The Endless Rose by Carlos Maleno

Author:Carlos Maleno
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Deep Vellum Publishing

The fourth time he returned to the alley, it was night. He saw the vagabond sitting on the curb, his mouth moving in silence, counting out coins he took from the cardboard box and sorting them into small heaps on the ground. Then his wrinkled face—more wrinkled than usual because of the spell of concentration he seemed to be under—relaxed into a smile. He put the coins in his worn jacket pocket, got up and began to walk toward Marcelo. Marcelo stood his ground as the man approached, but just as he thought the beggar was going to stop and speak, he brushed past Marcelo as if he’d never seen him before or as if he didn’t exist, as if Marcelo were nothing but a spirit or a ghost or both, if there’s any difference.

Marcelo followed him for a while down streets that went through relatively new neighborhoods, but were still poorly lit and rather narrow. The beggar turned down a cobbled sidestreet that didn’t seem to belong to the surrounding neighborhood. As the two of them approached the entrance of a nightclub, its tinted glass doors swung open and two men emerged and turned to look at them. As Marcelo walked past them, they had cigarettes in their mouths. One of the men glared at him. Up ahead, the street took another right turn, behind which Marcelo lost sight of the beggar, so he picked up his pace, and when he rounded the corner, he saw the beggar approaching somebody leaning against a wall under an arcade. The two figures stood in the shadows, and the other’s silhouette looked like that of a fairly young boy. Marcelo walked toward them, stopping a few yards off. The boy turned his head and scrutinized Marcelo from head to toe. He didn’t look any more than twenty years old, with dark, close-cropped hair and a tight, black sweater that accentuated his slim build. The beggar, who didn’t seem to have noticed Marcelo, or who, if he had, was ignoring him, continued talking with the boy, who stared at him with an apparently amused grimace. The beggar inched closer to the boy, as if he was frightened or trying not to spook him, and placed at the boy’s feet the coins he’d taken from his pocket and had been clutching in his hand. Without taking his eyes off the beggar, the boy squatted and picked up the coins, he then took his time counting them across from the beggar’s nervous and impatient gaze, and finally stuffed them in a pocket of his jeans. Marcelo witnessed an enormous smile spread across the beggar’s face. He watched as the beggar got on his knees and scraped them along the ground toward the boy, until his face was nearly touching the other’s groin, and Marcelo also noticed the look of disgust on the boy’s face as he began to unzip his fly, but then in one quick, precise, springlike movement his fist traced a perfect arc and struck the beggar in the head, knocking him to the ground.

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