The Boy of Clay – Chapter 2, Part 6

 

Some juicy stuff in this one. Evaristo expounds on my great-great-great-grandmother, who sounds like an amazing woman. Don’t want to give it away, but something big happened that she ended up carrying in stoic silence for most of her life. The more I translate, the more these people seem less like characters in a book, and more like family.

In those early years of my childhood, I felt an attraction to trades. I had a predilection towards two trades: carpentry and blacksmithing. I loved to saw and plane wood; I loved the spiral shavings produced from the forward and backward movements of the jack plane; like wide, gold streamers. The smell of new wood; the veins of the wood; the shining nails; the hammer; the chisel, the many tools of this trade captivated me. My mind’s interest was no less awakened by blacksmithing. I craved an occupation that was more masculine, more poetic, more dignified. On my street was one of these smithies that I constantly visited, accompanied by Mama Mercedes. As much as I  enjoyed the woodshop, the forge had me delirious with excitement. The heat of the forge thrilled me. I wrote down all the details on forging. Everything was done as follows: the smith puts the metal into the forge and heats it; when it’s red-hot, the metal is placed on an anvil and is dealt a series of blows with a hammer to give it form. The scene was alive: flames of the forge meander between the blacksmith’s coal; the flames were coronated with sparks; the sparks would return whenever the iron, in that incandescent state, received the blacksmith’s hammer.

Much later, while studying mythology, Vulcan, who manufactured Jupiter’s bolts of lightening with the Cyclopes in the underground caves of Mount Etna, reminded me of the blacksmith on my street.

Today, having lived through many hours of suffering, I think I was wrought, like the iron bars forged by a smith, from a decree of fire and hammering… I too, as forged iron, was put into the hearth where metals are tempered, and struck upon the anvil. Thus, by the force of fire and shock, I reached the temple necessary to withstand the weight of my woes…

I’m patiently unraveling the tangle of memories; the thread of this ball of yarn slides between my excited fingers with the fluidity of a strand of tears; but there comes a point where the skein resists, and the thread knots further. Then, with anxious haste, my fingers pull at the reluctant thread, and I’m left with long strands as strips of fabric are torn apart. The long pieces of thread are isolated memories, memories that struggle against remembrance, and in their rebellion, escape the painting of the past.

There are memories that emerge spontaneously; others are hidden in the depths of memory, hostile in their elusiveness; others sleep, and they are so asleep that they seem dead; others are vague, trembling, reluctant, and finally stand, aided by the renewed excitement, with a grand splendor.

My mother, provoked by the worries that tormented her, had moved back to the house that we inhabited years prior, located on the same Street of the Sun (Calle Sol). Mama Mercedes, the Black nursemaid, had married a shipbuilder, and abandoned the house. Grandpa died, leaving their properties compromised; the Curia descended upon them. Grandma, who adored my mother, stayed in our house.

Grandma was the model of a Spanish woman: a great lady. Pale, blonde, with clear green eyes and a fine-lipped mouth; accused of uncommon beauty; her face was stern and maintained a wonderful serenity. Nevertheless, a tragedy weighed over her character that never, (never!), relented. My grandparents were married in Palma de Mallorca; after, they had gone to France, where their children were born. Later, according to a predetermined plan, they took a trip around the world and ended up residing in San Juan, Puerto Rico, where they had their interests. They were accompanied by a French governess, a beautiful woman of great learning. During her pregnancy, my grandmother caught Grandpa in the governess’ bedroom. When my grandfather tried to make excuses, my grandmother informed him that all matrimonial relations between them were closed forever. That neither society nor their own children would know what had happened, even though he had died for her and she for him. That they would remain under the same roof, but estranged from one another. That their love no longer existed… She never mentioned the incident to anyone; never permitted anyone an allusion to such painful private matters; never reproached my grandfather. When he got sick, she became his nurse. Knowing that he was dying, she doubled her care. She remained at his side until he died; he gathered his final breath; she enshrouded him; she lit the candles, and prayed the whole time that the body was in the house. 

