THE CRUNCH OF FROST

Nute and I were fooling around, as usual, walking back and forth along the path to the well. We had nothing better to do; we didn’t even have a cigarette to justify stopping for as long as it took to smoke one. It was bitterly cold, and the stubborn frost crunched beneath the soles of our shoes. Clouds of vapor escaped our mouths whenever we dared to open them.

“Don’t lean over, idiot.” I always call him an idiot when we get near the well. I know that one day he’ll fall in and we won’t be able to get him out, even with a crane.

“There’s a man in the well,” Nute said in his piping voice. When he shouts or cries, it’s worse: he sounds like the horn of a departing ship.

“There’s nobody there. Let’s ask old Frank for a cigarette; he gave me one once.”

“The man in the well is Hitler. Hitler’s down inside the well. Come on.” He said it with conviction. That frightened me. I only take Nute seriously when he says things like that.

When we reached the well and looked down, we saw that Hitler was indeed struggling to finish climbing out. The silt and moss clinging to the walls made them slippery. I looked around for something to hit him with and spotted a thick branch leaning against the door of Helga’s house.

“Don’t let him get away,” I said unnecessarily. Nute chuckled. Hitler seemed to be having a great deal of trouble completing the climb. I came back with the branch and struck him on the head four or five times. The fifth blow was pointless; the Führer had already fallen into the depths of the well.

“It isn’t deep,” said Nute, who can always read my thoughts.

“He’ll be back in a moment, idiot,” I muttered. Nute laughed again.

“He’s in for a surprise.”

“Oh, really?” Once Nute gets an idea into his head, not even Christ himself could pry it out.

“Yes. We’ll stand on opposite sides of the well and squeeze it until we mash him to a pulp.”

I shrugged.

“All right.”

When Hitler finished climbing and we saw the tonsure crowning his head, the size of a twenty-kopeck coin, we compressed the walls of the well with all our might. When we put our minds to it, Nute and I are a pair of beasts. The idiot is stronger than I am, but I’m not far behind. Once he broke my nose with a punch, but I played dead, and when the bastard bent over to see what was wrong with me, I bit one of his testicles. Not hard enough to tear it off, but I bit it. He howled like a wild animal and swore he would kill me, but he did nothing.

“That’s it,” said Nute after we had compressed the well to the size of a can of peaches. It still weighed a good seventy kilos, of course, but Hitler was inside, dead and crushed into a lump.

“What now?”

“Who’s the idiot now?” Nute glared at me, his black eyes full of rage. He always gets like that when he commits an assassination. “We have to hide this somewhere. As soon as the Nazis realize what’s happened, they’ll come looking for him.”

I nodded. We set the can in a cradle of braided ropes and carried it to a corner of the woods beside the village. It’s not as if Frampol has a great forest, a world-famous forest or anything like that, but a hundred beeches make a forest, even if that gives the purists a pain in the balls.

“We can’t bury it, idiot,” I said when I saw Nute beginning to dig with the shovel he had stolen from Henrik.

“Are we going to carry this seventy-kilo lump around until the Second Coming of Our Lord?” Sometimes, when Nute gets sharp, I feel like biting his other testicle.

“We can’t let it out of our sight. If the Nazis come into the woods and dig Hitler up, all we’ll have left to decide is whether we want to be fried, boiled or roasted.”

Nute lowered his head and threw the shovel a long way off. Less than a minute later, though, he went to fetch it. Henrik’s shovel incriminated us as much as the compressed body inside the well. In fact, the entire universe was pointing an accusing finger at us. But we had rid them of Hitler, hadn’t we?

“No,” said Nute. “They’ll put someone just like him in charge, or someone worse. All we’ve bought them is a little breathing room.”

“Says the idiot who pisses himself whenever he sees a woman.” That’s Nute’s weak spot, but since I know it humiliates him more than my constant remarks about his stupidity, I only fire that shot when it’s absolutely necessary.

We dragged the well containing Hitler from the woods back to the houses, leaving a dusty furrow behind us. That furrow was like a wound across the world’s chest, and as soon as we had put the mashed-up Hitler in the cabinet, I sent Nute to erase the trail.

For the first few days, we couldn’t leave the cabinet alone. It was as though we feared the bastard might come back to life and escape his prison. Every few minutes, one of us would say, to keep our spirits up:

“He’s dead. Good and dead.”

It didn’t matter which of us said it. One of us did. When Janche came to see me for her Thursday ration, I sent her away without letting her in. She could tell something serious was wrong with me, but subtlety has never been her strong suit.

“Have you finally become Nute the idiot’s boyfriend? Do you like doing it with an idiot like him? Do you stick it up his ass or in his mouth?”

I slapped her, and she left crying and hurling insults at me. She called me a sexist pig. I don’t know whether the cure was worse than the disease. But the Hitler business wasn’t something we could make a joke of, as we usually did with everything else.

The Nazis came a week later. They didn’t say a word about Hitler. They merely looked high and low with those hard, sharp stares that take your breath away. But they touched nothing. The leader of the patrol, a twenty-five-centimeter-tall Swede named Sven Svergensson, barked orders in his own language, which we didn’t understand at all. It took the intervention of a corporal who looked so much like Nute that I nearly called him “idiot” three times before we understood the purpose of the visit. They wanted to take a census of layabouts, and we fit the bill perfectly. Why don’t you work. Because it makes us tired. Ah. Write that down. Would you like to work. No. You know the State wants everyone to work. Yes. But we don’t want to. All right. Write that down.

The one doing the writing was Chinese. You won’t believe it. The whole time, the sly fellow kept looking toward the cabinet, as if he could see through its thick oak doors. He couldn’t possibly know we had Hitler packed away in there. They would only accept that Hitler had been turned to paste on the day they could measure and weigh him.

“Write your names on this form,” said the Swede. Actually, the corporal said it, translating the patrol leader’s orders. The corporal was rather hard of hearing, so he perched Sven Svergensson on his shoulder. They made such a funny sight, with the Nazi’s little legs swinging in the air and both hands clutching the lapel of the corporal’s coat to keep from falling, that Nute had to tape his mouth shut to stop himself from bursting out laughing. Idiot!

But if the Swede was afraid of falling, we were even more afraid they would discover that we had not only killed Hitler but reduced him to pulp. We kept glancing at the cabinet so conspicuously that the Chinese man grew suspicious.

“Why do you keep looking at the cabinet?” he finally asked.

“Because we’re afraid you’ll open it and discover we’re hiding a corpse inside.”

The Chinese man let out a laugh like a tsunami, and the corporal immediately joined in. It caught the Swede off guard, and disaster followed. Sven Svergensson fell headfirst from the corporal’s shoulder and smashed into the ceramic floor. Once he had brought his laughter under control, the Chinese man kicked the Swede’s corpse into a corner and took command.

