12. Swallows
There she is now Platero, a dark and lively little figure, in her grey nest beside the painting of the Virgin of Montemayor, a nest which is always respected. The unhappy bird seems terrified. I believe that this time the poor swallows have made a mistake as the hens did last week, when they took shelter in the chicken coop in midafternoon during the eclipse of the sun. Spring had the coquetry to arrive earlier than usual this year, but, shivering with the cold, she has had to hide her tender nudity again in the cloud bed of March. How sad to see the virgin blossoms in the orange grove wither in the bud!
The swallows are here already, Platero, yet one can scarcely hear them as in other years, when the very day of their arrival they greeted and investigated everything, chattering without pause in their fluted trills. They would tell the flowers what they had seen in Africa, of their two journeys over the sea, landing on the water with a wing for a sail, or in the rigging of ships; of other sunsets, other dawns, other nights with stars.
They do not know what to do. They fly about silently, perplexed, like ants when a child tramples on their path. They do not dare to fly up and down the Calle Nueva in a steady straight line, with that flourish at the end, nor enter their nests in the wells, nor perch on the telegraph wires which the north wind keeps humming, in their classic pose as mail carriers, beside the white insulators. They will die of the cold, Platero!
11. The Thorn
As he came into the pasture, Platero began to limp. I dropped down to the ground.
“But what’s the matter lad?”
Platero held his right forefoot slightly raised showing its sole, weak and limp, its hoof barely touching the burning sand of the path.
With a solicitude which was greater, no doubt, than that of old Darbón, his doctor, I turned back his forefoot and looked at its red sole. A long green thorn from a healthy orange tree was stuck in it like a little round dagger of emerald. Shaken by Platero’s suffering, I pulled out the thorn; I led the poor animal to the stream of the yellow iris so that the running water might lick his little wound with its long pure toungue.
Aferwards we went on toward the white sea, I walking in front and he behind, still limping and nudging me gently on the shoulder.
10. The Boneyard
If you die, my dear Platero, before I do, you will not go in the town crier’s cart to the vast salt marsh nor to the gully beside the hill road, like other poor donkeys, like horses and dogs that have no one to love them. You shall not have your ribs stripped and bloodied by the crows, like the shell of a boat against the crimson sunset, an ugly sight for the traveling salesmen going to the station at San Juan in the six o’ clock coach; nor shall you lie there stiff and swollen among the clams rotting in the ditch, to frighten children leaning boldly and curiously over the edge of the slope, holding on to the branches, when they go out on Sunday afternoons in the fall to eat toasted pine kernels in the pinewoods.
Do not be troubled, Platero, for I shall bury you at the foot of the great round pine in the orchard at La Piña, of which you are so fond. You will be close to life’s serenity and mirth. The little boys will play and the little girls will sew in their low chairs at your side. You will know the verses which solitude brings me. You will hear the singing of the girls washing in the orange grove and the rattle of the well chain will delight and refresh your eternal peace.The whole year long the linnets, the titmice and the finches, in the enduring happiness of the treetops, will weave a small roof of music between your tranquil sleep and the changeless blue of the infinite sky above Moguer.
9. Angelus!
Look, Platero, how many roses are falling all around; blue roses, white roses, roses without color…. One would think that the sky were dissolving into roses. Look how the roses are covering my forehead, my shoulders, my hands…. What shall I do with so many roses?
Do you know, I wonder, for I do not, where this delicate flower comes from? Daily it casts a mantle of tenderness over the landscape, leaving it softly pink, white and blue…. more roses, more roses…. like a painting by Fra Angelico who always knelt to paint the sky.
One would think that they were throwing roses to the earth from the seven galleries of Paradise. Like a warm and lightly colored snowfall the roses lie on the tower, on the roof, on the trees. Look; all the strong lines, with their adornment, become delicate. More roses, more and more roses….
It seems, Platero, while the Angelus is ringing, that this life of ours loses its daily force and that another force from within, loftier, purer and more constant, causes everything to rise, like fountains of grace, to the stars which are beginning to sparkle now among the roses. More roses…. Your eyes, which you cannot see, Platero, and which you raise meekly to the sky, are two beautiful roses.
8. Judas
“Don’t be frightened, lad! What’s the matter with you? Come now, gently…. It’s just that they are killing Judas, silly.”
Yes, they are killing Judas. They have hung one at Monturrio, another at the Calle de Enmedio; the other is there at the Pozo del Concejo. I saw them last night, as still in the air as if held by supernatural force, the rope which fastened them to a balcony being invisible in the dark. What grotesque medleys they were, of old top hats and women’s sleeves, masks of Ministers of State, and hoop skirts, beneath the serene stars! The dogs barked at them, but did not quite go away, and the horses, distrustful, did not want to pass below them…
Now the bells are saying, Platero, that the veil of the high altar has been rent. I do not think that there is a single shotgun in the town that has not been fired at Judas. The odor of powder even reaches here. Another shot! And another!
Yet today, Platero, Judas is the deputy, the teacher, the lawyer, the tax collector, the mayor, the midwife; and each man, turned boy against his Holy Saturday morning, fires his cowardly gun at the one he hates, in a superimposition of vague and absurd spring simulations.
7. The Crazy Man
Dressed in mourning, with my beard cut like a Nazarene’s and my narrow brimmed hat, I must present a strange figure riding Platero’s soft grey back.
When on the way to the vineyards I across the last streets, bright with whitewash and sun, the gypsy children come running after us, shaggy and oily-smooth, showing tense brown bellies through their red, green, and yellow rags. They give long shrill cries of:
“The crazy man! The crazy man! The crazy man!”
Already the green fields lie before us, facing the vast pure sky of burning indigo, my eyes - how far removed from what I hear!- open nobly, receiving into their calm that nameless quietude, that divine, harmonious serenity which lives in the endlessness of the horizon.
