Medardo Fraile: La trampa

-¿Adonde vas?

-No sé.

De doce de la noche a ocho de la mañana se duerme. De ocho de la mañana a doce de la noche, no.

-¿A dónde vas?

-¡Yo qué sé!

Hay tres caminos. Llevan a tres sitios, los mismos siempre. ¿Y entre ellos? ¿Y si fuera por entre dos de ellos? Iría también a sitios conocidos, siempre los mismos. Porque esto es conocido. Porque nada se mueve. Porque somos así. Porque estamos en el mapa y en el padrón y nos busca el tren, el coche de línea, el correo, el teléfono, los amigos, la familia, y nos encierra la calle, la habitación, la puerta. La ventana mira siempre al mismo sitio. ¿Y si un día mirase a otro sitio? No lo hará.

Hay veces en que a las cuatro de la tarde o a las siete tengo un sueño de losa. Pero a esa hora no se duerme y yo no duermo. Hay veces en que a las cuatro de la mañana, o a las cinco, tengo los ojos abiertos y la cabeza clara como una estrella. Y quiero dormirme. Y no puedo. Y mi mujer duerme. Y mis hijos. Porque el brasero y yo somos iguales: tarda en enfriarse. Noto en mi cabeza las brasas, las últimas brasas de la madrugada, en las que, a veces, cae una idea, cualquiera, y las reaviva dolorosamente, con algo funeral, como puñado de espliego.

¿Por qué no he podido comer hoy a la hora de comer?

-¿A dónde vas a estas horas?

Estas horas son siempre para otra cosa, lo sé. A veces huele a comida en las calles, o a cocina recién encendida, o a muía adormilada y caliente, o los campos y las estrellas empiezan a echar el vaho. ¿Y si ahora saliera y no viera a Mateo, no le viera nunca más y no se hubiera muerto?

-Acuéstate.

-No puedo…

-Levántate.

-Más tarde…

El otro día hubiera dado cualquier cosa por pasar a la otra habitación por otro sitio. Quise hacerlo y no pude. Empujé y no pude. Di puñetados y voces y no pude. Estuve a punto de ir por la piqueta.

Al filo de una madrugada estrangulé al gallo. Le echaron de menos porque no cantó. Aunque los vecinos cantaron como todos los días.

No quiero cerrar nada por las noches, ni las ventanas, ni las puertas, ni el corral, ni la cuadra. No quiero dejar de ver el sol por las noches. Y lo veo. ¿Cómo se explica que nadie en absoluto, nadie, salga a la calle de noche? Sí quiero fumarme ahora un cigarro con Felipe, ¿lo puedo hacer?

A veces me voy a trabajar a las tantas, aunque no tenga trabajo pendiente. Luego, a lo mejor, no hago nada; un monigote de hierro sin pies ni cabeza. Pero entre golpe y golpe me empapo de silencio; un baño, como si me diera un baño. Y hasta las tías del Egido están dormidas; las tías del Egido, con sus nalgas gordas, lustrosas, bien magreadas. Si quisiera… Pero también tengo mi cama y mi mujer, que esperan. ¿Y si no quiero esa cama?

Ray Bradbury: A Scent of Sarsaparilla

r. William Finch stood quietly in the dark and blowing attic all morning and afternoon for three days. For three days in late November, he stood alone, feeling the soft white flakes of Time falling out of the infinite cold steel sky, silently, softly, feathering the roof and powdering the eaves. He stood, eyes shut. The attic, wallowed in seas of wind in the long sunless days, creaked every bone and shook down ancient dusts from its beams and warped timbers and lathings. It was a mass of sighs and torments that ached all about him where he stood sniffing its elegant dry perfumes and feeling of its ancient heritages. Ah. Ah.

Listening, downstairs, his wife Cora could not hear him walk or shift or twitch. She imagined she could only hear him breathe, slowly out and in, like a dusty bellows, alone up there in the attic, high in the windy house.

"Ridiculous," she muttered.

When he hurried down for lunch the third afternoon, he smiled at the bleak walls, the chipped plates, the scratched silverware, and even at his wife!

"What's all the excitement?" she demanded.

"Good spirits is all. Wonderful spirits!" he laughed. He seemed almost hysterical with joy. He was seething in a great warm ferment which, obviously, he had trouble concealing. His wife frowned.

