Bunuel_Luis_My_Last_Breath

Luis fainted, and to this day I don't know whether it was from heatstroke, drunkenness, or very clever tactics!For several days afterward, our parents spoke to us only in thethird person, but when he thought we weren't listening, my fatherregaled his friends with the story of our exploit, exaggerating theobstacles we'd had to overcome and praising Luis's proposed selfsacrifice.(No one ever mentioned mine, which seemed to me everybit as heroic, but in our family Luis was the only one who recognizedmy small human worth.)Years went by in which Luis and I rarely saw each other. He wasbusy at the university, and I was occupied with the useless educationdesigned for young girls of good families. My two older sisters marriedyoung. I remember how Luis loved to play checkers with oursecond sister, but the games always ended disastrously, since bothwere fiercely determined to win. It was a real war of nerves. If mysister won, she had the right to pull a sort of pale mustache underLuis's nose until he cried "Enough!" He'd endure the torture for whatseemed like hours and then leap up suddenly and throw whatevercame into his hands, usually the checkerboard, as far as he could.On the other hand, if he won, he'd light a match and move it closerand closer to my sister's face until she said a certain taboo word we'dlearned from our coachman. (When we were little, he used to tellus that if we burned a bat's face, it would say "Culo! Cdo!") Sincemy sister stubbornly refused to utter the word, the games were foreverending in chaos and tears.