STORIES FOR ADO LESCENTS

Blue Beard
Charles Perrault

Once upon a time there lived a man who had beautiful houses in the city and in
the country, gold and silver china, highly decorated furniture, and gilded carriages;
but, unfortunately, his beard was blue, a color that gave him such an ugly and
terrible appearance that there was no woman or young man who did not flee at his
sight.
One of his neighbors, a lady of rank, had two very beautiful daughters. He asked
her for one in marriage, leaving the mother to choose who would be his wife. None
of the young women wanted to marry him and each one endorsed him on the other,
without the other or the one deciding to be the wife of a man who had a blue beard.
Furthermore, his displeasure was increased by the fact that he had married several
women and no one knew what had become of them.
Blue Beard, to establish relationships with them, took them with his mother,
three or four close friends and some young women from the neighborhood to one of
his country houses where they stayed eight full days, which they spent on walks,
hunting and fishing parties. , dances and gatherings, hardly sleeping and spending
the nights telling jokes. Time passed so pleasantly that it seemed to the slightest that
the owner of the house did not have a blue beard and that he was a very good man;
and upon returning to the city they celebrated the wedding.
After a month, Bluebeard told his wife that he was forced to make a trip to the
provinces, which would last at least six weeks, the important matter that forced him
to travel was important. She asked her to have as much fun as she could during her
absence, to invite her friends to accompany her, to go with them to the countryside,
if she liked, and to try not to be sad.
-Here you have, he added, the keys to the two large storage rooms. These are the
gold and silver tableware that is not used daily; The ones I give you belong to the
boxes where I keep the precious metals; These are the chests in which my stones and
jewels are, and here I give you the key that opens the doors to all the rooms. This
little key is the one in the cabinet at the end of the large gallery below. Open
everything, enter everywhere, but I forbid you to enter the cabinet; and I forbid it in
such a way that if you open it you can expect everything from my anger.
He promised to stick to exactly what he had just ordered; and he, after having
embraced her, got into the carriage and began his journey.
 The neighbors and friends did not wait to be called to go to the newlywed's
house, because their desire was great to see everything, which they did not dare to
do while the husband was there, because his blue beard frightened them. They then
began to explore the rooms, the cabinets, the wardrobes, the richness of each room
being surprising. They immediately went up to the storage room, where they never
tired of admiring the number and beauty of the tapestries, beds, sofas, trash cans,
nightstands, tables and mirrors that reproduced the images from head to toe and in
which the ornaments, some crystal, silver gilded, the others, they were so beautiful
and magnificent that they had not been seen like them. They did not stop pondering
and envying the happiness of their friend, who was not amused by seeing such
riches, as she was dominated by impatience to go and open the cabinet downstairs.
Curiosity pushed her, without noticing that she was failing to be polite by
abandoning her friends, she went down a reserved staircase, with such haste that two
or three times she was in danger of breaking her neck. When she reached the door of
the study, she paused for some time, thinking about her husband's prohibition and
reflecting that disobedience could bring her some misfortune; but the temptation was
so strong that he could not overcome it, and taking the little key he tremblingly
opened the cabinet door.
At first he saw nothing, because the windows were closed. After a few moments
the objects began to stand out and he noticed that the floor was completely covered
in curdled blood and that the bodies of several dead women attached to the walls
were reflected in it. These women were all those whom Bluebeard had married,
whom he had beheaded one after another. He thought he would die of fear at such a
spectacle and he dropped the key to the cabinet that he had just taken out of the lock.
After he had recovered somewhat, he took the key, closed the door and went up
to his room to control his agitation, without success, because it was extraordinary.
Having noticed that the cabinet key was stained with blood, he wiped it two or
