“The Raven Meets the Mole” Dialogue between Corbin and Winnie, by J. Ávila

The streets were somehow crowded, dust could be breathed all along the way, cars would come and go in an unending parade of flashy colors and noise, and though the sky was gray and likely to pour, the heat Corbin felt was unbearable. He decided he wanted to be somewhere quieter, somewhere he wouldn’t have to stand people’s stupidity and vulgarity. Then, once into a green, wide and lonely park, he made out a strange figure in the distance. Beyond a fenced entrance, there seemed to be a big bulk of earth and filth with a very peculiar “topping”, a woman with kind of a hat on her head. Corbin was not the type of guy who likes to gossip on any particular oddity, but since the woman was along the way he meant to follow, it would be inevitable he took a look at her.

As he came closer to the mute human sculpture, he began to wonder why the woman would remain there, all still and dumb. He even wondered if it was a woman or just a corpse. Once this last thought had pierced Corbin’s mind, he squinted his eyes and as any other morbid raven he attempted to find out what the body was doing there. He started to experience a rush of morbidity and he could feel his breath now panting. Then, all of a sudden, the woman’s head turned at Corbin. He stopped immediately, his heart got petrified. He could not hear a thing because his heart beats were flooding with their sound Corbin’s ears. All of his body muscles were tightened and his lungs had stopped pumping air in and out of his body. His eyes wide open scanned the woman’s face, who somehow seemed to be happy. This apparently happiness was what killed any interest Corbin had on the woman. She, she stood still, gazing at Corbin with compressed lips. He straightened up, lift his right eyebrow in a sign of his common disgust to people, and just turn his back on the lady half-buried in the earth and with compressed lips.

Corbin did not know why the woman was there sticking out from the ground –neither he wanted to- so he kept on walking his way. But her lips. The image of her lips, all smooth and thin; all pink and… compressed. “Compressed?” he asked himself. “Why were they compressed? Why would she on Earth stay there compressing her lips that way…?” The thought started to drill Corbin’s head and by the time he was getting out of the park, it was already killing him. He decided to come back, and with his distinctive sluggish moves but still with his usual touch of poise, turned back and headed again towards the woman. She would continue there, without having moved an inch. He arrived and then they found themselves gazing into the other’s eyeball. Finally, her voice broke the deathly silence that cloaked them.

- “Hello”, she said. Corbin did not reply to this artless attempt of conversation. “My name’s Winnie. How are you, wanderer?” Corbin was still dumb. While he tried to analyze further the way the woman moved her lips, she spoke again and said, “Don’t you feel like talking? Or is it that the words fail you? It happens. It does happen: words fail, there are times when even they fail”.

Corbin stood there, wondering how she dared talking to him, even more when she was not so different from a tree in the position she was.

- “What’s your name, lonesome wanderer? How do they call you?” Winnie asked again with this unnerving smile on her face.

- “Pravus. Corbin Pravus” he replied with a harsh voice and a sharp look.

- To this, Winnie replied with what Corbin thought was a too exaggerated excitement, “Corbin Pravus! What a mysterious and intriguing name! I quite remember these exquisite verses…” Winnie squinted her eyes as if looking for something in the depths of her head. Then, she opened her eyes again, this time with enthusiasm growing in them and then she finally said, “Ghastly, grim, and ancient Raven, wandering from the Nightly shore, -- Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore! Quoth the Raven "Nevermore!” She then squinted her eyes once again scrutinizing her mental summary of writers and said, “What I don’t remember is the name of whom the verse belongs to… Was it Edward Allan Doe? Edgar Dallas Foe?” Then, relaxing her facial muscles and with an air of not caring too much about it, she ended up saying, “Never mind, I guess…”

To this surprising demonstration of knowledge on poetry, Corbin let show himself –though unconsciously- amazed by Winnie.

- “Edgar Allan Poe,” he said without letting his voice reflect his inner amazement. “It is from ‘The Raven’, one of my favorite ones, personally”, he added.

