Felipe Alfau - Chromos

He broke into a run and flew swiftly through dark, abandoned streets. He chose a route of unfrequented byways of which he had no recollection, but he seemed to know his way unerringly. He met a few people and once he crossed a vast square swarming with traffic and revealing incandescence, but he went right through it unchallenged, no one taking notice of this strange, ghostly group that swam in the night like a cloud in the sky.

When he entered his room he found everything in great disorder; an overturned lamp was still lit. It was the scene of a desperate battle or a vulgar orgy. He deposited her on his bed, then straightened up the lamp and a few other things. Turning, he regarded her shape under the canvas. They were alone at last and then the boldness which had brought him safely here gave way to the well-known sadness and panic. He knew that panic well, one could never be completely free from it. It haunted you wherever you went. There was no escape. With superhuman efforts you shook it off, you cast it beyond your horizon, and then you heard a muffled rumble in the distance: panic creeping back, up and at you. You knew that you had not cast it off, but that it had broken loose from your control. And then it came like waves, swamping you, crushing you with overpowering centripetal force, like a hurricane of howling wolves, tearing away the ribbons of your scattered soul, drawing you into merciful insensibility.

When it had passed, you still stood there wondering. Why don’t the wounds bleed if I am wounded to death? Or, if I am dead, why does the corpse stand?

By now both of them must have been missed. The kidnap, his unmentionable crime must have been discovered and probably this very minute he was being hunted like a dangerous beast, but seeing her shape in his bed under the canvas made the fear-clotted blood in his veins flow in torrents of molten lava, and with the pit of his stomach coiling like a gigantic snake strangling him from within, he approached her and drew back the canvas.

Here is where the two alternatives converged, crashed and fused together into the cry and the leap of an animal pouncing on her.

He woke up with an effort which propelled him from a bottomless shaft He was exhausted and aching, and all desire except that for sleep had left him. The lamp was still burning. He felt the cold hard body and looked at her. Still the same expression, impassive, unchanged by what had happened. Was she never tired, that she continued to beckon and taunt when there was no life left in her victim? That unyielding, ever-demanding imperviousness revolted him and that strange inhuman smell—

He brought himself up from the bed, grabbed her brutally and shoved her stiff figure onto the large chair. The room was stifling and he gasped for breath. Then still semi-conscious, he staggered to a window and threw it open and went back to bed. Before sinking into sleep, he could see the same fixed expression that nothing could efface.

He walked in no particular direction through places that he did not know. The city had changed completely since he last saw it, with magnificent terraces overlooking immense boulevards. It was a wonderful city, but there was no one about. It seems that everybody was busy and he was the only one who had nothing to do but wrestle with his problem which was to rid himself of her. It was impossible to keep her in his room, always in sight, stiff, mute, accusing, and he was sure to be found out.

He dreaded going back to his room and finding her still there waiting for him, but there was nothing else he could do and night was falling and he must dispose of her body.

When he arrived home it was quite dark, and when he entered his room he could only see her outline from the last light coming through the window. He was careful and shrewd. He tiptoed about and did not turn the light on, so that no one could suspect that he had returned. He sat on the bed almost facing her, waiting for complete darkness, and he spoke to her in halting, disconnected sentences to pass the time, and when he looked out the window, it was night, complete, absolute night.

He crossed the room feeling his way, mindful of the furniture, to avoid making any noise, and peered out the other window which looked on to the backyard. Everything was pitch-black. All windows and shutters closed, but he knew from faint noises that everybody was behind them busy with their own things, their company and conversation, and this time he was also busy.

He opened his door and looked and listened to the silence and emptiness of the stairs and went back in and got hold of her, and with her body under one arm, her hip resting against his, went down swiftly and noiselessly, turned quickly past the hall entrance and made for the cellar.

There by the light of the single bulb, he found the shovel and went to the back stairs and out into the yard. He walked carefully, so carefully, until he was in the center where he was equally far from all who could hear, and with painstaking care began to dig, very cautiously because of the mixed gravel and broken glass in the dirt.

When he thought that the grave was deep enough, he placed her in, but it was not as deep as he had thought and whichever way he tried, either an arm or a leg or the head protruded, so he pulled her out again and dug some more. It was an endless task but he also knew that the night was endless. After a while he placed her in again but one of the legs still did not fit He leaned on that and forced all his weight on it and it yielded until it was below the level of the ground. His job was nearly finished and hastily he pushed the dirt back around and over her and stole back to his room.

As he entered his room he heard a cackling laugh coming from the yard and knew that it must be the landlady, mocking him without having even recognized him in the darkness, but he did not care. His room was his alone again and he could sleep at last. He threw himself in bed.

A deep reverberating murmur, like the cooing of a tremendous flock of doves, woke him up. The day was well on its way and the murmur was coming from the backyard.

He left the bed and, like a somnambulist, went to the window and looked out, and then total wakefulness and realization froze him where he stood. The yard was alive with hostile, curious, jeering people. Every window open, crowded, as if every stone in the walls had become a face. It was a great well of terrible, condemning, shocked faces, their eyes all converging on the grave he had dug.

His sight slid down the inverted pyramid of all those gazes and then he saw it. Her leg was sticking out, plainly in view, a thin ridge of dirt still clinging along the uppermost side.

He knew then that he was finished. The thing he had feared most had come to pass, his secret discovered, a thing worse than any penalty he must pay for his crime. He realized that it was useless trying to fight anymore. She had won all the way through to a final, crushing victory. He was finished. Even now he could imagine the lynching party marching to his house, gathering reinforcements and fury.

He looked at all those faces, but they were not paying any attention to him. They continued to look down and comment in murmuring giggles, and their sound was like the cooing of a tremendous flock of doves. Then he heard his own voice say: “My life is a suicide.” Resignedly he turned from the window and adjusted his rumpled attire.

Without another look at the yard, he went out to give himself up.

It is sad to walk among people who look away or turn their backs on you, people who stand in small circles, their intimacy and conversation excluding you, stealing quick looks out of the corners of their eyes. It is sad to walk alone among crowds of hostile backs, knowing that your sentence has been pronounced, that you are a man condemned and your hours counted, when the sky is overcast and the light so white, and unbearable despair tears you apart and you walk like a soul in pain.