Short Stories 2

 

Short Stories

 

The sadness

Rosario Barros Peña

eacher has given me a note for my mother. I have read it. He says he needs to talk to her because I'm wrong. I have put it on the table, under the bowl full of milk that I left him in the morning. I have microwaved the frozen tortilla I bought at the supermarket and I have eaten half of it. The other half I put on a plate on the table, next to the bowl of milk. My mother remains the same, with red eyes that stare without seeing and her hair, which no longer shines, spilled on the pillow. She smells like sweat in the room, but when I opened the blind, she yelled at me. She says that if the sun is not seen it is as if the days do not run, but that is not true. I know that days go by because the washing machine is full of dirty clothes and the dishwasher does not fit anything else, but above all, I know this because of the sadness that is on the furniture. Sadness is a white powder that fills everything. At first, it is fun. You can write about her, "fool who reads it", but, the next day, her words are not seen because there is more sadness about them. The teacher says I am bad because in class, I get distracted and I cannot help but think that one day that white powder will completely cover my mother and it will do it with me. And when my father returns, sadness will have erased the "I love you" that I write to him every night on the dining room table.

End

 

Crime

Antonio Di Benedetto

I was a stubborn smoker. One night I fell asleep with a cigarette in my mouth. I woke up afraid to wake up. It seems I knew: I had been born a bat wing. With repugnance, in the darkness, I searched my biggest knife. I cut it off. Fallen, in the light of day, she was a dark woman and I said that I loved her. They took me to prison.

End

 

Return

 Antonio Di Benedetto

I explain to Horacio: -Today I received the invitation for Manuel's act that took place on Monday. Horacio comments: -Cute subject for a fantastic story. He does not tell me how, it is my responsibility. I decide to go back to Monday, but the event has been suspended. I have to go back to Thursday, the day I spoke with Horacio. But when I return it is no longer Thursday, but Friday. Meanwhile on Thursday it happened that ... I reflect that it has already happened to me in another way. I had to look back for a woman. And she had to look for me. We went back, but each one by his own inspiration and without previously agreeing. We never coincide in our setbacks and trying to find the exact day for both of us, we waste our lives. Each time we got further back on the calendar. I deduce that, from one experience and another, I could draw a conclusion, although obviously bitter: You cannot go back to what you wanted.

End

Morning train

Thomas Bernhard

 

 Sitting on the morning train, we looked out the window precisely as we passed the ravine into which, fifteen years ago, the group of schoolboys with whom we were hiking to the waterfall fell, and we think that we were saved, but the others, however, are dead forever. The teacher who led our group to the waterfall hanged herself immediately after the sentence of the Salzburg High Court, which was eight years in prison. When the train passes by that place, we hear, with the screams of the group, our own screams.

End

The tram

Andrea Bocconi

 

 

At last. The stranger always came up at that stop. Wide smile, wide hips… an excellent mother to my children, she thought. She greets; she answered and resumed reading it: cultured, modern. He was in a bad mood: he was very conservative. Why was he responding to her greeting? She did not even know him. He doubts. She came down. He felt divorced: "And the children, who are they going to stay with?"

End

Bad memory

André Breton

I was told a very stupid, dark, and moving story a while ago. A man shows up one day at a hotel and asks for a room. They give him the number 35. When coming down, minutes later, he leaves the key in the administration and says: - Excuse me; I am a man with very little memory. If he allows me, every time he returns I will tell him my name: Mr. Delouit, and then you will repeat my room number. -Very well sir. After a while, the man returns, opens the office door: "Mr. Delouit." –It is number 35. -Thanks. A minute later, an extraordinarily agitated man, his suit covered in mud, bloodied and almost without human appearance enters the hotel administration and says to the employee: "Mr. Delouit." -How? Mr. Delouit? Another with that story. Mr. Delouit has just come up. –Sorry, it is I… I just fell through the window. Will you please tell me my room number?

End

Mistake

Karel Capek

We embark on the Mediterranean. It is so beautifully blue that one does not know which is the sky and which is the sea, so everywhere on the coast and on the ships there are signs indicating where is up and where is down; otherwise one may be confused. In order not to go any further, the other day, the captain told us that a ship made a mistake, and instead of continuing on the sea, it headed for heaven; and since the sky is infinite, he has not returned yet, and no one knows where he is.

End

 

 With affection,

Ruben