The world was made for them, all they had to do was enjoy it, enjoy it without demandingfrom it what it can’t give us. To “Hazel Eyes”’ children this was of no concern because they had more than enough with what the planet gave them. Neither their minds nor their hearts had room for greed.
A group of young men who had gone hunting returned anxious to the village with something important to tell. They requested to speak to the elders, and their request was granted. At night they would have a meeting with the committee of elders, who were responsible fortaking important decisions ofthe tribe.
When all was ready they walked into the elders’ tent, a huge tent made of reeds, branches and animal skins and a small fire in the middle. The elders remained attentive sitting across the fire, waiting to hear what these group of young men were so eager to share. Then one of the middle-aged men signalled they were free to talk. The boys began blabbering all at the same time which, made it impossible for anyone to understand what they were saying. Then the middle-aged man asked for silence. Everyone fell silent at once. One of the elders pointed at one of the young men and said:
Speedy Falcon, talk.
The young man began telling his story. He had been chasing a moose in the woods and finally the animal reached a clearing, one of the great prairies that lay beyond the green forest. As they were chasing the moose through the open field, Puma’s Foot stumbled upon something, something mysterious. The prairie had been cut by some sort of metal strings that formed a barrier difficult to trespass.
This seemed to surprise the elders and the committee met to deliberate. In the morning the old men would go on an expedition accompanied by some of the youngerand middle age men to see it for themselves.
The group moved slowly through the green forest and later they came to the meadow where they observed the strange phenomenon. The elders were surprised and studied those metal strings. Of course it was something man-made and must have been made by the hand of the white man, who else but them could place limits on this land?, a land mother to all that had been there before no man had even beenborn, a land that would continue to remain there after the last manhad disappeared. How could a man think that the land belonged to them by putting a metal fence around it? The oldest men of the tribe and their ancestors had hunted in that meadow. The prairie had been there since man was man and long before. Now, these men who had come from very distant places marked these lands as if they belonged to them.
Elías’ Mother
MY MOTHER had to work hard all her life because bringing up a child without any help is a great effort for anyone. She worked hard and I was often left alone. Although I missed her, I understood perfectly well what was happening, so far from blaming her for it, I tried to be as helpful as possible, doing everything I could at home. I soon learned to fend for myself, and I even learned to cook when I was about six.
For many years she worked in a chemical factory, manufacturing different cleaning products. The continuous inhalation of these products caused her respiratory problems and, over time, these took a toll on her health. And althoughshe never missed a day of work nor complained of any ailment, there came a day when she was unable to stand up. The doctor visited her at home and said her health was very delicate. So now, I had to take care of her. As much as she seemed to improve, she never really recovered and wilted slowly, like a flower that has been cut offfrom its root.
I have always thought that aging is not natural, that we should not die. Why the same oxygen that gives us life takes it away from us? Why can we not regenerate infinitely? Why can a tree live thousands of years and we can only live just a few? I don’t understand why people accept this without questioning it. I think it’s not natural, it’s a disease, like a virus that lives with us since the dawn of mankind, we have learned to live with it because it has always been with us and we are convinced it’s natural. I think we should strive to cure this disease. I saw nothing magical in my mother's eyes as she aged, nothing magical about her illness, nothing magical about her death. Why fight in life if all awaits you is a tragic end? I can only continue living thinking that I will do everything in my power to eradicate this disease. If at the end I don’t succeed, at least my life would have had meaning. What kind of gift is given to us and then abruptly taken away?
Since as far I can remember, it has always saddened me to see dusk. At sunset my eyes filled with tears, because although I was very little I knew that day would never return. Today, when I watch the sun go down I sometimes, without realising it, feel overwhelmed by an intense feeling of sadness, just as the inexplicable sensation you experience at a funeral, and before I know it my eyes fill with tears.
There are ambitious people and there are simple people like my mother, people who are content with little. She was satisfiedwith seeing me grow up happy, she didn’t ask anything more from life. Some people have everything and they still feel extremely unhappy. I guess the secret is not to have many things but to know how to contemplate the small ones, those small things that often go unnoticed and are what really make up our lives.
About María
EVERY NOW AND THEN María walked around the city centre. Although she wasn’t fond of crowds, she did enjoy looking at the store windows and the clothes the mannequins wore. She especially loved gazing through the long glass cases displaying all kinds of dried fruits and pickled foods. She adored the skewers with cucumber, olives, pepper and chives. She used to walk in and attentively observe everything showcased in the windows. Her mouth watered staring at those delicious snacks. As she liked every single one of them, she never knew which ones to choose, so she used to order a few of each, and walk out of the store with a bag full of different skewers in vinegar. Then she strolledaround, browsing at the shop windows delighted by her food. That morning she walkedlooking at the windows whileenjoying thosetreats. The truth is that not a lot of people can eat as much at that early hour of the morning, let alone eat snacks in vinegar, but María loved and enjoyed eating them more than a child loves a lollipop.
