of Marguerite Yourcenar
merchants from Europe were sitting on the bridge, facing the blue sea, the indigo shade of gray patchwork sails patched . The sun constantly changing place between the ropes and, with the rolling of the ship, seemed to be jumping around like a ball that bounced over a very open mesh network. The ship had to turn constantly to avoid the pitfalls and the pilot, aware of the maneuver, he stroked his chin blue.
At dusk, the merchants landed on a paved shore white marble, blue veins streaked the surface of the large slabs that once were covered with temples. The shadow that each of the merchants dragged behind him on the road, walking in the direction of sunset, was more elongated, narrower and not as dark as at high noon, his tone, a very pale blue, reminded the dark circles that extend under the eyelids of a patient. In the white domes of mosques Mirrored blue markings, like tattoos on a delicate heart, from time to time, a turquoise was clear by its own weight of wood paneling and fell with a thud on the carpet and pale blue spring.
She got the moon and launched an erratic dance like a devilish spirit, between the conical tombs of the cemetery. The sky was blue, like the tail of a mermaid's scales, and the Greek merchant was in the mountains lining the horizon bare a resemblance to the shallow blue group and the Centaurs.
All concentrated their shining stars inside the palace women. Merchants entered the courtyard to keep out the wind and sea, but women, frightened, refused to receive them and skinned them in vain to force their hands to call the steel doors, gleaming like a leaf sable.
So intense was the cold, the Dutch merchant lost all five fingers of his left foot, the Italian merchant fingers amputated on his right hand a turtle that he had taken in the dark, by a simple cabochon lapis lazuli. Finally, a nigger out of the palace crying and explained that, night after night, the women rejected his love for not being sufficiently dark skin. The Greek merchant was able to ingratiate himself with the black thanks to the gift of a talisman made of dried blood and dirt of a cemetery, so the Nubian brought them into a large living overseas and recommended color for women who do not speak too high to avoid awaken the camels in his stable and are unaffected by snakes suck Moonlight milk.
merchants opened their coffers to the greedy eyes of the slaves, in the midst of fragrant blue smoke, but none of the women answered their questions and princesses did not accept his gifts. In a room full of gold, a china wearing an orange jumpsuit branded as the impostors, because they offered the rings became invisible at the touch of your skin yellow. None noticed the presence of a woman dressed in black, sitting on the end of a corridor, and as he inadvertently stepped on the folds of her skirt, she cursed them by invoking the blue sky in the language of the Tartars, invoking the sun the Turkish language, and invoking the sand in the language of the desert. In a room covered in cobwebs, the merchants were not answered with another woman, dressed in gray, which could be felt constantly to make sure that there was, in the next room, scarlet, merchants fled to the sight of a woman in red who was bleeding from a large open wound in the chest, although she seemed not to notice, because her dress was not even spotting.
were able to hide out in the wing where there were kitchens and deliberated about the best way to reach the cavern of sapphires. Constantly bothered by the bustle of the water carriers, and a mangy dog \u200b\u200bwas licking the stump Blue Italian merchant, who had lost fingers. At last, they saw the stairs from the cellar of a slave girl who had crushed ice in a cloudy crystal Glazed bowl, set it down without looking where, on a column of air, to let your hands free and able to wave, lifting up front, where the star tattooed mages. His blue-black hair flowing from his temples to his shoulders, his blue eyes looked at the world through two tears, and her mouth was only a wound blue. Her lavender dress, with fine fabric wash faded by tired, I was torn at the knees, because the girl was accustomed to prostrate themselves in prayer and made him constantly.
not matter that he did not understand the language merchants, he was deaf, so he merely nodded his head gravely when they inquired how to get to the treasure in a mirror showing her eyes the color of gem and then pointing his steps in the dust of the corridor. The Greek merchant offered her charms: the girl had rejected them as they made a happy woman, but with a bitter smile of a desperate woman, the Dutch merchant handed him a bag full of jewelry, but she bowed with hands rolling the poor dressed all broken, and they were unable to guess if it is deemed too indigent or too rich to such splendor.
Then with a blade of grass lifted the latch the door and found themselves in a courtyard inside round like a bucket filled to the edges of the cold morning light. The young man used his finger to open the second door into the plain, one after another, they headed inside the island by a road bordered by clumps of aloe. The shadows of the merchants were glued to their heels, which seven small black snakes, while the girl was devoid of any shade, which gave them to think about whether it would be a ghost.
hills, blue distance, turned black, brown or gray as it approached, however, the merchant of Touraine did not lose courage and give courage to sing songs of French soil. The Castilian merchant received twice the sting of a scorpion and his legs were swollen knee and took a ripe eggplant color, but did not seem to feel pain and even walked over safer and more solemn than the others, as if supported by two thick pillars of basalt blue. The Irish merchant, seeing how pale beaded drops of blood on the heels of the girl who walked barefoot on helmets china and broken glass.
When they reached the site, had to crawl on their knees to enter the cave opened to the world not just a narrow mouth and cracked. The cave was, however, more spacious of what had been expected and so their eyes had become good friends with the darkness everywhere discovered fragments of sky between the cracks of the rock. A very pure lake occupied the center of the basement, and when the Italian merchant threw a pebble to calculate the depth, not heard her fall, but bubbles are formed on the surface, like a siren suddenly desperate to have expelled all the air filled your lungs. The Greek merchant dipped their greedy hands in that water and dyed to the wrists, pulled as if it were the boiling vat of a shark, but failed to grab the sapphires that rowed, which fleets nautilus, denser those waters that the seas. Then, she undid her long braids and hair dipped in the lake: Sapphires are set on them as in a dark silky mesh network. Called first to the Dutch merchant, who got the precious stones in the leggings, then, the French merchant, who filled the slashing of sapphires, the Greek merchant crammed a bottle that led to the Castilian merchant, tearing sweaty leather gloves, the filled and put them round the neck, in such a way that seemed to have both hands cut off. When it was the turn of the Irish merchant, and sapphires were not in the lake, the slave girl took off a necklace of beads and carrying signs will ordered that he be put on the heart.
came out crawling on the cave and the girl asked the Irish merchant to help her roll a great stone to end the inning. Then, put a seal made with a little clay and a strand of her hair.
