It must have been a full-moon night in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean\u2014en route to the unfamiliar home of a maternal aunt in a foreign country\u2014when, according to Alba\u2019s hazy memories, one of the ship\u2019s crew members told her a story. He was a taciturn man of Eastern appearance who had spent his entire life traveling among cargo and containers aboard massive freighters across the globe, and he claimed that in the Antarctic region there exists a small, isolated cove. There, if you speak your most secret fears out loud and in a firm voice, the wind is so cold and dense that it is capable of carrying them away forever, plunging you into a state of profound peace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Needing to feel cradled by some sort of magical tale to conjure away the terror of the void with which her own futility and insignificance hounded her in the middle of the ocean's vastness, she asked if he knew anyone for whom that simple trick had worked. He merely shrugged, adding that he had preferred to follow the Eastern tradition of whispering his fears into the hollow of a tree in the garden of his parents' house before leaving it forever, hiding them there so he wouldn't have to carry them around the world\u2014and without the wind sweeping them into an irreversible oblivion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That night, after the man had departed forever from her bed and her life, Alba drank half a bottle of gin in the solitude of her cabin and tried desperately to whisper everything that tortured her inside. Yet she only managed to prove once again that all those secret fears she fruitlessly tried to lock inside that bottle before casting it forever into the ocean were precisely that: secrets, enigmas to herself that she would never decipher. And for that very reason\u2014because she would never be able to articulate them into words and comprehend their meaning\u2014she would never manage to free herself from them as easily as that womanizing sailor had. They were destined to govern all her actions silently until the end of her days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sleepless nights ruined beneath the pale, whitish glow of the moon\u2014a faint, cold light that seems to enfold all the creatures of the night under its spell as a wretched reflection of another distant light they, too, greedily and secretly yearn for in their darkness. Grotesque creatures born of the poison of solitude, in which she, incapable of rebelling and shining with her own light, seems to plunge them. It would be this very light\u2014a carnival light, so vastly different from the fierce glare of noon\u2014that would illuminate the birth of a beautiful, strange creature nine months later. A creature destined to perish a few years on, after its brief vital breath, due to a mother's secret guilt for not having provided a proper father at birth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A being of light born from an anonymous and dark womb\u2014Alba\u2019s womb. Upon awakening one cold winter morning, thirstily seeking the embrace of life, it plunged instead into the frigid embrace of death after ingesting the crystal-clear liquid\u2014slightly sweetened to taste better\u2014from a small vial intended to mitigate, through the magic of medical science, the chemical wanderings of its mother, who was ecstatically dreaming in a distant garden at that tragic instant, just a few meters away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A tragic and agonizing epitaph, written with the virginal blood of innocence drowning in the tasteless abyss of methadone, for a woman who never knew how to rebel against the curse uttered years before, when as a mere child she made love for the first time. On that occasion, a very young man, barely in his adolescence\u2014the firstborn of the manor house where her mother served\u2014took her for a horseback ride through the woods at sunset. After stopping in a small clearing beside a stream, he ordered her to undress and, without further ado, began making love to her. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
That night, as he dropped her off in front of her house, she asked when she might see him again. He simply shrugged, arguing that women were like celestial bodies. A modest proportion of them were like stars in the firmament\u2014bodies that shone in the darkness of the night with their own light, destined to be desired by the furtive gazes of men, igniting their passion. The rest were merely anonymous bodies, lightless stars, destined to be consumed by male lust in order to quench, with their flesh, the turmoil and desire spawned by the deceitful, blinding mirage of the former, bringing back composure at nightfall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That desolate description following her first experience of love seemed to pierce Alba\u2019s soul far more deeply and painfully than her lover's insipid erect member had pierced her virginal vagina as he groaned with pleasure upon ejaculating inside her. She felt that the sexual act, instead of fulfilling her longing for communion with another being by fusing their bodies in love as she so desperately craved, brutally hurled her away from him, erecting an insurmountable wall between them. A curse that would accompany her in her relationships and love affairs for the rest of her short life, leading her to believe that women like her were nothing more than mere objects for men. And while a modest proportion of men used them to see themselves shine before the mirror of their own vanity, the rest simply abused them, unleashing upon them the fury of their frustration. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Of all the men who throughout her short life had found composure between her long, muscular legs, only one had also infiltrated her heart. Alba knew it, and she also knew that this man\u2014who felt just as lost as she did in the middle of the dark night\u2014needed her so as not to perish, annihilated by his own darkness. That was how, for a time, she lent herself to his game and let her lover become her pimp, offering her to other men for a ridiculous sum. Lonely and taciturn men, obese and deformed, lascivious and dissolute, victims of their desire to be loved and their inability to love. Monstrous men trying to soothe the loneliness of their lives by violently appropriating her body and her sex, all while dragging her with ever-greater vehemence into a melancholic sadness incapable of redemption, even among the soft caresses of her lover.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It was then, on a full-moon night\u2014one of those rare nights endowed with a strange luminosity when he happened to be in a good mood and had invited her to dinner\u2014that he gave her a pair of beautiful earrings. Sensing that she could still be loved, she ran out into the dark night, longing to be overtaken once more by the desire of that being who had servilely surrendered to his own ambition. But no one searched for her; no one went after her or forced her to return and yield once again to prostitution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For several weeks, she returned to her quiet, insipid life\u2014free of blackmail and passion, free of abuse and violence, filled only with indifference and solitude. She began to miss her sadness and desolation as an addict misses the poison that corrupts their veins and reason. She returned to him, having learned that in the lunar darkness there lurk dangers far more terrible than the ruthless lovelessness of the sun at dusk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
