I found out later, when I met him at a seminar and then it was necessary to exchange smiles of recognition. I don’t know if I am timid or prudent, but on the beach I kept ignoring him.
I learned his story later on. A couple of years later maybe, when he no longer came to the beach. When he finally had it captured on paper and had begun to let himself go from it.

We both frequented the writer’s association. Once in a while we exchanged words. We never mentioned the moments on the beach. It seemed like an intimacy we didn’t want out in the open, but shared in silence. One day, at a special presentation, he let his work be shown. I read it and it seemed like it was my own. From that day on, my mornings at the beach were always the same. I witnessed the story everyday. I now, tried to explain to myself what it was that had hurt him so. Nothing was totally clear to me, for he hid the most important. He didn’t mention his relationship with her, nor the love he was feeling; only that he had seen her. Not the pain of her death either but he had felt it. The years he spent in jail, unjustly, didn’t seem to matter, even now, sixteen years later, he didn't mention them. I found all this out from someone who knew him. He had loved her so much that when she had ceased to exist, his world had stopped. I think that only recently has his watch begun to mark the time. After having completed a sentence that shouldn’t have been his, when he had stopped covering up his face under that character named Capurro. Now, that he has been able to tell, in first person, how he possessed this deaf girl, how they had loved each other. Now that he has freed himself from I-don’t-know-what guilt.


So I had to read the story once again, that he had rewritten, and my time at the beach has begun to elapse. The sun has returned to shine on the ocean, the ducks lounge about what was once the pier. The artificial reef no longer brings to mind the memory of the deaf girl, of the passionate nights that she and Juan Carlos spent on the beach, her unexplainable death, and the sentence he had done, he who didn’t bother to declare his innocence. All this has been left on the paper keeping the scene open to the happy ending it deserves.





THE MONSOON

Leaning against the railing of the stairs, he dominated the ambience of the “boite de nuit”. Alfredo was one of those men who distinguished himself from the rest. His physical appearance was the perfect front for his personality and that is how she saw him, sending meaningful looks at two or three girls at a time.
Lucrecia knew it; she had always known it. That is how she had seen him the first time and every other time she had gone to the “boit de nuit” she had found him always dressed the same, a loose black shirt strategically unbuttoned to his navel and perfect-fitting jeans.
On their way to the ladies room they had unavoidably run into him, those girls he had been giving the eye to. Alfredo whispered to one what before he had said with his eyes. And, with the same spontaneity, repeated to the next girls, leaving them reeking for the rest of night, of the fragrance of his cologne. Lucrecia had once been one of the fortunate ladies. Her friend had too. They both had received sporadic phone calls from Alfredo. But she had never really given them much importance. Maybe because she knew a side of him that, doubtless, she didn’t much like, or maybe because they saw so little of each other that it was easy to forget about him.
He had left for unknown parts. She didn’t know about that because they didn’t frequent the same places. She kept herself on the edges of that mundane lifestyle, submerging herself in a fantasy world in which she watched the sea and dreamt of the monsoon.
It was precisely at that moment when everything fell into place.
Alfredo, on the other side of the world, in a hammock, was feeling the relief brought by that very same wind of her dreams. He looked at the stars, hardly believing that some one from his small town imagined his experience in that jungle. Lucrecia’s “Onirico Monsoon” intoxicated him. It made him reflect and meditate, in his own way, while contentedly he searched for treasure in the weighty heat of those islands.
Lucrecia nourished her spirit with challenges that were a little less tangible. In her delirium she lived through inconceivable experiences and situations, but rarely could she make them come true.

I don’t really remember when it was that they met again. Things happened in such a way that Alfredo had to leave that place. On his arrival somewhere in the small town, he must have run into Lucrecia and told her about his experience. She wanted to know more. He promised to call her the next day, she agreed even though she knew better than he did, he wouldn’t.
One day, for no apparent reason, the monsoon moved her hand to pick up the phone and call him. Alfredo, on the other end of the line, must have felt something like nostalgia when he heard that wind through the receiver and he watched himself impelled, for the first time, to ask out that woman he knew didn’t belong to him.
The date began with a short summary of some of their experiences. Hours passed, and days, prisoners of a magic spell that made them laugh, talk on endlessly, not eating, breathing or touching each other. They didn’t mention their differences and this re-enforced, even more, the effect of the drug that kept them together for almost six days. Lucrecia felt it. He did too, but it didn’t matter. They walked, together, down a dark, uncertain alley.
Everything she had disliked about him before vanished with the secret of the jungle, the war, the dream. The other Alfredo, the one from the “boite de nuit” was left in a trunk full of memories. Lucrecia was conscious of his being there but she didn’t want to take him out. She was aware also of being at the entrance to a labyrinth from which, possibly, there was no way out. He didn’t think about it, or rather, he preferred to forget about his real world and just enjoy.
Nonetheless, there came the moment, unbeknownst to them, when the spell was broken. Alfredo disappeared and little voices sang to Lucrecia of his misadventures.
She already knew all about that part of him and she kept that knowledge in the same trunk, but it insisted on opening up the lid and showing itself again and again so she could recognize it. I don’t know how much time went by. Alfredo didn’t call or go to see her. She accepted the endless absence and waited for life to change again, as it will.


