Silvina Ocampo: El retrato mal hecho

A los chicos les debía de gustar sentarse sobre las amplias faldas de Eponina porque tenía vestidos como sillones de brazos redondos. Pero Eponina, encerrada en las aguas negras de su vestido de moiré, era lejana y misteriosa; una mitad del rostro se le había borrado pero conservaba movimientos sobrios de estatua en miniatura. Raras veces los chicos se le habían sentado sobre las faldas, por culpa de la desaparición de las rodillas y de los brazos que con frecuencia involuntaria dejaba caer.

Detestaba los chicos, había detestado a sus hijos uno por uno a medida que iban naciendo, como ladrones de su adolescencia que nadie lleva presos, a no ser los brazos que los hacen dormir. Los brazos de Ana, la sirvienta, eran como cunas para sus hijos traviesos.

La vida era un larguísimo cansancio de descansar demasiado; la vida era muchas señoras que conversan sin oírse en las salas de las casas donde de tarde en tarde se espera una fiesta como un alivio. Y así, a fuerza de vivir en postura de retrato mal hecho, la impaciencia de Eponina se volvió paciente y comprimida, e idéntica a las rosas de papel que crecen debajo de los fanales.

La mucama la distraía con sus cantos por la mañana, cuando arreglaba los dormitorios. Ana tenía los ojos estirados y dormidos sobre un cuerpo muy despierto, y mantenía una inmovilidad extática de rueditas dentro de su actividad. Era incansablemente la primera que se levantaba y la última que se acostaba. Era ella quien repartía por toda la casa los desayunos y la ropa limpia, la que distribuía las compotas, la que hacía y deshacía las camas, la que servía la mesa.

Fue el 5 de abril de 1890, a la hora del almuerzo; los chicos jugaban en el fondo del jardín; Eponina leía en La Moda Elegante: "Se borda esta tira sobre pana de color bronce obscuro" o bien: "Traje de visita para señora joven, vestido verde mirto", o bien: "punto de cadeneta, punto de espiga, punto anudado, punto lanzado y pasado". Los chicos gritaban en el fondo del jardín. Eponina seguía leyendo: "Las hojas se hacen con seda color de aceituna" o bien: "los enrejados son de color de rosa y azules", o bien: "la flor grande es de color encarnado", o bien: "las venas y los tallos color albaricoque".

Ana no llegaba para servir la mesa; toda la familia, compuesta de tías, maridos, primas en abundancia, la buscaba por todos los rincones de la casa. No quedaba más que el altillo por explorar. Eponina dejó el periódico sobre la mesa, no sabía lo que quería decir albaricoque: "Las venas y los tallos color albaricoque". Subió al altillo y empujó la puerta hasta que cayó el mueble que la atrancaba. Un vuelo de murciélagos ciegos envolvía el techo roto. Entre un amontonamiento de sillas desvencijadas y palanganas viejas, Ana estaba con la cintura suelta de náufraga, sentada sobre el baúl; su delantal, siempre limpio, ahora estaba manchado de sangre. Eponina le tomó la mano, la levantó. Ana, indicando el baúl, contestó al silencio: "Lo he matado".

David Riley: Out of Corruption

So this, I thought on that fine September day less than one year ago, as I drove my car round a bend in the lane and drew up before a pair of wrought-iron gates, is where he lives. Despite the brilliance of the sunshine I could not help feeling somewhat disappointed. For the drab grey building visible beyond seemed to personify for me all that had struck me as wrong about the town I had left only two miles away, before passing through the tree-lined meadows and farms along the lane. The uncurtained windows of the house, however, the leaf-strewn pathway rank with mould and long, bare streaks of clay, all these gave off such an air of desolation that I felt instantly depressed. It was certainly not a place which I would have chosen to visit at any time of the day of my own free will, and certainly not at dusk, when the shadows lengthening all about the estate seemed to intensify its ugliness. Why Poole had decided to buy such a place I could not imagine, and I roundly cursed myself for having so readily agreed to come down here to visit him over the week-end. I only hoped, as I stepped out of my car, that the inside of the house would prove to be of a more hospitable appearance than its. facade.

