hijos

Prologue

Once upon a time there was a little girl who made many, many journeys.
She travelled. She travelled to far-away places, until she forgot, until she had gone away.
She became nothing, she became all that she had seen. She became nothing of all that.
Until one day she was forced to stop. She stopped, and then she sat down and then she told stories.
She told story after story. Everything she had travelled, she told. Everything and nothing she told…
And as she told she travelled, she travelled again. She travelled.
Once upon a time…

First Scene

Once upon a time there was a Little Man, very very little, who wanted to become big at any price!
But he didn’t know how. Every night he prayed to his lucky star.
Where he lived the stars were huge, and shone with the brightest imaginable light.
Praying to them came naturally.
The Little Man lived in a school - he was small, he still went to school. And he was lucky enough to live where he went to school.
Every morning he woke up in a white room, he drank the milk that he got for himself and then he read the white pages of his books, before taking the flock out to pasture. That’s right! because you may not know it, but the Little Man was also a shepherd.
His days passed between his books, the sheep and the pots and pans of his mother, Concepciòn. She was a quiet mother, dark-skinned and with wide, flat nose.
Her eyes were those of a dreamer, with the look that only women of the South have when they are remembering, and while Concepciòn dreamed she stirred pots full of food for her children.
She worked hard every day: she cooked the school meals, she baked the cakes and warmed the caramel that covered the candied apple chupa-chupa!
The Little Man never played with his school-mates during the break, oh no! He had to help Concepciòn sell her cakes, for just a few pennies, of course, because in that land no one had very many pennies.
The Little Man grew, wrestling with the bulls, looking for sheep lost in the dark of the mountains, surrounded by fearful legends, the fear of country-folk, the fantastic fears of those far-away places. One day the news arrived that a beautiful lady whose name was Evita was going to give everyone the things they needed: toys for the smallest ones, work and other necessities to the older folk.
At that particular time in the life of the Little Man, great miracles took place!
He met Love.
Evita was a beautiful lady! She wore clothes so elegant that they deserved names: they were called Chanel and they came from far-away places, and in the magazine pictures she looked like an Angel, blond, smiling, shining, just like the Little Man’s stars. She promised such beautiful things, and so for Christmas the Little Man saw the toy of his dreams arrive: a wonderful wooden lorry! It was the most beautiful lorry he had ever seen, and he began to pass his days, besides doing the tasks you already have heard about, carrying stones from one place to another.
Those were good times! The village seamstress was given two sewing machines by mistake, because she had received one for Christmas and the other shortly after, so when she was asked how her work was going, she answered with a toothless smile and moving both her feet, doubtless to show that she meant to work double quick!
Those were Christmases for everyone - at school all the children received a pair of shoes for every season and a basket full of Christmas cake and sparkling wine.
Yet every once in a while, despite all this, the Little Man’s eyes grew sad, like those of the dreaming women of the South, and deep in his heart, the heart of a little wounded bull, there began to grow verses, songs.
Poems.
Often he passed his evenings at the café in the piazza, reading out loud to the old people of the village the only newspaper that arrived there, or else the love letters of the unmarried women who couldn’t read despite their age, or the recipes that mothers cut out of magazines. But when the nostalgic veins of his companions had been warmed by the wine they sipped, the Little Man stood on the tables and, reciting verses he knew by heart, he chanted the tam-tam of songs that were giddy with drink!
Meanwhile Concepciòn divided her evenings between her pots and her memories.
She remembered the man who had left her years before, and sometimes, often, she forgot the world.
Everything became part of Concepciòn’s thoughtful, far-off expression.
She forgot her children, she would cross the streets and leave them waiting on the other side, where they waited for hours and hour! She even forgot her pots, and forgot to feed the Little Man and his sisters. So while they waited they sat in the courtyard of the school and traced the outlines of their favourite foods in the sand with broken branches, and went to bed imagining good smells all night in their dreams.
One day Concepciòn forgot herself as well, and she remained in a white room, alone, where neither the spring rains nor the summer storms could make her come back to this earth! She was there, in a corner of an imaginary wood, surrounded by the song of tropical birds, in the green place that had once been her world, and there she stayed forever after.
Many years went by and the Little Man had grown into a fine young man, but he hadn’t forgotten his great wish to become big, so he went to town to find work.
They weren’t easy years, because in the paved streets of the town he couldn’t find the sweet smell of the wet earth, the snorting of bulls in heat, the shouts of his companions. But wherever he went and whomever he met, he looked in their eyes over and again for lost images of a courtyard, of a school, by now abandoned…
He wanted to grow, whatever the price, but he was nostalgic, so one fine day he began to write.
Poems.
He went to the parks where he knew he would find the flowers and colours he needed for his metaphors, and there he met men (Angels) who, without showing themselves to anyone, were the guardians of all the green in the world! He learned their language, their songs, their breathing, the beating of their wings, their prayers, the secret of Poetry.
He met another Love!
Her. She was a white girl, who smelled good and was well brought-up. She believed in Christ and studied literature, but more important she also dreamed and wrote. Poems.
It was love, forbidden love, brutal love, passionate love! After a short time, two daughters were born!
Those were happy years. The Little Man worked by day and wrote by night. He often left Her alone to go out with his friends. They were the ones who had poetry in their eyes, and everything was done for the sake of poetry, forgetting about eating, about going home… about having a wife, being married. The Little Man whispered sweet words in the ears of women with the eyes of dreamers, and nothing could make him feel so far from this world and so close to the stars, the shining stars of the Little Man!
Then strange times began. Friends disappeared. Many friends. There were bombs. Bombs and hand- grenades.