Alfredo also felt that the time that had passed was immense. Carmen hugged him and kissed him, still a prisoner of the excitement of his homecoming. He only thought about Lucrecia, her smile, and so many things. Carmen didn’t notice. She took advantage of his sulleness to induce him into intimacy, something that he couldn’t resist. Lucrecia knew the reason for his absence, she knew about Alfredo’s fear of facing reality. The town was very small and ideas flew about in the air. Everyone, at one time or another, passes through public places and leaves the wind redolent with thoughts and notions; nobody ever stops to collect them. Most people don’t even know they exist. Lucrecia did. And without meaning to, she dreamt again of The Monsoon. This attracted, once again, the presence of Alfredo who, while embraced by Carmen, his look of surprise came across Lucrecia’s eyes. It was for just an instant because upon seeing Carmen, she had forgotten the dream. Then The Monsoon and the image of Alfredo vanished with lightning speed.
He felt it was time to call her. He wanted to explain something that didn’t need explaining. When Carmen let down her guard for a moment, he snuck to the phone, like when he was a kid trying to hide any mischief he was making from his mother. But it was useless. He couldn’t get a hold of her.
Lucrecia began to think. Prisoner of another terrible dream, she imagined what life would be like in a far off place with Alfredo by her side. She barely knew him. That was what was interesting. She thought about a kidnapping. She felt enamored with the risk. She asked herself if; once faraway, would he want to return? Greater than just the excitement of love, the adventure moved within her. He wouldn’t be able to get away because of Carmen, because of his work and for so many of the other reasons that tie men down like the fear of losing what they own. For that very reason she chose kidnapping. That way the responsibility would fall on her shoulders and he would be free of that absurd life that bored him so.
Immersing herself in that scheme, she calmly planned everything. She made a trip to what would be the final destination, she rented a house on the beach, and she arranged to move her life, her things, her dreams. In any case, if Alfredo, away from everything, decided to go back, she would begin a new dream in those faraway islands. If he stayed, this still wouldn’t be where they spent the rest of their lives. They were both birds, and when the time came they would resume their flight.
Alfredo went to the bar as usual. His extroverted personality kept him from being alone. He always found someone new to talk to. The man he came across that day spoke to him of some interesting business deals and he got excited about the ideas. This happened all the time, although almost nothing ever came from them. “The most important thing is to achieve” Alfredo used to say. “If you’re interested come to my place and I will tell you more about the project” replied Lucrecia’s accomplice.
Alfredo who was always hungry for new experiences and who easily built castles in the air, went to the meeting the next day. The conversation began with small talk, while the cook served the food that would be transported to an unknown island.
The conversation, the wine, the food, all of these brought on drowsiness from which there was no escape. There, sitting on a couch in the living room drinking coffee, his eyelids shut and he began to dream again about the search for treasure.
They took off in an unfamiliar vehicle and along the way saw battle, trenches, jungle, metal trailers, short men with large eyes, while Carmen, now a long way away, read a typewritten letter that said:

Carmen,
One of my business deals didn’t go as planned, things got complicated and I had to get away. I don’t know for how long. They might find me. I don’t know when I’ll be back. Don’t wait for me. Hopefully is will all work out for the best and I’ll be back in your arms in no time. Don’t call the police or try to find out where I am. That would only make things worse…

Carmen didn’t finish reading it. Angrily she ripped up the letter. Alfredo was always full of surprises. That is why Carmen never suspected that it wasn’t he who had written.

Lucrecia many miles away, in the thick heat of the islands, was rocking in a hammock filled with salty smelling herbs, watching the stars, waiting for The Monsoon to awaken Alfredo and decide the new course of that dream.





