Galego | English

Non fiction

Aconteceres

By Bieito Ledo

About this book

When life gives you the opportunity of meeting people who are so nice on the inside, a series of stories is triggered, stories that may not be true but that may not be false either. From that ambiguity stem these “happenings” (Aconteceres). They are narrated in the first person and the protagonist, the author, shares the souls of his characters to tell us with their own philosophy the meaning of love, family, intelligence, imagination or effort and, especially, friendship.

Book fragment

Once I had to deliver a speech in front of a large number of elderly men and women on the international day to remember that hard reality. I realised that what I could do was to convey strength, optimism and the will to live, and I reminded them of the past and how life had changed for the better. I reminded them too of the fact that the lives of cats had improved a lot because when I was a child they used to run about with mice in their mouths and that when the fishmonger arrived they went crazy with the smell of sardines. They used to eat the heads and bones…

Now, however, they are so high and mighty, including my mother’s cats. In the morning they demand breakfast and poor Secundina has to get up from bed, make coffee with milk, take the biscuits out and then they are still not satisfied because on Sundays she makes hot chocolate and churros, she lays the table with a linen cloth and napkins for them to clean their mouths after eating.

When I was leaving, a woman who did not look as if she had ever lived in any village came over and said, “Excuse me, that thing with your mother’s cats, is it true?”

I invited her to come to my village of Padroso the following weekend.