Estancia mínima

«To tell the truth, this gleaming gold (a really hellish luster for this inappropiate spot) so scared me at first that I had to lower my eyes at the sight of F.’s teeth and the grayish yellow porcelain. After a time, whenever I could, I glazed at it on purpose so as not to forget it, to torment myself, and finally to convince myself that all this is really true. In a thoughtless moment I even asked F. if it didn’t embarrass her. Of course, it didn’t —fortunately. But now I have become almost entirely reconciled, and not merely from habit (in fact I hadn’t the time to acquire a visual habit). I now no longer wish these gold teeth gone, but that is not quite the right expression, for I actually never did wish them gone. It’s rather that they now strike as almost becoming, most suitable, and —this is not unimportant— a very definite, genial, ever-present, visually undeniable human blemish which brings me perhaps closer to F. than could a healthy set of teeth, also horrible in its way.»

«A decir verdad, en los primeros tiempos tenía que bajar la vista ante los dientes de F. , ¡tanto me horrorizaba el fulgor de aquel oro! (fulgor realmente infernal en ese lugar tan poco apropiado)...Más tarde los miraba siempre que podía, deliberadamente… para torturarme y convencerme, por último, de todo aquello que era realmente verdad. En un momento de inflexión llegue incluso a preguntar a F. si no se avergonzaba. Naturalmente, y por fortuna, no sentía la menor vergüenza. Pero ahora… me he reconciliado ya casi del todo, y no desearía ver esos dientes de oro fuera de su boca… cosa que en realidad jamás llegué a desear. Sólo que hoy día esos dientes me parecen casi adecuados, particularmente precisos… un defecto humano evidente, amable, siempre visible, innegable para los ojos, que quizá me aproxima más a F. que una dentadura sana y, a su manera, no menos horrorosa.»

*Felice Bauer.

*A Grete Bloch. Franz Kafka, 1914.