Edgar Wallace: The ghost walker

DON MURDOCK came to the territories with three guns and a breaking heart. At least he had tried to keep the rifts wedged open and still preserved the similitude of hopeless grief and .unconquerable despair. It had been easy enough that night when the New York skyline was falling astern and he had looked over the side of the Berengaria and had seen, almost on the verge of tears, the pilot's hazardous climb to the waiting boat.

This man, thought Donald, swallowing a lump in his throat, was going back to a woman who loved him. A sane, shrewd mother of children, who went to church on Sundays and scoffed at ghosts. He could not imagine Mr. Pilot and Mrs. Pilot facing one another, trembling with fury over the matter of manifestations.

He could not imagine Mrs. Pilot drawing her wedding ring from her finger, flinging it on to the table and saying: "I think we are wasting time, Donald: you cannot understand and never will understand. You are just puffed up with conceit like every other college boy — you think people are crazy because you haven't the vision or the enterprise to get outside your own narrow circle . . . ."

All that sort of stuff, mostly illogical, but very, very, poignant.

So Donald went tragically to the wilds and made a will before leaving New York, leaving half of his four million dollars to Jane Fellaby and the other half to found a society for the suppression of Spiritualism.

Jane had been bitten very badly. She had sat in at seances and had heard voices and seen trumpets move and heard tambourines play, and had had other spiritual experiences. And she objected to his description of Professor Steelfit as a "fake" and her spiritualistic aunt as a halfwit — and here he was sailing for Africa, the home of primitive realities and lions and fever.

Mr. Commissioner Sanders did not like visitors in the Territories. They were a responsibility, and usually he ran them up to Chubiri on the lower river (which is as safe as Bond Street and much safer than Broadway) and sent them back to the ship with a thrilling sense of having faced fearful dangers.

Bones was usually the guide on these occasions.

"On your right, dear old friends, is the village of Goguba, where there was a simply fearful massacre . . . shockin' old bird named N'sumu used to be chief an' the silly old josser got tight an' behaved simply scandalously. On the left, dear young miss, is the island where all these old johnnies are buried . . . over there's where a perfectly ghastly feller named Oofaba drowned his naughty old self . . ."

But the "tourist" with letters of introduction was not really welcome, though he or she had little to complain of in the matter of courtesy and loving-kindness.

"Bones, here's a job for you." Sanders looked up from the letters he was reading at breakfast. "We are getting a 'Cook' for a couple of weeks."

Ángel Ganivet: En el aire. Las ruinas de Granada

¿Quieres venir conmigo -dijo un sabio a un poeta- a ver las ruinas de Granada?

-Hace tiempo, mucho tiempo, que deseaba ir a aquel misterioso rincón de la antigua España. Si yo soy poeta, soy el poeta de las ruinas. Nada hay que tan hondamente me interese y me conmueva como la contemplación de las desilusiones de la naturaleza de los restos miserables de las cosas que fueron y que ya no son. Si hay algo más hermoso que la vida, es el amargor y el desencanto que deja tras sí la existencia. La vida es como un niño que nos distrae con sus juegos inocentes, y las ruinas que la vida va dejando, son como un hombre de larga y fecunda experiencia, en cuyos labios hay siempre una palabra que explica grandes secretos.

-A mí me atrae, sobre todo en las ruinas, la idea de que allí ha resucitado o revivido algo que los hombres conocíamos sólo por la lectura de antiguos autores. Y me atraen más las ruinas de una catástrofe, que las que va dejando la acción destructora del tiempo; en las ruinas de Grecia o de Egipto, yo veo algo natural, algo que ha ido formándose lentamente con los años y que revela la escasa duración de las obras de los hombres, aun de las más grandes y sólidas; en las ruinas de Pompeya o en las de Londres y Granada, hay más grandeza; porque aquí la vida fue cortada bruscamente y al exhumarlas, algunos siglos después hallamos en ellas una petrificación de la vida misma, tal como fue. Un volcán, que cubre de repente una ciudad y la abrasa con su fuego, es para mí un escultor iluminado por la providencia. Pasa el tiempo, la curiosidad abre la inmensa sepultura y surge la obra maravillosa, la imagen de una civilización, de un momento de la vida de la humanidad.

-Esa es una visión de arqueólogo; hay una visión más bella; la del artista que no ve allí una petrificación de la vida, sino otra forma de la vida, en que ya el hombre no es necesario, en que la idea vive y habla en el aire, inspirada por la poesía que brota de las ruinas. Yo presiento que en las de Granada va a hablarme la idea del amor, que yo voy a sentir allí los suspiros de una mujer que amó mucho, que se murió amando, que después de muerta hace crecer sobre su tumba rosas de olor y claveles rojos, para llamar a los que pasan...

