The moment our competition’s awaited arrives; we now know which stories were chosen by the jury in this first edition of #mentesana. It has been difficult to decide among all your tales about the importance of keeping a healthy mind, about the challenges of mental health in our society, or about the barriers faced by those who suffer from such a condition.
The winner of the short-story contest #mentesana, organized by Zenda and sponsored by Iberdrola, is Elena Blázquez Villar, awarded 1,000 euros. The two finalists of the competition, in which more than four hundred stories took part, are Andrés Weiss and Leonardo Echeverz, who will receive 500 euros each. The jury valued the literary quality and originality of the submitted texts.
The jury was formed by Juan Gómez-Jurado, Espido Freire, Paula Izquierdo and Leandro Pérez.
Below we reproduce the three prize-winning stories. In this link you can consult the prize rules. Thank you all for participating.
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WINNER
THE TRAINS
ELENA BLÁZQUEZ VILLAR
The mother woke him up, as she did every morning. In the dinosaur-covered duvet, a tangle of curls lounged about and he didn’t want to get up. A small hand peeked out, threatening to swipe. It cost an endless effort to return to the world each morning. Sometimes his mother believed that the boy belonged more to the other realm than to this one. His dream was a chasm through which the boy derailed every night with a host of vivid dreams that kept him moving, and thus kept his mother busy, who always had to come in the middle of the night.
The mother ran her fingers along his back and a soft grunt told her he was coming back from his nocturnal planet, though not in a good mood.
“Cereals with milk? Or would you prefer toast with honey? Don’t play with the tablecloth, or the milk will spill. Today, better fruit for recess. Tell me, do you prefer banana or apple? Today you’re wearing the freshly washed smock, please don’t get it dirty. Aren’t you supposed to know how to play without getting yourself dirty?”
She tried to run a brush through the tangle of curls with little success, because the curls, like the boy, were quite unruly.
“Marcos, where have you put your boots? Did you stash them back in the pantry? Use your memory, come on, you can’t go to school barefoot; what will teacher Elvira say? Help me look for them; did you find them in a new hiding place?”
When they finally get into the car, the sun has already climbed over the hill opposite the house and a pink light beginning to break promises a blue, cold day.
As every morning, when pulling the car out of the garage, they hear the clatter of songbirds taking flight in all directions as the car passes in front of the fir tree. The mother, as always, tells him a minute beforehand:
—Watch out! The blackbirds and sparrows will burst into flight. How pressed together they are, look at them, poor things, what frights they’ve got! Look, today there’s a blue tit, how strange, it’s early to see one in March. Do you see its blue and yellow feathers? By the way, did you leave a bit of bread in the feeder outside? I reminded you when we got home yesterday. If we don’t put them something to eat every day, they won’t survive these so-cold winters.
The trip to school passes in silence, the mother attends to heavy traffic yet seems absent; on the radio they report that the National Court has sentenced Trashorras to 34,715 years for taking part in the 11-M attacks. A man in a Volvo honks at them for encroaching a bit on the lane and pulls her out of her reverie.
When they reach the school, the mother greets the other mothers who are already waiting at the door.
—Wrap up well, zip up, I’ll blow your nose because the runny nose is already falling. Put on your backpack, come on! Yes, the hat too; put it on, with this frost even the ideas freeze, dear. Look, there’s Martín! And Carlitos has arrived as well, what sleepy faces. Line up everyone, Teacher Elvira is opening the door already.
The mothers exchange glances. They never know whether to keep following the thread and decide to stay quiet. One more day.
—This has to end.
—But isn’t there anyone who looks after this woman? Doesn’t she have family who could take care of her?
—Any day now we are going to have a scare. If, in the end, she could drift off and take one of our children. It’s a pity, yes, but I’m starting to get worried. We should talk to the police, don’t you think? The children also have a hard time. Seeing her here every morning also reminds them of Marcos. My daughter asked me yesterday: why does Marcos’s mom still come to school if Marcos is in heaven?
The mother walks away with her ceaseless monologue of care and warnings toward the boy, and the last thing you hear her say is: “Let me not forget, tomorrow is the eleventh; I have to take the car to the workshop, so we’ll have to take the commuter rail to come to the school.”