THE WOMAN OF THE ROSE

What really made me jealous was that maroon evidence on his skin. No doubt, the sun had been caressing him. He came back from his lonely walk through the beach with his face lighted with a lascivious tint. I repeated to my self: “it’s just the sun”, but my inner voice was not at all convincing. The apparently absurd jealousy was consuming me and faking cordiality, I smiled while I tried to understand the reason for my feeling.
It came to my mind the first and last time we were together on that same beach. Any one who might have seen us from a distance, couldn’t have distinguished his body from mine. It was that same day when our kisses changed from short to long, from affectionate to passionate. It was that day when the sun painted my white feelings an intense red. He took me into the sea, walking slowly. The water kept us together, forgetting gravity. The waves moved our hands through our bodies with a drowsy rhythm.
Now his copper skin made me think he had been enjoying some similar moments with out me. Some times, when he went alone, I thought of following him, to hide myself behind the palm trees and observe him. To be sure his body received no other warmth but the sun’s and that his sensual aspect was nothing but a product of my increased imagination. I did not want to confirm my suspicion; I wanted to trust him. That is the reason I never followed him. Not even that day when I passed by without knowing he was there. I saw his clothes, and not thinking, I quickly came closer, left there a rose I had with me, and ran away.
Later I repented; he might feel his intimacy violated. I wanted to go back, and pick up the rose, but it was too late. “Hopefully he will not know it was me”, but then I felt jealous imagining he might dream about that unknown lady who courted him.
He never mentioned the rose. He began to perform his ritual more and more often. His brave aspect, his tanned skin, and that sexy air which surrounded his arrivals bothered me more than ever. Why did he go there? Why always alone? I wished so much we could repeat that day we shared. Maybe he wanted to meet alone the woman of the rose. To repeat with her those caresses in the waves. To let then the sun burn their bodies. I laid myself under the sun so that he could feel my ardent skin and watch over me jealously. But he never said a word. He came back each time more oppressed. Distant.
Invaded by the envy I felt for that sensual image of the woman of the rose, when I was getting crazy thinking about the erotic stories of that solitary beach, I went to look for him. I hid behind a palm tree to get closer, but I didn’t see him. Then I imagined some hands surrounding my body and a warm chest on my back pressing me against the palm and saying, “It is you the woman of the rose I’ve been waiting for ”. Just dreams. My imagination again. I saw him approach. He was alone. He also looked oppressed. I kept on watching for some minutes and then I left with the certainty that nobody was with him. Not much long after, he described to me his tribulation, consequence of his irrational acts. A gray woman, who he would have liked to erase from his life, molded in her inside a part of him. I am still by his side. But the woman of the rose is withered.





3D

The walls were no more obstacles. I traspassed them once and again to go from the room to the office from a third floor to a park. Not even the speed of the train stopped me from crossing, neither to be inside.
The furniture, the lamps, nothing was solid. Even though I extend my hand to touch what went trough my way, I couldn’t. It seemed an illusion. My condition began to make me dizzy. There were moments in which my eyes (only contact with that reality) focussed the images, like when I was a child who played with my grandma’s glasses. To these followed the nausea.
I closed my eyes for a while, but my curiosity of experience the unknown mad me opened them again.
Like that the brief images came back, while I traveled from one place to another. I liked the power of being close to people without them noticing my presence, hearing their conversation. I would have liked to enjoy it more, but this stubborned dizziness spoiled everything.
Finally, it came the moment I was so anxiously waiting for. In the gigantic screen, of nearly 20 Mts. height, the titles parade from upside to downside. The lights were turned on, and I could take of the hindrancing mask to leave that steep hall.





CAROM

There, in Ixtupil Street, is the billiard. People inside are weird. They have all come to town from far away each with a different story.
Men go there every day, to kill their idleness in a Carom. But just the way they arrive, they go away, almost always with the empty hands, having sown no seed to make a new tree grow in town.
The friendship that this game provokes is intense like the alcohol that waters them, but these last less than its effects. Every day a new brother arrives with whom to share the sorrow, loneliness, family longing, lost traditions. And all that, which is forgotten when the attacked ball touches the other two.
Mario was another ball at the billiard. He had a locksmith’s shop contiguous and every afternoon, he closed his door to open the one aside. Some times by himself, other times with some friends. That pleased German. The bills were so high that he ended up paying his debts with duplicates.
German came, as many others, running away from a collapsed home. His father almost never appears at his house and his mother attended a small stand in other to earn her life. Once in a while, he appeared, and gave them a good whip for not getting enough money. He took the few pesos German’s mother had and as he crossed the threshold, he drank directly from the bottle. Grandma used to say that German was like his mother, very industrious. Never the less, his glance remembered her Grandpa, he had that same killer look which once lead his ancestor to die trapped by the steel of a faraway prison.
-You inherited that- she said. And when the mother heard those words, she hit him saying: “Don’t you dear, you poor wretch to be like your grandpa, because before you do something wrong, I kill you”. At first German didn’t understood what was going on but as time passed by he began to absorb the story. So much the Grandma said it and his mother whipped him, that he ended up believing the story. He began feeling in his own flesh that killer desire, but had no guts to make it true. He just lucked himself up in a pigpen to betray his mother, by thinking with his inherited mind how to kill each and every inhabitant of that damned town, beginning by the two women who so much bothered him.

