The possessed by Antonio Muñoz Molina

The possessed by Antonio Muñoz Molina

The possessed


Antonio Muñoz Molina


Marino looked up from the coffee and surreptitiously returned to the tables in the background. As we had foreseen, almost feared the girl was there with his lips unpainted and brightly colored folder, making room on the table to leave over it, looking inside a small plastic wallet, because maybe it was not sure I could afford a breakfast.He was so young that there were still several years for his face had definite features.The nose, mouth, cheeks, were almost all children, and his short fingers with nail biting, but not the gesture that put the cigarette in his mouth or eyes, fixed on the door of the bar, sometimes almost glassy. Sleeping badly, of course, had dark circles and was very pale, certainly early in the morning to arrive in time to the bar and lied saying that classes started very early, and was probably not even be in high school. How imagine that face a row of seats, next to a window, listening to explanations of someone. Arrived one or nine two and always sat at the table. He knew it and was waiting, already installed in the bar, flipping through the newspaper while having breakfast. The truth is that even had to ask, and that gave him a modest assurance of stability. Just crossing the door, the waiter and he hurried to get the newspaper of the day to offer it up and put in a bowl of breakfast coffee, greeting him with a smile of hospitality, almost sweet.Marino took months to appear at the same time in the bar and leaving just twenty minutes later to go back in time to the office, the clock which introduced a laminated card with his picture and heard a sharp click of acquittal, the nine-thirty . Others said that the watch was he who had in his soul a liquid crystal timeliness. From 9:00 to 9:30 the size of the world is girdled the road between the office and bar.Dwell time was as comfortable as a citizen of one of those central European principalities that have the size of a village where everyone knows everyone and where there is no poverty or Army, but quiet banks numbered accounts. A benevolent country customs: just insert the card into the slot magnetic clock to cross its border, then down to the street and across a plaza where there were trees and a garden with a mediocre source. Marino knew exactly who would see in every corner and who would already be in the bar when he came in, poaching employees, ladies of a certain age who reverence their croissants dipped in tall glasses of chocolate milk. It was so familiar and unknown people, because the Marine was not ever in other parts of the city, like everyone, he too, ran out existence in the mean time for breakfast. A country that almost never went abroad. And if anyone came was difficult for the usual notice it, absorbed in the habit of known and unknown few, perhaps happy. So he took a few days to notice the presence of the girl. When the conclusion was it was like a slow process of saturation, similar to that of a colorless liquid drip into a glass of water that suddenly adds a reddish or blue or even hinted at until the moment he appears. He noticed no surprise her one day and took no less than ten minutes to fall in love. Twenty minutes later, at the office, and had forgotten. She needed to see her the next morning to recognize in himself the right dose and lethal Unfortunately, the feeling of being young and having lost something, some happiness or fulfillment of which he knew nothing, a news brief about a country where would not ever. Sitting at the bar, backs to the door, Marino was passed him, walking toward the bottom, so no doubt as a gust of wind or the course of a river. The summer had gone ahead and everyone was wearing short sleeves, except her. The man also seemed indifferent to the expected heat. He wore a brown suit, tight jacket and slightly flared trousers, always wore a jacket and tie (knot thick sunglasses, even on cloudy mornings. She waited eagerly every second it took to get there. It was obvious that no waiting was asleep and that when he went to the bar drove her desperate desire to be there with him, but the man never came before her. Tardiness, indifference, were the privileges of his manhood. In the course of two or three breakfasts Marino calculated the full story. The man would have thirty-five or forty years and treated her with coldness exaggerated or given by stealth. He was married, on the fourth finger of the left hand Marino had seen his ring.Have children not much younger than herself, perhaps a not very prosperous small business, a boutique in the suburbs or workshop radios, and would reopen as soon as she stopped off at a bus, relieved, a little secret, allowing a slight feeling of freedom and praise: his age who do not want an affair with a girl like that, who gets it. He brought her gifts. Small Packages, envelopes with cheap rings, meant Marino, things like that. Objects are easy to conceal that the rate slipped from his pocket and on the table with her fist and then disappearing into the bag or in the folder of the girl, as if nothing else be entertained every morning in a child's game. Marino watched smugly thinking sideways and hatred of the stupidity of love. Sometimes not stay in the bar or ten minutes. One morning, the man even entered, Marino saw the girl raised her eyes suddenly enlarged and reddened from insomnia