Abyss by Pilar Quintana

Author:Pilar Quintana
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: World Editions
Published: 2022-04-11T13:06:34+00:00

THE CLOUDS DISSOLVED from one minute to the next. The sun came out, the sky turned blue and everything came to life, like when someone takes an old black-and-white photo and turns it to color. The outline of mountains in the distance, the green of the forests, the flowers in the garden, the trees, and grass so perfect it looked plastic …

Anita, the maid, served us lunch in the pergola. It was right next to the house and made of wrought iron. A big bougainvillea climbed one column, its trunk thick, heavy with purple blossoms, its branches extending over us like a roof. Lunch was beans and rice, fried pork belly, patacones, and avocado. Anita was white, like her husband, and had curly black hair and a shy smile for everything.

“Thank you, Anita.”

Shy smile.

“Delicious beans.”

Shy smile.

Anita left us, and my father put his hand on top of mother’s.

“Are you happy?”

The sun filtered through the bougainvillea branches. Two red butterflies and a tiny hummingbird flitted around the flowers. The stream that ran through the property, its water trickling down through the rocks, tinkled like little bells.

“Very,” she said, with a look that took in the nature as well as the buildings. “Isn’t this place amazing?”

“Yes,” I said.

Paulina, sitting there with us at the table, her back to the precipice, with her placid little face and curly eyelashes, looked as pleased as I was.

That afternoon, Porfirio came down to the house to close the giant windows.

“Keep the cold from getting in.”

No sooner had he said it than it got in. A damp kind of cold that made our clothes and everything else, even the air we breathed, feel heavy. We were in the living room. My father was reading the paper. My mother, a magazine. I was on the floor at the center table, on a cushiony long-haired rug, working on a two-thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle I’d found in the study: a European landscape with a pond, a windmill, and horses.

“Would you like me to light a fire?” Porfirio asked.

“Please,” said mamá.

My father went into the back room with Porfirio and the two of them set to work. My mother said it was time for us to put on our sweaters. She set down her magazine and went upstairs. I was planning to follow, but as soon as I stood and looked up, I became hypnotized. Now it really was almost dusk.

The sky had clouded over, and dense fog hung, floating at the tops of the mountains. A white amoeba-shaped blob. I watched it expand, advance, approach the house and then envelop it, as though refusing to stay outside, searching for gaps in the doors or other holes it could slip through.

Outside everything was white, while inside it turned to darkness.

“Didn’t you go get your sweater?” asked mamá, coming back with hers on.

The house, encased in fog, was transformed. Narrow and flat, like a fake house on tv.

“Get going,” she insisted.

I went upstairs and put on my sweater. The girls’ room was big. It had three beds, each up against a different wall, in U-formation.

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