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

EIGHTEENTH EPISODE
(It was written...)

Coming back from the bullfight on the following night, the roads were long, ill-lit and never-ending; Albe’s father drove and her mother took the passenger seat. The music came in a steady double time, loud and vibrant; on that night coming back from Gerona, passing through La Bisbal, Parlavà and Torrebella de Montgrí (even though, in those days, these places could only be pronounced in Catalan and in the dead of night); on that night of endless moonlight, as I was filled with the select memory of the sound of horse trots, acrobatic bull-grapples and the thousand combustion engines that stole my soul away; on that night, I say again, in the quiet softness of the back seat where a pale penumbra of lust and temptation abounded, I pushed my hand along the upholstery and there reached Albe’s hand.
And how she gripped my fingers, my life-line, the paths to my fate and my very wrists; and how tenaciously I responded to such emotion! How happiness seemed to be that single moment, about to be summed up, later, in its lived and celebrated pilgrimage! And how decisive was Samuel Lupi’s marvelous bullfight on horseback and the providential breakdown of my Ford Escort!
It was written.

(Next episode of The Giant Cloud: “António took his noble choice to its last consequences…”)

Continues

(see here portuguese updated version)