The companion - Martín Gardella

Texto en español en El living sin tiempo: "El acompañante".

Traducido al inglés por Gustavo Sevilla.

My roommate has strange habits. When the day breaks, he gets up grudgingly to close the blinds. He adores the darkness and silence of nights to sit and watch shooting stars with emotion. He prefers to hide in the closet whenever I receive guests – I don’t know whether he does it as a gesture of politeness, out of shyness, or because he is afraid that the guest may be one of those individuals who, he tells me, seek to catch him. I know the risk, but I protect his secret knowingly. Since that stormy night when he settled at home, he has become my best companion, an extraordinary pal. I see to him and feed him as if he were a harmless baby, and in the afternoons I prepare him a bath so that he can play, for a long while, with the soapy sponge among his tentacles.

Martín Gardella