three times, but the blood did not disappear. In vain he washed it and even rubbed it
with grit and grit, because the stains continued without there being any way to make
them disappear, because when he managed to remove them from one side, they
appeared on the other.
Blue Beard returned from his trip the night of that same day and said that on the
way he had received letters notifying him that the matter that had forced him to be
absent had ended favorably for him. The wife did everything she could to make him
believe that his unexpected return had filled her with joy.
The next day he gave her the keys and handed them to her so trembling that she
immediately guessed everything that had happened.
-Why isn't the cabinet key with the others? -He asked him.
-I probably left it on my table, he replied.
-Give it to me right away, added Bluebeard.
After several delays, it was necessary to hand over the key. Mirola Barba Azul
said to his wife:
-Why is there blood on this key?
 -I don't know, she answered, paler than death.
-You do not know? -replied Blue Beard-; I know it. You wanted to enter the
office. Well, you will enter it and go to take your place among the women you have
seen there.
Upon hearing these words, she threw herself crying at her husband's feet and
asked his forgiveness with all the demonstrations of true repentance for having
disobeyed him. He would have moved a rock, such was his affliction and beauty, but
Bluebeard had a heart harder than granite.
-It is necessary that you die, he told him, and you will die instantly.
-Since it is necessary, she murmured, looking at him with eyes filled with tears,
give me some time to pray.
"I'll give you ten minutes," replied Bluebeard, "but not a second more."
As soon as she was alone she called her sister and said:
-Anita from my heart; Climb to the top of the tower and see if my brothers
come. They have promised me that they would come to see me today, and if you see
them, signal to them to speed up their pace.
Anita climbed to the top of the tower and the wretch asked her every moment.
-Anita, my sister, do you see something?
And Anita answered:
-I only see the sun that sparkles and the grass that turns green.
Blue Beard had a huge blade in his hand and was shouting at the top of his lungs
to his wife:
-Come down right away or I'll go up.
-One moment, for mercy's sake! -his wife answered him; and then he said in a
low voice: "Anita, my sister, do you see something?"
His sister responded:
-I only see the sun that sparkles and the grass that turns green.
"Come down soon," bellowed Bluebeard, "or I'll go up."
"Low," answered the unhappy woman; and then he asked, "Anita, my sister, is
anyone coming?"
-Yes, I see a great cloud of dust moving towards here...
-They're my siblings?
-Oh, no, my sister; It is a flock of rams.
-Are you going down or not going down? -Bluebeard shouted.
-One moment, just another moment! -exclaimed his wife; and then he added:
"Anita, my sister, is anyone coming?"
"I see," he answered, "two gentlemen heading this way, but they are still very
far away." Praise God! he exclaimed shortly after; they're my siblings! I signal to
them to quicken their pace.
Bluebeard began to scream so loudly that the entire house shook. The unhappy
woman came down and threw herself at his feet, crying and disheveled.
"Tears are of no use to you," he told her; you have to die
 Then he grabbed her hair with one hand and raised the blade with the other to
cut off her head. The unfortunate woman turned her dying gaze towards him and
begged him to give her a few seconds.
-No, no, that man roared; entrust yourself to God.
And at the same time he raised his armed arm...
At that moment they knocked on the door with such force that Bluebeard
stopped. They opened and two knights entered, who, baring their swords, ran
towards where that man was, who recognized his wife's two brothers, one belonging
to a regiment of dragoons and the other a musketeer; and when he saw them he
escaped. Both brothers pursued him so closely that they caught up with him before
he could reach the platform, pierced his body with their swords and left him dead.
The poor woman was almost as lifeless as her husband and did not even have the
strength to get up and hug her brothers.
It turned out that Bluebeard had no heirs, so all his assets passed to his wife,
who used part to marry her little sister to a young gentleman who had loved her for a
long time, another part to buy the ranks of captain for her brothers, and She reserved
the rest for herself, marrying a very dignified and honest man who made her forget
the sad moments she had spent with Bluebeard.