"What's that smell ?"

"Smell, smell, smell?"

"Sarsaparilla." She sniffed suspiciously. "That's what it is!"

"Oh, it couldn't be!" His hysterical happiness stopped as quickly as if she'd switched him off. He seemed stunned, ill at ease, and suddenly very careful.

"Where did you go this morning?" she asked.

"You know I was cleaning the attic."

"Mooning over a lot of trash. I didn't hear a sound. Thought maybe you weren't in the attic at all. What's that?" She pointed.

"Well, now how did those get there?" he asked the world.

He peered down at the pair of black spring-metal bicycle clips that bound his thin pants cuffs to his bony ankles.

"Found them in the attic," he answered himself. "Remember when we got out on the gravel road in the early morning on our tandem bike, Cora, forty years ago, everything fresh and new?"

"If you don't finish that attic today, I'll come up and toss everything out myself."

"Oh, no," he cried. "I have everything the way I want it!"

She looked at him coldly.

"Cora," he said, eating his lunch, relaxing, beginning to enthuse again, "You know what attics are? They're Time Machines, in which old, dim-witted men like me can travel back forty years to a time when it was summer all year round and children raided ice wagons. Remember how it tasted? You held the ice in your handkerchief. It was like sucking the flavor of linen and snow at the same time."

Ramón Gómez de la Serna: Sueño del violinista

Siempre había sido el sueño del gran violinista tocar debajo del agua para que se oyese arriba, creando los nenúfares musicales.

En el jardín abandonado y silente y sobre las aguas verdes, como una sombra en el agua, se oyeron unos compases de algo muy melancólico que se podía haber llamado “La alegría de morir”, y después de un último glu-glu salió flotando el violín como un barco de los niños que comenzó a bogar desorientado.

Algernon Blackwood: The Man Whom the Trees Loved

~I~

He painted trees as by some special divining instinct of their essential qualities. He understood them. He knew why in an oak forest, for instance, each individual was utterly distinct from its fellows, and why no two beeches in the whole world were alike. People asked him down to paint a favorite lime or silver birch, for he caught the individuality of a tree as some catch the individuality of a horse. How he managed it was something of a puzzle, for he never had painting lessons, his drawing was often wildly inaccurate, and, while his perception of a Tree Personality was true and vivid, his rendering of it might almost approach the ludicrous. Yet the character and personality of that particular tree stood there alive beneath his brush—shining, frowning, dreaming, as the case might be, friendly or hostile, good or evil. It emerged.

There was nothing else in the wide world that he could paint; flowers and landscapes he only muddled away into a smudge; with people he was helpless and hopeless; also with animals. Skies he could sometimes manage, or effects of wind in foliage, but as a rule he left these all severely alone. He kept to trees, wisely following an instinct that was guided by love. It was quite arresting, this way he had of making a tree look almost like a being—alive. It approached the uncanny.

"Yes, Sanderson knows what he's doing when he paints a tree!" thought old David Bittacy, C.B., late of the Woods and Forests. "Why, you can almost hear it rustle. You can smell the thing. You can hear the rain drip through its leaves. You can almost see the branches move. It grows." For in this way somewhat he expressed his satisfaction, half to persuade himself that the twenty guineas were well spent (since his wife thought otherwise), and half to explain this uncanny reality of life that lay in the fine old cedar framed above his study table.

Yet in the general view the mind of Mr. Bittacy was held to be austere, not to say morose. Few divined in him the secretly tenacious love of nature that had been fostered by years spent in the forests and jungles of the eastern world. It was odd for an Englishman, due possibly to that Eurasian ancestor. Surreptitiously, as though half ashamed of it, he had kept alive a sense of beauty that hardly belonged to his type, and was unusual for its vitality. Trees, in particular, nourished it. He, also, understood trees, felt a subtle sense of communion with them, born perhaps of those years he had lived in caring for them, guarding, protecting, nursing, years of solitude among their great shadowy presences. He kept it largely to himself, of course, because he knew the world he lived in. HE also kept it from his wife—to some extent. He knew it came between them, knew that she feared it, was opposed. But what he did not know, or realize at any rate, was the extent to which she grasped the power which they wielded over his life. Her fear, he judged, was simply due to those years in India, when for weeks at a time his calling took him away from her into the jungle forests, while she remained at home dreading all manner of evils that might befall him. This, of course, explained her instinctive opposition to the passion for woods that still influenced and clung to him. It was a natural survival of those anxious days of waiting in solitude for his safe return.