It was a fantastic day, besides in the morning there was barely anyone on the streets, something that pleased her because it didn’t make her feel observed. She saw a mannequin wearing a beautiful dress in a shop window -too expensive, best keep on walking, but she could not look away from this beautiful dress. If she bought it she would never forgive herself, she would have to pay credit on her card for six months and during that time she would not be able to spend any money on anything else. So, it’s better to forget about it but on the other hand, she thought what good is money if it can’t be spent?She didn’t have many dresses and it may come handy someday if she had to go to a party - surely she’d soon have to go to a relative’s wedding. So, on second thought, I could give it a lot of use. She thought she’d try it first, one loses nothing by trying it.
She entered the store and started looking at dresses that were hung in a long rack. The shop assistant looked at her and asked if she could help her with anything. María thenshyly said that she had seen a dress in the window and she thought it was very nice.
Well then, step into the changing room and I’ll bring it for you right away, said the shop assistant.
María entered the changing room and took off her clothes to try the dress on. The changing rooms had the entire back wall covered by a mirror so María stared at her slender figure. Since the assistant was taking her time, María began to act silly in front of the mirror and started doing bodybuilding poses, pretending she was a buffed man. Subsequently, she moved to her repertoire of silly faces so she was pretty absorbed in her own games when the shop assistant threw the dress over the door. María startled and let out an almost inaudible screak. Luckily, she thought, she managed to hold her scream and it looked like no one had heard it.
The fabric of the dress was almost like cotton candy, and it looked like it was her size, something rather unusual because although it may seem otherwise, she rarely found clothes that fitted her - one thing are the sizes tha
t models use on runways and another thing are the sizes that are offered to the public for sale. So very often she had to buy her clothes in the children's section. Shetried it on quickly and indeed it did look good, you could say it was almost perfect. The assistant asked if she had tried it on and María said yes so the young lady then pulled the curtain and had a look at her. She told her that she was the first girl who looked good in that dress because it was a very small size which, was impossible to fit on anyone, and she was thinking about removing it from the window because she could not sell it. María looked stunning in that dress, just like a princess out of the stories she loved to read. She decided she would buy it, and the shop assistant told her she’d reduce the price for her because she was the only one that that could fit on it. The dress was so beautiful and so comfortable she decided to keep it onto surprise her mother.
She paid for it, put her own clothes in a bag,and walked out of the shop wearing her new dress. She walked down the streets looking at herself in the reflection of the window displays. The dress irradiated flashes of light, as virgin snow when touched by the sun. While strolling down 43th street she thought abouther mom’s surprise when she sawher wearing her new dress. Her mother loved María to dress up with beautiful dresses but since little, she refused to do so and always preferred to dress like a boy - plus she used to get dirty with mudall the time because she liked to create different shapes with it until completely stained from head to toe.
The truth is that now that she was older she was very envious to see the other girls dressed in their dresses but dared not put on any because she still remembered her classmates’ scorn that one day when she was wearing a dress made by her mother. They told her she looked like a broom with a dress and many other nasty things that mocked her appearance until finally she ran out with tears streamed down her face. She ran home, took off that stupid dress and put on her pants.
She was walking happy as a runway model. At first she heard thenoise of sirens in the distance. Later, a deafening sound and, moments later, she witnessed a van with a supermarket trolley embedded in the hood. In the van there were sprinkles of something red, but she had no time to see what it was. Then, out of thin air, a tomato fell on the floor. What a peculiar occurrence, she thought, and then another three tomatoes landed together. What was happening? shethought while her face looked up to see where those tomatoes were coming from. She petrified as a storm of tomatoes fell on her and on the rest of 43rd street. The tomatoes hit her hard and she had to cover her head with her arms to protect herself from them. The pretty dress was ruined and when the rain of tomatoes stopped, she saw it reflected in a window display. Then she began to cry. Initially only tears but she started bawling and kicking, increasing the volume of her screams as she ran home.
