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    Un ollo de vidro / A Glass Eye
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Un ollo de vidro / A Glass Eye

Daniel A. Rodríguez Castelao foi unha figura fundamental na arte, cultura e política galega do século XX. Un ollo de vidro, publicado en 1922 nunha colección de literatura popular en lingua galega promovida pola Editorial Céltiga, é un dos seus relatos máis populares. No relato, Castelao bota man da cultura tradicional galega e a súa relación coa morte.

Daniel A. Rodríguez Castelao was a major figure in Galician art, culture, and politics of the twentieth century. “A Glass Eye,” published in 1922 in a collection of popular literature in the Galician language promoted by Céltiga Press, is one of his best-liked stories. In it, Castelao relies on traditional Galician culture and its relationship with death.

Un ollo de vidro

Castelao. Autoría

Leutor:

Certo día fitoume unha vaca. ¿Que coidará de min?, pensei eu; e naquel intre a vaca baixou a testa e sigueu comendo na herba. Agora xa sei que a vaca somentes dixo:

—Bo, total un home con anteollos.

E ó mellor eu non son máis que o que coidou a vaca. Velaí a ledicia de pensar que cando a miña calivera estea ó descuberto xa non poderá xuzgarme ningunha vaca.

A morte non me arrepía e o mal que desexo ó meu nemigo é que viva até sobrevivirse.

Eu son dos que estruchan a cara pra apalpa-la propia calivera e non fuxo dos cimeterios endexamais.

Tanto é así que teño un amigo enterrador nun cimeterio de cibdade. Iste meu amigo non é, de certo, amigo meu; é somentes un ouxeto de esperencia, un coelliño de Indias. Un enterrador sabe sempre moitas cousas e cóntaas con humorismo. Un enterrador de cibdade que dispe e descalza ós mortos pra surti-las tendas de roupa vella, ten de sere home que lle cómpre a un humorista. Un enterrador que saca boa soldada co ouro dos dentes das caliveras tiña de sere meu amigo.

Iste enterrador tense por home de ben e cóntame cousas tráxicas que fan rir e cóntame cousas de rir que arrepían, e coas sorpresas da súa conversa fuxen as horas sen decatarme.

Boeno; o conto foi que un día collín o camiño do cimeterio e atopei ó enterrador un pouquiño non sei cómo, e dispois de falarmos moito díxome que tiña de contarme en segredo unha cousa, sempre que eu fose home de ben e amigo leal. Eu fiquei un pouco encorado polo medo á sorpresa descoñecida e, dispois de collerme polo ombreiro e arrechegarme os seus beizos podres á miña orella, díxome paseniñamente:

—¡Atopei uns papeles nunha caixa…! Nunha caixa que non sei de quen sería. O esquelete tiña na calivera un ollo de vidro que me fitaba con senreira.

E o enterrador sacou de a rentes do coiro uns papeles enrugados. O enterrador non sabía ler e doumos a min pra que llos lese. Eran cachos de periódico, papeles de fumar... todos numerados, e no primeiro campaban istas verbas: "Memorias dun esquelete".

Aquela letra era traballosa de ler i estaba feita cun garabullo.

Cando rematei a leutura xa escomenzara o antre fusco e lusco e o enterrador, moi amocado, xurou que se non fose por Deus íñase ó esquelete i escacháballe a calivera cun sacho.

Despedinme dil e cando xa iña pola estrada, camiño da cibdade, oín que me chamaba dende a porta do cimeterio.

—¡Oia, veña acó!

E dispois quediño e moi solermiñamente deitoume na orella ista pregunta:

—Vostede, que é médico, ¿non sabería onde mercan ollos de vidro?

E por catro cartos fíxenme dono do ollo de vidro e das memorias.
As memorias do esquelete é o que ides a ler. Escoitade, pois, a un home do outro mundo, pregándovos por adiantado que non me fagades solidario das súas ideas.

Eu nascín, medrei e fíxenme home, e un bo día enfermóuseme un ollo. Fun aos médicos e lambéronme unha manchada de cartos e no remate de contas o ollo sandar sandou, pero quedoume grolo. Por aquel tempo tiña un galo tan amante que viña comer na miña man. Chamáballe Tenorio.

Un día estando eu agachado cos graos de millo na cunca das maus, veuse cara min, paseniñamente, tripando a terra con aquel de señorón fidalgo. Plántase diante de min, ergue o pescozo pra fitar de perto, cicais bulronamente, aquel meu malfadado ollo grolo e, cavilando que sería cousa de manxar, axeitoume un peteirazo tan ben dirixido que me deixou torto. Agora si, os médicos, dispois de lamberme outra manchada de cartos, puxéronme un ollo de vidro, tan ben imitado que bulía e todo.

¡A cantas mulleres engaiolei chiscándolles o ollo de vidro…!

Morrín antre cobertores como morren a cotío os bos homes, e ben afeitado e ben peiteado e co meu traxe dos días de festa —que por certo levoumo o enterrador ó día seguinte de enterrarme— fun pra debaixo dos terróns sen que ninguén se lembrase de quitarme o ollo de vidro.

Deitado na miña caixa de pino repousei moitísimos días, tantos que perdín a conta. Apodrecín axiña e aos poucos días de enterrado escomenzaron os vermes a faguerme cóchegas.

Cómpre decir que eiquí non está permitido presentarse en sociedade con farrapos de carne fedenta apegados nos ósos, pois os esqueletes, que non ven nin comen, ulen tan ben coma os vivos; así foi que namentres os vermes non manxaron a pouca freba que trouxen, non puden erguerme.

Foi unha noite de luar cando saín da cova por primeira vez. Traballiño custoume desentolle-las pernas e cando me erguín e botei a miña cachola fóra da terra, fiquei pasmado... Aquel ollo de vidro que de nada me servira na vida sírveme agora pra mirar.

Tolo de contento quitei o ollo, dinlle catro bicos e volvino a pór no seu sitio.