Federico García Lorca: Juego de damas

Las cinco damas de una corte llena de color y poesía, enamoradas las cinco de un joven misterioso que ha llegado a ella de lejanas tierras. Lo rondan, lo cercan y se ocultan mutuamente su amor. Pero el joven no les hace caso. El joven pasea el jardín enamorando a la hija del jardinero, joven con la piel tostada y de ninguna belleza, aunque sin fealdad, desde luego. Las otras damas lo rondan y averiguan de qué se trata e, indignadas, tratan de matar a la joven tostada, pero cuando llegan ya está ella muerta con la cara sonriente y llena de luz y aroma exquisito. Sobre un banco del jardín encuentran una mariposa que sale volando y las ropas del joven

Ambrose Bierce: Haïta, the Shepherd

In the heart of Haïta the illusions of youth had not been supplanted by those of age and experience. His thoughts were pure and pleasant, for his life was simple and his soul devoid of ambition. He rose with the sun and went forth to pray at the shrine of Hastur, the god of shepherds, who heard and was pleased. After performance of this pious rite Haïta unbarred the gate of the fold and with a cheerful mind drove his flock afield, eating his morning meal of curds and oat cake as he went, occasionally pausing to add a few berries, cold with dew, or to drink of the waters that came away from the hills to join the stream in the middle of the valley and be borne along with it, he knew not whither.

During the long summer day, as his sheep cropped the good grass which the gods had made to grow for them, or lay with their forelegs doubled under their breasts and chewed the cud, Haïta, reclining in the shadow of a tree, or sitting upon a rock, played so sweet music upon his reed pipe that sometimes from the corner of his eye he got accidental glimpses of the minor sylvan deities, leaning forward out of the copse to hear; but if he looked at them directly they vanished. From this - for he must be thinking if he would not turn into one of his own sheep - he drew the solemn inference that happiness may come if not sought, but if looked for will never be seen; for next to the favor of Hastur, who never disclosed himself, Haïta most valued the friendly interest of his neighbors, the shy immortals of the wood and stream. At nightfall he drove his flock back to the fold, saw that the gate was secure and retired to his cave for refreshment and for dreams.

So passed his life, one day like another, save when the storms uttered the wrath of an offended god. Then Haïta cowered in his cave, his face hidden in his hands, and prayed that he alone might be punished for his sins and the world saved from destruction. Sometimes when there was a great rain, and the stream came out of its banks, compelling him to urge his terrified flock to the uplands, he interceded for the people in the cities which he had been told lay in the plain beyond the two blue hills forming the gateway of his valley.

“It is kind of thee, O Hastur,” so he prayed, “to give me mountains so near to my dwelling and my fold that I and my sheep can escape the angry torrents; but the rest of the world thou must thyself deliver in some way that I know not of, or I will no longer worship thee.”

And Hastur, knowing that Haïta was a youth who kept his word, spared the cities and turned the waters into the sea.

So he had lived since he could remember. He could not rightly conceive any other mode of existence. The holy hermit who dwelt at the head of the valley, a full hour’s journey away, from whom he had heard the tale of the great cities where dwelt people - poor souls! - who had no sheep, gave him no knowledge of that early time, when, so he reasoned, he must have been small and helpless like a lamb.

Juan Ramón Jiménez: Soñé un sueño

Soñé que estaba muerto y que, muerto, soñaba que resucitaba, y que no podía. Y soñé que ese sueño había de ser eterno.

Montague Rhodes James: The Mezzotint

Some time ago I believe I had the pleasure of telling you the story of an adventure which happened to a friend of mine by the name of Dennistoun, during his pursuit of objects of art for the museum at Cambridge.

