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ANTHONY DE SA |
Anthony de Sa cresceu em Toronto. A suas histórias têm sido publicadas em várias revistas literárias norte-americanas. Página do autor: Excerpt from BARNACLE LOVE: "Made of Me"
"The road to the village - there was still only one - snaked its way along
the coast, hugging the cliffs so closely that if Manuel held his arm out the
window he could scrape his fingertips across the damp rock wall. Large balls
of pink and blue hydrangeas lined the road like weeds. Manuel remembered
going out early in the morning during the Festa de Nossa Senhora do Rosario,
his town's patron saint, to cull their large heads and pluck their
flake-like petals into linen potato sacs. The streets needed to be
decorated. Manuel smiled when every so often the children were startled by
the sudden pounding on the roof of the taxi - the gush of natural spring
water falling from fissures in the ominous rock above. Manuel buried his
nose into his son's hair, took in his distinct smell. He looked in amusement
as Antonio pressed his face into a red balloon and squished it against the
car window where the world outside turned pink. Manuel couldn't drag his
eyes away from his son as he practiced mouthing the few Portuguese phrases
he had been taught: bom dia, obrigado and ola! - repeated them over and over
into the balloon. The droning sound made Manuel's ears itch and he was
reminded of his own anxiety.As if sensing Manuel's irritation, Antonio, dressed in his new blue suit, moved to his mother's lap and rode her knee's nervous bounce. Manuel knew that his mother, if she were still well enough, would see her grandson and recognize his greatness. He looked at his daughter, Terezinha, a cotton ball in her first communion dress. Just before leaving, her mother had cut her fine hair, short, trimmed neatly around the guided lip of a bowl. Manuel had been angry but his wife had responded, "She's my daughter, she needed a haircut." Terezinha sat up front with the taxi driver. She wasn't afraid of anyone or anything. Every once in a while Georgina would reach over the front passenger seat to tug at Terezinha's ear when she was asking the driver too many questions." |