Toni Morrison – Song of Solomon

Escrito por Agustin Fest | Archivado en Lector

He had cooperated as a young father with the blind selection of names from the Bible for every child other than the first male. And abided by whatever the finger pointed to, for he knew every configuration of the naming of his sister. How his father, confused and melancholy over his wife’s death in childbirth, had thumbed through the Bible, and since he could not read a word, chose a group of letters that seemed to him strong and handsome; saw in them a large figure that looked like a tree hanging in some princely but protective way over a row of smaller trees. How he had copied the group of letters out on a piece of brown paper; copied, as illiterate people do, every curlicue, arch and bend in the letters, and presented it to the midwife.
“That’s the baby’s name.”
“You want this for the baby’s name?”
“I want that for the baby’s name. Say it.”
“You can’t name the baby this.”
“Say it.”
“It’s a man’s name.”
“Say it.”
“Pilate.”
“What?”
“Pilate. You wrote down Pilate.”
“Like a riverboat pilot?”
“No. Not like no riverboat pilot. Like a Christ-killing Pilate. You can’t get much worse than that for a name. And a baby girl at that.”
“That’s where my finger went down at.”
“Well, your brain ain’t got to follow it. You don’t want to give this motherless child the name of the mand that killed Jesus, do you?”
“I asked Jesus to save my wife.”
“Careful, Macon.”
“I asked him all night long.”
“He give you your baby.”
“Yes. He did. Baby name Pilate.”
“Jesus, have mercy.”
“Where you going with that piece of paper?”
“It’s going back where it came from. Right in the Devil’s flames.”
“Give it here. It come from the Bible. It stays in the Bible.”

–Song of Solomon, Toni Morrison.

Comentarios (0) | Octubre 21st, 2004

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