La valentía / José Antonio Ramos Sucre

Bravery

The cleric keeps the violent mastiffs, clutched with the leash. He has gone over the pages of the epopee so as to assign them a genteel nickname. He directs the dogs to an inclement grandee, versed in the roundabouts of the hunt, emulator of the sun and obstinate in choosing it as a cypher of his vanity and sign of his shield.
     The grandee is delayed in a simple village and his unsociable life and solemn ways motivate the birth and release of underhanded rumors. The mistrustful satellites live around him and under the empire of his inflexible voice.
     The grandee attains a politician’s name in a seditious kingdom, in a century of monks and knights, deviating from feudal criteria. He is guarded from the assault of fortune by engulfing himself in the warnings of history’s drama and discovers solace from the pounding of the world in the images of a free romance.
     The cleric marvels at the verve of the grandee, his will directed toward the domination of the earth and his affection for the unsettled of his fantasy. He deposits in his hands a fatuous legend, where he himself, author of capricious inspiration, levels conflicts by the ministry of chance.
     The grandee once more displays irrepressible resolve. He suspends the interview with the cleric and steps away to suppress the sanguinary howl of the hounds, wounding them on their face with a bony hand.




El cielo de esmalte (1929)




{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }