El ratón y la montaña

Antonio Gramsci wrote many letters to his wife from prison. In one of these, he tells her a story so she can read it to his sons: the story of a mouse who drinks a little boy's breakfast milk. When the little boy wakes up and cries with hunger, the mouse asks the goat for milk, but the goat can't give him any without grazing first. But the meadow has no grass, nor the spring any water... everything has been destroyed by war and financial speculation. The mouse makes a promise on the child's behalf that he will plant trees when he's older, and the whole world gets to work so that the little boy can have breakfast... and the town regains its former vitality. Laia Domènech provides a marvellous interpretation of Gramsci's story, with the same delicacy and humour that we came to know in 'La zanahoria' ('The Carrot') (Milrazones, 2015).