These last few days the world of literature has once again focused on the recently deceased Ana María Matute, and if last week her posthumous novel entitled "Familiar Demons" was published , yesterday she was the main protagonist of Liber 2014 at its opening.
In addition, today he will once again be the main star of this room since he will be paid a tribute and there will also be a public reading of his latest novel that has been available in all bookstores since last week.
In this posthumous tribute to Ana María Matute, well-known faces from the world of literature such as Carme Riera, Pere Gimferrer, the editor Silvia Sesé and the director of the RAE, José Manuel Blecua, will participate. The Vice President of the Government, Soraya Sáez de Satamaría, and the Minister of Culture, Ferran Mascarell, will also attend.
Our small tribute to this writer, whom we admired and still admire and love, is to offer you the first chapter of her new novel , which you can also buy directly at the end of reading this first chapter.
I - The window of the hawks
Some nights the Colonel would hear a child crying in the dark. At first he wondered who it was, since no child had lived in the house for many years. All that remained, on Mother's bedside table, a sepia photograph, a transparent and erratic smile —who knew if Mother or the child — floating in the night, like a winged firefly. Now his memories, even the dark ghosts of the Africa campaign, seemed more and more like waste, what is left, breadcrumbs on the tablecloth, from an ancient feast. But his memory recovered again and again the image of Fermín, his older brother. Enclosed in his mauve velvet frame, dressed as a sailor, leaning on a wooden ring, and always a child. Like a recurring ghost - "how strange, he's my older brother, but I'm older than him" - he persisted there, no one had taken him off the table, not even when Mother was gone, he had been married years ago His daughter had been born, and Herminia, his wife, had died.
Ever since it began to get dark, he had been placed in his wheelchair, with his back to the open balcony of the living room. Thus he stood in front of the mirror that Mother had hung at an angle, so that whoever looked into it, or whatever was reflected, seemed as if they were going to overturn themselves. Everything was then, as Mother liked to say, "a step beyond what it seemed." When he asked why the mirror was not completely against the wall, like the paintings, she repeated: "one step further", with the mysterious air of someone who is and is not. Since her death she felt much closer than when she lived and she slipped through the house without noise, always in slippers, mysterious, as the bearer of secrets and parcels kept between cotton wool of silence. And I was feeling more than remembering these things when the orange glow appeared in the right corner of the mirror, widening in the sky.
Suddenly Iago was at her side. As in the days when he was not yet his shadow-servant (as he called him), when he was still his orderly, he never heard him arrive, and simply appeared by his side.
"I went to find Miss Eva." He's home now, ”he said.
"They have burned down the convent," the Colonel murmured. This time it was his turn… That's why I didn't want my daughter… ”He stopped. One of Iago's qualities was that he could carry on a conversation with the minimum of explanation. Between him and the Colonel there was an invisible cord of rapport so close that they hardly needed words to understand each other.
—Yes, my Colonel… It was not an accident… I went to the garage, I harnessed the mare to the tílburi… And I took her out, I brought her from the convent shortly before they arrived with the drums. By then, she was safe.
"Who were they ...?"
"The usual ones, my Colonel." Am I taking you somewhere?
"No, leave me like that, with my back to the balcony." I want to keep looking at everything in the mirror ... What do you know about the nuns?
"They all left on time that I know of." The last three, Mother Ernestina, the superior, with two postulants. And Miss Eva, with me.
-The last?
"No, my Colonel, the first of the three."
Now the glare filled the mirror almost entirely, and the outline of the suburbs stood out black against the sky bent over it. One step further, he thought. And he thought he heard Mother's voice, a light breath in his ear, husky and soft at the same time.
It was perhaps when it was most distressing to hear it. But knowing that Eva, his daughter, was already safe at home, restored the precarious tranquility that he had enjoyed in recent times. Although she had never allowed that uneasiness to reveal the falseness of her immovable air, the impassiveness of her face. No one, least of all her daughter, would know the discomfort, the disgust caused by her decision, so surprising, to enter as a novice postulant in the convent where she had studied, intern, since she was seven years old. And the one who was never heard to speak praise, precisely.
