A series of stories by Pablo Eduardo Ibáñez López
Lú Lú felt a light shiver run through his body. He had been working for more than five days without rest. Despite the mental effort this task required, Lú could not stop asking himself questions. How long could a ten-year-old girl sleep? Where were Roberta and Sam? Why hadn’t they come? How much longer would he have to keep working? Many questions, no answers. Lú was very young, and so there were things he still did not understand — rules that ignorance made it impossible for him to respect. He sighed, resigned to his lot, and concentrated again on doing his work as well as possible. He was exhausted, but thanks to his youth he still had enough drive to continue without setbacks. Five more days passed that way. Five days of an overwhelming silence full of questions. The composure of efficient Lú was running out.
On the eleventh day his desperation reached its most fragile point; he stared fixedly at how Fil stood impassive before Gabriela. The little ten-year-old girl had not moved for more than a week. The room was freezing — sixteen degrees exactly. Lú, leaning against the wall, spat out a very faint grumble. As if testing a star — but nothing happened. Gabriela did not move. Her skin, habitually white, had taken on a grayish-purple tone. Her cheeks, which every morning had looked like two beautiful tomatoes, now sank beneath her eyes. Her golden hair was still just as beautiful, but now it was motionless. Lú made noise again. Nothing. Gabriela remained lying in silence, and Fil gave no sign of wanting to communicate with him. Unlike Lú, Fil was resting, though always on guard. His elongated body made him look majestic. Yet what was extraordinary about Fil was that he was a kind of unfinished well of knowledge with which Lú could fill the empty shelves of his thousands of questions. Fil boasted of knowing almost everything.
Despite being very different, Lú and Fil had become very good friends. They had met no more than three years earlier. Fil was already in his place when Lú arrived to fill the vacancy left by Carrie, who had been transferred to another department. Judging by Fil’s comments, he and Carrie had not gotten along very well. The reasons were many, but Fil often remarked that Carrie complained a lot. Lú, unlike the former holder of the post, was silent, efficient, and fast. This pleased kind Fil a great deal; despite certain special moments of the day when questions seemed to erupt like lava from inexperienced Lú, he treated him very well from the first day.
In the room where Lú and Fil did their work, Roberta and Sam also did theirs. The first seemed only to be supervising everything, since she went in and out of the room during the morning. Poor Roberta suffered from a tremendous allergy to dust, so she never missed the chance to cough at the top of her lungs when entering a room. This seemed funny to Lú but irritated Fil a great deal. Often, after Roberta had left the room, thin Fil was so annoyed that his face distorted. As was obvious, this amused Lú even more, and he always ended up calming his friend.
On the other hand, Sam was a very strange companion…