excerpt
An awkward silence comes between them, as if she’s trying to find the proper
words. Perhaps she wants to say how happy she’s that he sent her a letter, or how
sorry she’s for not talking to him for all this time. Perhaps she feels sorry for all
the years that have gone in which they haven’t kept in touch. Perhaps he feels all
these feelings of hers without a word said. After all, she doesn’t talk to her
brother very often and the words do not come easily.
“I haven’t talked to you in a while and I’ve missed you,” Evelyn utters.
“I haven’t talked to you either, Evelyn. I have only one sister and it hurts me
when I don’t know how you are,” his voice chokes.
Evelyn feels an opening, “I received your letter yesterday and my thoughts
have been with you every time.”
“Oh, you got it,” he waits for her to carry on.
“Yes, and I find it hard to understand that a man in your position and ideas,
which I remember you pointing out to us a number of times in the past, I
wonder, I repeat, I find it difficult to understand how you managed to come to
this point of agreeing with your simple-minded sister, who sees things a lot more
in black and white, rather than the gray and shady way of the service.” She says all
this almost in one breath. One can tell she’s made a serious effort to express her
feelings in such a way not to hurt him.
“I know, Evelyn. It may be surprising, yet a man starts, at a certain stage of his
life, to question things. A man comes to a point in life when he wants to have an
answer to a certain question without looking in the army manual or one black
book or another. A man reaches a point where he finds it very hard to remain on
the path he has taken, when he knows that path leads nowhere other than selling
out his life. Even admirals can come to such point in life.”
There is silence again and Bevan discerns faint sobbing and her breathing
becoming heavier by the moment, moments that strike like bells in the dusk
saying goodbye to the killed man, or to the dead, or to the light of day as it fades
slowly away.
“I’m sorry, Evelyn. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you. I just felt like telling
you that yes, Evelyn, you were right; sometimes the way we do things doesn’t
result in anything worth keeping as a trophy for our last years.”
“I love you, my dear brother, Bevan. I love you, remember that. It’s just the
two of us and I will always love you, even when our views differ in appearance or
in substance. Yes, sometimes the way the army does things, doesn’t result in
anything worth keeping as a memory, or as a trophy.”
“There is always a solution, Evelyn, and a way for one to stand on his feet,
straight like a proud oak on a mountainside, and take on the wrath of the
people’s hatred and the wrath of people’s fears, misunderstandings…
Libros Libertad 