A few prefaces

A bunch of prefaces











Here are the prefaces to tales and bits of larger texts that I had been
preparing those last months.



I’ve changed my tack, though. I’ve decided to publish the texts
accompanied with a translation (and this takes time,) while getting rid
of distracting introductions. So, I’ve put the little prefaces together, I’ve
added the few that I had already attached to other texts, and the result
has to be a fragment or sketch of biographical information.












[After the suicide of his second wife (when at the beginning they
thought he had murdered her in Bangkok,) the obtuse Thai committed
him to the “sanatorium” – a ward for crazies in one big jail, where he
remembered the quasi-equivalent treatment (insulin-induced coma
plus electroshocks) he endured as a youth in Lleida. Here a poem he
wrote at the time. And a day of his diary where the executor (me) is
intuited. Notice the “algolagnic” of both contemporaneous
pieces.



Orestes was a (social) climber, an avenger, a guilt-crazed wanderer;
through him women lost their power – contrariwise, through Reig
(witness Travessa deserts,) they would’ve won it all again.
Orestes was the one that first fought against a flock of sheep wrongly
assuming that they were the enemy – (later, lesser writers stole the
episode for themselves); he died by the venom of a snake that suddenly
bit his prick; his bones were stolen by the enemy (the enemy is not me;
the enemy are the damned castilians who would appropriate to
themselves Reig’s works, same as they have been stealing the works and
belongings of all the Catalonians since the latter lost their vast empire;
even retroactively the castilians steal: you’ll see everywhere references
to Llull, Lucrècia Borja, the Almogàvers, etc. as bloody castilian (or
named by the still more repugnant insult of spanish.) Reig abhorred
official “history,” obviously such a heap of lies. And his only sin (or at
any rate the ugliest by far of his sins,) had been having unwittingly been
born under the fascist castilians’ invading boot. He never set foot in
spain; never spoke their dreadful lingo. From Catalonia he went into
the world. He never had to purge his pangs of conscience for he never
actually committed a crime.



His crazy-ward diary deserves publication – with the baroness’
permission I could do it even myself. The fragment I reproduce should
serve to titillate the reader’s palate.]






–00–








“Wilco, milady,” I said when she asked me. She knew I had
some
appreciation for the poet, plus a few papers handed down to me by the
author himself.





So, on behalf of the dowager baroness, here we go. I’ll gather whatever
I’m able (and cull and add what the reader throws at me, if minimally
relevant) about Carles Reig – doomed minor poet.





(And therefore, as any minor, dutifully raped by the stern pedophiliac
judges of good taste and strict propriety. Disgusting thugs. After the
rape, it always follows, he was sent to prison, where he met with a most
gruesome death.)





(Just the highlights here, though. No rummy rerun of his rather boring
life. Just the highlights – mediocre dim highlights, alas, and therefore,
namely, the texts.)





(Indeed, while it lasted, shunned by the shallow and the sourly
exquisite, he
marinated in obscurity – and wouldn’t it be kind now if we helped,
albeit a trifle, to maintain him half-afloat, as is the case with any
obdurate floater...? To
this we’ll zealously strive, milady. Promise.)






–00–







Strange little tale where certain sensitive machines prove more humane
than the human beings themselves. The easiness with which the robotic
anchors ubiquitously parading their platitudinous pates flat on the
television screens effortlessly shift from the most heartrending news to
the most spurious banal jolly crap is shameful and demoralizing.







Damn the unimaginative brutes who are unable to feel the pain felt by
others! From this lack of fellow fondness stem all the wars and all
crimes against the well-being of the human worm. Instead of sending
every cruel creep and every war-mongering military fool to an asylum
for irreparable crazies, some of them are promoted to generals and
chiefs of enterprise and to president of the state. Sorrow state of
business.





In the story, the hero and one of his exes create a “Center for the
Description of the Niceties related to Being (and otherwise stolen away
by the powers that be.)” A sort of Society for the Protection of Sentient
Machines, one step deeper thus than the Society for the Protection of
Animals. And why not, for certain sensitive machines are bound to be, if
nothing else yet goes wrong (a big if,) the crutches with which human
beings might at last find the freedom to leave, still alive, the prison of
the carnivorous body. Rotting carcass.





(Of course, we refer to the GOOD machines. Not to the thug machines
the thugs employ for their murders and tortures. Those apache
helicopters, those bombing planes, those machine guns, and
flamethrowers, and poison dispensers, and lawnmowers and
leafblowers...)





Disconsolate, the meek and wise among the earthlings can’t digest such
existential discomfiture: that the thugs take their guns and fling them
about, and open their flies, and take out their most intelligent bit of
body matter, and therefore dangle their caricatural knouts, and jerk
them up and lay down the law.]








–00–







[I’ve gotten lately a few messages of protest objecting to a harmless
enough sobriquet. As it happens, for the sake of a joke, at the preamble
to these remembrances and little apropos notes, I’ve called Reig a
“minor poet.” Ok, he is a major poet, no doubt; but in my opinion he is
a great novelist – and that’s what matters. He was proposed for the
Nobel prize for literature many years in a row by a few first-class
Catalonian academicians, properly enthused with his humorous
masterpieces from the sixties, seventies and even eighties of the last
century – his comical novels, I say, not his scarcely circulated mostly
metaphysical poems. So?]






–00–








[Here’s the piece Carles Reig (it appears) was working on when... Ulrike
Morell tells us that “he was lucid until the last moment.”
Though a tad cryptically she adds: “Except that the last moment is
always the present moment.”



Nonetheless, the tale is rather poignant, both in itself and because of
the attached circumstances. Though unfinished, it’s obvious where is it
leading, as a dog going somewhere fast, just catalectic, so fleeting the
artist forgot the tail to draw, and the last ellipsis (...) could as well be a
proper aposiopesis loaded with finality?]






–00–






[A photo taken of him, with this inscription behind: Amb les
orquídies per corbata (Ailing with orchids at his neck.)]







–00–






The gal not to bright. They were visiting some cumbrous wasteful
cathedral, when he appraised her, in all seriousness, of the quaint
factoid. And she naturally believed him when Reig, with Reigian
understatement, told her that all men were autophagous. The little
(littler in his case) sausage that grows between their thighs liable to
recrescence. “When hungry and with nothing else handier, we just
cut a piece of it, a bit of it, the tip of it, and down it goes, somewhat
sour, but hey, if you are famished... No to worry, though; luckily, even at
mature ages, though slowlier then, the little sausage grows again, just
like lizzards’ tails, like crabs’ legs, and spiders’, and plenty other tricky
animals; ‘tis a well known fact, my pet.”