He did not publish his experiences very widely upon his return to England; but they could not fail to become known to a good many of his friends, and among others to the gentleman who at that time presided over an art museum at another University. It was to be expected that the story should make a considerable impression on the mind of a man whose vocation lay in lines similar to Dennistoun’s, and that he should be eager to catch at any explanation of the matter which tended to make it seem improbable that he should ever be called upon to deal with so agitating an emergency. It was, indeed, somewhat consoling to him to reflect that he was not expected to acquire ancient MSS. for his institution; that was the business of the Shelburnian Library. The authorities of that institution might, if they pleased, ransack obscure corners of the Continent for such matters. He was glad to be obliged at the moment to confine his attention to enlarging the already unsurpassed collection of English topographical drawings and engravings possessed by his museum. Yet, as it turned out, even a department so homely and familiar as this may have its dark corners, and to one of these Mr Williams was unexpectedly introduced.

Those who have taken even the most limited interest in the acquisition of topographical pictures are aware that there is one London dealer whose aid is indispensable to their researches. Mr J. W. Britnell publishes at short intervals very admirable catalogues of a large and constantly changing stock of engravings, plans, and old sketches of mansions, churches, and towns in England and Wales. These catalogues were, of course, the ABC of his subject to Mr Williams: but as his museum already contained an enormous accumulation of topographical pictures, he was a regular, rather than a copious, buyer; and he rather looked to Mr Britnell to fill up gaps in the rank and file of his collection than to supply him with rarities.

Now, in February of last year there appeared upon Mr Williams’s desk at the museum a catalogue from Mr Britnell’s emporium, and accompanying it was a typewritten communication from the dealer himself. This latter ran as follows:

Dear Sir,

We beg to call your attention to No. 978 in our accompanying catalogue, which we shall be glad to send on approval.

Yours faithfully,

J. W. Britnell.

To turn to No. 978 in the accompanying catalogue was with Mr. Williams (as he observed to himself) the work of a moment, and in the place indicated he found the following entry:

Ángel Olgoso: Introito para arpa de tendones humanos

El ojo derecho me cuelga a la altura del pómulo. Las ametralladoras nos barrieron del parapeto. A Le Brun y a mí. Caí bocabajo en el barro. Oscuridad, acógeme entre tus brazos. Hacerme el muerto. Aquel crujido era la bala volándome el hueso orbital. Intento devolver el ojo a su lugar sin delatarme. Parece un amasijo de muelles blandos. La aviación nos había bombardeado de nuevo a la salida del sol. El capitán d’Herbelot se disgregó en miles de pequeños d’Herbelot. El miedo no es negrura si antes has conocido el espanto. Thierry perdió los brazos mientras los estiraba en un bostezo de cansancio. Comimos ratas que sabíamos devoraban cuerpos de soldados muertos. Amortajamos miembros amputados. Hilamos tripas y las repusimos en sus cadáveres coronándolas con las fotos de sus novias sonrientes. Cada uno de nosotros, espectros raquíticos y aulladores, conocía en vida el nombre de su infierno: el bosque Prijmadin, la plaza de Altsattl, los pastizales de Na Mustku, el río Týna, la colina Podêbrady. Ha vuelto a desprenderse el globo ocular. Lo empujo al fondo de su cavidad con un lentísimo amago, intentando no descubrirme. Dios delante y yo detrás. En uno de los últimos ataques, Litvak el Pelícano levitó en el aire con la explosión del mortero y pude contemplar momentáneamente el revés entero de su piel. Litvak el Pelícano fumaba picadura de primera. Camaradas que eran borbotones de rabia, miedo, astucia, lealtad, locura, y una fracción de segundo después caparazones vacíos, hollejos, remolinos de carbón y fosfato. Permanezco inmóvil. Bocabajo. La náusea llama convulsamente a mi puerta. La dejo entrar y se acomoda en la mesa junto al dolor. Decrece el ruido sordo de los impactos contra los sacos terreros. Mi ojo izquierdo, entreabierto, asiste toda la tarde a desfiles de chinches y hormigas y cucarachas. No hay paisaje en esta sala de máquinas de la historia, en esta artesa para matanzas. Sólo raciones de sangre. Macutos de barro. Cantimploras de secreciones. Trincheras de vendas y delirios. Pienso en la pureza, en una monja de hábitos blancos y toca almidonada que acaricia mi frente con un beso incomparablemente dulce y consolador. Pienso en la imprecisión del dedo meñique de los pies. Se acerca el enemigo entre los escombros. Lo olisqueo. Tiemblo. La muerte es sólo un día más, nos arengaba el capitán d’Herbelot antes de desintegrarse en su halo. Un día más, quizá, pero interminable. Siento pánico. Doy la espalda a las ráfagas perdidas de los francotiradores, a los lanzallamas, al imperceptible y concluyente disparo de los rematadores de heridos. Llega la noche, como aturdida. Horas apiladas en frías capas de agonía. Temo también una paletada de cal sin previo aviso. Dormir. Visto desde arriba, mi cuerpo hace nido. El párpado restante se me cierra de sueño, de agotamiento, de asco. Pero lo que más empavorece a este cobarde, a este desertor, es la infinita maldad del amanecer.