to the glass door. The man was standing on the street, hands in pockets, sunglasses, tie loose, as if he too had had a bad night, and when he learned that she had been waved. Like a sleepwalker the girl stood up, picked up your wallet and your package of blond cigarettes and went after him. "Again, I have been left without paying," said the waiter. "The invite-Marino I sometimes had outbursts useless daring. I did not know he knew it, the waiter looked at him with a suspicion of reproach. "She does not know. "There you are. Marino, who suffered a limitless capacity for shame, cafes and paid instantly repented, but it was too late, he always was when I decided to do or not do something, and that day ended ten minutes before breakfast than usual, and joined the Back at the office clock at nine and twenty-five, a fact not noted with appreciation stopped their immediate superiors, and that later this month should pose a barely perceptible increase in their payroll. Similarly, if the return was delayed a minute the computer will deduct a minimum percentage of his salary, and the worst was not the financial loss difficult to detect on a pay already so low, but the shame of knowing that more subtle tardiness were automatically recorded in your personal profile. So Marino preferred out to breakfast with a few seconds of delay, and return with a broader range of tranquility, a minute or two, and when they gave the nine-thirty he was already at his desk, with his typewriter, puffing a little mint, because I did not smoke, or sacándole a pencil until it becomes as sharp as a scalpel. In the office who had quietly called scab. Marino spent three days without daring to breakfast at the usual place. He was ashamed, almost blushed as he remembered the face he had watched the waiter paid cafes. He had smiled, thinking, and guessing a secret vice, no doubt it took for one of those men who are mature and sombre walls of betting after the girls' schools. Those things were amazing, but occurred, Marino occasionally read about them in the chronicles of events and a health outreach magazine to which he subscribed. And it was frighteningly possible that the waiter, without malice, he would have talked to the girl, which would create a uniquely glazed to all sure she suspected something and laughed, and the man could take a competitor Marino One of these spies starved of love of others. Of what good is it to forge a respectable life, get a job for long hours and meet their obligations faithfully spotless, if a single gesture, if a careless whim what the weather can throw at discrediting. For three days, temporarily exiled from his usual bar, Marino survived from 9:30 to 1:00 disorder similar to that cause floods. Took longer due to find another café. The air smelled of urine and murky to snuff, the floor was littered with sawdust, coffee was sad, stale croissants, the public unknown, hostile waiters. So he returned to the office with stomach pains and with three minutes late, and the next morning he changed his bar, but it was useless, and the third day or even breakfast, lost and sick at the drop of melancholy, and who renounces to any discipline and dedication to the drink. He spent the fateful half-hour of liberty running around the streets near the office, looking from the outside bars unknown, like a beggar if you dare to enter will be expelled, staring faces of girls who rushed out of the portals with colored folders clasped to his chest live without seeing it never unwittingly accurate that was looking for. At ten nineteen, after underlining in red ink the title of a record, decided to surrender to a twofold evidence: I was in love, no more coffee in the city as they gave in their usual bar. The next day I woke up the excitement of coming back, like when I was younger and would not let him sleep a trip proximity. At eight least three minutes I was in the office before anyone else, not like those bohemians who appeared panting and unwashed at eight and five, lying ailments and apologies. Marino looked deep piety, to the relief of not being like them, and continued sharpening the tips of their pencils. That morning started several, but the prestige he had earned less than their expertise in this task was unchanged, since no one noticed. Marino disapproved and always used the pencil sharpener, with delicate anachronism, a razor blade. At eight fifty-seven, against his custom, had put the jacket and locked the drawer of his desk where he kept the pencils and the knife, and several erasers, ink and pencil and a sampler of clips from various sizes. A fifty-nine and was lurking in front of the office digital clock with punch cards in hand, waiting for the moment just appeared on the screen the nine zero zero. When last seen shaking the desired red numbers on the card insertion slot with the same accuracy with which gallant bullfighter puts a banderillas in the cervix of the animal. But Marino was in love and he was indifferent to its own perfection. The girl was in the bar, sweet home Marino recovered that unfolded before their best attributes, flags more intimate, perhaps his undeserved mercy. The waiter, whose face could not find the farthest Marino sign of disapproval, hastened to serve the coffee exactly as he liked, very short, with very hot milk with a drop of cold milk, and as the toast, I had never tried it more on point. But everything suddenly became