TE20 Migrant Mosaics

Carlos Gámez Pérez

In those days, the first of our relationship, the Spanish writer limitedhimself toteachingmetospeakhis language, and I learned about a culture we thought we shared at some open table in the back of the café; back then, he always told me a version of the story of Little Red Riding Hood in which she was a boy; a virginal, perfect little boy who didn’t have to go help his grandmother, but rather a high-ranking gentleman called Rodrigo who was very far away, in a luxurious palace that could only be accessed by climbing a staircase made of shells; this Little Red Riding Hood didn’t have to bring Sir Rodrigo cakes or butter or honey, as in the usual story; what he had to do was get inside Rodrigo’s bedroom and cure him of an infectious disease using a pin. Rodrigo, who belonged to the highest echelon of the Spanish nobility, had contracted this disease in the most lustful phase of his life, and he needed Little Red and the pin to survive and avoid the people’s rumors; for that reason, he looked at the boy with ever deeper eyes and ever longer teeth, day after day; until, one morning, Little Red asked Rodrigo the questions everyone knows, which were followed by Rodrigo’s responses, which are not necessary to repeat here except for the last one, when he shouted: the better to eat you with, and he jumped on Little Red, covering him with all of his adult’s body; then, with a single pinpoint movement, he penetrated the domains of his cavern, flooding into veins, arteries, and all the space the opening would allow, which the expat Spanish writer strangely referred to as The Cava; that was thepartof the story I neverunderstood, even though I understood I was listening to the story of a boy with a life similar to mine, if we weren’t indeed the very same person. Nor did I understand what he was saying about the Little Red boy, about a sweet whip, and about the violation of the sacred cavern, although I would later discover it was an African legend that had been distorted in 128