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."

"I'm suspicious of my own shadow.

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...

He stopped talking then. He said there wasn't much point in saying things he couldn't hear, things that evaporated in the air, things he couldn't get the taste of.

She gave them everything she had. She even gave them sons. All of them. And took the infants to their fathers to be recognized. But none of them wanted to. Then she told them, 'In that case, I'll be the father as well, even though fate chose me to be the mother.'

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.

Father Renteria picked up the coins, one by one, and walked to the altar.

"These are Yours," he said. "He can afford to buy salvation. Only you know whether this is the price. As for me, Lord, I throw myself at your feet to ask for the justice or injustice that any of us may ask ...For my part, I hope you damn him to hell."

And he

"What do you have here?" I asked.

"Odds and ends," she said. "My house is chock full of other people's things. As people went away, they chose my house to store their belongings, but not one of them has ever come back to claim them.

"I don't know, Juan Preciado. After so many years of never lifting up my head, I forgot about the sky. And even if I had looked up, what good would it have done? The sky is so high and my eyes so clouded that I was happy just knowing where the ground was. Besides, I lost all interest after padre Renteria told me I would never know glory. Or ev