useless, because love, as in adolescence, had taken appetite. The girl was alone at the bar and watched. Sitting at her usual table, drinking his coffee reluctantly, smoking, so early, circular spots with cup leaves school notes in your folder.More pale and disheveled than ever, with a dirty, tight satin trousers and a coarse yellow jersey from sticking to neglect the tail of a shirt that should belong to a man much taller than her, the man who that morning and would not appear the infidel. Straight hair and covered her eyes neglected. He bit cracked a lock with pink lips, still lost in the despair, loneliness and insomnia. Each time it appeared the silhouette of someone behind the windows of the bar the girl stood like a moment regained consciousness. I had not really looked at Marino, it seemed I could look at anything or anyone, just woke up in her eyes a moment to let you check again that she hoped he was not going to come. A nine-twenty left. He smelled of sweat warm almost tangible as he passed Marino, who only dared to turn to her when she could not see it. "I have a daughter, bitterly told the waiter. I'm afraid to grow. One sees so many things. Marino nodded fervently. Merit the confidence of the waiter, a stranger, so intensely excited, much more than love, feeling largely ignored. In the evening, about ten o'clock, when returning from a night course, saw from the bus to a man who was known. Before the end to recognize his memory had already identified a grudge. He walked alone, his hands in his pockets and the jacket open, and the tip of your tie sticking out almost obscenely under the brown vest. For years anyone with a bit of decency had been so long sideburns. Marino, startled, looked at the sidewalk to the girl and at first got the disappointment and relief from the sight. The man was back, but then the bus stopped at a light and the same faces that Marino had seen a minute before is repeated, as if the time back to the immediate past, often feel uneasy to Marino when he was in the bus. Now I saw it. She walked behind him, dressed exactly like the morning, with his shirt wrinkled skirts covering her thighs, her arms folder, more tired and pale, more obstinate in despair, as if it had ceased to follow the man and look in vain from eight in the morning, disheveled, sleepwalking under the lights at night, invulnerable to any truce or surrender. The man even turned to look and wait, so sure of his loyalty as that of an abused dog, oblivious to it all. It opened the light and did not see Marino and more. "There you have it," he told The next morning the waiter, pointing openly. Takes half an hour waiting. Someone should tell your father. "If he has," said Marino. Orphan imaginary exaggerating a bit murky love. Asco-life-without Marino's request, the waiter handed him the paper, folded still intact. I was opening it as a gesture of the girl shook him of cowardice. She had risen and appeared to look and walk toward him, carrying something in his hand, a purse or pencil case. But when it came to the bar and leaned on it and not looking. Under the hair, the cheekbones and forehead, beads of perspiration shone like little glass beads and fleeting. Marino first heard her voice when she called urgently for a glass of water the waiter, tapping nervously on the marble with short fingers and bitten nails painted.Neither his voice nor his eyes seemed to belong to, perhaps they would own many years later, when there was nothing in his life that was not irreparable. Some things they were already feared Marino, seeing it go to the toilet: the loneliness and fear, insomnia. No doubt the man had brown suit decided not to return, he had apologized to her with predictable cowardice and falsehood, worthy father again, sorry and guilty husband. Deceived, Marino thought watching the short corridor leading to the toilets, degraded, abandoned. Crying with legs spread in the toilet of a bar, perhaps fearing that they would not have been enough to hide everything, stealth and the tiny white pills numbered days, and successive moons calendars. They were nine and sixteen and the girl had not yet risen. Pretending to read the paper, to avoid the suspicion of ingratitude waiter, Marino predicted: "When you go will have painted the eyes, they cry and be like if they had spent five years and will remember everything from very far." At nine-twenty-one he waiter and Marino did not notice, because the bar was full of people, and the only table that was empty was that of the abandoned girl: a pink folder with pictures of singers and TV actors, a cup coffee, an ashtray with a single cigarette in the Marine believed that distinguish traces of lipstick. But Marino also love the details and erased the girl could not wear lipstick. To distract his impatience imagined female secret obligations, acid, cellulose hidden scent adhering to the English. It was like being spied something that should not be behind a door ajar, and smell his hair or his jersey without her knowledge. But time never came out and popped into the consciousness of the rapid flicker Marino with that transfigured the numbers of seconds left where he was signing after six minutes, because they were nine and twenty-four, and still had to pay breakfast and fold the paper and across the plaza to the door of his office and up to her in the elevator, all of which, at best, and if he went now, he would take more than