“We are lost in an absurd world,” Pato says. “The dream of a cruel drunken god.”

She straightens with her shoulder pushed away, back to the lucid, instinctively dialectical communist. She recovers as if someone poured cold water on her face.

 “The gods are dead,” she says, flat and dry. “We are here to make humanity aware of that historical truth.”

“I’m afraid humanity has other things on its mind.”

She is thinking.

“I wasn’t trained for this,” she finally concludes.

“For defeat, you mean?”

“For the doubt.”

“Oh.”

“To discuss the doubt.”

“Oh.”

“A communist only discusses certainties. That’s why I read books and listened to wise men and women until I thought everything was resolved forever: Marxism as a solution, the class struggle. That’s why I was so amazed by those who seemed not to see it as clearly as I did.”

“You’re speaking in the past tense, Comrade Patricia.”

“Because I believed that the borders between what was evil and what was righteous, between the bourgeois control of democracy and the dictatorship of the worker and peasant masses, were perfectly clear.”

“And they aren’t?”

She hesitates a moment, trying to express it better.

“Those I have seen die do so without shouting long live the Republic or long live anything. They just fall and stay put forever.”

“That’s how it is.”

“I thought…,” Pato falls silent.

Another flare rises into the sky and slowly descends beyond the cemetery. This time, distant shots ring out, and she sees the captain look in that direction, his profile again illuminated by the whitish artificial light.

“And now?” he says, still looking up at the jagged hill in the night.

“I still believe that,” she says, “or I want to believe it.

The flare goes out, and the sad smile of the captain is imprinted on the dazzled retina of the young woman.

“Well, it’s nothing wrong with that,” he says. “Many of us believed it.”

From “Line of Fire” by Arturo Perez-Reverte

Few authors have Perez-Reverte’s ability to describe an action and its immediate consequences. He focuses on this aspect in most of his books. But as this snippet shows, he can also write great dialogues:

“We are lost in an absurd world,” Pato says. “The dream of a cruel drunken god.”

She straightens with her shoulder pushed away, back to the lucid, instinctively dialectical communist. She recovers as if someone poured cold water on her face.

 “The gods are dead,” she says, flat and dry. “We are here to make humanity aware of that historical truth.”

“I’m afraid humanity has other things on its mind.”

Perez-Reverte shines as a different writer with his unique style and way of conceiving a novel.

Original text:

Estamos perdidos en un mundo absurdo —dice Pato. —El sueño de un dios borracho y cruel.

Se yergue ella apartando el hombro, de regreso a la comunista lúcida, instintivamente dialéctica. Vuelta en sí como si le hubieran echado agua fría en la cara.

 —Los dioses han muerto —afirma, rotunda y seca—. Estamos aquí para que la humanidad tome conciencia exacta de esa verdad histórica.

—Me temo que la humanidad tiene otras cosas en la cabeza.

Ella se queda pensando.

—No me adiestraron para esto —concluye al fin.

—¿Para la derrota, quieres decir?

—Para la duda.

—Ah.

—Para discutir sobre la duda.

—Ah.

—Una comunista sólo discute sobre certezas. Por eso leí libros, escuché a mujeres y hombres sabios hasta pensar que todo quedaba resuelto para siempre: el marxismo como solución, la lucha de clases… Por eso me asombraba tanto quien parecía no verlo tan claro como yo.

—Estás hablando en pasado, camarada Patricia.

—Porque creía que las fronteras entre lo malvado y lo recto, entre el control burgués de la democracia y la dictadura de las masas obreras y campesinas, eran perfectamente nítidas.

—¿Y no lo son?

Vacila ella un momento, buscando expresarlo mejor.

—Aquellos a quienes he visto morir lo hacen sin gritar viva la República ni viva nada. Sólo caen y se quedan quietos para siempre.

—Así es.

—Creí que… Se calla Pato.

Otra bengala asciende al cielo y baja despacio, más allá del cementerio. Esta vez suenan disparos lejanos, y ve al capitán mirar en esa dirección, de nuevo iluminado su perfil por la luz artificial y blanquecina.

—¿Y ahora? —dice él, sin dejar de observar la colina recortada en la noche.

—Sigo creyendo que —zanja ella—. O quiero creerlo.

Se apaga la bengala, y en las retinas deslumbradas de la joven queda impresa la sonrisa triste del capitán.

—Bueno, tampoco pasa nada —dice éste—. Fuimos muchos los que lo creímos.