JEREZAN NIGHT
At three in the morning, the parrot started insulting Grandpa. It wasn’t anything new, but this time he did it in Latin. Grandma, who hadn’t spoken in years, got up, put on her First Communion dress, and said, “The ham eclipse is back.” No one understood a thing. The dog was barking in Morse code. Channel Two was broadcasting an Orthodox mass in Russian. And in the fridge, the flan was moving on its own.
That was when my uncle Ernesto, who had been shut away in the attic of his own volition for fifteen years, came down with a bottle of Brandy de Jerez. He poured a few glasses in silence. We all drank. The parrot apologized. The flan stopped, and Grandma fell back asleep.
Roberto Marín Luque
