On foretimes, Don Verídico sowed houses and folks around El Resorte tavern, so the tavern wouldn’t feel lonely. This tale happened, they say, on the village born by him.
And people say that there was a treasure there, hidden in the house of a scoundrel old man. Once a month, the little shabby man, who was in the twilight of his life, would get up and see for his pension.
Taking advantage of the absence, some thieves, came from Montevideo, broke into his house. The thieves searched and searched for the treasure in every corner. The only thing they found was a wooden trunk, covered with rags, in a corner of the basement. The tremendous lock that guarded it resisted, unbeaten, the picklocks attacks.
So, they took the trunk. When they finally managed to open it, far away, they discovered that it was full of letters. They were love letters the old man had received throughout his long life.
The burglars were going to burn the letters. They argued. At last, they decided by returning them. One by one. One letter each week.
Since then, at midday every Monday, the old man would sit up on the hill. There he waited for the mailman to show up in the road. The horse barely seen, fat with saddlebags, among the trees, the aged man would start a reckless rush. The mailman, who already knew, had the old man letter in his hands.
And even San Pedro could hear the drumming of that heart frenzied by happiness for receiving woman’s words.
Eduardo Galeano, free translation from Portuguese, from The Book of Embraces (O livro dos abraços)
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Galeano is a tough one to translate. His use of language and words is very peculiar, molding its’ conjugations and forms at his own will and poetry. The original is beautiful, but when I tried to translate this into English I felt I’d need a lot of liberties, flexible mind and knowledge of both languages in order to make it work. Because depending on how formally you read it, even the originals wouldn’t make sense.
Traduções da Taverna 