I had stopped the car at a red light when
I saw them. Three laughing little girls of different heights, perhaps between
three and six years old, with braided hair ranging from light to dark brown,
and brilliant, white teeth. They were waving and shouting. Without knowing why,
I recalled a few summer days when I was little and my uncle would put me and my
cousins in the back of his brand-new 600 and take us for a ride that seemed
to last forever along the unpaved road that hugged the river. The memory made
me laugh and I gestured to the girls to come over. A second later they were
sitting in the back seat of my car, suddenly solemn and well-mannered.
"You taking us home now?," said
the tallest. I wasn't sure if it was a question, a wish or an order. I started
the car slowly, suddenly nervous and uneasy at having them in the car, afraid
they would get lost. But I decided to give them a ride and go only as far as
the next traffic light, a short one hundred yards away. These streets were the
girls’ playground, I told myself, surely they could not get lost a few yards
down the road.
In the meantime, we had a very polite
conversation, though lively and intense. Actually, it became an inquisition. Do
you have children? How many? Where are they? What are their names? Can we go
with you? It took a few seconds for them to agree to get out of the car when we
arrived at the traffic light. But once out, they flashed again their brilliant,
white teeth. As I drove away, I saw them in my rear-view mirror, holding hands
and skipping around like happy little birds in a puddle of summer rain.
Translated by Lina Strenio
I like how you connect the past and the present.
ResponEliminaFor example, with the driver as a young girl with her cousins, you use the image of the river, which is an image of time passing: the water, like time, flows in one direction. Then, in the present, you again use an image of water, but this time it is of a puddle, which is an image of water in the shape of a circle, meaning that time has stopped flowing forward and the driver is thinking of the past, and therefore, the circularity.
Another example, at the end of the story, the driver is moving away in the car, signifiying that the driver has started moving forward again along time's linearity. But, then, the driver looks in the car's rear-view mirror, as if she is looking back in time, and she sees the three girls, which had taken the driver on ride back in time when she was a little girl with her cousins.