Alfanhui Quotes

“You have yellow eyes like a stone curlew’s, so I’ll name you Alfanhui because that is the name the stone curlews call to each other.”

“Alfanhui would have been unable to say whether there was a dark solitude in his eyes and an unfathomable silence in his ears because the music and the colors came from that other place from which concrete knowledge never comes, a place abandoned on the very first day behind the farthermost wall of memory where that other memory is born;”

“Thus the maid went from illness to illness until, one day, she died. Alfanhui and his master buried her in the garden with a headstone etched in vinegar saying: Selfless and Silent.”

“Alfanhui knew about firewood. He knew which kinds of wood gave off sad flames and which gave off joyful flames, those that made strong, dark fires or those that made bright, dancing fires, those that left female embers to warm the dreams of cats or others that left male embers to bring repose to hunting dogs.”

“All his classmates envied him his ink because it was so bright and pretty, with sepia tone none of them had ever seen before. However, the boy learned a strange alphabet that no one else understood and he had to leave the school because the teacher said he was setting a bad example.”