ESPAÑOL PORTUGUÊS

ACQUIT AND CONDEM
(start of First Chapter)

As a needle crosses the flesh from one point to another, making stitches, he sees a black pen strung in his chest. He panics. He pulls it. It doesn't hurt, doesn't bleed. He is a bunch of cells without soul, without spirit. As he opens his eyes, a ray of light penetrates from a crack in the shutter. A narrow bed, a strange room, unknown scents emanating from the walls, the sheets, the pillows. He tries to get up. A fine pain runs across the back of his waist to his neck. He chokes off a scream. His head rotates under a roof seemingly steady. He feels the paralyzed body, heavy, inert, perched on the bed.
No, he is not dead; only he doesn't recognize this place. It is not his bedroom, his room, his cabinet, the lobby of the courthouse, the room of judgments. Where is he? Fortunately also it is not a grave.

His anxious eyes, in an effort of recognition, hover on the calendar attached to the wall, July 10, 1999. A few months remain until the beginning of the year two thousand. The burden of that exact time had pushed him to this place. He sees his pen there to the side, on the white paper. It had not been strung in his chest. He had fallen asleep before writing the first word, the title of his history. He had sat down on the bed with the pen in hand. An hour of searching, smoothing the chin, pulling the hair, wouldn't bring the word, the sense, the nucleus that could define his own life. He had paced the room until early morning, and he had tumbled into bed, exhausted.

Translated by Maria Soledad Valle de Melo

Author´s Biography

Author´s Bibliography

 

WRITERS' INDEX NEXT WRITER REBRA PERSONAL LINKS

AUTHOR'S E- MAIL