-¿Acaso toda la poesía está en las ideas vagas? ¿No hay también poesía en las piedras de los monumentos derruídos y en los esqueletos de los hombres? Yo he pensado muchas veces en el descubrimiento de las ruinas de Granada y lo que me hacía pensar era el deseo de ver una ciudad aniquilada de repente. Porque, según refieren los historiadores, la erupción del Vesubio que destruyó a Pompeya fue anunciada por ciertos extraños fenómenos, que esparcieron la alarma y permitieron a casi todos los habitantes ponerse a salvo; también cuando Londres quedó sepultada en el mar, se notó mucho tiempo antes el descenso del suelo y la ciudad fue poco a poco abandonada; pero el volcán que hace treinta siglos hizo desaparecer para siempre a Granada, sin dejar de ella el menor vestigio, fue un volcán de nueva formación, que al romper la corteza terrestre y lanzar su lava acumulada, no dejó tiempo para huir por lo inesperado del fenómeno y por la rapidez con que todo lo arrasó, desde las faldas de la Sierra Nevada hasta el mar.

Así, al reaparecer Granada, se nos ofrece algo nuevo en el mundo, el espectáculo de una ciudad muerta con todos sus habitantes muertos, en el mismo estado en que se hallaban en el instante preciso de la erupción. Yo no imagino que pueda ofrecerse a la contemplación del hombre nada más grande y original.

-Vamos, pues, allí, que ya estoy impaciente por ver tantas maravillas.

Howard Phillips Lovecraft - August Derleth: Innsmouth clay

The facts relating to the fate of my friend, the late sculptor, Jeffrey Corey-if indeed "late" is the correct reference-must begin with his return from Paris and his decision to rent a cottage on the coast south of Innsmouth in the autumn of 1927. Corey came from an armigerous family with some distant relationship to the Marsh clan of Innsmouth-not, however, such a one as would impose upon him any obligation to consort with his distant relatives. There were, in any case, old rumors abroad about the reclusive Marshes who still lived in that Massachusetts seaport town, and these were hardly calculated to inspire Corey with any desire to announce his presence in the vicinity.

I visited him a month after his arrival in December of that year. Corey was a comparatively young man, not yet forty, six feet in height, with a fine, fresh skin, which was free of any hirsute adornment, though his hair was worn rather long, as was then the custom among artists in the Latin quarter of Paris. He had very strong blue eyes, and his lantern-jawed face would have stood out in any assemblage of people, not alone for the piercing quality of his gaze, but as much for the rather strange, wattled appearance of the skin back from his jaws, under his ears and down his neck a little way below his ears. He was not ill-favored in looks, and a queer quality, almost hypnotic, that informed his fine-featured face had a kind of fascination for most people who met him. He was well settled in when I visited him, and had begun work on a statue of Rima, the Bird-Girl, which promised to become one of his finest works.

He had laid in supplies to keep him for a month, having gone into Innsmouth for them, and he seemed to me more than usually loquacious, principally about his distant relatives, about whom there was a considerable amount of talk, however guarded, in the shops of Innsmouth. Being reclusive, the Marshes were quite naturally the object of some curiosity; and since that curiosity was not satisfied, an impressive lore and legendry had grown up about them, reaching all the way back to an earlier generation which had been in the South Pacific trade. There was little definite enough to hold meaning for Corey, but what there was suggested all manner of arcane horror, of which he expected at some nebulous future time to learn more, though he had no compulsion to do so. It was just, he explained, that the subject was so prevalent in the village that it was almost impossible to escape it.

He spoke also of a prospective show, made references to friends in Paris and his years of study there, to the strength of Epstein's sculpture, and to the political turmoil boiling in the country. I cite these matters to indicate how perfectly normal Corey was on the occasion of this first visit to him after his return from Europe. I had, of course, seen him fleetingly in New York when he had come home, but hardly long enough to explore any subject as we were able to do that December of 1927.

Before I saw him again, in the following March, I received a curious letter from him, the gist of which was contained in the final paragraph, to which everything else in his letter seemed to mount as to a climax...

