Robert E. Howard: Red Nails

1. The Skull on the Crag

The woman on the horse reined in her weary steed. It stood with its legs wide-braced, its head drooping, as if it found even the weight of the gold-tassled, red-leather bridle too heavy. The woman drew a booted foot out of the silver stirrup and swung down from the gilt-worked saddle. She made the reins fast to the fork of a sapling, and turned about, hands on her hips, to survey her surroundings.

They were not inviting. Giant trees hemmed in the small pool where her horse had just drunk. Clumps of undergrowth limited the vision that quested under the somber twilight of the lofty arches formed by intertwining branches. The woman shivered with a twitch of her magnificent shoulders, and then cursed.

She was tall, full-bosomed, and large-limbed, with compact shoulders. Her whole figure reflected an unusual strength, without detracting from the femininity of her appearance. She was all woman, in spite of her bearing and her garments. The latter were incongruous, in view of her present environs. Instead of a skirt she wore short, wide-legged silk breeches, which ceased a hand's breadth short of her knees, and were upheld by a wide silken sash worn as a girdle. Flaring-topped boots of soft leather came almost to her knees, and a low-necked, wide-collared, wide-sleeved silk shirt completed her costume. One one shapely hip she wore a straight double-edged sword, and on the other a long dirk. Her unruly golden hair, cut square at her shoulders, was confined by a band of crimson satin.

Against the background of somber, primitive forest she posed with an unconscious picturesqueness, bizarre and out of place. She should have been posed against a background of sea clouds, painted masts, and wheeling gulls. There was the color of the sea in her wide eyes. And that was at it should have been, because this was Valeria of the Red Brotherhood, whose deeds are celebrated in song and ballad wherever seafarers gather.

She strove to pierce the sullen green roof of the arched branches and see the sky which presumably lay above it, but presently gave it up with a muttered oath.

Leaving her horse tied, she strode off toward the east, glancing back toward the pool from time to time in order to fix her route in her mind. The silence of the forest depressed her. No birds sang in the lofty boughs, nor did any rustling in the bushes indicate the presence of small animals. For leagues she had traveled in a realm of brooding stillness, broken only by the sounds of her own flight.

She had slaked her thirst at the pool, but now felt the gnawing of hunger and began looking about for some of the fruit on which she had sustained herself since exhausting the food originally in her saddlebags.

Ahead of her, presently, she saw an outcropping of dark, flint-like rock that sloped upward into what looked like a rugged crag rising among the trees. Its summit was lost to view amidst a cloud of encircling leaves. Perhaps its peak rose above the treetops, and from it she could see what lay beyond—if, indeed, anything lay beyond but more of this apparently illimitable forest through which she had ridden for so many days.

A narrow ridge formed a natural ramp that led up the steep face of the crag. After she had ascended some fifty feet, she came to the belt of leaves that surrounded the rock. The trunks of the trees did not crowd close to the crag, but the ends of their lower branches extended about it, veiling it with their foliage. She groped on in leafy obscurity, not able to see either above or below her; but presently she glimpsed blue sky, and a moment later came out in the clear, hot sunlight and saw the forest roof stretching away under her feet.

Ricardo Acevedo Esplugas: Astolfo, de lo que este vio en la luna y de lo que no contó

En un profundo valle, situado entre montes altísimos, había un inmenso tesoro, compuesto con todo lo que en la Tierra se había desperdiciado.

Astolfo sulla luna (1532), Ludovico Ariosto.

El hipogrifo descendió suavemente entre los valles de la luna. Sin perder su dignidad permitió que Astolfo le acariciara bajo su cuello emplumado, para luego devorar con prontitud su ración de gemas.

Sin comprender por qué, Astolfo sabía de la utilidad y el nombre de todos los objetos presentes y futuros que allí se apilaban: un gran rompeolas hecho de chalecos salvavidas; balas perdidas que revolotean como moscas buscando un blanco invisible; la yerba facturada con discursos llenos de promesas incumplidas; y junto al viento desclasificaban todos los documentos secretos del mundo.

