In the middle of a small living room an unrecognized animal always find a place to stay. It is apparently a dog, even if only a few people could state it. On the kitchen there are three small stools around the table, three flower vases on them with stems which refuse to bloom to having leaves and flowers. In front of the window to the rear of the house to see the yard which is perfectly illuminated, it can be seen a silver incense vessel which for many years ago is waiting for spreading out its smoky limbs to attract to some spirit.
I do not know why for me is so attractive to see the outside of that house from the sidewalk. It takes me in as if I were an injusticeÂ’s obtuse symbol and the melancholy painted with the color of the canary yellow with all the doors painted with the blue sky color. A serpent is living inside.
Alessandra hasn’t bitten to anybody yet. Its poison has become emancipated in its mouth, therefore she no longer bites, it does not make any sense. She knows that she is still a serpent. At the time she introduces herself, with a trained gesture, she spreads out the letter S from her name like a venomous hissing. “I am Alessandra”, she says, and for a second you have the certainty to have seen pass your whole life in front of you. There is a rattlesnake with green eyes and brown skin, she bows near to your face: you really expect it would show from her mouth a black and bifid tongue. In spite of it, she indulgently spares your life. Now you know to Alessandra.
I am a fakir when I tell her that I have changed a little bit more since I know her and I make love to her. She always gets mad. She does not believe in loveÂ… either in God or good-looking demons. At sunset, she sits down in front of the large window that is in the back of the house where her silver incense vessel is; there she pretends that she prays and that she is about to ignite it, but she never does it. Or she possibly does. I simply don not believe in her and in her brilliant incense vessel either.
The AlessandraÂ’s tongue is not black. It is a kind of deep pink, it is almost red. Neither it is bifid. Its tongue has a lengthened tip, with which she slowly caresses the roof of my mouth. It is humid and lukewarm; and, as a fish, it slips and it is not allowed to seize. The AlessandraÂ’s tongue is red; therefore, its words are red too.

Something extraordinary happened today. I was released from that trance in which I have lived for some years. She, the serpent, put me away. Captivated for her voice in days go by, today I listened to her to pronounce my name in order to expose me like an antagonist sorcerer of her magic. She said me in my night “no more adventures of a man in my life; it is me who plays with the desperate shrieks of the cats; you make they become silent. In the afternoons, I try to caress my dead mother; however, when you look at me to do it makes me think she is alive. My incense vessel refuses to open up in order to receive the flame that will light it since it knows you prefer the smelly smoke from your tobacco… (She sighs); I have stopped to yield poison in my mouth in view of the fearing thought to kill you by mistake… Oscar”.
I did not know about all those things. I feel sorry for her in the preceding seconds to this oblivion, which I want it becomes real at this moment.