Its blank, almost senile-looking windows stared down at me as I neared the door and rapped upon it. Soon, though, I found myself ushered deep inside the old house in Poole's redecorated study - a book lined room full of polished wood, paintings and leather armchairs, with a coal fire roaring in an elaborately carved hearth full of ebony cupids and flowers. Poole - tall, thin, with the concealed strength of a mountaineer - was in the best of spirits. My own, in contrast, though relieved to a degree by the signs of redecoration, were overcome by a newer and less easily explainable feeling of abhorrence. There was a certain, indefinable quality about the house which I strongly disliked, and I knew then, without a shadow of a doubt, that, however much Poole might enthuse about it, this initial feeling of mine would not be changed. The more I saw of the house, in fact, as Poole showed me around it, the stronger this abhorrence grew.

Upstairs it was almost derelict, with large, grey, vacuous rooms that echoed their emptiness through fibrous veils of cobwebs and dust. Looking at them I could well imagine this place as:

A house without a living room For dead it was, and called a tomb!

"I don't intend using them much," Poole explained, interrupting my thoughts, "except, perhaps, as store rooms, though I might have two or three done up for guests."

Presently we returned downstairs to the hallway where, at Poole's insistence, we turned off into an arched alcove, within which stood a sturdy wooden door that led to the cellar steps. Lighting a paraffin lamp from a shelf beside it, he unlocked the door and led me down the damp-slicked steps beyond into a tactile darkness that took us into its frigid depths like the waters of a Stygian well.

Clive Barker: The Midnight Meat Train

LEON KAUFMAN WAS no longer new to the city. The Palace of Delights, he’d always called it, in the days of his innocence. But that was when he’d lived in Atlanta, and New York was still a kind of promised land, where anything and everything was possible.Now Kaufman had lived three and a half months in his dream-city, and the Palace of Delights seemed less than delightful.Was it really only a season since he stepped out of Port Authority Bus Station and looked up 42nd Street towards the Broadway intersection? So short a time to lose so many treasured illusions.He was embarrassed now even to think of his naivety. It made him wince to remember how he had stood and announced aloud:‘New York, I love you.’Love? Never.It had been at best an infatuation.And now, after only three months living with his object of adoration, spending his days and nights in her presence, she had lost her aura of perfection.New York was just a city.He had seen her wake in the morning like a slut, and pick murdered men from between her teeth, and suicides from the tangles of her hair. He had seen her late at night, her dirty back streets shamelessly courting depravity. He had watched her in the hot afternoon, sluggish and ugly, indifferent to the atrocities that were being committed every hour in her throttled passages.It was no Palace of Delights.It bred death, not pleasure.Everyone he met had brushed with violence; it was a fact of life. It was almost chic to have known someone who had died a violent death. It was proof of living in that city.But Kaufman had loved New York from afar for almost twenty years. He’d planned his love affair for most of his adult life. It was not easy, therefore, to shake the passion off, as though he had never felt it. There were still times, very early, before the cop-sirens began, or at twilight, when Manhattan was still a miracle.For those moments, and for the sake of his dreams, he still gave her the benefit of the doubt, even when her behaviour was less than ladylike.She didn’t make such forgiveness easy. In the few months that Kaufman had lived in New York her streets had been awash with spilt blood.In fact, it was not so much the streets themselves, but the tunnels beneath those streets.

‘Subway Slaughter’ was the catch-phrase of the month. Only the previous week another three killings had been reported. The bodies had been discovered in one of the subway cars on the AVENUE OF THE AMERICAS, hacked open and partially disembowelled, as though an efficient abattoir operative had been interrupted in his work. The killings were so thoroughly professional that the police were interviewing every man on their records who had some past connection with the butchery trade. The meat-packaging plants on the water-front were being watched, the slaughter-houses scoured for clues. A swift arrest was promised, though none was made.This recent trio of corpses was not the first to be discovered in such a state; the very day that Kaufman had arrived a story had broken in The Times that was still the talk of every morbid secretary in the office.The story went that a German visitor, lost in the subway system late at night, had come across a body in a train. The victim was a well-built, attractive thirty-year-old woman from Brooklyn. She had been completely stripped. Every shred of clothing, every article of jewellery. Even the studs in her ears.More bizarre than the stripping was the neat and systematic way in which the clothes had been folded and placed in individual plastic bags on the seat beside the corpse.This was no irrational slasher at work. This was a highly-organized mind: a lunatic with a strong sense of tidiness.Further, and yet more bizarre than the careful stripping of the corpse, was the outrage that had then been perpe-trated upon it. The reports claimed, though the Police Department failed to confirm this, that the body had been meticulously shaved. Every hair had been removed: from the head, from the groin, from beneath the arms; all cut and scorched back to the flesh. Even the eyebrows and eyelashes had been plucked out.

