Read White Or Blue? A Short Story By Andorran Writer Pilar Burgus

The following story is from Burgués’s collection Flaixos de llum Blanca (Fragments of White Light), and appears exclusively as the Andorra selection for our Global Anthology, which highlights a short prose work from every country in the world.

Lying on a gurney, the ceiling’s constant whiteness. At full speed—depending on the urgency and skill of the orderly—the square neon lights rush by as if wanting to erase the monotony of the route so often taken between the hospital room and the operating theater.

Entering the elevator is an odyssey, a claustrophobic fit into a temporary coffin. It chills me. We’re leaving, and the whiteness is back; it always comes back. I cry so much, I always cry. I crave the blue of the past, and I dream.

I dream I open my eyes and the ceiling is sky-blue. Maybe they painted the hospital that first night, when the pain waned and I was able to sleep.

“Joan, give me your hand. Please. The meds are making me hallucinate.”

A white spot unexpectedly draws near; I’m in the car on my way home watching a white cloud through the window.
Translation by Julia Sanches

Read our interview with Pilar Burgués here.

About the author

Michael Barron

Books and Digest Editor

After obtaining a BA in Poetics from the Evergreen State College, Michael began his literary career at the independent publishing house New Directions. As an editor, he acquired books by and worked with writers such as Rachel Kushner, Rivka Galchen, Ahmed Bouanani, and Horacio Castellanos Moya, among others. After leaving New Directions in 2015, Michael began writing about literature and art for numerous publications, including Harper's, Vice, and Frieze, and took on consulting editorial positions at the UK-based literary press Fitzcarraldo Editions and the literary and art publication The White Review. He is currently writing a book on the cultural history of banishment.