“Open the cabinet!”

“(Idiot),” I whispered.

“(It wasn’t my fault),” Nute replied.

I opened the cabinet. The compressed well, with the shapeless mass that had once been Hitler inside it, gleamed as though it were the Holy Grail. Or as the Holy Grail might have gleamed if it had been a chalice. But the Chinese man couldn’t have cared less. His eyes lit up greedily when he saw the four bottles of potato schnapps I was saving to celebrate the birth of my future daughter.

“So that was your secret, you pigs!”

I lowered my head and began fingering my cap, just as I had seen a character overwhelmed by shame do in a film.

“Confiscation!” howled the corporal. He made a gesture, and four soldiers marched up to the cabinet, their heels clicking, and seized the bottles.

“In the name of the Party,” said the Chinese man, “we confiscate these four bottles of potato schnapps. Were you saving them to celebrate the birth of your daughter?” Everyone laughed again, including that idiot Nute, who had removed the tape from his mouth. Perhaps he wanted to show the whole world that he still had six teeth and gums blacker than tar.

“Sign here,” said the corporal, spreading a filthy sheet of paper on the table. As might have been expected, the confiscation included two cows, a samovar and a cart. The Nazis were beginning to put their earlier expropriations on the books. I had to admit it was a sensible policy.

We signed so they would leave. As the Nazis headed toward Bilgoraj, Janche appeared from the chicken coop, where she had been hiding.

“What did they do to you?” She had already forgotten the slap I’d given her the week before and had come back for more.

“I can’t see to you, Janche,” I told her, trying to look distraught.

“I don’t want you to,” the girl said. “From now on I’ll be Nute’s lover.” It’s strange: I can’t say Janche is stupid like Nute, but the two of them made a much more convincing couple than she and I did. Or so I think.

“The little toys are gone,” said Nute.

“The little toys?” Janche stuck a finger up her nose and withdrew it, disappointed: she hadn’t caught even the tiniest bit of snot.

“Tiny!” We remembered the Swede’s corpse at the same time. Now it wasn’t just the lump of Hitler we were hiding in the compressed well inside the cabinet. If we were discovered, we would end up in the crematoria at Auschwitz or the gas chamber at Majdanek.

“Wait a moment.” Nute reached into an inside pocket of Sven Svergensson’s coat and pulled out the Nazi’s papers. They looked like toys. “It says here, ‘Class E simulation; serial no. 370285.’” Janche covered her mouth.

“He isn’t human. I was afraid of that.”

“You were?” said Nute. “When did you say so?”

“Don’t be stupid; I thought it. I thought you could read my mind.” I bent over the little Swede’s body and pushed two fingers into the slit in his chest. The doll sprang open like a trap, with a click.

“Did the Nazis make these contraptions?” Janche is a country girl; she doesn’t even watch television, though now and then she shows a shrewdness that throws me off balance. This time her suspicion was well founded.

“The Nazis aren’t real, Janche,” said Nute.

“Can you tell reality from fantasy, Nute? The boss, that Hitler. He was at my house the other day,” said Janche, “the day you slapped me. He told me you two are idiots.”

“Both of us?” I asked in surprise. “Or just him?”

“Both of you. He said he’d have this village bombed in retaliation for what you did to him in the well. What did you do to him?”

“Nothing,” said Nute. “We didn’t do anything to him.”

I dropped into a chair, defeated. No wonder the Nazis hadn’t been interested in the Hitler we had mashed up and stored in the cabinet. They must have dozens, hundreds of Hitlers. If we had dared to examine him properly, we would have found a plate reading “Class H simulation; serial no. 456705.”

“Then we didn’t kill him,” said Nute with relief. “We didn’t kill a human being.”

“Hitler isn’t a human being. I was sure you knew that,” I protested. But it was a feeble protest; I didn’t believe it myself.

“I can’t know everything,” said Nute.

“Could you get me a cigarette?” I asked Janche.

“All right, but don’t say they’re just toys again. Will you be my lover again?”

“Well… yes. Once you get me the cigarette, we can be intimate again.”

Nute shrugged. He didn’t like Janche; he said she was dirty and smelled of rotten onions. He scratched the top of his head for a few seconds, then went over to the cabinet.

“Could you help me?”

I helped him take Hitler out. We decompressed him with difficulty—much more difficulty than we’d had pressing him flat—and laid him on the table. Wheels, belts and gears rolled everywhere, and Janche began setting aside pieces she thought would be suitable for making herself a bracelet.

“That means there’s a flesh-and-blood Hitler somewhere,” said Nute. “They wouldn’t have simulations otherwise.”

“No, idiot. That’s one of the many senseless ideas you come up with. It’s possible Hitler never existed.”

“You’re completely wrong, moron. This is just how we wanted to catch you: red-handed.” Framed in the doorway stood the imposing figure of the real Sven Svergensson, supreme commander of the Nazis in Lublin. He was nearly two meters tall and was pointing a 9 mm Parabellum, model 1908, popularly known as a “Luger,” at us.

“Can I be your lover?” said Janche. She approached the Nazi without fear and danced around him. It was a grand gesture on her part, risking her hide to save us from the Nazis. But we were sure it wouldn’t work. When Janche tries to cover up the smell of rotten onions, she douses herself in the mushroom perfume old Brane makes; then she smells like an abandoned tannery. And although it has nothing to do with anything, I should mention that the Swede had a nose as big as an avocado.

“Of course!” said Sven. “Give me proof of your love.”

“For example?” Janche stopped dancing, puzzled. The Nazi put the pistol in her hand and gently closed her fingers around it.

“Kill these two, and you shall be my lover.”

“Certainly!” Janche aimed at us. Nute pulled his shirt open in a stupid, useless gesture. I closed my eyes, so when the shot rang out, I expected a sharp pain in my chest or something of the sort. I opened them and was bewildered by the scene. Janche had shot the Swede between the eyes and then killed herself.

“Why did she do it?” said Nute.

“Out of love for us, idiot.” I looked at the pools of blood and mopped them up with a rag. I picked up the Luger and slipped it into my pocket.

“But are they toys, are they real, or are they both?” said Nute, suddenly as sharp and penetrating as a drill bit.

“What’s with all these questions? Do I owe you something?”