Agatha Christie: Philomel Cottage

"Good-bye, darling."

"Good-bye, sweetheart."

Alix Martin stood leaning over the small rustic gate, watching the retreating figure of her husband, as he walked down the road in the direction of the village.

Presently he turned a bend and was lost to sight, but Alix still stayed in the same position, absent-mindedly smoothing a lock of the rich brown hair which had blown across her face, her eyes far-away and dreamy.

Alix Martin was not beautiful, nor even, strictly speaking, pretty. But her face, the face of a woman no longer in her first youth, was irradiated and softened until her former colleagues of the old office days would hardly have recognized her. Miss Alix King had been a trim business-like young woman, efficient, slightly brusque in manner, obviously capable and matter-of-fact.

Alix had graduated in a hard school. For fifteen years, from the age of eighteen until she was thirty-three, she had kept herself (and for seven years of the time, an invalid mother) by her work as a shorthand-typist. It was the struggle for existence which had hardened the soft lines of her girlish face.

True, there had been romance - of a kind - Dick Windyford, a fellow-clerk. Very much of a woman at heart, Alix had always known without seeming to know that he cared. Outwardly they had been friends, nothing more. Out of his slender salary, Dick had been hard put to it to provide for the schooling of a younger brother. For the moment, he could not think of marriage.

And then suddenly deliverance from daily toil had come to the girl in the most unexpected manner. A distant cousin had died leaving her money to Alix - a few thousand pounds, enough to bring in a couple of hundred a year. To Alix, it was freedom, life, independence. Now she and Dick need wait no longer.

Nevertheless, when Alix envisaged the future, it was with the half acknowledged certainty that she would one day be Dick's wife. They cared for one another, so she would have put it, but they were both sensible people. Plenty of time, no need to do anything rash. So the years had gone on.

But Dick reacted unexpectedly. He had never directly spoken of his love to Alix, now he seemed less inclined to do so than ever. He avoided her, became morose and gloomy. Alix was quick to realize the truth.

She had become a woman of means. Delicacy and pride stood in the way of Dick's asking her to be his wife. She liked him none the worse for it and was indeed deliberating as to whether herself might not take the first step when for the second time the unexpected descended upon her.

She met Gerald Martin at a friend's house. He fell violently in love with her and within a week they were engaged. Alix, who had always considered herself "not the falling-in-love kind," was swept clean off her feet.

Unwittingly she had found the way to arouse her former lover. Dick Windyford had come to her stammering with rage and anger.

"The man's a perfect stranger to you! You know nothing about him!"

Charles Baudelaire: Une mort héroïque

Fancioulle était un admirable bouffon, et presque un des amis du Prince. Mais pour les personnes vouées par état au comique, les choses sérieuses ont de fatales attractions, et, bien qu'il puisse paraître bizarre que les idées de patrie et de liberté s'emparent despotiquement du cerveau d'un histrion, un jour Fancioulle entra dans une conspiration formée par quelques gentilshommes mécontents.

Il existe partout des hommes de bien pour dénoncer au pouvoir ces individus d'humeur atrabilaire qui veulent déposer les princes et opérer, sans la consulter, le déménagement d'une société. Les seigneurs en question furent arrêtés, ainsi que Fancioulle, et voués à une mort certaine.