A lo lejos, Astolfo pudo otear una figura vestida de blanco de cómico andar, su voz le llegó llena de interferencias:

“Este es un pequeño paso para el hombre…”

Wilkie Collins: The Ghost in the Cupboard Room

 Mr. Beaver, on being “spoke” (as his friend and ally, Jack Governor, called it), turned out of an imaginary hammock with the greatest promptitude, and went straight on duty. “As it’s Nat Beaver’s watch,” said he, “there shall be no skulking.” Jack looked at me, with an expectant and admiring turn of his eye on Mr. Beaver, full of complimentary implication. I noticed, by the way, that Jack, in a naval absence of mind with which he is greatly troubled at times, had his arm round my sister’s waist. Perhaps this complaint originates in an old nautical requirement of having something to hold on by.
These were the terms of Mr. Beaver’s revelation to us:
What I have got to put forward, will not take very long; and I shall beg leave to begin by going back to last night — just about the time when we all parted from one another to go to bed.
The members of this good company did a very necessary and customary thing, last night — they each took a bedroom candlestick, and lit the candle before they went up-stairs. I wonder whether any one of them noticed that I left my candlestick untouched, and my candle unlighted; and went to bed, in a Haunted House, of all the places in the world, in the dark? I don’t think any one of them did.
That is, perhaps, rather curious to begin with. It is likewise curious, and just as true, that the bare sight of those candlesticks in the hands of this good company set me in a tremble, and made last night, a night’s bad dream instead of a night’s good sleep. The fact of the matter is — and I give you leave, ladies and gentlemen, to laugh at it as much as you please — that the ghost which haunted me last night, which has haunted me off and on for many years past, and which will go on haunting me till I am a ghost myself (and consequently spirit-proof in all respects), is, nothing more or less than — a bedroom candlestick.
Yes, a bedroom candlestick and candle, or a flat candlestick and candle — put it which way you like — that is what haunts me. I wish it was something pleasanter and more out of the common way; a beautiful lady, or a mine of gold and silver, or a cellar of wine and a coach and horses, and such-like. But, being what it is, I must take it for what it is, and make the best of it — and I shall thank you all kindly if you will help me out by doing the same.
I am not a scholar myself; but I make bold to believe that the haunting of any man, with anything under the sun, begins with the frightening of him. At any rate, the haunting of me with a bedroom candlestick and candle began with the frightening of me with a bedroom candlestick and candle — the frightening of me half out of my life, ladies and gentlemen; and, for the time being, the frightening of me altogether out of my wits. That is not a very pleasant thing to confess to you all, before stating the particulars; but perhaps you will be the readier to believe that I am not a downright coward, because you find me bold enough to make a clean breast of it already, to my own great disadvantage, so far.
These are the particulars, as well as I can put them.

Juan Eduardo Zúñiga: La prisionera

Estoy en el jardín de un antiguo palacio que no sé de quién fue ni cuál es hoy su dueño. La tarde es húmeda, y otoñal el ocaso; en el blando suelo las hojas mueren adheridas al barro. No hace viento, no oigo ningún ruido entre los árboles que forman paseos en los que mudas estatuas, sobre pedestales de hiedra, alzan su desnudez.

Quisiera recorrer este extraño jardín, pero estoy quieto. Nadie lo visita, nadie hace crujir el puentecillo de madera sobre el constante arroyo. Nadie se apoya en las balaustradas del parterre ante la fila de bustos que la intemperie enmascaró con manchas verdinegras.

Estoy ante la gran fachada cubierta de ventanas que termina en altas chimeneas sobre el oscuro alero del tejado. Todo en ella muestra haber sufrido los ataques del tiempo pero estos rigores no dañaron a la única ventana que yo miro. Cada día, tras los cristales, aparece ella, su delicada silueta, y aparta la cortina de tul y largamente pasea su mirada por los senderos que se alejan hacia el río. Vestida de color violeta, siempre seria, eternamente bella, conserva su rostro juvenil, su gesto de candor, atenta a la llegada de alguien que ella espera. Inmóvil, tras el cristal, no habla, no muestra si acepta mi presencia, acaso no me ve. Resignada se dobla mi cabeza sobre el hombro mordido por las lluvias; desearía que sus dedos me rozasen antes de que su mano se haga transparencia. Desfallece mi cabeza enamorada; tras mis ojos vacíos atesoré palabras y palabras de amor dedicadas a ella. Acaso un día logren mover mis labios de durísima piedra.

