old swindler would admit, that he meant to keep them like this, dressed in rags, living from hand to mouth like peasants, beholden to him, when he gave them so little and he himself had so much. She was convinced that this, above all else, was driving Emilio into the arms of disgrace, driving him into the darkest hours of the night in search of respite from the unappeasable sorrows that plagued him in the harsh light of day.
She cried, full of pity for herself, not yet thirty years old and an old woman already, with little to look forward to—nothing but the endless drudgery of cook, clean and mend. And the unbearable sun to contend with, and the smells of Seville, the burning charcoal, the horse manure, the grease and the sweat. And the noises, the infernal conflagration of noises, yells, barks, the sobbing of children, the clanging of church bells. When would it all stop, dear God, when would the misery end? She brought her fingers up to her nose then and summoned the scent of the fifteen ingredients from her aunt’s stew, the memory of a distant childhood, uncomplicated, secure.
And Emilio thought: How lucky I am to find myself in this city filled with life, this city that bears witness to el compás, to the beat that makes all music ring truthfully, ring loud, ring straight through to the heart. He thought this because it was night, because darkness had descended and the voices would soon cease to utter mere words and be overtaken by song instead and the pain would rise to the surface then, would be experienced and then expunged. He had, for the first time in his life, found a way to balance body and spirit, to cope with the disappointments of the morning by receding with the singers into the underworld.
Estoy viviendo en el mundo
Con la esperanza perdida.
No es menester que me entierren
Porque estoy enterrao en via.
(I am living in the world
with no hope to speak of.
Don’t bother to bury me
for I am buried alive already.)
Emilio thought: There is much in the world left to me. The bejewelled night, the endless river of song, the hope I carry in my heart for Diego, the brightest star in the heavens, my beloved son.
And Mónica thought: There is much in the world to despair of. The sorrowful days, the smells and the noise, the fear I hold in my heart for Diego, fruit of my one true love, my only son.
In the meantime, Diego himself, now eleven years old—lost until then in a world circumscribed by books and maps, a sanctuary in which to hide from his mother’s bitterness, the ill moods of his Great-uncle Alfonso, the unhappiness that radiated from his father’s eyes, all the disappointments that seeped from their hearts and into the very walls of the house—was moments away from placing another piece in the puzzle that would become his life, moments from adding bits of earth and sky to a hitherto uncharted bit of his map.
It was around this time that a book arrived at the Librería Alfonso for el Señor Raleigh. The Englishman had recently settled in Seville, hoping the climate would soothe the aches in his aged bones and that the proximity to the Archives of the Indies—the impressive building that housed the history of the Discoveries—would satisfy the unquenchable curiosity that continued to course through his blood.
The arrival of this book marked the moment that Diego Clemente left all childish things behind. Herewith, he would embark on the journey that would begin right there, as a single bacterium that lodged itself in his mind, a fantasy, a boy’s delusion that, like the delusions of small and great men alike, would provide the spark to send him across an ocean and deposit him into the arms of the Mondo Novus, the glorious New World.
What book was this you ask? Ah, in a million years you would never guess. For it was none other than one of the volumes of the famed octavo edition of Audubon’s Birds of America, published in 1842, hand-coloured and magnificent even if plates had been removed here and there so that he could no longer admire the Brewer’s Black-bird nor the Crimson-Throated Purple Finch. But there were treasures to be had, in any case. There, in all their natural splendour, were the Cape May Wood Warbler, the Burrowing Day Owl, the Louisiana Tanager, the homely but comforting Brown Finch.
Diego hid the book inside the floorboards where he kept the three precious items that provided him with comfort when all upstairs was awash with regret and loss—a tin horn, a glass marble and a book of Becquer’s poetry, ragged and well worn but magical, he thought, a salve against the injustices inflicted by those who claimed to love him most.
And now this, an infinitely more precious book. He failed, in his ignorance, to appreciate how precious it actually was, but the boy had his own barometer to gauge the things of the world and the monetary value of the book would not have impressed him had he known it. Instead, he waded carefully through page after page of the beautiful 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