Did Grandma forgive my grandfather in the hour of his death? Nobody knows… My grandmother was all woman, conscious and proud of her duties. It’s known that she always (always!) loved him, but could never forget his weakness… 

I was Grandma’s favorite. She used to recite to me, with emphatic intonation, Spanish ballads; those romances that glorified historical events; romances in which relief was given to our peoples’ menagerie of virtues. There were the romances of José Zorilla, of Luis de Góngora Argote, of Lope de Vega, of Leandro Fernandez de Moratín, of Tirso de Molina<span style="font-size: medium;”>, and other great poets. Sometimes she interrupted the ballads to tell me stories. No longer were the terrifying stories of Mama Mercedes, nor the magical tales of One Thousand and One Nights told with such skill by my cousin Luisa. These were tales of the Brothers Grimm and Perrault; stories known to every child in the world. Years later, at college, I lectured a class about the works of famous storytellers; tales assured of immortality; unsurpassable stories, not just for their entertainment value, and their moral depth, but by their undeniable beauty…

Grandma spoke several languages, and possessed, like Grandpa, by then deceased, a great literary culture; there is no doubt that she had shaped my mind.

I had a great fondness for dolls. Why at that age are we more interested in puppets than people? Nevertheless, my interest in dolls has not decreased; even today, when I enter bazaars, I search for the place where dolls are on display, and I stare at them for hours, yearning to discover the soul I imagined inside of them during my childhood…

Do dolls have souls? Perhaps it is the soul of those that created them, giving them shape and color. Perhaps a soul is destined for all objects. Because everything, absolutely everything, has a soul. Because there is a soul to all, for both the organic and inorganic. If dolls have souls, what is their soul like? They represent figures real and unreal, human characters and characters that are only products of the imagination. They obey, in their operation, the spring that, like the pendulum, is subject to calculation… There are no doubt dolls that surpass man in the grace of their mannerisms. And I ask you, regarding the grace of those mannerisms: What is the result? Is it the consequence of an animal, or of a soul?

During this period of my childhood, the dolls were my best friends. I never slept without my hands on one of my dolls. I wouldn’t eat if my dolls did not sit with me in my highchair. If the dolls did not accompany me, I refused to walk to or attend Church. I’d take one or two dolls with me. They encouraged and enlivened me with their red faces and colorful costumes. And they would sleep upon me, awaiting perhaps, the advent of frustrated bliss, the fortune not achieved in this age of fortune…

In the evening, when we were leaving for the Plaza Colón, I carried a doll; and while the other children sang songs from Spain in a circle, I sat on one of the plaza benches, I heard them and it delighted me to listen to them; my doll and I were simple listeners. How these old and beautiful songs that they sang were cast into oblivion; and later, I would hear them in the gardens of Buen Retiro, in beloved Madrid.

 
 
Dona Ana No está aquí,
Que está en su vergel,
Abriendo las rosa
Y cerrando el clavel…

Doña Ana is not here,
‘Cause she is in her garden,
Opening the rose
And closing the carnation…

 

Oh, those old and gentle songs that come, filled with the sound of laughter and the fragrances of the garden, crossing the curve of the centuries: You pass, pass, and pick up, in your words and in your rhythms, the passionate wetness of my eyes and the ardent throb of my heart! You pass, pass. But, what am I saying? You shall pass, but the musical imprint of your winged foot will be in my blood like the humming of my mother’s voice in the night, already so distant, from my childhood.

My father had a brother whom we called Uncle Pepón. He was the captain of a brigantine, El Osado (The Bold), which made the voyage from Spain to the islands of the Greater Antilles, two of which: Cuba and Puerto Rico, still belonged to the Spanish Crown. Uncle Pepón was a young man, of average height, thin, muscular, agile; his face, toasted by tropical suns, always beamed with joy; his handsome sideburns, his little mustache, his romantic goatee, his green eyes and love for life made him an amiable and attractive character; he wore a dark blue uniform that brandished, on the neck and cuffs, tiny gold stars. When Uncle Pepón arrived in his brig, we all rejoiced, because we knew what a cheerful joker he was; when El Osado arrived at our port, the house became filled with curious objects and riotous laughter.