There in the distance, among the high garden patches, a few sharp-pitched cries persist, finely veiled, intermittant, panting, tedious:
“The cra-azy man! The cra-azy man!”
6. The Nursery School
If you were to come with the rest of the children to first grade, Platero, you would learn your alphabet and how to form you letters. You would be as wise as the donkey among the wax figures, the companion of the sea siren who, crowned with artificial flowers, appears through her glass case all flesh colored, rose and gold, in her green element; and wiser than the doctor and the priest of Palos, Platero.
But though only four years old, how big and awkward you are! In what little chair would you sit, at what table would you write, what notebook and what pen would be large enough for you, where in the circle, tell me, would you sit to sing the Credo?
No, Sister Domitila, in her robe of the sisterhood of Jesus of Nazereth, all purple with a cord of yellow like that of Reyes, the fishmonger, would probably keep you for two hours on your knees in a corner of the patio with the plane trees, or would beat you with her long dry cane, or eat up the quince cheese from your lunch, or hold a burning paper under your tail and turn your ears as red and hot as those of the wheelwright’s son when it is going to rain.
No, Platero, no. Come along with me. I shall teach you about the flowers and the stars. They shall not laugh at you as at an overgrown dolt, nor shall they put on you, as if you were one of those things they call donkeys, the cap with the large eyes bordered in bright red and blue like those on the river boats, and with ears twice the size of yours.
5. Chills
A large moon comes with us, round and pure. Vauguely, in the drowsy meadows one can see strange black goats among the brambles. Someone hides silently as we pass… Above the fence an immense almond tree, snowy with blossoms and moonlight, it’s top mingled with a white cloud, shelters the path from arrows shot by March stars… A pungent scent of oranges… Dampness, silence… The Vale of the Witches…
“Platero, how… cold it is!”
Platero, either because of his own fear or because of mine, breaks into a trot, steps into the stream, treads upon the moon and breaks it to pieces. It is as if a swarm of clear crystal roses were entangling him, trying to hold back his trotting feet…
And Platero trots up the slope, drawing in his croup as if someone were about to catch him, feeling now the soft warmth of the village which is near.
4. The Eclipse
We put our hands in our pockets without meaning to, and our foreheads felt the fine fluttering of cool shadows, as when one enters a thick pinewood. One by one the hens were retiring to their sheltered roost. The field round about darkened its green, as if the purple cloth from the main alter were veiling it. The distant sea shone white, and a few stars twinkled palely. What a change was coming over the white of the roof terraces! Those of us who were on them shouted to one another clever remarks, good or bad, appearing small and dark in the brief silence of the eclipse.
We looked at the sun through everything, opera glasses, field glasses, a bottle, smoked glass, and from everywhere: from the upper balcony, from the steps in the corral, from the window in the loft, from the grating of the patio, through its blue and scarlet panes…
With the disappearance of the sun which a moment before had made everything two, three, or a hundred times larger and better with its complications of light and gold, all, without the long transition of twilight, was left lonely and dull, as if it had traded its gold, first for silver and then copper. The town was like a musty penny which had lost even it’s value. How sad and small the streets, the squares, the tower, the paths on the hills!
Platero, down there in the corral, seemed less real, changed, a paper figure, a different donkey…
3. Games at Dusk
When in the village twilight Platero and I come, stiff with cold, through the purple shadows of the wretched alley which leads to the dry riverbed, poor children are playing at frightening one another, pretending to be beggars. One throws a sack over his head, another says he cannot see, another plays lame.
Then comes one of those sudden changes that happens with children, since they are wearing shoes and clothes, and their mothers, in some way known only to them, have given them food to eat, they think themselves princes.
“My father has a silver watch.”
“And mine a horse.”
“And mine, a shotgun.”
A watch that will rise at dawn, a gun that wil not kill hunger, a horse that will lead to poverty.
Then they form a circle. Amid so much blackness, a little girl with a thin voice - a thread of liquid crystal in the dark - sings melodiously as a princess:
“I’m the young widow of the Count of Orè…”
Yes, yes! Sing, dream, children of the poor! Soon, at the first blush of youth, spring will frighten you like a beggar in winter’s guise.
“Let’s go, Platero.”
2. White Butterflies
Night is coming on, misty and purple. Vague green and mauve lights persist beyond the church tower. The road rises enveloped in shadow, in bellflowers, the scent of grass, songs, weariness, and longing. Suddenly a dark man, with a cap and swordstick, his ugly face showing red for a moment in the glow of his cigar, comes down toward us from a wretched hut, buried among coal sacks. Platero shies in alarm.
“Any merchandise?”
“Look… white butterflies.”
The man wants to thrust his iron stick in the little basket, and I do not prevent it. I open the saddlebag and he can see nothing. And so the stuff for dreams passes free and guileless, paying no tribute to the tax collectors.
1. Platero
Platero is small, downy, smooth - so soft to te touch that one would think he were all cotton, that he had no bones. Only the jet mirrors of his eyes as two beetles of dark crystal.
I let him run loose and he goes off to the meadow; softly, scarcely touching them, he brushes his nose against the tiny flowers of pink, sky-blue, and golden yellow. I call him gently: “Platero?” and he comes to me at a gay little trot as though he were laughing, lost in a clatter of fancy.
He eats everything I give him. He like tangerines, muscatel grapes, all amber-colored, and purple figs with their crystal point of honey.
He is tender and loving as a little boy, as a little girl; but strong and firm like a stone. When I ride him on Sunday through the lanes at the edge of town, the men from the country, clean-dressed and slow-moving, stand still to watch him.
“He is made of steel.”
He is made of steel. Both steel and quicksilver.
