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Best Short Stories © 2024

The Poisoned Tale

(Reading Time: 12:11)
Rosaura lived in a house of balconies shaded by thick creepers and spent her life hiding behind them to read story books. Rosaura. Rosaura. She was a sad young woman, who had almost no friends; but no one could guess the source of his sadness. Because he loved his father so much, when he was in the house he could hear her singing and laughing through corridors and halls, but when he left for work, he disappeared as if by magic and began to read stories.

I know I should get up and attend the bereaved, pass the tray of coffee between my clients and the brandy among their insufferable husbands, but I feel exhausted. The only thing I want now is to rest my feet, which I have annihilated; let the litanies of my neighbors shed around me like an endless rosary of boredom. Don Lorenzo was a lesser cane farmer who, working only from sun up to the sun, managed to earn enough for the family's livelihood. First Rosaura and then Lorenzo. It is an amazing coincidence. He loved that house that had seen her born, whose galleries flew over the cane fields like a sailing ship. The history of the house fueled his passion for her, because on their battlements had taken place the first resistance of the Creoles to the invasion almost a hundred years ago. As he walked around his rooms and balconies, Don Lorenzo inevitably felt his blood lighted and he seemed to hear the thunder of muskets and the war cries of those who had died in defense of his country. In recent years, however, he had been obliged to make his walks around the house more cautiously, since the holes that pierced the floors were becoming more numerous, being able to see, in the abysmal bottom of them, the corral of hens and pigs that the necessity forced him to raise in the cellars. In spite of these disadvantages, Don Lorenzo would never have thought to sell his house or his estate. Like the fox of the story, he was convinced that a man could sell his skin,

I must not let others notice my astonishment, my surprise. After all that has happened to us, come now to be victims of a stack of shit little writer. As if my clients' shoes were not enough. "Who saw it and who saw it," I hear them saying behind their fans restless, "the mona, even if they wear silk, mona remains." Although now I frankly do not care. Thanks to Lorenzo I am beyond their claws, immune to their lower neckline, Rosa, tighten me here the zipper, Rosita, and all for the same grace and the same price. But I do not want to think about it anymore.

When his first wife died, Don Lorenzo felt so alone that, unleashing his energetic and healthy nature, he gave way to the nearest salvation. Like a shipwrecked man, striding in the stormy belly of the sea, he stumbles upon a rib of the same ship that has just sunk beneath his feet, and clings desperately to it to keep himself afloat, so Don Lorenzo grasped his wide hips and yet more plethoric breasts of Rosa, the old dressmaker of his wife. Having returned home, the laughter of Don Lorenzo rumbled again throughout the house and was struggling because his daughter also felt happy. As a cultured man, a lover of the arts and letters, he found nothing wrong with Rosaura's persistent love of story books. No doubt stung by remorse,

This is getting interesting. The author's way of telling me makes me laugh, it looks like a starched firuli, a gooey village. I definitely do not like him. Rosa was a practical woman, for whom the refinements of the past represented an unforgivable whim, and that way of being mistreated her with Rosaura. In the house there was an abundance of ragged and exquisite dolls, as in the books the young woman read, cabbages crowded with cabbage roses and layers of dusty velvet, and broken crystal chandeliers, which Rosaura claimed to have seen on nights sustained in high by wandering ghosts. In agreement with the people's shoemaker, Rosa sold one by one those relics of the family, without feeling the least bit of conscience for it.

The Firuli is wrong. First of all, Lorenzo had been in love with me for a long time (for a long time before his wife's death, by his sickbed, I dared to undress with his eyes) and I felt a mixture of tenderness and compassion towards him. That is why I married him and by no means out of interest, as has been hinted at in this account. On several occasions I refused his requests, and when I finally agreed, my family thought it crazy. Marrying him, taking care of the domestic work of that ruined house, was a kind of professional suicide, since the fame of my creations resonated long before my wedding in the most elegant and exclusive fashion boutiques of the town . Secondly, selling the junk from that house was not only psychologically healthy, but also economically. In my house we have always been poor and I have pride. I come from a family of ten children, but we have never been hungry, and the spectacle of that empty cupboard, painted entirely white and with a skylight on the ceiling that illuminated all its vertigo, would have frozen the marrow to the bravest. I sold the tereques of the house to fill it, to get to the table, at the time of dinner, the crumb of daily bread.

But Rosa's zeal did not stop here, but she also pawned the silver cutlery, the tablecloths and sheets that once belonged to Rosaura's mother, and her frugality came to such an extent that not even the moderately epicurean tastes of family were saved from it. Banished forever from the table were the rabbit in pepitoria, rice with guinea and wild pigeons, roasted to their tenderest point under the wings. This last measure greatly distressed Don Lorenzo, who loved, more than anything in the world, after his wife and daughter, those creole dishes whose smoky sight made him expand the cheeks willingly on their laughing corners.