Dun pulo brinquei da cova e fun cara ó rueiro dos esqueletes.

Os esqueletes son tan parvos coma as persoas. Abonda decir que non pensan máis que en beilar.

Pra min tódolos esqueletes son o mesmo. Pásame niste mundo de ósos o que me pasaba no outro cos negros, que todos parecíanme iguales. En troques iles, antre si, coñécense moi ben. Debe sere porque iles son cegos i eu vexo.

Farto de ollar aos meus compañeiros beilando coma se fosen osos ao son da "Danza macabra" de Saint Saëns, afasteime do rueiro e reparei nun esquelete que estaba sentado nunha campa e que tiña a calivera ladeada (eispresión de tristura e melanconía niste mundo). Chegueime a il e fitei como na caixa dos cadriles tiña acochado un esquelete pequerrechiño. Axiña decateime que era un esquelete de muller e inquirín garimoso:

—¿Será vostede algunha muller das que mataron en Osera, Nebra ou Sofán?

—Non, señor, non —respondeume—. ¡Eu morrín de tristura!

Dispois reparei que nos ósos dos cadriles non tiña buraco de bala.

—Moi fonda debeu sere a tristura —díxenlle.

—Si, señor. Eu morrín namorada do home que apodrece debaixo desta pedra.

E ollando a pedra puden ler un epitafio en verso castelán, e pendurado da cruz ollei un retrato con marco de varilla dourada. Era un sarxento de bigote arrichado fumando un puro con anilla.

Non quixen saber máis e funme deitar.

Nistes días hai moitos enterros. Non sei si haberá andacio, pois revolución non debe habela coa covardía que teñen os vivos. Cicais haxa folga de médicos, anque non coido que os médicos poidan evita-la mortandade.

A carón de min enterraron un, e pra saír de dúbidas peteille na súa caixa.
—¿Hai andacio na cibdade?

—¡Eu que sei! —respondeume unha voz coma se saí-se por unha boca chea de papas. (Debe ter xa podre a lingua).

—¿ E logo vostede non sabe de que morreu?

—¿Eu? ¡Eu pegueime un tiro!

Déronme ganas de rir, pero non puden. Os esqueletes non rin a cachón. O bandullo é a fonte da gargallada e sen bandullo non pode habere gargallada.

—¿E logo il haberá folga de médicos?

—Non hai folga, non; pois denantes de enterrarme, dous médicos arremangados coma dous cortadores abríronme a cachola cun serrón.

Perto de min repousa un zapateiro. Contoume as súas coitas nun tono menor.

—Eu tiña unha voz de trono, unha voz que metía medo de fonda que era, i en calidá de fenómeno entrei coma baixo no orfeón; mais de alí a pouco de entrare o direutor díxome que desafinaba e tiveron o callo de botarme fóra. Deus regalárame cunha gorxa e non me dera orella... Tan magoado fiquei que perdín a coor e os folgos pra o traballo, desganeime, enflaquecín e púxenme a morrer. Tódalas noites escoitaba os ensaios do orfeón acochadiño nas tebras da rúa, sospirando arreo coa ialma doída. A tristura foi estruchándome a caixa do peito e no derradeiro ensaio do orfeón fuxeu a vida de min nun sospiro velaíño.

O probe zapateiro morreu de saudade.

Por mata-lo tempo fun ó cimeterio civil. Alí non se beila; alí todo é serio. Cando entrei funme cara un fato de esqueletes que estaban escoitando a leria dunha calivera que tiña un buraco nunha sen (calivera de suicida moi século XIX). As súas verbas tíñaos a todos coa boca aberta; pero na médea hora que estiven escoitándoo nin tan siquera puden apañar unha idea. Aquil suicida tiña un só ideal: a República.

Eu no mundo tamén fun un pouco republicano anque nunca pensei que a República fose dabondo pra gobernar Hespaña.

O que máis me fireu daquela xente foi que non quixesen falar galego, sabendo que os esqueletes non poden falar ben o castelán. Non ten volta que darlle: sen gorxa non pode pronunciarse a "j" nin a "g" fortes.

Oíndolles decir que o progreso vai cara á unidade tomei a parola pra aclarar que o progreso iña cara á harmonía e que se o progreso fose cara isa unidade antipática, antiestética, antinatural e criminal, por riba do progreso está a perfeución, e que nós, os galegos, por un desexo de perfeución e por unha dinidade que xa vai sendo dinidade persoal, non debíamos consentir que na fala dos nosos avós se eispresase somentes a incultura que lle debemos ó centralismo.

Naquel intre esquecime que non era home nin suxeto de dereito. ¡Ai! Eu xa morrín e non son nada e aínda serei menos cando a terra me coma de todo. Comprendendo que era no mundo dos esqueletes, volvín a decir:

—¿Como queredes falar castelán se non tendes gorxa?

Aínda non rematara de ceibar a derradeira verba, cando un esquelete varudo e forte, turrando por min, afastoume daquela xuntanza dicíndome:

—Vostede facer mal falar con oitocentistas.

¡Era un inglés que falaba galego!

Son moi amigo do inglés. Xuntos paseamos moitas veces. Onte saímos do cimeterio e fomos pola estrada falando de mil cousas; por certo que un mozo que iña tocando no acordión un pasodoble flamengo, ó vernos, guindou co "escorrentaporcos" (así lle chamaba eu cando vivía) e fuxeu coma un lóstrego. O inglés e mais eu choutábamos pra botar fóra a risa que tíñamos na ialma.

Voltándomos ó cimeterio falamos da terra.

¡Moito falan da terra os vivos! Unha cousa é a terra e outra cousa é a paisaxe. Pra os vivos a terra é unha cousa ben fermosa por certo, pra os mortos a terra son as tebras. Eu penso que non morreríamos se a terra non precisase de nós pra botar herbiñas e floriñas e lucirse a conta dos apodrecidos.

