Happiness / Alegría

Happiness / Alegría
by Humberto Bllesteros Capasso
translated by César Mateo González
A
lberto was born strange.
of his life.
This is the story of the happiest day
That morning the owner’s rooster woke him up at six o’clock. He went
out to the yard barefoot. His sister, Yulitza, two years older than him, was
nude underneath the stream of water. The tube hung straight down over
the grass and shook from the water’s pressure. A murmur emanated from
the faucet’s handle.
Alberto lingered, watched the tube and made his head shudder with the
same rhythm. Then he watched the stream. As water shone, it refracted
the sunlight and dispersed it into fireflies that slithered down his sister’s
skin, extinguishing in the puddle she stood in.
He ran to her and the stream. She let him have a little room. He got wet
from thumping his head against Yulitza’s hip. She let him do that with an
uncomfortable smile while she lathered herself with soap.
As he focused on the chill water on top of his head and the rhythmic
warmth of his sister’s flesh against his forehead, out of the corner of his
eye Alberto saw his father coming outside from their home, barefoot as
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well, his machete in his hand.
He kept pushing his head against his sister until she got tired and left.
Then he sat under the water, closed his eyes and began to sway. He tried
to mimic the feverish chill that seemed to speak to him; that invited him
mercilessly, tirelessly to blend with it, to flow in a straight line onto the
ground and shatter into shimmering slivers on the concrete his father had
poured onto the yard so that the ground didn’t become a mud pit while
people bathed.
When someone shut the faucet off, he threw himself onto the ground and
watched the clouds. He started to play around with his voice, crying out
when a cloud tumbled and broke apart, and then lowering it to a mutter
when it grew still on the sky. Hours went by with that game.
Suddenly a firm hand gripped his shoulder and sat him up. His father
offered him a piece of sugarcane. He didn’t know what to do. His father
slowly took his hand, opened his fingers, placed the sugarcane in his palm
and closed his grip around it. Alberto began to squeeze and relax his fingers, focusing on the texture, but his father leaned his face towards his,
and Alberto saw that he had a piece of sugarcane too. He was sucking on
it.
Alberto put his sugarcane into his mouth. His father’s eyes blazed. Alberto
began to sway with his tongue, his voice and his head, to the rhythm of
the sweetness that seeped into his mouth and drew a disjointed line of
happiness through his body. Abruptly, he realized that his father, who was
watching him, was swaying too.
Entranced, Alberto understood that the rhythm with which his father
moved his body back and forth was similar to the one he sensed in the
sugarcane, in the taste, in his own body and in the world. He laughed, his
father kissed him on the forehead and went to cut down more sugarcane.
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ANAMESA
Alberto never saw his father move like that again; but on some nights,
while he was sitting in the yard or on the rock in front of the house,
he watched his father coming back from working in the field. He would
place a hand on his shoulder. For those brief moments he could almost
recall the sway of the sugarcane in his mouth and the light in his father’s
eyes. The loneliness he was born into became a vibration then, coloring
his blood with sugar.
A
lberto nació raro.
vida.
Esta es la historia del día más feliz de su
Esa mañana el gallo del patrón lo despertó a las seis. Salió descalzo al
patio. Su hermana, Yulitza, dos años mayor que él, estaba desnuda bajo el
chorro. El tubo, vertical sobre la tierra, temblaba con la presión. La llave
desprendía un rumor.
Alberto se quedó mirando el tubo, haciendo vibrar su cabeza con el
mismo ritmo. Luego miró el chorro. El agua brillaba, reflejando el sol y
dispersándolo en luciérnagas que resbalaban por la piel de su hermana y
se apagaban en el charco a sus pies.
Corrió hacia ella y entró al chorro. Ella le hizo un espacio. Él se mojó,
golpeando su cabeza contra la cintura de Yulitza. Ella lo dejó hacer con
una sonrisa incómoda mientras se jabonaba.
De reojo, concentrado en el frío del agua sobre su cabeza y en la tibieza
rítmica de su hermana contra su frente, Alberto vio a su padre salir de la
casa, también descalzo y con el machete en la mano.
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Siguió empujando con la cabeza a su hermana hasta que ella se cansó y
se fue. Entonces se sentó bajo el agua, cerró los ojos y comenzó a zarandearse. Intentó imitar el escalofrío que parecía hablarle; que lo invitaba sin
piedad y sin pausa a mezclarse con él, a correr en una línea hacia la tierra
y desbaratarse en brillos sobre la placa de concreto que su padre había
puesto en el patio para que no se hiciera un barrial cuando se bañara la
gente.
Cuando alguien le cerró la llave se tumbó sobre la losa y miró las nubes.
Comenzó a jugar con su voz, subiendo de volumen cuando una se desbarataba rápidamente y bajando hasta un murmullo cuando parecía quieta
en el cielo. En eso se le fueron las horas.
De pronto una mano fuerte le cogió el hombro y lo hizo sentarse en la
losa. Su padre le acercó un trozo de caña. Él no sabía qué hacer. Su padre,
lentamente, le tomó la mano, le abrió los dedos, puso el pedazo de caña en
su palma y los cerró. Alberto comenzó a apretar y desapretar los dedos,
concentrado en la textura, pero de pronto su padre le acercó la cara y
Alberto vio que él también tenía un pedazo de caña, pero en la boca, y lo
estaba chupando.
Entonces Alberto se metió su pedazo de caña a la boca. Los ojos de su
padre brillaron. Alberto dejó de verlos un buen rato y comenzó a oscilar
de nuevo, con la lengua y con la voz y con la cabeza, al ritmo del dulce
que le entraba a la boca y le creaba una línea discontinua de alegría en todo
el cuerpo. Y de pronto vio que, frente a él, su padre lo estaba mirando y
también oscilaba.
Alucinado, Alberto entendió que el ritmo con que su padre movía el
cuerpo adelante y atrás era similar al que él percibía en la caña, en el sabor,
en su propio cuerpo y en el mundo. Entonces rió, y su padre le dio un
beso en la frente y se fue a cortar más caña.
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Alberto nunca volvió a ver a su padre moverse como él; pero algunas
noches, sentado en el patio o en la piedra al frente de la casa, lo miraba
cuando volvía del trabajo y él le ponía una mano en el hombro. En esos
momentos casi lograba recordar aquella oscilación de la caña en su boca y
el brillo en los ojos de su padre. Entonces la soledad que le había tocado en
suerte se volvía una vibración y le coloreaba la sangre de azúcar. r
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