–00–







Knew her at a hospital in Leeds – a XIX century affair – plenty of
glassed doors... Long corridors leading apparently nowhere. But he
roamed and roamed. At last he found these panels, at the end of one
corridor where upon glazed glasses, the “real” diagnostics were written:
“No cancer,” she was told, but he went into the last lost glasses
and read: “Dead in three months.”







–00–







Here’s his wife Roberta P... [Phelps] asking at last for a divorce...
[Apparently Reig copied the letter, or a chunk of it, in one of his
diaries.] [Mostly, those facts are passed to us from the data Andreas
and Ulrike Morell, baroness von Frühlingsberg’s children, now hold.]







“Listen, Chas, I’m up to here, ok? When I knew you, lithe and keen,
lively beyond any of the rest of the gray organisms found in the ochre
empty heather-strewn countryside, all those overbearing weeds that
choked us, you were I reckon a sort of therapeutic bust for me. I had
come to Aberdeen fleeing from the vainglorious scion of the [a
world-renown paint producing company.]



“V... was a sadistic, elegiac, genocidal foe. He had his acrobatic
henchman after me. I knew that, once caught, they wouldn’t stop at
anything. It would have been much worst that those two lorry-drivers I
told you about when I knew you. I loved your pellucid sclerae as you
couldn’t believe what I was telling you: such horror of maiming and
dagger-puncturing, and the squeals, the yells, the furry velvety rodents
up my ducts. You shrank cozier and cozier as the squall raged outside.
From the radio we were overwhelmed (at least I was) by the wavering
choirs – some Malherian upheaval – a blur where hell peeps and sneers
at two would-be lovers glued in the catalytic enthrallment of synergy
never to be repeated in the unwritten history of eternity.



“When I wed you and our livelihood depended on something so
flimsy as your translations, and we subsisted only on the nuts and
blackberries we found, and the rashes and eggs and cobblers we cobbled
together with the cheaper ingredients we found in M... [name of
the store,] as they seemingly threw away nothing, I was brazenly
boisterously happy. I basked as any nimble nymph of the moors in our
wild bucolic [crude word for sex making] and in our shared
ambitions at gallant artistry.



“And then you sold out. We had nested on the brink of the abyss: I
should have seen the harbinger of our destruction in the successful
glyphs you wrote that people wanted actually to read – nothing else but
the warmth of the public would now slake your hyoids and your teeth.
And so we moved to Brussels, besmirched heart of Europe, where the
death knell resounded and soared, unbearably, as I gasped and brooded
in my stalemated little flat: the sheets of my bed felt like shrouds, the
stained cracked walls of my bedroom were fraught with devious
intimations of suicide... Luckily I met J... As we absconded for a week of
wild lovemaking and your children, misshapen by sorrow, sued for
somebody to wipe their asses out, did you rue the day you chose
wracking fame above happy obscurity...? It is not even a
tossup.



“J... wasn’t an eyesore of thwarted sexuality for the benefit of
another page adroitly completed. His government wasn’t at his behind
with a whip. He cooled his heels, he evinced his gigantic barbaric
[member] and sent to hell all nuances and demonstrated such
virility as you never had – and the little you had alas by now had
irretrievably eroded, waned, and try as I might I couldn’t acquit you in
my mind...



“However, when you would crawl on the soft pulverulent floor of the
bedroom and in those glorious days of June when J... had had to return
for a few weeks to K..., from daybreak until dark you tears flowing, your
anchylosed occipital trying to wedge its way past the swollen edges of
my [sexual orifices,] your middling boners chiseling away at
the marble of the night table (or maybe just at its wooden drawer, let’s
not exaggerate,) and the joy I felt as I broke and flung away all those
stupid texts you’d been slavering after for all those insecure, red, and
black nights of winter, how my jaws hurt from
laughing...!



“You were my toy again. Ah the plenitude then...



“Only that alas the mallet of the telephone ring resounded in the
emptiness and the fiery sparks of the sacrificial cradle flew not in vain,
for you jumped as if possessed.



“Did we both toil with our skulls or with our asses...? With the zeal
of a sub-vertebrate your started again to “work” for pay at your
translations and I was again left to look for some juicy tail
elsewhere.



“My ribs, my pelvis, my wings, all smarted as another genus of
rougher lover ploughed my neglected field. J... wouldn’t be back for
weeks... My vertebrae were suffering... I could have been killed. And yet
your “work” was too life-consuming for you even to inquire how good
had been my [sexual intercourse] with the new partners.
That I couldn’t stomach, your lack of interest in my sex life – I
knew you loved J..., and that that was why you became a worm after I
came back some tryst with him and asked for after the sleepy details I
deigned to supply... But why the aloofness with all those
others...?



“That was the beginning of the end. I knew we were growing apart,
becoming strangers, the hour of splitting the proceedings couldn’t be
far...”








–00–







In Brussels, where his wife at the time (the marriage endured
nonetheless a couple more years) was openly carrying on with a Polish
writer (then of note) away for a while from the so-called iron curtain
(benefiting from some type of special permission in order to research a
book,) a writer all in all not too appreciated today (though certainly
much more well-regarded than Reig himself; at least he is a “somebody”
seating in an Academy and everything)








–00–








Though he never finished his architectural studies, Reig was always
interested in the world of buildings. Actually his devotion to Catalan
culture stemmed from (or al least fed on) the example given by the
greatest of modern architects, the Catalonian Antoni Gaudí.




As is widely known, the castilian (or, in an abusive use of the word,
spanish) forces have been for 300 years crushing Catalonia. Before the
nazi Franco’s dictatorship [still proceeding apace with the current
crowned piece of crap,] the dictatorship of another “spanish” general
[another asshole, going by the name of Primo,] had begun in September
of 1923, after the Catalonian feast for independence, with its usual cries
of “Death to spain” and “Long live the sovereign nation of
Catalonia” had frightened the shit out of some of the
moneybaggers because of its wide popular appeal. The following year
[1924], in the eleven of September [September eleven is when Catalonia
celebrates its feast for the return of Independence,] Gaudí, aged 71, was
detained in Barcelona by the occupying forces of police. Brought to the
military building, he was interrogated. He was beaten and jailed
because he refused to speak in “spanish” (meaning castilian, of course)
to his torturers. The chief of a church came to the rescue, he had to pay
a heavy fine. One year and half later, the seventh of June 1926, Gaudí
was secretely murdered by the spaniards, crashed in a “quaint tramway
accident.”