Seique foi María Guerrero quen nun intre de cursilería e pra engaiolar a un fato de galegos papáns, doulle un bico a unha manchada de terra galega. ¡Mellor fora que bicase a codia dun pino ou a tona dun carballo! A terra galega metida nunha ola é coma a terra castelán, poño por caso de comparanza. Os irmáns pinos e os irmáns carballos, que ha traga-la terra, ises si que son galegos.

Acabo de descubrir un gran defeuto no inglés. O descubrimento custoume unha fonda pena. Parece mentira que unha ialma tan ergueita e tan intelixente teña un humor tan pouco noble.

O inglés vén a buscarme cuase que tódolos días á miña cova e, como eu son nugallán pra erguerme, il entretense falando e xogando co esquelete dun rapaciño que repousa cabo de min.

Ollade que clas de xogo entretiña ó inglés.

Dáballe un guindamazo na calivera ó rapaz e tiráballe con ela ó chan, e dispois poñíase a choutar. O probe do esqueletiño cacheaba a tentas a calivera e dispois poñíaa no seu sitio dicíndolle ó inglés:

—¿Que mal lle fixen eu? ¡Estéase quedo!

O inglés prometía estarse quedo e axiña volvía a guindarlle coa calivera ó probe esqueletiño. E así fixo moitas veces.

Eu cando tal reparei arrepúxenme ó inglés, que me respondeu friamente:
—Min divertirme moito. Min sentir non ser no outro mundo pra donar ó rillote unha esterlina.

Os obreiros no mundo queren as patacas baratas, os labregos queren a suba das patacas e hai homes que non viven das patacas. Eiquí as patacas non son problema ningún; mais polo que fomos no mundo respeutive ás patacas, dividímonos en dúas castes.

Hai no camposanto un "pataqueiro" que morreu de fame e que hoxe ten mausoleu de mármores. Foi home de gran me-recimento na vida; mais agora é insoportábel en forza de coidar que non nacerá no mundo quen o aventaxe como poeta.

Outro esquelete de mausoleu de mármore foi un "americano" que, farto de engaiolar ós indios no Chaco con adoas de vidro, morreu en arrecendor de santidade, deixando cartos pra escolas e hospitaes. O seu mausoleu ten no peruco de todo un símbolo da Caridade en figura de ama de cría. Iste filántropo aínda conserva un bisoñé que me fai choutar coa risa.

O filántropo e mailo poeta téñense moita xenreira. O filántropo di que o poeta non fixo máis que "macanas" (supoño que quererá dicir versos). O poeta di que o filántropo foi unha besta. Disas que "sobre o ben e o mal consultan simplementes o código penal".

O poeta non é ben asisado. Anda sempre pidindo unha calivera emprestada pra recita-lo monólogo de Hamlet, e aínda fai outras tolerías.
O filántropo non fai nin di nada que mereza contarse. Sin diñeiro ten mortas tódalas súas autividades.

Agora xa sei por qué o inglés tíñame tan grande estima. ¡Xa o vexo! Pideume emprestado o ollo; mais eu con moi aloumiñantes verbas e con moi boas razóns díxenlle que non llo emprestaba.

Debaixo dunha cruz de pau mal pintada con ferruxe, repousa un esquelete que, según fala, foi tan desventurado no outro mundo como é felís niste.

—Eu era criada de servir —contoume— . Anque non era bonita tiña mocedade. Un día caíume un dente e certo demo de señorito, que andaba faguéndome as beiras, ofreceume cartos pra que fose ó dentista. Mireime no espello e axiña comprendín canto me afeaba aquel portelo na boca, e tanto esgaravellou o señorito na miña tolería moza que deixeime pór o dente... ¡Ai!, aquel dente custoume un fillo; aquel fillo custoume o creto e canto tiña de boa moza. Caín a rolos e atopeime coa morte, sen saber o que era un traxe de seda nin un grolo de champán. Fea vivín, mallada e batida; agora podo durmir.

Ista sinxela leria deixoume amaiado.

Lémbrome que sendo eu rapaz chegou meu pai da América. O probe non trouxo máis que uns borceguíns vellos e un tarro amedeado de bicarbonato; viña enfermo e morreu axiña.

Sempre chorei o fracaso de meu pai que, na miña ademiración de fillo, tíveno polo máis bo, arriscado, intelixente e forte do mundo enteiro. Aquelas terras lonxanas que zugaron a vida do meu pai foron arreo maldecidas por min. Meu pai era dino de voltar san e millonario.

Onte no rueiro falábamos das nosas vidas e chegoume a vez de conta-la miña. Aínda non rematara de contala, cando un esquelete, dises esqueletes que parecen parvos, ergueuse coma un lóstrego e doume tan forte aperta que me rompeu unha costela.

¡Era meu pai!

Con certo esquelete que trouxo na cachola unha biblioteca enteira falo de moitas cousas e de todas sabe moito o meu amigo. De todas sabe moito, menos do que é o humorismo.

Cando chegamos nas nosas conversas a tal punto, o meu amigo fai catro ou cinco funambulismos filosóficos, estudia o humorismo dos grandes humoristas, fuxen as horas e no remate de contas ficamos sen saber migalla do asunto. Ás veces parece que vai chegar á definición e de súpeto engadella máis o fío.

Un esquelete ten de sere humorista e un esquelete galego moito máis aínda. Un galego é sempre socarrón ou humorista e a socarronería é o humorismo dos incultos así como o humorismo é a socarronería dos cultos. Un esquelete galego que trouxo unha biblioteca na cachola debía definir o humorismo e non o define e según di non houbo ninguén que o definise aínda.

Eu, que non trouxen máis de tres ou catro libros na cachola, póñolle eixemplos coma istes:

—Un rapaciño pequerrechiño escacha unha botella de aceite nas pedras da rúa e o probiño chora. Un home gordo dende a porta dunha tenda olla ó rapaz e rise. ¿Cal das dúas figuras lle interesa máis ó humorista?