Edgar Allan Poe: MS. Found in a Bottle

Qui n'a plus qu'un moment a vivre
N'a plus rien a dissimuler.
—Quinault—Atys

OF my country and of my family I have little to say. Ill usage and length of years have driven me from the one, and estranged me from the other. Hereditary wealth afforded me an education of no common order, and a contemplative turn of mind enabled me to methodize the stores which early study very diligently garnered up.—Beyond all things, the study of the German moralists gave me great delight; not from any ill-advised admiration of their eloquent madness, but from the ease with which my habits of rigid thought enabled me to detect their falsities. I have often been reproached with the aridity of my genius; a deficiency of imagination has been imputed to me as a crime; and the Pyrrhonism of my opinions has at all times rendered me notorious. Indeed, a strong relish for physical philosophy has, I fear, tinctured my mind with a very common error of this age—I mean the habit of referring occurrences, even the least susceptible of such reference, to the principles of that science. Upon the whole, no person could be less liable than myself to be led away from the severe precincts of truth by the ignes fatui of superstition. I have thought proper to premise thus much, lest the incredible tale I have to tell should be considered rather the raving of a crude imagination, than the positive experience of a mind to which the reveries of fancy have been a dead letter and a nullity.

After many years spent in foreign travel, I sailed in the year 18—, from the port of Batavia, in the rich and populous island of Java, on a voyage to the Archipelago of the Sunda islands. I went as passenger—having no other inducement than a kind of nervous restlessness which haunted me as a fiend.

Our vessel was a beautiful ship of about four hundred tons, copper-fastened, and built at Bombay of Malabar teak. She was freighted with cotton-wool and oil, from the Lachadive islands. We had also on board coir, jaggeree, ghee, cocoa-nuts, and a few cases of opium. The stowage was clumsily done, and the vessel consequently crank.

Dan Simmons: The River Styx Runs Upstream

What thou lovest well remains
the rest is dross
What thou lov'st well shall not be reft 
from thee
What thou lov'st well is thy
true heritage... 
—Ezra Pound, Canto LXXXI

I loved my mother very much. After her funeral, after the coffin was lowered, thefamily went home and waited for her return.

I was only eight at the time. Of the required ceremony I remember little. I recall thatthe collar of the previous year's shirt was far too tight and that the unaccustomed tiewas like a noose around my neck. I remember that the June day was too beautiful forsuch a solemn gathering. I remember Uncle Will's heavy drinking that morning andthe bottle of Jack Daniels he pulled out as we drove home from the funeral. Iremember my father's face.

The afternoon was too long. I had no role to play in the family's gathering that day, and the adults ignored me. I found myself wandering from room to room with a warm glass of Kool-Aid, until finally I escaped to the backyard. Even that familiar landscape of play and seclusion was ruined by the glimpse of pale, fat faces staring out from the neighbor's windows. They were waiting. Hoping for a glimpse. I felt like shouting, throwing rocks at them. Instead I sat down on the old tractor tire we used as a sandbox.

Very deliberately I poured the red Kool-Aid into the sand and watched the spreading stain digging a small pit.

They're digging her up now.

I ran to the swing set and angrily began to pump my legs against the bare soil. The swing creaked with rust, and one leg of the frame rose out of the ground.

No, they've already done that, stupid. Now they're hooking her up to big machines. Will they pump the blood back into her?

Michael Marshall Smith: To Receive Is Better

I’d like to be going by car, but of course I don’t know how to drive, and it would probably scare the shit out of me. A car would be much better, for lots of reasons. For a start, there’s too many people out here. There’s so many people.