USED CLOTHES
Pia Barros
A man enters the store. The leather jacket, worn, dirty, catches his eye immediately.
The shop assistant whispers a ridiculous price, as if she wanted to give it to him as a
gift. Just because it has a hole right in the heart. Only because behind the leather,
the white chiporro has a reddish stain that no detergent has been able to remove.
The man goes out into the street happily. A few steps away, some masked men
shoot from an alley. A bullet makes a turn one hundred and eighty degrees from its
original destination. It seems that the bullet has memory. She deviates and joyfully
advances to the jacket. Enter, knowing, into the orifice. The man freezes his smile
at the impact. The shop assistant runs to undress him and hang the jacket on the
coat rack again. She files her nails distractedly, waiting.

Love 77
Julio Cortazar

And after doing everything they do, they get up, bathe, powder, perfume, dress and, thus,
progressively, they return to being what they are not.
The Night of the Ugly by MARIO BENEDETTI

1.
We are both ugly. Not even vulgarly ugly. She has a sunken cheek. Since
eight, when he was operated. My disgusting mark next to my mouth comes
from a fierce burn, which occurred at the beginning of my adolescence.
Nor can it be said that we have tender eyes, those sort of beacons of
justification through which the horrible sometimes manage to approach
beauty. No, not at all. Both hers and mine are eyes of resentment, which
only reflect the little or no resignation with which we face our misfortune.
Maybe that has brought us together. Perhaps it united not the most
appropriate word. I am referring to the implacable hatred that each of us
feels for his own face.
We met at the entrance to the cinema, queuing to see any two handsome
men on the screen. It was there that for the first time we examined
ourselves without sympathy but with dark solidarity; That was where we
registered, from the first glance, our respective solitudes. In the queue,
everyone was in pairs, but they were also real couples: husbands,
boyfriends, lovers, grandparents, who knows. Everyone - hand in hand or
arm in arm - had someone. Only she and I had our hands loose and
clenched.
We look at each other's ugliness carefully, with insolence, without
curiosity. I traced the cleft of his cheekbone with the guarantee of self-
confidence that my shrunken cheek gave me. She didn't blush. I liked that
she was tough, that she returned my inspection with a close look at the
smooth, shiny, stubble-free area of my old burn.
Finally we enter. We sat in different, but adjacent rows. She couldn't look at
me, but I, even in the darkness, could make out the back of her neck with
blonde hair, her fresh, well-shaped ear. It was the ear of his normal side.
For an hour and forty minutes we admire the respective beauties of the
tough hero and the soft heroine. At least I have always been able to admire
beauty. I reserve my animosity for my face and sometimes for God. Also
for the faces of other ugly people, other scarecrows. Maybe I should feel
pity, but I can't. The truth is that they are like mirrors. Sometimes I wonder
what would have happened to the myth if Narcissus had had a sunken
cheekbone, or the acid had burned his cheek, or he was missing half his
nose, or had a seam in his forehead.
I waited for her at the exit. I walked a few meters next to her, and then I
spoke to her. When he stopped and looked at me, I had the impression that
he was hesitating. I invited her to chat for a while in a cafe or a candy store.
Suddenly he accepted.
The cafeteria was full, but at that moment a table became free. As we
passed through the people, the signs, the gestures of astonishment,
remained behind us. My antennae are particularly trained to capture that
sick curiosity, that unconscious sadism of those who have an ordinary,
miraculously symmetrical face. But this time my trained intuition wasn't
even necessary, since my ears were enough to register murmurs, coughs,
false throat clearings. A horrible and isolated face evidently has its interest;
but two ugliness together constitute in themselves a greater spectacle;
something that should be seen in company, together with one (or one) of
those good-looking people with whom the world deserves to be shared.
We sat down, ordered two ice creams, and she had the courage (I liked that
too) to take her little mirror out of her purse and fix her hair. Her pretty
hair.
“What are you thinking?” I asked.
She put away the mirror and smiled. The pit on his cheek changed shape.
“A commonplace,” he said. “Such for that.”
We talked at length. After an hour and a half, two coffees had to be ordered
to justify the long stay. I suddenly realized that both she and I were
speaking with a frankness so hurtful that it threatened to breach sincerity
and become almost the equivalent of hypocrisy. I decided to go all out.
“You feel excluded from the world, right?”
“Yes,” he said, still looking at me.
“You admire the beautiful, the normal. You would like to have a face as
balanced as that little girl on your right, even though you are intelligent, and
she, judging by her laugh, is hopelessly stupid.”
"Yeah."
For the first time he could not hold my gaze.
“I would like that too. But there is a chance, you know, that you and I will
come up with something.”
"Something like that?"
“How to love each other, wow. Or just get along. Call it what you want,
but there is a possibility.”
She frowned. I didn't want to get my hopes up.
“Promise me not to take me for a nut.”
"I promise."
“The possibility is to go into the night. In the entire night. In total darkness.
Do you get me?"
"No."
“You have to understand me! Total darkness. Where you don't see me,
where I don't see you. Your body is cute, didn't you know that?”
He blushed, and the cleft of his cheek suddenly turned scarlet.
“I live alone, in an apartment, and it's close.”
He raised his head and now he looked at me, wondering, finding out about
me, desperately trying to come up with a diagnosis.
“Come on,” he said.
2
I not only turned off the light but also drew the double curtain. Next to me
she was breathing. And it was not a heavy breathing. He did not want to
help her undress.
I didn't see anything, nothing. But I could still realize that he was now
motionless, waiting. I cautiously stretched out a hand until I found his
chest. My touch transmitted to me a stimulating, powerful version. That's
how I saw her belly, her sex. His hands also saw me.
In that moment I understood that I had to tear myself (and tear her away)
from that lie that I had created myself. Or tried to manufacture. It was like
lightning. We weren't that. We weren't that.
I had to draw on all my reserves of courage, but I did it. My hand slowly
ascended to his face, found the furrow of horror, and began a slow,
convincing and convinced caress. In fact my fingers (at first a little
trembling, then progressively calm) passed over her tears many times.
Then, when I least expected it, his hand also reached my face, and passed
and reviewed the seam and the smooth skin, that beardless island of my
sinister mark. We cried until dawn. Unhappy, happy. Then I got up and
drew back the double curtain.