Mario closed the locksmith’s shop at five. He was the first to arrive at the billiard and he used to leave very early in the morning, when the place was already empty. In his loneliness, German and him played the “lets see whom first…”
-Let us see who first puts the yellow ball inside…
-Let us see who first does three caroms…
But from time to time the play was extended to other concepts.
-Let us see who first kisses “La Juanita”
Juanita was the daughter of a military man who lived in front the billiard. The father used to leave his house around noon and to come back at dawn, when Juanita had already left. The game of “Let’s see who first kisses her” lasted more than one afternoon; indeed some weeks passed by. Even though they saluted when she passed by, they invited her out, followed her whispering things, they never even got a smile.
-This matter of Juanita is a matter of honor- they said while drinking.
-This is the first “Let’s see who first…”that has no winner. This can’t stay like this.
One night, in the billiard’s dimness, Mario and German farewell reason. Not to drown on the brandy, they delayed themselves on the ice cubes and floating, they told each other their intimacies.
-My grand father the General walked around the mounts killing people, confessed German. I have in my soul written all his homicide strategies.
-Don’t tell me- said Mario making fun. Since when are you so macho?
-If you don’t believe me, ask my grandma.
-You better prove it by playing “Let us see who first”.
-Whom you want me to kill? -Asked German, while by the window the sun began to rise and with it the house in front opened to let Juanita out.
It was not necessary to plan the move. German had the strategy in his blood. The only thing he needed was guts. That, the brandy will provide. Mario was so drunk that did not even thought he needed a weapon; he went away with the bottle in his hand, decided to get inside the neighboring house. Then he will just have to wait for Juanita to come back. German went back to prepare the action. During the day, he saw no more Mario. He dedicate himself to what he had in mind, accompanied with his inseparable bottle. Mario just looked up his master key, which allowed him in Juanita’s house, where he stayed hidden until he finished this bottle. Then he wandered in the kitchen looking for something and back to his hiding place. Some hours went by. When the moment in which Juanita was about to arrive, he lost the idea of time and went out quickly to find another bottle. Juanita was walking back home just when it was beginning to get dark. She didn’t notice a car following her. She walked slowly crossing streets, while the driver who perfectly knew where she was going spied her on ever corner. Two blocks were missing, the most empty and dark ones. Juanita hurried to cross the next to the last.
Suddenly she felt cold the blood that circulates his body, as she saw a zigzag shadow. German following her route waited at the steering wheel the moment when she will appear in the corner to cross. When he saw her coming, he stepped in the pedal to accelerate. In that same street where Juanita was but in the opposite sense she was walking, came out from the in front corner Mario, who couldn’t keep his walk straight to cross, and a big truck who would have passed him if it wouldn’t have coincide in that dark crossroads with German, Mario and Juanita.


Carom: Style of the Billiards game. A point is scored by caroming the cue ball from one object ball to another.





CHILDHOOD DREAM

Even though far away, I felt it coming so speedily that it put up a twister compounded by fear particles, which my body absorbed quickly. It was a multiform mass, which molded with the energy, transforming in any abominable specter that my mind could create. I saw it every time closer, ands time passed by it took possession of me. Fear I called the hurricane that had in itself a liquid of dread and as it turned it became denser. It flooded my grandmother’s garden, that of chachalacas. The ivy, sheath of the four walls let fall a leaf which began going around in the center of the whirlpool, now slowly, a cause of the heavy consistence. I sited on top, damped of this same liquid paralyzing me and menacing with swallowing me completely, continued that endless circular movement with a despairing slowness and no possibilities to escape.
The night came and the mass turned darkness. Its multiform appearance began to pursue me. I couldn’t open my eyes, nor see the road. Even though I made an effort I couldn’t cry. I felt its wet claws scraping my ankles. I tried to escape but I couldn’t see. I couldn’t see anything. So it didn’t took long before it reached me. It entered myself, becoming the lord and master of my imagination, materializing every monster it created while I was hiding, always with my eyes opened big, with the ears alert to every sound, every movement. But that which scares me so much was inside my body. In order to take it out, I had to open. I couldn’t think of other way, so feeling my way I walked to the kitchen. I felt the steps appear and disappear, the walls interposing, the furniture hitting my shins. Finally I arrived. I opened almost all the drawers. Then I found the knife. Once I had it on my hand, without thinking about it, I stabbed myself in order to kill what was inside. I fell to the floor commotioned. If the dripping sweat wouldn’t have waken me up of that terrible nightmare, I would have died there, bleeding in the kitchen’s floor.