Ursula K. Le Guin: The Day Before the Revolution

In memoriam Paul Goodman, 1911-1972

The speaker's voice was as loud as empty beer-trucks in a stone street, and the people at the meeting were jammed up close, cobblestones, that great voice booming over them. Taviri was somewhere on the other side of the hall. She had to get to him. She wormed and pushed her way among the dark-clothed, close-packed people. She did not hear the words, nor see the faces: only the booming, and the bodies pressed one behind the other. She could not see Taviri, she was too short. A broad black-vested belly and chest loomed up, blocking her way. She must get through to Taviri. Sweating, she jabbed fiercely with her fist. It was like hitting stone, he did not move at all, but the huge lungs let out right over her head a prodigious noise, a bellow.. She cowered. Then she understood that the bellow had not been at her. Others were shouting. The speaker had said something, something fine about taxes or shadows. Thrilled, she joined the shouting--"Yes! Yes!" --and shoving on, came out easily into the open expanse of the Regimental Drill Field in Parheo. Overhead the evening sky lay deep and colorless, and all around her nodded the tall weeds with dry, white, close-floreted heads. She had never known what they were called. The flowers nodded above her head, swaying in the wind that always blew across the fields in the dusk. She ran among them, and they whipped lithe aside and stood up again swaying, silent. Taviri stood among the tall weeds in his good suit, the dark grey one that made him look like a professor or a play-actor, harshly elegant. He did not look happy, but he was laughing, and saying something to her. The sound of his voice made her cry, and she reached out to catch hold of his hand, but she did not stop, quite. She could not stop. "Oh, Taviri," she said, It's just on there!" The queer sweet smell of the white weeds was heavy as she went on. There were thorns. tangles underfoot, there were slopes, pits. She feared to fall, to fall, she stopped.

Sun, bright morning-glare, straight in the eyes, relentless. She had forgotten to pull the blind last night. She turned her back on the sun, but the right side wasn't comfortable. No use. Day. She sighed twice, sat up, got her legs over the edge of the bed, and sat hunched in her nightdress looking down at her feet.

The toes, compressed by a lifetime of cheap shoes, were almost square where they touched each other, and bulged out above in corns; the nails were discolored and shapeless. Between the knob-like anklebones ran fine, dry wrinkles. The brief little plain at the base of the toes had kept its delicacy, but the skin was the color of mud, and knotted veins crossed the instep. Disgusting. Sad, depressing. Mean. Pitiful. She tried on all the words, and they all fit, like hideous little hats. Hideous: yes, that one too. To look at oneself and find it hideous, what a job! But then, when she hadn't been hideous, had she sat around and stared at herself like this? Not much! A proper body's not an object, not an implement, not a belonging to be admired, it's just you, yourself. Only when it's no longer you. but yours, a thing owned, do you worry about it-- Is it in good shape? Will it do? Will it last?

"Who cares" said Laia fiercely, and stood up.

It made her giddy to stand up suddenly. She had to put out her hand to the bed-table, for she dreaded falling. At that she thought of reaching out to Taviri in the dream.

What had he said? She could not remember. She was not sure if she had even touched his hand. She frowned, trying to force memory. It had been so long since she had dreamed about Taviri; and now not even to remember what he had said!

It was gone, it was gone. She stood there hunched in her nightdress, frowning, one hand on the bed-table. How long was it since she had thought of him--let alone dreamed of him--even thought of him, as "Taviri?" How long since she had said his name?

Asieo said. When Asieo and I were in prison in the North. Before I met Asieo. Asieo's theory of reciprocity. Oh yes, she talked about him, talked about him too much no doubt, maundered, dragged him in. But as "Asieo," the last name, the public man. The private man was gone, utterly gone. There were so few left who had even known him. They had all used to be in jail. One laughed about it in those days, all the friends in all the jails. But they weren't even there, these days. They were in the prison cemeteries. Or in the common graves. 

Pere Calders: Invasió subtil

A l'Hostal Punta Marina, de Tossa, vaig conèixer un japonès desconcertant, que no s'assemblava en cap aspecte a la idea que jo tenia formada d'aquesta mena d'orientals.

A l'hora de sopar, va asseure's a la meva taula, després de demanar-me permís sense gaire cerimònia. Em va cridar l'atenció el fet que no tenia els ulls oblics ni la pell groguenca. Al contrari: en qüestió de color tirava a galtes rosades i a cabell rossenc.

Jo estava encuriosit per veure quins plats demanaria. Confesso que era una actitud pueril, esperant que encarregués plats poc corrents o combinacions exòtiques. El cas és que em va sorprendre fent-se servir amanida -"amb força ceba", digué-, cap i pota, molls a la brasa i ametlles torrades. Al final, cafè, una copa de conyac i una breva.

M'havia imaginat que el japonè menjaria amb una pulcritud exagerada, irritant i tot, pinçant els aliments com si fossin peces de rellotgeria. Però no fou pas així: l'home se servia del ganivet i la forquilla amb una gran desimboltura, i mastegava a boca plena sense complicacions estètiques. A mi, la veritat, em feia trontollar els partits presos.

