Three novellas explore the emotional and sexual relationships that can entrap, consume, frustrate and preserve the human spirit. "Helen" is an intensely erotic story of the love between a young man and an older woman. "Caravetti" deals with romantic love as against married love by contrasting love in Paris to love in a highly structured Spanish society, in which duty to family and the opportunism of purchased love reflect the ageless choice. "Adam" pursues the mental relationship between a homosexual and a heterosexual man in unrequited love, and the frustrations of both men in dealing with sexual attraction within the dictates of society.
Genre: FAMILY & RELATIONSHIPS / Friendshipsells moderately
Caravetti felt the round form of the shoulders and slipped his hands under the arms and along the clay sides. Deftly his fingers touched the swells and indentations of the male figure. He glanced at the young man standing in front of him, surveyed the near duplicate beside him, and lifted his hands to the face to begin a gentle moulding of its features. The sun waned at seven o'clock height, glimmered over the tops of a group of short trees and fell into the garden where the three figures stood, two motionless and the third working silently.
In the lane outside the garden walls some small children were playing with a ragged sandal. It was the type some of their people wore all the year round; a straight sole of woven hemp with black cords to fasten it to the ankles. The children had made up a song about the sandal which was the attractive element in the game, although only the words "alpargata mas barata" were distinguishable. The narrow lane led down-hill to the main street of the town. This was the street with the wide sidewalk, which boasted the shopping district.
Although the townspeople of San Bernardino found everything they needed in the dozen stores of the town, the few tourists who happened to sojourn there preferred to shop in Izina, the cosmopolitan centre of the island. There the houses fell together over narrow streets cut into the side of the hill where the old town descended from behind its Roman wall to mix with the shops, banks, pensions, and white squatty houses of a newer age.
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Portuguese
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Already translated.
Translated by Fabielle Cruz
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Spanish
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Already translated.
Translated by scarleth cerrato
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