There were protests, proposals, promises. Great promises made by men on high who raised their finger, sticks, guns and whatever was needed to silence people.
By now the Little Man was well-known for his poems. He was a danger in the city because he helped people like himself, the little people who, like him, dreamed about changing the world. But not with bombs.
On his typewriter he wrote texts for demonstrations, speeches, flyers.
In time the Little Man got to know black lists, prison bars, dark underground rooms. Hands on strapped-up bodies; expert fingers begging with straitjackets against the silence, underwater games, electric shocks.
In the darkness of these rooms the Little Man learned to recognize voices and prayers, invented languages, imaginary languages, the melodies of mothers, nursery rhymes for children who were never more to be found.
He learned to recognize the heavy tread of boots, the steps of naked feet, the steps of small feet and the sound of a whole body being dragged, as though the flesh were a hunk, a hunk towards a well. Towards a deep ditch.
He, too, the Little Man, was touched, doctored. Broken.
The mere memory of a warm blanket against the cold walls could carry him away, away from there, like a poem, away from there for an instant!
He had no idea where he was, but from a tiny window on lucky days he could see the shadow of people passing. He saw their shoes, beautiful shoes, tired shoes, shoes in a hurry, fashionable shoes, colourful shoes shining, but they never shone as brightly as the stars, the Little Man’s stars, now so far away!
One day his friends came. They hadn’t forgotten him! Perhaps the shoes outside his window had spoken! Miracles were still possible! Miracles happened then! The Little Man was set free, he was saved! But they, the shoes, never saw what the Little Man had seen inside, and he couldn’t tell anyone about it. He chose to write verse, to draw firebirds, to wash his dry throat with the kisses of strangers, and with his sweaty hand he transformed tears into wine, wine to forget, wine so that he could love again!
Many died. Disappeared. Escaped. And some stayed.
Our Little Man, the village bull, had to leave behind him the summer rains, the shout of his companions, and go far, far away. He left behind the flowers in the parks, the drawings in the sand, but he never let go of his stars.
And her? She had to choose, whether to love him, whether to follow him. And his little ones? They had to choose, and they chose. Out of fear, out of terror. Out of love.
It was a country where everything was green.
With passing of time, the Little Man had grown a beard, he sweated and gave off a sour smell. He wore white shirts, and he often hid in forgotten alleys, in the house of strangers. Sometimes he drank to calm the salt tears that sprung from his eyes and kept him from seeing the stars in the sky clearly.
Lonely days arrived, lived in the homes of others. Whole days spent just trying to understand, to learn other tongues, other customs. Sleepless nights, where strange animals broke into bathtubs and where even under a suffocating sun he thought of nothing but the things left behind, the land, the pots. The Poems.
The Little Man didn’t understand if this was growing or dying, but it made no difference, he had to survive.
And Her? She followed him, she had the daughters, they asked questions, she had to answer, and then she believed in Christ! She was well brought-up, and even under these circumstances she still had a good smell.
She said that this was their life now. She took pills to sleep, pills to calm her tears, the things that had been lost and the wounds; wrathful fingerprints left on her skin by the Little Man. Fingers of a man, which used to caress her, and now could only touch her like this: sharp as a knife, heavy, now those hands were capable of breaking, too.
There were other moves, long journeys, continents. Cold water, bags emptied, border checks, tickets, frontiers crossed.
Friends, so many friends, friends that were forgotten, friends reborn and rediscovered. Great friends, as big as houses, houses that were welcoming and open. New houses, new journeys to grow in, and a new country!
It was a country where everything was white.
Even the hands, the gestures, the expressions, the words: everything white. But the whitest things were the sheets, and that was where the Little Man spent the greater part of his days. He wrote, he slept, and sometimes he hit his head against the walls, he groaned, he drank (and you already know why), and then he grew; the Little Man’s body grew!… He’d become big and fat and his eyes were black, very black and very sad.
Her. What can we say about Her? She was a mother, a nun, a witch. She was all. She was Poetry and food, she was body and thought, she was bread and cake, she was work and money, she was strategist and nurse, she was language, she was separation. She was a woman, a woman caught up in a war.
The Little Man and his family had survived many battles. The powerful men were far away by now, and they found shelter in the white country where they lived, the Little Man, Her and their daughters.
The daughters grew up in the white country, they played in the snow and wrote poems, too, they went to school and had friends, lovers who were white as snow, they had dreams that weren’t as white as the dreams of the other children.
They grew up and travelled, they fell in love with men from far-off countries, they had children, sometimes they wrote small, unfinished poems. They never became white, by now they were part of other journeys, other colours. They never did great things, but their eyes had inherited the shining, the stars’ shining, the distant stars of the Little Man.
One day something happened and no one knew what to do. The Little Man grew and grew, but from outside it was impossible to see where he was growing! Something was growing inside him and was making his lungs swell. It kept the Little Man from breathing, from loving with the violence he had always desired, from following adventure, as he had done, from consuming the deepest passions, the passions he had devoured.
The Little Man had grey hair now and suffered greatly because the pain was so intense it kept him from writing, from speaking, from walking. It kept him from being little.
The Little Man suddenly saw that his days were numbered, he saw that his stars were numbered in the sky, and the flowers left behind in the parks of the South were numbered, too. He saw the journeys numbered, rains and tears numbered like his years, like his books, like his Poems.
And meanwhile…Meanwhile She followed him, delicate, a bit tired, until one day the Little Man decided to travel, to go away, to go back to his home so as not to die alone in that white country where he couldn’t understand anything anyway, and to go on loving!
She promised to follow him, once again, for the last time.
She understood that only dogs die far away from their homes.