—Pola porta dunha eirexa saen dous noivos acabados de se casaren. A noiva —¡malpocada!— non pode tapar o que leva de sete meses. Na porta da eirexa hai moita xente. Unha muller gorda abanea o bandullo coa risa. Un home, que ten un libro debaixo do brazo, olla sereo a escea. Unha muller do pobo pon a cara doída. Outra muller, tamén do pobo, enruga o nariz e rosma polo baixo verba coma ista: ¡sinvergonza! ¿Quen dista xente é humorista?

—Un médico cachea o bacilo de Koch no esputo dun seu amigo e de súpeto ergue a testa, respira forte, acariña o microscopio e di sospirando: "¡Atopeino!". ¿Pode sere humorista iste home?

—Vestir un rapaciño de toureiro ou de militar no antroido, ¿pode sere humorismo?

—Direille... direille —contesta sempre o sabio esquelete—. E non me di nada.

Eu ben podía escribir algo da Santa Compaña; mais o pobo galego ficaría sen un misterio nas longas noites do inverno, cando o maxín ferve na cachola coma o caldo no pote. Non; eu calarei coma unha estoa.
O que "anda" cos mortos que perda a coor das meixelas, que enflaqueza e que morra. A Santa Compaña fai falla nas cociñas mornas ó redor da lareira, cando zoa o vento nas tebras da noite.

Hoxe meu pai, cun lagarto apreixado nas maus, faloume diste xeito:

—Teño de ir ó San Andrés de Teixido pra cumplir unha oferta que fixen e non cumplín en vida. A miña ialma ten de encarnar niste lagarto e moito tempo tardarei en voltar. Recoméndoche que teñas conta da miña cova e que de vez en cando botes unha ollada ó meu esquelete, pois teño un veciño coxo e pode roubarme unha perna.

Quixera estar soterrado nun cimeterio aldeán, no adro da eirexa... ¡Con que ledicia escoitaría nas mañáns ledas do domingo as conversas dos feligreses! Niste cimeterio de cibdade as xentes non veñen máis que a falar dos mortos, ¡e cantas parvadas din...! Logo, meus compañeiros, afeitos ás regalías do outro mundo ou fracasados na vida, non fan máis que laiárense polo que perderon ou polo que non conqueriron.

Dende fai tempo veño reparando que un home de carne e óso sae dunha cova, gabea pola parede do cimeterio e foxe cara á cibdade. De alí a dúas ou tres horas volta pra o cimeterio ensumíndose nun decir amén debaixo da terra. A primeira vez que tal reparei non quería dar creto ó meu ollo; mais o caso repiteuse moitas veces arreo.

Unha noite púxenme ó axexo agardando que xurdise da terra e fun detrás dil. Correr corría o condanado; mais eu, escorréndome polas sombras dos muros, non quitei o ollo de enriba dil. Chegou ó burgo máis probe da cibdade e parouse diante dunha chouza entrando dispois nela por unha rendixa da porta. Eu rubin ó tellado e saltei á horta que daba detrás da chouza, e por un buraquiño puden fitar a escea máis arrepiante que poidera maxinarse. Unha lampariña de aceite alumeaba mornamente a cariña fraca i encoveirada dunha rapaza que durmía nun leito misérrimo. O pantasma chegouse a ela i estivo unha chea de tempo cos beizos pousados no pescozo da rapaza.

Cando se ergueu tiña a boca ourelada de roxo, namentras no pescozo da rapaza corría un fío de sangue e na pele da súa cariña fraca arrufiaba a brancura da morte.

Aquel pantasma era un vampiro.

No siguente día o pantasma chuchou o derradeiro sangue que podía dar a probe rapaza. Cando aínda estaba quente a derradeira badalada das doce horas no campanario da eirexa, ouvearon os cans ventando a morte.

O vampiro sigueu chuchando o sangue de máis vítimas, que iñan morrendo coma as lámparas de aceite chuchadas polos morcegos.

Quixen saber quen fora o vampiro no mundo dos homes e fun ler o seu nome de bronce no rico mármore da campa. O nome só abondoume: fora un canalla que roubaba pra dar regalía ó seu bandullo de porco; dono da xusticia, roubaba dende a súa confortábel casa. ¿Pra que decir máis? Era... ¡era un cacique!

Eu quería atopar maneira de darlle morte ó vampiro. Busca por eiquí, cachea por acolá... non puden abranguer nos currunchos do maxín unha boa iñorma pra matalo, e quixen falar co esquelete que trouxo unha biblioteca na cachola pra ver se me daba luces a súa conversa.

—No vampirismo cren moitos pobos e hai moitas probas xudiciaes de aparicións de pantasmas que chuchaban sangue de persoas; mais eu coido que non debe dárselle creto a semellantes contos. Fuxiron os tempos en que o verdugo queimaba os cadavres sospeitosos de vampirismo e hoxe non se permitiría en ningures espetar unha estaca no curazón dun cadavre.

O meu amigo, cheo de cencia oficial, moqueábase das xentes sinxelas que cren nos vampiros. Eu gardei o meu segredo pra non pasar por parvo e seguín preguntando solermiñamente:

—¿E hai sabios no mundo que cren no vampirismo?

—Hainos. A fundadora da Teosofía fala de iso e conta moitos feitos. Se mal non me lembro acolle a eisplicación do fenómeno por causas físicas. Cando un morto aparente estivo moi apegado á materia e foi na vida un malvado, o corpo astral, envolto no doble etéreo, sae da sepultura con obxeto de manter ó corpo físico con sangue que chucha nas persoas vivas, e desta maneira perpetúase o estado cataléptico do soterrado. O corpo astral comunica o sangue dun xeito aínda descoñecido; mais agardan que calquera día sexa eisplicado polas cencias psicolóxicas.

—¿E vostede nin tan siquera ten dúbidas?