The Mayor's wife has just entered the room. I'll greet her without getting up, with a slight nod. She is wearing one of my exclusive models, which I had to redo at least ten times, to keep her happy, but although I know she expects me to approach her and tell her how much she has left, giving her a thousand bows, I do not feel like do what. I am tired of serving as a censer to the wives of the rich people. At first I felt compassion for them: to see them languish like flowers suffocated behind the glass galleries of their mansions, with nothing to occupy their minds other than bridge, gossiping from gossip to gossip and from snack to snack, I broke my heart . Boredom, that ogre with a plush claw, had already finished several of them, who had perished victims of neurosis and depression, when I began to preach, from my modest workshop, salvation through the Line and Color. Beauty is, I am sure, the most sublime virtue, the most divine attribute of women. Beauty can do everything, cure everything, cure everything.

With the help of Lorenzo I subscribed to the most elegant magazines in Paris, New York and London and began to publish in La Gaceta a weekly homily, which pointed out the latest trends in fashion. If in the autumn he wore purple magenta or amaranth pastel, if in spring the waist was lined or pleated, if in winter the buttons were used of a tortoise or a walnut, everything was a matter of dogma, a passionate article of faith . The workshop soon became a beehive of activity, so many were the orders I received and so many visits of the ladies who came to consult me the details of their last "tenuous."

The success soon became rich and all thanks to the help of Lorenzo, who made possible the miracle by selling the hacienda and lending me the capital that I needed to expand my business. That is why today, the miserable day of his funeral, I do not have to be thin or considerate with anyone. I am tired of so much reverence and so much flattery, so elegant lady that needs to be flattered all the time to feel that it exists. May the Mayor's wife raise her own tail and smell her own ass. I prefer reading this infamous story a thousand times to having to talk to her, to have to tell her how well she has combined today, how wonderfully her witch's blanket, her spatula shoes, her horrible bag.

Don Lorenzo sold his house and his estate and moved with his family to live in town. The change was favorable for Rosaura: she recovered the good color and now had countless friends and friends, with whom she walked in the malls and parks. For the first time in his life he ceased to be interested in story books, and when, a few months later, his father gave him the last of them, he left him half forgotten and read on the night table. Don Lorenzo, on the other hand, looked increasingly sad, his heart pitied by the sale of his reeds.

Rosa, in her new place, expanded her business and had more and more parishioners. The change of locality certainly favored her, now occupying the lower part of the house. He no longer had the poultry and pig corral crowding him by the door and his clientele rose up. As these ladies, however, were slow to pay their debts and Rosa, on the other hand, could not resist the temptation to always keep the most luxurious dresses for herself, her workshop never finished raising her head. It was at that time that he began to martyrize Lorenzo with the testament: "If you die at this moment, I will have to work until the hour of my death to pay the debt," he said one night before falling asleep, "since with the half of your money will not be able to start it. " And as Don Lorenzo refused to disinherit his daughter to benefit her, he began to insult and insult Rosaura, accusing her of dreaming of always living the story, while she rubbed her eyes and fingers sewing and embroidering for them. And before turning her back to extinguish the light from the night table, she told him that since it was her daughter whom he loved most in the world, she had no choice but to abandon him.

I feel curiously insensitive, indifferent to what I am reading. I have begun to feel cold and I am a bit dizzy, but it must be the torture of this interminable wake. I do not see the time when they take the coffin out the door and this bunch of maledicientes has just finished going home. Compared to the gossip of my clients, the sainetes of this unusual tale are but vulgar stories, which bounce me without my feeling.

I behaved well with Lorenzo; I have my conscience calm. That's all that matters. I insisted, it is true, that we moved to the capital and we all benefit from it; I insisted, it is true, that she left me the treasure-house of all her possessions, because I considered myself much more capable than Rosaura, who always walks with her head in the clouds, to administer them. But I never threatened to leave him. The affairs of the family went from bad to worse and the ruin threatened Lorenzo more and more, but he did not seem to care. When arriving the day of the birthday of his daughter bought to him, as always, his traditional book of stories. Rosaura, meanwhile, decided to cook her father that day a jam of guava, which her mother used to make her.

That night, Don Lorenzo sat down happily at the table and dined with more appetite than he had shown in a long time. When dinner was over, he gave Rosaura his book, bound, as he always said with a laugh, in "moose-heart leather." Ignoring the circumflex accents that cast a shadow over his wife's frown, father and daughter admired the opulent specimen, whose thick golden ridge elegantly highlighted the purple of the lids. Standing motionless on her chair, Rosa watched them in silence, a sly smile on her lips. She was wearing her most luxurious dress that night, for she would attend Don Lorenzo at a large dinner at the Mayor's house, and she did not want to be disturbed or lose her temper with Rosaura.