From then on, her life turned into a monotonous spiral of nocturnal battles and surrenders, until, in the middle of that arid, desolate desert, there arrived the most radiant of her mirages: cinema\u2014and with it, all her delusions and daydreams. Suddenly, everything she had craved in her dark nights seemed to sprout magically from nothingness in the hands of those beings arrived from some strange, distant place, their light pouring generously over the woods and lonely houses, giving them an enchanted look, like an exotic fairytale of a land spellbound under its sway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And that night, the full moon shone intensely on the horizon, radiating through the window of her tiny room onto Alba\u2019s naked body as she slept in bed\u2014a body that seemed to glow beneath its beam like a strange, hypnotic vision from which that same whitish light emanated for a few brief moments. A cold light, void of fire: a pale reflection of that other distant light which both, so greedily in their darkness, could not help but yearn for. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The moment had arrived, and Alba knew\u2014just as Dante had known after seeing Beatrice for the first time\u2014that she had crossed a threshold of no return. The joy and happiness she had felt over those last few days gave way to an infinite sadness that corroded her soul. That afternoon, life ended and death began. She looked at herself in the mirror, drew back the window curtains, and began to weep bitterly. It was a frigid winter afternoon, and it was raining. Raining over the green meadows and vast forests surrounding her tiny childhood room. Raining over the rooftops of the small town lost among high mountains, which had kept her secluded and safe from the vast world she so longed to know. Raining upon souls, the raindrops stained with tears of blood that resisted losing themselves in the rain of oblivion\u2014black tears born from infected souls like hers, oozing the coagulated blood that seeped from their fractures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She gave a kiss to Andrea, her velvet doll, and put on her finest dress to look resplendent for the farewell ceremony. Everyone was there: the famed young leading man, the promising director, those who had enjoyed her body on wild nights of alcohol and sex after shoots, and those who could not even imagine that such a thing had ever happened there; those who had acted before the cameras, and those who, like her, had dreamt behind them of doing so one day. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
She summoned her courage and began wandering through rooms and halls, smiling and greeting everyone with a feigned, exaggerated joy and warmth. They all spoke to her of their new projects and hopes, and she pretended to listen passionately, rejoicing for them and for the gifts life still held in store for them, until suddenly everything vanished and before her opened a deep abyss into which her soul collapsed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A stranger\u2014a grey, solitary being who was standing there\u2014took her by the arm and told her that he was the author of that story she had been dreaming about, and that those characters she so desired and envied at the same time were nothing more than projections and delusions of her inflamed imagination. She listened to him in silence, and for a fleeting moment she dreamed that one day someone like him would also write something thinking of her, so that her body might imprint it upon hundreds of thousands of retinas, allowing the world to know the happiness and pain of a soul confined within its silence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Instead, that man merely did as all the others before him had done: he took her to his room\u2014a dull, dark room in which someone else, an eternal and real presence, oblivious to all the ridiculous afflictions and desires of those men, could not help but notice her grief, welcoming her into its eternal bosom with infinite sadness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She looked at herself in the mirror, drew back the window curtains, and began to weep bitterly. It was a frigid winter night, and it was raining. Raining over the green meadows and vast forests surrounding that dull hotel room. Raining over the rooftops of the small town lost among high mountains, which had kept her secluded and safe from the vast world she so longed to know. Raining upon souls, the raindrops stained with tears of blood that burst upon impact as her empty body hit the cold, dark pavement of the street\u2014black tears born from infected souls like hers, oozing the coagulated blood that seeped from their fractures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