D'altra banda, parlava català com qualsevol de nosaltres, sense ni una ombra de cap accent foraster. Això no era tan estrany, si es considera que aquesta gent és molt estudiosa i llesta en gran manera. Però a mi em feia sentir inferior, perquè no sé ni un borrall de japonès. És curiós de constatar que, el toc estranger a l'entrevista, l'hi posava jo, condicionant tota la meva actuació -gestos, paraules, entrades de conversa-, al fet que el meu interlocutor era japonès. Ell, en canvi, estava fresc com una rosa.

Jo creia que aquell home devia ésser representant o venedor d'aparells fotogràfics, o de transistors. Qui sap si de perles cultivades... Vaig provar tots aquells temes i ell els apartà amb un ample moviment del braç. "Venc sants d'Olot, jo", digué. "Encara hi ha mercat?", vaig preguntar-li. I em va dir que sí, que anava de baixa però que ell es defensava. Feia la zona sud de la Península, i va afirmar que, així que tenia un descans o venien dues festes seguides, cap a casa falta gent...

Diego de Torres Villarroel: La casa de los duendes

Ya estaba yo puesto de jácaro, vestido de baladrón y reventando de ganchoso, esperan­do con necias ansias el día en que había de partir con mi clérigo contrabandista a la solicitud de unas galeras o en la horca, en vez de unos talegos de tabaco, que (según me dijo) habíamos de transportar desde Burgos a Madrid, sin licencia del Rey, sus celadores ni ministros; y una tarde muy cercana al día de nuestra delincuente resolución, encontré en la calle de Atocha a don Julián Casquero, capellán de la excelentísima señora condesa de los Arcos. Venía éste en busca mía, sin color en el rostro, poseído del espanto y lleno de una horrorosa cobardía. Esta­ba el hombre tan trémulo, tan pajizo y tan arrebatado como si se le hubiera aparecido alguna cosa sobrenatural. Balbuciente y con las voces lánguidas y rotas, en ademán de enfermo que habla con el frío de la calentura, me dio a entender que me venía buscando para que aquella noche acompañase a la señora condesa, que yacía horriblemente atribulada con la novedad de un tremendo y extraño ruido que tres noches antes había resonado en todos los centros y extremidades de las piezas de la casa. Ponderome el tristísimo pavor que padecían todas las criadas y criados, y añadió que su ama tendría mucho consuelo y serenidad en verme y en que la acompañase en aquella insoportable confusión y tumultuosa angustia. Prometí ir a besar sus pies, sumamente alegre, porque el padecer yo el miedo y la turbación era dudoso, y de cierto aseguraba una buena cena aquella noche. Llegó la hora, fui a la casa, entráronme hasta el gabi­nete de su excelencia, en donde la hallé afligida, pavorosa y rodeada de sus asistentas, todas tan pálidas, inmobles y mudas, que parecían estatuas. Procuré apartar, con la rudeza y desenfado de mis expresiones, el asombro que se les había metido en el espíritu; ofrecí rondar los escon­dites más ocultos, y, con mi ingenuidad y mis promesas, quedaron sus corazones más trata­bles. Yo cené con sabroso apetito a las diez de la noche, y a esta hora empezaron los lacayos a sacar las camas de las habitaciones de los criados, las que tendían en un salón, donde se acos­taba todo el montón de familiares, para sufrir sin tanto horror, con los alivios de la sociedad, el ignorado ruido que esperaban. Capitulose a bulto entre los tímidos y los inocentes a este rumor por juego, locura y ejercicio de duende, sin más causa que haber dado la manía, la pre­cipitación o el antojo de la vulgaridad este nombre a todos los estrépitos nocturnos. Apiñaron en el salón catorce camas, en las que se fueron mal metiendo personas de ambos sexos y de todos estados. Cada una se fue desnudando y haciendo sus menesteres indispensables con el recato, decencia y silencio más posible. Yo me apoderé de una silla, puse a mi lado una hacha' de cuatro mechas y un espadón cargado de orín, y, sin acordarme de cosa de esta vida ni de la otra, empecé a dormir con admirable serenidad. A la una de la noche resonó con bastante sen­timiento el enfadoso ruido; gritaron los que estaban empanados en el pastelón de la pieza; desperté con prontitud y oí unos golpes vagos, turbios y de dificultoso examen en diferentes sitios de la casa. Subí, favorecido de mi luz y de mi espadón, a los desvanes y azoteas, y no encontré fantasma, esperezo ni bulto de cosa racional. Volvieron a mecerse y repetirse los porrazos; yo torné a examinar el paraje donde presumí que podían tener su origen, y tampo­co pude descubrir la causa, el nacimiento ni el actor. Continuaba, de cuarto en cuarto de hora, el descomunal estruendo, y, en esta alternativa, duró hasta las tres y media de la mañana. Once días estuvimos escuchando y padeciendo a las mismas horas los tristes y tonitruosos golpes; y, cansada su excelencia de sufrir el ruido, la descomodidad y la vigilia, trató de esconderse en el primer rincón que encontrase vacío, aunque no fuese abonado a su persona, grandeza y familia dilatada. Mandó adelantar en vivas diligencias su deliberación, y sus criados se pusie­ron en una precipitada obediencia, ya de reverentes, ya de horrorizados con el suceso de la última noche, que fue el que diré.