Don Lorenzo then began to tease his wife and told him, trying to get her out of her reverie, that the exotic dresses of those queens and great ladies that appeared in the book of Rosaura could well serve her as inspiration for their models. "Although to dress your opulent meats would take several reams of silk more than the ones they needed, I would not mind paying them, because you are a woman of truth and not a willowy mannequin story," he said pinching a clumsy buttocks. Poor Lorenzo! Obviously he wanted me, yes. With his jokes he always made me laugh until my tears went away. Frozen in her apathetic silence, Rosa found that joke in bad taste and showed no enthusiasm for the illustrations and engravings. Finished at last the examination of the luxurious copy,

I had been bothering for some time now, and now I realize what it is. The incident of guava sweet took place many years ago, when we still lived in the farmhouse and Rosaura was still a child. The Firuli is wrong: it has shamelessly altered the chronology of events, showing that they took place recently, when it is the opposite. Only a few months ago Lorenzo gave Rosaura the book he says, on the occasion of his twentieth anniversary, but it has been more than six years since Lorenzo sold the estate. Anyone would say that Rosa is still an innocent child, when she is already a manganzona of age, a woman made and right. Every day he looks more like his mother, the indolent and useless women of this town. He refuses to work on anything, feeding on the honest bread of those who work.

I remember perfectly the event of the sweet of guava. We were going to a cocktail at the Mayor's house, to whom you yourself, Lorenzo, had proposed that he buy you the hacienda "Los creposculos" - as you called it nostalgically and that the neighbors had dubiously dubbed the hacienda "Los coros crespos" in revenge by the fumes of an aristocrat that you always gave yourself - to build a museum of history, dedicated to preserving, for generations to come, the relics of the sugarcane empires. I had managed to convince you, after long nights of stubborn discussion under the shabby canopy of your bed, of the impossibility of continuing to live in that house, where there was no electric light or hot water and where, to top it all, French Provencal latrine that Alfonso XII had given to your grandfather.Gone with the wind , with the brocade curtains that the wind had not yet taken away, because that was the only way to impress the unbearable wife of the Mayor, to appeal to his frenzied delirium of grandeur. We finally bought the house with all the antiques it had inside, but not to make it a museum and a park that the people could enjoy, but to enjoy them as their rustic country house.

Frantic and out of her mind, Rosa stood up and stared in horror at those streaks of syrup that were slowly descending down her skirt to stain with her bloody liquid the satin buckles of her shoes. He trembled with anger, and at first it was impossible for him to utter a single word. Once the soul returned to the body, however, began to infuriate Rosaura, accusing her of spending her life reading stories, while she was forced to consume her eyes and fingers sewing for them. And it was the fault of all those cursed books Don Lorenzo gave him, which were proof that Rosaura was held in greater esteem than her in that house and so he had decided to leave his side forever if these were not immediately thrown into the yard,

It will be the smoke of the candles, it will be the perfume of myrtles, but I feel more and more dizzy. I do not know why, I've started to sweat and my hands shake. The reading of this story has begun to find me in I do not know which mysterious place of the body. And as soon as she finished speaking, Rosa paled mortally and, without anyone being able to avoid it, fell round and without meaning to the ground. Terrified at his wife's fainting, Don Lorenzo knelt at his side and began to cry, begging him in a voice so much that he would come back to himself and not leave him, because he had decided to please her in everything she had asked him to do. Satisfied with the promise she had been able to draw from him, Rosa opened her eyes and looked at him with a smile, allowing Rosaura, in proof of reconciliation, to keep her books.

That night Rosaura shed tears, until at last she fell asleep on her pillow, under which she had concealed the gift of her father. Then he had a strange dream: he dreamed that among the stories in that book there was one who would be poisoned, because he would destroy his first reader in a fulminating manner. His author, in writing, had taken the precaution of inscribing in him a sign, a definitive way of recognizing him, but even though in his dream Rosaura struggled to remember what it was, it was impossible for him to do so. When he finally awoke, his body was sprouting from an icy sweat, but he was still ignorant of whether that tale would work its evil through smell, hearing, and touch.

A few weeks after these events Don Lorenzo died serene at the bottom of his own bed, comforted by the care and prayers of his wife and daughter. The body was surrounded by flowers and candles, and the relatives and relatives sitting around, weeping and praising the virtues of the dead, when Rosa entered the room, holding in her hand the last book of stories that Don Lorenzo had given to Rosaura and which had caused so much controversy on one occasion between her and her late husband. He saluted the Mayor's wife with an imperceptible nod and sat down in a somewhat withdrawn chair, after a little silence and repose. Opening the book at random on her skirt, she began to leaf through the pages, admiring her illustrations and thinking that now that she was a woman of means, she could well afford to make herself one of those splendid royal attire. He went through several pages without any news, until he came to a story that caught his eye. Unlike the rest, it had no illustration and was printed in a strange guava colored ink. The first paragraph surprised her because the heroine was called exactly like her stepdaughter. Wetting the finger of his heart with the tip of his tongue, he began to separate with interest those pages which, owing to the thick ink, clung uneasily to one another. From amazement he passed into amazement, from amazement to amazement, and from amazement to terror, but in spite of the growing discomfort he felt, curiosity did not allow him to stop reading them. The story began: "Rosaura lived in a house with balconies shaded by thick creepers ... "But Rosa never knew how it ended.
-Rosario Ferre

Latin American Short Stories 
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