Wherever you turn there’s more of them, looking tired, and rumpled, but whole. That’s the strange thing. Everybody is whole.

A car would also be quicker. Sooner or later they’re going to track me down, and I’ve got somewhere to go before they do. The public transport system sucks, incidentally. Long periods of being crowded into carriages that smell, interspersed with long waits for another line, and I don’t have a lot of time. It’s intimidating too. People stare. They just look and look, and they don’t know the danger they’re in. Because in a minute one of them is going to look just one second too long, and I’m going to pull his fucking face off, which will do neither of us any good.

So instead I turn and look out the window. There’s nothing to see, because we’re in a tunnel, and I have to shut my eye to stop myself from screaming. The carriage is like another tunnel, a tunnel with windows, and I feel like I’ve been buried far too deep. I grew up in tunnels, ones that had no windows. The people who made them didn’t even bother to pretend that there was something to look out on, something to look for. Because there wasn’t. Nothing’s coming up, nothing that isn’t going to involve some fucker coming at you with a knife. So they don’t pretend. I’ll say

that for them, at least: they don’t taunt you with false hopes.

Manny did, in a way, which is why I feel complicated about him. On the one hand, he was the best thing that ever happened to us. But look at it another way, and maybe we’d have been better off without him. I’m being unreasonable. Without Manny, the whole thing would have been worse, thirty years of utter fucking pointlessness. I wouldn’t have known, of course, but I do now: and I’m glad it wasn’t that way. Without Manny I wouldn’t be where I am now. Standing in a subway carriage, running out of time.

People are giving me a wide berth, which I guess isn’t so surprising. Partly it’ll be my face, and my leg. People don’t like that kind of thing. But probably it’s mainly me. I know the way I am, can feel the fury I radiate. It’s not a nice way to be, I know that, but then my life has not been nice. Maybe you should try it, and see how calm you stay.

Félix J. Palma: Confusión macabra

Los lunes, la ciudad tiene un despertar cansado de perra recién parida. Eliseo Barroso siempre asiste al remiso advenimiento del día tenso bajo las mantas, imaginando que su parsimonia se debe a los problemas de la luz para asirse a un mundo que la noche abandonó húmedo, como si la claridad resbalara continuamente de las lentejuelas de rocío derramadas sobre la hierba del jardín. A veces, consume un largo rato contemplando a Verónica, que duerme separada de él por esa distancia que la rutina matrimonial impone en el lecho. Y entonces siente una mezcla de piedad y envidia al oír el significativo ronroneo con que ella anuncia la perfección de su descanso. Por su postura confiada, Eliseo deduce que Verónica cree ocupar el espacio que le corresponde, su exacto lugar en el mundo. Incluso se atrevería a decir que ha dejado que la vida la arrastre sin resistirse hacia este momento de vulgar plenitud, convencida de que yacer cada noche junto a él es lo correcto.

Eliseo, sin embargo, apenas logra adentrarse en el sueño, como esos ancianos que no pasan de mojarse los pies en la puntita del mar. Hace casi tres años que le atormenta la idea de habitar una madriguera errónea, de encontrarse en el colchón equivocado. Por eso, en las honduras de la madrugada, se escurre del lecho y se encierra en el baño. Allí, sentado sobre el inodoro, realiza siempre el mismo ritual. Abre su cartera y, con dedos de cirujano, le extrae el corazón: el recorte de periódico que le confirma que toda su vida es un error monumental, un despropósito en el que nadie repara. Ajado y amarillento, el recorte muestra la fotografía de una mujer que dedica a la cámara una mirada entre aturdida y furiosa. En el pie de foto puede leerse: Laura Cerviño Frías, una de las víctimas del equívoco. Sobre la crónica, hay una entradilla donde se nos informa de que, debido a un error del hospital, una mujer tuvo que velar durante diez horas el cadáver de una desconocida. El titular reza: Confusión macabra.

