Adelaide wanted to become an evangelizing nun in the Amazon, and when she told her geography teacher at the Sisters' school she attended, the teacher immediately sent her to talk to the Mother Superior before the "disease" spread through the class.
The next day, her parents had to go talk to the Mother Superior after explaining what had happened with their daughter. The Mother Superior added:
"That cannot be, because the word of God is reserved for men, and obedience and patience for women."
"¡Yes, Mother Superior, I certainly know that!" responded Adelaida's mother. "Moreover, what could I teach those women from the jungle? It would be inappropriate to suggest that they could go to work, imitating the life of men.- replied Adelaide's mother.
On the same day as the conversation, upon returning home from school, Adelaide's parents punished her by confining her to her room.
Alone in her room, she lay on her bed, staring at the ceiling with tear-filled eyes. The ceiling was adorned with phosphorescent stars that her mother had pasted when she was little, to keep her company when the lights went out. She lay there for a while without moving, with her eyes fixed on a blurry universe. When she stopped crying, she sat up, took two dolls from the shelf on the wall, and brought them back, placing them on her lap on the bed. One doll had red stockings and blonde streaked hair; the other had black hair and was named Pepona. Both dolls also couldn't understand why Adelaide couldn't be an evangelizing missionary in the Amazon.
After a while, she got tired of playing with the dolls and put them back on the shelf. As she did, she noticed the book her aunt had given her for her birthday.
She took the book from the shelf and lay on the bed, placing it on the floor, on top of the carpet, to read while lying face down.
She had read a couple of chapters when she realized that the characters in the novel, a group of teenagers, were speaking inside her head, and she could hear their voices as she ran her finger over the pages of the book. After this discovery, Adelaide started reading everything she could get her hands on during the punishments she had to endure in her room.
At school, she gave up the idea of becoming an evangelizing nun in the Amazon and began writing things that, after some time, she secretly let her best friend read, and eventually, they ended up in the hands of her classmates for them to read.
"How vain," we said, mocking her by calling her Adelaide Fuertes.
One day, Adelaide appeared with a box full of books with the intention of selling us one.
We were astonished. Adelaide Fuertes had written a novel!
What had happened? Had a bug bitten her, or was she born to write? Did she have a seed inside her that sprouted with reading?
"Such a mystery!"
The only thing to do here to shed some light on this matter is an essay on Adelaide's novel.
Essay on Adelaide's Novel
At the age of twenty-two, Adelaide neither studied nor worked, and with no prospects in sight, she decided to return to school. She enrolled in a basic professional training course for administrative work. There, she met some friends from the convent school. To celebrate our reunion, we continued teasing Adelaide.
We led normal lives, going from school to home and from home to school. Most of us excelled in religion class. It was a couple of months before June when Adelaide showed up at school with a box full of identical books.
We thought she wanted to become a bookseller or a librarian, but the mistake was quickly revealed.
While we struggled to fry an egg and complained at home that we didn't like fish or soup with thick noodles, our classmate wanted to make a statement. To do so, she had written a book.
She secretly wrote her manuscript, sending copies to the addresses of publishing houses she found in the books she read—some of which no longer existed. Eventually, she received a response from a printing press in Albacete, saying they would handle the Galician correction and printing of her first novel for a thousand euros.
Without hesitation, she deposited the amount in the account they provided and sent them the bank receipt and the complete manuscript. The origin of the funds was completely unknown to us. Someone said she spent the money her aunt left her when she died, expecting Adelaide to lead a normal life, go to university, and get married.
Now, Adelaide was at school with a box of books sent by the printing press, asking us to buy one to make some money and buy some clothes.
The first to buy the book was the philosophy teacher, who, being absent-minded, thought the purchase benefits were for a class trip. The philosophy teacher showed the book to the guidance counselor, who couldn't believe a student from the school had written a book. Believing the purchase was for a school trip, the guidance counselor also bought the book.
While the teachers were in the cafeteria, the principal noticed the book they were carrying and asked what they were reading. When they told him that a student, Adelaide Fuertes, had written a novel, he decided that a student's work should be in the school library and instructed the janitor to buy several books for the school.
The janitor went to find Adelaide and also bought one more book for himself, just in case he would be foolish not to take advantage of the opportunity to buy a book that could be as valuable as Adelaide Fuertes' early letters in the future. Besides, the novel with a dedication to friends was only ten euros; a real bargain, according to the janitor.
By late morning, some classmates had bought the book, and others bought it not to be left out. As my local book club seller says, "Everyone has a pile of unread books at home, and one more won't hurt." Adelaide returned home with an empty box.
Surprised by the success, she told her parents that night she would make dinner, and the whole family enjoyed a large pan of french fries with eggs and ketchup.
- Adelaide never made a donation for a school trip -
The first reading of the novel came from her best friend, who wanted to read Adelaide Fuertes' work to criticize it.
