All This I Will Give to You

by Dolores Redondo

Reading was the fortress from which he could defend himself as he struggled in a losing campaign to control the exultant instincts of his sexuality. Reading was a defense, a shield his timidity could use to arm itself, a guide to seeking relationships. But writing was infinitely more than that. Writing was an interior palace with secret sites, gorgeous places, a complex of unlimited spaces. He explored them, laughing, running barefoot, and stopping to touch the beautiful treasures stored there.

Flanked by hundred-year-old trees, the unpaved drive was covered with pine needles. Here and there open pine cones clung to thin branches overhead like wooden roses. The ground sloped gradually upward toward an open area with a carefully

manicured lawn and a one-story stone structure where rounded arches in a facade enclosed two magnificent wooden doors.

A century-old ficus had place of privilege at the near edge of the pond. Its two-toned leaves shone, forming a strange cascade, and its veined living roots gave it majesty and sweep, as if it were ruled by its own desires and not by any passersby who had the liberty to walk away. Attracted by the grandeur of that tree, Manuel stepped forward and touched the trunk, its bark as fine and warm as a living animal. He turned again toward Griñán but didn’t see him. He smiled for the first time in days. He looked down the path and made out the shape of an ancient water mill. He set off in that direction, resisting with difficulty the impulse to break into a run. He descended a stair guarded by two sandstone lions that the ravages of time had rendered as smooth and round as shapes drawn by a small child, and he went around the building of ancient tile, attracted by the splash of water over a mill wheel. Ferns grew along steps that presented a succession of communicating pools of greenery, each thicker and denser than the previous one. Every turn in the road opened up new paths that beckoned him into their labyrinth with the alluring promise of undiscovered niches, fountains, and views.

Manuel smiled, enraptured, admiring at every step the studied carelessness of the garden, the serenity of its beautiful chaos, the sylvan taming of that leafy glade. He imagined a happy childhood in this place. And suddenly the twists and turns weren’t merely the experience of this present moment; they belonged to him.

Description Of setting

He looked into the mirror. His face was ashen, the aftermath of the insomnia that had kept him writing until dawn. He looked over his shoulder at the closely scribbled pages that covered the desktop. Others had slid to the floor, so that an avalanche of paper now presented a snowy track across the room to the bed. He gazed stupidly at them for a couple of moments. When he turned back to the mirror his eyes were as clouded as the early-morning sky of Galicia, masked by a film of pallid sadness. He rubbed a hand across his face in an effort to shake off his fatigue. He raked his fingers through his short dark hair and noticed there was much more gray at his temples than just a few days before. His cheeks were dark with what was now a salt-and-pepper morning shadow. His lips were as bright and red as those of a sad clown. When he tried to smile, no more than a mild tremor crossed the mask his face had become, as rigid as if a drunken dentist had injected him with too much novocaine or his face were paralyzed with Botox. “You can’t keep this up,” he told the man in the mirror.

Description of character - sadness

time I saw him, he was smiling.”