VI PREMIO INTERNACIONAL DE CUENTO “LAS DALIAS” THE VI “LAS DALIAS” INTERNATIONAL SHORT STORY AWARD

The voices and a metallic clanging brought him out of his dream. He’d always been a scaredycat, a wimp, a coward. Time and time again he’d heard his old man say, «Our son is a faggot!». «Hell, this will toughen him up!». «In the army he will learn to defend himself, Cristina». Cristina… his mother. After all, what did it mean to be a man? What did it mean to be a soldier? He new that nothing, not even something as harsh and alienating as the compulsory military service would keep him from those two congenital diseases: loneliness and fear.

The wind was pounding on the island like it hadn’t done so for days, biting at his eyelids with its sheet of white needles. He couldn’t feel his legs, they were stiff under the heavy weight of the snow. His stomach groaned with hunger, and he couldn’t help but think of the food they had promised to bring from the Breadbasket of the World. He was also thirsty, his lips were dry and soar, his nose was runny. The island he had come to defend was attacking him, like a wild wolf he hadn’t managed to tame.

Suddenly, he saw a pair of boots. Polished white leather, laced-up to the sky, and with the bottom of somebody’s trousers stuffed into them. Those feet must have felt warm and comfortable in those fluffy cotton socks, not like his poor feet. He felt jealous of the enemy.

He was still shaking, more nervous than cold. He could smell the sad scent of boot polish; he felt the damp earth oozing from under the boots that were now treading around his body. He felt the different odours penetrating his nostrils with scandalous intensity: the pang of gunpowder coming from the rifle that had fallen next to his face, the rank urine that had briefly warmed his crotch, the sweet blood that spoke of his fate.

He leaned on his good arm and dipped his finger once more into the blood. He drew a speech balloon that that said, «FUCK YOU», which incidentally was the only thing he knew how to say in English, thanks to the teachings of his comrades on his first day in the Malvinas. All done. It was time. Now he could leave in peace, far from that unforgiving place that seemed to be covered with the remains of a gigantic window in the sky that had become unhinged and had crashed down to the ground.

–What a disaster –he mumbled–. Nobody’s coming to clear all this up. Not even the dirty snow, not even the dead.

He pulled out a half-smoked Marlboro cigarette from his jacket and, pushing the butt a little into the snow, placed it in the mouth of Señor Torcaza.

–There’s always time for one of these…

A shadow creeped up in front of him: it was the black snow many of his comrades had already seen. They lay there, spread over the cold ground, like discarded rubbish bags.

He heard the FAL hammer’s cock.

«What a disaster –he mumbled again, almost out of breath– nobody’s going to clear all of this up», a few seconds before the British soldier, camouflaged wraith, opened fire.