El corazón delator (The Tell-Tale Heart): free C1 Spanish story
Level C1 (Advanced) · Classics · about 3 minutes
A man who insists he is not mad, and a heartbeat that will not stop.
Adapted from The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe (1843).
In the app you can tap any word for its meaning, listen to natural narration with each word highlighted, and switch between Latin American and Spain Spanish. Read it in the app, free.
The story in Spanish
El narrador quiere convencernos de que no está loco, y para demostrarlo nos cuenta, con una calma inquietante, lo que hizo. Admite que es nervioso, terriblemente nervioso, pero asegura que la enfermedad, lejos de destruirle los sentidos, se los ha agudizado, sobre todo el oído. Vivía con un anciano al que, según dice, quería de verdad: el anciano nunca le había hecho daño, y a él no le interesaba su dinero. Lo que no soportaba era uno de sus ojos: un ojo de buitre, de un azul pálido, cubierto por una especie de velo. Cada vez que lo miraba, se le helaba la sangre, y así, poco a poco, decidió quitarle la vida al anciano para librarse del ojo para siempre.
Durante siete noches, a medianoche, abrió muy despacio la puerta del dormitorio del anciano y dejó pasar un único rayo de luz de su linterna. Pero el ojo siempre estaba cerrado; si hubiera estado abierto, él habría hecho lo que había planeado desde la primera noche. Nunca fue tan amable con el anciano como aquella semana: cada mañana entraba en su habitación, lo llamaba por su nombre con cariño y le preguntaba qué tal había dormido.
La octava noche, el anciano se despertó y, al sentir que alguien estaba en la habitación, se incorporó en la cama y se quedó inmóvil, muerto de miedo. Durante una hora entera, ninguno de los dos se movió, hasta que el narrador oyó un leve gemido: el gemido de terror de quien sabe que va a morir. El rayo de luz cayó por fin sobre el ojo abierto, y el narrador empezó a oír un sonido sordo y rápido, como el de un reloj envuelto en algodón: era el corazón del viejo. Con un grito, se lanzó sobre él, y poco después escondió el cuerpo bajo las tablas del suelo, sin dejar ni una sola huella.
A las cuatro de la madrugada llegaron tres policías: un vecino había oído un grito. El narrador los recibió tranquilo, les explicó que el grito había sido suyo, en una pesadilla, y que el anciano estaba de viaje en el campo. Incluso los invitó a sentarse en la misma habitación y puso su propia silla justo encima del lugar donde estaba escondido el cuerpo. Los policías quedaron convencidos, pero al poco rato él empezó a palidecer: le dolía la cabeza y le zumbaban los oídos. Mientras ellos charlaban, él volvió a oír aquel latido, cada vez más fuerte, hasta que, desesperado, gritó: «¡Lo confieso! ¡Levanten las tablas! ¡Es el latido de su horrible corazón!».
English translation
The narrator wants to convince us that he is not mad, and to prove it he tells us, with an unsettling calm, what he did. He admits he is nervous, dreadfully nervous, but insists that his illness, far from destroying his senses, has sharpened them, above all his hearing. He lived with an old man whom, he says, he truly loved: the old man had never harmed him and he had no interest in his money. What he could not bear was one of his eyes: a vulture’s eye, pale blue, covered by a kind of film. Whenever it looked at him, his blood ran cold, and so, little by little, he made up his mind to take the old man’s life and rid himself of the eye forever.
For seven nights, at midnight, he very slowly opened the door of the old man's bedroom and let a single ray of light from his lantern through. But the eye was always closed; had it been open, he would have done what he had planned from the very first night. He was never kinder to the old man than that week: every morning he went into his room, called him warmly by name and asked him how he had slept.
On the eighth night, the old man woke up and, sensing that someone was in the room, sat up in bed and stayed motionless, terrified. For a whole hour neither of them moved, until the narrator heard a faint groan: the groan of terror of someone who knows he is going to die. The ray of light finally fell on the open eye, and the narrator began to hear a dull, quick sound, like a watch wrapped in cotton: it was the old man’s heart. With a shout, he threw himself at him, and soon afterward he hid the body under the floorboards, without leaving a single trace.
At four in the morning three policemen arrived: a neighbor had heard a scream. The narrator received them calmly and explained that the scream had been his own, in a nightmare, and that the old man was away in the country. He even invited them to sit in the very same room and placed his own chair right above the place where the body was hidden. The officers were convinced, but before long he began to turn pale: his head ached and his ears were ringing. While they chatted, he heard that heartbeat again, louder and louder, until, desperate, he screamed: “I admit the deed! Tear up the planks! It is the beating of his hideous heart!”
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