Nute lowered his head again; the effort of understanding the previous line of reasoning had exhausted him. But I wasn’t going to let things slide like mud flowing down a hillside on a stormy day. I imagined myself walking along the path to the well. I had nothing better to do; I didn’t even have a cigarette to justify stopping for as long as it took to smoke one. It was bitterly cold; the stubborn frost crunched beneath the soles of my shoes, and clouds of vapor escaped my mouth whenever I dared to open it. I imagined Nute climbing the walls of the well, but it never occurred to me to do anything as bizarre as compress him, as we had done with Hitler. In my hallucination, I was much more direct. I drew the Luger, aimed between his eyes and fired. His body seemed to fall backward so slowly that I could finish my speech before I heard the dull thud as he hit the ground. I shook my head to dispel the images, went over to the well and touched Nute’s shoulder. He was staring into space as though he had been deactivated.

“I don’t want to see you around for a while, idiot. For the rest of the day, in fact. Janche is coming to see me today, and we want to do what you’re already thinking of, in peace.”

“Didn’t Janche kill herself?” said Nute, bewildered.

“Where did you get that idea? Women like Janche don’t kill themselves to save two idiots like us.” I pulled a handful of banknotes from my pocket. There were zlotys, rubles and a few pounds; there wasn’t a single euro. I gave him enough money to go to the cinema. Just then Hitler climbed out of the well and looked at me with an angelic expression, pleading for me to extend my charitable gesture to him. I sighed and added a couple of bills. “Don’t show your faces until tonight, idiots,” I said.

 

UN MINUTO DEL SUO TEMPO

«Aspetti. Rimanga un minuto».

L’uomo la guardò stranito; aveva finito di vestirsi e tirò una boccata nervosa alla sigaretta, come se la richiesta fosse qualcosa di stravagante. «Ti ho già pagato, no?».

«È solo un minuto». Era la prima volta che chiedeva una cosa del genere a un cliente e ignorava il perché lo stesse facendo. Un impulso, l’ultimo tentativo di una persona che stava annegando.

Neanche l’uomo sapeva perché acconsentì, ma si sedette sul bordo del letto e trascorse il minuto a guardare il proprio orologio da polso. Era un orologio economico.

«È già ora?», disse quando il minuto fu trascorso.

«È già ora», disse lei. «Può andarsene, se vuole».

Il quinto cliente volle sapere. «Perché lo fai, ragazza?». Parlava in modo strano, con un accento duro, rispettoso e diffidente allo stesso tempo. Ma non l’aveva trattata con delicatezza; era rozzo e maldestro.

«Non lo so ancora, signore. Con questo sono cinque».

«Cinque minuti, ragazza?».

«Sì». Non ritenne opportuno aggiungere altro.

L’uomo rimase in piedi, in silenzio; non guardava l’orologio, non lo portava. «È già ora?», disse quando credette che fosse trascorso il minuto.

Quella era l’unica cosa che li accomunava tutti. Tutti chiedevano: «È già ora?». Non importava se avessero o meno l’orologio.

«Grazie», disse lei.

Il ventitreesimo – su questo non ci sono dubbi, perché lei contabilizzava scrupolosamente ogni singolo minuto ottenuto – era un esperto lanciatore di frecce, un arciere che partecipava a competizioni. Si sorprese più degli altri, ma si mostrò generoso.

«Un minuto? Potrebbero essere cinque o dieci. È molto piacevole».

«Dieci?». A lei brillarono gli occhi; non si aspettava che qualcuno le regalasse dieci interi minuti volontariamente.

«Dieci, venti, quanti ne vuoi; niente e nessuno mi aspetta».

«Dieci vanno bene», disse lei, stordita.

«Immagino che vorrai saperlo. L’arciere, l’arco, la freccia e il bersaglio sono una cosa sola…».

Lei non era interessata. Ma l’arciere voleva raccontarglielo e continuò con la sua precisa, minuziosa spiegazione non richiesta.

Grazie all’arciere e a un anziano molto raffinato ed elegante riuscì a completare la prima ora. L’anziano non era all’altezza delle circostanze, ma le regalò comunque mezz’ora intera, in silenzio. Le chiese solo di rimanere nuda, immobile, e lei acconsentì senza fiatare. L’uomo passò la mezz’ora a guardare un neo che lei aveva tra i seni: non i capezzoli o la vulva, l’anziano guardava il neo. Fu la prima volta che fu lei a dire «È già ora», e non era una domanda.

L’ora intera che aveva ottenuto era un’ora vergine e assolutamente sua; non doveva condividerla, né tantomeno mostrarla, sebbene fosse quasi certa che nessuno, tra le persone che la circondavano, sarebbe stato capace di percepire la sottile consistenza di quei sessanta minuti, la fragile trama che formavano i secondi, intrecciati come cristalli di neve. Si chiedeva anche se fosse prudente continuare ad accumulare tempo o se, al contrario, dovesse spenderlo prima che scoppiasse, come una bolla di sapone.

Il ritorno fu doloroso, come sempre. Ad attenderla c’era la stessa trama di urla e rimproveri; il denaro, l’unica cosa che contava in quella casa, passò ancora una volta dalle sue mani a quelle degli altri. Ma era irrilevante, e decise di non spendere il tempo accumulato in quella dimensione appassita della sua vita. Guardò i monconi di papà e annusò l’acerba ubriacatura di mamma come se entrambi fossero gli attori non protagonisti di un pessimo programma televisivo. Uscì sbattendo la porta. La mamma barcollò, cercando di trattenerla; papà nemmeno quello.

Per una strana coincidenza completò un intero giorno con il cliente numero mille. Gli ultimi minuti le furono regalati da un marinaio liberiano con cui non riuscì a scambiare nemmeno una parola. Ma l’uomo capì di che cosa lei avesse bisogno, come se una contiguità naturale con le cose primordiali gli permettesse di fare a meno dei segni. Furono undici minuti esatti e lei ottenne un giorno intero, il suo trentadue di gennaio; un lasso di tempo fuggitivo catturato grazie a un artificio, a un tranello. Le apparteneva, era suo, privato, e l’inquietava solo il sapere quando avrebbe avuto il coraggio di spenderlo.

«Grazie», disse.

Lui scosse la testa, gli brillarono gli occhi e si inumidì le labbra con la lingua. «Grazie», ripeté, senza sapere quello che diceva. Sarebbe stata una misteriosa meraviglia conoscerla senza che il denaro entrasse a far parte del gioco. «Grazie», ripeté ancora una volta. Era una bella parola che rotolava e schioccava come un pesce intrappolato in un amo.

Lei sorrise e gli aprì la porta. Ma lui non se ne andò. Tirò fuori dalla tasca banconote di diversi paesi e tagli e con esse scrisse parole dolci che significavano più o meno la stessa cosa in qualsiasi lingua.

«Non posso», disse lei scuotendo la testa. «Ho completato il mio giorno. Non lo farò più».

Lui raccolse il denaro formando un mucchietto e se lo rimise in tasca; aveva capito.

Lei gli prese la mano e lo costrinse a toccarle le palpebre umide.