–00–






Deirdre M... [Murdock] never forgave him. She commited suicide in
such a way that the doubt sould never be slaked, and Reig “paid” for it
in a devilish Thai prison.







–00–







(Last letter to Joan Barceló – alas, it never reached the promising
author alive.)





Letter to a dead great poet.







A Catalonian Boris Vian, tragically cut down still sooner (than Boris) by
the fucking envious scissors-wielding running uglies of the skies – fates
malignant upon whom one every shit Reig shits anvengefully now
parks.



From this day on he always thought he had already lived for too long. 25
was the age to die; and he’d missed the date; and he’d never be great;
just dead.



Soaring wrinkles now as if the image of himself precedes him – the
image namely of Dorian Gray’s soul’s mirror.



Dithyrambic nonsense addressed by him to the threatening ghoul that
looked at him behind the truthful glasses... While, not to be placated,
gruffly the monster only answered: Futility, nonentity, you are already
dead, you are but a rotten piece of flesh – From then on he only saw
himself dead. He always hated mirrors.







–00–







Grave mistake – told his common law wife one’s prick not only grows
again, regenerates, if cut, but does so longer; he was sleeping and she
wanted a longer bigger one, you bet, and who wouldn’t. With silken
steps she approached. A foot coincided with the pisspot, the bearer of
the seamstress scissors tripped and fell. The scissors committed
loathsome rapine on her rank innards. The shout, the shriek. The
saintly hermit awoke; with vintage sweat he ran with her bleeding on
his arms...



At the crumbly Leeds hospital, Neal N... [Nul], the night surgeon,
surreptiotiously softened the swollen drums of her tummy with the
blurred sticks of his dirty fingers. Reig tried to enroll as a helper. An
insane nurse tossed him aside. Reig saw himself the duped hero in a
Burroughsian routine. What a travesty, he insisted. For now
the surgeons from another team were trying to operate on him. But
I’m just the bereaved, I was just trying to compose anthems of mercy for
my girlfriend’s sake; she’s perched, bloated and grunting, about to fall
(such a perilous balancing act,) over the sewers of never
more!



They hacked hard now, or so he dreamed, for he had been given a shot
of varnish that knocked him down for the length of time (the whole
night) that took for them to sew the woman up. Ellipses and parabolas
the hatchets drew over his empty spectral casing above the table, for he
soared over his own besmirched body. He was an angel avoiding the
hatchets’ geometrical shenanigans.



Though he died at age fifty-three, he continued writing well into his
nineties, he heard, or thus interpreted the screaming wedge of
chalk writing over the wretched slate of his life’s diagnostics strung up
at the foot of his corpse. He descended over his vacant body, he dove
like a rocket into his own, and they got embroiled into strange
dovetailings. At last, some measure of composure imposed itself, and
now, after the occult groaning orgasms, they in peace cuddled together.
He awoke in tatters, his dreamed glimpses from the glorious summit
turned to nil, and his dry bloods ugly upon his grudging body.




His pockets were also empty. No currency, no credentials. He was
again the lovely nobody, the free errand boy of his youth, always on the
fly, after the first doozy of an event that caught his eye, after coins found
on the gutter, after gifts given by those forbidden lovers he was the
secret and trusted go-between.



He flew now, and he never saw the woman again. [She’s still alive,
though.]









–00–







Another playwright of lame plays, a Something-Something S...
[Sinesterrae,] declared himself a flaky admirer in a toady’s letter, and
asked Reig for a play to be played in S.’s tiny Barcelona theater – that
play he wrote, ridiculing the first war against the Iraqis, got
appropriated by people “unknown;” the troupe in S.’s theater staged
bits and pieces of it and ascribed it to an “anonymous” author.








–00–








Entrusted by the trustees of Reig’s state with the task of winnowing the
baggage, I was given two boxes with bits and odds, and a few cd’s with
the latest writings...



There was on one of the diaries’ covers a drawing of Orestes and his eels
– Orestes, of course, the patron saint of masturbators.








–00–







Such a bucolic tragedy... Deirdre M..., not far from the cottage.





He was teaching his small son the names of the mushrooms –
Catalonians love them, and their names (incomparable richness of
vocabulary) are often poetical and any case deliciously euphonic – the
boy mostly knew already the names in Finnish and Russian...



Reig, dazzled by his own words, started to wax lyrical. Moved or
inspired by the names of the fungi, he had stopped on a parapet near
the road adjoining the forest and had started writing a poem that
included necessarily the beautiful names of the mushrooms...




Thus the child died – the baby crossed through a gap into the road and
a passing car took his life – the wife had been left carousing with a
(male) friend back at the place of the picnic...



Grac – hypocoristically Graquell – his dead son’s name. He was only
four. Thus he lost his only child... [Ulrike and Andreas are children of
the baroness.]



Thus the “trip to forgetting” to Asia...



Heart attack in Bangkok – they thought, the obtuse Thai, he had given
himself minor doses of pills to fake double suicide – as a former dead,
and consequently resuscitated, he was terribly feared, and shunned by
everybody. Those are the excruciating sheets from “Bangkok
’89” – from the first day of captivity to the last.








–00–









From then on he foreswore women – at the end of his life, he only
married the baroness to ensure (with her wealth) his legacy.









[The texts © by Carles Reig; the notes © O’Donovan McCracken.]

The visitors

The visitors






The visitors. A story written by Carles Reig i Morell and
translated by O’Donovan
McCracken.

Quina casualitat que a tots ens vingui avui la mateixa
dèria









Van trucar a la seua porta, però no calia. La vella ja els havia ajustada la
porta, perquè entressin empenyent-la una mica. Els havia vist vindre
per la finestra. Dues dones i un home, entre els cinquanta i els seixanta
anys... La Rosa, la Violeta, l’Indaleci. La Rosa amb el seu vestidet
violeta, la Violeta amb el seu vestidet rosa, l’Indaleci de blau, amb el seu
vestit de marineret.



Com quaranta-vuit anys enrere.



Els tres visitants de primer s’havien pensats que havien perduda
l’adreça... Havien dubtat una mica.



–Vols dir que anem bé? –havia demanat l’Indaleci. Es va ficar la mà a la
butxaca; n’havia trobat un paperet tot rebregat–. Sí, em sembla que sí.




