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Across: Across

Friday, November 5
TREASURE


After gathering in the East, back home in Gascon. Someone greets me from one of the terraces that night despite the inclement, the outdoor dining. "Do not you know me? How will you know if a century ago have not seen ... I Salvador, your best friend Aldeanueva. " Salvador! We were best friends in the world between nine and twelve or thirteen. I did the schoolwork and he defended the town bully. I was so helpless child as now, but also a bit Quixote. Three or four boys and older boys were picking on a girl on the track, opposite the school. Other children watched and did nothing. I, with glasses, the most squalid and run riot in all, I set out to defend. They left the girl alone, she went crying home, but began to play me like a ball, darting from one to another. It was then when he came Salvador. Then I got left alone, and not just because his punches, but because he was the son of one of the people's civil guard, a grumpy sort who did not enjoy much sympathy. Since then we were friends. "You have half wafer, but you have balls", I said more than once. I was doing homework and he helped me in other things, how to feed silk worms kept in a shoebox. Eat mulberry leaves, which were not always at hand. We had to get them with stones, breaking some branches, or climbing on trees growing on the road from the station. I was useless for both. Salvador took a minute not to provide food for the insatiable critters. He also was among those who were thrown into the river from atop the Roman bridge while I had barely learned to swim. But he liked me because thanks to my aid began to get good grades and his father, who was a brute, left giving beatings. Also because I could tell stories. I remember endless summer afternoons, when all the people took naps lethargic, and he came to my house, a little lower than hers, also on the road, and called me with a pebble throwing the balcony. "Are we going for a ride?". And the two walked up the track boring, where we stayed in the shadow of one of the great elms, supported by its huge trunk and twisted. "Tell me something," he said. And I spoke of a besieged city and a large wooden horse filled with soldiers, a king who pursued their enemies and who was saved because a spider weave its web at the entrance to the cave where he had taken refuge, of brigands hiding in the nearby mountains ... They were the stories I read in school books, I heard or dreamed. I listened with eyes wide open, without any doubt that it was all true. But when I told him he had found a treasure near the Maiden Bridge not believe me. "A treasure! What nonsense! Think I'm a kid, or worse, I'm stupid. " I took him to see. He had found by the roadside, as if he had thrown from a car. As I did not dare take it home, I hid behind some rocks, under some branches, a little further. And he was there when I arrived in Salvador. It was not very large package wrapped in brown paper and tied with a rope. "Go treasure!" Said Salvador. But the paper had a tear and she looked a ticket thousand. It required little imagination to guess the wads of cash. "A fortune! Here are millions! Where will it come from? ". "Sure, some bank robber." "There will be delivered to the civil guard." "My father? Before the burn! ". We decided to hide them better to decide what we would do. I wanted to go around the world Salvador would like nothing more than long as far as possible, where his father could not find him. But where you buy tickets for a trip? What you have to carry luggage? In these questions we were when I came across an old newspaper, one of the newspapers dismissing the barber and I read avidly. He talked about con artists who had defrauded an elderly man in Cáceres. And that he was tried again in Plasencia. But there, someone had recognized and had to flee. Explained what it was the thymus. "I fear that our treasury has gone up in smoke," said Salvador. "How that has gone up in smoke? Here still! ". "Open it." The envelope was opened and filled, as I had guessed, of newspaper clippings. Salvador I looked stunned, but then I had an idea and I searched among the papers until I found the true note that we had seen the wounds. "We have a treasure, but we are rich." At that time the pay they gave to a child on Sundays, when it gave was of a quarter and a thousand were a fortune. The lap that gave the world those thousand pesetas, the things we buy, what we enjoy with that ticket a week kept one and the next one!


"I played you save when I came to Asturias. What did you do with them? ". "What did you want to do? Continue saving until we see you. Were more yours than mine. Here you go. " He opened his wallet and pulled out a crumpled bill thousand. "I do not serve you to buy many things," he said, smiling. And I hugged him pleased to have recovered the treasure forgotten childhood.