Both remained silent, Corbin silently inspecting the filth around Winnie and Winnie looking at the bag beside her. Then, she turned again to Corbin and asked:

- “Why do you wander around these forgotten plots? Have you lost your way, my dear black-feathered friend? Winnie asked lowering her head a little to her left and seeming innocent, just a like a little girl wanting to know something trivial.

- “Not all those who wander are lost…” Corbin replied as if expecting Winnie to reply back with what he wanted to hear.

- Coming back to her mental summary of writers, she started to think on the author of such quotation and said, “J.A.R Tolking? J.K. Rowling?”

- With a touch of disappointment in his voice but with also arrogance in it, he corrected her, “J.R.R. Tolkien”.

- “Oh, is it his? Winnie replied. “That is what I find so wonderful, that not a day goes by – (she smiles)-- to speak in the old style --(now smiles off) -- hardly a day, without some addition to one's knowledge however trifling, the addition I mean, provided one takes the pains”.

Another silent lapse laid down on the uncommon scene, lapse then interrupted by Corbin who asked:

- “Why were you compressing your lips when I first passed you by?” Corbin asked without the slightest touch of prudence or caution.

Winnie’s face changed completely in a matter of seconds. It seemed as if sorrow was breaking in her. She lowered her eyes, looked at the bag again. Then, it seemed to Corbin that she was going to turn back but something had kept her from doing so. She then said:

- “I used to have my Willie and I always used to say that something of what I talked with him was being heard, that I was not merely talking to myself, that is in the wilderness, a thing I could never bear to do -- for any length of time. (She paused.) That was what enabled me to go on, go on talking that is. (She paused.) I used to ask myself that whereas if he was to die -- (she then smiled) -- to speak in the old style -- (now smiled off) -- or go away and leave me, then what would I do, what could I do, all day long, I mean between the bell for waking and the bell for sleep? (She paused again.) Simply gaze before me with compressed lips…”

Corbin started to feel weird, but not the usual weird. It was something he hadn’t felt in a long time. He felt pity for Winnie, the woman was mad. But there was something more. He felt, he knew there was something more evoked by this uncommon woman. He saw her again in detail: she was there, stuck in the ground like a mole, with depression killing her from the inside but with this puzzling smile popping out of her face. How? How could she manage to smile that way when her life seemed to be miserable, when she wasn’t even capable of keeping herself quiet? And why would she stay there without moving? Why didn’t she have to deal with others, with people and their filth? Why could she stay away from everybody all alone with her loneliness and patheticism while he had to face his co-workers, his neighbors, his family? Why couldn’t he just stay stuck in earth just like Winnie?! Out of the blue, Corbin caught himself feeling envious. He was envious of Winnie.

Winnie realized Corbin was going through an inner kind of crisis while looking at the ground surrounding her. There, she said,

- “I suppose this -- might seem strange -- this what I have said -- yes -- strange -- were it not -- that all seems strange. Most strange. Never any change. And more and more strange”. The tone of her voice let perceive she was somehow trying to diffuse the tension. It was not clear why Winnie thought Corbin had the impression she felt bad for being stuck, so she added, “What a curse, mobility!”

But in Corbin’s head, that’s exactly what made him angry the most. She was there, as life passed her by, compressing her lips, as if nothing else mattered in the whole world. Corbin was there, hating her, loathing her, and wanting to flay her with his own hands when the caw of a flock of ravens near the place brought him back to reality. He didn’t need to stay there. In fact, he felt Winnie was a lesser to him, a pathetic excuse of human being stuck in earth more alone than anyone else in the world, even more than him.

He rose his head, looked down on Winnie, and then he turned his back on her so he could continue his way. Winnie stood there, with her head lowered this time to her right, as birds usually do or as if she was trying to analyze the picture. She did not say a word. Instead of that, her upper lip and her lower lip started to tighten inwards, leaving her with the same image she had when met by the “wandering raven”, gazing in front of her with compressed lips that is.

As for Corbin, he kept on walking thinking that that day’s encounter was something out of the dull everyday crap he’s used to live or see. “How did she get in there, anyway? Could it be possible that I… that I get stuck one day too…? It was cold now, nightfall was definitely on its way and Corbin felt like drinking something hot. He put his ear-phones on again and continued walking while humming a scary movie soundtrack…