The letter I

 A tale by Jose Rafael Pocaterra

 

I

No, it was not possible!, already in my seventh year and still dummy, a real dummy, too dumb to tell one letter from another and harder to control than a squirrel.

«Enough, that´s it! », said my grandma. «He´s got to start school...»

And from that day on, with that relentless efficacy so miraculous for her seventy years, she started looking for a teacher for me. My mother didn't want her to; she protested that I was still a little boy, but grandmother insisted resolutely. And one afternoon after coming in from the street, she unwrapped some bundles she´d received, and taking out a schoolbag, a slate with a sponge, a thick book with lot of drawings and a bundle of pencils, she said, gazing at me with that cool tenderness of hers: «Tomorrow, my child, you´re off to the house of a very nice lady and she´s going to teach you lot of things...!

I hugged her around her neck and ran through the house, showing the servants my new schoolbag, my brand new slate, my book, labeled with my name in my mother's beautiful handwriting, a book that seemed an amazing treasure chest surprising, full of marvels! And all that afternoon and evening I couldn´t sleep, thinking about how much I would be able to read and learn from those great big books left bound in a leather left by my uncle, who had been a lawyer, and which I leafed through to admire the pictures and the red capital and the little blocks of handwritten letters which filled the yellowed margins.

I have definite feeling inside that I was a person big enough to go to school.

II

So many years ago, my God! And I still see the humble little house, the long corridor, the little patio with its potsherds, at the end a canvas gate that opened to the dining room, the small room where there was a black table with an oil lamp in whose tube a fork danced. On the wall there was a faded map and on the ceiling another one formed by leaks. There were also two dilapidated rocking chairs, chairs; a small sideboard with two plaster dogs and a glass butter dish that simulated a brooder lying on its nest; but everything so clean and so old that it could be said that it emerged by itself, in the same places since the beginning of time.

At the other end of the corrector, near where they put the chair sent from home the day before, was a green painted jar with a cracked pot; there a crystalline water in musical drops, long and slow, was singing the march of the hours. And I don't know why that filter stone full of weeds, with its mold and its smell of humid lands, reminded me of banks of the river or rocks advanced on the waves of the sea...

But that morning I was not up for imagination, and when my grandmother left, feeling alone and unhappy among those strange children who were watching me out of the corner of their eyes, pointing at me; Before the very thin physiognomy of the discolored lips and nose whose lobe was almost transparent, of the Miss, I began to cry. She came to comfort me, and my desperation was increased when I felt an icy kiss like a frog on my cheek.

That morning as a "new child" showed me the reverse of what had been illusory visions of wisdom... So in the afternoon, when I returned to school, dragged almost by the maid, my eyelids were reddened from crying, two superb my aunt's spankings and the bundle in a banderole with the blackboard and the pencils the virginal Mandevil drumming inside in a rhythmic and mocking way.

III

Then I fell in love with my school and my classmates: three ugly little girls with saffron hair and striped stockings, a fat guy who picked his nose from him and poked us with a sharp blackboard pencil; another skinny, sad, haggard boy, with a handkerchief and some leaves always around his neck and smelling of oil; and Martica, the daughter of the sign across the street who was German. Seven or eight at the most: the three sisters were called the Rizars, the chubby José Antonio, Totón, and the skinny boy who died after a while, I do not remember what his name was. I know he died because one afternoon he stopped going, and two weeks later there was no school.

Miss had a brother, a brother with whom she threatened us when we gave too much to do or one of those strange childish rebellions that betray the eternal beast broke out.

-Keep going! Keep breaking the blackboard, spoiled brat, Ramón Maria is already coming!

We stayed in suspense, cowed, thinking about that terrible Ramón Maria who could arrive at any moment... That day, with more anguish than ever, we saw him come in staggering as usual, smelling of reverberation, watery eyes, tomato nose and a green gay avocado.

We felt fear and admiration for that man whose evocation alone calmed school storms and whom Miss, all shy and confused, led to her room by her arm, trying to silence some swearwords that we learned and endorsed to each other below of the Mandevil.

-I'm going to accuse you with Miss! protested Marta, the most resolute of the females, almost with a shriek.

-The young lady and you... -and the ugly, unconscious and hilarious interjection jumped from here to there like a ball, until it hit the very ears of the young lady.

That was the day to be in the living room, kneeling on the brickwork, the book in the hands, and the ears like two carrots.

-Boy, why do you say that so horrible? he scolded me with an affecting severity that belied the gray sweetness of his gaze.

-Because I am a man like Mr. Ramón Maria!

And she answered, confused, to my audacity:

-That's what he says when he's "sick."

IV

Despite everything, I became the favorite. It was in vain that every moment a little voice was raised:

-Miss, here "the new boy" put ink in my eye!

-Miss, that «the new boy» is looking for a lawsuit.

Sometimes there would be a strident shriek followed by three or four slaps:

-Here...!

The reprimand came, the punishment; and then softer than ever, that long, pale, almost transparent hand of the old maid was teaching me with a holy patience to know the letters that I distinguished by a special method: the A, the man with the legs spread and I mentally evoked the Mr. Ramón Maria when he came in “sick” from the street-; the O, to the fat man -I was thinking of Toton's father-; the greek Y is a fork - like the slingshot he had hidden -; the latin I, the skinny woman -and the tall, emaciated figure of the young lady inevitably occurred to me... That's how I got to know the Ñ, a train with its plume of smoke; the P, the man with the bundle; and the & the cripple who begged on Sundays at the door of the church.