Salomé Guadalupe Ingelmo: Purgatorio / Purgatory

Mucho es mayor el miedo que suspende
mi alma del tormento de allí abajo,
que parece ya pesarme esa carga.
Dante Alighieri, Divina Comedia, Purgatorio, Canto XIII, 136-38

Siglo XXV. Tan omnipresente como impotente, el Padre observa. Ni en sus más ambiciosos sueños se hubiera atrevido a vaticinar una vida tan larga para su imperio. Tampoco habría sospechado que el hombre hubiese podido sobrevivir a sus pecados durante tanto tiempo. A las puertas de las librerías, las masas, expectantes pero dóciles, guardan fila para descargar la recién editada novela. Preparan sus zócalos craneales para recibir la presunta última entrega de esa saga que él comenzase un lejano día, en lo que ahora pareciera otro universo. Apenas reconoce el planeta. En lo alto de las austeras fachadas, el trastataranieto de su bichozno, consumido como los cactus del severo desierto arrakeno, ofrece su mejor sonrisa artificial desde una levitante silla de autopropulsión. Nadie le calcularía ciento cincuenta años: de hecho no aparenta más de un siglo. Los fieles veneran su holograma como si del propio Paul Atreides se tratara.

Desearía mandarles un nuevo diluvio. Darles una lección por adorar a un becerro de plomo. Reprocharles a esos ingratos su indiferencia y castigarles por su traición. Sólo existe un Padre verdadero… Pero hace siglos que carece de cuerpo. Y ya nadie le recuerda. A veces hasta él duda de quién fue Frank Herbert. A dios muerto, dios puesto.

Los efectos de la agonía inducida por la especia remiten. El escritor, poco a poco, abandona el estado de precognición y regresa a 1965. Cada día le atormentan más esas visiones de futuro. Tanto que algunas noches insomnes ha planeado destruir su manuscrito y romper así la cadena. Pero su naturaleza es débil, y nada puede frente a las tentaciones terrenas. Él no ha conseguido superar la prueba: no ha logrado aniquilar sus pasiones. Es sólo un hombre. Abre el cajón y extrae el paquete ya preparado: la dirección de su editor minuciosamente escrita con letra vacilante. “Vanitas vanitatum, et omnia vanitas”, musita por un momento. Antes de zambullirse en sus sueños de grandeza de nuevo.

Robert William Chambers: The Repairer of Reputations (The King in Yellow)

I

"Ne raillons pas les fous; leur folie dure plus longtemps que la nôtre.... Voila toute la différence."

Toward the end of the year 1920 the Government of the United States had practically completed the programme, adopted during the last months of President Winthrop's administration. The country was apparently tranquil. Everybody knows how the Tariff and Labour questions were settled. The war with Germany, incident on that country's seizure of the Samoan Islands, had left no visible scars upon the republic, and the temporary occupation of Norfolk by the invading army had been forgotten in the joy over repeated naval victories, and the subsequent ridiculous plight of General Von Gartenlaube's forces in the State of New Jersey. The Cuban and Hawaiian investments had paid one hundred per cent and the territory of Samoa was well worth its cost as a coaling station. The country was in a superb state of defence. Every coast city had been well supplied with land fortifications; the army under the parental eye of the General Staff, organized according to the Prussian system, had been increased to 300,000 men, with a territorial reserve of a million; and six magnificent squadrons of cruisers and battle-ships patrolled the six stations of the navigable seas, leaving a steam reserve amply fitted to control home waters. The gentlemen from the West had at last been constrained to acknowledge that a college for the training of diplomats was as necessary as law schools are for the training of barristers; consequently we were no longer represented abroad by incompetent patriots. The nation was prosperous; Chicago, for a moment paralyzed after a second great fire, had risen from its ruins, white and imperial, and more beautiful than the white city which had been built for its plaything in 1893. Everywhere good architecture was replacing bad, and even in New York, a sudden craving for decency had swept away a great portion of the existing horrors. Streets had been widened, properly paved and lighted, trees had been planted, squares laid out, elevated structures demolished and underground roads built to replace them. The new government buildings and barracks were fine bits of architecture, and the long system of stone quays which completely surrounded the island had been turned into parks which proved a god-send to the population. The subsidizing of the state theatre and state opera brought its own reward. The United States National Academy of Design was much like European institutions of the same kind. Nobody envied the Secretary of Fine Arts, either his cabinet position or his portfolio. The Secretary of Forestry and Game Preservation had a much easier time, thanks to the new system of National Mounted Police. We had profited well by the latest treaties with France and England; the exclusion of foreign-born Jews as a measure of self-preservation, the settlement of the new independent negro state of Suanee, the checking of immigration, the new laws concerning naturalization, and the gradual centralization of power in the executive all contributed to national calm and prosperity. When the Government solved the Indian problem and squadrons of Indian cavalry scouts in native costume were substituted for the pitiable organizations tacked on to the tail of skeletonized regiments by a former Secretary of War, the nation drew a long sigh of relief. When, after the colossal Congress of Religions, bigotry and intolerance were laid in their graves and kindness and charity began to draw warring sects together, many thought the millennium had arrived, at least in the new world which after all is a world by itself.