The way they were made longer than the morning round. The Castilian merchant, who began to suffer because of his legs poisoned, he staggered and swore by invoking the name of the Mother of God. The Dutch merchant, who was hungry, tried to wrest the blue ripe figs from a fig tree, but a swarm of bees hidden in the thick syrupy deeply stung in the throat and hands.
reached the bottom of the walls, the group took a detour to avoid the guards and walked quietly to the port of fishermen of sirens, which was always desert, for a long time ago that no sirens were already fishing that country. The boat floated gently into the water, attached to the toe of bronze, the only remains of a once colossal statue erected in honor of a god that no one remembered the name. In the spring, the slave was deaf intention of saying goodbye to the men, waving his hands placed on the heart, then, the Greek merchant took her by the wrists and dragged her into the boat, moved by the purpose of selling Venetian Prince Negroponte, who knew that he liked women injured or suffering from any disability. The girl was carried away without a fight and tears, falling on the wooden bridge, were transformed into beautiful aquamarine, so their killers managed to give reasons why it did mourn.
The left naked and tied to the mast, her body was so white that the ship served as a beacon in the night clear sailing between the islands. When they had finished their game of sticks, the merchants went down to the cabin to go to sleep. Towards dawn, the Dutch took the bridge spurred by the desire and went to the prisoner, willing to violating it. But behold, the girl had disappeared: the bands hung, empty, black trunk of the mast, like a belt too wide, and where his feet had touched soft and thin there was nothing but an aromatic herb mantoncito which gave off a humble blue.
In the days after a dead calm prevailed, and the rays of the sun, which fell perpendicularly upon the smooth color of algae, producing a squeal of hot iron dipped in cold water. The Castilian merchant's gangrenous legs had turned blue as the mountains that are discerned on the horizon and spills purulent slid from the tables of bridge to the sea. When suffering became intolerable, the man pulled a large knife belt and severed triangular up to the thighs of both legs poisoned. Died exhausted at dawn, after the merchant Sapphires legacy their Swiss, who was his mortal enemy.
After a week called at Smyrna and the merchant of Touraine, who had always feared the sea, he chose to land, intending to continue their journey on the back of a good mule. Armenian banker sapphires changed his ten thousand coins with the effigy of Prester John. They were perfectly round pieces and uploaded Frenchman happily with them until thirteen mules, but, so I came to Angers, after seven years of travel, was surprised to find that the currencies of the monarch did not give way in his country.
In Ragusa, the Dutch merchant traded its sapphires and a pitcher of beer served at the same dock, but had to spit that insipid liquid that he had thrown the same taste as the beer tavern in Amsterdam. The Italian merchant landed in Venice in order to make himself Dogo, but died murdered the day after his marriage to the lagoon. As for the Greek merchant, came to a tie out sapphires and suspend over the side of the boat, waiting for contact with the waves off its beautiful color beneficial blue. When wet, gems became liquid and hardly added to the treasure of the sea a few drops of clear water. The man was comforted catching fish and roasting to smoldering ashes.
One evening, after twenty-seven days of sailing, the ship was attacked by a privateer. The Merchant of Basel swallowed his sapphires to removing them from the greed of the pirates and died in appalling pain guts. Greek, jumped into the sea and was picked up by a dolphin, which led to Tinos. The Irishman, beaten to a pulp, was left for dead in the boat, among the corpses and empty bags, no one bothered to remove the false stone pendant blue I had no value. Thirty days later, the boat went adrift on its own in the port of Dublin and Irish dismounted to beg for a piece of bread.
was raining. The sloping roofs of houses for low suggesting large mirrors to capture the ghosts of the dead light. The uneven pavement is puddled more and more, the sky a dirty brown, looked so muddy that even the angels would have dared to leave the house of God, the streets were deserted, the position of a traveling draper who sold socks raw wool and shoelaces, he looked left at the edge of a sidewalk under an umbrella. Kings and bishops carved in the porch of the cathedral did nothing to prevent rain falling on their crowns or mitres, and the Magdalene received water in their bare breasts.
The merchant, all discouraged, he sat down under the porch next to a young beggar, so poor that his body, bluish cold, you could see through the tears in her gray dress. His knees knocked together slightly, his fingers covered with chilblains pressed a piece of bread. The merchant asked for the love of God who gave it, and she laid him in the act. The merchant wanted to give her the blue beads hanging because they do not Have it nothing else to offer, nothing more reached into his pocket, around your neck, between the beads of his rosary. Not finding him, she began to mourn heartbroken: no longer possessed anything that might remind you of the color hue of the sky and the sea where he had been about to perish.
sighed deeply and, as dusk and the cold fog thickened around, the girl was snuggled against him to keep her warm. The man asked him questions about the country and she replied in the rude dialect of the people who left long ago, while still very young. So aside shaggy hair covering the face of the beggar, but was so dirty that the rain was making in the regueritos white, and the merchant discovered with horror that the girl was blind and an ominous cloud covered the left eye. He left for it, however, laid his head on those bad knees covered in rags and slept calm: the right eye, which had been deprived of sight, was miraculously blue.
0 comments:
Post a Comment