Delirium

Delirium Read Online Free PDF

Book: Delirium Read Online Free PDF
Author: Laura Restrepo
Tags: Fiction, Literary
remember that clearly, at the far end of the room Agustina’s eyes were shining, with an unhealthy gleam but they were shining, as if whatever was sapping her strength had been incapable of breaking the intensity of her gaze, in fact to the contrary, amid the sudden waste of her body I discerned a challenge in her eyes that filled me with fear, something disturbing, an excessive vibration that brought to mind the word
delirium
, Agustina was possessed by some delirium that simmered inside her with a slow, hostile shudder.
    And yet it had been only four days since I’d gone away and left her painting the walls of the front room of our apartment a mossy green, a color she herself had chosen because, as she explained to me, feng shui advises it for couples like us, and to prevent her from spouting some complicated Eastern theory, I was careful not to ask her what she meant by couples like us or why moss green would be good for us. I had to drive my van to Ibagué on Wednesday to deliver an order of Purina, so I decided to take advantage of a free stay my health insurance offered at Las Palmeras Holiday Resort, tacky and middle class, as I informed Agustina, but it had a pool and cabins and was in a stunning mountain valley in the warm country, and ultimately why find fault when I couldn’t have afforded anything better anyway. I wanted to spend a few days there with my two sons, Toño and Carlos, my children with Marta Elena, my first wife; for a while I’d needed some time with them to see how they were feeling, and to continue mending the family closeness that had been ruptured when I separated from their mother.
    That was my reason for not inviting Agustina, too, although she gets along well with the boys and they get along well with her; in fact, I can’t help but feel that there are moments when a generational bond is established among the three of them that leaves me out, or to put it another way, a slightly hypnotic and almost physical link, created when my two sons’ eyes light up at the sight of Agustina’s beauty, and she, in turn, gazes nostalgically at those sculpted adolescent bodies like someone relinquishing a place she isn’t fated to visit. What I mean is, things cool a few degrees between my sons and me when she’s there; our conversation turns a little stiff and we behave as though in the presence of company.
    When I informed Agustina that I was taking the trip alone, she threw one of those seismic fits that have led me to call her my rabid plaything, because Agustina is like that, witty and amusing but with a vicious temper. Afterward she refused to speak to me for several hours, and at last, when she was calmer, she asked how I could possibly not realize that she might like a break and some sunshine, too, that we had no time together during the week because I was at work and I spent Saturdays with Toño and Carlos. It broke my heart to hear Agustina’s reproaches because in a way she’s like an older daughter to me whom I sometimes neglect in favor of my other two children, and also because the sun and warmth make her even more desirable, cheering her up and toasting her skin, which is usually so excessively white that it’s almost blue, and it broke my heart, too, because all her complaints were true, as true as they were inevitable: nothing in the world, not even my devotion to her, would prevent me from using those coupons and free days to go off alone with my two boys.
    Upon seeing that I wasn’t going to change my mind, Agustina pulled an old trick from her sleeve: she told me she had a feeling that something bad was going to happen, and only someone who has the dubious fortune of living with a visionary can understand the tyranny this represents, because by raising the alarm of impending danger, the visionary’s premonitions freeze trips, plans, and impulses in such a way that you never discover whether the supposed mishap would have come about or not; or actually it does come about even
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