Temprano levantó la muerte el vuelo,
(Death took an early flight)
Temprano madrugó la madrugada,
(Dawn rose early in the morning)
-Miguel Hernández: “Elegía”.
-Miguel Hernández: “Elegía”.
I think I had been watching him for several hours, sleeping so peacefully. I say I think, because I don’t know how to measure time very well. Perhaps I had been watching him all day. The fact is that he was sleeping, so beautiful, dressed in his beautiful clothes. He looked like a prince, asleep
We were always together, doing things
together. It was already daylight, I had already been up for hours, but he was
still asleep. I was becoming impatient. I wanted him to wake up, so that we
could be together, doing things together.
What I do not understand is why he would not
wake up; why he was still asleep; why the neighbours came to see him; why he
was sleeping in a different bed, so ugly, painted white and grey; why he had
two laurel leaves covering his eyes.
Well, I am only three years old, there are
many things I do not understand, and the adult people do not explain them to
me. But, when those men put a lid on the cradle of my little brother, and they
were going to lift it, to take him away, I saw my mom dash towards them, like a
wild animal. She hugged the cradle, clung to it, and began to scream like a
crazy woman. And what scared me the most was that, Dad was also crying. I had
never seen my dad cry. I thought that men did not cry. It was then that I
realized that something very bad was happening.
Well, when Mom calmed down, those men
lifted my little brother’s ugly bed, and placed it inside a carriage that was
waiting outside. A most ugly carriage, painted black, with grey glass windows,
and two black-furred horses in front of it.
Then they took him away.
I never saw him again, since that day. I
ask Mom where is my little brother, and when will he return. She says he is in
heaven, because up there the air is clean; that as my little brother’s lungs
were sick, and he could not breathe well, the dirty air, down here, was harming
him, specially the air in our neighbourhood, with so much dust raised by the
trucks as they drive on the dirt road. Mom says that in heaven, he is well,
that he can breathe well, because up there the air is clean. Mom says that one
day, we'll go visit him.
© Text
and photograph: William Almonte Jiménez, 2011