Cuando la primera cuchillada de luz hiende la cortina del dormitorio, Eliseo dedica al despertador el alzamiento de cejas que lo hace sonar. Verónica, como si el timbre la arrancara siempre de entre los brazos de Errol Flynn, suelta invariablemente un gruñido hosco. Comienza entonces la torpe representación de la higiene personal, los tropiezos en la angostura del baño y el rezongar del niño, una coreografía doméstica con aires de danza sagrada que acaba desembocando milagrosamente en la pastoril escena del desayuno: Verónica perfumada hasta la médula, vestida de profesora de instituto; el niño repeinado, practicando la lectura con las esquelas del periódico; y él amortajado en gris sucio para la oficina. Todos alrededor del plato de tostadas que ha brotado como por arte de magia durante el ceremonial.

Les Daniels: They're Coming for You

Mr Bliss came home from work early one Monday afternoon. It was a big mistake.

He'd had a headache, and his secretary, after offering him various patent medicines, complete with their manufacturer's slogans, had said "Why don't you take the rest of the day off, Mr Bliss?"

Everyone called him Mr Bliss. The others in the office were Dave or Dan or Charlie, but he was Mr Bliss. He liked it that way. Sometimes he thought that even his wife should call him Mr Bliss.

Instead, she was calling on God.

Her voice came from on high. From upstairs. In the bedroom. She didn't seem to be in pain, but Mr Bliss could remedy that.

She wasn't alone; someone was grunting in harmony with her cries to the creator. Mr Bliss was bitter about this.

Without even waiting to hang up his overcoat, he tiptoed into the kitchen, and plucked from its magnetic rack one of the Japanese knives his wife had ordered after watching a television commercial. They were designed for cutting things into small pieces, and they were guaranteed for life, however long that happened to be. Mr Bliss would see to it that his wife had no cause for complaint. He turned away from the rack, paused for a sigh, then went back and selected another knife. The first was for the one who wanted to meet God, and the second for the one who was making those animal noises.

After a moment's reflection, he decided to use the back stairs. They were more secretive, somehow, and Mr Bliss intended to have a big secret just as soon as he could get organized.

He had an erection for the first time in weeks, and his headache was gone.

He moved as quickly and carefully as he could, sliding across the checkerboard linoleum and taking the back stairs two at a time in slow, painful, thigh-straining stretches. He knew there was a step which creaked, couldn't recall which one it was, and knew he would step on it anyway.

Richard Matheson: Duel

At 11:32 a.m., Mann passed the truck.

He was heading west, en route to San Francisco. It was Thursday and unseasonably hot for April. He

had his suit coat off, his tie removed and shirt collar opened, his sleeve cuffs folded back. There was

sunlight on his left arm and on part of his lap. He could feel the heat of it through his dark trousers as he drove along the two-lane highway. For the past twenty minutes, he had not seen another vehicle going in either direction.

Then he saw the truck ahead, moving up a curving grade between two high green hills. He heard the

grinding strain of its motor and saw a double shadow on the road. The truck was pulling a trailer.

He paid no attention to the details of the truck. As he drew behind it on the grade, he edged his car

toward the opposite lane. The road ahead had blind curves and he didn't try to pass until the truck had

crossed the ridge. He waited until it started around a left curve on the downgrade, then, seeing that the

way was clear, pressed down on the accelerator pedal and steered his car into the eastbound lane. He

waited until he could see the truck front in his rear-view mirror before he turned back into the proper

lane.

Mann looked across the countryside ahead. There were ranges of mountains as far as he could see

and, all around him, rolling green hills. He whistled softly as the car sped down the winding grade, its tires making crisp sounds on the pavement.

At the bottom of the hill, he crossed a concrete bridge and, glancing to the right, saw a dry stream bed

strewn with rocks and gravel. As the car moved off the bridge, he saw a trailer park set back from the

highway to his right. How can anyone live out here? he thought. His shifting gaze caught sight of a pet

cemetery ahead and he smiled. Maybe those people in the trailers wanted to be close to the graves of

their dogs and cats.

Robert R. McCammon: Eat Me

A question gnawed, day and night, at Jim Crisp. He pondered it as he walked the streets, while a dark rain fell and rats chattered at his feet; he mulled over it as he sat in his apartment, staring at the static on the television screen hour after hour. The question haunted him as he sat in the cemetery on Fourteenth Street, surrounded by empty graves. And this burning question was: when did love die?

