Pedro Páramo

by Juan Rulfo

The road rose and fell: “It rises or falls according to whether one’s going or coming. For the person who’s leaving, it rises; for the one who’s coming, it falls.”

That place sits on the burning embers of the earth, at the very mouth of Hell. They say many of those who die there and go to Hell come back to fetch their blankets.

I noticed that her voice was made of human cords, that her mouth had teeth and a tongue that would engage and disengage as she spoke, and that her eyes were just like those of anyone else alive on earth.

And that if all I heard was silence, it was because I hadn’t yet grown accustomed to the silence. Maybe because my head was still full of sounds and voices.

—THIS TOWN IS FULL of echoes. It’s as if they were trapped in the gaps of the walls or beneath the cobblestones. As you walk, you feel someone following in your footsteps. You hear things rustling. Laughter. Old laughter, as if it were tired of laughing. And voices that are weary from overuse. You hear all those things. I imagine the day will come when these sounds wither away.