Hugo Hiriart: La mosca y el perfumista

El terror me había pasmado paralizándome, reacción animal que me habría condenado a una muerte minuciosamente sanguinaria si la Caromola no me toma de la mano y corre conmigo por el laberinto de los corredores. Mi ingobernable pavor me llevó a implorar a la Caromola que tirara en cualquier parte a su majestad el emperador Blodo, hijo de la luna y del grillo sagrado, al que en sus hombros cargaba la dulce cirquera. De haber prestado oídos a mis urgentes palabras de seguro ahora estaríamos los dos artísticamente destazados. En la carrera principié a comprender nuestras desgracias: sin duda el difunto conde Chanma había confundido la puerta de la real perrera con la del real harén, error explicable, porque las dos puertas, enormes y ornadas con altorrelieves de bronce, son iguales, sólo que una está situada en el cuarto y la otra en el quinto piso del palacio, y había librado a los animales en lugar de a las mujeres. ¡Pobre Chanma!, él ya

había pagado su yerro de anciano. ¿Dónde estarían el príncipe Bomo y el mariscal Larba? ¿Lograrían agrupar a nuestras fuerzas y estarían peleando? El recuerdo de Ordominea en la sala de las artes simuladoras me llenaba de terror. Seguía a la Caromola que avanzaba con seguridad y aplomo definitivos, semejante a una niñera diligente con dos criaturas veleidosas y recalcitrantes. Nunca en mi vida había visto más feliz al emperador que en esa hora trágica: el hijo de la luna y el unicornio sagrado cantaba, reía, pataleaba y babeaba; por un momento pensé que podía morir de dicha. ¿Adónde nos dirigíamos? La pequeña escalera de piedra labrada y su pasamanos que imitaba las contorsiones de una culebra me reveló el propósito de la Caromola: nuestro destino era el real serrallo y la confusión de las setenta y cuatro concubinas. Al fondo del corredor vi la puerta de madera y bronce como quien mira la puerta de los paraísos. Tres guardias armados de hachas se interponían entre nosotros y el harén. La Caromola arrojó al emperador a mis brazos y de un brinco se colocó sobre mi hombro izquierdo: lo que vieron los soldados que custodiaban la puerta no fue al gran eunuco Foca con sus deslumbrantes vestidos y su andar arrogante, sino a un apresurado titiritero que entraba al serrallo con dos muñecos, un mono y una especie de perro, efecto este último que logró la gran cirquera y actriz cubriéndose el rostro con sus sedosas y largas barbas del color del té de manzanilla. Los guardias nos franquearon el paso y entramos al turbador lugar en el que setenta y cuatro mujeres y unas seiscientas sirvientas vivían juntas. Al amor del real serrallo volví a vestir trajes de seda. La Caromola declaró su intención de regresar a la sala de las artes simuladoras; yo la abracé emocionado y estaba por revivir nuestras más caras tradiciones de oratoria de despedida en su capítulo de oraciones fúnebres, ardua disciplina en la que desde joven fui un consumado maestro, pero la cirquera me interrumpió asegurándome con su aplomo y empaque habituales que pronto estaría de vuelta. La miré llorando de escepticismo. “Viajaré disfrazada de emperador, es decir, de mono”, explicó lacónicamente la Caromola al tiempo que vestía el traje del emperador Blodo, hijo de la luna y de la cebra sagrada, “y traeré conmigo todo lo que precisamos para nuestra fuga”. Desapareció la Caromola con agilidad de sombra y yo me consagré a la redacción en verso, de acuerdo a las más canónicas reglas de composición, de mi testamento.

Clark Ashton Smith: Ubbo-Sathla

For Ubbo-Sathla is the source and the end. Before the coming of Zhothaqquah or Yok-Zothoth or Kthulhut from the stars, Ubbo-Sathla dwelt in the steaming fens of the newmade Earth: a mass without head or members, spawning the grey, formless efts of the prime and the grisly prototypes of terrene life . . . And all earthly life, it is told, shall go back at last through the great circle of time to Ubbo-Sathla.

—The Book of Eibon.

Paul Tregardis found the milky crystal in a litter of oddments from many lands and eras. He had entered the shop of the curio-dealer through an aimless impulse, with no particular object in mind, other than the idle distraction of eyeing and fingering a miscellany of far-gathered things. Looking desultorily about, his attention had been drawn by a dull glimmering on one of the tables; and he had extricated the queer orb-like stone from its shadowy, crowded position between an ugly little Aztec idol, the fossil egg of a dinornis, and an obscene fetich of black wood from the Niger.