Â…Â…Â…Â…Â…Â…Â…Â…Â…Â…Â…Â…Â…Â…Â…Â…Â…Â…Â…Â…Â…Â…Â…

I wantÂ…Â… I want to abandon you and to leave far from here, as it is possible in a jump.
IÂ’m repented and, after having been tossed, I try to enter again. But, during that night behind the door of your home, I listen to the rattle shaking preventing me from to pass over the threshold of your entrance. It hypnotizes me. I spend my night outside, smoking and waking up your neighbors by the conversation at the top of oneÂ’s voice which I have with your grandma. She claims me to have been me who turned her granddaughter into such a poisonous reptile. While I reply her that Alessa was born from a soft egg that was under a rock during the hot season. But she doesnÂ’t believe me. Probably she is really dead.
Before to meet you I liked scent of the fallen trees. In the forest they have a sweet and attractive aroma. During the winter I used to be a woodcutter and a gardener in the summer. I like citron blossom.
I met you during an interminable autumn, at midday of the chestnut celebration by the woodcutters. Many men die on that day. They, extraneously, don’t take out the serpents on their way in looking for chestnuts. They told that when a naked woman is met by chance at woods they make her love and they die by a time-consuming ecstasy afterwards. While he looks at the bare victim his body remains curved like if were walking in all fours and its penis still erected. I don’t think on what it says because I met you while you were biting a victim, and you both didn’t copulate. You was looking at him and dispossessing him, in the meantime, with your fatal kiss you was perforating his skin, wrinkled by the integrity of his life… “damn man you are, and nourishment of inferior beasts be your flesh. By your beautiful chastity toward other female you deceive your wife when she desires you at the most and she longs for you being faithful, but you bring sin and forbidden experiments to her bed. You are an inferior being and a jeer among men…” After saying this, the man die.
I still have the certainty that you knew I was there watching you killing to that poor devil. Pushing forward with your arms you separated yourself of him. It was in the moment of the rejection that puts aside what is not liked yet. As soon as the body of the woodcutter fell down and it beat the infinite land of the forest, the scene was filled with a sweet and soft scent. After I have been in that wonderful state of interdiction I recovered myself and I could see you naked were running. Running away of the defenseless predator; your back was shinning. Your skin is that one of a black serpent, scaled in an hallucinating delirium, which does not convalesce itself from its nature.
I have not gotten weary of looking for you –I still hunting you. Even though I heard your rattle shaking, I’m not afraid of it-. Many years ago, the ninth day, the first hour, I found you outdoors. Without risk of being injured I could draw near to you because you are cold-blooded as well as all the reptile. Your drowsy, slow, movements, would make you my prey. The old woman that used to take care of you took me by surprise through the window. She left the house shouting incoherent stuffs, whereas I was carrying you inside of my bag bound for the unknown city. “They are taking my girl!, my granddaughter!, they are kidnapping her!… a huntsman is taking my little woman!” The unfortunate woman always thought that her granddaughter, as a loneliness partner, has truly been a woman. She did not stop shouting those nonsense stuffs until she die.
You agreed to come with me once I kissed you. I have never taken what is not belonged to me. Therefore, meanwhile you were waiting for the sun rises and it warms your body up, I was quietly approaching the rock where you were resting on. You straightened up your head for make me notice that you have seen me for you were prepared to defend yourself. At this moment you recognized me and said me with that particular sound from a serpent in your voice “come here, I was waiting for you. I’m Alessssandra” At once, a sense of fear made me to hesitate. That was the only time!. I never thought your welcome neither having the fortune for not have the fear for being bitten because of you knew my name “Take me to the city, Oscar, and I will live with you…” Afterwards, you entered into my jacket rattling and I carry you with me.”
You’ve chosen the place where you would live in: “This is my home and here you will stay by my side while I want to feel like that.” There have been thirteen years ago since I arrived here bringing a serpent with me. In a short time, your grandmother arrived carrying with her that silver incense vessel which was holding up from her neck. Also, that undefined beast which is almost always sleeping over that wicker carpet in the center of the house made by you, came to live with us.
I always have the same dream, I never put myself aside of it. Now, you lies over the big and flat stone where I saw you jus that day which I brought you to the city. You are still coiled crying inconceivable words: “What a pleasure I’m feeling! The ghosts have come and they warm me…!” –exhaling you are saying- and by saying it softly you caress your breast and belly with your hands, curling up those who are invisible beings for me and with you watch me out, and also you curls up my own sensation of the time. I believe right now you feed the days that left form my life in that sweet shadow under your breast.

Many hours have passed by since I left your house. The frenzied harangue of your pearly rattled is not heard anymore. Immediately, worried I enter in a hurry, and bump into that enigmatic beast. A wool quilt is observing me with its red eyes: those are beautiful buttons which they may belonged to a kingÂ’s cape. I stand up and go on toward my bedroom. Now IÂ’m crying. My serpent is dead. Immobile, it is coiled in its own fatality, her eyes are watching toward the door. Waiting for me she is observing me from another world. I listen her grandmother who is praying, but I do not care. I still absorbed by my inconsolable loss; only the steaming touch of that magic incense vessel console me as a long huge comes out from it. Then I terrify myself: I hear my name as a part of the prayers of the old woman. IÂ’m a ghost and she prays for my eternal rest.

Just once we talk about the future.
-Had you get from me what you wish, Alessa?
-Everything, but I never defeated youÂ…
-Are you going to kill me sometime?
-Probably, if I can.
-Why?
-I love you; later on, I will die.
-I going to leave you Alessa.
“So be it” –She said and taste the air with her tongue.

03/25/2005

Author's Note: Translation to English by Zhaidy A.
Gracias por el toque afectuosísimo y mágico

Posted on 03/26/2005
Copyright © 2024 Oscar Martínez