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192 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1942
I am not, sir, a bad person, though in all truth I am not lacking in reasons for being one. We are all born naked, and yet, as we begin to grow up, it pleases Destiny to vary us, as if we were made of wax. Then, we are all sent down various paths to the same end: death. Some men are ordered down a path lined with flowers, others are asked to advance along a road sown with thistles and prickly pears. The first gaze about serenely and in the aroma of their joyfulness they smile the smile of the innocent, while the latter writhe under the violent sun of the plain and knit their brows like varmints at bay. There is a world of difference between adorning one’s flesh with rouge and eau-de-cologne and doing it with tattoos that later will never wear off…
And so I decided to just lie low and let events take their course. Maybe that’s the way the sheep think as they are led off to the slaughterhouse.
A little further on, to the right of my road and halfway home, the cemetery lay along my way, just where it had always lain, and bounded by the same wall of blackened adobe bricks, with the same tall cypress which hadn’t changed a leaf and the same hooting owl perched in its branches. It was the cemetery where my father rested from his ruinous fury, Mario from his innocence, my wife from her abandon, and Stretch from his pimping. It was the cemetery where the remains of my two children lay rotting, the one who had been aborted, and yet buried, and Pascualillo who in the eleven months of his life had yet been our darling…
“Se llevaban mal mis padres; a su poca educación se unía su escasez de virtudes y su falta de conformidad con lo que Dios les mandaba —defectos todos ellos que para mi desgracia hube de heredar— y esto hacía que se cuidaran bien poco de pensar los principios y de refrenar los instintos”
“Si mi condición de hombre me hubiera permitido perdonar, hubiera perdonado, pero el mundo es como es y el querer avanzar contra corriente no es sino vano intento”
“Los mismos cueros tenemos todos los mortales al nacer y sin embargo, cuando vamos creciendo, el destino se complace en variarnos como si fuésemos de cera y en destinarnos por sendas diferentes al mismo fin: la muerte. Hay hombres a quienes se les ordena marchar por el camino de las flores, y hombres a quienes se les manda tirar por el camino de los cardos y de las chumberas. Aquellos gozan de un mirar sereno y al aroma de su felicidad sonríen con la cara del inocente; estos otros sufren del sol violento de la llanura y arrugan el ceño como las alimañas por defenderse. Hay mucha diferencia entre adornarse las carnes con arrebol y colonia, y hacerlo con tatuajes que después nadie ha de borrar ya”