Portada de La casa que me habita, de Wilfredo Carrizales, en su edición digital, que obtuvo en 2006 el Premio Nacional del Libro de Venezuela.

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Traducción al inglés: Brian Christian

1.

The house opens its outer wall: the precise opening for admitting the grace and alert glance of a woman whose name bears an indigenous resonance.

The ferns climb the locks of the feminine visitor and the night breeze comes to meet her, to further lighten her step and enthrone her in her place, which awaits her anxiously.

The inner walls of the house unfurl their marvelous lights, candelabras and masks. The Far East shortens the distances floating through musical instruments born of primitive materials. A tightening of bodies halts the advance of the night and thousands of kisses perch in the thicket of eros and its arcanum.

The house acquaints itself with the woman and summons placid dreams for her on the carpet of old stories. Her fine female profile scarcely moans when it transforms into a crescent moon and the light is so strong that the house has begun to spin.

2.

The clock on the wall decides each night to give only a certain number of strokes. At these hours, out from their hiding come the shadows of an indefinite time. They descend the white walls, from various places, and congregate very close to the clock’s case. They closely observe the movements of the pendulum. Then they calculate the exact moment to disappear, absorbed into the peripheries of forgotten spaces.

The rains ensue, being drawn to that unusual phenomenon. The house steps up its early exultation and detects the celerity of celestial bodies. As the rainy boundary nears, something like a tremor shakes the foundations of the house. The efficacy of putting its strength behind a transcendent impulse is made obvious once more.

The puddles of water are so transparent that the garden itself looks at its reflection in them and finds another childhood.

3.

On Saturdays the house grows distant inside. I turn to a deep-down courage and turn over, palm to palm, the distance that I can no longer hope to return. I discover (as if nothing had ever been discovered before) a torn down corner in a neglected courtyard. Boundary post and frontier of nostalgias.

The walls have chosen to age and in that way go crumbling prides and antiquated natures along with their respective lineages.

The masons keep passing by incessantly, theirs a trade of dreams and dirt, stories of song and stone mixed.

The mortar’s presence feels nourishing to the bricks. It goes without saying that the hints of pallid blue and grays that pit the textures remain.

(A lock of straw hopes to adorn the indestructible head wall and the future rains will resuscitate the grasses we whole-heartedly defended when we were young.)

4.

The orange blossom flowers mark the beginning of the house and their importance extends beyond a mere space confined by the wind and the rocks in the ground.

In full bloom, the house bursts forth and its earthy sap shows in tiles of essential shelter, columns of monastic patience and prayers to bind the beams together.

In another time the house moved itself along the circles traced out by the chuckling cricket of dawn.

Let’s play—we’d say then—to invent the importance of shrubs that don’t know their own precociousness. Let’s weigh—we’d swear in those days—the splendor of aromas and gather in the orchard the auroras hoisted in our comets.

5.

There are the noises of bare feet in the thresholds of doors. The earth incites the dust to profane the unusual tenderness of the segmented floor. There are noises, also, of feet that, in better times, once were well shod. Pendent memories of braids hang face down and the breeze moves them, entering silently through the windows that open to larger mysteries.

Incessantly, the heavy walls persecute the albumen where far-off incidents are projected for the delight of my eyes that already expect everything.

Dreams can’t take off when they want. All that’s left is to show a power that lurks in every corner, but the messages perseveringly sent by the house must be brought to a happy end.

(A rooster comes to the house and the mornings crow upon making out the white eggs that roll happily over the dead leaves.)

6.

A thrush prowls around one of the house’s hearts. Such a thing is often allowed when levity manifests itself in extraordinary circumstances. Otherwise, a darkness all but takes hold, irremediably, of the spirit that the house guards zealously in its deep core.

Sometimes grey-brown or reddish patches appear in the cracks through which dreams escape, and then a pressure seems to slow the natural advance of the house towards other, more plethoric confines.

The soil of the courtyards then rummages a singular destiny that justifies it before the eyes of visitors.

7.

The house that inhabits me stirs and tosses on each and every one of its sides. I think I’m worthy of its kindness and I promise to be a truthful witness to the events that bring it back, alive and throbbing again.

Suddenly, nooks and corners of the house are exposed and left to flee to innumerable objects, furniture and tiny guests. I don’t miss a single detail of the event; I draw no false conclusions. I scrutinize, and I scrutinize myself.

At first glance, this portentous fact enjoys the agglomeration of ancient footsteps and the perpetual motion of hopes circumscribed along the walls’ perimeter.

Skipping a quick beat, in the next few days the house will air out and loom over the rooms that testify to every detail.

8.

The house’s peak doesn’t hold. It senses the nearness of the front door, which faces the sharp twist of the weather vane.

Under the skeleton of rafters, domestic life transpires in contemplation of the zenithal light, high in its persistence. Still, clarity is only given to those who dare to cross the interrogating thresholds of the building.

With bone and calcium the walls praise the ascent that will put them at the same height as the canopy where the moon is held.

9.

The cats are charmed by the house, its acquiescent warmth. At night, amid the whiteness of the walls, the head representative of the felines lays claim to his jurisdiction and demands plush conditions beside abundant food. In return, he offers true kinship.

It’s said some protective spirit of cats turns up, constantly, at the house to procure well-being for the mewing brotherhood. (When the spirit occupies the domestic sphere I purr and eat the erotic foods of sleep.)

There’s a bread of musk spicing the house’s hunger in watery times. At that point, I appear before the Feline Council and present my twin arrogance and humility as an offering to the magnificence of the masters of the home.

10.

In the kitchen the house boils over in sorceries and the pots and pans return to the days of alchemy. Springing from the distant airs and the centuries of aromatic wisdom: nails of scent to fasten the windows of the senses; cinnamon useful in the navigation of pleasures; nutmeg in the frontier of the palate, provocative and sensual; ginger, loving passenger on the way to the perfect climax; chilies of the rainbow...

The edible world leaps after the oil and the meeting is lubricated in the communion of spark and sizzle, splash and shine.

The house transforms each one of its hearts into phenomenal food and so encourages the delight of bringing to the mouth another waiting mouth and lips that express the desire dyeing itself in wine at the stroke of midnight.

(Master of his taste the rooster gets stewed at dawn in a mix of wines and proclaims, drunk, the hour of caresses.)

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