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FICTION
A Very Personal Belief
A story about faith and deeds, inspired by Miguel de Unamuno’s ‘San Manuel Bueno, Mártir’
“Father, father!” the boy called down the street.
Martín had heard the same words countless times over the years, from a hundred different people, in a thousand different voices. He had no children. He had a village.
The tone of the imprecation this time was urgent, anguished. Martín ran down the beaten earth that passed for San Telmo’s main road, and through the door held open for him by the trembling hand of the boy’s mother, Conchita.
On a bed in the middle of the cramped room lay an old man, his lungs rasping weakly. Again, a sound Martín had heard a hundred different times, though always, in truth, in the same way. And always at the same age: the age of death.
His task here was not to save, but to succour. To succour the living, but first and foremost the dying. He knelt alongside the bed, which he now saw was an improvised construct of wooden pallets from the mine. Barely supporting the old man’s weakened frame. Central to his life, and quite probably his death, as had been the case for half the village in the years Martín had been stationed here.
