Accounting
From my balcony, I see a man with a large, gray overcoat seated on a bench. A man lost in thought staring fixedly at the ground while he counts the stones in the pathway. He has been there for two days. Every once in a while he looks at his watch. On the third day I went down to the street, stopped in front of him and asked, “Are you waiting for someone? Is something wrong?” He raised his eyes, looked at me, and with a calm yet firm voice he answered, “No, sir, I am just waiting to be able to count the next stone.”
“But if they are always the same, and you have been here for three days, you must have already counted them a thousand times!”
“No, sir, they are not the same. Do you see that one on the left that is a little broken? Okay, yesterday it was the 12,301st, and now it is the 14,567th. And that one at the end that is next to the tree? A couple of hours ago it was the 14,020th; at this very moment it is the 14,550th.”
“Now I see, no two stones are the same!”
With that, the man with the large, gray overcoat finished his conversation with me, and oblivious to everything, immersed himself again into his own little world of accounting.
--Julia Otxoa. Translated by Clare Frantz
Showing posts with label Stories by Julia Otxoa. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Stories by Julia Otxoa. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 24, 2013
Telephone
Telephone
Everyone complains that I never answer the telephone, if they only knew! But of course, they don’t know, they completely ignore the dimensions of my house, the distance that I have to travel, the dangers that I have to avoid to manage picking up the phone before the call finishes.
First of all, due to the island climate, the tiles of the long corridor are always damp, more than once I have slipped on them and been left with a bruised body for weeks. Then there is the issue of the blinding light that pierces through the towering windows leaving me totally blind while I run desperately to catch it in time for the call, and to top it all off there are those strange dogs, always nervous, excited, with a kind of gleam in their eyes from another world. Crossing promptly before I scream, plaintively scream, the whole corridor is then an echo multiplied by cold shadows enveloping me like spider webs, so that I don’t make it, that I never make it. But people ignore all of this and call and call and the more they call the more my life is in danger....
[to be continued]
--Julia Otxoa. Translated by Anna Tatarko.
Everyone complains that I never answer the telephone, if they only knew! But of course, they don’t know, they completely ignore the dimensions of my house, the distance that I have to travel, the dangers that I have to avoid to manage picking up the phone before the call finishes.
First of all, due to the island climate, the tiles of the long corridor are always damp, more than once I have slipped on them and been left with a bruised body for weeks. Then there is the issue of the blinding light that pierces through the towering windows leaving me totally blind while I run desperately to catch it in time for the call, and to top it all off there are those strange dogs, always nervous, excited, with a kind of gleam in their eyes from another world. Crossing promptly before I scream, plaintively scream, the whole corridor is then an echo multiplied by cold shadows enveloping me like spider webs, so that I don’t make it, that I never make it. But people ignore all of this and call and call and the more they call the more my life is in danger....
[to be continued]
--Julia Otxoa. Translated by Anna Tatarko.
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