Thinking took effort. It made his brain hurt, but it seemed to Jim that thinking was his last link with life. He used to be an accountant, a long time ago. He'd worked with a firm downtown for over twenty years, had never been married, hadn't dated much either. Numbers, logic, the rituals of mathematics had been the center of his life; now logic itself had gone insane, and no one kept records anymore. He had a terrible sensation of not belonging in this world, of being suspended in a nightmare that would stretch to the boundaries of eternity. He had no need for sleep any longer; something inside him had burst a while back, and he'd lost the ten or twelve pounds of fat that had gathered around his middle over the years. His body was lean now, so light sometimes a strong wind knocked him off his feet. The smell came and went, but Jim had a caseload of English Leather in his apartment and he took baths in the stuff.

The open maw of time frightened him. Days without number lay ahead. What was there to do, when there was nothing to be done? No one called the roll, no one punched the time-clock, no one set the deadlines. This warped freedom gave a sense of power to others; to Jim it was the most confining of prisons, because all the symbols of order---stoplights, calendars, clocks---were still there, still working, yet they had no purpose or sense, and they reminded him too much of what had been before.

Fernando Iwasaki: Última voluntad

Los moribundos tienen fugaces destellos de lucidez que se extinguen como velas en la penumbra de la muerte. Mamá murió así, enumerando mis obligaciones, recordándome mis deberes, indicándome en qué cajón estaban los papeles del seguro, quiénes tenían libros suyos y sobre todo conminándome a proteger siempre a mis hermanas. Pobre mamá. Su agonía había sido muy larga y jamás esperamos que en el último instante podría despedirse así. Lentamente fue cayendo en una somnolencia dolorosa, repitiendo una y otra vez los nombres de mis hermanas. Cogí su mano y me dijo que le alegraba reunirse por fin con papá. De pronto me clavó dulcemente las uñas y me pidió que nunca dejara solo a Luisito, que estaba enfermito y me necesitaba. Y mamá murió como suponía, reservando sus palabras finales para el pobre Luisito, que falleció de leucemia cuando éramos niños.

Fuimos a casa de mamá a ordenar sus cosas y escuchamos un llanto dentro del ropero. Mis hermanas dicen que es mi obligación y me lo tuve que llevar a casa. Le gusta jugar con medias de nailon y pétalos secos.

Roald Dahl: Man From the South

It was getting on toward six o’clock so I thought I’d buy myself a beer and go out and sit in a deck chair by the swimming pool and have a little evening sun.

I went to the bar and got the beer and carried it outside and wandered down the garden toward the pool.

It was a fine garden with lawns and beds of azaleas and tall coconut palms, and the wind was blowing strongly through the tops of the palm trees making the leaves hiss and crackle as though they were on fire. I could see the clusters of big brown nuts handing down underneath the leaves.

There were plenty of deck chairs around the swimming pool and there were white tables and huge brightly colored umbrellas and sunburned men and women sitting around in bathing suits. In the pool itself there were three or four girls and about a dozen boys, all splashing about and making a lot of noise and throwing a large rubber ball at one another.

I stood watching them. The girls were English girls from the hotel. The boys I didn’t know about, but they sounded American and I thought they were probably naval cadets who’d come ashore from the U.S. naval training vessel which had arrived in the harbor that morning.

I went over and sat down under a yellow umbrella where there were four empty seats, and I poured my beer and settled back comfortably with a cigarette.

It was very pleasant sitting there in the sunshine with beer and a cigarette. It was pleasant to sit and watch the bathers splashing about in the green water.

The American sailors were getting on nicely with the English girls. They’d reached the stage where they were diving under the water and tipping them up by their legs.

Just then I noticed a small, oldish man walking briskly around the edge of the pool. He was immaculately dressed in a white suit and he walked very quickly with little bouncing strides, pushing himself high up onto his toes with each step. He had on a large creamy Panama hat, and he came bouncing along the side of the pool, looking at the people and the chairs.

He stopped beside me and smiled, showing two rows of very small, uneven teeth, slightly tarnished. I smiled back.