By the time I go down to the hotel lobby, it has already grown dark, and everyone is there. Almost the entire production crew is present: camera operators, electricians, gaffers, makeup artists, sound technicians, art directors, and a crowd of people I have never seen before and will never see again after tonight. One of the screenwriters approaches me and invites me to sit with him and most of the directing team by a large window overlooking the night lights of the small town where we have been shooting most of the film\u2019s scenes. Its houses and streets seem to have recovered their tranquillity at last, having finally rid themselves of all of us after six weeks of turmoil and commotion. I feel no desire to speak with any of them and politely decline their invitation, claiming I don't feel well and am only staying down here for a few minutes before retiring back to my room.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In truth, I have nothing to do with any of them or with their film. If I am here now, it is only because the director insisted that I be the one to recite the insipid lines that close the story\u2014as if featuring the author, rather than using a voiceover, somehow more convincingly validated his alleged inspiration from the previously written text. Perhaps I should have told him that it is precisely in how it differs from the written story that the artistic value of his film lies, and that I myself would never narrate that tale again in the same way I did two years ago. But instead, I boarded a train three nights ago and stood before a camera to recite, with a solemn expression, words that now felt empty and devoid of meaning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Javier Rodrigo, the promising actor cast as the protagonist, walks up to the bar and orders a sparkling water. He looks at me and says the story captivated him from the very first moment he read my novel, calling it a true challenge to portray its charismatic lead on screen. I smile, and he asks if I\u2019ve thought about writing a sequel. He says that now that a movie has been made and people will be talking about it, I really ought to. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Suddenly, a very young woman\u2014no older than twenty\u2014stands beside us, looking at us with a smile, saying nothing. She is very drunk, and I feel a certain secondhand embarrassment looking at her after having watched her pursue Javier and several members of the directing team in an almost obscene manner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Javier introduces us and seizes the opportunity to quickly slip away from her. I ask if she is an actress too, and she laughs, shaking her head. She says she was part of the local location team, though she appears in the movie as well. She is on screen for two minutes, standing silently behind a counter when the protagonist and his girlfriend rob a pharmacy. I say that had I known earlier, I would have written a line or two for her character, and she begins to laugh hysterical-like while ordering another gin and tonic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I ask if she hasn't had too much to drink, and she laughs again, saying that's what one is supposed to do at celebrations. She says that now that the movie is finished, we will all leave to pursue our projects, but she will stay right here, continuing her same grey, apathetic life, walking through deserted streets that will only torture her by reminding her of these past few days of happiness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I remain silent, feeling unintentionally ashamed of the glamour and stupid fantasies that those of us involved in film shoots can spark when we cross paths with certain lives, while she finishes her drink and collapses onto the bar. I catch her by the waist, lean her against my shoulder, and manage to drag her to the hotel entrance so she can breathe the fresh night air. She begins to groan and shout, saying she wants to die, and I decide to take her up to my room, trying to calm her down and spare her the embarrassing spectacle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Upon entering my room, I lay her on a sofa, and though it is a bit chilly, I open all the windows to let the night breeze in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\"Are we going to fuck to celebrate that the movie is finished?\" she asks, laughing again with that unhinged laugh.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I remain silent and observe the sinuous folds of her firm skin and the curves of her young body. For a moment, I feel the arousal and bliss of a time long past, when such a question would not have sounded like a macabre mockery. I would like to tell her yes, but to forget about movies and celebrations\u2014that right now I feel a terrible sadness, and she is the only one who can help me by welcoming me between her long, muscular legs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\"No,\" I reply, standing before her. \"You're going to take a bath, and you'll feel much better.\"<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\"A bath, yes,\" she repeats like an automaton, \"but first I'll have something to drink.\"<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She gets up and stumbles over to a cabinet with drinks next to a table holding several copies of my novel. She picks one up, saying she wants me to sign it for her. I sit across from her and hand the copy back after writing a brief inscription, saying that I am now going to prepare her bath.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\"'For Alba, whom I was lucky enough to meet thanks to this stupid novel,'\" she reads aloud before dropping it onto the floor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\"Yes, for Alba,\" I say, picking it up. \"A woman far more dazzling than any character in a novel or a film.\"<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I step into the bathroom and begin filling the tub with hot water. Despite the sound of running water, I can hear her talking to herself and stumbling drunkenly around the room with a glass in her hand, until, after a few minutes of tense silence, I begin to hear the sound of shouting outside.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I rush frantically back into the bedroom, and Alba is gone. The noise of people screaming in the street grows louder, and I lean over the balcony. Suddenly, a strange sensation freezes my blood: looking down, I see a crowd gathered around Alba's lifeless body after she threw herself into the void from my room. Some of those surrounding her look up to where I am standing, and I immediately draw back as if I had been the one guilty of that horrible tragedy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I sit broken in an armchair. On the table lies the open copy of my novel. Beneath my inscription celebrating having met her thanks to that stupid novel, Alba has written in a sinuous hand: \"Not as stupid as life.\"<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Free adaptation of a short-story by Sam Shepard from Motel Chronicles<\/strong> (1982)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n Accessed 1 times<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It must have been a full-moon night in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean\u2014en route to the unfamiliar home of a maternal aunt in a foreign country\u2014when, according to Alba\u2019s hazy memories, one of the ship\u2019s crew members told her a story. 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