Читать книгу Fate - Jorge Consiglio - Страница 8

She wasn’t sure they were ants. They were certainly tiny insects, moving aimlessly, yet very fast. Marina Kezelman grimaced in disgust. Kneeling down, wearing a pair of running shoes and rolled-up trousers, a torch clenched between her teeth, she looked like a mad explorer. She shone the light into the crevice between the wall and the fridge. It was a narrow, mournful space: the scene of a hidden world.

Marina Kezelman stretched her right arm as far as she could – the cartilage made a noise as it tensed – and moved it around in the dark. Then she overcame her revulsion, clenched her fist and struck hard. She killed ten or twenty of the insects. The survivors rustled frantically. Marina Kezelman was clearly a threat. Her height became apparent when she stood up, which she did in two movements. She was five feet four inches tall. This fact was relevant to a feature of her personality, perhaps the most significant one: her determination. Marina Kezelman was someone who faced her problems head-on. As her husband put it, she crushed them. Right now, although she was pressed for time, she decided to take action. She left the torch on the counter and opened the cupboard. She searched and searched some more. She pushed aside a pack of candles; a can of WD-40 fell from her hands. She didn’t find what she was looking for, but she kept searching anyway. In the end, she got creative and sprayed the bugs with fabric stiffener. Bewilderment engulfed the community, and yet all its members continued to throng, covered in bright white foam. Marina Kezelman didn’t know what to do next. She bit down hard on her lower lip, knelt for the third time and stormed them blindly. She flattened over a hundred with her bare hand. Death writ large – this longed-for massacre – filled her with elation, a state of excitement. She rubbed her forehead and continued her mission, but the impulse faded after ten seconds. With an over-hasty swipe of her hand, she snagged one of her fingernails in a crack in the wall and it broke. A rush of cold rippled up her spine. She let out a short shriek of pain and ran to the bathroom. For three seconds (no longer than three seconds) she became aware that a neighbour – an eighteen-year-old kid she’d seen around – had started to play the first chords of a Dvorak polka on the piano. The battle against the bugs had reached a ceasefire.