Edward Frederic Benson: The cat

Many people will doubtless, remember that exhibition at the Royal Academy, not so many seasons ago which came to be known as Alingham's year, when Dick Alingham vaulted, with one bound, as it were, out of the crowd of strugglers and seated himself with admirably certain poise on the very topmost pinnacle of contemporary fame. He exhibited three portraits, each a masterpiece, which killed every picture within range. But since that year nobody cared anything for pictures whether in or out of range except those three, it did not signify so greatly. The phenomenon of his appearance was as sudden as that of the meteor, coming from nowhere and sliding large and luminous across the remote and star-sown sky, as inexplicable as the bursting of a spring on some dust-ridden rocky hillside. Some fairy godmother, one might conjecture, had bethought herself of her forgotten godson, and with a wave of her wand bestowed on him this transcendent gift. But, as the Irish say, she held her wand in her left hand, for her gift had another side to it. Or perhaps, again, Jim Merwick is right, and the theory he propounds in his monograph, "On certain obscure lesions of the nerve centres," says the final word on the subject.

Dick Alingham himself, as was indeed natural, was delighted with his fairy godmother or his obscure lesion (whichever was responsible), and (the monograph spoken of above was written after Dick's death) confessed frankly to his friend Merwick, who was still struggling through the crowd of rising young medical practitioners, that it was all quite as inexplicable to himself as it was to anyone else.

"All I know about it," he said, "is that last autumn I went through two months of mental depression so hideous that I thought again and again that I must go off my head. For hours daily, I sat here, waiting for something to crack, which as far as I am concerned would end everything.

"Yes, there was a cause; you know it."

He paused a moment and poured into his glass a fairly liberal allowance of whisky, filled it half up from a syphon, and lit a cigarette. The cause, indeed, had no need to be enlarged on, for Merwick quite well remembered how the girl Dick had been engaged to threw him over with an abruptness that was almost superb, when a more eligible suitor made his appearance. The latter was certainly very eligible indeed with his good looks, his title, and his million of money, and Lady Madingley—ex-future Mrs. Alingham—was perfectly content with what she had done.

She was one of those blonde, lithe, silken girls, who, happily for the peace of men's minds, are rather rare, and who remind one of some humanised yet celestial and bestial cat.

Salvador Elizondo: Anapoyesis

Un escueto cable, transcrito por los periódicos, anuncia la muerte, en circunstancias trágicas, del Profesor Pierre Emile Aubanel que fuera, hasta antes de la guerra, titular de la cátedra de termodinámica en la Escuela Politécnica y de lingüística aplicada en la Escuela de Altos Estudios. Pocas semanas antes de que estallara el conflicto, en los medios científicos de París se discutían acaloradamente los trabajos que Aubanel había dado a conocer en el Instituto. Hubo quienes los juzgaron charlatanería y, ante el escándalo, Aubanel, que ya había dado su libro Énergie et langage a las prensas, se retiró a la soledad de su departamento de la rué dé Rome para proseguir sus investigaciones en privado. Losónos de guerra y de ocupación lo obligaron a un encierro fructífero, si bien la Gestapo cuidó de confiscar y destruir toda la edición del libro alegando, con base en un argumento lingüístico errado, el origen sefaradí del nombre de su autor.

Aubanel conservó cierto renombre en sus especialidades de la termodinámica aun al través del holocausto europeo. Lo conocí, después de la guerra, con motivo de la entropía de los altos vacíos, cuestión acerca de la cual fui a consultarlo, aunque lo que nos hizo amigos y me procuró su confianza fue la poesía. Yo recordaba haber leído que Stéphane Mallarmé había vivido en la misma calle que Aubanel. Cuando terminamos nuestra consulta y pasamos a hablar de generalidades, le pregunté si no podría indicarme cuál era la casa del poeta o si quedaba cerca.

Aubanel entornó los ojos y esbozó una sonrisa irónica; luego dijo:

—Mi querido amigo, ésta fue la casa de Mallarmé.

