The world was still, the air was still. In the town of Majagual, a hamlet lost in the swamps, everyone else was taking a siesta.
Gustavo asked Don Francisco about his first love. He had to repeat the question several times, first love, first love, FIRST LOVE. Methuselah cupped his ear with his hand. “What? What did you say?”
And at last, “Oh, yes.”
Rocking in his chair, he wrinkled his brow, closed his eyes. “My first love…”
Gustavo waited. He waited while memory traveled. And that creaky little boat listed, shipped water, got lost. It took a voyage of more than a century, and the waters were shrouded in mist. Don Francisco went in search of his first time, his faced screwed up, pitted by a thousand furrows. Gustavo looked away and waited.
At last Don Francisco murmured, almost secretly, “Isabel.”
Then he rammed his bamboo cane into the ground, and leaning on it he rose up from his chair, arched his back like a rooster, and howled, “Isabe-e-e-1!”
Time Turns Pages
“When?” she asked. “When?”
Once a week, Miguel Miglionico passed by her doorway. He always found her sitting there, facing the street, and Dona Elvirita always peppered him with questions about his wife’s pregnancy. “When?”
And Miguel repeated, “June.”
White attire always neat, white hair always combed, Dona Elvirita radiated peace, the dignity of age, and she dispensed advice: “Touch her belly, it brings good luck.”
“Tell her to drink dark beer or malteds, so she’ll have lots of milk.”
“Give her what she hankers for, each and every craving, because if a woman has to swallow her hunger the kid gets birthmarks.”
Every Friday, Dona Elvirita awaited Miguel’s appearance. Her translucent skin, which encircled her body like pink smoke, revealed a tangle of little veins popping with curiosity. “And her belly, is it pointed? Then for sure it’s a boy.”
Winds from the south blew cold, autumn was leaving the streets of Montevideo.
“It won’t be long now, right?”
One afternoon, Miguel came by in a great hurry. “The doctor says it’s a matter of hours. Today or tomorrow.”
Dona Elvirita opened her eyes wide. “Already?”
The following Friday her chair was empty. Dona Elvirita died on June 17, 1980, while in the Miglionico home a boy named Martin was born.
Mother
A sneaker,
a love letter, signature illegible,
ten little pots with plastic flowers,
seven balloons in assorted colors,
an eyeliner pencil,
a glove,
a cap,
an old photo of Alan Ladd,
three Ninja turtles,
a storybook,
a maraca,
fourteen hairbrushes,
and a few toy cars
are part of the booty of a cat that lives and steals in the Avellaneda neighborhood.
Slinking along rooftops and cornices, she steals for her son, who is paralyzed and lives surrounded by these ill-gotten offerings.
Father
Vera stayed home from school and spent the entire day indoors. At dusk, she wrote her father a letter. He was in the hospital, quite ill. She wrote, “You must like yourself, take care of yourself, look out for yourself, spoil yourself, forgive yourself, love yourself, cherish yourself. I’ll like you, I’ll take care of you, I’ll look out for you, I’ll spoil you, I’ll forgive you, I’ll love you, I’ll cherish you.”
Héctor Carnevale lasted a few days more. Then, with his daughter’s letter under his pillow, he departed in his sleep.
Grandmother
When Miriam Miguez looks at a mountain, she wishes she could pass through it with her gaze and come out on the other side of the world. When she looks at her childhood, she wishes she could pass through all the years and come out on the other side of time.
On the other side of time is Grandmother.
In her house in Cordoba, Grandmother kept a few boxes hidden away. Sometimes, when Miriam and she were alone and there was no danger that anyone might walk in, Grandmother would crack open her treasure chests and let her grandchild see inside.
Those sequins, tiny medals, bird feathers, old keys, knitting needles, colored ribbons, dry leaves, and magazine clippings looked like mere things, but the two of them knew they were much more than things.
When Grandmother died, it all disappeared, perhaps burned or put out with the trash.
Now Miriam has secret boxes of her own. Sometimes she opens them.
Grandfather
Geologists were searching for the remains of a small copper mine called Cortadera, which had once existed but no longer appeared on any map.
In the town of Cerrillos someone told them, “No one knows anything about that. Who could say? Maybe old Honorio knows.”
Don Honorio, defeated by aches and pains and wine, greeted the geologists from his cot. They had a hard time convincing him. Only after a goodly number of bottles and many cigarettes — I think so, I don’t know, we’ll see — did the old man agree to accompany them the following day.
Dog-tired, stumbling, he began to walk.
At first he languished at the back. He refused any assistance, and they had to wait for him to catch up. With a great effort he managed to reach the dry riverbed.
Then, bit by bit, his gait grew steadier. Along the length of the gully and across the stony fields his bent body began to straighten.
“Over there! Over there!” He pointed the way, and his voice came alive when he recognized long-lost places.
After a full day’s hike, Don Honorio, who had started in silence, was doing most of the talking. He climbed hills and leaped over years. By the time they entered the valley, he was marching ahead of his young, exhausted companions.
He slept with his face to the stars. He was the first one up, anxious to get to the mine, and he brooked no detour or distraction.
“That’s the grinder and there’s the steam shovel,” he said. And without the least hesitation, he located the mouths of shafts and the places that once boasted the best veins, the rusty irons that used to be machinery, the ruins that were homes, the parched corners once fed by springs. For each spot, each object, Don Honorio had a story, and every story overflowed with people and laughter.
By the time they arrived back in town, he was younger than his grandchildren.
Labor
At dawn Dona Tota walked into a hospital in the barrio of Lands. She was carrying a child in her belly. In the entrance way she found a star, in the form of a brooch, lying on the floor.
The star sparkled on one side, but not the other. That happens whenever stars fall to earth and lay in the dirt. On one side they glow silver, invoking the nights of the world; on the other side, they’re just tin.
Gripped in her fist, that star of silver and tin accompanied Dona Tota in labor.
The newborn was named Diego Armando Maradona.
Birth
The public hospital in the fanciest neighborhood of Rio de Janeiro received a thousand patients every day. Nearly all were poor or poorer.
A doctor on call told Juan Bedoian, “Last week, I had to choose between two newborns. We have only one incubator. The babies came at the same time, each with one foot in the grave, and I had to choose which would live and which would die.”