The thing was about the size of a small orange and was slightly flattened at the ends, like a planet at its poles. It puzzled Tregardis, for it was not like an ordinary crystal, being cloudy and changeable, with an intermittent glowing in its heart, as if it were alternately illumed and darkened from within. Holding it to the wintry window, he studied it for awhile without being able to determine the secret of this singular and regular alternation. His puzzlement was soon complicated by a dawning sense of vague and irrecognizable familiarity, as if he had seen the thing before under circumstances that were now wholly forgotten.

He appealed to the curio-dealer, a dwarfish Hebrew with an air of dusty antiquity, who gave the impression of being lost to commercial considerations in some web of cabbalistic revery.

"Can you tell me anything about this?"

The dealer gave an indescribable, simultaneous shrug of his shoulders and his eye-brows.

"It is very old—palaeogean, one might say. I cannot tell you much, for little is known. A geologist found it in Greenland, beneath glacial ice, in the Miocene strata. Who knows? It may have belonged to some sorcerer of primeval Thule. Greenland was a warm, fertile region, beneath the sun of Miocene times. No doubt it is a magic crystal; and a man might behold strange visions in its heart, if he looked long enough."

Tregardis was quite startled; for the dealer's apparently fantastic suggestion had brought to mind his own delvings in a branch of obscure lore; and, in particular, had recalled The Book of Eibon, that strangest and rarest of occult forgotten volumes, which is said to have come down through a series of manifold translations from a prehistoric original written in the lost language of Hyperborea. Tregardis, with much difficulty, had obtained the medieval French version—a copy that had been owned by many generations of sorcerers and Satanists—but had never been able to find the Greek manuscript from which the version was derived.

The remote, fabulous original was supposed to have been the work of a great Hyperborean wizard, from whom it had taken its name. It was a collection of dark and baleful myths, of liturgies, rituals and incantations both evil and esoteric. Not without shudders, in the course of studies that the average person would have considered more than singular, Tregardis had collated the French volume with the frightful Necronomicon of the mad Arab, Abdul Alhazred. He had found many correspondences of the blackest and most appalling significance, together with much forbidden data that was either unknown to the Arab or omitted by him ... or by his translators.

Harold Kremer: El combate

Fue en la guerra de los Mil Días. Raúl Sánchez, con una bala en el estómago, caminó durante tres días y tres noches. Se arrastró por montes y selvas hasta llegar a Buga. Entró a su casa, besó a su madre, a sus hermanas y se desmayó. A los dos días despertó. Vio a sus compañeros de guerra y preguntó por su madre y sus hermanas. Nadie le respondió. Preguntó por qué estaba allí en el campo de batalla. Le respondieron la verdad: iba a morir. Le dieron un calmante y volvió a dormir. Al despertar se encontró en su casa. Preguntó por sus compañeros. "Cuando ibas a partir a la guerra caíste enfermo", le dijo su madre. Raúl cerró los ojos y murió.

Howard Phillips Lovecraft: The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath

Three times Randolph Carter dreamed of the marvellous city, and three times was he snatched away while still he paused on the high terrace above it. All golden and lovely it blazed in the sunset, with walls, temples, colonnades, and arched bridges of veined marble, silver-basined fountains of prismatic spray in broad squares and perfumed gardens, and wide streets marching between delicate trees and blossom-laden urns and ivory statues in gleaming rows; while on steep northward slopes climbed tiers of red roofs and old peaked gables harbouring little lanes of grassy cobbles. It was a fever of the gods; a fanfare of supernal trumpets and a clash of immortal cymbals. Mystery hung about it as clouds about a fabulous unvisited mountain; and as Carter stood breathless and expectant on that balustraded parapet there swept up to him the poignancy and suspense of almost-vanished memory, the pain of lost things, and the maddening need to place again what once had an awesome and momentous place.

He knew that for him its meaning must once have been supreme; though in what cycle or incarnation he had known it, or whether in dream or in waking, he could not tell. Vaguely it called up glimpses of a far, forgotten first youth, when wonder and pleasure lay in all the mystery of days, and dawn and dusk alike strode forth prophetick to the eager sound of lutes and song; unclosing faery gates toward further and surprising marvels. But each night as he stood on that high marble terrace with the curious urns and carven rail and looked off over that hushed sunset city of beauty and unearthly immanence, he felt the bondage of dream’s tyrannous gods; for in no wise could he leave that lofty spot, or descend the wide marmoreal flights flung endlessly down to where those streets of elder witchery lay outspread and beckoning.