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FINALISTS
MY HANDS
ANDRÉS WEISS
It was the first time I felt something like this. This was real. I remember feeling a pain in the chest and thinking that a heart attack was killing me. The cardiologist told me, a few days later, that the heart does not hurt. Nobody spends two days at home with a heart attack and then goes to a clinic when they finally manage to get an appointment.
I stayed two full days almost immobile, in order not to push that heart attack that lay across my chest. “It must be muscular,” he said with a smile.
Nor does it compare with the verdict from my neurologist: “You must be stressed.” I’m convinced I suffered a stroke, even though they cannot detect anything in their tests. There were several days during which I sought different opinions and all seemed wrong.
This was different, because the other thing I could not see, just as I could not see the cause of those other chest pains that are best not remembered… Lung cancer had already taken my mother and, that time, it was behind me.
No, now I could see it, I could feel it. And of course I could feel it if I had it at my fingertips! That hand, the left, which had given me so many joys writing poems or drawing houses at the foot of a mountain slope.
It was bigger than the right hand. For some reason, which I am still trying to unravel, it had undergone a mutation. I saw them side by side and made them touch each other. I faced them palm to palm and the left one protruded.
I could not determine exactly when one hand had grown larger than the other. I pondered many possibilities. One of them, the one that convinced me, was that it was due to the practice of writing. I linked it to sports. For example, in development stages, basketball players, by repeatedly jumping, manage to gain a few extra inches. If that could happen to them… how could my hand not grow larger?
I already treated it as a deformity. When I shopped, I kept my left hand inside the pocket of a sweatshirt or pants. I never rested it on a counter, neither in a bank nor in a shop.
It took me a long time to decide to see a specialist. I knew many trauma doctors or surgeons who specialized in foot, ankle, and knee, but what about hand specialists? Surely, if I asked, they would joke that I should go to a manicurist. Those jokers seldom fail.
Thank God, greetings were done with the right hand. Otherwise, I could have been exposed at every moment. I don’t remember exactly how long passed from my discovery until I decided to consult a hand surgeon. It could have been months. Perhaps that problem was caused by a trauma, and clearly it wasn’t a mental trauma but a physical one. I requested an appointment by phone: the less I exposed myself, the better. When asked for the reason for the consultation, I simply said: “My hand hurts a little.”
Many nights I thought about the reasons for my misfortune. I could never know since when I suffered it, and I even began to think it could be a birth defect. But if that was the case, had my parents, friends, and loved ones hidden my problem from me?
I remember very well the day I walked toward the clinic. Fortunately, I would not be observed by someone on duty, but by someone who already knew many hands and many afflictions of these kinds. The care during my transfer was quite extreme. For a moment I stumbled on the bus after a sudden brake. My right hand wasn’t yet strong enough to bear the weight of my whole body.
A few blocks before reaching the clinic, I wanted to stop at a pharmacy to buy some mild relaxant. I felt so nervous that I would have taken the strongest tranquilizer they had. My nerves betrayed me: the coins in my pocket to pay seemed to jump from my right hand and began to roll all over the place. My desperate search slowed under the pharmacist’s judging gaze. He perhaps thought: “Why doesn’t this man use both hands?” Of course, but he didn’t know my whole story or my problem.
When I could leave there, a bit sweaty, I took one of the pills I had bought and kept walking a few more blocks. On the corner there was a furniture store. In its window hung a large mirror that looked as if it had been made for giants.
I could not resist the temptation. First I looked around, and when I confirmed there was no one on the street, I pulled my left hand out of the pocket. I stood straight, torso firm, facing the mirror. Arms and hands pressed to the body.
My eyes experienced something revelatory. My right hand was considerably smaller than the left. That made me wonder when my right hand had shrunk. My blood pressure dropped a bit and instinctively I put both hands in my pockets. I turned around and went back home thinking about how I could get on the bus and pay without using either hand.
BRINDIS
LEONARDO ECHEVERZ
On Fridays Luisa leaves a little early. She leaves dinner prepared and the night’s remedy ready. Before leaving, the lady asks if she’ll come on Monday. Luisa tells her yes, that she always comes on Mondays. They kiss. In the elevator, she thinks that sometimes the lady forgets things, but never forgets to ask whether she will return.