Señaló en torno con un gesto indiferente de la mano. Yo estaba asombrado de vérmelas con este gran hombre de ciencia incomprendido precisamente en la casa del más incomprendido de los poetas.

—Ya no queda nada de lo que había en su tiempo —dijo—. Cuando tomé la casa la reformé; tiré unos muros y levanté otros. En tiempo de Mallarmé estaba toda empapelada al estilo de la época, ya sabe usted.

Me enseñó toda la casa. Era común y corriente. En lo que había sido el estudio del poeta. Aubanel había instalado un aparatoso laboratorio. Entrabriendo la puerta me lo mostró desde el umbral. Por. el tipo de las instalaciones y la índole de los aparatos dispuestos sobre las grandes mesas de madera hubiera sido imposible deducir, a primer vista, cuál era la verdadera naturaleza de sus investigaciones.

Jacques Sternberg: Le plafond

Il était immobilisé dans son lit, les deux jambes fracturées. Depuis six semaines, il en était réduit à regarder fixement le plafond. Depuis six semaines, il cherchait en vain dans ce désert de plâtre un détail, une fissure, une tache, n'importe quoi, quand un matin, il vit la chose, là dans un coin, près de la fenêtre.

Il eut un sursaut de joie. Avidement, il s'attacha à suivre le point rouge qui bougeait, car il bougeait, il bougeait oui, rapide et cependant si lent car si minuscule. Elle suivait des yeux, affolé à l'idée de le perdre de vue. Ce point rouge qui venait de sortir d'un angle du plafond, c'était une fourmi.

Après quelques secondes, elle parut hésiter, elle revint sur ses pas, s'arrêta un instant près d'un angle du plafond,

elle dut lancer quelques signaux, car aussitôt une autre fourmi apparut.

Elles s'avancèrent, mais se séparèrent très vite. Et venant de deux endroits différents, d'autres fourmis apparurent.

Immédiatement, en quelques virevoltes bien réglées, elles se rangèrent en patrouilles de six unités.

Le malade regardait toujours avec la même avidité, souriant, ébloui, subjugué.

Une heure plus tard, tout le plafond grouillait de caravanes dont la plus importante filait vers le mur, lourde et rouge comme un caillot de sang vivant.

Les groupes correspondaient sans cesse entre eux, chaque mouvement paraissait' médité, et des patrouilles allaient sans cesse d'un groupe à l'autre, donnant des ordres pendant que d'autres groupes semblaient assurer la circulation qui était d'ailleurs très ordonnée.

Le malade souriait toujours, empoigné, étourdi de plaisir et d'étonnement.

Vers une heure, l'année tout entière avait abandonné le plafond et se trouvait groupée verticale à quelques

millimètres de la jonction entre le mur et le parquet. Elle s'arrêta là.

Manuel Mujica Láinez: El hambre

Alrededor de la empalizada desigual que corona la meseta frente al río, las hogueras de los indios chisporrotean día y noche. En la negrura sin estrellas meten más miedo todavía. Los españoles, apostados cautelosamente entre los troncos, ven al fulgor de las hogueras destrenzadas por la locura del viento, las sombras bailoteantes de los salvajes. De tanto en tanto, un soplo de aire helado, al colarse en las casucas de barro y paja, trae con él los alaridos y los cantos de guerra. Y en seguida recomienza la lluvia de flechas incendiarias cuyos cometas iluminan el paisaje desnudo. En las treguas, los gemidos del Adelantado, que no abandona el lecho, añaden pavor a los conquistadores. Hubieran querido sacarle de allí; hubieran querido arrastrarle en su silla de manos, blandiendo la espada como un demente, hasta los navíos que cabecean más allá de la playa de toscas, desplegar las velas y escapar de esta tierra maldita; pero no lo permite el cerco de los indios. Y cuando no son los gritos de los sitiadores ni los lamentos de Mendoza, ahí está el angustiado implorar de los que roe el hambre, y cuya queja crece a modo de una marea, debajo de las otras voces, del golpear de las ráfagas, del tiroteo espaciado de los arcabuces, del crujir y derrumbarse de las construcciones ardientes.

Así han transcurrido varios días; muchos días. No los cuentan ya. Hoy no queda mendrugo que llevarse a la boca. Todo ha sido arrebatado, arrancado, triturado: las flacas raciones primero, luego la harina podrida, las ratas, las sabandijas inmundas, las botas hervidas cuyo cuero chuparon desesperadamente. Ahora jefes y soldados yacen doquier, junto a los fuegos débiles o arrimados a las estacas defensoras. Es difícil distinguir a los vivos de los muertos.

