Triunfo Arciniegas
THE TEST
Triunfo Arciniegas
THE TEST Translated by Ver贸nica Arciniegas Ilustrations by Adolfo Serra and others Graphic Design by Alejandra Arciniegas
She looked at me with pity when I told her that I was willing to take the test of cutting a rose from her garden at midnight.
The rumor of her boyfriends’ disappearance was just a slander from women who envied her bewitching beauty.
The dogs barked furiously, grinning their threatening fangs and tightening their chains mercilessly while the woman led me by the hand to the door.
She made a gesture and the dogs hid their tails between their legs and coiled up like snakes.
Distant and forgetful, she closed the door and fastened the latch.
She did not want to know about my desires and my steps through this no-man's-land.
I took refuge, invisible, in the Osiris bar and the hours tore themselves up with painful slowness.
I returned at midnight, threw the rope and jumped the garden wall.
I cut the rose and then the dogs surrounded me without hurting me because I was one of them, with a tail and fangs.
While I was rolling around in pain on the ground, I understood that the message of their barking was not that of threat but of warning, and I listened to the woman crying in the back of the house.