Galego | English

Fiction

Home sen nome

By Suso de Toro

About this book

Nano is bedridden in a hospital room and for two days an old dying man gives him company. The man is old, full of tubes and physically at his wits’ end. The old man, the man without a name is an enigma invaded by memories, between delirium and dreams caused by medication. In that situation he starts a monologue recalling his terrifying hundred-year-old biography. A restless life, conditioned by the early loss of his mother, the shadow of his twin brother, his stay in Berlin during the rise of the Nazi regime and his sympathies towards it, his main role in the killings of civilians during the hard repression in 1936 in Compostela or his voluntary participation in the Blue Division. The visit of Celia, a young script-writer, forces the old man without a name to brightly confess without any repentance or remorse, his participation in multiple shootings, torture and rape and his reasons for it… Using drama-like strategies, Suso de Toro presents his most ambitious literary work so far: an intense and emotional narration against the background of the repression in Galicia during the coup d’etat and the years after the war. A disturbing reflection on memory focusing on the executioners.

Book fragment

You are awake. You are here. You are. You. What are you? Who are you? Another day, you are here. Existing again another day, being again. A being. Being over again. Who? Bringing thoughts together, memory, light. Come on, come on. Nano. Your name is Nano! And yes, you are Nano, and you are here! Fucking hell, Nano, you are here! Yes. Where the hell are you? Where are you, you think in fear. You feel on the back of your hand the touch of unknown sheets, the weight of a very light blanket, you are lying on an unknown bed, the rough and clean touch of the sheet, smells of detergent, humid with your own sweat. And it comes to your mind, or is it memory? that you are in some hospital. That you are in hospital. Definitely, you are in hospital. And you think, good God, I am in hospital. And then is there anybody else in this room? because in hospital you always share a room, Nano. Who are you with in this room, who is there by your side?

And you think, oh fuck, I am so fucking scared of hospitals and look where you are now. You thought that you would not come to a hospital again and here you are now. How many years since you last stepped into a hospital. Since you lost your hand. One does not simply think such things happen, but they do happen and one has to be ready.