The truth is that I never thought about it, she must know everything, where would she have learned it? As far as I know, an electrician has never come to my house to fix an outlet, not that I can remember, and me with my fixation on pulling the cord without giving it a thought. I pulled them out of the wall, tore the whole plug right off, as she said to me:
“Manu again? Son, please be careful.”
But when I needed it again, it was fixed. If only she was at home, there was no doubt who had bothered to fix what I was damaging, and who always covered my books? Of course it was her.
“Mom, this is broken,” I would tell her, “can you fix it for me?”
There she was with her smile saying:
“Go get it, it’s alright.”
“Mom, I’m having trouble with this, can you help me because I have to finish it?”
“Let’s see! Look, this is how it’s done,” she would tell me and stop whatever she was doing to show me.
“Mom, this one, or the other?” and she would help me as if I were the only person in the world. Of course, now that I think about it, she did the same for my brothers and sisters, and I think to myself, how many hands did she have? How could she spare time for everyone? On top of this, she painted. I really don’t know when she found time for it.
Sometimes in the morning, I saw that she had, there in the corner where she didn’t want anyone to touch anything. I would contemplate one of those paintings that she had created. Such color! Where would she get them from? I always asked myself. Why did I never see her painting them? I only ever heard her, when I was little, say:
“Manu, don’t touch, that’s been freshly painted.”
She would tell me in a serious tone, the one she used when she said something important and that all children know so well. We did our best to obey, fully aware that she wasn’t joking.
But if I’d just gotten out of bed, did she do it while everyone else slept? I got the answer when I got a little older. It was actually when we were all asleep and the house had already fallen silent. When she had finished the multitude of tasks, when she had prepared the clothes that we all had to wear the next day, she started painting. She said it helped her to rest and be fresh the next morning.
<<<<< >>>>>
We went out onto the street, she closed the door firmly, then she locked up. I was surprised that such an ancient and huge door had such a small key, and looking I noticed that the lock, the opening that served as the lock in ancient times, was now just an ornament, because of its size. The key that would have been used must have been very large, surely those iron keys that weighed so much could certainly not be carried in that small bag, where I saw that the librarian kept the key.
She headed confidently toward one of the side streets. She moved so fast, just as I had seen her move through the corridors of the library and it was difficult for me to keep pace with her. Although I tried, I had no choice but to say:
“Please Miss, a little more slowly or I can’t follow you, you’re going very fast.”
She looked me up and down as if she wanted to take an X-ray and muttered:
“Hmmm! What kind of young man are you! Tired after such a pace, really? Surely you prefer to be sitting for hours, without realizing that your body needs to move to make you feel good and so that the passage of the years will not be noticed in the bones,” she replied as she slowed down slightly.
“Yes,” I mumbled softly, but in reality, what had I answered? That I had spent the day sitting or that my bones were already beginning to claim my attention? In my younger days, I would play sports practically every day, now I had to take a pill some days to be able to withstand the pain, especially in the knees, which I think wasn’t due to a lack of walking, but rather the endless hours I spent sitting.
She was right, what she had said was correct. I forced myself to follow her without protesting again, when I suddenly thought that I had been sitting the whole time, looking for information in those books that I’d taken from the shelves that she had indicated, but from there I could see her back at her work station, where I had noticed that there was nowhere for her to sit. She’d been standing the entire the time.
“What strength!” I thought. “‘I would not have endured it. Well,” I reasoned as an excuse, “she’ll be used to it; a specific result of the years she’s been doing this kind of work.”
Since I was distracted by my thoughts, and as she continued on in silence, I hadn’t realized where we were, nor the streets we’d passed. That usually happens when you’re driving, if you’re alone you have to pay attention to everything to get to the place you want to go, but if someone next to you is giving you directions, when you arrive, you realize that if you had to go back, you wouldn’t know where to go, since you didn’t pay attention to where you had come from, you had only relied on the person who was guiding you and following their instructions. That was what had happened to me and I almost missed the place, when I heard:
“Here it is! We’ve arrived. Now you’ll see how to find what you’re looking for. I think it’s the place where they have the most material on that subject in all of Santiago.”
