Obabakoak

Obabakoak Read Online Free PDF

Book: Obabakoak Read Online Free PDF
Author: Bernardo Atxaga
impossible that such a thing could happen. But there was the proof that it had. The cream-colored envelope was real, as were the two handwritten sheets it contained. “Ask me anything you don’t understand,” said my father before leaving the room. I picked up the dictionary he’d given me for my birthday and began to read the letter.
    Outside the window, the sun, having failed to make any impression on the clouds, was burning out like a faint fire and a dark mantle was falling across the whole park, across the grass, the trees, and the lake. Only the swans seemed whiter and more luminous than before.
    Esteban Werfell switched on the lamp and took out Maria Vockel’s letter from one of the drawers in the table. Then, with great care, he began to transcribe it into his notebook.
    Dear Esteban,
    We shouldn’t be frightened of things we don’t understand, at least not when, as in our case, what is incomprehensible is also so delightful. That Sunday of which you speak, I was in bed with a slight sore throat and feeling very bored, when suddenly I felt like reading a book. But, as it happened, an electrical fault had plunged the whole house into darkness and I couldn’t start reading without first going to look for a candle. So I got up and went to the kitchen to find one.
    The event in which we were both involved occurred shortly afterward, as I was returning to my room holding the lit candle in my hand. First I heard the sound of an organ and then I saw a dark-haired boy sitting next to the old man who was playing the instrument, breathing heavily as he did so and swaying about over the keyboard. Then I heard the same words you did and I felt very happy, as if it had been a dream, a very nice dream. Is that what happened to you? Did you feel happy too? I hope so.
    Afterward I told my mother about it. But she took no notice of me and sent me back to bed saying I must be feverish. But we know what happened to us. The same thing happened to us both and there must be some reason for that.
    Then Maria Vockel went on to tell him about her life in Hamburg, so very different from the life he led in Obaba, so much more interesting. She learned languages, she went skating and sailing. She also went to the cinema, but not to see silent films; silent films, it seemed, were now old hat.
    The letter ended with a request. She would like a photo of him. Would he be kind enough to send one? She would reciprocate by sending hers. “I’m much blonder than you imagined,” she declared.
    Esteban Werfell smiled when he read that and returned the letter to the drawer. He had to go on writing and as fast as he could, for it was growing dark. The park had filled with shadows and the swans were asleep now in their house.
    Maria Vockel’s letter cheered me up so much that for the first time in my life I began to feel superior to the people of Obaba. Something astonishing had happened to me, not the sort of thing that would happen to just anyone, something that truly made me one of “the chosen.” Henceforward, I would be a strong person and not allow myself to be intimidated by the other “chosen ones” who used to point their fingers at me.
    For some time I continued going around with my school friends. I needed their company, in part because my relationship with Maria Vockel was too great a novelty to be kept a secret. And when, like the adolescents we were, we met up to exchange confidences, I tended to be the most talkative of all, even more than Andrés.
    But they didn’t like that girl from Hamburg. They said she was probably ugly and wore glasses and was bound to be boring, why else would she talk so much about books and reading.
    “Doesn’t she ever mention ‘it’?” they would ask, laughing and making obscene gestures.
    I defended myself by showing them the photo of a young girl, fair-haired and without glasses, her lips curved in a smile, and chided them for their coarseness. But they would just start laughing again and cast
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