Adelaida García Morales

La tía Águeda
Adelaida García Morales
Marta tiene diez años y ya sabe lo que es la muerte: hace poco ha perdido a su madre, y vive sola con su padre, un médico sevillano. Pero en la España de los años cincuenta un hombre y una niña difícilmente podían sobrellevar la domesticidad sin la barrera protectora de las mujeres. Marta se irá a vivir con su tía Águeda a un pueblo de la provincia de Huelva, y entra en un mundo nuevo, un retablo provinciano y gótico de sutiles negros y show more grises, de buenas intenciones y rígida disciplina, donde el primer e inocente atisbo del sexo desencadena una suerte de caza de brujas, donde la maldad surge de la desdicha y una ordenada casa de buena familia esconde un cruel entramado de pasiones...

Una vuelta al oscuro mundo de la infancia, en una prosa delicada y lacónica, donde importan tanto las insinuaciones como las afirmaciones. Adelaida García Morales, una de las escritoras más interesantes y personales de la literatura española actual, regresa al territorio de sus más espléndidas narraciones: la entrada en la vida, la primera mirada que unos ojos despiadadamente inocentes arrojan sobre el amor y la muerte. show less

The South and Bene are two short stories by Adelaida García Morales---not as in short stories, but short in page count---where the narrator, now a grown-up woman, looks back to her childhood in a dysfunctional family. The tone is conversational, in The South the narrator's father is addressed and in Bene her brother, both long dead.

In The South the girl's life circles around the father to whom she adores and who is close and distant at once, her only ally in the family but still someone show more with a life and secrets of his own. And his own death -- which he finally chooses and which terminally separates the girl from everything that she once held meaningful. South is where the father was from, South is where the girl looks to to find answers she was never given at home.

Bene is the name of a servant that comes to work for the family, or the what's left of it: the mother is already dead and the father is mostly away; the siblings, the narrator and her brother Santiago, are being brought up by aunts and servants. Bene seems to have a past, and everyone seems to think different things of what that past is what it means. The child hears things but she probably doesn't hear all, and at least she can't understand what the adults are talking about. But she understands she's not being told everything. The brother is older and he is already moving from childhood to the adults' world, and again the child is left alone.

The stories are emotionally strong and well written, though I have to admit that at times the same thing happened to me that sometimes happens when reading old stories: the charaters' mindset and sensibilities are so different from mine and their reactions to things is so different from what I think would be 'normal' that I can't relate. Sometimes that means I feel like studying an alien species, sometimes it makes me interested. This time it was, more the latter than the former, though.

Victor Erice has directed a film based on The South (El Sur) which is also well worth seeing, one of the really good book to film adaptations, even though it actually uses only about two thirds of the story. show less

"Me siento subida a una extraña plataforma aérea, lanzada ya hacia la muerte. Y tú, Agustín, me destruyes. Mira cómo me haces enfermar: débil por ti, enloquecida por ti, que sólo me das tu silencio. Pero ya he aprendido a escuchar tu voz sin que me hables, y eso es lo peor. Pues ahora sé que tu silencio no es silencio, ni tu indiferencia, indiferencia. O quizá sólo sea mi esperanza disparatada que me hace inventar un fantasma, tú, con los sentimientos que deseo."

La narradora y protagonista recibe un escueto telegrama que le comunica la muerte de su hermano Diego. Conmocionada, viaja a su Sevilla natal para ocuparse de las exequias, pero nada ocurre como era de esperar: tal vez su hermano no ha muerto y el telegrama ha sido producto de una mente extraviada, tal vez Diego sólo para unos días en una casa de campo.