Instinctively she touches the bag with her hand. She does a quick check to make sure she didn’t forget anything: keys, wallet, the imported chocolates that she receives as a prize from the lady, kept hidden.
When she steps out onto the street the humid heat hits her. She walks to the bus stop with the bag pressed against her chest. At that hour people return home in a rush. Luisa, not so much. For many years no one has waited for her at home.
Her bus is late. She watches the crowd at the stop change. Some get on, others wait. When the 86 arrives, Luisa climbs on slowly and a young man kindly offers her the seat by the window. She rests the bag on her lap. She puts her glasses away in their case. She takes out one of the chocolates and looks at it. The wrapper bears golden letters and a name that seems German. She’s hungry. She still has that habit of not eating in front of others. As if it were something intimate. She thinks about opening it, but she tucks it away again. At home it will taste better.
She travels, looking out the window. She likes the balconies of the apartments. She imagines how it would be to live there. The bus stalls at a traffic light and Luisa focuses on each balcony. On some there is movement: a woman watering the plants, a man smoking leaning on the railing with the phone in his hand. On another, a curly-haired boy sits on his tricycle eating something.
On a third-floor balcony, white sheets hang. They billow in the wind and for a moment cover the entire window. Luisa thinks that she would like that apartment. She doesn’t know why. Perhaps because of the sheets.
She recognizes the streets without paying them much attention. Some shops have already drawn their blinds; others are getting ready for the night.
She gets off two stops early, as always. She prefers to walk that stretch. She needs exercise. A long time sitting.
At the corner she waits for the light to change. A man sleeps on some cardboard next to the shutter of a pharmacy. She carefully avoids the white and red barriers of the construction. She maneuvers around the pavement rubble to avoid tripping. They never finish breaking things.
Finally she reaches the building. She looks for the keys before stopping in front of the door. She enters and closes it quickly.
The hall still preserves something of what it once was: the granite floor, the moldings on the ceiling. Although the walls have grown used to the damp. The downstairs neighbor filled the hallways with plastic pots and cans of succulents.
She takes the old elevator and goes up to the second floor. In the hallway there is only one light on. Luisa opens the door to her apartment, sets the bag on a chair, and takes off her shoes.
She wiggles her toes and feels relief. She enters the dining room and studies herself in the large mirror, blurred at the joints. She looks at her belly and the breasts that once aroused desire in men.
She lifts her shirt a little. She tucks in her belly. She releases it. She tucks it in again. She does a small runway, turning her wrists outward and straightening her back as her mother taught her, this time without the book on her head. She laughs. There are things one keeps doing even when no one is watching.
She looks for the usual radio station. On Fridays, at that hour, they play zarzuela music and speak little. Luisa recognizes some stations before the announcer says the name. Others not. She turns up the volume and goes to the kitchen to drink a glass of water. She needs to reach the doctors’ recommended daily intake of one liter. She grabs the cleaner and the cloth from the white cabinet in the laundry room.
Today it’s the turn of the bayout, that cabinet that keeps all her treasures.
You must pull the bronze handle with careful firmness. When the doors open, a small lamp lights the interior. The movement produces a slight vibration that makes the glasses clink together, never more than two seconds.
From the bayout rises a special smell, kneaded by time, but with something fresh and strangely new. A blend of all the things it keeps. The sum of the scents of the treasures.
She extracts the special-occasion china, the porcelain dogs, the party souvenirs. She places each object carefully on the table until the cabinet is emptied. She runs a cloth inside and cleans each piece before putting it back.
Outside, the dirt persists, the smell of cat urine, the smog of the avenue that bursts without pause.
Inside, Luisa remembers the chocolate and leaves it on a small plate.
She pulls the bottle from the box and holds it to the light.
She fills a little glass with Jerez brandy, a gift from the lady, brought from Spain. Perhaps the taste comes from her father, a Spanish immigrant. She knows there won’t be another bottle: every drop matters. She serves just enough, savoring it slowly.
With the second sip she feels the warmth in her throat. Then in her chest. Luisa smiles.
The bayout glints and the afternoon becomes another one.