The Boy of Clay – Chapter 2, Part 2

This excerpt should put to rest the tenuous rumor that my family are descendants of Ponce de León. If that were truly the case, I can’t help but think it would have been mentioned somewhere in the following…

When the voice of el sereno sang: "Nine o’ clock and all’s well," Mama Mercedes would serve me cookies, sweets and Malaga wine. After these delicacies, and being forced to recite an Our Father and a Hail Mary, I slept. My eyes, before submitting to dream, remained open for a few moments. Then the roof of the house, the cross beams, transformed into sky: at first, horrendous, malformed figures would tear out my screams; later, these frightful figures, attacked by archangels with swords, withdrew, and the Virgin would appear in blue, her blonde head encircled by light; she stood in the center of a ring of angels, all with pink faces and eyes of clearest blue; everything radiating in the night sky of my childhood… From that sky I descended into sleep: it was like a beautiful angel wrapped in gauze floated and rippled before me, and held, in hands that were almost blurry, flowers with large, round corollas; these flowers touched my eyelids, and I slept with a smile on my lips…  
 
The next day, after breakfast: milk and sponge cake, I peaked from the balcony to watch the Spanish gunners; they were young men, tall; packed in white uniforms with white helmets touching their heads; at midday and afternoon, I saw them again; they darted across the street when the horn at San Cristobal Castle resounded with sharp, metallic notes. Sometimes, on holidays, these gunners, sympathetic to children, came staggering up towards the balcony of my house, regaling me with almond chips and other goodies. I didn’t know why they were wobbling; but Mama Mercedes told me they wobbled because they were merry, that joy made them that way. Since then, whenever I saw them reeling, I’d yell to Mama Mercedes: "Look! The gunners are joyful!" For me, the wobble was a sign of happiness. Did Mama Mercedes not teach me thus?
 
I was a delicate and sensitive child, and I was intensely impressionable. Today, in recalling the events from that age, the emotions are reproduced enough to make me shudder. I find myself amidst a stormy cloud; and sometimes I hear sounds and voices I thought to be dead forever. Then I see myself, tiny, fragile, leaning over the balcony of the house where I spent the first years of my life. On the streets, cobbled and dusty, a variety of people and things would cross: already the grinder is whistling and rolling the wheels of the cart in which his whetstone gleams; already there’s el barquillero with his basket of wafers, ringing his iron triangle; already there’s the vendor selling paper windmills. Everything comes to life and shines as brightly as it did back then. There’s other people and things that, from a distance, are impossible to make out; they are lost to me, they leave me… I can not say for sure whether they belong to the world of wakefulness or sleep, if I lived or dreamed, if they are fragments of some remote reality or fragments of a dream even more remote.
 
The people that surrounded me: my mother, my grandparents, my cousin Luisa, my wet nurse, they loved me and cared for me. I felt detached from them, however, and worse, detached from myself. Who was I? What was I doing at that house? I felt like I had taken the place of someone that lived there. Such was my ignorance…
 
My mother felt uneasy in the house where we lived, and decided to move us to another house on the same street. This other house was located next to the historic Casa Blanca, the mansion constructed by Don Juan Ponce de León, conquistador of Puerto Rico and governor of Florida, whose remains rest in our Iglesia Cathedral. Our house overlooked the harbor entrance. From time to time, we saw the ships passing from Spain. The gold and yellow flag, which floated upon the castles of the city, shined from the stern of the ships. These ships brought scrumptious edibles and delicious wines from the Motherland.
 
I grew; and as I grew, I turned into a dreamer. Because San Juan didn’t have an aqueduct, every house had a well. My mother told me that those who fall into the well inevitably end up in another world. Again came the mystery of another world… When I leaned over the edge of the well, and sank my anxious eyes into the still, dark water, trembling from head to toe, I thought: Through that still, dark water is the other world. Since I could not go to the other world, whatever fell from my hands would pay tribute to the well. I threw in sticks, umbrellas, shoes, wallets, fans, combs, forks, plates, spoons, soup dishes, and even my father’s bowler hat… One day, to correct my error in judgment, they let me attend the well as it was being cleaned out, which would happen periodically; and from the tank, of course, a bazaar’s worth of goods was extracted… 
 
Long after that age I still believe in the visions–I’ve recounted them since with palpable dread–of a phantasmic apparition in Casa Blanca. The public lights, consisting of gas lanterns, kept the city in twilight; favoring this gloom, the ghost would perform its mischief. The ghost was punctual: at nine o’ clock at night it would leave the old mansion, scaring the neighbors, who would shut the doors and windows of their houses and, not trusting the locks (though it was never said that ghosts could pull back on bolts), secure them with crossbars.
 
My father, who, being a good, and therefore practical Spaniard, prepared to offer the ghost a welcome. One night, armed with a pistol, he waited patiently for the arrival of the supernatural visitor; and when the long, white silhouette glowed against the shadowy street, he fired several shots. He watched the ghost run, abandoning in its flight, a white sheet and a pair of stilts…
 
It was a guy masquerading as a ghost to scare the neighbors. His intentions, which were harmless, had the zesty deceit of Don Juan’s exploits from the old romances.
 
The phantom, thanks to the rosary of bullets that my father prayed from his gun, never bothered us again…
 
From that past I am treated to a lively night of innumerable shooting stars. Memories appear; gleaming with vibrant light, and then disappear, leaving me a trail in which, still fresh and redolent, I return to and relive; immersing myself in a bath of emotions, I feel the intimate wave shake and swing me.
 
Miraculous memory! With the power of a god, I awaken discarded sensations in the corners of oblivion and resurrect the dead imagery; images that, in an innocent and untainted world, lay the foundation for my greatest treasure. Memory is like a cave of enchantment. As we proceedinside, we get to walk amongst the countless multitudes of memories. Some memories attract other memories. Sweetly entwined, emerging from the bottom of that bewitching cave; some appear blurry, others ablaze, but all have the gracious air of yesterday; and the heart, in continuing its rhythmic dance, displays its gratitude… Some memories have the fresh spontaneity of flowers that blossom in the morning; others resist, and only offer themselves after the required insistence. Many are known, some are not even suspected; but all congregate as a harmonious whole. Every now and then, in the shadowy blue of the holy grotto–damp, yearning eyes see only fragments of memories. They are pieces of lost memories; they are recollections that memory could not unite, because it could not find the threads to weave its tiny vestments.
 
Since my mother was naturally generous, the beggars who knocked at the front door of my house never went away empty handed. When she had no money for charity, she gave them things from the wardrobe or the cupboard. If someone intimated their sorrowful story, tears welled up in her beautiful green eyes and she turned into tenderness itself. The troubles of others grieved her more than her own misfortunes. My mother was born for love and compassion.