Don Pedro se niega a ver sus ojos hinchados y sus labios como higos secos, pero en el interior de su choza miserable y rica le acosa el fantasma de esas caras sin torsos, que reptan sobre el lujo burlón de los muebles traídos de Guadix, se adhieren al gran tapiz con los emblemas de la Orden de Santiago, aparecen en las mesas, cerca del Erasmo y el Virgilio inútiles, entre la revuelta vajilla que, limpia de viandas, muestra en su tersura el “Ave María” heráldico del fundador.

Dan Simmons: This Year’s Class Picture

Ms. Geiss watched her new student coming across the first-graders’ playground from her vantage point on the balcony of the old school’s belfry. She lowered the barrel of the Remington .30-06 until the child was centered in the crosshairs of the telescopic sight. The image was quite clear in the early morning light. It was a boy, not one she knew, and he looked to have been about nine or ten when he died. His green Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles t-shirt had been slashed down the center and there was a spattering of dried blood along the ragged cleft. Ms. Geiss could see the white gleam of an exposed rib.

      She hesitated, lifting her eye from the sight to watch the small figure lurch and stumble his way through the swing sets and round the jungle gym. His age was right, but she already had twenty-two students. More than that, she knew, and the class became difficult to manage. And today was class picture day and she did not need the extra aggravation. Plus, the child’s appearance was on the borderline of what she would accept in her fourth grade…especially on class picture day.  

      You never had that luxury before the Tribulations, she chided herself. She put her eye back against the plastic sunhood of the sight and grimaced slightly as she thought of the children who had been “mainstreamed” into her elementary classes over the years: deaf children, blind children, borderline autistic children, children suffering with epilepsy and Down’s syndrome and hyperactivity and sexual abuse and abandonment and dyslexia and petit mal seizures…children dying of cancer and children dying of AIDS…

      The dead child had crossed the shallow moat and was approaching the razor wire barriers that Ms. Geiss had strung around the school just where the first-graders’ gravel playground adjoined the fourth-graders’ paved basketball and four-square courts. She knew that the boy would keep coming and negotiate the wire no matter how many slices of flesh were torn from his body.

      Sighing, already feeling tired even before the school day had formally begun, Ms. Geiss lowered the Remington, clicked on the safety, and started down the belfry ladder to go and greet her new student.

      She peered in her classroom door on the way to the supply closet on the second floor. The class was restless, daylight and hunger stirring them to tug against the chains and iron collars. Little Samantha Stewart, technically too young for fourth grade, had torn her dress almost off in her nighttime struggles. Sara and Sarah J. were tangled in each other’s chains. Todd, the biggest of the bunch and the former class bully, had chewed away the rubber lining of his collar again. Ms. Geiss could see flecks of black rubber around Todd’s white lips and knew that the metal collar had worn away the flesh of his neck almost to the bone. She would have to make a decision about Todd soon.

      On the long bulletin board behind her desk, she could see the thirty-eight class pictures she had mounted there. Thirty-eight years. Thirty-eight class pictures, all taken in this school. Starting with the thirty-second year, the photographs became much smaller as they had gone from the large format camera the photo studio had used to the school Polaroid that Ms. Geiss had rigged to continue the tradition. The classes were also smaller. In her thirty-fifth year there had been only five students in her fourth grade. Sarah J. and Todd had been in that class –alive, pink-skinned, thin and frightened looking, but healthy. In the thirty-sixth year there were no living children…but seven students. In the next-to-last photograph, there were sixteen faces. This year, today, she would have to set the camera to get all twenty-two children in the frame. No, she thought, twenty-three with the new boy.

Salomé Guadalupe Ingelmo: Un maullido resuena nítido en el silencio nocturno / A crisp meow sounds in the nighttime silence

Este gato siempre sabe a qué árbol arrimarse. Llegará a visir.
Terenci Moix, El arpista ciego.

El egiptólogo, habituado a los lamentos del vetusto edificio, distingue inmediatamente la llamada de la bestia. Otra vez un gato callejero ha debido de colarse en el edificio. El vigilante se habrá dejado una ventana abierta. “Maledetto micio”. Posa sus gafas sobre el escritorio y, hastiado, abandona los libros. Se dispone a ir en busca del intruso. Naturalmente esas actividades no entran dentro de sus competencias, pero prefiere perder el tiempo en encargarse personalmente que encontrar unos indiscretos excrementos en el lugar más inoportuno después. “Se vuoi una cosa fatta bene, falla da te”, repite la frase tantas veces escuchada en boca de su padre.