FAREWELL

We reached the peak. His so chapped hands stained with red the suit. The face had been devoured by the wind. Never the less he seemed painless. Muted, we observed from the top of the world. Shared the experience of the realization, astound on the divine creation, engrossed on the infinite. After having conquered that peak, he would have no higher hills to climb. My eyes will stay there, lonely, as the only witness of that magic zone. I began to feel pain. Not like the one of his wounds which bleeded. Not like the one of his feet ulcerated and numbed. Mine was an empty pain, which sharpen with the descending. I saw far away his city. Foul. Noisy. A place were I don’t belong. In the foothill, while he decided to turn back and leave, he observed me with affection. Sadly. I felt the emptiness brought by the farewell. He thanked my companion. I extended my wings and surpassing the sun’s fall. I flied again to the peak. He understood the sound I send as a goodbye, and whispered. Who could be you, eagle, with no frontiers but the sky’s.





THE DAUGHTER

The disgrace, which surrounded her, was a big contrast to her personality. Like a heron, she walked crafty through the hallway of the pesty hospital. That uniform, mirror of her insides, was impervious to the disgrace where she was submerged. Her life, one more story of all those which elapsed there, inside, with no more care than the one of those who wandered in the swamp.
It is said that there I not a love as big as a mother’s. I would say that there is not a love so big, as that of a woman, who loves like a mother without being.
Even before Dorita was born, her mother had already taken the decision of abandon her. That idea was reinforced at her birth, when it was detected her possible mind illness.
The nurse took the child in her arms, and felt her owner of all the care her frustrated years had accumulated.
So began Dorita’s life, showered by the love she daily poured on her. Her physical appearance was the reflection of the hatred her mother had felt for her, and the repulsion of all those who looked at her contrasted by the whiteness of she who adopted her.
On her first years, the illness diagnosed was not so obvious. But as she stopped being a baby, her normality began to disappear. At the same time she learned to walk, with every step, her physical appearance impaired. To all these changes the nurse seemed blind. Her love was so intense, that enabled her to see the each day more miserable destiny of the child.
Dorita was beginning to realize many things. Even though she didn’t count on a developed intelligence, her sensitivity was ( a flor de piel ) . She perceived people’s rejection. Also the beauty of the arms who lull her. Instead of absorbing all that care, she accumulated obscure sentiments that people deposited on her. These fed her horrible image, creating a vicious circle that went round and round each time faster in the hate.
One of those rainy afternoons, the nurse carelessly left a bottle of acid and in an accident occurred by the dullness of Dorita, she burned her arm. Since then, the girl kept on staring the scald identifying herself with the disgusting aspect.
Another rainy afternoon came. The girl, invaded for a sentiment of love, needed to identity herself with that woman. Be a part of her. In a glare of her poor intelligence, she looked for the acid’s bottle and poured it over the nurse’s head while she was sleeping. It was then, she felt her as her mother.





VERNON

Since the day I was sent by the police to solve the murder, the house caused me a commotion. Its imposing view of the sea, never has been for me a pleasant one. Not even in these first days of marriage, when Alejandro has tried to make my life agreeable, I have feel tranquility. How can he be serene?
Each window produces me vertigo. I can’t forget her, stubburned to her husband, to mine, more than to her own life. When I think of that (that he is my husband), it is only then that I smile. Not happily, but incredulous to such an aberration. I don’t know how my romance began. Neither how he, with all that he has being through, has the spirit to court a third one. I disown how he managed to do make me fall in love. But here I am, walking in the beach hold by Alejandro Vernon. Behind, lies the story that began that rainy afternoon when I was waiting my partner.
I began to leaf the newspaper. Normally I never do it. It seems to me that the news brings in their black ink energy of the same color that stays in my hands. I would have never imagined that the next time I would hear from Laura, an old friend from highschool, would be from that note, wording her dead. The note was clear; the widower was one of those millionaires who appear in every newspaper; she Mrs. Vernon, had been killed.
Astonished, I commented the story to my partner, who answered amazed that the department had assigned the investigation of that case to us. Before one week, I was already working at the scene of the crime as part of the service staff.
I don’t believe in things happening by accident, but I can’t find a better way to describe this. In the kitchen were solved all the mysteries. So I used to spend most of my time there. I heard the cleaning ladies, the children, even the walls spoke. I didn’t thought it would take me such a short time to discover the facts. First I heard that the day Laura was killed, everybody was at the beach. It was very hot and she used to say she suffered a tropical illness that enabled her to share with her children their recreational time outdoors. When everybody came back, they found the corps with the face destroyed and a puddle of blood about the head.
A woman called Isabel was working at the house. Tall and distinguished, she meant to be Mr. Vernon’s assistant. She lived in a small cabana on the garden. Since the first day I noticed their relationship. Even though they seemed distant Alejandro Vernon seemed really affected by his wife’s dead. When I met Isabel, I though she might have killed Laura, but even if that was true, I needed evidence.

