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Seven
Short Stories. Edited
by Columbia Stationery Corp.
N.Y. 1981.
“The
Billiard Player”
“My
beach is not like yours. It is quite different from the
beaches known.
The
sand is white as snow.
When someone walks on them, no footprints are left,
they disappear magically.
So
is my beach, my white, pure and immaculate huge
surface.
It
also has other characteristics.
My beach has no sky.
It is covered by a grey coloured roof, like a
ceiling that separates
it from the real sky.
Furthermore,
it has a sea
of blood. When
the waves die on the shore spotting the whiteness of the
sand, the dying color disappears all of a sudden, as soon
as the blood goes off.
In
the middle of this silent solitude, on the beach
full with blood, its white sand and grey stormy ceiling,
there is a billiard table.
A
dutch-made billiard, with a cue leaned on one side and
three coloured balls on the green felt cover.
One white, one blue and the other red.
Every
Friday 13 of each month, on the dot, a little man appears with a smooth skinned face and egged features.
The
little man wears a neat formal suit.
He is dressed with the garment of a professional
billiard player: a luxurious smoking, shiny silk lapels, a starched skirt,
black ribboned tie and
varnished point-shaped shoes.
He
stops and watches the billiard position with his eyesless
face. He steps towards the table while his trucks disappear
imediately behind him.
He
gets closer as he does every Friday , he carefully takes
the cue and starts playing.
During
24 hours, from one day to the next, he restlessly makes
caroms without pause, in a neglecting attitude.
It
is evident that the player is an unerring maker of caroms
because he never fails in making the three ivory balls
strike among each other.
And even then they remain in the most difficult
positions against the table cushions, the smoothed faced
little man, is embodied to adopt the most complex
positions and applies all kind of resources without
violating the rules of the game in order to obtain more
and more caroms without errors.
When
the day is over, the billiard player, as he usually uses
to do from the beginning, he puts the cue again beside the
table and departs towards the dunes from where he watches
the billiard table that stands at the seaside and then he
disappears among the tamarisks until the next Friday 13,
to continue his routine as unerring caroms maker.
One
Friday 13 comes that the little man observes from the
dunes, that a bird is overflying
the table with fluttering wings.
It
is an
enormous alluminum bird with
wings like church window glasses.
The
bird breaks the silence of my beach with a chirping and
fragile fluttering.
The
strange appearance surprises the billiard player who shows
amazing marks on his smooth face.
He takes the cue to attack the bird without
success. The
confused bird, lays down on the table and tempted by the
balls, starts eating
al of them one by one as if they were three fruits.
The
player takes a long time to react .
In fact, when
the bird ate the
balls, it has freed him from the routine of making caroms.
He
puts the cue over his shoulder as if it were a rifle and
decides to depart along the pathway of the dunes.
As
he always does, he climbs to the top of my beach.
He
cannot help but stopping
for a while to see the billiard table for the last time.
He does it just in the moment that the huge bird
breaks off its legs from the green felt and retakes its
flight.
The
little man discovers that the bird lays three eggs on the
table, but he cannot recognize them as eggs.
He takes for granted that they are balls, and they
have turned into three little rugby balls.
He
feels himself pushed to go back quickly to the billiard
table. He is
completely sure that if he aims the cue efficiently to the
eggs, the carom will be performed, the eggs will be broken
on striking among each other and finally he wil be able to
get rid of the slavery of being and eternal effective
player.
He
takes the cue, with the care
that he never needed before and taking his best
aim not to fail, as if his life would depend on his
act. The eggs
break before open
wide amazing eyes.
But
when the eggs break, three strange red birds are born from
its shells.
The
three fighting
birds start to grow up in age, height and plumage
all of a sudden.
They
flow up surprisingly, entering into a bloody fight against
the crystal aluminium bird and they immediately break its
tail and both wings that when
falling down into the sea makes its bloody water to
become into a bright and transparent blue colour.
The
winning birds flow violently ver the billiard table like a
spiral where the little man stands completely amazed.
They
drill three holes in the ceiling like wood-peckers and
flow away through them towards the open sky, far beyond
the roof of my beach.
The
billiard player realizes that it has no use to stay there.
He uses the cue as a walking stick and convincely
decides to go away.
This
time no truck of his feet or walking stick are left behind
but when he reaches
the last dune he cannot help to turn down and watch
the billiard table as he has always done.
He
can clearly see three perfect circles drawn over the green
felt, marked by the shining rays that come from the sky through
three holes left by the huge birds.
Accordingly,
the billiard player still visits my beach each Friday 13
but he has changed his smooth face by one
definitely featured, elegant in his
luxurious smoking, his shiny silk lapels, his
starched skirt , his black ribboned tie and his varnished
point shaped shoes to continue making caroms with spots of
lights for ever. "If
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