Last Tango on a Wintry Day - Carmen Ruggero (best novels of all time .TXT) 📗

that trip to the movies or that walk in the park.
“My father said no,” I said to Sergio, apologetically.
“Maybe some other time,” he said, though we both knew there wouldn’t be another time.


It was all too much for a young one to fathom. Unable to change the course of events, I let my heart bleed into whimsical rhymes exchanging anger, fear and confusion for wild and hopeless dreams – I escaped into a reality of my own.


Observing the sun as it filtered through the oak leaves, I discovered the leaves turned yellow and so I wrote about how light changed the look of things – such a simple thought. But I also saw how darkness obliterated the leaf.


One evening on the following spring, my friend Rosa and I sat on my front steps talking when we noticed our friend Hector’s tall, slender figure turn quickly around the corner. His eyes darted nervously from Rosa’s face to mine and his lips were pale and stiff as he tried to smile. He buckled his long legs, sat next to us and whispered: “They came into our classroom – the soldiers came. They had weapons – took two of our classmates.”
Hector ran his fingers through his yellow hair and let his head hang low. “They told us not to move while they tore through everyone’s books and notes – quickly, as if they didn’t know what they were looking for. They finally found something … inside this guy’s satchel … a book … Martin Fierro by José Hernandez. They took him … asked him who was his closest friend … the poor guy was panicked … he pointed at someone and they took him too.”


When he finished his account, Hector got up quickly and started to walk away from us. He seemed lost.


“Will the students be let go?” I asked.


I can still see him standing there. He had tucked his hands inside his trouser pockets and his shirt bubbled behind him as it flapped to the breeze. He turned his head slowly toward me.


“Don’t be naïve, they’re dead by now.”


And I recalled the poem:

Naides me puede quitar
Aquello que Dios me dio

Lo que al mundo truje yo
Del mundo lo he de llevar.

No one can take from me
What was given to me by God

All I brought into the world
From the world I will take back.

That was the last time I saw Hector. No one knew where he’d gone; or if they knew, they weren’t saying. But his voice followed me that morning in June of 1959 as I ran through the pounding rain to my old empty house and I couldn’t make it go away. It spoke to me of a reality I didn’t want to hear.


Don’t be naïve … they’re dead … dead …

“Stop!” I yelled.

Go away little girl… they’re all gone… dead … run little girl, run…

And I ran until I got to my old house for that one final goodbye. Don’t be naïve … the voice spoke to me, again. I was barely sixteen – going on thirty-five – still considered too young to understand human passion, yet fully versed in death, fear and destruction. I pressed my hands to the glass and closed my eyes to block the rain and see the sun shine through the oak leaf in my fantasy in one last attempt to hold on; thinking, wishing … if I just didn’t turn around to face the empty house life could still go on as I had known it to be.

“Don’t be naïve, little girl,”

the voice whispered again.


And it’s hard to tell how long I stood at that window, thinking and then not; fighting ambivalence – feelings I couldn’t let go. All I could do was gaze into the wintry downpour.

THE END
Carmen Ruggero © 2009

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Publication Date: 10-17-2009

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