Looking for something in the office library I heard the door creak. Isabel was astonished when she saw me, and angrily she asked me to leave the room, locking the door.
In the dressing room I now occupy, are the duplicates of all the locks. I kept in my pocket the one I needed and days after; I went back to the office. My partner waited outside of the house. I had to force some drawers. It jumped to my sight an envelope dropped of dark brown, inside, a tame of the interne TV circuit and other papers where as well stained. Once again the door creaked. My legs were moving unwillingly. Isabel’s eyes came out of their orbits. Like an avalanche she tried to reach me. I don’t know who felt fierier. The nerves made me shy away and stumble with some furniture. The wood, the ornaments and my body caused thunderous noise, as they made contact in the floor. This warned the whole house. Something was going on inside that room. Alejandro entered the scene followed by my partner from the police.
Isabel was arrested while they made the investigation. For my surprise things were not the way I thought. The letter I discovered, Laura sent it to someone just before she died. After that, the mail brought it back because of some mistake in the address. Laura had left in print, how she hated Isabel and her plan to commit suicide and make everything look as if she was responsible.

The afternoon disappears letting the night come in. The house is mute. The laughs have not come back from the beach. Laura provokes Isabel’s fury. The camera of the interne circuit is carefully watching. They begin struggling. Laura takes Isabel out of the mechanic witness, takes the letter opener she had stole from her, and there, in front of her, she stabs herself. With the strength given by her achievement she returns to record the last instant of her life. Even though I never saw Laura’s body showered in blood. She appears to me in the bibliotheque, the dining room and the bathroom. To the room where she died I have never gone back since the day I found the evidence. While I live in this house, I will always imagine her here, besides this bed which is now mine, but was hers.





WILD FANCY AFTERNOON

In intent to feel the moon, as the fellows used to way, Marina dared to try it. She just had to close the eyes and imagine. The first time incredulous with certain moderation she was beginning to integrate to the group. Afterwards, as Ada said, she loosens her hair. Now she realized that after having tried it a couple of times, she managed, as the others did, without any effort, to feel the moon, bigger than ever, the stars, and a great number of characters situations and facts, that she never thought56 could appear in her mind. Everything, inside that cube of concrete. She not only saw things, but great deals of feelings also were produced inside her being. Once you are in, if you like it, you’ll never leave it they said to her. And so it was. What began as something of once a week, turned up as part of her life. The fellows, each afternoon shared their fantasies feelings and visions. Sometimes they were specters, deformed realities, dragons, altered lizards. Others, were flimsy daybreaks, quiet meadows, leaking fowls. So she arrived to be another addict, who submerged in the horror, imagination, metaphor and tale, participated every afternoon on the literary workshop.

Desnudo (traducción francés e inglés)

DESNUDO

Tan fría que de blanco pinta la luna mi cuerpo. Tan desnuda que a pesar de la escasa luz que me escurre de la ventana, se ve mi alma. El pintor también exhibe su cuerpo. Lo hace por solidaridad. Día tras día, estoy aquí, por horas enteras descubierta, inmóvil. No es fácil. Su profesión quisiera ser más generosa. Quitarme el hambre. Pero no puede. Después de todo, no lo hago por dinero. De haber sido así estaría en otro sitio. Más cubierta. Fingiendo una sonrisa. El verdadero placer me esboza cada vez más los huesos. Sin embargo no lo siento. Su arte observa todo centímetro de mi piel sedando la miseria. Mis sentimientos empiezan a hervir. Un pincel mojado de color claro roza mi cuerpo en un lienzo. Suave , húmedo , el óleo imprime no mi solitaria figura , sino una nueva , diferente , que penetra por sus ojos y expele con ardor un trazo único dónde nazco nuevamente . Así me acaricia el cuello, el hombro. La melena de su brocha baja por la cintura. Comienzo a temblar. Su razón lo hace pensar en el invierno. Deja su tarea y acerca a mis labios de sol, una perfumada taza. Sólo un trago. Con la cabeza niego el segundo. Quiero que continúe. Mi carne parece un hielo. Sigo ahí petrificada. El pintor me suelta el pelo. Lo desliza suavemente por mi espalda. Intenta cubrirme. Regresa y continúa quemándome con retoques. Se detiene muy abajo de la cintura. Lo hace más despacio. Alternando el negro y el carne. Tiemblo más fuerte. Pero él, extasiado ya no se entera. Chorrea de luz los muslos. El ayuno y el deseo se unen y me traicionan. Me desplomo como un mármol pesado. Sus manos de hielo son ahora las que tiemblan. Se funden en las brazas de mi cuerpo que yace en el suelo hecho pedazos. Ya sólo existo en el lienzo. Sin frío. Sin hambre. Como una ninfa que observa siempre al artista desnudo.