Je croirais volontiers que le Prince fut presque fâché de trouver son comédien favori parmi les rebelles. Le Prince n'était ni meilleur ni pire qu'un autre; mais une excessive sensibilité le rendait, en beaucoup de cas, plus cruel et plus despote que tous ses pareils. Amoureux passionné des beaux-arts, excellent connaisseur d'ailleurs, il était vraiment insatiable de voluptés. Assez indifférent relativement aux hommes et à la morale, véritable artiste lui-même, il ne connaissait d'ennemi dangereux que l'Ennui, et les efforts bizarres qu'il faisait pour fuir ou pour vaincre ce tyran du monde lui auraient certainement attiré, de la part d'un historien sévère, l'épithète de "monstre", s'il avait été permis, dans ses domaines, d'écrire quoi que ce fût qui ne tendît pas uniquement au plaisir ou à l'étonnement, qui est une des formes les plus délicates du plaisir. Le grand malheur de ce Prince fut qu'il n'eut jamais un théâtre assez vaste pour son génie. Il y a de jeunes Nérons qui étouffent dans des limites trop étroites, et dont les siècles à venir ignoreront toujours le nom et la bonne volonté. L'imprévoyante Providence avait donné à celui-ci des facultés plus grandes que ses Etats.

Tout d'un coup le bruit courut que le souverain voulait faire grâce à tous les conjurés; et l'origine de ce bruit fut l'annonce d'un grand spectacle où Fancioulle devait jouer l'un de ses principaux et de ses meilleurs rôles, et auquel assisteraient même, disait-on, les gentilshommes condamnés; signe évident, ajoutaient les esprits superficiels, des tendances généreuses du Prince offensé.

De la part d'un homme aussi naturellement et volontairement excentrique, tout était possible, même la vertu, même la clémence, surtout s'il avait pu espérer y trouver des plaisirs inattendus. Mais pour ceux qui, comme moi, avaient pu pénétrer plus avant dans les profondeurs de cette âme curieuse et malade, il était infiniment plus probable que le Prince voulait juger de la valeur des talents scéniques d'un homme condamné à mort. Il voulait profiter de l'occasion pour faire une expérience physiologique d'un intérêt capital, et vérifier jusqu'à quel point les facultés habituelles d'un artiste pouvaient être altérées ou modifiées par la situation extraordinaire où il se trouvait; au-delà, existait-il dans son âme une intention plus ou moins arrêtée de clémence? C'est un point qui n'a jamais pu être éclairci.

José Manuel Benítez Ariza: Críticas de cine

Sé cómo lo hacen. Primero, se filma al personaje caminando en dirección a la cámara. A partir de determinado punto, se hacen otras dos tomas del personaje siguiendo trayectorias opuestas. También puede utilizarse un espejo, para que las dos trayectorias divergentes guarden una perfecta simetría. El resultado es lo que cuenta: esa imagen inquietante de un hombre desdoblándose en dos personajes con destinos opuestos. Espejos, fundidos, transparencias. Muy fácil, en el cine.

También están las tomas descartadas: todo lo que no se aprovecha cuando se procede al montaje definitivo de la película. Uno mira, por ejemplo, a John Gielgud en El agente secreto. Lo mira bajar las escaleras en su uniforme de aviador. Abajo lo espera Peter Lorre. Y uno sospecha que, en el limbo de las imágenes descartadas, a lo mejor es Peter Lorre el que sube esa escalera mientras John Gielgud lo espera en el descansillo, las manos a la espalda, los guantes doblados en el cinturón. Y que, a lo mejor, de haberse aprovechado el recelo, la desconfianza que implicaba esa actitud distante, John Gielgud no hubiese llegado a ser cómplice de un asesinato inútil cometido más tarde por Peter Lorre. Claro que, entonces, no tendríamos película. A lo sumo, y de haber quedado constancia de que Gielgud no acepta la misión, hubiésemos tenido el vago consuelo de que algunas personas se niegan a prestarse a ser cómplices de cosas que, de cualquier modo, acabarán sucediendo.

Lo que me va a suceder a mí también es inevitable. Y, por una vez, tiene algo que ver, aunque sólo sea de un modo tangencial, con el cine.

Me preguntarán de dónde demonios he sacado la pistola. Es una historia larga, que incluye haberme ganado la confianza de Luisito, el hijo de mi vecino, y haberlo llevado, junto con mi sobrinilla, al zoo y al parque y a una película de Disney y a no sé cuántos sitios más en las últimas semanas. El padre de Luisito es policía. Y Luisito sabe dónde guarda el arma.

