The Mapmaker’s Opera. Bea Gonzalez
birds—here a Scarlet Tanager gliding, his plumage resplendent, while the less colourful female perched tranquilly on a branch below. Over there a duck, the Greater Scaup, with its pale blue bill and its perfectly webbed feet. And more, so many more, it seemed to him unbelievable that these creatures could even exist. Were they not just a madman’s fancy, the delusions of an artist tired with God’s inventions and determined to dip into the well of creation for himself?
And the boy wondered, is it possible, if they do indeed exist, that these birds, tiny and delicate as they seem, is it possible that they can cross lines of latitude and longitude so easily, that they can travel vast expanses of a land I can only envision in my dreams? He located their path on his atlas, traced a line from north to south across a great continent, from the broad shoulders in Canada to the end of the tail that was Mexico, and he thought, there on that line, on that grid, lies my future, though its shape eluded him just then, the particulars still nebulous at that point in time. But the days would pass, the months would fly and the moment of departure would arrive; the details would work themselves out.
It was one of the first signs of Diego Clemente’s ability to refashion his world, to reimagine it so that it would never fail to live up to his dreams, and it began there, with the images of birds that, until he sighted them with his own eyes, he would find difficult to believe were real.
Before he handed the book over to el Señor Raleigh, he dedicated himself to copying the images of each bird onto paper, using a simple charcoal pencil to draw its outline, committing the colourful markings to memory, so that years later he would be able to identify many a bird from the memory of a masked eye, a yellow band at the end of a tail, a pair of pink legs and feet.
He gave the book back to its rightful owner, fearful after three months of hoarding it that he would be found out, that el Señor Raleigh, who had always been so kind, would think ill of him suddenly, would detect the covetousness that resided inside his heart and he would be left bereft, not only of a precious book but also of the respect of a man he considered a mentor and friend. But if the older man suspected Diego’s crime, he kept his suspicions to himself. What was more, he shared the book eagerly with Diego, bringing it by the bookshop, where the two spent many moments perusing the specimens contained therein.
Not too many years passed before fate began its work in paving the road for the realization of Diego’s dream. Suddenly, it seemed, dramatically, it happened, in a wink of an eye, in a flash, with no time to make sense of it, no time to mourn, no time to adjust. Just ten days after his fourteenth birthday—the glorious fourteen, el Señor Raleigh proclaimed, the dawn of a truly golden age—Diego watched in horror as Emilio was commended, within a single turbulent day, to his eternal rest.
It was Diego who found him lying flat on the floor of the Librería Alfonso, feverish and writhing in pain. It was as if all the disappointment that had seeped through Emilio’s veins, all of the venomous words that had fallen from Mónica’s tongue, Remedios’s orders and later her disdain, it was as if all these things had coalesced in Emilio’s gallbladder until it was too much and the beleaguered organ poisoned him to death.
Diego held Emilio’s hand throughout all of it, hoping against hope that the fever would break, oblivious to Mónica’s shrieks, Mónica’s laments. For what would become of them now, good God? Had she not already weathered enough? Had she not suffered more indignities than the good Job? What was she to do in this wretched city with no husband to protect her, no way to survive without a man to fend for them, without a place to live?
Uncle Alfonso, old, ill-humoured, tired of life, yes, but genuinely fond of his nephew, genuinely distressed by Diego’s despair, yelled back at her, “Mujer, if there was ever a need for peace it is now, woman. Can’t you see that Emilio lies close to death?” And old as he was, weak and withered as he felt, he dragged the hysterical Mónica upstairs to give his nephew the silence he needed for rest.
Diego did not record Emilio’s last words, and he leaves to our imagination his feelings, the despair he surely felt as he watched his beloved father fade. But in the half-light of the early morning, a dim and tenuous light, we are sure we can see them—a boy lying over the dying body of the man he has loved deeply, while his father tries desperately to ward off the pain and offer a few consoling words.
Upstairs a woman wept, engulfed by her fears, wallowing in her misfortune but torn by her equally strong feelings of love—because she did love him, make no mistake. Love is an unruly emotion, few parameters can limit it: There are as many ways to love as there are ways to meet your death and she had loved, not well perhaps, but loved in the only way she could.
Upstairs, too, an old man grimaced, keeping his emotions in check, tired, distressed with the machinations of the world. Is this how it all ends, Dios mío, he asked, are we mere instruments to be played at the whims of the gods?
A month would pass after Emilio’s death before Mónica conceived her plan.
And then a new dot would be added to an ancient map and another wound would be administered just as others were beginning to mend.
If our philosophers are right, then we must accept their assurances that the bad can only lead to the good, that everything on the ascent is descending at the same time, that tragedy has its purpose and that events transpire as they do because there is a plan, though the shape of it eludes us and the end remains a mystery until the moment it arrives, blowing in like an unpredicted hurricane, strewing the pieces of our little lives about.
Emilio’s death opened its own doors. Mónica—once drowning in self-pity, a victim of regret and all the wretched disappointments in the world—was sharply awakened, one could say rudely, given the circumstances, but awakened she was and she now grew docile in equal measure to the anger that had possessed her before. Up above her in the attic, counting time with frail fingers and a stale cup of wine, was Uncle Alfonso, revelling in his newfound power, for Mónica would not dare let an errant word escape from her lips now, he surmised correctly. No, señor, not one complaint would readily roll from that wicked tongue.
Instead—“Could I get you something, Don Alfonso?”—she would ask, her once unhappily pursed lips unzipped, the sarcasm of old displaced by the considerable weight of her fear.
Uncle Alfonso did not press his luck too eagerly. Old age had its own handicaps—a boulder around a frail neck, you said of it once, Abuela—and old Alfonso was not eager to be abandoned, to be left on his own to face the encroaching frailties that emerged with the passing of time. A weak leg, a cloudy eye, a shaky hand.
Finally, there was silence—a charged silence to be sure, for the air was wound as tight as the string of a guitar. It was impossible to guess when one of them would snap from the tension, when the veneer of civility would be abandoned and the war of words resumed. But in the immediate aftermath of Emilio’s death, silence filled the house and Diego was thankful for it, wondered often how much his father would have appreciated this sudden ceasefire, how much he would have enjoyed a peaceful home.
The English kept coming to the store, though the tours were cancelled, Diego being too young for the task. In any case, his knowledge of English was still poor and he had no desire to be trotting about Seville with a group of foreigners bent on a bit of culture after a morning of hunting in the Andalusian countryside; he could not but feel badly for all those dead bustards, the deer, the red-legged partridges and the wild boars.
Without Emilio, the bookshop fared even worse than before. They were reduced to selling the standards of old—the French and Spanish dictionaries of Nuñez de Taboada, the Arte de la Lengua Arábica of Pedro de Alcalá, paper made of linen, which pleased the Englishmen who were used to the inferior product sold in their own country, paper fashioned from cotton rags.
Uncle Alfonso rarely descended from the attic to help mind the store—there was no need for it, he reasoned; his own life was sure to