«Thomas», disse il marinaio indicandosi il petto.

«Samantha», disse lei; storse la bocca e scosse la testa. «No. Non è vero; mi chiamo Rosa».

«Rosa», ripeté lui trascinando le sillabe fino a trasformarle in un suono ventoso e aspro, secco come il soffio del fiato in una canna vuota.

«Devi andartene; vattene», disse Rosa indicando la porta.

Thomas annuì tristemente. Fece due passi strascicando i piedi e afferrò la maniglia; spinse verso il basso e girò la testa. In quel momento vide l’intero giorno girare tra onde e spirali di colori intorno a Rosa. Lei cercò di nasconderlo tra le pieghe della blusa, ma scoprì di essere nuda. Troppo tardi per qualsiasi cosa, mosse le braccia come pale, come una farfalla intrappolata nella marmellata.

Thomas sbatté le palpebre. Vedeva chiaramente il giorno che lei era riuscita a ottenere. Era una variopinta fusione di pizzi e ricami; ai lati, vicino ai punti in cui ogni minuto precipitava nel successivo, si vedevano rivetti dorati, con rilievi simili a uncini e dischi appena percepibili che giravano alla massima velocità. L’insieme sembrava una bestia maligna o per lo meno tortuosa, pronta a far rispettare la propria volontà inesorabile.

«Rosa?». Cercò di avanzare ma fu fermato dal braccio alzato della ragazza.

«Non toccarlo!».

«No?». Thomas, che oltre all’affinità con le essenze possedeva l’intuizione dei viaggiatori, seppe che quel luogo gli era precluso; un marinaio conosce i porti proibiti o da quale taverna uscirà con un taglio in faccia. Un no è un no. Prima si fermò e poi fece un gesto indefinito, di sconcerto o di prevenzione.

Rosa non seppe interpretare quel gesto: credette che la mano alzata, come tante altre volte, si sarebbe abbattuta sul suo viso e si coprì con le braccia a croce.

«No!».

Un no è un no. Lui capì e girò come una trottola. Estese il corpo lungo i cerchi concentrici di una nebbiosa premonizione e si rannicchiò. Non poteva esprimere con parole, parole di un’altra lingua che Rosa non avrebbe capito, che anche lui aveva un giorno intatto, costruito con frammenti di maree, onde, tempeste. Che cos’è, in fondo, ciò che inseguiamo per tutta la vita? Ma non poteva neppure dirle che se li avessero uniti avrebbero avuto due giorni perfetti, due gemme che avrebbero potuto fondersi fino a perdere la loro identità e diventare molto più del doppio di se stesse.

Rosa intuì qualcosa di tutto ciò, sebbene non volesse rischiare; non doveva esporre il suo giorno intatto ai capricci di un respiro estraneo. Il complicato amalgama di spirali girò su se stesso per esporre gli accessi alla brezza che soffiava dal lontano mare, e diede un nome a ciascuno dei punti che pulsavano nella stanza. Un bagliore dorato brillò come le ali di un colibrì che sbattono alla massima velocità.

Thomas, non avendo più nulla da perdere, convocò i suoi amici delle ombre, si vestì con i bagliori di una giovinezza spezzata in un villaggio chiamato Soboe, rivisse i simmetrici infortuni di un padre ubriacone e violento, di una madre violentata dai soldati durante una delle tante guerre. Nascere in Liberia, è la stessa cosa che essere linciati da una folla assetata di sangue. Allora, non avendo più nulla da perdere, creò un fulgore flessibile, sotterraneo, saporito, la specie di materia che covano nei loro nidi gli uccelli invisibili, l’accolse nel cavo della mano e lo conficcò nel petto di Rosa. Disse qualcosa nella propria lingua, una parola di scusa, capace di esprimere tutto l’amore dell’universo. E mentre la donna dissanguava, lui trovò la forza di tagliarsi la giugulare con il filo di un’onda.

Il tempo, convinto che quello fosse il miglior finale possibile, sommò i giorni vinti da Rosa e Thomas e li moltiplicò per due, per quattro, per otto, per infinito. Più tardi, molto più tardi, uscì dalla stanza, chiuse a chiave e la gettò nelle fauci di un drago che passava casualmente di lì.

Traducción al italiano: Heiko Caimi

El cuento en castellano: 

https://microficcionesycuentos.blogspot.com/2026/08/un-minuto-de-su-tiempo.html

El cuento en italiano: INKROCI

Sergio Gaut vel Hartman – Un minuto del suo tempo - Inkroci Magazine

 

VLUCHTEN

De Nederlandse versie van dit verhaal is herzien door de schrijver Finn Audenaert. 

Na Jorges dood bracht ik een tijdlang mijn dagen door met herinneringen bijeen te rapen uit alle hoeken van het huis, als was het vuile was. Ik stopte ze in een rieten mand, in de hoop dat ik ze er ooit weer uit zou halen, wassen, in de zon drogen, strijken en misschien opnieuw gebruiken … zoals je doet met een oud overhemd, versleten maar vertrouwd.

Maar het was valse hoop.

Het werkte niet.

Het verdriet dat mij doordrong was zo overweldigend dat het huis in een gevangenis veranderde, en iedere minuut begon te lijken op die waarmee een levenslange gevangenisstraf wordt afgemeten: beklemmende ogenblikken die, opgestapeld, je doen verlangen naar het einde van de straf, naar het einde van de marteling.

Ik dwaalde van kamer naar kamer, mijn voeten slepend over de vloer. Ik nam een voorwerp op om het onmiddellijk weer op precies dezelfde plaats terug te zetten, erop lettend dat het zelfs geen millimeter verschoven was. Ik maakte verschillende nutteloze inventarissen en ontdekte dat keramiek en ivoren beeldjes soms meer leven bezitten dan een mens, vooral wanneer die mens gekwetst is, wanneer de pijn zich als een gif in zijn lichaam heeft vastgezet en hem volledig verlamt.

Maar ik moest iets doen om niet helemaal ten onder te gaan. Op aanraden van familie en vrienden dwong ik mezelf tot handelen. Ik maakte er een gewoonte van iedere dag door de wijk te wandelen, langs de straten waar Jorge en ik zo vaak samen hadden gelopen.

Ik liep maar door, terwijl ik gedachteloos tuinen en gevels bekeek, cafés, parken, winkels en monumenten.

Toch beleefde ik er geen enkel plezier aan.

Het was aangenaam, zelfs rustgevend, maar al snel ontdekte ik dat het minder gevaarlijk was binnen te blijven, want op iedere straathoek wachtten de herinneringen mij op als een vuistslag recht op de kaak – die gezegende en vervloekte herinneringen …

Dus gaf ik mijn wandelingen op en bracht ik mijn ochtenden, middagen en avonden voor de televisie door, met een leeg hoofd en zonder de minste belangstelling voor wat ik zag.