She’d stopped, and I hadn’t heard, but when I did, I quickly stopped and looked at the window. It was a very old bookstore. She went in right away, and before I could reach her, she was already greeting an old man who was seated and who I took to be the owner. When I got close to them, I heard the man as he got up from his seat and greeted her.
“Hello Pilar, how long has it been without seeing you? I thought you’d forgotten the address of this place, or have you been so busy that you’ve not had time to come visit an old friend?”
She said to him softly in apology:
“I’m sorry, I don’t get much spare time as you know, but you’re right, it’s been too long since the last time and it shouldn’t have been so. How is everything?”
“Good! As always! As for my ailments, you know…, fine! So what brings you here today? I see you’re in good company,” said the man, whom I could see as he winked at her while he said it.
“Sorry! Sorry!” she said as she turned to me. “Let me introduce you to…,” and looking at me she said:
“How scatterbrained of me! I don’t even know your name.”
“As scatterbrained as ever, you haven’t changed a bit,” the old bookseller said and laughed. “I remember that first time we met, the shy curious girl who needed to ask something, but her shame kept her from even speaking. How I asked you to write it down for me so I could find out, because your words came out so broken that there was no way to understand you. Do you remember what you wrote?” the old man asked leaning into her ear.
“No,” she replied, a little surprised by the unexpected question.
“Well I do, I haven’t forgotten it, despite all the time that’s gone by. You wrote on that paper in big letters, so I could read it properly, ‘Everything you have about the Virgin and the Apparitions of Fatima.’ Yep, that’s right, that’s what she wrote for me on that piece of paper,” the man said looking at me. “I, a communist recognized by everyone, let out a huge laugh that was heard throughout the store, and you tearfully asked me for forgiveness. I still don’t know why, because you hadn’t done anything to offend me.”
“Well, let’s get back to today, as I’m an old man, I live more and more in the past and in my memories, which are certainly more fun than daily life, where nothing different ever happens. Every day is the same, nobody comes in here and I spend the morning with the duster, going over the old books so that the dust doesn’t accumulate too much. It can’t be left even for a single day, and in the afternoon sitting in the doorway enjoying a coffee and taking a little sun, if the sun has deigned to visit us that day, and if not, I drink my coffee sitting by the heater so that these old bones don’t protest too much, if that’s even possible. And how are things in your life?” he asked her suddenly, as if he were just realizing that she was still there.
“Pilar, you didn’t get married, right? Do you still have that little gray kitten that gave you such good company, and that kept ruining that cushion you were so fond of?”
“That was a hundred years ago, how can you remember all that?” she asked laughing.
“Come on, you’re exaggerating!” he answered. “Yes, it’s true that the years have indeed passed. You had pretty brown braids back then, and now I see some gray hair in there, which you surely haven’t colored yourself,” he said quietly.
“No, they’re natural,” she replied with a sad smile, “how time flies!”
“Okay, okay, let’s leave this melancholy behind… and you told me you had come with this young man… but I haven’t let you tell me why,” he added, looking at me.
“Well, it’s almost the same as that first time,” she responded, “to learn everything you have about ‘The Apparitions of Fatima,’ which seems to be something that interests him, and as you know, that’s my area. I was very happy that someone had reminded me of this, and I told him that I would help him find that information, some of which I’m sure he can find around here somewhere.”
“Young man,” the old man said suddenly, “are you a believer?”
Surprised by his question, I answered him haltingly:
“No, but does that matter?”
<<<<< >>>>>
It was a subject that was very clear in my mind and that I had discussed for a long time with family and friends, but when I arrived at University, the belief that you can be a good person without believing in anything became stronger, and that was my philosophy of life.
It was hard for my mother to understand, because she had always been very involved within the parish and had tried to get the five of us to continue with those religious beliefs and practices.
“Let the kids find their own way, they’re honest and good people, and they’ll learn their beliefs over time and make their own decisions,” said my father.
He always accompanied her to mass, but he didn’t get involved in anything else, leaving us with freedom and decision-making power, which my mother told him was not good for our future.
One day, knocking on the door of my room, asking for permission to come in, my older sister Carmen told me she’d been talking with Don Ignacio, the priest at our parish, who had known us since we were little, who had baptized us and with whom we had made our First Holy Communion.
