Despicable Stories

By Isaías Ramos García

Narrative is a literary style that describes perfectly this tales collection. This texts, written in prose, narrate a series of episodes that happen to one or more characters. They are explained by the author in first person, and seen from his particular point of view. The author appears directly involved in the stories that, although aren't real, are based on some of the author's personal experiences. What the stories have in common is a particular way of narrating and describing the author's feelings when facing the crude personal reality, something that at the end leaves the reader with a bittersweet smile.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Editorial Alvi Books
• Release date: Jan 19, 2020
• ISBN: 9781071525623

Book preview

DESPICABLE STORIES

Index

The Neighbours.

At the Bus.

The Guest.

From the Terrace.

Dani Miserias.

Corpus Christi.

The Family.

The Friends.

The Lovers.

Behind the Door.

The neighbours.

In every town and city, in every neighborhood, people from every house can get on well or not so well, have quarrels. There is always place for grudges or arguments to bloom into. This is one of those quarrels, it's so nonsense that it can show how selfish, miserable and vicious that people can be. It happens in the place I'm living in, in Armilla, 7 kms far from Granada, a locality that is neither so big, nor so small. It counts with around 20.000 inhabitants. Although it is not a beautiful town, there are uglier towns.

Not so much of a town, but there are still some elders who have dedicated their lives to country work, people who have the mindset of Spaniards from rural Spain in the 20's or 30's.

This anecdote in particular, was told to me yesterday and I found it funny, catching and amusing enough to write it on paper. Sometimes, people are despicable, they are capable of acting so selfishly and ridicule, in such a miserable and wrong way that you neither despise, nor hate them, but laugh at them.

So, this particular scene takes place in a central street of the town. I won't tell any names in order not to compromise anybody or gaining any enemies.

At the corner of a street, there is an ice-cream shop whose owner is an old lady who, during the 60's or 70's, when nearly half Spain used to migrate to Barcelona or Madrid, migrated to a bigger and more cosmopolitan city than Granada. The thing is that this lady came back to this place and settled her store, renting a place to a gentleman who had three more in the same street, just behind the town hall. Shortly after, another lady rented another place to the same gentleman and settled a handerbarshery next to the ice-cream shop. Finally, the third place was rented.

The first lady opened her shop after Easter, and she used to put aluminium tables and chairs in front of her shop's door, occupying both her's and the next door's place of the street, but she had to pay a long tax at the town hall for doing that. The third one, who was known by being particularly nasty and unpleasant, didn't seem to agree with that. She said that the tables and chairs were an obstacle, so people couldn't easily enter her shop, and because of that, she lost some clients. So, she complained about that with the owner of the three commercial places and she also went to the town hall and whined a little more, which resulted in the authorities forcing the ice-cream shopper to put her chairs and tables only in her side of the street, without invading the next two sides, with which her possibilities of attracting people to buy her ice-creams, drinks, milkshakes, sitting by the fresh air of the street. In one hand, it was harmful for her business, but on the other hand, it was good for her, because she didn't have to put so much tables and chairs, which every day were fully occupied, and also, she didn't have to clean that much space of the iron floor of the artificial terrace. The other lady, the handerbarhsery's owner, who worked in the shop with her daughter (both of them were certainly beautiful, by the way), couldn't fulfill her purposes, because the cars used to park in front of her shop. Well, she could solve that problem buying two huge flowerpots and placing them in front of her door, having to pay an extra Municipal tax for doing so.

All in all, the ice-cream shopper tells the story to everyone who comes to her store to have an ice-cream, and as the people who used to sit in front of the handerbarhsery were able to see the front door of that store, they could go in and buy something if they needed or wanted it. Now, the client number of this other not-so-sympathetic lady, had decreased.

While on the subject, the shop's owner didn't tell anything to the ice-cream shopper, with what she didn't realize about the story until it was already told, as she herself reproached to him.

This  amusing event was told to me yesterday after dinner, on the twenty sixth day of May, in the year 2008, and it's a good example of the nonsense, of the mischief, of the trivialities that walking people are capable of. They would be the elders of the Earth, the ones that the adults of my childhood used to bet for me to belong to their group, the group that I was willing to belong, capable of such foolishness. People say that the rich steal pompously, and the poor steal as they can. It is possible for rich people to behave in such a hypocritical, pharisaic way, and to fight among themselves in such a way that they put entire towns and countries to fight, such as Cleopatra and Marco Antonio in one side, and Octavius in the other during their days, in such an amazing, terrible and astonishing way. Nevertheless, in times like these, so selfish and democratic, I find this rather difficult.

At the bus.

This morning I had to take the public bus. Inside a bus you can see a wide variety of people: tall ones, short ones, skinny ones, fat ones, young ones, mature ones and elders, but which called my attention the most was the whole lot of different personalities I had in front of me. The face is the soul's mirror, and when seeing the ones that were available for my eyesight inside the public transport, I was able to realize how varied can be the human personalities and desires.

Let's start.

To begin with, not so far away of the seat I could get for me, there was a lady who was wearing lots of makeup, very well dressed, with lots of perfume and a very bad taste for clothing. This pretty woman looked like she also had lots of money, but having money doesn't mean losing the old bad manners. This girl, because this is what she was, talked about having this and that, which is extremely vulgar and impolite. Starting to rant and rave about what you have is something you never, should ever do if you really belong to a rich lineage, if you are an aristocrat, of which just a few remain alive, you should avoid doing that. It was also possible to see that this person wasn't a very clever or well raised one. Dressed up with a bison's fur coat, a diamond bracelet in a wrist, a Rolex in the other, her hair recently done, she constantly wiped the corners of her lips with two of her fingers, the thumb and the index. She must have been from El Ejido or somewhere else and she must have raised her fortune at the countryside. She must have grown up between Greenhouses and stinky stubbles. The fact that she had to take the bus having so much money, was something unusual. As she herself was explaining to an acquaintance of hers, she had had to lend her car to her son, so she had no option but taking the bus,

Later on, not so far away, I could see a quite old and fat man. He looked like he couldn't retain his very instincts, because he was eating a whole cake in the very place where he was standing up, and while he was doing so, he was leaning the middle part of his anatomy against a young girl who, extremely ashamed, remained silent and had to hold up in spite of the rubbing. I got up and offered my seat to the poor girl.

A little further, there was an old lady from abroad sitting there, maybe german or english, I couldn't exactly know, because I didn't hear her speaking. Her eyes called my attention immediately. Without the shadow of a doubt, she was a wise woman, with a strong personality, firm and decided, a person who tends to remember every good or bad that she receives. She got my admiration. Moreover, in spite of her age -her face was full of wrinkles and her large double chin was hanging under her throat- she was still beautiful, with a straight nose and very aristocratic, fine features. No doubt she was a lovely woman when she was younger, but she was still being so. She was dressed up with simplicity, but she had a very good taste on clothes. She was wearing canvas sandals, as long as we are in summer, a skirt that could scarcely cover her knees, a white cotton shirt and a cardigan over her shoulders. Her hair was done in a way that increased her natural beauty, and was the most suitable for her, not like the one that the lady I've seen not so long ago, who looked ridiculous.

Now, a couple was sitting in front of me, probably from Morocco -They spoke Arabian-, very young and not so good-looking. In their eyes you could see the joy of being young, the joy of people who have their souls completely full of projects and hopes, who have everything standing right in front of them and are always gazing further. She had very notorious breasts, I couldn't help noticing them even though I tried to look her in the eyes. He held her hand from time