Wat moest ik doen?

Verhuizen?

Alleen al de gedachte mijn spullen in dozen te stoppen verlamde me. Elk voorwerp voelde als een enkeltje naar de nostalgie, een uitnodiging tot melancholie.

Een goede vriendin stelde voor dat ik naar een ontmoetingscentrum zou gaan. Misschien zou ik daar een man leren kennen met wie ik mijn leven opnieuw kon opbouwen.

Mijn leven opnieuw opbouwen?

Mijn leven lag niet in puin.

Het bestond eenvoudigweg niet meer.

Het was een leegte geworden.

Een enorme, holle leegte.

De herfst was somber en de winter afschuwelijk. Ik geloof dat ik een twintigtal romans heb gelezen, omdat ik de televisie beu was, en duizend idiote programma’s heb bekeken, moe van al die belachelijke verhalen waarin mensen veel grotere en pijnlijkere problemen hadden dan de mijne, maar ze oplosten met een gemak dat me angst inboezemde.

Ik had geen financiële zorgen, geen kinderen die mij nodig hadden en geen kleinkinderen om lief te hebben.

Dus bleef ik wegzakken in het moeras, vergeten midden in een onherbergzaam land waar niemand ooit langskwam.

Vragen jullie of ik gehuild heb?

Ik heb gehuild tot er geen tranen meer over waren, tot ik mezelf ervan overtuigd had dat huilen nergens toe diende, dat Jorge niet zou terugkeren en dat ik de moed niet bezat om hem achterna te gaan.

Toen voelde ik het verpletterende gewicht van mijn ongeloof.

Kon ik me tenminste maar een plaats voorstellen voorbij het leven, waar hij op mij wachtte.

September was niet beter dan augustus en oktober was erger dan welke maand van welk jaar ook. De uren rekten zich uit met een wreedheid die een monster uit een roman waardig was, en mijn verlangen om het huis te verlaten begon zich te vermengen met mijn onvermogen om er ook werkelijk een voet buiten te zetten.

Ik slingerde heen en weer als een pendel, verscheurd, verbijsterd, verdoofd als een haas die midden op de weg verstijft in het licht van koplampen.

Is er dan geen uitweg?

Nee, antwoordde ik op een vraag die eigenlijk geen antwoord nodig had.

Toch sloot ik, kort voor Kerstmis, het huis af en vertrok naar de kust.

Aanvankelijk wist ik zelf niet waarom ik dat deed, al dacht ik misschien, diep verborgen in een afgesloten kamer van mijn geest, dat afstand nemen van de vertrouwde plaatsen en voorwerpen mij de kans zou geven alles vanuit een ander perspectief te bekijken.

Dat was niet waar.

Wat ik werkelijk zocht, was een ogenblik dat ik drie jaar eerder samen met Jorge had beleefd.

Ik zocht dat ene moment van betoverende onrust toen wij, gezeten op de treden van een geïmproviseerd openluchttheater, keken naar een jong acrobatenechtpaar.

Die zomer, gedragen door de volmaakte en weemoedige klanken van het Adagietto uit Mahlers Vijfde Symfonie, draaiden en zweefden die twee rond een metalen constructie. Ze verstrengelden zich in kleurrijke doeken, stortten zich naar de afgrond en stegen daarna weer op als rusteloze vogels.

Tijdens de hele voorstelling zaten Jorge en ik hand in hand, met het hart in de keel, terwijl we ons een liefdesverhaal voorstelden dat getekend was door ontberingen en scheidingen.

‘Het leven van rondreizende artiesten,’ zeiden we.

We gingen iedere avond naar hen kijken, tijdens wat later onze laatste zomer aan zee zou blijken te zijn, zonder ook maar te vermoeden dat de dood ons toen al op de hielen zat, bezig het geschenk voor te bereiden dat hij ons pas na vele maanden van lijden zou overhandigen.

We bleven terugkomen omdat we allebei een beetje verliefd waren geworden op die acrobaten, alsof we met onze vingertoppen bijna vijftig jaar konden aanraken die uit het weefsel van de tijd waren losgeraakt.

Noem me gerust een masochist.

Ik zal het je niet kwalijk nemen.

Ik wilde hen terugzien om tenminste één stukje terug te vinden van het verleden dat ik met Jorge had gedeeld.

Ook dat hielp niet.

Op het plein waren clowns, muzikanten met gitaren en mondharmonica’s, schakers en poppenspelers, maar zij waren er niet.

Wat ben ik toch dom, dacht ik. Waarom heb ik aangenomen dat ze drie jaar later nog altijd op dezelfde plek optreden, nog steeds vliegend en draaiend door de lucht, gedragen door Mahlers sublieme muziek? Er zijn zoveel badplaatsen!

Ik verliet het plein en liep naar de zee.

De zomer liep ten einde.

Binnenkort zou de uittocht beginnen; de leegte en de stilte zouden de overwinning behalen.

Op de pieren, waar slechts enkele vissers heen en weer liepen, leek alles mijn verlatenheid te weerspiegelen.

Ik volgde de boulevard richting haven, steeds verder van het centrum vandaan, terwijl ik de schemering afzocht in de hoop mijn verloren geest terug te vinden.

Maar Jorge was er natuurlijk niet.

Mijn fantasieën zouden altijd blijven wat ze waren: schaduwen, veroordeeld om opgesloten te blijven in hun kisten; halskettingen van niets; vogels van schuim die oplossen in de nacht.

Ik leunde met mijn ellebogen op de stenen balustrade van de boulevard en liet mijn tranen zonder enige schaamte stromen.

Niemand kon mij toch zien.

En zelfs áls iemand mij had gezien, dacht ik … wie maakt zich druk om een oude vrouw die huilt om de man van wie ze hield?

Het onherroepelijke van de situatie overviel me opnieuw.

Maar dit keer verzette ik me niet.

Zo zou het blijven tot het einde.

En voor het eerst wenste ik dat dat einde niet al te lang op zich zou laten wachten.

Na een tijdje merkte ik dat enkele meters verder een jongleur zijn knotsen met grote vaardigheid in de lucht wierp, maar zonder enig enthousiasme.

Niemand keek naar zijn optreden.

Toch bleef hij de knotsen opgooien en weer opvangen, opgooien en weer opvangen, als een mechanische herhaling van een eindeloze routine.

Toen hield hij plotseling op.

Hij raapte zijn knotsen op en liep recht op mij af.

‘Ik wachtte op u,’ zei hij.

‘Op mij?’

Mijn verbazing was oprecht.

