Land of Smoke by Sara Gallardo

Author:Sara Gallardo [Sara Gallardo]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781782274049
Publisher: Steerforth Press
Published: 2017-07-17T16:00:00+00:00

A LAWN

AMONG THE GARDENS that run from Palermo to Recoleta there’s a square of lawn. One year the gardeners forgot to cut it. The grass grew at its leisure.

Every half-hour a train ran by with rusty breath. The roots felt it pass, the earthworms interrupted their journeys.

The grass kept growing as it pleased.

In autumn, juices went through the earth, just as the needle of a mattress repairman goes through thick wool. The grasses and earthworms were surprised by the novelty.

When the sun set, the doormen of the apartments burned the garbage. Whirlwinds appeared over the buildings. Black papers fluttered around the metal screening of chimney-tops, crumbling in their eagerness to escape. Sparks gave themselves to the air and disappeared; soot rose. The soot from other houses met it. Together, they formed clouds. Broken up by a flight of birds, the passing of a train or a gust of wind, they came to land on the lawn.

The lawn. Near the traffic lights of the avenues, yellow, red or green colours tinted it according to the order of crossing, and over it the cars belched a trail of smoke.

It wasn’t really a lawn. It was more of a pasture.

With its soft surface it attracted those in love. Kids too, playing football or toddling about, their parents behind them. Ice cream sellers who when the heat won out came to sit down. And coffee vendors laden with Thermoses, who tried to make themselves heard above the sound of the trains. It attracted the birds, who found good food. And the insects, because it was a forest full of places to shelter.

It attracted the owners of dogs.

The dogs were keen to run, to smell, to do their business.

They had owners of all kinds. The confident ones let go of the leashes. The frightened ones ran behind, tied to them. If women, they twisted the heels of their shoes. Loose and leashed dogs met one another, whimpering; free ones bounded off, chasing each other and returning when they heard their names shouted.

There’s an hour of night when those in love have gone home and the trains have stopped, when dew falls on the lawn. The soot trickles down. Each blade of grass retains a dewdrop.

Days of rain come too. Just water, washing, whispering, filling the earth with damp. Not a person, not a dog. Silent, the grass opens its mouth.

One day the city mayor travelled through all the gardens between Palermo to Recoleta. A king had announced his visit.

The gardeners arrived to cut all the grass, north to south, east to west.

And the grass that died sang.

It sang of the breath and rattle of the train, the descending soot, the juices of autumn. The earthworms. The lovers. The traffic lights. The ice cream sellers. The insects. The dogs with and without leashes. The owners of the dogs. The birds. The coffee vendors. The big children and the ones just learning to walk. The dew, the smoke from the cars, the rain.

It sang, that voice of the grass, that smell of freshly mown lawn.

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