NUE

Si froid que mon corps est gelé à blanc par la lune.Si nue qu’ en dépit de la lumière faible qui se repand par la fenêtre sur moi, mon âme est douloureusement exposée.
L’ artiste aussi dévoile son corps.Il le fait par solidarité.
Jour après jour,durant des heures je suis ici, nue, immobile.Ce n’est pas facile.
Sa profession devrait être plus généreuse.
Elle devrait me délivrer de ma faim, mais elle ne le peut pas.Après tout, je ne le fais pas pour l’argent.Autrement je serais ailleurs.Plus couverte. Maquillant un sourire.Faux bonheur.
Le vrai plaisir fait saillir mes os de plus en plus, mais je ne le sent pas.
Son art observe chaque centimètre de ma peau, apaisant la misère. Mes pensées commencent à bouillir.
Un pinceau trempé d’une couleur lumineuse touche mon corps, doucement sur une toile.
Douce et humide, la peinture n’inprime pas mon apparence solitaire mais une autre forme nouvelle, différente, qui penètre et par laquelle je renais.
Ainsi il caresse mon cou, mes épaules, les poils soyeux du pinceau descendent vers ma taille.
Je commence à trembler. Son ésprit le fait penser en hiver.
Il arrete son travail et apporte une coupe parfumée à mes levres de soleil . Une seule gorgée.D’un mouvement de tête, je rejete la deuxième. Je veux qu’il continue.
Ma chaire est glacée. Je suis toujours là, médusée.
L’ artiste libère mes cheveux. Il les laisse tomber doucement sur mon dos. Il essaye de me couvrir.
Il retourne et continue à me bruler de ses pinceaux. Il s’arrete au bas de ma taille. Il la contourne doucement, alternant les tons noir et chair. Je tremble plus fort. Mais lui, ravi par l’extase ne le remarque plus.
Il enpourpre les cuisses de lumière. Ma faim et mon désir se fondent et me trahissent. Je m’écroule comme un bloc de marbre. Ses mains de glace tremblent maintenant. Elles se confondent dans les cendres brulents de mon corps qui gît sur le sol.
Maintenant j’existe seulement sur la toile…liberée du froid….liberée de la faim…
Comme une nymphe qui regarde éternellement l’artiste nu.



NUDE

So cold that my body is frosted white by the moon. So nude that in spite of the scarce light that flows over me from the window, my soul is painfully exposed. The artist also shows his body. He does it for the sake of solidarity. Day after day, for hours on end I am here, nude, still. It is not easy. His profession would like to be more generous. To take away my hunger, but cannot. After all, I do not do it for money. Otherwise, I would be somewhere else. More covered. Faking a smile. False happiness. The true pleasure makes my bones stick out farther and farther, but I do not feel it. His art watches every centimeter of my skin, soothing the misery. My thoughts begin to boil. A wet light-colored paintbrush touches my body lightly on a canvas. Soft and wet, the oil paint imprints not my solitary figure, but a new one, different, which penetrates through which I am born again. Thus, he caresses my neck, my shoulders, the bristles of his brush comes down through the waist. I begin to shiver. His mind makes him think in winter. He stops his work and brings a perfumed cup to my lips of sun. Only a sip. With my head I reject the second one. I want him to go on. My flesh feels like ice. I am still there, petrified. The artist loosens my hair. He slips it softly down my back. He tries to cover me up. He goes back and continues to burn me with his brush strokes. He stops down below my waist. He does it slowly, alternating the black and the flesh tones. I shiver more strongly. But he, enraptured in ecstasy, no longer notices. He flushes the thighs with light. My hunger and my desire meld and betray me. I collapse like a block of marble. His icy hands are now shivering. They melt in the burning ashes of my body that lies in pieces on the floor. I now only exist on the canvas. . . free of cold. . . free of hunger… Like a nymph staring endlessly at the nude artist.