Carlos Ruiz Zafón: La mujer de vapor

Nunca se lo confesé a nadie, pero conseguí el piso de puro milagro. Laura, que tenía besar de tango, trabajaba de secretaria para el administrador de fincas del primero segunda. La conocí una noche de julio en que el cielo ardía de vapor y desesperación. Yo dormía a la intemperie, en un banco de la plaza, cuando me despertó el roce de unos labios. «¿Necesitas un sitio para quedarte?» Laura me condujo hasta el portal. El edificio era uno de esos mausoleos verticales que embrujan la ciudad vieja, un laberinto de gárgolas y remiendos sobre cuyo atrio se leía 1866. La seguí escaleras arriba, casi a tientas. A nuestro paso, el edificio crujía como los barcos viejos. Laura no me preguntó por nóminas ni referencias. Mejor, porque en la cárcel no te dan ni unas ni otras. El ático era del tamaño de mi celda, una estancia suspendida en la tundra de tejados. «Me lo quedo», dije. A decir verdad, después de tres años en prisión, había perdido el sentido del olfato, y lo de las voces que transpiraban por los muros no era novedad. Laura subía casi todas las noches. Su piel fría y su aliento de niebla eran lo único que no quemaba de aquel verano infernal. Al amanecer, Laura se perdía escaleras abajo, en silencio. Durante el día yo aprovechaba para dormitar. Los vecinos de la escalera tenían esa amabilidad mansa que confiere la miseria. Conté seis familias, todas con niños y viejos que olían a hollín y a tierra removida. Mi favorito era don Florián, que vivía justo debajo y pintaba muñecas por encargo. Pasé semanas sin salir del edificio. Las arañas trazaban arabescos en mi puerta. Doña Luisa, la del tercero, siempre me subía algo de comer. Don Florián me prestaba revistas viejas y me retaba a partidas de dominó. Los críos de la escalera me invitaban a jugar al escondite. Por primera vez en mi vida me sentía bienvenido, casi querido. A medianoche, Laura traía sus diecinueve años envueltos en seda blanca y se dejaba hacer como si fuera la última vez. La amaba hasta el alba, saciándome en su cuerpo de cuanto la vida me había robado. Luego yo soñaba en blanco y negro, como los perros y los malditos. Incluso a los despojos de la vida como yo se les concede un asomo de felicidad en este mundo. Aquel verano fue el 

Raymond Carver: Whoever Was Using This Bed

The call comes in the middle of the night, three in the morning, and it nearly scares us to death.

"Answer it, answer it!" my wife cries. "My God, who is it? Answer it!"

I can't find the light, but I get to the other room, where the phone is, and pick it up after the fourth ring.

"Is Bud there?" this woman says, very drunk.

"Jesus, you have the wrong number," I say, and hang up.

I turn the light on, and go into the bathroom, and that's when I hear the phone start again.

"Answer that!" my wife screams from the bedroom. "What in God's name do they want, Jack? I can't take any more."

I hurry out of the bathroom and pick up the phone.

"Bud?" the woman says. "What are you doing, Bud?"

I say, "Look here. You have a wrong number. Don't ever call this number again."

"I have to talk to Bud," she says.

I hang up, wait until it rings again, and then I take the receiver and lay it on the table beside the phone. But I hear the woman's voice say, "Bud, talk to me, please." I leave the receiver on its side on the table, turn off the light, and close the door to the room.

In the bedroom I find the lamp on and my wife, Iris, sitting against the headboard with her knees drawn up under the covers. She has a pillow behind her back, and she's more on my side than her own side. The covers are up around her shoulders. The blankets and the sheet have been pulled out from the foot of the bed. If we want to go back to sleep — I want to go back to sleep, anyway — we may have to start from scratch and do this bed over again.

"What the hell was that all about?" Iris says. "We should have unptugged the phone. I guess we forgot. Try forgetting one night to unplug the phone and see what happens. I don't believe it."

After Iris and I started living together, my former wife, or else one of my kids, used to call up when we were asleep and want to harangue us. They kept doing it even after Iris and I were married. So we started unplugging our phone before we went to bed. We unplugged the phone every night of the year, just about. It was a habit. This time I slipped up, that's all.