—Eu, que son home ben asisado, non creo; anque, de certo, fanme cavilar certas cousas, como son as mortes aparentes e o feito de habérense atopado cadavres que aínda tiñan as carnes moles, os ollos abertos, o coiro sonrosado, a boca e o nariz cheos de sangue fresco, que tamén xurdía das feridas que, por asesinato ou por axusticiamento, lles produxeran a morre. Tal contan vellos documentos.

—¿E de que maneira podería dárselle morte ó vampiro?

—Pois... para arredar o corpo astral do físico non hai outro remedio que queima-lo cadavre.

Non quixen saber máis. Afasteime da miña biblioteca e fun pensando pra os meus adentros: "Vampiros hainos; pois logo, polo si ou polo non, debían queimarse a tódolos caciques. Os caciques son capaces de facérense os mortos pra seguir vivindo a conta dos malpocados".

FIN
Leutor:

Xa que liches as memorias do esquelete soterrado nun cimeterio de cibdade e xa que te regalaches deprendendo cousas do Alén que non sabías, ben podes escoitarme un anaquiño a min e pra rematar axiña.

Unha cousa que fixen con premeditación e nouturnidade podería levarme á cadea habendo testigos; mais eu asegúroche que non foi por mal. Atende.

Co ollo de vidro mercado ó enterrador de cibdade pillei o camiño da parroquia de Tal e alí, no adro da eirexa e axudado por un home valente, pasada medeanoite, abrín a sepultura onde repousa pra sempre xamais un amigo meu. ¡Medo papeino!

O meu amigo foi rapaz de grande intelixencia e dun esprito superior a toda louvanza. Estudeamos xuntos na vella Compostela e a gripe escamoteouno da miña vista. Como derradeira proba de fonda amistade quixen faguerlle regalo do ollo de vidro. ¡Dispois de todo eu non o quería pra nada…!

Abrimos a tapa da caixa ben a modiño pra non escangalla-lo esquelete. Ouh, leutor: meu amigo conservaba o seu traxe e os seus zapatos novos, proba de que o enterrador de aldea é mellor cristiano que o seu colega da cibdade.

Na cunca direita da súa calivera pousei o ollo de vidro, riba das súas maus pousei un bloque de papel mais un lápiz. E arrechegándome ó buraco do ouvido, díxenlle así:

—Querido Pedro: Velaí che deixo un ollo de vidro pra que vexas, papel e lápiz pra que escribas. Serás o rei niste cimeterio; mais eu prégoche que non te fagas cacique. Pasados algúns meses virei recoller canto ti escribas. Perdóname, amantiño, que non che dea un bico. Adeus e deica logo.

Se canto escriba o meu amigo é dino de intrés asegúroche que será publicado pra que compares e vexas que non é o mesmo ser soterrado no adro dunha eirexa que nun cimeterio de cibdade.

Regálate como poidas, leutor, e non che digo máis.

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Coa colaboración de: Herdeiros de Daniel A. Rodríguez Castelao e Editorial Galaxia

A Glass Eye

Castelao. Autoría
Kathleen N. March. Tradución

Dear Reader:

One day a cow started staring at me. What could it be thinking? I thought, and at that moment the cow lowered its head and went on grazing. Now I know the cow simply said:

"It's just a man wearing glasses."

And maybe I'm just what the cow thought I was. That's why I'm pleased when I think about how when my skull is visible no cow's going to be able to judge me.

Death doesn't frighten me and the curse I curse my enemy hat he might live until he survives.

I'm one of those who grips his face to feel his own skull and I never run from cemeteries.

That's a fact and I even have a friend who's w gravedigger in a city cemetery. This frieend of mine isn't really my friend; he's just an experiment, a guinea pig. A gravedigger always knows a lot of things and tells them in a funny way. A city gravedigger who removes the clothing and footwear of the dead to sell to the second hand clothing stores has to be a man with a sense of humor. A gravedigger who makes good money with the teeth from skulls had to be my friend.

This gravedigger thinks he is acting in a befitting manner and tells me tragic things that make me laugh and he tells me funny things that give me chills, and with all the surprising things he reveals in conversations, the hours fly by without my noticing.

So now it happened that one day I was going along the path to the cemetery when I ran into the gravedigger who was a bit, well I guess, upset, and after a good long conversation he told me he had to tell me a secret, as long as I promised to be a good fellow and not reveal it. I felt a bit overwhelmed by the fear at an unexpected surprise and after he'd gripped my shoulder and and put his rotten lips next to my ear, he said slowly:

"I found some papers in a box...! In a box that I don't know who the boxbelongs to. The skull of the skeleton had a glass eye that was angrily staring at me."

Then the gravedigger pulled out some wrinkled papers from a leather portfolio. He didn't know how to read and handed them to me so I could read them to him. They were scraps of newspaper, cigarette papers... all numbered, and on the first one were written the words: "Memoirs of a skeleton."

The handwriting looked like chicken scratches and had been done with a twig.

When I finished reading it was twilight and the gravedigger, very perturbed, swore that if it weren't sacrilegious he'd go to the skeleton and crack his skull open with a hoe.

I bid him farewell and when I was already heading along the road in the direction of the city, I heard somebody calling to me from the door to the cemetery.

"Hey, come here!"

And after that he put this question in my ear, very softly and slowly:


"You're a doctor, do you happen to know where a person can buy a glass eye?"

So for a few bucks I became the owner of the glass eye and the memoirs.
The memoirs of the skeleton are what you're going to read now. So listen to a man from the other world, but I beg of you don't think I agree with his ideas.

*****

MEMOIRS OF A SKELETON


I was born, grew up, and became a man, then one fine day something went wrong with one of
my eyes. I went to some doctors and they charged me an arm and a leg and the result was that the eye healed, but it had a bump on it. At that time I had a rooster who adored me and would eat from my hand. I called him Tenorio.

