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La Luz Es Como El Agua | Light Is Like Water | Part 3

La Luz Es Como El Agua - part 3

Read it in English

     Llamados de urgencia, los bomberos forzaron la puerta del quinto piso, y encontraron la casa rebosada de luz hasta el techo. El sofá y los sillones forrados en piel de leopardo flotaban en la sala a distintos niveles, entre las botellas del bar y el piano de cola y su mantón de Manila que aleteaba a media agua como una mantarraya de oro. Los utensilios domésticos, en la plenitud de su poesía, volaban con sus proprias alas por el cielo de la cocina. Los instrumentos de la bande de guerra, que los niños usaban para bailar, flotaban al garete entre los peces de colores liberados de la pecera de mamá, que eran los únicos que flotaban vivos y felices en la vasta ciénaga iluminada. En el cuarto de baño flotaban los cepillos de dientes de todos, los preservativos de papá, los pomos de crema y la dentadura de mamá, y el televisor de la alcoba principal flotaba de costado, todavía encendido en el último episodio de la película de media noche, prohibida para niños.

    Al final del corredor, flotando entre dos aguas, Totó estaba sentado en la popa del bote, aferrado a los remos y con la máscara puesta, buscando el faro del puerto hasta donde le alcanzó el aire de los tanques, y Joel flotaba en la proa buscando todavía la altura de la estrella polar con el sextante, y flotaban por toda la casa sus treinta y siete compañeros de clase, eternizados en el instante de hacer pipí en la maceta de geranios, de cantar el himno de la escuela con la letra cambiada por versos de burla contra el rector, de beberse a escondidas un vaso de brandy de la botella de papá. Pues habían abierto tantas luces al mismo tiempo que la casa se había rebosado, y todo el cuarto año elemental de escuela de San Julián el Hospitalario se había ahogado en el piso quinto del número 47 del Paseo de la Castellana. En Madrid de España, una ciudad remota de veranos ardientes y vientos helados, sin mar ni río, y cuyos aborígenes de tierra firme nunca fueron maestros en la ciencia de navegar en la luz.

Karen Stärke





Light is like water - part 3

    Called urgently, the firefighters forced the door to the fifth floor, and found the house filled with light to the ceiling. The sofa and armchairs covered in leopard skin floated in the room at different levels, between the bottles at the bar and the grand piano and its Manila shawl that fluttered in the middle of the water like a golden stingray. The household utensils, in the fullness of their poetry, flew with their own wings through the kitchen sky. The instruments of the war band, which the children used to dance, floated wildly among the goldfish released from Mom's fish tank, which were the only ones floating alive and happy in the vast illuminated swamp. Everyone's toothbrushes, Dad's condoms, bottles of cream, and Mom's teeth floated in the bathroom, and the TV in the master bedroom floated on its side, still on from the last episode of the midnight movie, prohibited for children.

    At the end of the corridor, floating between two waters, Totó was sitting in the stern of the boat, clinging to the oars and with his mask on, looking for the port lighthouse as far as the air from the tanks could reach him, and Joel was floating in the bow still searching for the height of the polar star with the sextant, and his thirty-seven classmates were floating around the house, eternalized in the moment of peeing in the pot of geraniums, of singing the school anthem with the lyrics changed. for mocking verses against the rector, of secretly drinking a glass of brandy from dad's bottle. Well, they had opened so many lights at the same time that the house had overflowed, and the entire fourth elementary year of the San Julián el Hospitalario school had drowned on the fifth floor of number 47 Paseo de la Castellana. In Madrid of Spain, a remote city of burning summers and icy winds, without sea or river, and whose aborigines of the mainland were never masters in the science of navigating in the light.

Karen Stärke

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