So here it is, the non-revised piece, with more than one ortographic mistake, but not serious enough to leave me without my super little first place :D... The Defense!!!!
At the city library’s front, in Viña del mar, there is one of the only three bronze casts in the world of a custom made Rodin’s sculpture. I know that because I am that sculpture. My name is “The Defense”, and I was suposed to stand gloriously at some square in Valparaíso, to be admired by every high Commander on the city, but apparently my naked, anguished-looking characters didn’t suit the idea of a national heroe’s effigy. Therefore, I was left to get mouldy at a basement until, alter several years of darkness and misery, I was freed again, exposed to the public eye. At first they set me at an unsuitable place, so I coud not be anything but unhappy about my situation. But after ten years or so, the fools in charge of my wellbeing finally found a place worthy of my recently recovered celebrity status. I was to be posted in front of a palace. It was not the greatest palace in the city, but a concurred one at least, since it was the city library.
I was ecstatic when I heard the news, I just couldn’t wait to get there, where I would surely be appreciated by every passerby. I, “The Defense”, would finally be the object of public admiration that I deserved to be.
Of course, now that I look back I’m shocked at the idea of being so naïve. The place wasn’t nearly as glamorous as I expected it to be. For starters, the crowd of learned scholars that I expected to find at the entrance of a public library where at a distinct lack. The only people who entered the building on a regular basis where the employees, simple people, tired by their jobs, not willing to take in the surroundings.
Then, there where the pedestrians. None of them, and I’m being literal, has ever bothered to take a proper look at me, least of all utter a word of praise. Soon I discovered that the only people who ever even spare me a glance or a quick photo were tourists, and they all fled rapidly when they were introduced to the moai standing a few yards from me (which, by the way, has quite a large amount of visitors, and that it’s located on the opposite side of the block, so it steals all the attention, the selfish bastard), at the museum of natural arts.
In the end I settled for standing here, all alone in the middle of the crowd, and visited only by pigeons, whose only gift for was their shit in my head.
This was my pathetic life until a couple of months ago, when a rather odd looking old man came and seated at the bench in front of me, praising my fine lines, and the store narrated by them, with his eyes. The old tramp returned the next day, and the day after that, and so on, and so on. After what must have been a week, he started talking to me, and even though he looked like a poor old nutter, his words transpired such intensity and wizenes that I started to think that my luck had changed for good, and that I had finally found a deep, learned soul to whom I could share all my great value.
But I’ve always wanted more, I wanted to be watched and understood by a lot of people, by dozens and hudreds of people. I wanted the grandeur my noble father had inherited to me. And so I started to stop paying attention to the vagrant, to stop waiting for him, and I finally managed to stop noticing him at all.
That was untill today at noon, when he came back, looking furious, yelling and making havoc around me. He was angry, he was more than angry, he was mad. But I soon stopped noticing him, because at precisely that time, a multitude of people started congregating around me, taking me in with wide eyes, astonished, in awe. It was what I had always dreamt of, and I suddenly felt happy, fulfilled, in peace, one with God!… And then I heard the gunshot, and I felt the blood splattered all over my body. People began to scream. “He really did it!” they said.
My tramp’s last words, as I heard a witness telling the policemen, were “God damn that Rodin statue!”
hope you have liked it!!!
bye bye!!
