You could spend the rest of your life under this tree, alone, happy to be in the world, listening to the clicking of the crickets and the chirping of the cicadas and the whisper of the leaves in the olive trees. Who knows what might happen to you today at the house of the cypresses. You tremble. Again, you see the two laughing masks and the four rows of white teeth, hahahahahahahha! Two terrible goddesses of mockery.
And if … if you don’t go?
You make yourself comfortable under the tree. With your head sunk back on the backpack, with your eyes focused on the tapestry of dark leaves embroidered on a turquoise background, you recall Patricia’s hair. And her eyes with the tulip pistils, which are able to float across space. Have you conquered that woman … But, what are you talking about? Was there really some kind of struggle involved … ? You have conquered her, what more can she offer you? No, there is no need for you to go and see her.
You make yourself comfortable under the tree. But you don’t stop seeing the laughing masks, the four rows of white teeth, the goddesses of mockery, more horrifying than the Furies themselves. And, in the tapestry of dark leaves embroidered on a turquoise background, something begins to take shape … and, all at once, the color orange gives a shout, yes, it is an orange towel opening slowly, very slowly, like a curtain rising in an opera house, and what is behind the curtain, what is on the stage, is a gift for your eyes only. But the orange color gradually fades and the stage disappears under the mist of the summer heat.
And then, you feel another kind of heat, a more direct kind: Patricia’s fingers. With her palm on your cheek, you go to sleep while the sea breeze spreads your hair, playfully, the way her fingers did the other day. You smile, sleepily … and a dragonfly rests comfortably on a blade of grass.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Monika Zgustova was born in Prague and spent her formative years in the United States. She has published five novels, a collection of short stories, and a biography, and two of her plays have been staged. Her work has been translated into nine languages and has won several prestigious awards, including the 2009 Mercè Rodoreda Award for short fiction. She has also won critical acclaim for her novels The Silent Woman (2005), Winter Garden (2009), and Goya’s Glass (2012). Zgustova has translated more than fifty fiction books from Czech and Russian into both Spanish and Catalan. She currently lives in Barcelona, Spain, and regularly contributes opinion-editorial articles to the leading Spanish newspaper, El País.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Original Title: Menta fresca amb llimona
copyright © 2002 by Monika Zgustova
Translation: Fresh Mint with Lemon
copyright © 2013 by Matthew Tree
ISBN: 978-1-4804-0798-5
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