The thread of blood and Diosmira Concepción

When he saw that trickle of blood, Diosmira Concepción was surprised. It was not for less, in his continuous walk along that great avenue of tropical palm trees and tall buildings, he had never seen anything like it: it was a thin thread of blood that for blocks and blocks slid between the tiles of the sidewalks, turning where he had to turn and dodge where he had to dodge, he went around not one, not two, not three trees, but all that crossed his path, until finally he was heading—almost in a straight line—to the front of a building where a lots of people crowded around something.

The crimson filament, which Diosmira Concepción took as a sign of providence, was lost under the feet of a crowd that could not understand if it was trembling with consternation or morbidity. The short, broad-hearted woman would never see that on the other side of the crowd lay a dead man; and perhaps she would never have known if it weren’t for the fact that her lifelong comadre saw her there, petite and curious, trying to see through the cracks left by people.

Circumcision Retama, who was just passing by when a deaf and terrifying sound frightened her, was already aware of the details of the misfortune.

“Someone important has died!” —he commented, and almost immediately, as if he had the need to vomit the gossip, he indicated—, he says he was linked to the bank where you kept your savings, it seems he jumped from the 14th floor. I think they killed him.

Macabre sounded like the comadre’s conclusion, but given the latest news it seemed the most appropriate. Everyone knew, and it was an open secret, that the bank in question laundered dirty money in full view and with the patience of the authorities, not in vain did it have branches across from each other and one a few meters from the next.

Diosmira Concepción also knew, as did most of the neighbors, that several of the local oligarchs filled their mouths badmouthing Western centralism, but they took full advantage of the business they did with the politicians who pulled the strings of power.

The woman, visualizing the future, imagined how the morondanga government was going to cover up the crime to prevent the crap that was about to be discovered from being known and that, of course, affected the environment of power. Convinced that the country was being eaten up by drug trafficking and that corruption did what it wanted and with whom it wanted, Diosmira Concepción left, trusting that at some point someone else would see the trickle of blood that she herself would form when I die.

The author is a writer, ronniepierola.blogspot.com