Pedro Paramo

He went outside and looked at the sky. It was raining stars. He was sorry, because he would rather have seen a tranquil sky. He heard roosters crowing. He felt the mantle of night covering the earth. The earth, "this vale of tears."

"Then it must be my sixth sense. A gift God gave me — or maybe a curse.

All I know is that I've suffered because of it."

Green pastures. Watching the horizon rise and fall as the wind swirled through the wheat, an afternoon rippling with curling lines of rain. The color of the earth, the smell of alfalfa and bread. A town that smelled like spilled honey...

Empty carts, churning the silence of the streets. Fading into the dark road of night. And shadows. The echo of shadows.

"I'm suspicious of my own shadow.

None of us still living is in God's grace. We can't lift up our eyes, because they're filled with shame. And shame doesn't help.

Later the two of them had strolled through the azalea-shaded cloister of the parish patio. They sat beneath an arbor where grapes were ripening.

"They're bitter, Father," the priest anticipated Father Renteria's question. "We live in a land in which everything grows, thanks to God's providence; but everything that grows is bitter. Tha

And though there were no children playing, no doves, no blue-shadowed roof tiles, I felt that the town was alive. And that if I heard only silence, it was because I was not yet accustomed to silence - maybe because my head was still filled with sounds and voices.

From the time I left the house of that woman who let me use her bed, the one — I told you - I'd seen dissolving in the liquid of her sweat, from that time on I'd felt cold. And the farther I walked, the colder I got, until my skin was all goose bumps. I wanted to turn back; I thought that if I went back I might find the warmth I'd left behind; but

He never liked to relive that memory because it brought others with it, as if a bulging sack of grain had burst and he was trying to keep the kernels from spilling out.