I communicated to the others my improvements to the method of knowing the letters, and Marta -as always!- denounced me:

-Miss, «the new boy» says that you are the Latin I!

She looked at me gravely and said without anger, without even reproach, with a quivering bitterness in her voice, wanting to make the grimace of her discolored lips smile:

-Yes, the Latin I is the most unfortunate of the letters... it could be!

I was ashamed; I felt like crying. Since that day, every time I passed the pointer over that letter, without knowing why, a dark remorse invaded me.

V

One afternoon at two o'clock, Mr. Ramón Maria came in more "sick" than usual, with his sack dirty from the lime on the walls. When she went to take his arm, she received a shove going to hit a corner of the jar with her forehead. We burst out laughing; and she, ignoring us, followed behind her with her hand on her head... We were still laughing, when one of the girls, who had leaned over to feel a dark stain on the bricks, raised her little finger dyed red:

-Look, look: she drew blood!

We are suddenly serious, very pale, with eyes wide open.

I reported it at home and they severely forbade me to repeat it. But days later, when the inspector visited the school, a neat little old man, dressed in black, asked him in front of us when he saw his bandaged temple:

- How did she suffer some blow, daughter?

Quickly, with a faint blush like a candle flame, he answered in embarrassment:

-No sir, I tripped...

-Lies, Mr. Inspector, lies -I protested, rebelling in a brusque, instinctive way, before that anguished dissimulation- it was her brother, Mr. Ramón Maria who pushed her, like this... against the wall... -and expressively I hit her a formidable push to the old man.

-Yes, child, I know...-he mumbled, losing his mind.

He then said something else under his breath; he stayed a few moments and left.

She then took me with her to her room; I thought she was going to punish me, but she sat me on her lap and covered me with kisses; of cold and tenacious kisses, of maternal caresses that seemed to have slept for a long time in the network of her nerves, while I, self-conscious, felt that along with the coldness of her kisses and the icy caress of her hands, drops of tears, warm, heavy, fell on my neck. I raised her face and I will never forget that painful expression that lengthened the gray eyes full of tears and formed an anguished knot in her emaciated throat.

Two weeks passed, and Mr. Ramón Maria did not return to the house. Other times these absences were brief, when he was "in jail", as Tomasa, the only servant of the young lady, informed us that when she went out to arrange for him to be released, she stayed teaching school and telling us wonderful stories about the bird of seven colors, of the White-flower princess or the always renewed and fresh tricks that Uncle Rabbit played on Uncle Tiger.

But this time Miss didn't come out; a serious worry distracted her in the middle of her lessons. She then she was out of it two or three times; The maid told us that she had gone to a lawyer's house because Mr. Ramón Maria had proposed to sell the house.

On the way back, pale, tired, the young lady complained of a headache; she suspended the lessons, remaining absorbed for long periods, with her gaze lost in a mist of tears... Then she made a sudden gesture, opened the book on her knees and began to point to the reading with a voice in which all the women seemed to moan resignations of this world: «Come on, boy: Jorge had an axe...».

VII

There has been no school for fifteen days. Miss is very sick. From home they have been there two or three times. Yesterday afternoon I heard my grandmother say that she didn't like that cough at all...

I don't know who they were talking about.

VIII

Miss died this morning at six...

IX

They have dressed me in black and my grandmother has taken me to the mortuary house. I hardly recognize her: neither the hen nor the plaster dogs are on her shelf; the map on the wall has a black ribbon across it; there are many chairs and many people in mourning who grumble and smoke. The room full of neighbors praying. In a corner we are all the disciples, without whispering, very serious, with that innocent sadness that children in mourning have. From there we see, in the center of the room, a narrow, white and very long urn that is like Miss and where she is stuck. I imagine it with terror: the open Mandevil, showing me with the yellow finger, the I, the Latin I precisely.

At times, Mr. Ramón Maria, who receives condolences at the end of the corridor and wears a sulphurous black jacket instead of a gay-green denim jacket, goes to his room and comes back. He sits sighing with droplets on his mustache. He has undoubtedly cried a lot because his eyes are more tearful than ever and his nose is red, purple.

From time to time he blows his nose and says out loud:

- She is she as asleep!

X

After the funeral, that night, I was afraid. I didn't want to go to sleep. Grandma has tried to distract me by telling cute stories from her youth. But the idea of ​​death is stuck, tenaciously, in my brain. Suddenly he interrupted her to ask:

-She will suffer too now?

"No," she answers, understanding who I'm talking about, "Miss doesn't suffer now!"

And gazing at me with those dove´s eyes of her, that sweet unforgettable look, he adds:

-Blessed are the meek and humble of heart because they will see God!...

 

Jose Rafael Pocaterra. Venezuelan novelist, short story writer, essayist and poet. He was born in Valencia (Carabobo) and died in Montreal (Canada). He is one of the central figures of Venezuelan literature. His works include: Feminist Politics (1913), Dark Lives (1915), Beloved Land of the Sun (1918), Grotesque Tales (1922), Memoirs of a Venezuelan of Decadence (written in prison between 1920 and 1921) The House of the Ábila (1946), among others.