Hello, kind readers. This week has gone flying. My time has elapsed between readings. I have always believed that reading, like any activity that man does, must be done with pleasure, with desire. said Miguel de Cervantes: "He who reads a lot and walks a lot, sees a lot and knows a lot". Today I want to share with you the reading of a story by a Venezuelan writer: Rómulo Gallegos.

If we have to speak of one of the most important authors of Venezuela in the 20th century, some even speak of the only one, it is precisely Romulo Gallegos, author of novels such as La trepadora, Canaima and the already famous Doña Bárbara, a novel that catapulted him, inside and outside the South American country, as one of the best Spanish-speaking writers. This writer was not only a master of language, but through his texts he portrayed the Venezuelan reality like no one else. His knowledge and understanding of Venezuela and its inhabitants made Romulo Gallegos an unrepeatable writer.

Today I would like us to approach his narrative through one of his most famous and versioned stories, which has been taken to cinema, theater and television: La hora menguada.

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La hora menguada (The waning hour) is a story divided into four parts that begins when Enriqueta discovers that her husband, recently dead, has had affairs with Amelia, her sister; and for more, discovers that Amelia is pregnant. In those initial moments, the character of the two sisters is well defined: Enriqueta is hard and dry, and Amelia is obedient and disoriented. The story becomes more complex and develops from Enriqueta's proposal to Amelia: to raise the child as if it were her own:

-...well. Now we have to try to see if something is saved: even the concept of others. We'll leave here, where everyone doesn't know us and this shame comes to our faces. We will settle in the camp until your son is born. And that son will be mine. I will lie and I will lend myself to comedy to save you from dishonour... and.....

The signs of suspension tell us that Enriqueta does not finish telling us the other reason why she decides to leave and assume the maternity, but the readers know that it is to avoid that they make fun of her, so that all know of the deceit of her deceitful husband with her sister. Amelia, without much discussion and without having the intention of contradicting her sister, accepts. So from this moment on, begins the secret that comes to unite these two women for the rest of their lives.

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In the second part of this story, we find that time has passed and the child Gustavo Adolfo has already been born, who has grown up surrounded by the love of these two women who struggle to fill him with attention and pampering, each seeking to be a maternal figure:

It was a pugilate of two souls tormented by the secret, to take full possession of that of the child who belonged to both and to neither.
-My son! My little son!....
Enriqueta said, eating him with kisses, with her heart tortured by the maternal longing that despaired before the evidence of her lie.
-Boy! Boy!
Amelia exclaimed, suffering the sorrow of Tantalus for not being able to satisfy her maternal pride by displaying the truth of her love.

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In these previous lines we see how the narrator refers to Tantalus to speak of Amelia's pain, and with this we see that he refers not only to having his son and not being able to show him his maternal love, but also to the sacrifice he made when he gave his son to Enriqueta. For this anti-maternal action, she is punished. Gustavo Adolfo thus became the person who unites the two sisters, but also the one who separates them. In each of the moments they spend with the child, they see the need to meet, but each of the women rejects this encounter as rivals, confronted by the love of the child:

Sometimes a simultaneous impulse of tenderness gathered on the infantile head the hands of them that were and stumbled in the same caress; abruptly they withdrew them at the time that their mouths contracted by hard gestures of anger, let escape grunts that sometimes provoked the hilarity and others the strangeness of the child.

As we can see, this silent war between the two women does not go unnoticed by the child, who at first seems normal to him and can even enjoy that they take great pains to give him love and attention, but little by little he feels something abnormal in that excessive love. With this suspicion this part closes.

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Thus, in chapter three we find that Gustavo Adolfo has grown up and has maintained the sensation that the two women keep a secret, so he has taken on the habit that every time he comes home he does it in silence waiting to hear some words that reveal the mystery. In one of those many opportunities, she listens to what had been hidden from her for so many years:

As he entered the hallway he heard Enriqueta's angry voice telling Amelia:
-And if it hadn't been for me, what would become of you? Even your son wouldn't love you, because Gustav Adolf wouldn't have forgiven you if you had made him the son of guilt. You betrayed me, you took away my husband's love...
-But I gave you my son... What more do you want? I've given you what you didn't know how to have. You owe me the greatest joy of a woman: to hear her called mother. And I gave it to you at my expense...
-Traitor! Bad woman...
-Sterile!

As a result of this revelation, Gustavo Adolfo turns around and leaves, never to return again. The last part of this story is the description of how these two women end their years together, waiting for Gustavo Adolfo to return and each one blaming himself for having spoken of more that day.

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This story by Gallegos, though half melodramatic, can be fascinating. In this story we see that at the beginning, the narrator makes us see that the discovery of a secret (the infidelity of Enriqueta's husband with Amelia) and the beginning of another secret (to pass off Amelia's son as Enriqueta's son), unites women and makes them accomplices. Strangely enough, confession separates us but unites us in an infinite expectation, in the accompaniment of misfortune and loneliness, in spite of antagonism. It also becomes fascinating because not only do we see the confrontation of two wounded women, but we also see how the male figure is the center of the life of these two sisters: at first he is Enriqueta's husband and then Gustavo Adolfo.

At the end of the story we may think not only of Amelia's betrayal, but also of the hatred that Enriqueta must have felt and from there her revenge. In the power relations that are born between the sisters, in the flight of Gustavo Adolfo, driven away by hatred. In Romulo Gallegos' ability to express an era in which the most important thing was to maintain an image within society, and the woman was even able to bear and hide the infidelities of a man, even if it meant giving up children.

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To conclude, I must say that Romulo Gallegos' narrative has well earned the place it occupies in Venezuelan literature. Although he is known more as a novelist than a storyteller, his archetypal characters and stories became emblematic of the Venezuelan nationality. Although many deny it, its appearance broke the waters of Venezuelan literature in a before and after.

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I hope you enjoyed reading it and from it you want to know more about this great Venezuelan writer, if you don't know him. Remember to vote for @adsactly as a witness and join our server in discord. Until the next smile. ;)

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCE

http://www.cervantesvirtual.com/obra-visor/la-hora-menguada--0/html/ff6026a0-82b1-11df-acc7-002185ce6064_2.html

Written by: @nancybriti

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