She wanted to disappear from the face of the earth, she wanted to die at that very moment. She thought the best way to get home without meeting too many people along the way would be through the park so she ran there quickly to avoid meeting anyone. Once in the park she looked for areas where there wasn’t anyone and as soon as she saw someone, she quickly hid behind a tree so they could not see her. Then she saw a strange man leaning against a tree. He was wearing a somewhat absurdoutfit, with a headband on his neck. His clothes were dirty, as if he had been rolling on the floor. He looked as though he was one of those degenerate men who hide behind bushes to watch couples. María made an attempt to hide but as she tried to move she stepped on a branch which, split and made a loud noise. The man looked at her and she screamed. María was shocked and even more so when the man came up to her and tried to grab her. The girl started running and the degenerate did nothing but run after her trying to catch her. Suddenly, her mind produced all those stories you hear about rapists in the news - what if the man managed to catch up to her?She did not want to think about it but one thing was clear – if he ever reached her, she’ll break his head with whatever came to hand. Her legs did not want to go any faster and the man almost touched her but she then began throwing everything in her path backwards towards him. The deranged man did not give up. María tried to run even faster while throwing everything and anything she came across along the way.
At last, it looked as though the man slowed down and he could no longer be seen anywhere. But just in case, she continued running, and she ran for quite some distance before feeling safe. Her home was still quite far. After what had happened she wasn’t sure whether to go through the quieter area of the park or through the busiest thoroughfares because even though she had managed to get rid of the man who was chasing her, she didn’t feel quite sure that he wasn’t going to reappear at any time. She thought this was one of the worse days of her life, if not the worst. The thing is that it was only still quite early and generally, when you start the day on the wrong foot, it is usually bound to finish the same way.
As she was walking home through the park it began to drizzle, a very light rain that soon began to fall with strength, piercing her skin. In no time the light rain became large drops. At first, she thought that the water could resolve the problem caused by the tomatoes, at least partially, but suddenly it seemed as if a harmless rainfallhad turned into a typhoon, water falling in vast quantities, the wind blowing so hard that dragged you away if you didn’t bent. How could that be happening? These things only occur in the news, but you never think they’ll happen to you. These things only happen in remote places. María had no time to find a good shelter and remained under a large tree. A dog went past before her eyes, a beautiful dog that appeared to be of a Belgian Shepherd breed. The poor thing was walking in the rain not knowing where to go.
Come here beautiful, come here little fellow.
Shecalled the dog and it came running towards her. It was wearing a red collar with a metal sheet that read “NAZRAT”. As the water kept rising, María -, who was a good climber -, clamberedup to the first branch of the tree, while the dog barked watching her from below. She then hung upside down, clutching her legs on a branch, and picked up the dog which, while it looked large it weighed much less than one might have thought. They remained in the branch for some time but the water started to reach them. Then, María tried climbing higher up to the upper branches, finding all sorts of inventive ways to carry the dog with her but when the branch had to bear their weight, it gave way and broke, causing them both to fall into the water.
One does not react for some seconds, not aware of what has happened, submerged under water, and time seems to stop. There’s a feeling of wellbeing, lightness, weightlessness and you don’t realise this is not your environment until the lungs contract demanding air again. What from the outside seemed to be a stream of water, it was more like a moving mass of soil and rocks. Beneath the apparent calm of the surface there ran rivers of mud and stones that made it impossible to stay afloat on the surface.
The air burnt inside María’s lungs and finally she had to expel it and in doing so, her lungs emptied and she sank like a stone, disappearing under the water. She travelled for a long time in a world of dreams. At firsteverything was dark and silent but just as electricity illuminates a room when you press a switch, darkness filled with light and silence was filled with sounds, a dream world without beginning nor end whereyou see before your very eyes all the stages of your life separated by long pauses in which you watch the vivid colours of the water flowing downstream in the sun. The brightest colours María could have ever imagined.
León’s Wondrous Tales
LEÓN SPENT a few years working in the North, transporting milk for a dairy factory. Many are the stories he used to tell about those years driving a tanker truck loaded with milk. He often said that although the North was generally very cold, when it was hot, it was really hot and that although hot days were not very common, there was always a warm day that caught you by surprise and made you suffer an unbearable heat. León explained that he had a solution to cool himself down in these unusual days of extreme heat - he parked his truck in a secluded place and climbed on
the tank, opened the cistern’s top hatch and enjoyed a refreshing milk bath that left his skin soft and white.
One of these days, the milk on his skin had dried up and his entire body felt excruciatingly itchy. When he reached his delivery destination, as he was walking towards the person in charge of collecting the delivery and signing up the invoice that confirmed that all was in order, León’s body succumbed to some indescribable form of seizure. The manager was stunned watching him beat his body with his hands as he walked towards him. The cause of it all? The myriad of insects of all kinds which, attracted by the smell of milk, had clung to his body and couldn’t stop biting him.
About León
- BUT WHAT the hell is this? I give you all my savings and you come back with two firecrackers and a rusty shotgun.
- What did you expect, León, with the dough you gave me? Besides, not in your wildest dreams would I give you and Flat a real gun.
The Relic Page 8