–Sí, ara ho reconec –va dir la Rosa.



–Jo també –afegí la Violeta.



–La caseta no era gaire lluny d’aquest mateix indret.



–Això ja pertany a l’universitat, i la caseta era rere aquest mateix revolt.




–Sí; una sort viure tan a prop d’un edifici tan vast, amb uns terrenys tan
amples i llisos, d’horitzons nets i perspectives tan exactes; s’hi jugava
meravellosament: aquells giravolts, aquelles rampes i raconades; t’hi
podies penjar i despenjar; hi podies patinar; t’hi podies amagar...




–Horitzons nets de jardí sec. Quina delícia córrer-hi. I fer-hi volar
estels. Passejar-hi amb globus de colors...



–I presumir-hi amb vestidets...



–I ara fixeu-vos-hi: tot torna a ésser tan ben reparat...



–Com aquell dia...



–Copiat, calcat, estergit... Les mateixes perspectives, la mateixa
geometria, el mateix ciment...



–Tan llis i ample...



–I solitari...



–Com si no hi hagués mai hagut cap explosió...



–Igualet com era abans...



–Tres o quatre altres vailets hi jugaven...



–Naltres guaitàvem de dalt els vidres bruts de l’aula buida estant...




–Tot aquell fum, tota aquella runa, tota aquella sorollada de vehicles.




–Ens vam tornar a posar els vestits.



–Tu el teu rosa, jo el meu violeta. Ell el blau de marineret.



–Com ara! Quina casualitat!



–I quina casualitat que ahir, o abans d’ahir, o l’altre dia, em
truquessis...



–No et vaig trucar; tu em trucares...



–I a mi... O, calla, potser fores tu, Rosa... Ara no me’n recordo.




–Jo tampoc.



–Aneu confosos.



–Tant se val.



–Tenia tantes ganes aquests dies de tornar-hi!



–Jo també, una mena de neguit.



–Com si quelcom t’hi cridés; t’hi comonís el geni del lloc; o com si fos
que calia commemorar qualque mena d’aniversari, però què fa...




–Què fa...? Uns..., deixa’m comptar...



–Uns quaranta-vuit anys, aproximadament...



–No és cap aniversari assenyalat, no.



–Tot aquest esdeveniment... Hi he pensat tan sovint!



–I jo.



–Home, era traumàtic.



–Déu-n’hi-do.



–Allò que esclatà...



–Pentà.



–Metà.



–Un gas acumulat sota el ciment armat de les obres de renovació, en un
sot, una cavitat subterrània, hermèticament segellada pels ciments, la
pressió, la lenta escalfor, la terra prement, al capdavall el va fer esclatar
de sobte...



–De sobte tot aquell ciment atapeït es torna pols, o cendra...



–I els cossos un buf d’essència...



–Naltres guaitàvem de dalt els vidres bruts de l’aula buida estant...




–Tot aquell fum, tota aquella runa, tota aquella sorollada de vehicles.




–Hi van morir uns quants d’estudiants.



–També tres 0 quatre vailets qui hi jugaven.



–I ara fixeu-vos-hi: tot torna a ésser tan ben reparat...



–Com aquell dia...



–Copiat, calcat, estergit... Les mateixes perspectives, la mateixa
geometria, el mateix ciment...



–Tan llis i ample...



–I solitari...



–Com si no hi hagués mai hagut cap explosió...



–Igualet com era abans...



–Naltres guaitàvem de dalt els vidres bruts de l’aula buida estant...




–Tot aquell fum, tota aquella runa, tota aquella sorollada de vehicles.




–Ens vam tornar a posar els vestits.



–Tu el teu rosa, jo el meu violeta. Ell el blau de marineret.



–Com ara! Quina casualitat!



–Hi jugàvem a metges, per això ens havíem de tornar a posar els
vestits...



–Sí que érem poca-vergonyetes, de petitets...



–Tu el teu rosa, jo el meu violeta. Ell el blau de marineret.



–Com ara! Quina casualitat!



–I quina casualitat que ahir, o abans d’ahir, o l’altre dia, em
truquessis...



–No et vaig trucar; tu em trucares...



–I a mi... O, calla, potser fores tu, Rosa... Ara no me’n recordo.




–Jo tampoc.



–Quina sorollada de vehicles...



–Vam sortir per una altra porta a l’altre cantó de l’edifici...



–Vam tornar d’amagatotis a casa de la dida...



–Sí, en reconec els topants perfectament... –va dir l’Indaleci, i es va
tornar ficar el paperet a la butxaca.



–Que érem entremaliats!



–Sols a casa tot aquell dia: quines festasses!



–Tornàrem a jugar a metges.



–Aquest cop damunt el llit.



–I ens menjàrem totes les llepolies amagades als calaixos de la cuina...




–Quin goig. Quines festasses.



–Les hores passaren. Arribà la nit.



–Mai no havíem passada cap nit a la caseta de la dida.



–Els pares sempre ens prenien abans que es fes tard.



–Li’n deien d’àvia ja.



–Era vídua.



–Deu ésser vella.



–Si ja li’n deien d’àvia fa gairebé cinquanta anys...



–I ja era vídua...



–La dida què deu tenir? Noranta anys o més.



–Recordes com vam sortir...?



–Recordo que ens mancava l’aire, que xipollejàvem...



–Ens va deure deixar anar durant la nit...



–Quan vam sentir que la dida tornava, ens vam tancar al recambró...




–Com ens en rèiem!



–Jo no em podia aguantar el riure.



–Jo tampoc.



–L’Indaleci deia “xst, xst!” com un desesperat, però també reia,
també...



–I tant. Era tan còmica la cosa.



–La dida ens hi va tancar.



–Vam sentir la clau.



–Quina broma, també.



–Ara qui se’n devia riure era ella!



–És veritat que a les fosques començava de tenir-hi una mica de por.




–I llavors semblava que hi mancava l’aire...



–Que ens hi asfixiàvem...



–Esgarrapàvem la porta...



–Ens va deure deixar anar durant la nit...



–Potser ens desmaiàvem...



Havien passats uns quants d’anys. Què devia fer...? Una pila d’anys, sí.
Gairebé cinquanta i tot. Deu tindre noranta anys o més. Ara, això
també, se’n recordava com si fos ahir. Se n’ha recordat cada dia després
d’aquell dia de l’explosió. Cada dia. Aquell trasbals! Qui podria
oblidar-lo.



