When an angel is thrown out of his kingdom, he falls with force and fury onto the city. Raise your eyes to the infinite sky and you see how his divine form moves and tears apart through the air, making luminous flashes, like the flickering meteorite which disintegrates, weightless on touching the atmosphere.
The fleeting friction of his figure against the firmament creates a dull, poetic sound, a sad and distant lament.
Then I shiver and start walking up the street, towards Moorgate, with my leather jacket shaken by the wind and my cigarette starting to burn the corners of my lips. Arriving at Leadenhall, while the flashes of fire rush flickering above my head, I think that London is a damn Peruvian piñata on the point of pulverising itself.
The quartered body collapses like a shower of stars, radiant and metallic, like a storm rushing quick towards the earth, which follows its course, orbiting with indifference, as if nothing were happening right before its eyes.
The hands, the fingers, the feet, fall and will fall with real shame, the same shame that you feel when you are defeated and vanquished by fate. At a crossroads, I am able to see part of the wing embedded in the cement, reflected in the glass and steel of the skyscraper. The lines are perfect and have a lethal beauty. Then I stop and smile, and the stars, and the huge sky begins burning bountifully over my kingdom of dreams.
Translation by Katherine Capaldi
Gunter Silva studied law and political science at the Universidad Católica de Santa María in Peru and holds a BA in the Arts and Humanities. He is currently completing a MA in Creative Writing at the University of Westminster. He has published two books of short stories. Crónicas de Londres (Atalaya. Lima, 2012) and Homesick (SU. Miami, 2013). Many of his short stories were included in Anthologies and translated into various languages.
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