The book was full of mistakes, and to the reader's astonishment, even though it was written in Galician, it used words like "fiasta" or "miou" because it was corrected on the fly by the linotype operator from the Albacete printing press, who happened to be from Tomiño, Pontevedra province. Despite the unconventional phrases spoken by the characters in the novel:
- "Come closer, miou, today I'm throwing a fiasta!" - these quickly became famous at all the fiestas.
However, we won't dwell on the unique use of the Galician language in the novel; instead, we'll focus on the complex plot.
Adelaide used paper notes stuck to the walls, as seen in detective movies where the detective hangs characters, events, and clues on the wall of their office, connected by red yarn. She used these as a guide to knit the plot of the novel onto paper with an old typewriter.
At some point, her parents decided to paint Adelaide's room, which hadn't been touched since her early childhood.
The appearance of the painters forced the author to unexpectedly pause in the novel. She had to remove the yellow notes from the wall, containing the main ideas of the work, and store them in a shoebox while the painters did their job. It took almost two weeks.
When the room smelled of freshly painted walls and the job was done, Adelaide returned with the shoebox and placed the yellow papers back on the walls. However, as they were second-hand, like relationships, they weren't rearranged like the first time.
This led to unexpected twists in the novel's plot, forcing readers to reflect:
- "But the story started differently!"
Readers often had to stop to make sense of what they had just read - "Did I make a mistake in reading?" - and at other times, it seemed as if multiple conversations were happening on WhatsApp.
The mystery in the novel begins in the first pages:
The victim hadn't died; she had been killed by receiving a package of chorizos filled with rat poison via express delivery.
When the police arrived at the victim's house, they asked the neighbors if they had witnessed anything. Everyone declared the same: around the time the victim died, they were watching TV with their phones in hand.
"I didn't hear anything because I was watching TV with my phone and asking a friend through messaging if she knew what had just happened in the movie I was watching on TV."
The first moments of mystery in the novel:
Who was on the other end of the phone?
But in the second chapter of the novel, due to a lack of experience in the detective novel genre, the mystery ends when we find ourselves in the funeral home, just before transferring the victim to her final rest. The only one who shows up wearing makeup is the killer.
After several attempts in the novel's reading, we discover the motive for the crime.
The killer, as described in the novel, with the same name as the author, had to be like Adelaide because her coworkers in fiction gave her a bottle of perfume, and her boss had an air freshener of lemon placed on her door just for her.
The victim, a young man with significant potential for advancement in life, had just been signed by the local football team with the promise of receiving a five-euro bonus for every goal he scored. After several years of dating the killer, they had just broken up due to a fight she had with two of his best friends, knocking one of them out.
When they separated, the victim recklessly posted online how badly the killer spoke about her friends.
On this, I agree with Adelaide.
"One doesn't have to be very perceptive to understand the natural feelings that lead to the outcome."
The killer learns from her best friend in a park bar. She was unaware of the publication of her confidences on a social relationship page. It was sunny, and the rays bounced off the aluminum tables while she waited, drinking a horchata.
When her friend arrived, sitting across from her and ordering another horchata, they began to talk. At a moment in the conversation, her friend stopped sipping her horchata and said:
"I would have preferred another friend, but you were always there for me."
Upon hearing what her friend just said, the killer discovers that her ex has posted her confessions on the internet, and while sipping her drink with all the naturalness, she vows to take revenge on him.
At this moment, reading becomes easy and fluid. Skipping a dozen chapters - the most recommended to avoid getting lost again - we reach the climax when the postman discovers the killer injecting poison into a bag of chorizos.
"For whom are these chorizos?"
"They're for my ex's dog!"
"But your ex doesn't have a dog!"
Or something like that.
After publishing our essay on Adelaide's novel, we started receiving emails from friends expressing interest in knowing the title of the work. We regret disappointing the expectations generated in your kind emails. However, we sincerely believe that with our essay, we have contributed to Adelaide's work gaining more interest beyond her close circle of intimate friends and acquaintances. Although Adelaide may think otherwise and relate the low sales and dissemination of her novel to our essay and the healthy warnings about the risks of reading it that we have included.
To avoid any anger and frowns from my friend, which could hinder the tranquility and forgetfulness of the novel beyond reading it, I feel obligated to maintain and guard the silence about the title of the work.
- Things among friends, you understand.
To our surprise, some readers believe that the fight described in the novel has its origin in the author's real life. Insinuating that Adelaide is referring to when she beat up her cousins Caramalos for not letting her ex score a goal against them in a local football match. We won't give more clues.
Some readers have asked about the neighbors' messaging while the victim was preparing chorizos with boiled potatoes. We think the killer could have sent the neighbors some fake news to entertain them with their readings while the victim was agonizing.
Will there be a sequel to the novel?
We don't know what might be going through the author's mind right now, but we recall that before starting the reading of her work, she warns readers that they have the first edition of the novel in their hands. Adelaide may have many flaws, but she is not a liar, and we have no doubt that the victim will not go without seeking revenge. Therefore, soon, at the latest, we will have the eagerly awaited second part of her novel, and we can read the revenge of her ex-boyfriend.
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