When for the third time he awaked with those flights still undescended and those hushed sunset streets still untraversed, he prayed long and earnestly to the hidden gods of dream that brood capricious above the clouds on unknown Kadath, in the cold waste where no man treads. But the gods made no answer and shewed no relenting, nor did they give any favouring sign when he prayed to them in dream, and invoked them sacrificially through the bearded priests Nasht and Kaman-Thah, whose cavern-temple with its pillar of flame lies not far from the gates of the waking world. It seemed, however, that his prayers must have been adversely heard, for after even the first of them he ceased wholly to behold the marvellous city; as if his three glimpses from afar had been mere accidents or oversights, and against some hidden plan or wish of the gods.

At length, sick with longing for those glittering sunset streets and cryptical hill lanes among ancient tiled roofs, nor able sleeping or waking to drive them from his mind, Carter resolved to go with bold entreaty whither no man had gone before, and dare the icy deserts through the dark to where unknown Kadath, veiled in cloud and crowned with unimagined stars, holds secret and nocturnal the onyx castle of the Great Ones.

In light slumber he descended the seventy steps to the cavern of flame and talked of this design to the bearded priests Nasht and Kaman-Thah. And the priests shook their pshent-bearing heads and vowed it would be the death of his soul. They pointed out that the Great Ones had shewn already their wish, and that it is not agreeable to them to be harassed by insistent pleas. They reminded him, too, that not only had no man ever been to unknown Kadath, but no man had ever suspected in what part of space it may lie; whether it be in the dreamlands around our world, or in those surrounding some unguessed companion of Fomalhaut or Aldebaran. If in our dreamland, it might conceivably be reached; but only three fully human souls since time began had ever crossed and recrossed the black impious gulfs to other dreamlands, and of that three two had come back quite mad. There were, in such voyages, incalculable local dangers; as well as that shocking final peril which gibbers unmentionably outside the ordered universe, where no dreams reach; that last amorphous blight of nethermost confusion which blasphemes and bubbles at the centre of all infinity—the boundless daemon-sultan Azathoth, whose name no lips dare speak aloud, and who gnaws hungrily in inconceivable, unlighted chambers beyond time amidst the muffled, maddening beating of vile drums and the thin, monotonous whine of accursed flutes; to which detestable pounding and piping dance slowly, awkwardly, and absurdly the gigantic ultimate gods, the blind, voiceless, tenebrous, mindless Other Gods whose soul and messenger is the crawling chaos Nyarlathotep.

Horacio Quiroga: El hijo

Es un poderoso día de verano en Misiones, con todo el sol, el calor y la calma que puede deparar la estación. La naturaleza, plenamente abierta, se siente satisfecha de sí.

Como el sol, el calor y la calma ambiente, el padre abre también su corazón a la naturaleza.

-Ten cuidado, chiquito -dice a su hijo, abreviando en esa frase todas las observaciones del caso y que su hijo comprende perfectamente.

-Si, papá -responde la criatura mientras coge la escopeta y carga de cartuchos los bolsillos de su camisa, que cierra con cuidado.

-Vuelve a la hora de almorzar -observa aún el padre.

-Sí, papá -repite el chico.

Equilibra la escopeta en la mano, sonríe a su padre, lo besa en la cabeza y parte. Su padre lo sigue un rato con los ojos y vuelve a su quehacer de ese día, feliz con la alegría de su pequeño.

Sabe que su hijo es educado desde su más tierna infancia en el hábito y la precaución del peligro, puede manejar un fusil y cazar no importa qué. Aunque es muy alto para su edad, no tiene sino trece años. Y parecía tener menos, a juzgar por la pureza de sus ojos azules, frescos aún de sorpresa infantil. No necesita el padre levantar los ojos de su quehacer para seguir con la mente la marcha de su hijo.

Ha cruzado la picada roja y se encamina rectamente al monte a través del abra de espartillo.

Para cazar en el monte -caza de pelo- se requiere más paciencia de la que su cachorro puede rendir. Después de atravesar esa isla de monte, su hijo costeará la linde de cactus hasta el bañado, en procura de palomas, tucanes o tal cual casal de garzas, como las que su amigo Juan ha descubierto días anteriores. Sólo ahora, el padre esboza una sonrisa al recuerdo de la pasión cinegética de las dos criaturas. Cazan sólo a veces un yacútoro, un surucuá -menos aún- y regresan triunfales, Juan a su rancho con el fusil de nueve milímetros que él le ha regalado, y su hijo a la meseta con la gran escopeta Saint-Étienne, calibre 16, cuádruple cierre y pólvora blanca.

Él fue lo mismo. A los trece años hubiera dado la vida por poseer una escopeta. Su hijo, de aquella edad, la posee ahora y el padre sonríe...

Rudyard Kipling: The Strange Ride of Morrowbie Jukes

Alive or dead—there is no other way.

—Native Proverb.

