The Little Boy Who Did Not Know How To Play translated from Ana María Matute's story in Spanish, "El niño que no sabía jugar" There was a little boy who did not know how to play. His mother would look at him from the window, coming and going up and down the little dirt paths, with his still hands slumped to his sides. Gaudy-colored toys; the ball, so round, and the trucks, with their little wheels -- he hated them all. He’d look at them, he’d touch them, and then would go out to the garden, a land with no roof, with his pale, dirty little hands, dangling on either side of his body like two muted bells. The mother just kept looking anxiously at the son, who went and came with a dark cloud in his eyes. "If he just liked to play," she said, "I wouldn’t feel so cold looking at him as he passed." But the father said, with pride: "He does not know how to play, he’s not an ordinary boy. He’s a boy who thinks." One day the mother put on her coat and followed the boy, through the pouring rain, hiding herself amidst the trees. When the boy came to the edge of the pond, he crouched down, he looked for crickets, tadpoles, and earthworms. He went around putting them in a box. Later he sat down on the ground, and one by one picked them out of the box. With his dirty, almost black, little nails, he would make a light sound -- "crack!" and cut their heads off. The Little Boy Whose Friend Passed Away translated from the story "El niño quien se le murió el amigo" One morning, he woke up and went to look for his friend on the other side of the fence. But the friend wasn’t there, and, when he went back home, his mother told him: "Your friend died. Son, don’t think about him anymore. Look for other kids to play with." The boy sat down on the stoop, face in between his hands and elbows on his knees. "He’ll come back," he thought. Because it just wasn’t possible there lay his friend’s marbles, toy truck and tinfoil pistol, and his watch that wouldn’t run, and his friend wouldn’t come back to get them. Night came, and with it, a great star, and the boy did not want to come in to eat dinner. "Come in, child, it’s getting cold," his mother said. But, instead of coming in, the boy got up from the stoop and went out to look for his friend, with his marbles, his truck, his tinfoil pistol, and his watch that wouldn’t run. Upon reaching the fence, his friend’s voice did not call him, nor did he hear him in the trees, nor at the well. He went looking for him all night. And it was a long, almost white night, that left his suit and shoes covered in stardust. At sunrise, the boy, who was hungry and thirsty, stretched out his arms, and thought: "How silly and stupid these toys are. And this watch that doesn’t run, it’s worthless." He threw all these things into the well, and returned to the house, dying of hunger. His mother opened the door to him, and said: "How this child has grown. My God, how he has grown." And she bought him a man’s suit, because the one he was wearing had become very short. back to translations home