Monday, November 8
CAN NOT BE POET

Paul Brown sent me a book of variations on Achilles and the tortoise, some of them early in the journal Clarín . With the famous paradox of Zeno I can think of something funny: when I first heard, I was a child, it seemed silly, and it still seems to me many years later. Common sense argues that the reaches running more and running less reflections of Zeno (for a distance must be traveled before the first half and half half and so on to infinity) does not contradict because they speak another thing, Achilles and the tortoise.
In beetle Wittgenstein, Martin Cohen, explains the paradoxes of Zeno: "Before Achilles can catch up with the tortoise, it is clear that you first need to reach the place where it was before. And the turtle slow progress, for sure during that time has moved a bit more on your way. And it does not matter now the advantage is only a few meters, Achilles also have to visit them. And when it does, the turtle will have moved again, if only a few centimeters. And again and again, in countless smaller and smaller steps. At first glance, Achilles never travel the distance. "
"At first view? If the turtle is a few inches in front of Achilles, this will just take a step forward. That is what I said when I was ten, the teacher explained to me the alleged paradox. "This race distressed philosophers for many centuries," the good of Martin Cohen. But it does not take Einstein to realize that "when the propositions of mathematics refer to reality, not true, and when some do not refer to reality." The line has infinite points (and one-dimensional) is an abstraction of the geometry, the track at the conclusion of the race of Achilles and the tortoise has a limited number of meters and a fixed width.
"Someone with a mind so attached to the logic and so down to earth can not be a poet," he complains a friend.



Tuesday, November 9
VISIT

Past midnight, when he was about to go to bed, the doorbell rang. "Who will be at this hour?" He said. "Open, I am." She was a woman's voice, I did not recognize. "Opens at once, it's cold." "But by whom question?". "As for you. Who do I ask? Is not this the fourth right? ". And without thinking twice I opened the door, but thinking good look through the peephole before leaving home to enter this unknown impatient. Opened, however, as I heard the sound of the elevator. He gave me a hug and affectionate kisses. "You have not changed anything." She was dark, not too high, not very pretty, but nice smile, about forty years (or maybe more, but looked younger) and carried a small bag. He was sure he had not seen in my life, but came into the floor as if it were not the first time. "Anytime you have more books, will not soon be able to go from one room to another." He sat where I usually feel: that habit seemed not to know or did not care. "I'll sleep here, I will not intrude," he said. "It's too late for you, sure as you were about to go to bed. Then follow, follow your custom. I read just before sleep. Tell me where you have the blankets so that then you do not mind. " From the bag he produced a book, memories of Harpo Marx, then lay down on the couch, wrapped himself with the blanket I brought and began to read quietly. I was left standing in the doorway, looking at her not knowing what to do or say. She looked up from her book and smiled: "Did not you read? I like it. Notice how it starts: I do not know if my life has been a success or a failure and I have no hurry to find out. I just take things as they come and so much time left me to enjoy life. "



Wednesday, November 10
SHELTER FROM THE STORM

This morning I had class early. When I peeked into the room, the stranger was still there, sleeping peacefully. The blanket had fallen to the ground, so I went to wrap her and pick up the book had also been dropped carelessly.
Then I forgot about it, I forgot all immersed in the pleasant daily routine, now, however, was a novelty to explain literature beginning in Teaching. Accustomed to the few students of Philology, I am pleased to meet again with a classroom full and restless.
Before commencing, take a coffee in the cafeteria, I thought: "The last class I gave here in 1993, the first in 1977 and the first time I walked into this building, as a student, was in 1968." I felt a little dizzy. But in the classroom, as he put in play old tricks to attract the attention of the students felt the intoxication of starting an adventure. I am the guide, I have the treasure map, I hope to be able to discover the wonders of literature. The classroom is one of the places where less than it costs me to be happy: the problems, however serious, is always left out.
Upon arriving home, shortly before two o'clock, just in time to put in microwave dish and get pre-cooked to lunch at two o'clock, as I always do, I caught a delicious smell. The table was set and the unknown (not me his name, I dared not ask because surely I must know) had cooked for me. "You see that I have not forgotten the time you eat or what you listen to while eating: I have news of Radio Nacional. Even if you were a gentleman, you should turn off the radio and talk to me. "