Remember Altagracia?
En la numerosa penumbra, el desconocido
se creerá en su ciudad
y lo sorprenderá salir a otra,
de otro lenguaje y de otro cielo.
In the numerous darkness, the foreigner
will believe himself in his city
and it will stupefy him to find another,
from a different language and a different sky.
Jorge Luis Borges
q
Condega Town
“a stream
runs through my mind
amber honey and beeswax
coat my mouth”
Richard Weakley, “A Stream Through the Mind”
ach time I went to buy tortillas, I repeated in my mind the recommendations of my mother, “One peso or tortillas, and come back quickly, I don’t want you to stay playing on the streets”. But after a while I only remembered the first part, so on my way back, since I had to walk by the plaza, where everyday the boys of my town were playing with spin tops and flying kites, crossing it was like a torture to me.
I would approach the guy who had the highest kite and ask him to lend it to me for a moment, because it was cool. I remember the feeling of the rope between my fingers, the wind pulling me, suddenly it starts to fall, “pull it! Pull it! You dummy!” and I pull, I give some rope, pull again, until it reaches the desired height.
In the distance I see my cousin approaching, waving his hands, snapping his fingers, announcing a storm, “you son of a gun, they’re gonna kill you this time, your mother says it was an hour ago she sent you for the tortillas!”
My face blushes hot, my body itches all over, I’m back to reality in a shock, cold air running through my lungs. I pick up the tortillas from the ground, clean the few that fell off the napkin...
Back home a different world awaits me, yells, spanks, weeping, “don’t cry mister, don’t cry!” a gnarl in my throat, tears... but I don’t cry.
- - -
Bread Man
When I was a child, days began at eight or nine in the morning. I was still too young for school, so I enjoyed the luxury of waking up late. When I started elementary school though, it was a different story. I had to ride public buses for an hour before arriving at school. I used to get up so early, at about six a.m. It was then that I saw him for the first time.
Bread Man arrived in his bicycle at six or five thirty in the morning. The felt hat slanted to the right, his pants tied with a rubber band at the cuff so they wouldn’t be caught in the bike’s chain. A big basket in the back seat with a huge table cloth wrapping the varied pieces of bread he sold: French bread, monkey fingers, large loaves, small ones, semitas, triangles, all warm, right out of the carbon oven his wife had at home. Eating that bread with real, homemade butter, soaked in cafe con leche, was a heavenly breakfast, with frijolitos, love eggs, you know, real eggs, made by hen and rooster, with a brown shell, good sized, orange-yellow yolk. Not like the ones we swallow today, all pale like if they had leukemia.
But when Panaderia Jumbo, the Jumbo Bread Factory opened in the late sixties to early seventies, all that changed. The owner, some Deutch immigrant who spoke funny, had brought all that modern machinery from Holland. He opened the factory in the middle of the barrio. Some people were happy to work in a clean environment making more money than what they were used to, wearing a distinctive uniform with the word “Panaderia Jumbo” threaded on their chest.
So, Bread Man started to lose clientele. It wasn’t necessary anymore to madrugar, to wake up at 5 in the morning in order to buy bread. The Jumbo squarish, white pieces were available any time, day or night in many pulperias, neighborhood grocery stores. You could store it longer without it getting hard as a rock. It was cheaper and they had a wide variety of types also, all of Bread Man’s and some more; different shapes, colors, and flavors.
When I entered seventh grade, Bread Man had stopped delivering. I don’t recall why by brother and I remembered him once and wondered his whereabouts. We decided to visit his house on the other side of the creek. We rode our bikes and got there. It was his house alright, but he didn’t live there anymore. Some unknown tenant was there, he had moved out and away, the old man said, I don’t know where. “I bought his property very cheap, including his oven and molds”. And he showed them proudly, like trophies hanging on the wall. The oven, dusty, with spider webs, and little bugs; the bicycle with flat tires, the headlamp broken, the seat torn out.
Where are you Bread Man? Where did Herr Gerster drove you to? Did you go back to your loved mountains in Matagalpa? Are you delivering bread to the saints in Heaven?
¿
The Gigantess
“In the swamp in secluded recesses,
a shy and hidden bird is warbling a song”
Walt Whitman, “When Lilacs Last in the Door and Bloomed”
uring Holy Week, we used to go to church each day. Even if we spent the whole seven days at my uncle’s house at Huehuete Beach Town, we still went to church every day. It was an old town chapel, with old saints, like Mayan temples, rotten benches, and a million holes on the stucco walls.
Monday through Thursday, it was okay to play, and run, and sing. But Friday, ay, ay, ay, nobody could talk, or run, or play. That day Jesus had died thousands of years before. The streets would be empty like a desert and the day hot as if the sun itself had descended to earth. You wouldn’t see drunkards on the streets, or cars, or horses; all cows would be kept within
corrals, and it was forbidden to fly kites, spit on the ground, and take a sunbath. Saturday, mock figures of Judas would appear hanging from light poles along the road. Peasants would put big tree trunks on the pavement to restrain cars from circulating.