La vídua guardava mainatges. Els pares ja la tractaven d’àvia, i això fa
gairebé cinquanta anys i tot.



No els pegava mai – només els tancava al recambró fosc una estoneta si
feien cap dolenteria gaire grossa, que hi ploressin el pecat. Una mica de
penitència...



Aquell migdia els va tornar a portar al pati de l’universitat. L’havien
renovat recentment. L’havien encimentat tot. S’hi trobaven, ben
mirades, perspectives geomètriques molt delineades, molt netes. Els
horitzons eren ben dibuixats, i vasts. La quitxalla hi jugava enfal·lerida;
tots aquells embalums tan exactes que calia escalar...



La dida era asseguda a un banc de pedra. Al pedrís, hi havia
companyia. Hi havia qualque altra mare jove, o qualque altra dida com
ella, d’edat.



La greu explosió s’esdevingué llavors. Quin esglai. Semblava la fi del
món. S’endugué alguns estudiants – i tres o quatre vailets qui també hi
jugaven. Els féu bocins: pitjor.



Van vindre de seguida els bombers, les ambulàncies, la policia,
l’enrenou, l’aldarull, les càmeres, els periodistes... I llavors els pares.




Hi havia... ningú no sabia quants d’estudiants morts, i hi mancaven
mainatges. Els seus, també hi mancaven els seus: la Violeta, la Rosa,
l’Indaleci. Un dipòsit subterrani esclatava; gasos embassats, i ara on
són els cossos...? Obliterats – esfumats – esborrats – no en troben ni els
àtoms.



Passaven ara mateix els tres visitants pel pati renovat de l’universitat,
prop d’on la dida vivia.



–Que curiós: portem el mateix vestidet d’aquell dia.



–És curiós. I l’Indaleci igual.



–I quina casualitat que, ahir, o abans d’ahir, o l’altre dia, em
truquessis...



–No et vaig trucar; tu em trucares...



–I a mi... O, calla, potser fores tu, Rosa... Ara no me’n recordo.




–Jo tampoc.



I ara ací tornen. Els tres, plegadets, còmplices, com aquell dia de l’esclat
que semblava que s’ho enduia tot. Els ha albirats per la finestra. La
Violeta amb vestidet rosa, la Rosa amb vestidet violeta, l’Indaleci amb
vestit blau de marineret. Dues dones i un home qui visiten la vella dida.
Ha ajustada la porta perquè entrin només empenyent-la una miqueta.




Aquell dia podrit, quan l’àvia va tornar a casa, retuda, tota desfeta,
pensant-se que havia perduts els infants, i després d’haver patida la
histèria de les mares i les ires caòtiques dels pares, després d’haver
d’anar amunt i avall, pels hospitals, per les estacions de bombers i
policies... Ara que tornava feta físicament un parrac i emocionalment
buida, i psíquicament esmicolada...



Va sentir sorolls al recambró fosc. Es va espantar... Algun animalot
amagat...?



Se n’anava cap a la cuina a agafar-hi l’escombra. Pensava pel camí en
els tres mortets... Tan bona canalleta! No els havia atupats mai – només
els tancava en aquest mateix recambró fosc una estoneta si havien feta,
pobrissonets, cap dolenteria gaire grossa, una estoneta curta, que la
pena els esmenés.



Com es podia imaginar..., a quin cap cabia..., ara, en canvi, que els
vailets n’haguessin sortits incòlumes – una explosió tan apocalíptica! –
i que d'amagatotis haguessin tornats a casa...



–Ens hi havíem divertits qui-sap-lo...



–Ens havíem menjades totes les llepolies amagades...



–Havíem jugat a metges al llit...



–Ara que vam sentir que la dida tornava, ens amagàrem al recambró...




–Com ens en rèiem!



–Jo no em podia aguantar el riure.



–Jo tampoc.



–L’Indaleci deia “xst, xst!” com un desesperat, però també reia,
també...



–I tant. Era tan còmica la cosa.



Aquelles rialletes nervioses, aquells mormols i xiuxiueigs... La dida se
n’adonava. O al·lucinava i veia visions; o en sentia; sentia no pas
visions, l’equivalent que percep no pas l’ull, l’orella; o se li afluixava el
seny, perdia el senderi i... O eren àngels, animetes, dimoniets...




O espera’t! Quina de més grossa que li n’han feta aquesta vegada. Això
ja passa de mida, allò sí que no té perdó. Troba que sí, de debò, que són
vius – tantes hores de patir! – i que se li han amagats al recambró. Si
això no és mereix un càstig, maleïts! Els tanca amb clau.



–I llavors semblava que a poc a poc ens mancava l’aire...



–Que ens hi asfixiàvem...



–Esgarrapàvem la porta...



–Ens va deure deixar anar durant la nit...



–Potser ens desmaiàvem...



Els ha tancats amb clau al recambró hermètic, ha ficat màstic i tot al
forat del pany. Ja us hi podrireu (va dir), maleïts!



Impel·lida, els tanca. No pot obrir-los. Hi ha vegades que, en sentir-los
vagament cridar, gairebé es veu temptada a aixecar-se i a obrir-los,
però l’odi, el ressentiment, la crueltat, són massa forts; la revenja,
l’avolesa – la malèfica fal·lera per veure la feina enllestida; la feina
enllestida d’una vegada; que ja n’hi ha prou; que ja no pot més;
que cal aguantar; això l'impel·leix a no obrir – de primer colpien la
porta, cridaven, esgarrapaven la porta, després s’afebleixen, en acabat
no res – deuen haver perdut el coneixement – o, maleïts com són,
encara tornen a enganyar-me (es deia); no em tornareu a ensarronar
pas!



No els havia tustats mai – només els tancava en aquest mateix
recambró fosc una estoneta si mai en feien una de gaire grossa, que la
por els adrecés... Ara els hi tancava per sempre.



S’hi asfixiaren. Mai més no n’obrí la porta, mai més. S’havia demanat
alguna vegada: Qui sap quina cara fan ara...?



