Family of Pascual Duarte by Camilo Jose Cela

Author:Camilo Jose Cela
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Deep Vellum Publishing

WHO KNOWS IF it were not God’s vengeance upon me for all the sins I had committed and all the sins I would still commit! Who knows if it were not written in the divine record that misfortune was my only sign, that the road to disaster was the only path my dogged footsteps could travel throughout all my sad days?

One does not ever get used to misfortune, believe me, for we are always sure the present affliction must be the last, although later, with the passage of time, we begin to be convinced—with what misery of heart!—that the worst is yet to come …

I think of these things now, because if I thought I would die of anguish at the time of Lola’s miscarriage or the knifing of Zacarías, it was simply because—believe me!—I had no idea of how bad things would get.

There were three women around me when Pascualillo left us, three women to whom I was joined by some tie or other, though at times I felt them to be as strange to me as any passing stranger, as remote from me as was the rest of the world, and not one of these three women, I give you my word, not one of them was capable, either through her tenderness or simply by her manner, of lightening the burden of pain caused by the death of my son. On the contrary, it seemed as if they had come to an agreement to embitter my life. The three were my wife, my mother, and my sister.

Who would have thought this possible, and I putting my hopes in the company of the three of them!

Women are as ungrateful and mean as jackdaws.

They howled in chorus:

“The little angel, carried off by an ill wind, an evil draft!”

“Taken away from us, taken to limbo!”

“The little creature who was the living image of the sun!”

“Oh, the agony, the death throes!”

“I held him gasping in these arms!”

It sounded like a litany, as slow and weary as a night filled with wine, as languid and heavy as the pace of an ass.

And they went on in this way day after day, week after week … It was frightful, dreadful, the curse of God, vengeance from on high.

I controlled myself.

It’s love, I reflected, that makes them cruel in spite of themselves.

I tried not to hear, to take no notice, to pay no more attention to their ritual than if they had been puppets, to lend no weight to their words … I was letting time take care of my sorrow, letting it fade like a cut rose fades, keeping my peace, packing my sorrow away like a jewel, striving to suffer as little as possible. All vain illusions, these were, and every day I wondered all the more at the good fortune of those born for the easy path, while God bedevilled me with my fantasies.

I grew to fear the sunset as much as fire or rabies. The most painful act of the day was to light the kitchen candle around seven o’clock.

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