A trained woman
Juan José Arreola

Today I stopped to contemplate this curious spectacle: in a square on the outskirts, a dusty
mountebank was displaying a trained woman. Although the function took place at ground
level and in the middle of the street, the man gave the greatest importance to the chalk
circle previously drawn, according to him, with permission from the authorities. Again and
again he turned back the spectators who exceeded the limits of that improvised track. The
chain that went from his left hand to the woman's neck was nothing more than a symbol,
since the slightest effort would have been enough to break it. Much more impressive was
the loose silk whip that the mountebank shook in the air, proudly, but without making a
crack.

A little monster of indefinite age completed the cast. Beating her drum gave musical
background to the woman's actions, which were reduced to walking in an upright position,
overcoming some paper obstacles and solving questions of elementary arithmetic. Every
time a coin rolled on the floor, there was a brief theatrical parenthesis by the audience.
"Kisses!" ordered the mountebank. "No. Not that one. To the gentleman who threw the
coin. The woman was wrong, and half a dozen individuals allowed themselves to be kissed,
their hair standing on end, amidst laughter and applause. A guard approached saying that
this was prohibited. The tamer handed him a filthy paper with official stamps, and the
policeman left sullenly, shrugging his shoulders.
To tell the truth, the woman's graces were nothing out of this world. But they accused
infinite, frankly abnormal, patience on the part of man. And the public always knows how
to appreciate such efforts. Pay to see a clothed flea; and not so much because of the beauty
of the suit, but because of the work it took to put it on. I myself have spent a long time
watching with admiration an invalid who did with his feet what very few could do with
their hands.
Guided by a blind impulse of solidarity, I neglected the woman and put all my attention on
the man. There is no doubt that the guy was suffering. The more difficult the fate, the more
difficult it was for him to hide and laugh. Every time she made a mistake, the man trembled
in anguish. I understood that he was not completely indifferent to the woman, and that he
had grown fond of her, perhaps in the years of his tedious apprenticeship. There was a
relationship between the two, intimate and degrading, that went beyond the tamer and the
beast. Whoever delves into it will undoubtedly reach an obscene conclusion.
The public, innocent by nature, does not notice anything and misses the details that are
obvious to the prominent observer. He admires the author of a prodigy, but he does not care
about his headaches or the monstrous details that may exist in his private life. He simply
sticks to the results, and when he is pleased, he does not spare his applause.
The only thing I can say with certainty is that the mountebank, judging by his reactions, felt
proud and guilty. Obviously, no one could deny him the merit of having trained the woman;
but neither could anyone mitigate the idea of his own vileness. (At this point in my
meditation, the woman was circling on a narrow faded velvet rug.)
The guardian of public order approached again to harass the mountebank. According to
him, we were hindering the circulation, almost the rhythm, of normal life. «A trained
woman? "You all go to the circus." The accused responded again with dirty paper
arguments, which the police officer read from afar with disgust. (The woman, meanwhile,
was collecting coins in her sequined cap. Some heroes allowed themselves to be kissed;
others stood aside modestly, somewhere between dignified and ashamed.)
The representative of the authorities left forever, through the popular subscription of a
bribe. The mountebank, feigning the greatest happiness, ordered the dwarf with the drum to
play a tropical rhythm. The woman, who was preparing for a mathematical number, shook
the colored abacus like a tambourine. He began to dance with decomposed gestures that
were hardly ribald. Its director felt extremely disappointed, since deep down in his heart he
pinned all his hopes on prison. Dejected and furious, he rebuked the dancer's slowness with
bloody adjectives. The public began to be infected by his false enthusiasm, and who more,
who less, everyone clapped their hands and shook their bodies.
To complete the effect, and wanting to make the best possible out of the situation, the man
began to hit the woman with his whip of lies. Then I realized the mistake I was making. I
laid my eyes on her, simply, like everyone else. I stopped looking at him, whatever his
tragedy. (At that moment, tears were streaming down her flour-dusted face.)
Resolved to disprove before all my ideas of compassion and criticism, searching in vain
with my eyes for the permission of the mountebank, and before another repentant could
take the lead, I jumped over the chalk line into the circle of contortions and capers.
Spurred on by his father, the drum dwarf gave free rein to his instrument, in a crescendo of
incredible percussion. Encouraged by such spontaneous company, the woman surpassed
herself and achieved resounding success. I matched my rhythm with his and did not lose
foot or step of that improvised perpetual movement, until the boy stopped playing.
As a final attitude, nothing seemed more appropriate than suddenly falling to my knees.