That disgust, added to the fear — yes, even fear, he couldn't fool himself — that the latest events produced in him. Convents burned, friends persecuted, the change of regime, of the flag ...
Not a single mirror in the entire convent. Not a single mirror in my cell: he had not seen me for a year. It was the first thing that occurred to me when Mother Ernestina brought us together again in her office. It was more than a week since she had taken off her habit and "disguised herself as a woman," as the aspiring novices said. There were only three of us left, the twins from the south and me. The rest had returned to their homes, or their families had come for them. Mother Ernestina gazed at us in silence for a few minutes, and finally began to cry. It was very rare to see the imposing superior cry, before whom we had trembled more than once. Now, he embraced us one by one and said: «You, Eva, have your father… He has already sent Iago to look for you: he is waiting for you downstairs. I take the twins with me ... See you very soon, "and he added immediately," as long as God wants. "
I jumped down the stairs and, when I saw the thick and almost smiling face of Iago, in his bizarre uniform invented by himself with garments discarded by the Colonel, and, above all, the beloved mare Catalina, I was about to hug them to both. But I got on the tílburi in silence. I'm tame, I thought. An untimely inner trembling, which mixed feelings of fear and irrepressible joy, shook my heart inside. "A whole year without looking in the mirror ...", I repeated to myself, as in one of those stupid songs that sometimes occupy our thoughts, without our being able to avoid it.
At last, already skimming the edge of the woods, on the hill, the house appeared. The townspeople called it the Palace. "But it's not a palace ... just because it has two shields on the front ..." I was already entering the large, heavy door, and I was running up the stairs. I missed — and now I realized just how much — my room, old and outdated as it was, even if it had nothing to do with other girls' rooms, as I saw in the magazines. Above all, I missed the large mirror in my wardrobe.
In reality - who was going to say it - I missed the whole house, from the attic with my favorite window in front of the tree to old Magdalena, cook and housekeeper, all in one piece, who «had met Mother and Mother ... ", And to Iago, whom he secretly called" the Shadow "because he seemed not to detach himself from the wheelchair, nor from the very thoughts of my father, with his shared ghosts of the war in Africa; everything that had seemed gray, monotonous, and unbearable to me, including the Colonel. I hurried up the stairs, and the familiar creak of the wooden steps seemed to give me a kind of welcome, though as sober and stingy as the Colonel himself: a formal kiss on the hand was all that was allowed as a token of affection. «Then I'll go see him… first I want to see my room. After all, he looks at the world in his tilted mirror… I look at myself in mine, I thought, with a vague mixture of compassion and hidden revenge on the retired invalid. At that time, I was often overcome by a dark unease: I had to take revenge on my father, although I did not know the cause. Did she hate him? I did not dismiss this idea, but at the same time I put it aside, frightened, and ended up waking up ghostly guilt, which I could not explain. I didn't even know my mother. I knew her name was Herminia, and that, from what I heard from Magdalena, "now almost no one dies in childbirth, but she had such bad luck." I opened the door pushing it with both hands. It was heavy, like everything else in the house, and that familiar grunt also seemed to scratch the air that, suddenly, it seemed cozy, and before it sounded like rejection to me. It smelled musty, although everything was neat and clean. You could see Magdalena's hands ("as Mother liked ... and also your mother, who tried to imitate her in everything ..."). When would you stop hearing the same phrases, talking about the same people? Between Magdalena and Yago, who took care of my father with a doggy, almost annoying dedication, they ran the house (or rather, they "dragged" it, like snails). It also seemed to me that my own life was dragging down, perhaps because of that, and not just because of upsetting my father, had I decided to enter the convent?