Hij was die acrobaat, de jonge man die hoog in de metalen constructie zijn partner tussen rode en gele doeken de lucht in wierp, haar hand greep of juist losliet zodat ze naar de afgrond leek te storten; haar weer optilde en opnieuw losliet, in een waanzinnige choreografie die geen einde leek te kennen.

Hij was het.

Daar bestond geen twijfel over.

Maar had hij op míj gewacht?

We hadden nooit één enkel woord met elkaar gewisseld.

Hij kon zich mij onmogelijk herinneren.

Ik was slechts een van de vele schaduwen in het publiek geweest, betoverd door hun vlucht en door de muziek.

‘Ja, op u,’ antwoordde hij. ‘Waarom niet? Mahler is stil geworden, weet u. De muziek is verdwenen. Op het plein klinkt het Adagietto niet meer. Ik kon haar niet vasthouden … Ze viel van zeven meter hoog.’

Ik sloeg mijn hand voor mijn mond en onderdrukte een snik.

Ik wist niet wat ik moest zeggen.

Hij wel.

‘Ik ben ook alleen achtergebleven … begrijpt u?’

El cuento en neerlandés:

Sergio Gaut vel Hartman - Vluchten

El cuento en castellano: 

https://microficcionesycuentos.blogspot.com/2026/07/vuelos.html 

 

FLIGHTS

After Jorge died, I spent a while gathering memories from every corner of the house, as though they were dirty clothes, stuffing them into a laundry basket in the hope that one day I would take them out, wash them, hang them in the sun, iron them, and perhaps wear them again... the way you would an old shirt, worn thin but comfortable. But it was a false hope. It didn't work.

The sadness that soaked into me was so overwhelming that the house became a prison, and every minute began to resemble the kind that measure out a life sentence, sordid instants that, added together, make you long for the death penalty, for the end of the torment. I wandered from room to room, dragging my feet, picking up an object only to put it back exactly where it had been, making sure it hadn't shifted by so much as a millimeter. I drew up several pointless inventories and discovered that ceramics and ivory carvings can possess more life than a human being—especially when that human being has been wounded, when pain has lodged in the flesh like a poison that leaves you paralyzed.

But I had to do something to keep from sinking completely, so, urged on by relatives and friends, I forced myself to act. I got into the habit of walking through the neighborhood every day, retracing the streets Jorge and I had walked together so many times. I walked and walked, absentmindedly taking in gardens and façades, cafés, parks, shops, monuments. But I found no pleasure in it. It was pleasant enough, gentle enough, yet before long I realized it was actually safer to stay indoors, because every street corner ended up feeling like a punch to the jaw delivered by memories—those blessed and cursed memories...

So I gave up my walks and spent my mornings, afternoons, and evenings watching television, my mind completely blank, with no interest whatsoever in what I was seeing. What was I supposed to do? Move away? The mere thought of packing up the house paralyzed me. Every object seemed like a one-way ticket to nostalgia, an invitation to melancholy. A dear friend suggested I join a social club where people met one another. Maybe I'd find a man and rebuild my life. Rebuild my life? My life wasn't in ruins. It had simply ceased to exist. It had become nothing more than an enormous empty hole.

Autumn was bleak, and winter was unbearable. I think I read twenty novels, bored with television, and watched a thousand idiotic programs, weary of absurd stories in which people suffered problems far greater and more painful than mine, only to solve them with an ease that frightened me. With no financial worries, no children who needed me, no grandchildren to love, I kept sinking into the mire, forgotten in the middle of a desolate land no one ever crossed.

Did I cry? I cried until there were no tears left, until I finally convinced myself that crying would accomplish nothing, that Jorge wasn't coming back, and that I lacked the courage to go looking for him. That was when the crushing weight of my lack of faith made itself felt. If only I could imagine some place beyond life where he might be waiting for me.

September was no better than August, and October was worse than any month of any year. The hours stretched on with the elastic cruelty of fictional monsters, and my desperate need to leave the house became entangled with my inability to step outside it. I swung back and forth like a pendulum, torn in two, bewildered, stunned like a rabbit frozen in the glare of headlights. Isn't there any way out? There isn't, I answered the question that didn't need asking.

And yet, shortly before Christmas, I locked up the house and left for the beach. At first I didn't really know why I was going, although perhaps, in some hidden corner of my mind, I imagined that putting some distance between myself and the familiar places and objects would allow me to see things differently.

It wasn't true. What I was really searching for was a moment Jorge and I had shared three years earlier.

I was looking for that instant of magical apprehension when, seated on the steps of an improvised amphitheater, we watched a young pair of acrobats perform. That summer, cradled by the perfect, desolate strains of the Adagietto from Mahler's Fifth Symphony, they spun and soared around a metal frame, tangling themselves in colorful silks, plunging toward the abyss before rising again like neurotic birds. Throughout the performance, Jorge and I sat hand in hand, hearts in our mouths, imagining a love story marked by hardship and separation. The life of wandering performers, we used to say. We went to see them every night during what turned out to be our last summer at the beach, though we had no idea then that death was already stalking us, preparing the gift it would hand us after many months of suffering. We kept returning because we had both fallen a little in love with those acrobats, brushing with our fingertips against almost fifty years unraveled from the fabric of time. Call me a masochist if you like—I won't be offended. I wanted to see them again, to recover one fragment of the past I had shared with Jorge.

That didn't work either.

The square was full of clowns, fools with guitars and harmonicas, chess players, puppeteers—but they weren't there.

How foolish of me, I thought. What made me believe they'd still be performing in the same place three years later, flying and spinning through the air to Mahler's sublime music? There are so many beaches.

I left the square and walked toward the sea. Summer was drawing to a close. Before long the exodus would begin; silence and emptiness would win the battle. On the piers, where only a handful of fishermen moved about, everything echoed my desolation. I followed the promenade toward the harbor, away from the crowded center, searching the gathering dusk for my lost ghost.

But Jorge wasn't there, of course.

My fantasies would remain exactly that—shadows condemned to stay locked away in their chests, necklaces made of nothing, birds of foam dissolving into the night.

I leaned against the stone balustrade and let my tears flow without the slightest embarrassment. No one could see me anyway. And even if someone did, I thought... who cares about an old woman crying for the man she loved? Once again the irretrievable nature of it all overwhelmed me, but this time I offered no resistance. This was how it would be until the end, and for the first time I wished that end would not take too long.

It took me a moment to notice that, a few yards away, a juggler was tossing clubs into the air with remarkable skill but no enthusiasm whatsoever. No one was watching him, and it struck me as odd that he kept throwing and catching them, throwing and catching them, mechanically repeating the same routine.

Then he stopped.

He gathered up the clubs and walked straight toward me.

