criminal in prose

There are novels that overwhelm the reader in the large area of ​​a plot, causing the maximum penalty: twelve steps to instant oblivion without even reading the end, and there are at least two stories by Julio Cortazar that are resolved by means of a blunt penalty kick, by edge of the final whistle. The metaphor then goes back and forth: the devious trip against the reader in full flight of a dialogue read as a tattoo and the writer who places the first syllable in the blob of penalty kicks, stealthily withdraws towards the crescent of all his sleeplessness and heads towards the gloved reader under the posts of the goal, oscillating in that nervous paragraph that seems to become eternity and curdles a supersonic line that has to nestle itself on the edge of a bedpost, in the center of the networks of insomnia or in the upper corner of the shared imagination.

Let the professionals think about the improvised philosophies with which each of the plays is interpreted, even from a bland and hypocritical championship: we no longer know what distraction to apply to the underlying passion of football to evade the guilt that stains us all, the thousands of dead workers, the authoritarian prohibitions of the host country or the already widespread awareness that FIFA is a nest of corruption and robbery in broad daylight. Let the drill continue every four years, but also assume that the globalized ecumenism of so many overexploited players and athletes produces not a few high-level competition games resolved –beyond regulation time and overtime—in chilling rounds of penalties.

Something similar happens in the literature that excites us, especially in the so-called chico genre: the stories or short stories that seek their triumph in the firing squad –which does not mourn- between the reader (often as a gatekeeper) and the author (who usually be battering ram). The steps are measured in pages and spelling punctuation, there is a fearful silence and the impalpable, almost inaudible whistle is awaited, so that the entire plot and its circumstances are resolved -for better or worse- in criminal prose.

I think of the jiribilla à la Panenka, the occasional lightness of the authors who float the conclusion like a harmless balloon that defeats us because we had already flown defeated towards a side that we thought was predictable. There is the direct whiplash to the face of the goalkeeper with or without gloves who throws the copy in the doorway of the goal where he dozes, precisely because the final turn of a romance or the revelation of a crime was not expected and there is the bell shot, that hits the crossbar to sting just inside the cave of our reading goal and there is the reader who flies towards the corner –there where the spiders make their nest- and cunningly catches the shot launched by the storyteller, not to mention the writers who fly the spherical wonder of a story above the frame, the storyteller who usually hits the post on both sides without being able to score a story and the storyteller who performs all kinds of juggling prior to the firecracker to easily deliver the ball from what is narrated to the hands of the reader-guardian.

Without video to verify it, the criminal in prose depends on chance and maintains the tension of yesteryear, which includes errors and circumstantial mistakes and opinions or optics found. Not exempt from controversy, but a romantic and hypnotic breath exudes from the seconds of silence that precede the phrase as a shot, the key word as shortcut in a minimal ethereal trigonometry that freezes time, mobilizes the planets and redefines the stars… the The page trembles and the pillows explode in a scream that deafens all the calm of that miracle called reading and the celebration can alter the tide of the sheets, the bedside lamp and the calm of the couple who snored next to us until the prodigious moment in which prose as a criminal imprints its result on the conscience, tearful eyes and raised arms in this foolish habit of hypnotizing oneself almost every day with the passion of literature, particularly the league of short stories, that immense genre that does not deserves to be overshadowed by the ninety-minute soap operas, the epic long-term stories that – well regarded – are capitalized precisely because of the stories and cuentinimos like gambeta or dri bling, empty passes and trompe l’oeil thirty meters from the goal, where the writer as storyteller applies the maximum penalty in each twist of the waist, each unspeakable blink when he passes the ball of his prose under the arch of some legs, the pipe or tunnel that causes cross-eyed eyes or the silent tribute of the deceived reader who recognizes that there is a lot of story to throw directly into the small area of ​​our passion… although from time to time it seems no more than a metaphor for what they call football, calcium, football or football.

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