The Giant Cloud
A novel in twenty episodes
By Luís Carmelo
(transl. Bernardo Palmeirim)

SEVENTH EPISODE
(Edmundo Edmundo seems more stoic …)

The jar is made of crystal, tall and glazed, and looks like a soft flame ready to take on the French window looking out on the swimming pool.
Edmundo strides on decisively, at nine o’clock sharp, his hands stuck in the pockets of stark white trousers, his memory warped by the orders made out to his printing company, by the car breaking down, the bullfight story, and the prodigal presence of clouds on this canicular August day.
Edmundo nails his eyes on the aquarium and afterwards goes swiftly round the table, filled with tableware, strong-colored juices, ice, and a basket full of fresh bread. A smile to the closest waiter imprints the rare eclipse of another morning that, truth be told, seems doomed to pure holiday forgetfulness.
It is one past nine in the morning and Edmundo has already sat at the table, with a napkin covering his Louisiana linen habit, and with the sound of kids out on the lawn invading the world like comets and brutish asteroids.
The peace of breakfast wanders between shapeless silhouettes that go in and out of the room, meandering in sudden agitation. Edmundo seems more stoic, volatile, as if he had disappeared into a typhoon, spun out into the turbulence of this summer hotel.
The heat bites, but Edmundo has already moved out onto the lawn with his dark glasses and moves an obsessively white handkerchief over his forehead. An uncertain morning sloth hangs all around, and the reclining chair ends up hosting the detective novel, even though the occasion is as brief and transient as life itself.
Word after word, scene after scene, crime after crime, and Edmundo keeps remembering the price of paper, the Lisbon telegram, the bullfight and, who would figure, the last cloud which seems to move upon Gerona now.


(Next episode of The Giant Cloud: “She swims to the opposite side of the pool, slowly, in this generous moment of existence, holding onto the buoys and sliding - then suddenly, in slow motion, waves goodbye in Edmundo’s direction”)

Continues

(see here portuguese updated version)