Las Vegas (traducción frances e inglés)

LAS VEGAS

Las asentaderas flácidas se levantaron del ya tibio banco metálico en que se desbordaban. La maloliente boca contaba con resignación diez fichas. Una de ellas debía tener la suerte de multiplicarse. Seis para la comida y cuatro para el día siguiente. Había sobrevivido un día más.
Dormía una repetitiva angustia. No pedía más que un plato de comida diario y poder reincorporarse al mismo sitio. Los secos párpados se cerraban por escasas cinco horas y regresaba día tras día, como las manecillas del reloj atrapadas en un círculo vicioso, con la congoja de que un día no pudiera continuar.
Esa era otra de tantas mañanas.
El mismo asiento pequeño. La mente vacía nunca se había detenido a pensar en lo incómodo que le resultaba. La regordeta blanca mano dejó el cigarro para regresar a fundirse con la palanca. Las figuras idénticas aparecieron alineadas en la máquina. Los ojos cansados recuperaron la energía perdida. El glorioso ruido del metal que se golpeaba pareció durar tanto como el tiempo que llevaba deseando ese momento. La ambición se apoderó del escurrido pecho y decidió dirigir sus hinchados pies a una mesa elegante. Black Jack.Las fichas se desbordaban de la mesa queriendo abarcar tan solo el número de su suerte. La amorfa panza sufrió un espasmo al ver duplicada la cantidad. La curvada espalda se quiso pasar sobre la mesa para alcanzar su fortuna. Los brazos varicosos sintieron un dolor que continuó por el hombro hasta el pecho. Cayó de un golpe la pesada cabeza, desparramando su asquerosa melena en aquella elegante mesa. Miles de cuerpos con desorbitados ojos se acercaron. Con un final feliz, su pesadilla había terminado.





LAS VEGAS

Les fesses molles qui regorgeaient de la petite chaise métalique deja chaude se relevèrent.
La bouche malodorante etait en train de compter avec résignation dix jetons. Un d’entre euex devait bien être « le chanceux » , celui qui se multiplirait.
Six pour la nouriture et quatre pour le landemain. Ayant survécut encore un jour à un someil angoissé, il ne demmandait rien de plus qu’un repas quotidien et pouvoir revenir à la même place. Les paupières sechées se fermeraient à paine pour cinq heures avant qu’il y retourne, jour après jour, comme les aiguilles d’une horloge piègée dans un circuit inférnal, avec la peur de ne plus pouvoir continuer.
C’etait un de ces nombreux matins . La même chaise exigue. L’esprit vide n’avait jamais arrêté de se dire qu’elle était très inconfortable.
La main blanche et dodue abandonna la cigarette pour revenir se coller au levier.
Des images identiques apparurent allignées dans la machine. Les yeux fatigués retrouverent leur énergie perdue . Le tintement glorieux du metal parut durer aussi longtemps que l’attente passée à espérer cet instant.
L’ambition s’empara de l’étroite poitrine et décida de conduire les jambes defaillantes à une table plus élégante. Black Jack.
Les jetons inondairent la table avec la volonté de « soumettre » le numero gagnant.
Le ventre informe fut secoué par un spasme en voyant la mise doublée. Le dos arrondis voulut atteindre sa fortune en se panchant sur la table. Le bras variqueux sentit la douleur qui fusilla sa poitrine à travers l’epaule.
La tête lourde tomba avec un bruit sourd, éparpillant ses cheveux sales sur la table élégante.
Des milliers de corps aux yeux exorbités s’approcherent……
Une « fin heureuse » avait arreté un tel cauchemar.




LAS VEGAS

The flabby buttocks got up from the already warm metal stool, on which they overflowed. The fetid smelling mouth was counting, with resignation, ten chips. One of them should be the lucky one to multiply. Six for the food and four for the next day. Having survived one day more while sleeping in repeatedly anguish, only asking for a daily meal and to be able to go back to the same place. The dried eyelids would close scarcely for five hours before going back day after day, like the hands of a clock trapped in a vicious circle, with the anxiety that one day they would not be able to continue. That was another of many mornings.
The same small seat. The empty mind had never stopped to think how uncomfortable it was. The plump white hand left the cigarette to go back to meld with the lever. Identical figures appeared aligned in the machine. The tired eyes got back their lost energy. The glorious sound of the metal seemed to last as long as the time he had been wishing for that moment. Ambition got hold of the narrow chest and decided to lead the swollen feet to a more elegant table. Black Jack. The chips were overflowing the table wanting only to undertake the lucky number. The shapeless belly suffered a spasm while seeing the amount doubled. The curved back wanted to go over the table to reach for its fortune. The varicose arms felt a pain that shot through the shoulder to the chest. The heavy head fell with a single thump, spreading its filthy hair on that elegant table. Thousands of bodies with popping eyes approached. With a happy ending, such nightmare had ended.