Fresh tears filled her downcast eyes and rolled over her cheeks as she blinked. “How did you come to be here, Pepa?” “I was one of five daughters. The last one,” she said softly. I glanced at her husband, who had stirred in his sleep and mumbled noisily before resuming his snoring. I knew exactly what she meant. A daughter could mean the opportunity for a good alliance or a financial burden on her father. In a household of five daughters, the father would be happy to find anyone to take them. Without a dowry, a girl would likely never be able to marry, or to be choosy about it. Pepa told me her husband had agreed to marry her without a dowry, despite her knowing how to read. Gregorio awakened at the sound of her voice. He was listening. I couldn’t help that. In her town, she said, everyone thought her strange because she could read. It had been a relief to accompany her husband in his quest for fortune in the Indies.Her mother had tried to convince him to leave her in a convent, but he wouldn’t hear of it. Gregorio kept watching her, sympathetically. He might have consoled her himself had her husband not awakened at that instant. Gregorio narrowed his eyes and shot him a loathsome look from head to toe. “I’ll have something brought for you, señora,” Gregorio said. “You’ll need your strength.” “Gregorio is right, you should eat,” I said. This unexpected attention seemed to perk her spirits. “I can read something to you all, if you like,” she said, eyes lowered. “Of course,” I said, breaking the silence. “What do you have there?” “It’s the Lazarillo de Tormes,” she said, taking a small book out from under the folds of her skirt. The corners of her mouth trembled as she tried to smile. She must have been protecting that book like an amulet. “This is a story about a rascal who is a blind man’s guide. Do you know it? Here, listen: Fainting and dying of hunger, I staggered along the street, and while passing by the Barley Square I found an old praying woman with more tooth than a wild boar . . .”
Raindrops It was daybreak when we turned our eyes toward the dark spot of the horizon our fate stood, windless inexplicable, inaccessible shamelessly challenging us though only the man with the severed arm, sighted and turned back to the house where he sat on his chair such calmness on his face as if he had solved all the problems of the world while we kept our hands extended so the heavy drops of the first autumn rain would fall onto our palms
Manolis Aligizakis 