I ara ho sap, dues dones i un home, ja mig vells i tot,
cinquanta-seixanta anys, i tanmateix amb el mateix aspecte de la nit on
moriren, la Rosa vestideta de violeta, la Violeta de rosa, l’Indaleci de
blau, amb vestit de marineret. I ara venien a cercar-la per a endur-se-la
a llur món dels morts – a llur món dels morts on l’únic record que
tenien era el d’aquell dia de la mort. Com ella recordarà, morta, aquest
dia de la visita dels tres vailets qui assassinà sense cap recança – sense
cap recança, ni llavors ni mai. Ells recordant doncs l’avinentesa de
l’explosió i de l’ofec a l’hermètic recambró. Ella la visita dels...




–Que vella us heu feta, padrina!



–Com aneu?



–Quants d’anys que feia que no ens vèiem...!



–D’ençà d’aquell dia de l’accident...



–Ara en parlàvem...



–Un dia memorable, ca?



–Ens hi havíem divertits qui-sap-lo...



–Ens divertíem recordant..., ves que inconscients...!



–Recordant la malifeta: que ens amagàvem...



–Després d’haver jugat tots sols...



–I que ens haguéssim menjades totes les llepolies amagades...




–Oh, i poques-vergonyetes rai. Havíem jugat a metges al llit...




–Ara que vam sentir que tornàveu, ens vàrem amagar al recambró...




–Com ens en rèiem!



–Jo no em podia aguantar el riure.



–Jo tampoc.



–L’Indaleci deia “xst, xst!” com un desesperat, però també reia,
també...



–I tant. Era tan còmica la cosa.



–I llavors ens hi vau tancar amb clau.



–Ui quina por al cap d’estoneta.



–Al començament ens pensàvem que era de broma.



–Que ens seguíeu la facècia...



–Però a poc a poc ens mancava l’aire...



–Ens asfixiàvem...



–Esgarrapàvem la porta...



–Volíem sortir. Allò...



–T’hi mories...



La vella dida se’ls guaitava amb fàstic, un fàstic que augmentava com
més xerraven i es repetien. Vol deseixir-se’n i no pot. Com si se li
adherissin a la pell, com si se li enganxifessin, llefiscosos,
escaguitxosos, esllenegats. Voltada per tres carronyes a mig momificar
qui li parlen per sempre més dels anys de l’avior incandescent.




–Ara que vam sentir que tornàveu, ens vàrem amagar al recambró...




–Com ens en rèiem!



–Jo no em podia aguantar el riure.



–Jo tampoc.



–L’Indaleci deia “xst, xst!” com un desesperat, però també reia,
també...



–I tant. Era tan còmica la cosa.



–I llavors ens hi vau tancar amb clau.



La vella es trau la clau de la butxaca de la bata. La fica al forat del pany.
En fa saltar el màstic ressec, florit de rovell. La clau s’engalaverna al
forat. Ara la fa girar. Obre la porta del recambró.



–I encara hi sou –diu la vella.



A mig momificar, llefiscosos, escaguitxosos, esllenegats. Tres carronyes
qui li parlen per sempre més dels anys de l’avior incandescent. Mal
embolicades amb quatre cassigalls tots llords – llurs vestits tots eslleïts,
llurs vestits de l’avior incandescent, quatre cassigalls tots llords,
esblanqueïts, esgrogueïts, tots eslleïts, violeta, rosa, blau, els mateixos
vestits, sí, en acabat de gairebé cinquanta anys amagats en recambró
fosc, hermèticament clos.

That story belongs to a sheaf of them that originally were included in
the volume that later had to be halved (as per the publisher’s diktat) in
order that at least the more continuous half could be printed
[apparently the publisher had a limited amount of paper!] The volume
I’m talking about is Meuques! [Meuques! translates
both as Whores! and, emphatically, What’s mine?]
published in 1979 in Barcelona, though written in the early nineteen
seventies. The hero of this novel writes a zany diary and in the process
loses a day. During this supposedly lost day [supposedly because the
day he misses, namely the first of July, actually gets secreted into the
entry of the “day” before, a mythical thirty-first of June,] the clueless
hero dreams a few dreams that become stories (that later got cut from
the novel.)





Page 11o of the first edition parenthetically notes it: “(In the diary, a
chasm. Opisthographically written, a few leaves of lucid dreams that I
can’t now unravel.)”





Anyway, I’ve even decided to translate this one, because I think it’s so
exquisite.

How fateful that today we all felt the urge to
visit











They knocked at her door, though there was no need to. The crone had
seen them approaching through the window; she had gone to the door
and let it ajar, so that they had only to push it to enter. They: two
women and a man, in their fifties or early sixties... Rose, Violet,
Indalecian. Rose wearing her violet dress, Violet her pink one,
Indalecian his blue one, dressed as a little demure mariner.



Exactly as it all had happened forty-eight years earlier.



The three visitors had thought for a moment that they had lost the
address... They had been in doubt for a spell.



“Are you sure we are heading the right way?” Indalecian had asked. He
put his hand inside his pocket; he had found a little piece of paper all
torn. “Yes, I think we are getting close.”



“Oh, now I recognize it,” said Rose.



“Same here,” added Violet.



–Her little house was very near that same spot.



–This section belongs already to the university; the small house was
just around this same corner.



–Such good luck to live next to so vast an edifice, with grounds so wide
and flat, and clean horizons and precise lookouts – one could so nicely
play in there, with all those smooth bends, and gradients and nooks –
you could climb and slide down – you could skate, you could hide...




–Clean horizons of dry garden. How delightful to be able to run along it.
To fly kites around it, to otherwise stroll up and down while holding a
few colored balloons...



–And showing off one’s pretty dresses...



–And now look: everything is again as it was before: everything fixed so
that you’d see no difference...



–Just like it all was that very same day...



–Copied, traced, stenciled... The same outlook, same lookout, same
geometry, same cement...



–So flat and wide...



–And lonely...



–As if there had never been any explosion...



–Just a duplicate of that same day...



–Three or four other children were playing there also...



–We were looking down at everything from the empty class atop one of
the last stories...



–All that smoke, all that sudden rubble: weird; and such an awful noise
of frantic vehicles...



–We hurried to get back into our dresses...



–Yours the pink one, mine the pretty violet, his the blue: a cute little
sailor, that’s him.



–You are so right, and just like today! Dressed exactly! Isn’t that
chancy, almost fateful?



–And talk about chancy: when yesterday, or the day before, or when was
it, when you phoned me...



–I didn’t phone you. You phoned me...



–And me... Or, wait, perhaps it was you, Rose... Didn’t...? Now I don’t
remember.



–Me neither.



–How puzzled you appear...



–It doesn’t really matter.



–All those days I was craving so much to come back and see those
localities, and nanny!