Apenas le da tiempo a distinguir el bulto con el que tropieza. No obstante percibe el familiar crujido de las vendas acartonadas, y a su nariz llega el aroma de las resinas con las que fue embalsamado. Su mente racional se rebela. Abre la boca en un reproche que la brutal caída dejará en suspenso. Durante el vuelo, el rostro ‒congelado en una última mueca de horror‒ mira hacia atrás y constata que, en efecto, es cierto.

A los pies de la escalera yace el cuerpo del arqueólogo. El cuello, partido, adopta un ángulo imposible. El cadáver mira fijamente por la ventana, hacia una luna redonda y enorme como la que lo vigilaba desde el cielo en Biban el-Harim.

Una vez la policía abandona el museo, el vigilante recoge la momia del suelo.

“Es una pieza nueva, descubierta por el difunto. Anoche la estaba catalogando. Debió de resbalársele de las manos mientras perdía el equilibrio y caía rodando. Como homenaje póstumo, pasará a sala inmediatamente”, musita consternado el director.

Los ojos del felino, hierático como en vida, refulgen victoriosos en sus cuencas vacías. Finalmente recobra el protagonismo. Tras verse despojado por los excavadores de los juguetes con los que fue sepultado para que amenizase la eternidad, él, el favorito de la reina y propietario de un vasto harén gatuno, un apreciado semental destinado a dormir, engordar y procrear, aun reducido a mojama, ha obtenido su venganza.

Rudyard Kipling: The Return of Imray

The doors were wide, the story saith,
Out of the night came the patient wraith,
He might not speak, and he could not stir
A hair of the Baron's minniver—
Speechless and strengthless, a shadow thin,
He roved the castle to seek his kin.
And oh,'twas a piteous thing to see
The dumb ghost follow his enemy!
THE BARON.

Imray achieved the impossible. Without warning, for no conceivable motive, in his youth, at the threshold of his career he chose to disappear from the world—-which is to say, the little Indian station where he lived.

Upon a day he was alive, well, happy, and in great evidence among the billiard-tables at his Club. Upon a morning, he was not, and no manner of search could make sure where he might be. He had stepped out of his place; he had not appeared at his office at the proper time, and his dogcart was not upon the public roads. For these reasons, and because he was hampering, in a microscopical degree, the administration of the Indian Empire, that Empire paused for one microscopical moment to make inquiry into the fate of Imray. Ponds were dragged, wells were plumbed, telegrams were despatched down the lines of railways and to the nearest seaport town-twelve hundred miles away; but Imray was not at the end of the drag-ropes nor the telegraph wires. He was gone, and his place knew him no more.

Then the work of the great Indian Empire swept forward, because it could not be delayed, and Imray from being a man became a mystery—such a thing as men talk over at their tables in the Club for a month, and then forget utterly. His guns, horses, and carts were sold to the highest bidder. His superior officer wrote an altogether absurd letter to his mother, saying that Imray had unaccountably disappeared, and his bungalow stood empty.

After three or four months of the scorching hot weather had gone by, my friend Strickland, of the Police, saw fit to rent the bungalow from the native landlord. This was before he was engaged to Miss Youghal—an affair which has been described in another place—and while he was pursuing his investigations into native life. His own life was sufficiently peculiar, and men complained of his manners and customs. There was always food in his house, but there were no regular times for meals. He ate, standing up and walking about, whatever he might find at the sideboard, and this is not good for human beings. His domestic equipment was limited to six rifles, three shot-guns, five saddles, and a collection of stiff-jointed mahseer-rods, bigger and stronger than the largest salmon-rods. These occupied one-half of his bungalow, and the other half was given up to Strickland and his dog Tietjens—an enormous Rampur slut who devoured daily the rations of two men. She spoke to Strickland in a language of her own; and whenever, walking abroad, she saw things calculated to destroy the peace of Her Majesty the Queen-Empress, she returned to her master and laid information. Strickland would take steps at once, and the end of his labours was trouble and fine and imprisonment for other people. The natives believed that Tietjens was a familiar spirit, and treated her with the great reverence that is born of hate and fear. One room in the bungalow was set apart for her special use. She owned a bedstead, a blanket, and a drinking-trough, and if any one came into Strickland's room at night her custom was to knock down the invader and give tongue till some one came with a light. Strickland owed his life to her, when he was on the Frontier, in search of a local murderer, who came in the gray dawn to send Strickland much farther than the Andaman Islands. Tietjens caught the man as he was crawling into Strickland's tent with a dagger between his teeth; and after his record of iniquity was established in the eyes of the law he was hanged. From that date Tietjens wore a collar of rough silver, and employed a monogram on her night-blanket; and the blanket was of double woven Kashmir cloth, for she was a delicate dog.