"I've been waiting for you," he said.

"For me?" My bewilderment was genuine.

He was the acrobat—the young man who had once hung from that metal frame, sending his partner soaring among crimson and golden silks, catching her hand or letting go so she would plunge toward the void before lifting her once again into their mad, endless choreography. It was undoubtedly him.

But waiting for me?

We had never exchanged a single word. He couldn't possibly remember me. I had been just another shadow among the audience, hypnotized by the music and the flight of their bodies.

"Yes," he said. "Why not? Mahler fell silent, you know. The music stopped. There's no Adagietto playing in the square anymore. I couldn't hold on to her... and she fell from twenty-three feet."

I covered my mouth with my hand and stifled a sob. I had no idea what to say.

He did.

"I was left alone too, you see."

El cuento en castellano: https://microficcionesycuentos.blogspot.com/2026/07/vuelos.html

 

PARTNERS, DOPPELGÄNGERS, SOMETHING LIKE THAT

The rain was falling as if someone were sharpening knives against the sky.

I first saw the man at a quarter past eleven that night, beneath the awning of the Atlantic Bar. He wore a dark hat, a dark raincoat, and an expression as dark as the clothes and the night. But in this city, that didn't set him apart from anyone.

What caught my attention was that he had my face. Not similar features. My face. The same broken nose from the same long-forgotten fight years ago. The same scar beside the left ear. The same wrinkles carved by cheap whiskey, Turkish cigarettes, and the wrong women.

He stood staring at me from across the street. I stared back. Neither of us crossed.

Cars raised curtains of water between us. At times he vanished behind the headlights, only to emerge again like a photograph developing in a darkroom. I thought of a long-lost brother, a con man wearing a mask, a lunatic escaped from some institution. I even thought that someone had forgotten a mirror on the other side of the street.

The night invited foolish thoughts... and I'm a specialist in those.

Then the man slowly raised his right hand. I didn't move. He held up something between his fingers. A photograph.

Even from that distance I recognized the image. It was the dead woman I had found that morning.

And behind her, smiling for the camera, stood him and me. Together. Like old friends. Like partners. Like accomplices.

"Hey!," I shouted, determined to break the stalemate.

"We can skip the formalities," he replied. “Surely you realize that...”

"No!," I cut him off.

My outburst sounded disproportionate. I was aware that something about the man, the double, was flawed. Something essential escaped me. Some detail invalidated the copy and made it impossible to accept that any of this could be real.

"Let's accept the evidence of our senses."

It sounded ridiculous.

I had found Eloísa Murnau's body after tailing her for weeks at the request of her husband, a gangster named Marco Robotti. But my double had not been there with me.

So why was he in the photograph?

"If you know me that well," I managed to say, “then you know I haven't touched a drop of alcohol in six months.”

Half my words were carried away by the wind and rain, but that didn't stop my double from letting out a loud laugh, celebrating the clumsiness of my reasoning. Yet the laugh itself seemed proud of its own crudity, of my own vulgarity. I tried to think about something else, imagining that it might drive away the mirage. The opposite happened. Suddenly the guy was standing beside me, jabbing me sharply in the ribs.

"Where does this need of yours come from, this urge to turn every pattern into a story? Doctors want a pathological explanation. Journalists want a scandal. Readers want a solution. Cops want a killer. But nature is under no obligation to provide narrative solutions."

I instinctively stepped back and leaned against a peeling wall. A rat scurried between my legs, sending such an intense shiver through me that, for a moment, the image of my doppelgänger wavered like the flame of a candle.

But it did not disappear. Can there exist a real, observable, predictable phenomenon whose explanation remains inaccessible to human intelligence?

"At the end of the day," I said aloud, trying to steady myself, “a hallucination is a hallucination. Nothing more.”

"Of course," said my double. “The problem is that a hallucination explains nothing, either.”

He lit a cigarette. The match briefly illuminated his face, and I had the unpleasant sensation of seeing myself reflected in a photograph taken ten years in the future.

"Hallucinations don't know things the hallucinating person doesn't know," he added, taking advantage of my bewilderment.

He slipped a hand into his raincoat pocket and pulled out a small black notebook. My black notebook. The same one that had vanished from my desk three weeks earlier. He opened it halfway.

"Page forty-seven," he said.

I didn't answer. Or perhaps I did. At that point, it was impossible to tell whether he was the one speaking or I was.

"I don't remember..."

"You wrote that Eloísa Murnau had been afraid of elevators since she was nine years old because she spent three hours trapped inside one with her aunt's corpse. You never told anyone that. Not even Robotti."

The rain struck the cobblestones with a mechanical stubbornness that was also somehow perverse. Could any conclusion be drawn from such relentlessness? Perhaps rain had discovered a way to be sentimental and pragmatic at the same time, while, like so many other things, leaving meaning outside the reach of human understanding.

"I could have found that out," I said, trying to crawl out of the philosophical swamp into which I had wandered.

"Of course you could have. But you didn't."

He turned a few pages.

"You also wrote that you intended to leave the city as soon as this job was over. Montevideo. A boarding house near the harbor. Fishing now and then. No more chasing unfaithful husbands, unfaithful wives, and mediocre murderers."

I felt a hollow sensation in my stomach. I had never written that. I had thought it. But I had never written it down. And that was far worse. My double closed the notebook.

"All right. Objective accomplished," I said. “Time for you to disappear. Fade away.”

My double ignored me or pretended to.

"Now I'd like to know something, my dear partner. If I am a creation of your mind... why am I the one who knows the secrets you're so determined to ignore? What filthy, foul-smelling enigma are you trying to bury in the deepest basement of your mind? You were at the motel where Eloísa Murnau was murdered. You ran like a rat when you heard the police sirens. Yet you couldn't resist the sinister impulse to take a photograph of yourself beside the corpse. I hope you'll explain that to me. I'm patient."

"I want to see the photograph again. These days images can be forged, and I..."

I never finished the sentence. My double was already handing me the photograph. I took it with my left hand. The rain had softened the edges, but the image remained perfectly visible.

There was Eloísa Murnau. Dead. Her neck twisted at an impossible angle. The motel lamp cast an oblique shadow across the bed. And behind her stood the two of us. Me. And me again. My partner. My doppelgänger. My double.

I did not hesitate to repeat the thought stubbornly, like the rain striking the pavement, not because repetition could change anything, but because repetition itself challenged the reason for that impossible scene. I studied the photograph for several seconds. Then I studied it for several seconds more. Something was definitely wrong. Not with the photograph. With my memory.

"Do you see it?," the double asked. I didn't answer. Because I was beginning to. The motel room had only one window. Yet the photograph showed two. One beside the bed. The other behind us. A window I didn't remember seeing. A window that, I was certain, had never existed. I felt something shifting slowly inside my head. Like a heavy piece of furniture being dragged across an empty room.

