MEMORIES OF AN ABSENT-MINDED

My grandmother used to say that in the fat years we had to save for the lean years and for that reservoirs were built. I actually did never arrive to understand the benefit of a reservoir full of fat, something that always seemed to me absolutely grotesque. The fact is, my grandma used to be a good deal of senile, but since respect for the elderly was in fashion in those days, we had to hold back our annoyance. It was grandpa the one we did not put attention to, for he was completely bald. One day he got fed up and went overseas to make a fortune. He was pretty disappointed when we realized that the fortune was already made and he came back home with his tail between his legs. Since then he took up fully to the study of ancient Greek.

In my villagethere was also a Village Fool. He was christened Sisebuto, and of course, that way he was not going to become an engineer. There were also some goats, a mayor who had not studied abroad, a shepherd who played the flute awfully, a Romanic church of patches as all churches are, a lilting fountain that did not let anybody sleep and a graveyard, very chic, but very small, in which you had to book for years in advance. Yet the best in the village was the Pinewood of the Moorish. There had never been any Moorish over there, but it is the same, because it was not a pinewood either but a black poplar-tree grove. Not far away from the village, there ran a very lazy river. It had very little water and, when those in the village up the river got angry, they blocked it placing a rock on the river bed. However , so scarce was the flow of water that it could not even reach the sea, and it had to turn back and return to its source. So they had to remove the rock in order to prevent their own turnips from drying off.

The funniest thing was the Patron Saints Feast. It was celebrated several times a year, because our patron saint had a name which was very popular in the age saints used to live in--there were a number of saints with the same name and no one knew who was the right one. Devout people as they were, they celebrated all of them just in case. In these festive days we were dressed in the Sunday suit. It was a very important event because we did not wear it any Sunday so it was not spoiled. There was a band that came from a distant place, for in their own land their musical abilities were already known and they were no longer hired out, and we enjoyed very lively evening dances every morning. The Big Day of the festival a lump of sugar was raffled and the saint was taken out for a parade. Such was the cause of the growing damage of the figure--he was a bigheaded saint and always ended up losing his balance. One year a broom vendor came--he got excellent critiques.

The most boring thing was school. We learnt the Goth Kings table and the multiplication list. The teacher was a very brute ugly guy, with a walrus moustache. He did not stop using his ruler in all the lesson and he drew crooked lines on the blackboard. He was such an animal that one day we put a drawing pin on his chair and we were punished for speaking in class. There was a glass case full of books. The teacher took us in front of it from time to time and he shook it so it emanated culture and we could soak up it. The school was very poor and it only had a newspaper from April 1936 as textbook.

The greatest thing the village had was its hill. It was a beautiful hill, which could be seen even from the bordering localities. It was the pride of all villagers and each night one of them stayed keeping an eye on it to prevent an American millionaire from taking it stone by stone. We had a tap as well. The neighbours took turns and each month one of them kept it at home.

I was later sent to study with the friars of Saint Thomas of the Slap, in the capital, where I learnt how to say sternocleidomastoid, which is a lake in China.

© 1996-2000 by Álvaro G. Vicario www.demogracia.com

    Add document to Favourites