Free B0040702LQ EBOK by Margaret Jull Costa;Annella McDermott

impulses.
    They reached the bend while there was still a couple of
hours' light left. Impatient to catch sight of their goal, he kept
craning his neck, or stepping out into the middle of the road,
to calm the anxiety that had seized his steps. And again she
stopped suddenly, with her feet together and her mouth open,
staring straight ahead.
    `What's wrong?'
    He shook her arm, grasped her hand and squeezed it
tightly, an inert hand, through which he could feel flowing
into his own body all the force of her apprehension, a hand
reduced almost to nothing, then, with the countryside steeped
in the sudden silence that is the prelude to the storm, when
you sense that even invisible beings are crouching down to
shelter, then, in another very different place, but, again, behind
him, he felt - he did not see - the flash of lightning, the
simultaneous, contradictory rupture of sea and sky which,
after the mirage, took on a graver, more deceptive look, like a
child trying to hide with his body some damage he has caused,
both sea and sky suddenly made old and worn by a film of
dissolute rust.
    He had turned round to look at the walker with his dog -
now incredibly far away, considering he had just crossed their
path, at the moment of crisis - when she emerged from her
trance.
    `What about the inn? Where is the inn?' she asked.
    It was that insistent question that completed his sense of
disorientation. He walked forward a few steps, leaving her
alone on the road, he climbed up a little mound to look
around in all directions and came back more confused than
ever.
    `I think we passed it.'

    `It's round that bend.'
    `I don't know what we were thinking of. Anyway, let's go
back.'
    But she looked at him very oddly; her face was expressionless, but incredulity had invaded her whole body to such an
extent that he could not suppress a gesture of annoyance.
    `Let's go,' he said to her, trying to turn her in the opposite
direction to the one they had been following. But she stood
there rigid, staring straight ahead.
    `It's no good,' she replied.
    `What do you mean, it's no good? Come on, it's getting
late. It's time we went back.'
    `It's no good,' she repeated.
    `What on earth do you mean, it's no good?'
    `I mean it's different. Everything is different. Look how
different it all is. Give me your hand. Look.'
    He obeyed, and the lightning flashed again, perhaps as a
direct consequence of the electric charge he had felt when he
touched her hand. It was true that everything had changed;
after the dazzle produced by the lightning, everything around
him, though there was not the slightest perceptible alteration,
was unrecognisable, just as a photograph of a familiar landscape, printed the wrong way round, is hard to recognise
because there is no actual deception.
    They took a few light, faltering steps in the direction they
had been following earlier; then he stammered incoherently:
    `The inn ... further on, a bit further on.'
    `Exactly, a bit further on.'
    They stood rooted to the spot, hand in hand and staring
open-mouthed up the road, not moving a muscle or giving
the faintest reaction when the man walking his dog crossed
their path once more, paying no heed to the unusual sight
they presented.
    Nor did the dog cast a glance in their direction, but tore on,
straining at the leash.
    As for them. . . the last vestiges of their senses did not allow
them to notice that, as well as the dog, the man used a stick,
held out in front in him, almost motionless, above his stiff, rapid steps, he did not look to left or right and his eyes were
hidden behind dark glasses.

    © Herederos de Juan Benet
    Translated by Annella McDermott
    Juan Benet (Madrid, 1927-1993) was unusual in combining
the profession of engineer with the practice of literature.
Benet wrote a large number of novels, short stories and
essays. His style is generally considered difficult, but he is
widely admired, particularly by other writers, and is