Newton's light

“Red slammed the book shut. And glared sternly at Yellow. The other colours all around them sighed. You could guess it was an awkward moment. I’ll go further: a tense moment. I’ll go further still: a combative moment.”

Little Yellow tried to cross his legs to make his position more stable, but he had no knees to bend. The colours looked at Red, waiting. He had been chosen to represent them. And Red was very, very red with rage: “We are waiting for an explanation.”

“Explanation…” Little Yellow repeated, stalling for time. “Explanation of what?”

The colours cleared their throats and fidgeted. They even started whispering. But Red asserted his authority.

“Don’t play dumb. You know perfectly well.”

He pulled a very thin book from a bag and brandished it before them all, as if he were presenting evidence in a courtroom scene from a film.

“Newton’s Light, first edition. The seven colours of the rainbow: that’s us.
Yes, that’s all of us,” said Liliana.
“And we occupy,” Green added, “practically the same space, each of us.”

It would be good if the Camões Prize, awarded to it in 2015, helped draw attention to the work of Hélia Correia, a reclusive author who shuns the spotlight and one of the leading voices in contemporary Portuguese literature.

Hélia Correia (1949) is a contemporary Portuguese writer. She holds a degree in Romance Philology and is a secondary school Portuguese teacher. Despite her love of poetry, she is recognised as a fiction writer and one of the most exciting new voices in Portuguese fiction from the 1980s generation, although her short stories, novellas and novels are always imbued with poetic language.