five minutes, time risky, but impossible, because the waiter, overwhelmed by the public, not making any case, and he did not dare to loose or leave without pay for breakfast, and who knows when to come to the site and twenty-seven would not be blocked the elevator mishap that occurred with some frequency. The dark corridor of the toilets was like a clock without hands. Marino estimated that the girl had locked up more than twenty minutes. In dealing with smaller fractions of time people tend to act with a blind unconscious. Arming of audacity, Marino decided he had to urinate. At nine twenty-six could be on the street. As a final precaution watched the waiter spoke loudly with someone while cleaning the bar with a damp cloth, and anyway, nobody could Marino suspicious behavior, anyone can get off his stool and walked to the sink. For at least ten years since you heart beat so fiercely that he did not notice in the empty stomach nauseous. In the women's bathroom door had a silhouette of a Japanese umbrella. Was ajar and heard after which the water tank. It was nine twenty-seven and Marino had no courage to go on pretending. As he throws himself to the indignity and vice pushed. He felt desperately stubborn resistance and inert. Along the bidet on the floor, without going yet, saw a hand stretched upward, treeless like a dead bird. He's fainted, he thought Marino, as if she heard those words in a nightmare, and kept pushing until his body was caught between the door and lintel, and drowned and misery, he felt they were going to surprise him and he would lose the job and never introduce your plastic card at the exact time slot clock. Only the next morning, reading the paper, not in the bar, where would-could never understand what he was seeing. The girl's face was so white and cold as the slab of the bidet, and her bare arm that had a purple stain slightly darker than your lips made on the gums. In his open eyes shining light bulb as dirty in a frosted glass. Lay folded on the ground in an impossible position, and it seemed that at the last moment he wanted contain tub bleeding because he had a long patterned scarf tied to the forearm. Before Marino stepped out something, a plastic thing creaked under his right foot crashing like a leech. Trembling crossed the bar. No one noticed him, no one saw the red was leaving footprints behind. At nine thirty-two introduced his magnetic card into the office clock.Much later, as in dreams, he rose to the sound of a siren of the police or hospital, cutting through the warm air damping, the sound of air conditioners and typewriters. Antonio Muñoz Molina Summary of his work Inventing is a great joy. Read something you like is a great joy. And writing is about the celebration that Flaubert called perpetual orgy. That is how Antonio Muñoz Molina, one of the leading figures of Spanish contemporary literature, the writer's craft. Born in Úbeda (Jaén) in 1956, studied journalism in Madrid and graduated in Art History at the University of Granada. Narrator, writer and member of the Royal Spanish Academy, started in 1986 with the novel Beatus ille, a solid literary career. Earlier, in 1984 and 1985, had published their articles in the volume The Journal of Urban and Robinson Nautilus, respectively. A Muñoz Molina basically interested in the narration of events, namely the fact that his story telling and be reborn in the reader. According to the author: The narrator is someone who has experienced or witnessed an extreme experience, or after hearing it fulfills the task of repeating to the other ... The task of that account is to save and make up the memory. With his second novel, Winter in Lisbon (1987), a tribute to black American cinema and the world of jazz, won the Critics Award and National Book Award, both in 1988. The story, of love and intrigue, set in a murky world marginal, vividly recreated by the author.The novel explores aspects common to other texts by the author as the anxiety, the dreary obsessions, the resort again and again to snuff and alcohol, both of which appear here intensified. With Beltenebros (1989) is located in the clandestine world of politics after the civil war.However, as in the three previous novels, under the political intrigue, lies the theme of impossible love and exasperated by a woman lying between two fires. This novel inspired the film of the same name, directed by Pilar Miró. With The Polish rider won the Planeta Prize and National Book again in 1992. He is also author of the novella The owner of the secret (1994), the trial of the Umayyad Cordoba (1989), and novel Full Moon (1997). Pure joy just released, which brings together texts, speeches and conference marked by his great love for literature and in which there is endless debate on the creative process of writing fiction, literary criticism and tributes. The stories written by Antonio Muñoz Molina were collected in 1988 in The other lives and, more recently, world gold Nothing (1993). The stories included in this volume, written between 1988 and 1993, relate to issues such as the inevitability of fate and the blurring boundaries between the extraordinary and the everyday. They also present a series of film and literary myths dear to the author. The owned and If you tell me look up the volume Nothing fancy, Plaza Janes, Barcelona, 1996.


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by Frank Paya


Original text: Spanish