I opened the window, and dusk came in, almost night. The proximity of the forest and the orchards that surrounded the house gave off a wild breath, of raw spring. Everything seemed about to be born. I faced the mirror, and began to pull my clothes off, spreading them around me, until I was naked, I saw myself in full length. And I no longer saw a girl. I was gazing - gazing at me - for the first time: a young, white woman. A creature that barely got the sun, and at that moment I discovered that it was thirsty for sun, for wind. The contrast of the whiteness of my skin with the intense black of my hair almost surprised me, as if it did not belong to me, as if it belonged to someone else. That had been my probationary year, and the next, if it persisted — which it would not persist — it would be my admission to the convent, now officially as a novice. I abruptly opened the wardrobe and the dresses swayed upstairs on their hangers. "All my dresses ..." I reached out and hugged them, like former accomplices, more than friends. In the convent, during my probationary year, I still did not wear the habit, but the permitted skirts and blouses had nothing to do with those. And again, after a long time, I looked into my eyes. He often avoided looking me in the eye. This time I did it without fear. They were blue, big, bright. I'm pretty, I told myself aloud. Something that for the last year was forbidden not only to say, but to think. The door hinges groaned again, and Magdalena entered, without knocking, as usual. He hugged me, shed a tear.
"Tell me, girl, tell me ...
—First some came, threw insults and stones against the main door… Then, when it was getting dark, those with the drums arrived… But by then, Mother Ernestina had gathered those of us who were left, because most of them were missing; They had gone home or their families had come to pick them up… There were only three of us left: the twins and me. Mother Ernestina told me then that Yago had come to get me, with the tílburi… I was glad that he brought the tílburi and the mare Catalina. Mother Ernestina locked the door, and she and the twins hugged me. All of them, previously so reserved, suddenly embraced each other.
I could hear myself speaking in a bored voice, as if forced to read aloud.
-That's all? -I ask
"Yes, that's it, Magdalena… just… I'm glad to be home."
It's not the whole truth, it's not that I'm happy to be home. I'm glad I got out of there. " But intimately I was also glad of the reunion with the smell of earth and trees that came in through the window, that narrowed and surrounded me like a mysterious music, only audible inside me. And then, abruptly, the storm came. A volley of rain fell, loud and loud, entered the room, wetting the floor and the two of us.
"God has done it… God bless!" He shouted more than Magdalena said, clasping her hands, as if praying. A drop of water ran down his forehead. And closed the window. But immediately he turned to me: "You haven't gone to see your father yet ...?" And he stopped, as if frightened by his words or something he was seeing. My God, you're naked!
"Don't worry ... I'll get dressed right away and go down to see him."
"I won't take long to serve you dinner," she murmured and, still nervous, added as if to herself: "The poor thing will be worried, waiting for you ... He saw the fire in the mirror, but by then ... Iago anticipated and went to look for you ...
"I'm telling you not to worry."
When I was left alone I opened the drawer of underwear and was taking out the clothes with a soft, longing delight. Lace and silk slipped through my fingers, and I closed my eyes. In my blissful year of testing, even my underwear had to change for the rough clothes that I was forced to wear. Hated them. Although I could consider myself lucky: I kept my hair.
I dressed, slowly, in clothes that a year ago seemed vulgar, ordinary, and now precious. How many things that he did not give importance to then suddenly became longed for, one could say discovered. Why had I gone to the convent? What had he come to look for there? Now he had to find a convincing answer. But "out there ..." everything was so unknown, so mysterious. Full of confusion, ignorance, and almost hatred towards I did not know who or what, the respectful fear that I had felt as a child and adolescent towards my father now appeared turned into a kind of inane rancor. But even above these feelings, a vast, almost limitless boredom invaded me even heavier, more stolid than resentment, and the indecision that, paradoxically, had pushed me, a year ago, to enter the Convent. A place that no longer had anything to do with the one I remembered from my schoolgirl years.
Could boredom be such a destructive feeling? I looked back in the mirror, already dressed, and thought: I am a stranger. I don't know who that woman is.