“La migala” by Juan José Arreola

The crumb runs freely through the house, but my capacity for horror does not
diminish.

The day Beatriz and I entered that filthy booth at the street fair, I realized that the
repulsive vermin was the most atrocious thing that fate could have in store for me.
Worse than contempt and commiseration suddenly shining in a clear gaze.

A few days later I returned to buy the migala, and the surprised mountebank gave me
some information about his habits and his strange diet. Then I understood that I had
in my hands, once and for all, the total threat, the maximum dose of terror that my
spirit could bear. I remember my trembling, hesitant step, when on the way back to
the house I felt the light and dense weight of the spider, that weight from which I
could safely deduct the weight of the wooden box in which I carried it, as if they were
two total pesos. different: that of the innocent wood and that of the impure and
poisonous animal that pulled me like a definitive burden. Inside that box was the
personal hell that I would install in my house to destroy, to annul the other, the
enormous hell of men.

The memorable night when I released the baby in my apartment and saw her run like
a crab and hide under a piece of furniture, was the beginning of an indescribable life.
Since then, every moment I have has been walked by the steps of the spider, which
fills the house with its invisible presence.

Every night I tremble in anticipation of the deadly sting. Many times I wake up with my
body frozen, tense, immobile, because the dream has created for me, with precision,
the tickling step of the spider over my skin, its indefinable weight, its entrail
consistency. However, it always dawns. I am alive and my soul unnecessarily
prepares and perfects itself.

There are days when I think that the crumb has disappeared, that she has gotten lost
or that she has died. But I do not do anything to check it out. I always let chance put
me in front of her again, when I leave the bathroom, or while I undress to lie down in
bed. Sometimes the silence of the night brings me the echo of his footsteps, which I
have learned to hear, although I know they are imperceptible.

Many days I find the food I left the day before intact. When it disappears, I don't know
if it was eaten by the crumb or some other innocent guest in the house. I have also
come to think that perhaps I am the victim of a hoax and that I am at the mercy of a
false crumb. Maybe the mountebank has tricked me, making me pay a high price for
a harmless and disgusting beetle.

But in reality this is not important, because I have consecrated the crumb with the
certainty of my postponed death. In the most acute hours of insomnia, when I get lost
in conjectures and nothing calms me, the crumb usually visits me. He walks around
the room in confusion and tries to clumsily climb the walls. He stops, raises his head
and moves his palps. It seems snooping, agitated, an invisible companion.
Then, shaken in my loneliness, cornered by the little monster, I remember that in
another time I dreamed of Beatriz and her impossible company.