Susana Torres – The Affront

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Susana TorresInternational Relations Professor. IE School of International Relations.

Reading:

The Affront by Luis Mateo Díez, 1993.

You deserved everything I did to you, except for that last affront, even if I recognize that nothing is more easily excused than what’s been done in the name of a love betrayed.

What I told him in the letter was unbecoming, because it was the exclusive property of our intimacy, and I’m sure that when he sought out and found the mole in that secret place where only I kissed you, while you, excited, encouraged me, he felt the same disappointment as somebody who comes across a treasure chest where nothing has been left but the bitter mocking of the person who emptied it.

I know your love is lost forever and I’m resigned to it, but the secret of that mole belongs to my lips only, and so each time he looks for that intimate treasure, all he’ll find is the emptiness left by the person who despoiled it.

An affront that has left me imprisoned, him enslaved, and you culpable, and all three of us mired in sorrow, because I will keep on loving you and he will never be able to love you fully, and you will never be able to forget me completely as long as that mole sustains the memory of my kisses and my tears.

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