One day while I was bent over with the kernels of corn cupped in my hand, he headed toward me, jumping around like a highfalluting landowner. He stands there right in front of me, stretching his neck high to stare at me closely, maybe making fun of my poor eye with the lump in it and, thinking it was something to eat, gave me such a well-aimed peck that it left me with only one eye. This time, after charging me another wad of money, the doctors gave me a glass eye that looked quite real and moved, things like that.

Oh, the women I seduced by winking at them with my glass eye...!

I died in bed, between the covers the way good men often do, clean-shaven, with my hair nicely combed and with my fancy dress suit on - which the gravedigger actually walked off with the day after burying me - and I was placed under clods of dirt without anybody remembering to remove my glass eye.

I lay resting in my pine box for many days, so many I lost count. I rotted quickly and a few days after my burial the worms began to tickle.

Suffice it to say that we're not allowed to go out in public with shreds of rotten flesh sticking to our bones, because skeletons, who neither see nor eat, smell as good as humans. That's why, until the worms hadn't feasted on the little meat I'd brought, I couldn't get up.

I emerged from the tomb for the first time on a night with a full moon. It was really hard to get my stiff legs working and when I sat up and stuck my noggin out of the ground, I was shocked... That glass eye that hadn't been any good at all to me while I was alive was working; I could see.

I was crazy, I was so happy. I took it out, kissed it four times and then put it back in place. In one hop I was out of the tomb and heading toward the path to the skeletons.
Skeletons are as dumb as people are. It's enough to say all they can think about is dancing.

All skeletons are the same to me. I think the same way in this world of bones as I thought about darker races in the other world. They all seemed the same to me. On the other hand, they can tell each other apart easily. It's probably because they're blind and I can see.

Tired of watching my companions dancing like bears to the sound of Saint Saëns' Danse Macabre, I left the path and noticed a skeleton that was sitting on a sarcophagus and with its skull was tilted to one side (an expression of sadness and melancholy in this world). I went over to it and noticed how inside the pelvic area there was a tiny little skeleton, barely visible. I quickly realized this was the skeleton of a woman and inquired in a gentle tone:

"Are you one of the women they killed in Oseira, Nebra, or Sofán?" "No sir, no," she responded. "I died from sadness!"
After that I noticed there was no bullet hole in the pelvic area. "You must have been very, very sad," I told her.
"Yes, sir. I died for love of the man who is buried beneath this stone."

When I looked at the stone I could see an epitaph in Spanish verse, while hanging from the cross
I saw a portrair with a gilded frame. It was a sargent with a bushy mustache smoking a cigar with a gold band.

I didn't want to hear any more and went to lie down.

These days there are a lot of interments. Maybe there's an epidemic, because there's not likely to be a revolution given how cowardly the living are. Maybe the doctors are on strike, even though I don't think doctors can avoid people dying.

They buried somebody next to me, and just to be sure, I rapped on his box.

"Is there an epidemic in the city?"

"How should I know!" a voice replied, sounding like it came from a mouth full of porridge. (His tongue must have been rotten.)

"So, do you know what caused your death?" "Me? I shot myself!"
I felt like laughing, but I didn't. Skeletons don't laugh out loud. The gut is where guffaws come from and without a gut a guffaw is impossible.

"So are the physicians on strike?"

"No, there's no strike. Because before they buried me, two doctors with their sleeves rolled up like two butchers opened my skull up with a saw."

Nearby lies a shoemaker. In a soft tone he told me how he had suffered.

"Once I had a thunderous voice, a voice that scared everybody because it was so deep, and I was a real success as bass in the choir. But soon after I joined, the director told me I sang off key and they had the nerve to kick me out. God had given me a good voice but he hadn't given me the ear to use it... I was so upset that I lturned pale and lost the desire to work, I felt disillusioned, lost weight and got ready to die. Every night I would listen to the choir practices, hidden in the shadows of the street, constantly sighing, my soul wounded. Sadness weighed
heavily on my chest and during the last choir practice my life went out of me in a small whoosh." The poor shoemaker died of melancholy.

Just to kill time I went to the public cemetery. Nobody dances there, everything is serious. When
I went in I headed toward a herd of skeletons who were listening to the ranting of a skull that had a hole in one temple (typical nineteenth century suicide). His words had everyone open-mouthed, but during the half hour they were listening they couldn't make out a single idea. That suicide
had a single ideal: the Republic.

When I was in the world I was more or less a Republican even though I never thought the
Republic was enough to govern Spain.

What hurt me most about those people was that they refused to speak Galician, knowing that skeletons can't speak Spanish well. There's no way around it: without a throat it's impossible to pronounce the harsh "j" and "g."

Hearing them say that progress means unity, I took the floor to clarify that progress required harmony and that if progress went in the direction of that unpleasant, antiaesthetic, antinatural
and criminal unity, perfection was valued over progress, and that we Galicians, out of a desire for perfection and because of a dignity that is of a personal sort, should not allow the way of
speaking of our grandparents to be used to express the lack of culture that we owe to centralism."

At that moment I'd forgotten that I was not a man nor a legal entity. Ay! I've already died and I'll be even less when the earth swallows me up entirely. Understanding that I was in the world of skeletons, I repeated:

"How do you plan to speak Spanish if you don't have a throat?"

I still hadn't finished the last word when a healthy male skeleton, pulling on me, pulled me away from that meeting, saying:

"You're going to get into trouble speaking with blokes from the nineteenth century. That was an Englishman speaking Galician!"

I am good friends with the Englishman. We've often gone for strolls together. Yesterday we left the cemetery and went along the road talking about a thousand things. It turned out that a lad who was plaing a Flamenco march on the accordeon, left the “juke band” (as I used to call it when I was alive) and took off like greased lightning. The Englishman and I jumped up and down to shake out the laughter inside us.

On our way back to the cemetery we talked about land.