Monday through Thursday were the Gigantess days, la Gigantona. My little brother was afraid of her. She was preceded by a host of noisy boys and girls throwing small rocks at her long skirt, laughing, dancing. A small group of men, probably paying promises to some Saint of their devotion, marched in front of La Gigantona, playing tin drums and trumpets. Taa! Taa! Taa! Tum! Tum!, Taa! Taa! Taa! Tum! Tum! After each round of drums and music, these men alternated to recite rhyming poems, four lines each, ridiculing a prominent political figure or the economic situation of the country. A group of shabby dogs completed the escort of La Gigantona, who kept shaking
her 12 feet high body, with long, loose arms moving as if swimming in the air.
When the revolutionary government came to power, they tied this tradition to the Catholic Holy Week celebrations, and since they did not believe in God, all those who attempted to revive La Gigantona were accused of traitors, counter-revolutionaries, and imperialists. Most men that used to play the drums and trumpets were sent to the mountains to fight some “crazy, idealistic idiots opposing the new government”. They were sent to defend a revolution with no meaning to them, under the orders of “internationalist brothers”.
The children, if not dead of hunger, were recruited to be a part of the Civilian Militia. Instead of learning how to read, they learned how to fire a machine gun, denounce their parents, and “give their life for the revolutionary directorate”.
Back in a hidden patio, behind a tight curtain of pine trees and madroZos, the woman who played La Gigantona, still keeps her costume. She cleans it every year, wears it, and dances, and sings, and tells jokes to herself about the comandantes and a revolution that took away her yearly reason of living. We can still hear her dancing Taa! Taa! Taa! Tum! Tum!, Taa! Taa! Taa! Tum!
¿
The Knife Sharpener
atching the Knife Sharpener was awesome. All those sparks jumping wildly from his spinning stone wheel, like fire works in a miniature sky at the rear of his bicycle. Like a thousand comets appearing and disappearing at his will.
He usually came on Saturdays afternoon. Our maid was already awaiting his arrival, a bunch of knives, ice picks, and blades on her lap. Even Grandma’s scissors made it to the process.
He never said many words. “Will you sharpen today, Mrs. Lopez?” “Yes, here you are”. He then turned his bike upside down, used the rear wheel and the pedals to generate speed for his ambulatory sharpening store. Spinning, spinning around, hypnotizing the guys from the barrio. A tough one puts his hand on the sparks, “they don’t burn, try it!, he who doesn’t is a maric\n!” , the water dripping to the ground, all the eyes avoiding his gaze, nobody wants to try. Silence. The metallic sound like razors fighting, saws singing, shrieking ravens flying away, scared.
The Knife Sharpener belongs to a large gallery of personalities long gone from the barrio. Carbon Man, Shoe Shine Boy, Curly Oldman, Paperboy, etc.
There is no market to sharpen knives or scissors anymore. My Grandma, Abuelita, died in 74 and no one inherited her ability to craft clothes. It is easier to buy them at Sears or Letty’s, and if you don’t like them, you can always return them. The new stainless steel and electroplate knives are more durable, almost immortal. If they ever lose edge, Mom may prefer to buy a new one or a complete set, for that matter. Yes, massively produced.
The gardener’s machete sits in a corner of the patio, rusting. There is no sharpener to take care of it. No grass to cut, everything is a concrete slab now, you know. No green in our hearts, just cement and memories. Only the wheel spinning in the brain, and the sparks burning my longing.
¿
Father’s Home
“Often in thought go up and down
the pleasant streets of that dear old town,
and my youth comes back to me”
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “My Lost Youth”
his is my parent’s house, hence mine, ours. It is located at the edge of the city, where there is no pavement, no bus routes, no taxis. Some would say it is at the end of civilization. My father has to walk each day about four miles from the point where the bus drops him off, to the house’s porch. The barrio is known as Altagracia. Towards the south, or the mountain, there are woods, and a small rural village. Towards the north, or the lake, there is a large dry canal that crosses the entire neighborhood, large planted fields extend beyond my sight. During heavy rains it overflows and the water destroys everything. Towards the east or arriba,
uptown, there are some haciendas with cattle, and more woods. We get the daily milk from one of these haciendas, in wood wagons pulled by old oxen, or bueyes. Towards the west, or abajo, downtown, a lot of houses, and the brim of the eternal city of Managua.