There is, as the conjurers say, no deception about this tale. Jukes by accident stumbled upon a village that is well known to exist, though he is the only Englishman who has been there. A somewhat similar institution used to flourish on the outskirts of Calcutta, and there is a story that if you go into the heart of Bikanir, which is in the heart of the Great Indian Desert, you shall come across not a village but a town where the Dead who did not die but may not live have established their headquarters. And, since it is perfectly true that in the same Desert is a wonderful city where all the rich money lenders retreat after they have made their fortunes (fortunes so vast that the owners cannot trust even the strong hand of the Government to protect them, but take refuge in the waterless sands), and drive sumptuous C-spring barouches, and buy beautiful girls and decorate their palaces with gold and ivory and Minton tiles and mother-n'-pearl, I do not see why Jukes's tale should not be true. He is a Civil Engineer, with a head for plans and distances and things of that kind, and he certainly would not take the trouble to invent imaginary traps. He could earn more by doing his legitimate work. He never varies the tale in the telling, and grows very hot and indignant when he thinks of the disrespectful treatment he received. He wrote this quite straightforwardly at first, but he has since touched it up in places and introduced Moral Reflections, thus:

In the beginning it all arose from a slight attack of fever. My work necessitated my being in camp for some months between Pakpattan and Muharakpur—a desolate sandy stretch of country as every one who has had the misfortune to go there may know. My coolies were neither more nor less exasperating than other gangs, and my work demanded sufficient attention to keep me from moping, had I been inclined to so unmanly a weakness.

On the 23d December, 1884, I felt a little feverish. There was a full moon at the time, and, in consequence, every dog near my tent was baying it. The brutes assembled in twos and threes and drove me frantic. A few days previously I had shot one loud-mouthed singer and suspended his carcass in terrorem about fifty yards from my tent-door. But his friends fell upon, fought for, and ultimately devoured the body; and, as it seemed to me, sang their hymns of thanksgiving afterward with renewed energy.

The light-heartedness which accompanies fever acts differently on different men. My irritation gave way, after a short time, to a fixed determination to slaughter one huge black and white beast who had been foremost in song and first in flight throughout the evening. Thanks to a shaking hand and a giddy head I had already missed him twice with both barrels of my shot-gun, when it struck me that my best plan would be to ride him down in the open and finish him off with a hog-spear. This, of course, was merely the semi-delirious notion of a fever patient; but I remember that it struck me at the time as being eminently practical and feasible.

Salvador Elizondo: Puente de piedra

“Tienes que venir al pic-nic”, le había dicho, “ésa será como la prueba de fuego de tus sentimientos”. Ella no hubiera querido estar sola con él allí en el campo. Pero no podía negarse porque muchas veces, desde que se habían conocido, ella le había dicho: “Me gustaría estar sola contigo en un cuarto; ver cómo eres en la intimidad, cuando te sientas en un sillón y te pones a leer o a fumar”. Por eso el pic-nic era como una fórmula de transacción. La soledad, pero no la soledad sucia del consabido departamento equívoco, pequeño y abigarrado, con los inevitables carteles de París y de Picasso, el cuadro dizque abstracto, el tocadiscos, los cigarrillos resecos, los libros que no interesan y los muebles mal tapizados, sino una soledad abierta hacia las copas de los árboles y hacia las faldas de los montes en la mañana. “Será un encuentro en la naturaleza”, había dicho un poco para obligarla y un poco para que ella estuviera segura de sus buenas intenciones. Ambos gustaban, sin embargo, de estar al cubierto. Amaban el cine y los cafés, y las vueltas a la manzana en automóvil porque así siempre estaban bajo techo. Parecía como que las estrellas los inquietaban y de noche se detenían en alguna esquina solitaria y se quedaban hablando largo rato en el interior del coche. Sólo el sol de mediodía los llenaba de entusiasmo a pesar de sus inclinaciones. Al mediodía les gustaba encontrarse en el Centro y mezclarse al bullicio de los empleados y de los turistas porque ellos eran como una isla bajo los árboles de los jardines públicos y ella le decía: “¡Cuántas veces he pasado por aquí y nunca me había parecido como ahora!” Se equivocaba quizá, pero en esa equivocación estaba contenido todo lo que él amaba en ella y le aterrorizaba la posibilidad de que su separación inminente tuviera lugar entre un estrépito de automóviles o en una garçonière de mal gusto. El pic-nic ponía una nota neutra, pero que podría interpretarse como sublime, en el recuerdo de aquella escena de despedida. Ella había aceptado. Él esperaba retenerla para siempre, pero ella, después de haber aceptado, llegaba a su casa por la noche y lloraba igual que siempre, encerrada en su cuarto mientras sus padres y sus hermanos pequeños veían la televisión. Era como una anciana o como una niña. De la ilusión pasaba al desencanto, temerosa siempre de perder la estabilidad de sus sentimientos. Pero su intuición, que las más de las veces la inquietaba, le decía ahora que ese día de campo no tendría la menor importancia. Por eso consideraba que no había hecho mal aceptando.

