ATONEMENT

WORDS

On that side of the track, an endless maize field with goose pimples, and Diego is dragging the body through the mud, penetrating into that colossal opaqueness. An evening rain threatens his advance, but it can only sense it, because the walk of the youth hides between the stalks. In the distance, somewhere beyond that drowned abyss, must await the marsh. He knows it, as he has covered that same purgatory before, but each time his feet walked more slowly, his arms pulled with less strength, the panic chased him more closely. Today, after so much blood and mud, his task becomes unbearable: each stride sinks him deeper into the slime of misery and each pace floods his chest with more desperation, but he has no choice: before him stretches the swamp; behind lies hell; if he stops, a viscous embrace will swallow his heart.

Perhaps it is the fear, but Diego manages to raise a foot, wearily, and walks another step, while pulling up that misshapen form from the filthy pit were it had run aground. Some rooks have smelled his frightened sweat and are approaching him, cawing in circles above the trail of death that Diego’s escape is drawing in the density, awaiting the moment that the exhausted boy crosses the boundary of the sown field and collapses from exhaustion on the edge of the water. But the young man cannot hear them: his weeping is growing along with his anxiety, and he can barely take another step.

However, and despite all, Diego manages to reach the bog, with the last of his strength. He won’t stop for a single moment in that horrifying place. First, he will hurl the bundle. Once with empty hands, he will be able to forget again.

MOVIES

Eureka, Shinji Aoyama, Japan, 2000.

The child has been late for school for the first time. But everyone looks at him with astonished faces, whispering to each other, pointing at him, pronouncing his name indiscreetly, waiting.

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Green, by Goretti Broto.