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Fiction

Chuvia Mansa

By Xoán Ramón Díaz

About this book

Chuvia mansa is Xoán Ramón Díaz’s second book with Manolo Meiriño as its main character. The first one was A xeada negra.

One thing is clear: Manolo Meiriño is not a private detective. Manolo Meiriño is a rolling stone. After reading these two books we know little or nothing about this dark character. We could say that Xoán Ramón Díaz deliberately refuses to give out any characterising trait. There is no mention of his physical appearance. Just some vague comments about the way he looks and a very localised muscle complexion, his carelessness when he dresses. It has to be the reader who gives shape to the body and face of Manolo Meiriño. Regarding his moral standards he is neither more generous nor more explicit. All in all, the acts and words of Meiriño will allow us to deduct his character, his ambiguous but assessable character anyway.

His past is also obscure for the reader. He belongs to the average middle class that allows him to join but never finish his university degree. In the meantime he seems to be educated enough and he does not reject good books, he has an exquisite musical training, of a music lover and instrument player.

Book fragment

Meiriño didn’t pay any attention to his colleague’s comment. He continued walking with the same soft, oblivious steps that had led him in his pilgrimage from one bar to another the whole evening. He hanged his coat with his left hand and then he go read of the rain that enveloped him. The water, pulverized in continuous suspension, floated all the time in the warm air, moist air. The light from the lamps faded away and was painted with diffuse shines, filtering through the infinite and minimum drops. Everything was covered in dead gold, in a subtle gauze of liquid fog. Wherever he looked everything seemed fantasmagoric and unreal.

The moist and heat created cobwebs on Manolo Meiriño’s face. The warm moist was entangled in every inch of his body and his shirt and trousers were pressed against this chest and thighs. Behind him there was his shadow with the hypertrophied black backbone, crawling on the cells of the pavement. Creeping and transparent, matt on the used tiles, shuffling his feet, Meiriño made a soft sound. His slow and painless steps made a rhythmic chaf-chaf sound on the timid shines and warm sparks of the street-lamps.