"Now we're getting to the interesting part," said my double.

And for the first time since he had appeared across the street, I suspected that he wasn't trying to convince me of anything. He was trying to make me remember something that had never happened. I slipped the photograph into my raincoat pocket, spread the fingers of my right hand, and tapped them one by one with my left.

"Eloísa's corpse. Robotti. The two of us. The photograph. What's this thing that's tickling the palm of my hand?"

"Thank goodness we only have five fingers on each hand," he replied with a smile." I'm afraid too much Hammett, Chandler, and Cain has rotted your brain. Without any malice, I suggest a healthy dose of Christie and Simenon. It might help clarify some of the dark images you've concocted. A decent photo-editing program wouldn't hurt, either. Hard-boiled fiction"please! Sometimes it seems you've locked yourself inside a bubble even more fantastic than science fiction. Reality, my friend, is something simple... especially if we set aside everything we neither understand nor ever will.

"Thank you very much for the lesson," I said. “Are you going to help me solve Eloísa Murnau's murder, or do you intend to keep insulting my reading habits?”

My double appeared to ponder the question.

"Robotti didn't hire you to find Eloísa."

"I never said that was the gangster's intention."

"Exactly."

The rain continued to fall between us. I could no longer remember whether I was soaked through or whether the water was simply part of the same nightmare from which I couldn't wake.

"Robotti hired you to follow his wife because he suspected she had a lover. That's true. What you never asked yourself was why Eloísa seemed so determined to be followed."

A small jolt ran through me. Not because the idea was brilliant. Because it was obvious. Too obvious. I remembered Eloísa entering cafés whose windows left her visible from the street. I remembered the taxis she hailed and abandoned a few blocks later. I remembered her abrupt changes of route. For weeks I had interpreted those movements as attempts to shake me off. What if she wasn't trying to shake me off?

"No," I murmured.

"Yes."

"That proves nothing."

"It proves that she wanted someone to reconstruct a route."

My double pointed to the pocket where I had slipped the photograph.

"And you still haven't understood the destination of that route."

For the first time since that impossible conversation had begun, I felt something worse than fear. I felt curiosity.

"Where are we?," I asked.

My double looked at me, perhaps surprised by my sudden change of direction. I had come to the conclusion that this was the important question. Not the what, the how, or the when… but the where.

I felt that I might be able to dismantle that obtuse, ramshackle structure if only I could determine the location of the dream, delusion, hallucination, or whatever it was that held me prisoner in such an absurd situation. And my doppelgänger realized that, for the first time, I was aiming in the right direction.

"Aiming in the right direction," he said, as though he could read my thoughts. “Aiming with a gun, or with a conjecture slowly evolving into a sound hypothesis.”

"And who's playing philosopher now?"

For the first time I believed I was taking the initiative, and a sustained initiative eventually bears fruit. At least that's what I believed until my double proved me wrong.

"Where are we?," I repeated, this time with enough force to make even the toughest man hesitate.

"In the same place where Eloísa spent the last three months."

"You didn't answer my question."

"Yes, I did. The problem is that you're still a long way from understanding the answer."

I wanted to reply, but something stepped between my thoughts. An image. Barely a flash. Eloísa sitting alone in the Venezia Café. She wasn't reading the newspaper. She wasn't waiting for anyone. She was looking around. That was what she was doing. Looking. For weeks I had followed her, convinced she was trying to conceal clandestine meetings. Yet now, as I rummaged through my memories, I noticed something strange. Eloísa watched doors. Windows. Mirrors. She watched passersby. She watched reflections in shop windows. She watched the world the way someone watches when afraid of being watched. Or when hoping to recognize something.

"You're beginning to see it," said my double.

The rain seemed to have eased. Or perhaps I had simply stopped hearing it, stopped paying attention to it. If one ceases to perceive something, is that the same as declaring it nonexistent?

"There's something else," I murmured.

And then I remembered. The last time I saw Eloísa alive. The motel. The room. The window. No. The windows. Before I found the body, before I even opened the door, I saw Eloísa through the glass. She was standing. Motionless. Looking out. Looking directly at me. And smiling. It was not the smile of a frightened woman. It was the smile of someone who, after a long wait, had finally found what she had been searching for all those months.

"Do you realize now that Eloísa's smile retrospectively transforms the entire investigation?"

"No, I don't realize it," he said.

But only to disguise the fact that he was beginning to discover the truth, written in blood on the reverse side of the plot.

"She no longer looks like a woman being hunted by a jealous gangster. She looks like someone who was waiting for the narrator to reach precisely this point. She was lying in wait, watching, waiting; setting a trap or preparing a revelation."

"Nobody needs to be murdered to prove they're right..."

I knew my argument was weak, and my double dispatched it with a few words and a handful of precise, flawless gestures.

"No. But some people need to die before someone else begins asking the right questions."

He slipped a hand into his raincoat pocket and pulled out something else. It wasn't a photograph. It was a key. I recognized it immediately. The key to Room 17 at the motel. The same key I had handed to Sergeant Molina that morning. Or thought I had handed to him.

"Eloísa wasn't waiting for you," said my double.

I looked at the key. I looked at the rain. I looked at my own face reflected in the features of that figure, a stranger, myself.

"She was waiting for you," he repeated.

And I understood. Not all at once. Not like a flash of revelation. I understood the way dawn arrives: slowly, almost reluctantly. Eloísa watched windows, mirrors, and shopfronts because she was searching for something impossible. Someone impossible. She had discovered the fissure before I had. The duplication. The invisible presence. That was why she smiled when she saw me through the glass. She wasn't recognizing me. She was confusing me. She was confusing us. My double tossed the key into the water pooled beside the curb.

"Who killed her?," I asked.

For the first time, he seemed tired.

"It does you no good to keep believing that's the important question."

Then he smiled. It was my smile. The one that appears in photographs when I don't know I'm being photographed. The genuine one. And then something simple happened. Something so simple that it took me several seconds to understand it. The opposite sidewalk was empty. I remained motionless beneath the rain for several more minutes, an eternity. Then I slipped a hand into my pocket to make sure the photograph was still there. It wasn't. Of course it wasn't. All I found was a small black notebook. I opened it cautiously, as though expecting a scorpion to crawl out from between its pages. On page forty-seven there was a sentence written in my own hand. A sentence I had no memory of writing.

"If the encounter with the other ever takes place, ask which of the two of you started the story." I closed the notebook. The rain kept falling.

Why should the rain stop in this story?

El cuento en castellano:

https://microficcionesycuentos.blogspot.com/2026/06/socios-sosias-algo-como-eso.html