It is the year 1954. My father is celebrating my birth, he’s getting drunk for almost a week now. He has to work every day in that little store he rents in the downtown. He repairs TV sets, refrigerators, radios, and all kind of electric appliances. He learned by correspondence and has an assistant, Julio, who is his apprentice. Saturdays and Sundays, father works in the house. It has a little porch, a small family/living room. Two bedrooms that share a common bathroom. In the back, there is the kitchen/dining/utility room. A large patio, or so it seemed all those years I lived there, completes the house, enclosed by a six-foot high block wall. Eventually lots of trees will grow here. The guava tree, where the swing is, the same I am allergic to. The mango tree, the one that gives enormous fruits, colored in yellow, green, orange and purple. The whispering pines, the plantains, the green oranges, the lemon trees, the almond tree, and many others forming a penetrable jungle where we all play together or alone.
Saturdays and Sundays he keeps building with his bare hands a little piece of the house. One day he completes the roof, the windows, and the doors. Another, he paints walls, installs electrical connections, plumbing fixtures, and excavates the septic tank. My mother watches after us, we got to be seven kids, five girls and two boys. Two maids help her out, one is pregnant, and the other has twelve children. One day, he will build a second story, with two bedrooms, one for me, one for my elder sister, Lani, who will always keep it locked, singing Elvis Presley songs and dancing nude. I will keep mine locked too, in revenge, writing love letters to my ten year old novia, girlfriend, who I will never kiss or even hold hands with. Don Antonio, the neighbor cattycornered, comes to help him once in a while. He has seven children too, but one of them is ill. She doesn’t speak and spends her entire day babbling, smiling strangely, her saliva falling from her mouth, her innocent eyes looking lovingly to yours. One day, he will finish the garage, big enough for three cars, that will eat up a large chunk of the patio, but what the hell, we have too many trees anyway, and we now need two cars, and the ping pong table has no place, but here. Two iron doors can keep the chogotes, the bums, from asking for food too much, (Lani and I will smuggle it to them anyway), and with a proper roof this can be another play area for the kids.
In 1972, the second story will be destroyed by the earthquake, we will have moved out the month before to the newest house, which was also semi-destroyed by the earthquake. But my dreams, remembrances, fears and happy moments will remain in the house of Altagracia. Its block walls, fixed glass windows, zinc roof, wooden second story, all copied from an American blueprint bought by mail, will accompany me forever. This is the womb I came from, the uterus I grew up in, the open arms and the strong hand holding my child years. There will never be another house.
¿
Terra Incognita
I was born in a city that is not Miami
it had a barrio with dirt streets and wandering
dog packs
there were gray cows and carts pushed by dingy kids
there were blind, limping beggars
and peep toms in the back yards
there was a canal overflowed with filthy waters and garbage
and small plank shacks about to fall apart
there was a paper boy with chellings in a leather bag
and barefooted girls with tortilla baskets on their heads
there was a knife sharpener and a fat bread baker, both on bicycle
there was a neighbor with a retarded daughter and a married one
there were hogs playing on the mud and a poet dreaming with Victor Hugo
there were convenience stores brimming with tin toys and candy
and wagons with milk containers pulled by a pair of drooling oxen
there were schools for the pauper and a meager Catholic church
there was the Vatican Embassy surrounded by masonry walls and Mercedes Benzes
and the nearby Pious XII School where I kissed for the first time
I often ask myself what animals would my
sling shot have hunt
had I been born in Madagascar
or what games would I have played
had some Stevenson replaced Jose
or what buses would I have raided had the
Metro Paris run by the corner of my house
or what moons would I have admired with Amelia
had some Edvika Kruger been my friend
I ignore what innumerable destinies I would
have lived inside tired bodies or hostile places
or what arrows nailed my silent chest
or what Arab fighters cut my right hand
I know this longing stare would accompany me in arduous combat
and all solitary roads in Cairo already took me to Gnosos and Karnak
I know my fingers drawed those faint buffaloes in Altamira
and in a remote place of Alpha Centauri,
Tahor showed me
the Sacred Crystal on which The Spirit revealed to him
the Holy Secrets of the Cosmic Mind
¿
Epilogue
Poetic practice can be a dangerous game or a perpetuating way of life. We manifest in verse form dreams not accomplished and crude realities.
To the mystic, a poem is essence. To the practical, a waste of energy. To the poet, a source of force. To the masses a boring form of expression.
Is it a Cosmic Mission? Is it a legacy? Is it a pastime? Is it to be shared? Each poet has his or her own motives to write, and to me that is good enough.
My mother, Vilma, gave me my first book of poetry. My father, Adolfo, gave me my first book of science. Both write poems.
My uncle, Alberto, gave me my first book of science-fiction. He also wrote prose.
This tool, poetry, has been with me ever since. In it, science and letters blend. Poetry relates me to others and to myself. I learned to write in order to survive.
D.L. Miami, Florida 1996
www.danilolopez.org