Baggy Pants & A Bicycle

At night the band would play paso dobles in the square. When it was time for the tuba solo, the audience became quiet and in the absolute quiet the song of the cuckoo could be heard from amidst the orange trees with a measured cadence as if it were marking time. In the summer nights of 1947, the soul of everyone that inhabited the earthly paradise was from one of two classes: that of the poor who ate boiled beans or lupine; that of the rich, of almond milk or cinnamon milkshakes, while the band played “España cañi”—“Gypsy Spain” beneath 50 watt light bulbs and a canine hunger.

There is no Paradise without a forbidden tree, without a strict vigilance of pleasures, without the threat of expulsion. The authentic Paradise is always the one that has been lost like Milton’s, but in the summer of 1947, my Paradise was in that Mediterranean village. Vilavella had whitewashed walls, geraniums in the windows, and a gold finch or green finch jumping around neurotically in a cage hung from the blue colored doorpost of any house. During the summer, the monotonous recital of the multiplication tables no longer emanated from the school windows; it had been replaced by the shouts of the children playing in the plaza; but the sounds of the tools of agriculture continued: the braying of the asses were heard in the distance like the trumpets of Jericho; the anvil of the blacksmith, the piccolo of the knife-grinder. At the end of the afternoon, the carts of tillage returned with panting dogs and the air smelled of burnt straw and baked pumpkin and that was also its color.

The substantial seemed to be the silence of nature, but within that silence was also the silence of those who had lost the war and could not speak. As they abandoned the prison or concentration camp, those of the losing side formed a separate circle of people at the National Bar. They were the ones who had been expelled from Paradise, the ones who didn’t attend church, the ones who didn’t kneel during the administration of the Viaticum, and didn’t cross themselves when the church bells indicated the moment in which the mass was rising toward God. A line of crippled beggars would arrive in Paradise everyday to request a crust of bread at the houses of the rich. Some came beaten down by existence since the beginning of time; on the other hand, there were others who exhibited a natural rebelliousness, from whom defeat had not taken their pride. It was said that one of them belonged to the maquis of La Pastor¹, a hermaphrodite that controlled the region of Morella²; that another was a spy from the District Attorney's Office of Valuations investigating the black market; that another was fleeing an unrequited love. I remember the elegant bearing, the severe expression of one of them, who was killed on a Sunday of August.

A great event of my life occurred that summer of 1947. For the first time in my life, I rode my Orbea bicyle to the beach when I could hardly reach the pedals. That July Sunday, I crossed the highway of Nules which was shaded by a tunnel of banana trees on the whitewashed trunks of which were rubber stamped the silhouette of Franco with yoke and arrows. During the journey of six kilometers, I was hit with the breeze full of all the aromas of nature in their pure state: the sweet stench of the fertilizer from a field of sweet potatoes, the vapors of rotten lemons from the stagnant water of an irrigation ditch, the hot radiance of the wheat stubble, and the still moist droppings left by the horses on the high road, the wet, acrid odor of rice straw.

As I arrived at the first dunes, a flank of the salt-filled breeze slipped through the sweat soaked collar of my shirt and inflated the shirt infusing me with the agreeable sensation of freedom. On the beach of Moncofa, some adolescent girls swam in their nightgowns and the white cloth of their nightgowns clung to their bodies when they came out of the water. Some boys would stare at the dark triangles of their pubis and later, whisper and laugh among themselves. Laborers refreshed their horses in the sea and others ate watermelon in the shade of grounded boats.

It was that summer in which I broke my arm when I fell off the bicycle, and when I wore baggy pants for the first time. The dressmaker whose breasts made the two nostrils of my nose quiver during the fitting stuck me with pins on purpose— as if I were a Saint Sebastian riddled with arrows, because perhaps that excited her. In the street there was a parade with drums and trumpets, an enthusiastic crowd shouted “Franco sí, communism no.” Around this time a rumor had spread that in the village of Cuevas de Vinromá la Virgen, a little girl named Raquel had appeared and was performing miracles. One Sunday in August of that summer of 1947, shots were heard in the mountains and in the skirmish one of those beggars who they said was a marquis was killed. It was that summer also when a bull named Islero killed the bullfighter Monolete, and in which I read The Black Corsair of Salgari.

(Translated from the Spanish by Louis Bedrock.)