“Very good and very cool.”
“Well, I’m glad,” he said, sitting down opposite us, a suspicious look in his eye. “And may one know what you were talking about?”
“Don’t look at us like that, Uncle, we’ve been very good. Not a single word about literature has passed our lips. Cross my heart.”
“What were you talking about, then, if you don’t mind my asking?”
My friend said that he didn’t mind in the least and repeated our discussion about the magnolia tree.
“Not a bad subject,” my uncle said thoughtfully.
“What do you think, Uncle?”
“I don’t know much about it, to be honest, because I bought the house exactly as it is now, garden and all. But I do know that those first-generation emigrants, the ones who left their village for the first time and headed off to South America, were genuinely dazzled by the landscape and by the people they found there. And that later, when they returned home, they always tried to bring something back with them from that world.”
“So you agree with me, then, that they brought the magnolias and the palm trees with them as souvenirs, to have something to look at when they felt nostalgic for South America,” I said.
“No, that’s not what I mean. I don’t think they brought anything with them as a souvenir. There’s no sadness when you return home, but there is a desire to show people things. Let me explain what I mean. The man who built this house…”
“His name was Tellería, wasn’t it?” I said.
“That’s right, José Tellería. He sailed across the ocean and within ten years he was a rich man. I think he owned every textile shop in Montevideo. And when he came back to Obaba after those ten years, he brought with him a kind of sample book of everything he’d seen in Uruguay. He didn’t just bring the seeds of these trees here, he also brought masses of animals: parrots, lorikeets, monkeys…”
“Monkeys too? I didn’t know that,” I said.
“Didn’t you? They were really famous around these parts. Because of course at that time no one in Obaba had ever seen a monkey, not even in photographs. They hadn’t seen such brightly colored birds before either but in the end they were just birds with wings and beaks, and so rather less amazing. But the monkeys, looking for all the world like hairy children… what’s more, one of those monkeys, Alberto, a chimpanzee that Tellería used to dress up in a vest and baggy trousers, used to work in a circus in Montevideo and he could turn somersaults and knew all kinds of tricks. The people who came to see the monkey wet themselves laughing and I don’t mean to be vulgar, for that was literally what happened. They would stand around the garden fence and after watching for a few minutes, would have to rush off and relieve themselves. But in the end, Alberto and his companions became so famous that Tellería had to keep them indoors.”
“Why did he have to keep them indoors?” my friend asked, exchanging a knowing look with me. I was slower on the uptake than him, however, and had not yet made the connection between Tellería’s chimpanzee and a certain monkey from Montevideo I had first heard mentioned in a highway café, and so I failed to understand his message. I needed a few more minutes in order — as Gautier would have said — to hear the steps of the dancer drawing near.
“He had to keep them indoors because the house was becoming a place of pilgrimage,” my uncle explained. “Hundreds of people must have come to see the monkeys and wet themselves laughing. At first Tellería was happy, delighted to see how much everyone enjoyed his South American sample book. But after about three months he got fed up with all the hooha and, from then on, he only exhibited them on Obaba feast days.”
“Did you ever see them, Uncle?” asked my friend.
“More or less. I did see the monkeys, but I was very young. The fact is I haven’t told you the story as I remember it but as a friend of mine from Montevideo remembered it.”
“Oh yes, and who was he?” my friend asked insistently.
“Samuel Tellería Uribe, the rich man’s son. Samuel emigrated to South America too, not to make his fortune like his father, but in search of adventure, with the idea of exploring Amazonas. He was one of the group of people I knew in Montevideo who used to get together at the Café Real and that’s when he told me the story. I’d almost completely forgotten it until now.”
My friend turned around and looked at me again. Did I realize what was happening? Yes, at last I did, I was beginning to hear the dancer’s steps. Montevideo, Monkey, Amazonas… those three words all pointed to the same person.
“Where does Samuel live now? In Dublin?” my friend asked.
My uncle looked at him wide-eyed.
“Well, yes, he does actually. That’s how I come to be living in this house. Because Samuel sold it to me when he got married to Laura, an Irish girl. But how do you know that?”
“Aren’t you expecting a visit from him, Uncle?” we asked.
“He’s always saying he’ll come, but I haven’t had a letter from him in ages. But what’s all this about? Why have you both got that odd expression on your faces?”
We didn’t have an odd expression on our faces. We were just smiling.
“Now, dear uncle, you really are going to be astonished. Your friend Samuel Tellería Uribe…”
But we didn’t have time to finish the sentence. Before we could do so, the dancer gave his final steps and jumped onto the glass. Twice in fact.
We heard a car approaching the house and, shortly afterward, a red Lancia drove into the garden and two men got out.
“Ismael and Mr. Smith!” said my friend and I in amazement.
“Samuel!” exclaimed my uncle, even more amazed. And getting up from the table, he went over to embrace his old friend.
Samuel Tellería Uribe
WHAT DID HE WANT to do first? Would he like to see the house? Hadn’t he brought any luggage? Did he still remember Obaba after all these years? What should they do then, go indoors or drink a little white wine first? How come he’d turned up in that young man’s car…? My uncle’s questions piled up around him, bogged him down. Being a man accustomed to programs and ceremonies, unexpected visits upset him.
“I can see his heart beating from here. It’s jumping up and down in his chest like a young chick in a box,” I whispered to my friend.
“And what about Mr. Smith? Have you seen the state he’s in?”
The old man, all six foot five of him, kept bending toward my uncle, turning his hat around and around in his hands and ceaselessly nodding his white head. He barely had time to reply to all my uncle’s questions. He seemed more embarrassed than upset.
“Why don’t we give them a hand? If they carry on like this, they’ll both go under,” my friend said. We left the shade of the magnolia tree and stepped out into the sun.
But Ismael beat us to it. He was the one to interrupt the animated conversation between the two men. Addressing my uncle, he began in honeyed tones to explain:
“I was driving along in my car when I saw him lying on his back in an apple orchard. In fact I got out of the car because I was worried. I thought something had happened to him. But not at all. He was just calmly, deeply asleep. And when he told me he was born here, I gave him a lift.”
“You did well,” said my uncle.
“Yes, many thanks. It was very kind of you,” said Mr. Smith. “There were no taxis about and so I lay down to sleep on the grass. But anyway…”
“You should have come with us!” we said. But it would seem he remembered nothing of the previous night, and he looked mystified.