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

TENTH EPISODE
(António was the only friend that truly understood my fury...)

I was tired of the tie-up my life had become, and was lacking hope and courage, so I decided to ask for military leave, a passport and new papers. When I got all the paperwork together, I got into the recently acquired Escort and headed for the Costa Brava. I needed to clear my head, and above all, to escape our national graveyard. It was three full days to the L’Escala beach.
Besides, I had watched die, well inside my home and skin, one of those weddings from days of yore, where the divine unction aspires to a commitment for eternity, and of which a grand and mythical example is the marriage of Dom Pedro and Lady Inês, who will rise to meet face to face someday, in Alcobaça, at the end of time, when the radiant advent from paradise and its thousand limbos are revealed by Our Lord God. In those days of Salazar and “Tomásio”, before the first black and white TV ads, I was the candid and traditional owner of two printing shops, condemned to the outrage of a divorce against all holy law and, as if that was not enough, António was the only friend that truly understood my disjunction and, especially, my fury. After having seen Lady Filipa escape from my legion to her uncle’s house (the Bishop) in Viseu, I permanently escaped from Restelo into Bairro Alto of a thousand loves, where I ended up finding a different life and a new assortment of pleasures.
A shade of a second went by and I was still muttering to myself how tired and running short of hope I was. And that it would be foolish to think of other flights or temptations.

(Next episode of The Giant Cloud:“…And Albe, sweet Dulcinea, talking in front of me, and I could barely hear her, as the stain of fatigue slowly subsided, inch by inch…”)

Continues

(see here portuguese updated version)