The Boy and the Book

                                            THE BOY AND THE BOOK

I never really had a name. They just used to call me ‘pibe’. Later on in life, I baptised myself from a list in the Registry Office, but until then, the only baptismal fire I ever knew was the hot sun of the Chaco. How I remember that heat! It burnt one’s skin, melting the vision, and baking one’s head until a man thought that his brains would explode and his eyes pop out.

From the first days that I can remember, I worked. We all worked, rooting around like a family of scrawny chickens, desperately trying to make a living from the arid hectare and a half that my father inherited from his father. We owned a cow, two or three pigs depending on whether times were bad or worse, some hens and a bad-tempered rooster. And we slaved over vegetables and corn, and planted cotton, It was a hard life and my father was a hard man.

There was no paper in our house. Neither of my parents,  nor my elder brothers Tulio and Antonio, could read or write, and I was so paperless that I had no name. Not even our farm had papers.  We lived kilometres from the nearest village, which was, in turn, kilometres from the nearest town. We had no neighbours, no policemen, no postman and no priest We paid no taxes and saw no posters.

“Pibe, have you fed the hens?”

“Pibe, water the vegetables!”

“Pibe, move the cow!”

Once I asked my mother, a taciturn woman with soft brown eyes, “Why don’t I have a name?”

“Why do you need one ? You know who you are.” I had no answer.

By the time I was nine, I was a dreamy muscular little rebel. Tulio and Antonio were good sons. They never questioned our father’s hard driving insistence, and they worked shoulder to shoulder with his curt unsmiling orders. They were good brothers too, answering me patiently and avoiding my more stupid questions.

“Why don’t I have a name?  You both have names?”

“Pibe, you ask too many questions.”

“Pibe … that’s your name! ……. Pibe.”

“But why don’t I have a real name ?”

Only once did my persistence crack their restraint, and then it was Tulio, the oldest, who spat back the real answers.

“Because Father didn’t give you one!”

“But why not?”

“Because that’s the way it is. You are the third, and the third stays at home, - always. You will be here until you die working  this land. Father was the third.”

“But why ?”

“Because that’s the way it always has been, and the way it always will be.  And since you will always be here, why do you need a name ?”

The truth lit the fires of resentment. And indeed once I thought, I knew that I had always known that. My father was indeed a third son, - his two older brothers had died in the war against Paraguay. He had accepted his role. Now he was ‘Father’, but once he too had been ‘Pibe’, but it was then that I decided I would never accept this fate. Whatever I was, wherever I was, I would have a name. My soul was like the Chaco, burning – but with shame.

I was twelve when I met her, and I knew at once that she was the most beautiful woman in the world. One of pigs had escaped, and I had been sent across the reddish, sandy dunes, pockmarked with sturdy weeds and millions of ant-holes, to find it and bring it back, and sent urgently, for the piglets were due and would mean a lot in our precarious family economy. Three or four kilometres from home, I saw the pig and began to run fast so as to turn it back.  Just as I reached the track that led to the bigger track, I saw her riding a mule. She had breasts, hips, long dark curly hair, and full blood-red lips. And she was tall, taller even than my brothers. But it was only when she got off the mule to speak to me, that I noticed her dark satin eyes, and the long, long fingers.

“Hey, pibe, where’s the village? Is it far from here?”

She was wearing red trousers with cut-off bottoms, and a creamy shirt, - and she knew my name.

“Hey pibe, - answer me, will you?”

 What was more, she smelled good.

“Hey pibe, what are you staring at?”

“Sorry, - but how do you know who I am?”

“I don’t! So, little mystery man, -  where is the village ?”

I pointed to the track that went to the bigger track, and which, - or so they said, - led to the road that went to the village.

“That’s the way, - I think. Why are you going to the village?” We lived in a small world, and going to the village was a special event. Anyway, our curiosity never meant that we were rude, - just curious!

“ The circus is going there, and I belong to the circus.”

“A Circus? What’s a circus?”

“Have you never seen a circus ?”

I shook my head. I never had, and I couldn’t imagine what it might be, She laughed, stood up and fished around in her saddlebag.

“Here. Take a couple of these home. They will tell you about our circus, and then you can tell your friends.” She handed me some brown things with squiggles on them. I looked at them dumbfounded. I had never seen paper, - let alone writing – before.

She looked down at me gently. “Hey, pibe, what’s the matter?” , and then realising, “ you can’t read, can

you?”

I shook my head. How could have I expressed that in my world, the word ‘read’ was never used?

And then she asked me, even more gently, “Hey pibe, what’s your name?”

Then I knew anger, the cold anger that comes from being nameless, and I lifted my head and my chin to tell the truth right into her face. “I have no name. They haven’t given me one. They say I don’t need it.”

She smiled then, and stroked my arm. “Then you must fight to have one. But to have a name, you must be a person. That is a fight that only you can fight. No one can help you, - for if they do, you will never be your own person, only theirs.”

She turned back to her saddlebag, standing on tiptoes to reach into the bottom. “I will give you this present, so that you can fight, pibe.” And she handed me a book. Then, mounting the mule again, she looked down at me. “Take it, hold it, feel it, protect it, learn to read it, and, most of all, love it and what it says, and how it says it. Then you will learn that the world is for you and I, just as much as it is for others. Then you can be you, pibe, and you will find your name.”  Then she waved and rode off along the track that led to the bigger track, and, -so they said, - to the road that went to the village. I never saw her again.

I never knew why I hid that book for so long, but I always knew why I loved it. It had pictures, brown sepia prints that spoke of things way beyond my world, - of mountains and snow, of strange animals and people, of dancing and laughter, and magic and peace. And the words, strange incomprehensible signs to me then, seemed to speak with the pictures.

Life did not change much. I dug and ran, watered and cleaned, raked and harnessed, but whenever I could I pulled out my book from its hiding place, and let the pictures speak. The Chaco sun was just as hot, the work as hard, my father as sullen and my mother as silent as always, and everyday was just as hard and monotonous. Nor did my anger grow less. The burning continued, and the pain and shame that went with it. But while the pictures spoke, I knew that there was something different in my life.

About fifty paces behind our adobe, straw-thatched house, there was a big ‘chivato’ tree, below which we kept chickens. You couldn’t have spoken of a hen-house, because the few piled boxes, and strings of wire that marked it,  were not worthy of the name, and the hens very rarely left eggs there. A lot of my day was spent crawling under bushes, looking for eggs. Scrawny hens and scrawny humans are great survivors, and obvious places of danger are avoided. But, when I sat with my back against the tree facing away from the house, I could not see my life nor be seen by those who were in it. It was where I sat when the pictures spoke to me.

I was twelve, and old enough to have heard him coming, for he was as little a man of stealth as he was of  warmth. I was deep in the book, soothed by its wonders, when I sensed him standing over me. He snatched the book, kicking me roughly in the hip.

“Idiot! Waster! How will this fill your stomach?”, and he hurled the book into a stinking puddle of muddy water.  “Feed the hens, pibe, - that’s all you or I will ever be good for!”

It was the longest sentence that my father had ever spoken to me. He turned his back, and walked away back to the work he had been doing.

I was angry but calm. I was sad but determined. The book was ruined, but my life would not be.  I too turned and walked, then ran, - onward to a world of books, of circuses and mountains, of snow and laughter, of magic and of strange animals, of dancing and of peace. I ran and ran. I never looked back and I never went back, and along tracks that led to bigger tracks, and roads that led to streets, and streets that led to schools, I made my way to the world of names and people, ……. and to the world of words.