The Lost Origin by Matilde Asensi Read Free Book Online

were over and all that was left was to park the car, you’d discover with horror that the cars were squeezed together in such a way on both sides of the street that it was almost impossible to get from one side of the street to the other without using a can opener. It would have been a miracle if the situation had been any different that night, but, of course, it was not, and I ended up doing the same as always. Which is to say I parked the left half of the car diagonally across one of the block’s corners.
    My brother’s apartment was on the fourth floor of a very old building. I was convinced that some cloned strain of Jabba resided there, the product of some mysterious genetic experiment, because every time that I went, I found myself in the elevator with some almost exact replica of him. It never failed, and the phenomenon ended up worrying me so much that I asked Daniel if he had also noticed it. My brother, obviously, had burst into laughter and had explained to me that there was a very extensive family that occupied various apartments in the building, and that all of its members did hold a certain resemblance to Marc.
    “Certain resemblance?” I exclaimed, indignant.
    “They’re all enormous and red-headed, but that’s where it ends!”
    “Well, I would say they’re identical.”
    “Don’t exaggerate!”
    But now my brother was not at home and I could not tell him, as I always did, that I had again found myself in the elevator with one of those clones. The door was opened by my sister-in-law, who, although she was dressed to go out, looked drawn and had bags under her eyes.
    “You don’t look good, Arnau.” She told me with an affectionate smile.
    “I think I didn’t sleep very well,” I replied as I went into the apartment. In the hall that began in front of me and ended in the living room, a diminutive figure came forward with a shaky step, dragging, like Snoopy with Linus, an old blanket with which he was also covering half of his head.
    “He’s exhausted,” Ona told me, lowering her voice. “Don’t excite him.”
    I didn’t get a chance to. Halfway there, the blanketed figure decided it wasn’t worth the effort and turned around, going back to his grandparents, who were watching television. Sincethe sofa was visible from the entryway, I waved hello to Ona’s parents, while my sister-in-law tugged at my left arm to take me to Daniel’s office.
    “You have to see this, Arnau,” she said, as she turned on the light. My brother’s study was even smaller than my closet, but he had managed to fix it up with an enormous quantity of very tall wooden bookshelves overflowing with books, magazines, notebooks, and files. Occupying the center of that chaos was his work desk, covered with unstable stacks of folders and papers, surrounding, like high walls, some annotated manuscripts on which rested a pen, and next to them the closed laptop.
    Ona went to the desk, and, without moving anything, leaned over the papers and put a finger on them.
    “Go on, read this,” she murmured.
    I still wore the backpack on my shoulder, but the urgency that came through Ona’s voice pulled me toward the table. There, where she was pointing with her index finger, were written some phrases in my brother’s handwriting, which, although perfectly understandable at the beginning, became almost illegible at the end:
    “Mana huyarinqui lunthata? Do you not hear, thief?
    “Jiwañta [...] You are dead [...], anatatäta chakxaña, you’ve tried to take the stick from the door.
    “
Jutayañäta allintarapiña
, you will call the gravedigger,
chhärma
, this very night.
    “The others (them)
jiwanaqañapxi jumaru,
all die everywhere for you.
    “
Achakay, akapacha chhaqtañi jumaru
. Oh, this world will cease to be visible to you!
    “
Kamachi
[...], law [...],
lawt’ata
, closed with a key,
Yäp
….”
    Everything after that, as if Daniel had been losing consciousness while his hand kept trying to write, looked like a