Читать книгу Loquela - Carlos Labbe - Страница 12

THE NOVEL

Sitting on a bench in the plaza, Carlos was drawing a tree. He groaned and crumpled up the paper, realizing that every day his lines were getting worse; the tree he was sketching looked nothing like the one in front of him, it was more like a building or a statue. A few days ago, his little sister had asked him to teach her to draw hands. To start with he showed her how to copy her own, the left. But in the end, Josefa looked at his drawing and narrowed her eyes: that’s not a hand, she said, it’s the claws of a beast. He put the sketch down beside him and looked around the plaza. A modest, pretty schoolgirl passed by in front of him. Holding her by the hand was a man dressed in a suit and tie, one of those guys who’d run you over to get to the bank on time. What a waste, thought Carlos.

Then he picked up his sketch again. He didn’t give the couple another thought, they’ll end up on some bench somewhere, as usual, he said to himself. The tree was no longer a tree but a gathering of strange shadows, immense stains suggesting shapes: a couple through a window and perhaps someone spying from the corner, lying in wait. He was distracted by a cry that gradually became a scream: a girl was calling for help. He walked calmly to the other side of the plaza, where he found a circle of onlookers gathering around the same schoolgirl he’d seen before, whose torn uniform didn’t cover the bruises on her legs. A compassionate woman who was trying to console the girl retrieved her buttonless blouse from the bushes. A man was asking questions. The degenerate had run away, he realized, and the schoolgirl cried, ignoring all the people, hands covering her face. Nothing about her was sexy now, just the opposite, he thought, walking away. He realized that the girl’s blue uniform was just like the one Elisa had been wearing only a few years before. He remembered afternoons junior year when he’d wait for her outside the school before they’d walk home together down Alcántara. Sometimes she walked a few steps ahead, other times he led the way, but walking backwards, facing Elisa. He never took his eyes off her, not her, not that uniform; he could barely contain the desire to slip his hand up under her blue skirt. He called her from a payphone, fearing she wouldn’t be there. She answered and asked him a question: why did his voice sound so different, like he was someone else entirely.