I was never awoken by the deafening shouts of the blackbirds in the cherry trees beneath the windows. I only awoke when their discordant tweeting would suddenly and mysteriously cease. Then I noticed the silence, I felt it inside me and all around me. In the window lit by the newly risen sun, passing through the dense foliage of the creeper. I never felt so close to life as in the silence that burst into the midst of the great humid heat of summer. And more than once, in the August sky, where the sun rises rapidly and the night suddenly, almost without transition, turns golden, the torrid silence snatched me from my sleep and made me jump up and go to the window to look out between the dark leaves.
I remember waking from silence in the warm mud among the reeds, when the buzzing of a bee or the sparkling flight of dragonflies over the water would bring it to a close like a shiver: then the breaking of the silence would show it to us, return it to us by bringing us back from its insensible dream. From that time on, I have understood how much we need it. By talking and talking, by listening and listening, we return to silence as if to a fountain.
Falling silent at the right time, knowing on just which day to launch into the air, like pieces of green bark, the hollow words that seemed so useful to us. Falling silent in time and finding a path, an opening that slices like a sunbeam, in order to return for an instant to that mute tumult from which we began. Why should this be so difficult? I remember the old peasants leaning on a stone wall in the sunshine: they stayed silent. I also recall a child tired of playing at the close of the day: when he sat on the doorstep, frowning, his chin resting on his fist, still surrounded by the dust raised by his toys: he was remembering it. Neither the old men nor the boy knew it. And the trees, the earth, were silence, only silence, beautiful and solemn silence, raised aloft, stretched out, like a warning.
***
One of the things that I have lost totally and irremediably – I realized this when I returned to the country after an eleven-year absence – is the golden hour of siesta.
Siesta time but no siesta. I have never been able to sleep after eating. The siesta hour is invaded by spirits; by shifting cloudlets; by dry, slender drizzle – rain made of sand: all swarming behind the eyes. A restless, ill-fitting hour. Reading inspires no thought; flies buzz constantly; the sun is half friend, half enemy. And if it rains, the water has a rare call that cannot be understood but which upsets me. During siesta, mist brings the ghosts of melancholy.
But back then, when we were children, the siesta hour meant freedom, simple and radiant. It was the blessed hour when the grown-ups slept. The racket from the kitchen was stilled, and the maids too were encased in mysterious silence, as though they had been paralyzed in some shadow: that of their bedrooms, high at the top of the house, or perhaps in the vegetable garden. It was our hour. The hour when the boys from the other side of the river whistled, rhythmically and oh so sweetly, imitating blackbirds or quails, or the wings of the singing dragonfly. It was the hour of the cruel and unpleasant sun, which irritates adults.
But children are not usually afraid of the sun. Naked, free, unconscious, they chase each other under the sun like woodland creatures. In the three o'clock sun, amidst the whirring of crickets and the buzzing of the mosquitoes, we trampled the brittle twigs and drove malignant thorns which hid between innocent shoots into our bare feet. The poplar grove, with its trunks like golden masts, the distant orchards and the river, always the river, with its gold trout and moss – all guarded the hour of siesta. Something was always lost in flight: a sandal or a belt. Something that we couldn't go back to search for, because we weren't brave enough to repeat the adventure of creeping downstairs, avoiding the traitorous creaking boards. At siesta time, our bicycles shone like happy, dancing water. The reeds collapsed because the dog followed us, breathing heavily with his tongue out and his eyes filled with gold sparks.
The village boys, who filled their boxes with lizards, toads, tadpoles, grasshoppers, sloes, mulberries, beans, crickets and fizzy drinks, said: "There are two trout – that big – down by Dos Cruces."
Their dark wet bodies gleamed like varnished clay pots. We followed them, we copied them, we admired them and we loved them. Friendship is a grand discovery at eight, nine or eleven. Braulio, who had round eyes like rainbow-coloured crystals. Andrés of the broken teeth. Nicolasín, from whose ears sprouted tufts of copper hair. Francisco, Benito, Félix, Donato. So many names below the river, behind the golden trout, down to the far-off sea.
"What's the sea like?"
We opened our arms wide. "The sea is..."
Brusque laughter, punches, jeers. The trout slipped through inexperienced fingers, a pair of trousers was lost.
"Oh my, oh my, oh my!"
My brother became serious. "Don't worry. I'll speak to your mother."
He made sure that no one saw his knees trembling just at the thought of speaking to that woman – so tall, dour, as dry as a scythe – the one who threw stones with a shepherd's aim and used words like nettles.
"What's the world like?"
"The world is an orange."
"An orange, he says!"
Donato's head emerged from the water; half-drowned, he was gripping a trout between his teeth fiercely. We shouted, we argued. Donato slit its throat, pushed his rough stubby fingers into the gills and squeezed. The trout's eyes were two anguished pearls, and it was better not to look at them. Donato's hands and his flat nose were covered in red drops. Siesta was ending and our worries were beginning: lost sandals, wet clothes, scratched knees.
At siesta time now, adults sleep or read. I neither read nor sleep. I hardly even think.
Continues in the print edition. Order now.
Translated by Alice Waugh and Tony Wood.