–Same here; sort of an urge, an urgency.



–As if summoned to the premises, by the spirit of the place, as it were.
As if in order to celebrate some ephemeredes, an anniversary...




–Couldn’t rightly be... Let me reckon now...



–It was forty-eight years ago, yeah, more or less, depends on the
month...



–It isn’t quite a round cipher, no; no rationale for solemn
commemoration... Unless...



–The big occurrence, of course. I’ve been thinking so often about it!




–Same here.



–Brother, it was such a traumatic affair.



–You bet.



–What erupted, what blew up so suddenly...



–Pentane.



–Methane.



–Some sort of underground gas that gathered under the thick layers of
cement after they had refurbished the university grounds, some sort of
subterranean hole that got hermetically trapped by the works; the
pressure building up with the heat, the telluric squeeze, and suddenly
the huge burst...



–And so much packed cement becoming just dust and ashes...




–And the bodies just wisps of essential powder...



–We were looking down at everything from the empty class atop one of
the last stories...



–All that smoke, all that sudden rubble: weird; and such an awful noise
of frantic vehicles...



–A few students died then...



–Also three or four children that were playing there.



–And now look: everything is again as it was before: everything fixed so
that you’d see no difference...



–Just like it all was that very same day...



–Copied, traced, stenciled... The same outlook, same lookout, same
geometry, same cement...



–So flat and wide...



–And lonely...



–As if there had never been any explosion...



–Just a duplicate of that same day...



–We were looking down at everything from the empty class atop one of
the last stories...



–All that smoke, all that sudden rubble: weird; and such an awful noise
of frantic vehicles...



–We hurried to get back into our dresses...



–Yours the pink one, mine the pretty violet, his the blue: a cute little
sailor, that’s him.



–You are so right, and just like today! Dressed exactly! Isn’t that
chancy, almost fateful?



–We were playing at doctors and nurses, that’s why we had to put our
dresses back...



–Weren’t we naughty, then, sassy monkeys...



–Yours the pink one, mine the pretty violet, his the blue: a cute little
sailor, that’s him.



–You are so right, and just like today! Dressed exactly! Isn’t that
chancy, almost fateful?



–And talk about chancy: when yesterday, or the day before, or when was
it, when you phoned me...



–I didn’t phone you. You phoned me...



–And me... Or, wait, perhaps it was you, Rose... Didn’t...? Now I don’t
remember.



–Me neither.



–What a furious racket, all those vehicles...



–We secretly ran away through one of the side doors, at the other
extreme from where all the commotion was going on...



–Headed furtively straight into nanny’s place...



–Yeah, now I do perfectly recognize the layout... –said Indalecian, and
put the little paper back into his pocket.



–Weren’t we the naughty rascals then!



–Alone for the rest of the long day, the orgies!



–We played again at nurses and doctors.



–That time atop the bed.



–And we ate all the sweets and goodies nanny had hidden in her
kitchen’s drawers.



–Brother, such orgies.



–The hours were passing. Came the night.



–We had never stayed so long. Never had seen of us, the night, in
nanny’s little house.



–Our parents had always come to fetch us; never so dark as that day.




–The crone, they called her a crone already.



–She was a widow.



–She must be so old now...



–Almost fifty years ago, she was already the crone, or the granny,
imagine...



–And she was already a widow...



–She must be... What...? Ninety if a day, probably more...



–Do you remember how we got out...?



–Not quite. One thing I remember: how we floundered, the air so
scarce...



–She must have let us loose during the night...



–We heard nanny coming back, and we rushed toward the little closet...




–How funny we found the occasion, didn’t we?



–Me, I couldn’t hold my laughter.



–Same here.



–Indalecian urging “sh..., sh...”, but also laughing like crazy...




–Of course. It was too comical.



–Then the nanny locked the door.



–We heard the key revolving.



–Becoming too much of a joke, then.



–Now it was her turn to laugh, at us.



–I confess that in the absolute dark I was beginning to be scared.




–And then the air seemed to grow scarce...



–We were fighting to breathe...



–We were scratching at the door...



–She must have let us loose during the night...



–Perhaps we fell in a faint...



Now a few years had elapsed. How many...? A lot of years, yes. Maybe as
many as fifty all told. She must be ninety if a day, probably older. But
she remembered it all, as if it had happened yesterday. The day of the
explosion, she’s remembered it every single day. Such a wreckage! Who
could forget it.



The widow babysat the children. The parents already calling her the
granny. And that happening almost fifty years ago already.



She never beat the children, she wouldn’t, ever – at most she would
punish them by pushing them into the dark closet, for a corrective spell
– the contrite crying cleaning the sin – and only if the sin warranted the
insulation.



That doomed afternoon she again had brought the children to play to
the grounds of the university. The fine grounds, just recently renewed.
Cemented all over. With new very neat perspectives. Precise geometry:
such a vast expanse, such a stimulating design. The little brats how
eagerly they enjoyed themselves there – all those well-planned lumps of
concrete so enticing to climb...



The nanny sat on a bench of stone. There were other people on the
bench or thereabouts: some young mums, some other nannies
approximately of her age...



The deafening eruption happened then. Such a panic. It was as if the
end of the world had come. A few students were blown up by the
explosion – and three or four children that were playing at the site.




Firemen were present in an instant, pullulating, also the ambulances,
the police, such a hullabaloo, the uproar, the fuss, cameras,
journalists... And then the parents.



There had been a number... nobody knew how many students dead,
demolished – and there were children unaccounted for. Hers, hers were
also missing: Violet, Rose, Indalecian. An underground repository had
burst – gases trapped – and now where were the bodies...? Obliterated,
vanished, erased... Not an atom left to rescue.



Those were the same renovated grounds of the university the three
visitors were walking on now, on their ineluctable way toward the
nanny’s little house.



–It’s mighty remarkable: we wearing exactly the same clothing as that
day.



–Remarkable indeed. And what chance that Indalecian’s choice also...?




–And talk about chance: when yesterday, or the day before, or when was
it, when you phoned me...



–I didn’t phone you. You phoned me...



–And me... Or, wait, perhaps it was you, Rose... Didn’t...? Now I don’t
remember.



–Me neither.



And now here they come, again. The three of them, in a pack, in a pact,
as if in cahoots, just as it happened in the day of the great conflagration
that seemed to want to take everything with it. The crone’s seen them
through the window. Violet in her pink dress, Rose in her pink one,
Indalecian dressed as a decorous little mariner, in blue. Two women, a
man, come to visit their old nanny. She’s left the door ajar, so that a
simple little shove would open it and they could enter.