The living sure spend a lot of time talking about land! One thing’s the land and the other’s the landscape. For the living the land is of course a beautiful thing. For the dead the land is made up of shadows. I think we wouldn’t die if the earth didn’t need us for its grasses and flowers to grow nicely.

It might have been María Guerrero who, in a moment of tastelessness and to impress a group of Galician dimwits, kissed a speck of Galician dirt. It would have been better if she had kissed the bark of a pine tree or the surface of an oak! Galician dirt inside a pot is like Castilian dirt, to make one comparison. The brother pines and brother oaks, the earth that swallows them up, those are definitely Galician.

I’ve just discovered a huge defect in the Englishman. That discovery made me very sad. It seems impossible that such a noble and intelligent soul would have such lowbrow* humor.

The Englishman comes to my grave to look for me almost every day and since I’m a real lazybones, he amuses himself talking and playing with the skeleton of a little boy who is resting near me.

It was quite the game the Englishman used to entertain himself.

He rapped on the boy’s cranium and pulled him down with it. After that he started to hop around. The poor little skeleton felt all around his skull and afterward put it back in place, saying to the Englishman:

“What harm did I ever do to you? Stop that.”

The Englishman promised to stay still but soon he was back knocking the little skeleton’s skull around. And he did that several times.

The workers of the living world want potatoes to be cheap, the farmers want the price of potatoes to go up, and there are people who don’t live on potatoes. Here potatoes aren’t a problem at all, but we’re divided into two classes here, according to our relationship with them when we were alive.

In the graveyard there’s a “potato lover” who starved to death and now has a mausoleum made of marble. He was a man who was admirable when he was alive, but now he’s unbearable because he’s convinced there’ll never be a better poet than he was.

Another skeleton with a marble mausoleum was a colonist who had emigrated to America who got tired of trying to pull the wool over the eyes of the Indians in the Chaco with glass beads, and had died with the reputation of a saint, leaving money to schools and hospitals. His mausoleum has, at the very top, a big symbol of Charity symbolized by a wet-nurse. This philanthropist is
still wearing a toupée that makes me split my sides laughing.

The philanthropist and the poet can't stand one another. The philanthropist says the poet never did anything more than stupid things (I imagine he means verses). The poet says the philanthropist is a brute. The ones who, to decided what’s right and what’s wrong always go by the law.

The poet is not very smart. He’s always going around asking to borrow a skull so he can recite
Hamlet’s monologue, and he does other foolish things as well.

The philanthropist doesn’t do or say anything that’s worth talking about. Without money all his activities have come to a halt.

Now I know why the Englishman held me in such high esteem. I can see it now! He asked to borrow my eye, but with careful words and adroit reasoning I told him I wasn’t going to lend it to him.

Beneath a cross that’s all covered with rust, there rests a skeleton who, as the story goes, was as unlucky in life as he is happy in this world.

“I was a servant,” she told me. “Even though I wasn’t pretty, at least I had my youth. One day I lost a tooth and a certain devil of a young man who was courting me gave me money so I could go to a dentist. I looked at myself in the mirror and saw how ugly that gap made me and the young man insisted so much that out of youthful foolishness I let myself get the new tooth. Oh, that tooth cost me a child. That child cost me my reputation and my youth. I started to roll downhill and ran smack into death, never having had a silk dress or a glass of champagne were. I lived an ugly life, battered and beaten. Now I can sleep.

This simple exchange left me exhausted.

I remember how when I was a boy my father arrived from America. The poor man only brought a few old work boots and half a can of baking soda. He was sick when he came back and died soon after.

I was always so sad about my father’s failure, and as his son I admired him, thinking he was the best, *bravest, most intelligent, and strongest man in the whole world. I constantly railed against those far-off lands that sucked the life out of my father. My father had deserved to return healthy and a millionaire.

Yesterday on the path we talked about our lives and then it was my turn to talk about mine. I hadn’t finished yet when a skeleton, one of those skeletons that have a stupid look on their faces, rose up like a bolt of lightning and hugged me so hard he broke one of my ribs.

It was my father.

With a certain skeleton who came armed with a whole library in his head I have conversations about a lot of things and my friend knows a lot about them all. He knows a lot about all of them, except for what humor is.

When our conversations reach that point, my friend gives four or five philosophical discourses, studies the humor of the great humorists, time flies by, and in the end we find we don’t have a clue. Sometimes it looks like he’s going to reach a definition, but then suddenly he tangles the thread even more.

A skeleton has to be comical and a Galician skeleton has to be even more comical. Galician is always ironic or a comedian and irony is the humor of simple folk in the same way as humor is

the irony of the sophisticated. A Galician skeleton who brought a library in his head ought to be able to define humorism and can’t define it and he says nobody has managed to define it yet.

Since I only brought three or four books in my head, I give examples like these:

"A little child breaks a bottle of oil on the stones in the street and poor thing is crying. A fat man in the doorway of a store watches the boy and laughs. Which of the two figures is more interesting to the humorist?

"A bride and groom who've just gotten married come out of the door of a church. The bride - poor thing! - can't cover up what's been going on for seven months. There are a lot of people by the church door. A fat woman laughs and her belly wobbles. A man with a book under his arm watches the scene calmly. A country woman has a sad face. Another woman, also from the country, wrinkles her nose and softly grumbles something like: scoundrel! Which one of you is the humorist?

"A doctor studies the Koch bacillus in the sputum of a friend and suddenly raises his head, breathes strongly, caresses the microscope and says with a sigh: 'I found it!'. Might this man be a humorist?"

"Is it humorism if a little boy dresses up as a matador or a military officer at Carnival time?"
"I can answer that... I can answer," the wise skeleton always says. And doesn't tell me a thing. I certainly could write a little about the Santa Compaña, the Holy Company, but then the
Galician people wouldn't have any mystery on long winter nights, when the imagination is simmering in the noggin like soup in the pot. No, I'll keep my trap shut like idiots do.

