Alejandro Dolina Li returned home after years of absence.
In China, the wars are long and complex.
endlessly advancing armies, sometimes encounter enemies, because the Empire is huge and politics is swinging.
News travels very slowly. A mail can take three years or ten, to tour the country from end to end. Thus, the rulers ignore the fate of his troops and, usually, armies do not come back or never return when he sent the prince who has moved to another camp, another look or another world.
The people of Li was just a village with no name. Almost all the men had gone to war thirty years earlier. Almost none returned. Li
were lucky. The only fact not be lost forever in the unforgiving desert of central China, or the labyrinth of rivers and canals whose banks one hundred different dialects are spoken, could be seen as a favor infrequent destination. But perhaps Li was not my habit to philosophize about the alternation of pomp and adverse events. For him, life was dark, cloudy, incomprehensible, but also fatal, unquestionable.
When you come to town, was about to pass by. Not that I have changed a lot, but after thirty years of absence and endless pilgrimage towns, Li was rather confused ideas about their place of origin.
By the way, did not recognize anyone. He looked painfully home, on streets like dying in the river. " In one of them acknowledged that in fact bluffing had been hung long after his departure. He knocked on the door and a woman got tired of poverty. There were gestures of joy and love. Those wretched beings bowed to the news with resignation, as if knowing that each was the threshold of new diseases.
Although the mechanism of memory of their children was linked to number three, five were found in Li's return. They were all big men who worked the land, but the child was in a tiny cleaning function in the provincial administration. Li
not work. He sat long hours at the door of his house and at night ate in silence, with his family. Went to bed early and never touched his wife. Very occasionally going to the pub and get drunk with cheap alcohol. At times fighting with other men, for no reason. Someone asked:
- You're the one who has returned from the war? "And he broke a jar in the head.
One day his woman dared to speak. "Husband
no longer proceed as before your departure. He said he could not remember what came before his departure. Hü
was a merchant in the capital who spent four or five times a year by the village.
Li's wife and some others waiting for their husbands, had taken a lover. Hü dispatched those meetings in the form of transient tremors on the grass at night. In truth, he did not remember with complete accuracy which of those women were his lovers. He hoped they were going to cross on their way and were going to drag into the woods, eventually. So he was surprised when the wife of Li ran after him in an alley and said excitedly:
"My husband is back, and do not take me. - Who is your husband? Hü asked.
"His name is Li.
"Everyone in the village are called Li.
"He went to war and is the son of Li, the peasant.
"I will be discreet," said Hu. And he went singing an obscene song.
was Li's wife, some nights, a dark tendency to want the man who slept with her was an imposter. Perhaps expecting the arrival of another Li, in the form of a young man and burning. Meanwhile, Li himself used to wonder how he had chosen to have children a woman so bleak.
One evening, angered by the lack of firewood, Li reproached his wife for his father-unfulfilled promise of delivering six hens commission as a wedding. She said nothing, but he remembered the solemn transfer of a pig.
Years later, passed through the village t'ieh-kuai Li, or Li, the iron crutch, one of the eight immortals. The locals gave him alms and stopped next to a cedar tree, where some elderly patients healed with magic drugs. At dusk, lit a blue flame and made a broth boil there whose secret ingredients thrown inspiring fumes. The gods made t'ieh-kuai Li a timely disclosures when the immortal looked at the bottom of the pot. A young man asked what was life. T'ieh-kuai Li did drink a little broth to a black cat. The cat died and t'ieh-kuai Li said the young man
"Life is not knowing what life is.
Encouraged by a growing enthusiasm, Li's wife was brought closer to the teacher and finally dared to ask.
"A man came to my house. Is it the same as it was?
t'ieh-kuai Li looked at the pot and saw the fumes to Li, the real husband of the woman, dead in the war one month after the party. Also saw the man who slept with her now as it was in his youth, recently married to another girl in a house like in a street toward the river was dying.
then realized the mistake which had returned. Compared the possible destinations, exchanged penalties and saw the end of all roads. Then another cat gave a little broth. The cat died.
"All men are returning because they have gone.
The woman returned home and lived for many years with Li. Then they all died off. Today nobody remembers them in that town. And in truth, nobody knows what was that town.
0 comments:
Post a Comment