That rotten day, when the crone had returned home, undone, beat, sure
that she had lost her young wards, and after she had had to endure the
hysterics of the mothers, the chaotic ire of the fathers, after having had
to go up and own, through the hospitals, though the police and firemen
stations... Now that she was coming back literally in tatters, physically a
wreck, emptied emotionally, psychically shattered...



She heard little gratings in the dark closet. She got scared... Maybe
some a critter had gotten in...?



She was heading into the kitchen, to fetch the broom. Along the corridor
she was thinking about the three poor little dear departed... Such good
children! She had never smacked them – at most she had shut them in
that very same dark closet, just for a little spell, if the ugly action so
warranted, poor little dears, let the little pain redress them.



How could anybody imagine, what head could even ever fathom, that,
instead, the rascals had escaped unscathed – and from such an
apocalyptic upheaval! – and then slithered stealthily back home...




–We had had then lots and lots of fun...



–We ate all the hidden goodies and sweets...



–We had played nurses and doctors atop the bed...



–We heard nanny coming back, and we rushed toward the little closet...




–How funny we found the occasion, didn’t we?



–Me, I couldn’t hold my laughter.



–Same here.



–Indalecian urging “sh..., sh...”, but also laughing like crazy...




–Of course. It was too comical.



All those tinny laughs, those gratings and whispers and mumbles... Now
the crone realized... She was either hallucinating and seeing visions, or
hearing them (the equivalent, through the deluded ear, that the deluded
eye sees,) or she was losing her mind, or declining fast... Or the matter
to deal now with was with angels, and souls, and little devils...




Or just wait! That was the biggest mischief they had ever perpetrated,
wasn’t it. After so much pain, that wasn’t even forgivable...! And they all
the time hidden inside the dark closet. If that was not worth a harsh
sentence, damned evil brats! She locked them there.



–And then we felt as if the air became scarce, little by little we were
stifling...



–Couldn’t draw a breath...



–We would scratch at the door...



–She must have let us loose during the night...



–We must have lost conscience...



She’s locked them in the airtight little closet – she’s even put some
putty in the lock’s hole. She said: “Damned scoundrels, you’ll rot there
yet!”



Driven, she locks them in. She’s unable to open the door and let them
out. She has a few moments of weakness, when she hears them faintly
whimper still, when maybe she’s about to be tempted into relenting,
almost stirred to get up and open the closet, but then the hatred irrupts;
the resentment, the cruelty are too strongly wound around her will; the
malice, the thirst for revenge; the spiteful need too imperative to see the
work through. To see the work through, once and for all.
Enough, she must see it through, she must be firm, ruthless; she’s
driven by her tightly-coiled demon to not open; not open despite the
fierce knocks on the door, and then the screams, and then the
scratchings, more and more feeble, until there’s silence – they must
have fainted – or maybe, as they are so tricky, maybe they are just
faking it, they are liable to..., I see them, too keen to pay themselves my
goat again. She said: “You won’t get my goat again!”



She had never raised her hand at them – she had just at most pushed
them into the little dark closet, and then shut them in, and then drop
the key into her gown’s pocket. And only if the naughtiness had
warranted the act – let a little fear correct them. And now she was
locking them in forever.



They died when the air had been spent. Never she opened again that
door, never. Sometimes she wondered: “Who knows their aspect
now...?”



Now she herself knows: two women, one man, almost geezers
themselves already, in their fifties or sixties, and yet looking for all the
world as they used to look the night they died: Rose in violet, Violet in
pink, Indalecian in blue, as a demure little mariner. Here they were,
come to fetch her, to escort her to their world of the dead – their dead
world where the only memory they had was the one of the day they died.
Same as she will now remember, dead, the day the visitors came, the
three little old scoundrels that she murdered without regret – without a
wisp of sorrow, never again: never then, never now, no remorse. They
remembering the occurrence around the explosion and the stifling in
the dark closet, she their visit...



–Granny, how old you’ve grown!



–How are you doing?



–All those years that we never saw each other...!



–From the day of the accident...



–We were just talking about it...



–Of course, such a memorable day!



–We had had so much fun...



–We were enjoying the memories, aren’t we unconscionable...!




–Recalling the impudence we had when we hid in the dark closet...




–After the jolly time we had had playing alone...



–And eating all the hidden sweets and goodies...



–Naughty, weren’t we? We had been playing at doctors and nurses atop
the bed...



–As we heard that your were coming back we hid inside the closet...




–How funny we found the occasion, didn’t we?



–Me, I couldn’t hold my laughter.



–Same here.



–Indalecian urging “sh..., sh...”, but also laughing like crazy...




–Of course. It was too comical.



–Then we heard the key – you had locked us in.



–Soon we were really scared.



–At the beginning we thought it might all be in good fun.



–That you were also in in the merriment...



–Slowly, though, the air grew scarce...



–We were stifling...



–We started scratching at the door...



–We wanted out. It was too...



–One would have died...



The crone was watching them with growing disgust – the more they
talked and repeated themselves the more hideous they became. She
wanted also out. But she couldn’t free herself – they were tacky,
loathful, and gluing into her, like clammy skins of rot. She was assieged
by three garrulous carrions, three half-mummified gooey bastards that
couldn’t quit babbling – they kept on chatting, tirelessly chattering
about old times, when the incandescence blinded them.



–As we heard that your were coming back we hid inside the closet...




–How funny we found the occasion, didn’t we?



–Me, I couldn’t hold my laughter.



–Same here.



–Indalecian urging “sh..., sh...”, but also laughing like crazy...




–Of course. It was too comical.



–And then you locked us in.



The crone lifts the key from the pocket in her gown. She sticks it into
the lock’s hole. With it she removes the dried putty, now varnished with
rust. The key grates inside the hole. Now she manages to turn it. She
opens the door of the closet.



The crone says: “And there you are still.”



Half-mummified, tacky, viscous, melting – three chatty carrions that
for ever more will talk to her about old times, when the incandescence
blinded them. The carrions wrapped in a few dirty tatters – their
dresses now discolored, their dresses from the old times when the
incandescence burned them, a few dirty tatters turned whitish,
yellowish, discolored, violet, pink, blue, the same old dresses indeed,
after almost fifty years hidden in a dark little closet, hermetically
shut.