A person who goes around with the dead has to lose the color in his cheeks, grow very thin, and die. The Holy Company is necessary in the warm kitchens when sitting around the hearth, when the wind is blowing in the blackness of the night.

Today my father, holding a lizard in his hands, said this to me:

"I have to go to San Andrés de Teixido to keep a vow I made and didn't carry out while I was alive. I'm asking you to keep watch over my grave and to check my skeleton once in a while, because I've got a neighbor who limps and he might steal one of my legs."

I wish I were buried in a village cemetery, in the atrium of the church... I'd be so happy listening to the parishioners' conversations on bright Sunday mornings. In this city cemetery people only come here to talk about the dead, and they say so many stupid things...

Well, my companions, accustomed to the luxury of the other world or failures while alive, do nothing but complain about what they've lost or what they didn't achieve.

For some while now I've been watching a flesh and blood man come out of a grave, crawling up the wall of the cemmetery, and rushing off toward the city. Two or three hours later more or less he returns to the cemetery, slipping under the dirt lickety-split. The first time I saw that I couldn't believe my eyes, but it happened many times in a row.

One night I hid and was waiting for him to arise from the dirt, then I went after him. The damned guy could really run, but I was hiding in the shadows of the walls, I didn't take my eye off
him.He reached the poorest neighborhood* in the city and stopped in front of a hut, entering it after through a crack in the door. I climbed to the roof and jumped into the garden behind the hut. Through a tiny hole I could make out the most horrible scene you could ever imagine. A small oil lamp gently illuminated the thin, deathly pale face of a girl who was sleeping in a miserable bed. The phantom went over to her and rested his lips on the girl's neck for a long time.

When he got up his mouth was ringed with red, while a trickle of blood ran down the girl's neck and the pallor of death was cooling on the skin of her thin face.

That phantom was a vampire.

The next day the phantom suck the last blood the poor girl had to give. While she was still warm the last chime of midnight in the belltower, the dogs begin to howl announcing her death.

The vampire continued sucking the blood of more victims, who were expiring like oil lamps when bats suck them dry.

I wanted to find out who the vampire had been while he was in the world of the living and went to read his name on the exquisite marble of his tomb lid. The name itself told me: he was the heartless fellow who robbed people to satisfy his insatiable appetite. Master of justice, he had robbed people from the comfort of his home. There's nothing more to say about him. He was... he was a cacique, a tyrant!

I wanted to find a way to kill the vampire. I looked here, felt around there,... but I couldn't find anywhere in my brain a good way to kill him, so I decided to speak with the skeleton who'd brought a library in his head to see if a conversation with him could enlighten me.

"Many cultures believe in vampirism and there are many legal proofs of the appearance of phantoms who suck people's blood; but I think those stories are worthless. The times when the executioner burned the cadavers suspected of vampirism are long gone and nowadays you wouldn't be allowed the drive a stake in the heart of any cadaver."

My friend, very up on official information, made fun of the simple folk who believe in vampires. I kept my secret so I would look stupid and continued to press him cautiously:

"And are there any wise men in the world who believe in vampirism?"

"There are. The woman who founded Theosophy talks about that and gives many accounts. If I'm not mistaken, she follows the explanation of the phenomenon due to physical causes. When the deceased person was apparently very attached to the body and was evil in his life time, the astral body, wrapped in an ethereal double, comes out of the burial place in order to maintain the physical body with the blood he sucks from living persons and in this way the cataleptic state of the person buried is mantained. The astral body communicates with the blood in a way that is
still unknown; however, any day now they expect that this will be explained by the psychological sciences."

"And you don't doubt this in the least?"

"As an intelligent man, I don't believe it. Although, it's true some things make me wonder, such as the ones who are in suspended animation and the fact that they've found cadavers that still have soft flesh, with their eyes open, rosy skin, mouth and eyes covered with fresh blood that also flowed from the wounds that caused their death, whether by assassination or fto enact justice.

"And how can you kill a vampire?"

"Well... in order to separate the astral body from the physical one there's only one remedy:
burning the cadaver."

I didn't want to hear any more. I left my library and got to thinking to myself: "Vampires exist; therefore, just in case, all the fat cat caciques ought to be burned. Caciques are capable of playing dead just so they can keep feeding off the poor folk."

The End

Dear Reader:

Now that you've read the memoirs of the skeleton buried in a city cemetery and you've enjoyed learning things about the Beyond that you didn't know, surely you can hear me out now and then we'll be done.

One thing I did, premeditated and in the dark of night, might put me in jail if anybody saw me. However, I an assure you I didn't have bad intentions. Listen.

With the glass eye I'd bought from the city gravedigger I started along toward the parish in Tal and there, in the atrium of the church and assisted by a brave man, after midnight, I opened the sepulchre where a friend of mine has found eternal rest. I was petrified!

My friend was a young guy who was extremely intelligent and his spirit was more powerful than you could imagine. As a final proof of our close friendship I wanted to give him the glass eye as
a gift. I certainly didn't want it!

We opened the cover of the casket very slowly so as not to ruin the skeleton. Oh, reader: my friend was still wearing his suit and new shoes, proof that the village gravedigger was a better Christian than his colleague in the city.

In the left socket of his skull I set the glass eye, and on top of his hands I placed a pad of paper and a pencil. Then, moving close to the hole of the ear, I said to him:

"Dear Pedro: I'm giving you a glass eye so you can see, paper and pencil so you can write. You're going to be the king of this cemetery, but I beg you not to become a cacique. After a few months I'll come to get whatever you've written. Forgive me, my dear fellow, for not giving you a kiss. Farewell and until then."

If anything my friend writes is of interest, I promise it'll be published so you can read it and see that it's not the same to be buried in the atrium of a church as it is in a cemetery in the city.

Treat yourself the best you can, my reader, because that's all you can do.

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With the collaboration of: Heirs of Daniel A. Rodríguez Castelao and Editorial Galaxia

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