The Nap
Joaquín Mattos Omar
Traducción: Miguel Zapata Ferreira, Ph. D.
From: MATTOS OMAR, Joaquín. Páginas de un desconocido
[Pages by an unknown author]. Colección literaria 29.
Bogotá, Fundación Simón y Lola Guberek, 1989.
Anecdote for Poe
and the young man Andrés Caicedo.As soon as she had finished her lunch, the girl felt an annoying sensation caused by the remaining pieces of steak between her teeth. She immediately went to the toothpick box, but verified with a bitter gesture of failure, that it was completely empty.“Damned house!” she swore. “One cannot even find a toothpick!”
Her mother, however, always so good and wise, calmed her down by advising her to use sewing thread instead. Thus, the girl took a golden piece of thread, very similar to a fine little beam of light and made it go repeatedly through the spaces between her teeth.The procedure worked out fine. Her precious incisors, canine teeth, and molars, all got scrupulously clean. She could finally throw herself, satisfied, on her bed, ready to enjoy a pleasant nap. In fact, it was not difficult for her to rapidly fall asleep.After a while, however, she woke up startled, bothered by the intense pain in her gums. A secret throbbing of nervous flow, an unbearable sting in the root of her teeth annoyed her. She realized she had hurt herself badly with the thread, whose edge —she remembered— had been as penetrating as the light of that midday. She was tempted to violently pull her teeth out, urged by the intimate necessity to reach the focal point of the pain so as to alleviate it with her fingertips.
She had already started to shout to her mother to consult her about the situation, when her teeth abruptly jumped out of her mouth, as if she herself had spat them out with a strong explosive movement. She remained perplexed but alleviated, observing her thirty-two small, white and ivory-looking teeth —healthy, polished, and bloody— scattered to and fro across the bed, while her mouth filled up in a delicious jet of blood. Her mother’s voice vaguely reached her ears, answering from the back of the house, "coming Berenice; I’m coming."_____
Final del cuento "Berenice, de Edgar Allan Poe:He pointed to my garments; --they were muddy and clotted with gore. I spoke not, and he took me gently by the hand; --it was indented with the impress of human nails. He directed my attention to some object against the wall; --I looked at it for some minutes; --it was a spade. With a shriek I bounded to the table, and grasped the box that lay upon it. But I could not force it open; and in my tremor it slipped from my hands, and fell heavily, and burst into pieces; and from it, with a rattling sound, there rolled out some instruments of dental surgery, intermingled with thirty-two small, white and ivory-looking substances that were scattered to and fro about the floor.
La siesta
Joaquín Matos Omar
Anécdota para míster Poe
y el jovencito Andrés Caicedo.
Tan pronto como hubo terminado de almorzar, la muchacha sintió la molestia que empezaron a causarle algunas migajas de carne frita que se le habían quedado acuñadas entre los dientes. Fue de inmediato a la cajetilla de mondadientes, pero le tocó comprobar, con un agrio gesto de fracaso, que ésta se hallaba completamente vacía.―¡Maldita sea esta casa! ―estalló. ―¡Ni siquiera puede encontrarse un palillo de dientes!Su madre, sin embargo, siempre tan buena y sabia, supo tranquilizarla, recomendándole usar a cambio, hilo de coser. Tomó, pues, la muchacha una hebra dorada, muy parecida a un fino chorrito de luz. , y la hizo pasar una y otra vez por los intersticios de su dentadura.El procedimiento resultó eficaz. Sus preciosos incisivos, caninos y molares quedaron, todos, escrupulosamente limpios, y ella pudo tirarse satisfecha en la cama, dispuesta ya a gozar de una buena siesta. No le fue difícil, en efecto, conciliar rápidamente el sueño.Al rato, sin embargo, despertó sobresaltada, sintiéndose aturdida por una agudísima sensación de dolor en las encías. La aquejaba un secreto runrún de corrientes nerviosas, un cosquilleo insoportable en la raíz de los dientes, apremiada por la íntima urgencia de tener acceso al exacto punto del dolor para procurarse alivio con la yema de los dedos.Ya había empezado a llamar a gritos a su madre para consultarle la situación, cuando los dientes saltaron bruscamente de su boca, como si ella misma los hubiese escupido con un enérgico movimiento de explosión. Permaneció perpleja pero aliviada, observando sus treinta y dos blancas piececillas regadas sobre la cama, sanas, bruñidas y sanguinolentas mientras su propia boca se ensopaba en un delicioso manantial de sangre y en sus oídos rebotaba vagamente la voz de su madre que le respondía desde el fondo: “Ya voy, Berenice, ya voy”._________________________________________
© Joaquín Mattos Omar
© Miguel Zapata Ferreira (Traducción)
LA CASA DE ASTERIÓN
ISSN: 0124 - 9282
Revista Trimestral de Estudios Literarios
Volumen V – Número 20
Enero-Febrero-Marzo de 2005
SUPLEMENTO LITERARIO CARIBANÍA
ISSN: 0124 - 9290
DEPARTAMENTO DE IDIOMAS
FACULTAD DE CIENCIAS HUMANAS - FACULTAD DE EDUCACIÓN
UNIVERSIDAD DEL ATLÁNTICO
Barranquilla - Colombia
El URL de este documento es:
http://casadeasterion.homestead.com/v5n20siesta.html