Les hablaba de un personaje que camina hasta un punto y, a partir de ahí, se convierte en dos réplicas de sí mismo que siguen caminos opuestos. Estoy viendo la escena, no me pregunten de qué película. He detenido la imagen (mi última estupidez: el vídeo de cuatro cabezales, que me ha costado cien mil pesetas) justo en el momento en que el personaje empieza a desdoblarse. Estudio las dos caras. Desde el principio, en una se lee decisión, seguridad, éxito. La otra, en cambio, parece desconcertada, como si no supiera dónde está o intuyera un peligro inmediato.

Los artículos de cine que publicaba en El Vigía no le gustaban a nadie. Ni siquiera al director de El Vigía. Los publicaba porque le salían gratis. Y porque, sospecho, le hacía gracia que el mismo tipo que le atendía en la ventanilla del banco por las mañanas apareciese por la tarde en el periódico con un par de folios mecanografiados y la pretensión (insólita, al principio) de que se los publicaran. Convencerlo no fue fácil. Se permitió rechazar los diez o doce primeros, con una mezcla muy suya de amabilidad e impertinencia, pero dejando siempre abierta la posibilidad de aceptar el próximo. Y yo iba al cine aquella misma noche y, al día siguiente, mientras mi mujer dormía la siesta, le daba a la máquina y pergeñaba una nueva crítica. Era cuestión de insistir. Alguna vez, pensaba, a ese tipo le sobraría espacio en alguna página. Las cosas que pasan en una ciudad como ésta no dan ni para llenar las dieciséis páginas de un periodicucho como El Vigía.

Hume Nisbet: The Vampire Maid

It was the exact kind of abode that I had been looking after for weeks, for I was in that condition of mind when absolute renunciation of society was a necessity. I had become diffident of myself, and wearied of my kind. A strange unrest was in my blood; a barren dearth in my brains. Familiar objects and faces had grown distasteful to me. I wanted to be alone.

This is the mood which comes upon every sensitive and artistic mind when the possessor has been overworked or living too long in one groove. It is Nature's hint for him to seek pastures new; the sign that a retreat has become needful.

If he does not yield, he breaks down and becomes whimsical and hypochondriacal, as well as hypercritical. It is always a bad sign when a man becomes over-critical and censorious about his own or other people's work, for it means that he is losing the vital portions of work, freshness and enthusiasm.

Before I arrived at the dismal stage of criticism I hastily packed up my knapsack, and taking the train to Westmorland, I began my tramp in search of solitude, bracing air and romantic surroundings.

Many places I came upon during that early summer wandering that appeared to have almost the required conditions, yet some petty drawback prevented me from deciding. Sometimes it was the scenery that I did not take kindly to. At other places I took sudden antipathies to the landlady or landlord, and felt I would abhor them before a week was spent under their charge. Other places which might have suited me I could not have, as they did not want a lodger. Fate was driving me to this Cottage on the Moor, and no one can resist destiny.

One day I found myself on a wide and pathless moor near the sea. I had slept the night before at a small hamlet, but that was already eight miles in my rear, and since I had turned my back upon it I had not seen any signs of humanity; I was alone with a fair sky above me, a balmy ozone-filled wind blowing over the stony and heather-clad mounds, and nothing to disturb my meditations.

How far the moor stretched I had no knowledge; I only knew that by keeping in a straight line I would come to the ocean cliffs, then perhaps after a time arrive at some fishing village.

I had provisions in my knapsack, and being young did not fear a night under the stars. I was inhaling the delicious summer air and once more getting back the vigour and happiness I had lost; my city-dried brains were again becoming juicy.

Ednodio Quintero: Cacería

Permanece estirado, boca arriba, sobre la estrecha cama de madera. Con los ojos apenas entreabiertos busca, en las extrañas líneas del techo, el comienzo de un camino que lo aleje de su perseguidor. Durante noches enteras ha soportado el acoso, atravesando praderas de yerbas venenosas, vadeando ríos de vidrio molido, cruzando puentes frágiles como galletas. Cuando el perseguidor está a punto de alcanzarlo, cuando lo siente tan cerca que su aliento le quema la nuca, se revuelca en la cama como un gallo que recibe un espuelazo en pleno corazón. Entonces el perseguidor se detiene y descansa recostado a un árbol, aguarda con paciencia que la víctima cierre los ojos para reanudar la cacería.