Él cifraba todas sus esperanzas en ese paseo. Odiaba la naturaleza, es verdad. Sobre todo, ese campo agresivo en que los perros hambrientos acudían invariablemente a devorar los restos de la comida y en donde, como en las playas, siempre surgía el espectáculo de esas mujeres gordas que llevan pantalones, esos empleados deplorables que juegan fútbol con sus hijos, esos adolescentes que tocan con sus guitarras canciones de moda. Durante aquellos días hizo un minucioso inventario de las localidades y de las posibilidades que ofrecía el día de campo. El trópico no era lo suficientemente sereno para ser escenario del diálogo que tenía previsto. El vino tal vez surtiría un efecto demasiado violento o demasiado opresivo en el calor. Sería preciso dirigirse hacia el norte. Ese paisaje alpino inmediatamente al alcance de la mano, con sus barrancas de abetos, con sus riachuelos de guijarros, con su posibilidad de detenerse un momento en la caminata para recoger una piña y exclamar: “¡Mira, está llena de piñones!”, como si en esta frase quedara comprendido un vago amor a la naturaleza. Y ese frío tierno, templado, que siempre justifica una botella de vino, un queso fuerte con unos trozos de pan, un grito salvaje de efusión musical en medio del silencio que sólo estaría roto por el ruido de la corriente de un arroyo.

Abraham Merritt: The woman of the wood

MCKAY sat on the balcony of the little inn that squatted like a brown gnome among the pines on the eastern shore of the lake.

It was a small and lonely lake high up in the Vosges; and yet, lonely is not just the word with which to tag its spirit; rather was it aloof, withdrawn. The mountains came down on every side, making a great tree-lined bowl that seemed, when McKay first saw it, to be filled with the still wine of peace.

McKay had worn the wings in the world war with honor, flying first with the French and later with his own country's forces. And as a bird loves the trees, so did McKay love them. To him they were not merely trunks and roots, branches and leaves; to him they were personalities. He was acutely aware of differences in character even among the same species—that pine was benevolent and jolly; that one austere and monkish; there stood a swaggering bravo, and there dwelt a sage wrapped in green meditation; that birch was a wanton—the birch near her was virginal, still a dream.

The war had sapped him, nerve and brain and soul. Through all the years that had passed since then the wound had kept open. But now, as he slid his car down the vast green bowl, he felt its spirit reach out to him; reach out to him and caress and quiet him, promising him healing. He seemed to drift like a falling leaf through the clustered woods; to be cradled by gentle hands of the trees.

He had stopped at the little gnome of an inn, and there he had lingered, day after day, week after week.

The trees had nursed him; soft whisperings of leaves, slow chant of the needled pines, had first deadened, then driven from him the re-echoing clamor of the war and its sorrow. The open wound of his spirit had closed under their green healing; had closed and become scar; and even the scar had been covered and buried, as the scars on Earth's breast are covered and buried beneath the falling leaves of Autumn. The trees had laid green healing hands on his eyes, banishing the pictures of war. He had sucked strength from the green breasts of the hills.

Yet as strength flowed back to him and mind and spirit healed, McKay had grown steadily aware that the place was troubled; that its tranquillity was not perfect; that there was ferment of fear within it.

It was as though the trees had waited until he himself had become whole before they made their own unrest known to him. Now they were trying to tell him something; there was a shrillness as of apprehension, of anger, in the whispering of the leaves, the needled chanting of the pines.

And it was this that had kept McKay at the inn—a definite consciousness of appeal, consciousness of something wrong—something wrong that he was being asked to right. He strained his ears to catch words in the rustling branches, words that trembled on the brink of his human understanding.

Mario Benedetti: Eso

Al preso lo interrogaban tres veces por semana para averiguar «quien le había enseñado eso». Él siempre respondía con un digno silencio y entonces el teniente de turno arrimaba a sus testículos la horrenda picana.

Un día el preso tuvo la súbita inspiración de contestar: «Marx. Sí, ahora lo recuerdo, fue Marx.» El teniente asombrado pero alerta, atinó a preguntar: «Ajá. Y a ese Marx ¿quién se lo enseñó?» El preso, ya en disposición de hacer concesiones agregó: «No estoy seguro, pero creo que fue Hegel.»

El teniente sonrió, satisfecho, y el preso, tal vez por deformación profesional, alcanzó a pensar: «Ojalá que el viejo no se haya movido de Alemania.»