If dawn—when the cool air and lemon-coloured light bring out the outlines and differences between one thing and another, and infuse the town’s early risers with energy—comes in answer to the dark dream of night, evening is a celebration of the end of the red-hot day, when life had to take refuge inside the houses, and the sun and the heat were the sole masters of the deserted streets. At siesta time everything hardens to withstand the sun—the buildings and the trees and even the flowers in the gardens seem to turn to stone, and grin and bear it. The town clenches like a fist, and waits.
Evening is the relaxation of all that pent-up tension. The doors and windows that were sealed against the light and heat are flung wide, releasing the breath held within; and the entire town spills unhurriedly out of its houses, softly, like a hand opening, to walk the sidewalks and streets, ride their bicycles, put their chairs out on the sidewalk, gather on every street corner, in shops and bars, to chat with neighbours. No one stays indoors at that time of day—all the life of Malihuel is out on the streets. As day recedes, the street lights catch fire—dimly, save in the two streets with mercury lamps—and the light of the houses spills yellow out of the open windows and doors, guiding passers-by from one to the other, like Chinese lanterns in a purple dusk. The town lights up as the surrounding fields darken, and it is never more beautiful or more fragile than the moment it seems to ripple over the plain, soft and evanescent like an alcohol flame in a half-lit room. Then, everything is fire—the houses are blue flames and the streets long flaming wicks, the trees torches, the vehicles embers, the people candles that move by themselves as if carried, and even the omnipresent dust, whipped up by the wind from the endless fields, becomes a smoky incense and softens the outlines, perfumed by successive passes of the sprinkler truck. Everything seems momentarily redeemed and justified by the grace of the light—as in Millet’s Angelus, the world is one. It’s nothing but an illusion of course—a hybrid of the magic of the light and the sentimentalism of the observer, who watches it now from the top of the coach that pulls inexorably away, and who could be forgiven for thinking, for a moment while the illusion lasts, that there is no better place on earth to live.
Copyright
Original text © Carlos Gamerro
English translation © Ian Barnett 2011
An Open Secret first published in Spanish
as El Secreto y las voces in 2002
This edition first published in 2011 by
Pushkin Press
12 Chester Terrace
London NW1 4ND
ISBN 978 1 906548 72 8
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission in writing from Pushkin Press
Cover Illustration Cumulus Clouds above Road, Patagonia, Argentina
© Eastcott Momatiuk
Frontispiece Carlos Gamerro
© Thomas Langdon
Set in 11 on 14.5 Monotype Baskerville
by Tetragon
and printed in Great Britain on
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An Open Secret Page 24