Mexican Spanish Stories
El silencio verde
The Green Silence
She put the plane down on a river. Now the only way out is downstream.
Bush pilot Renata Ávila should never have taken off into that storm. But a famous chef from Mexico City offered her triple to reach a dying vanilla grower in the heart of the Uxpanapa jungle, and the bank letter in her glove compartment was hard to ignore. When the engine dies over a sea of trees, the plane ends up on the bottom of the river, nobody knows where they are, and the search is looking thirty kilometers in the wrong direction.
- Languages
- Spanish & English
- Reading level
- B1-B2
- Length
- 12 chapters
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A short sample from the opening
Capítulo 1: El último vuelo de la tarde
Chapter 1: The Last Flight of the Afternoon
El aire de Minatitlán olía a petróleo y a lluvia. Renata Ávila caminaba alrededor de la avioneta con una linterna en la mano, aunque todavía eran las cuatro de la tarde: el cielo del sur estaba tan oscuro que parecía de noche. Revisó las llantas, los alerones, el aceite. Pasó la mano por el ala blanca de la Cessna 206, con las letras XA-RAV pintadas en azul, como quien acaricia el cuello de un caballo viejo. La avioneta tenía cuarenta y un años, igual que ella. Su padre la había comprado el año en que ella nació.
The air in Minatitlán smelled of oil and rain. Renata Ávila was walking around the plane with a flashlight in her hand, even though it was still only four in the afternoon: the southern sky was so dark it looked like night. She checked the tires, the ailerons, the oil. She ran her hand over the white wing of the Cessna 206, with the letters XA-RAV painted in blue, the way you stroke the neck of an old horse. The plane was forty-one years old, the same as her. Her father had bought it the year she was born.
Aerotaxis Ávila era una empresa de un solo avión y de una sola piloto. Antes eran tres avionetas y cuatro pilotos, y su padre, don Rogelio, volaba a todas las rancherías del sur de Veracruz y de Oaxaca: llevaba médicos, maestros, medicinas, a veces una novia con su vestido blanco, a veces un muerto en su caja. Don Rogelio había muerto hacía dos años, de un infarto, en tierra, en su hamaca, cosa que a él le habría dado mucha vergüenza. Le dejó a su hija la Cessna, el hangar y una deuda con el banco que no la dejaba dormir.
Aerotaxis Ávila was a company with a single plane and a single pilot. There used to be three planes and four pilots, and her father, don Rogelio, flew to all the hamlets of southern Veracruz and Oaxaca: he carried doctors, teachers, medicine, sometimes a bride in her white dress, sometimes a dead man in his coffin. Don Rogelio had died two years earlier, of a heart attack, on the ground, in his hammock, which would have embarrassed him terribly. He left his daughter the Cessna, the hangar and a debt with the bank that kept her awake at night.
This is a short excerpt. The full novella has 12 chapters.
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