Tinta Invisible / Invisible Ink

Un hombre espera la muerte en una habitación de hospital. Para engañar al tiempo y mitigar la angustia, él y su hijo rememoran historias. No tanto historias de vida: el hombre ha sido marino, y sus largas ausencias, y alguna que otra desavenencia, han hecho que sean pocas las experiencias vitales que padre e hijo se atrevan a compartir. Lo que reviven son sus lecturas, las historias de los libros que llenaron las estanterías de la casa familiar, las historias de los escritores que las inventaron.

Al hilo de esta conversación, Javier Peña -puestos que de él se trata- emprende una búsqueda obsesiva en la que las vidas de todos esos escritores, en sus anhelos, sus luces y sus sombras. Shirley Jackson, Nabokov, Juan Rulfo, Margaret Atwood, Emily Dickinson...le hablan a través de sus vidas y él escucha. Quiere sumarlos a esta conversación casi póstuma con su padre.

Porque se da cuenta de que la literatura nos vincula milagrosamente con personas que escribieron sus historias en otro momento y en otro lugar. Y de que, a veces, los lectores somos capaces de sobrepasar la letra escrita y leer la tinta invisible que el escritor ha dejado en la página. Cuando lo conseguimos, atisbamos la verdadera belleza: quizás esos momentos de gozosa lectura sean suficientes para justificar una vida.

ENGLISH DESCRIPTION

Halfway between essay and memoir, a story of love and loss between father and son, and the books that bring them together. Secrets and silence, anguish and hope from the great writers. An emotional odyssey that plunges the reader into an investigation regarding creative writing and the transformative power of stories.

A man awaits death in a hospital room. To cheat time and mitigate his anguish, he and his son remember stories. No so much life stories: the man was a sailor, and his long absences and the occasional disagreement meant there are few vital experiences father and son dare share. What they relive is what they read, stories from those books that filled the shelves in their family home, stories of the writers that created them.

And on the thread of this conversation, Javier Peña--since it is he--begins an obsessive search within the lives of all those writers, their yearnings, their shadows, and light. Shirley Jackson, Nabokov, Juan Rulfo, Margaret Atwood, Emily Dickinson... speak to him through their lives, and he listens. He wants to add them to this almost posthumous conversation with his father.

Since he realizes that literature miraculously connects us to people who wrote stories in different times and different places. And occasionally, readers are capable of going beyond the written word and read the invisible ink the writer left on the page. When we manage it, we have a glimpse of true beauty: perhaps these moments of joyous reading are enough to justify a life.