![]() ![]() I came back when they told me that Darío, my brother, the first of the infinite number of siblings that I had, was dying, and they didn’t know what from. May it all be for the greater glory of he who I said and she who I said. And me, who swore not to come back! Never say, “I’ll never drink this water,” because at the rate we’re going and with how many of us there are, on the day we least expect it, we’ll all be drinking that river’s shit-water. Which God, which homeland? Idiots! God doesn’t exist and if he does he is a pig and Colombia is a slaughterhouse. They made nine children in the first twenty years while the machine was working for them, for the greater glory of God and the homeland. How about that! They were the mirror of love, the sun of happiness, and the perfect marriage. The Madwoman had lost more than a husband when he died she lost a servant, the only one that lasted for her. But did I say my house? Idiot! It hadn’t been my house for such a long time, ever since Dad died, and so the dust wasn’t mine either, because since he’s been gone, nobody’s swept it up. And it’s been so long since we were children! The days, years, and life had been passing us by, as tumultuously as that river in Medellín that they converted into a sewer so that instead of the sabaletas it used to carry, the little shiny fish of days gone by, it would drag along, in its dirty water, shit, shit, and more shit towards the sea in its eddies of rage.īy the New Year, he was back to reality: to the inescapable condition, to his illness, to the dusty madhouse of his house, of my house, that was crumbling in ruins. It was Christmas week, the happiest week for the children of Antioquia. Like that, free of himself, at the edge of the abyss of death that he would fall over not long afterwards, he spent what I believe were his only days in peace since his long-ago youth. ![]() When they opened the door for him, he entered without saying hello, went upstairs, crossed the second floor, got to the room in the back, collapsed on the bed and fell into a coma. ![]() Translated by Laia García Sánchez & Robert Jackson ![]()
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