More suitcases, more boxes and cartons and an entire house in the boxes, in a ship in freezing waters, towards a familiar land.
More tickets, more clothes, more sweat.
More houses, more friends, more encounters and reunions.
There were decisive hours of rushing to hospitals, x-rays and medicines.
There were trips, photographs. There were monsters and magic!
Finally the Little Man had come home to his own Land; He, She and the daughters. Everyone came to see the Little Man. Everyone followed him, as far as they could, until the stars prevented them. And there, in a corner of a room the colour of the sky, the Little Man and She ended their long journey with a kiss.
And he met another Love.

Epilogue

One last thing, about stories…
Once they asked an old cripple to tell a story. He told the story of a saint, a saint who would dance and jump while he prayed. The old man got so involved in the story he was telling that he began to dance and sing himself, and so he was cured … forever.

Candelaria Romero was born in 1973 in Argentina (San Miguel de Tucuman), of parents who were writers. In 1976 the family was forced to escape from her native land because of the dictatorship that had been installed there, and in 1979 they found political exile in Sweden. At the age of seven Candelaria published her first poem and joined the T.E.A. / Artists’ Workshop, (Taller de Esperimentaciòn Artìstica), where she took writing courses and at the same time began to study theatre. In 1991 she graduated from the Grammar School of Dramatic Arts in Stockholm. Since 1992 she has lived in Bergamo, where she works in the theatre and writes. She collaborates with the Italian branch of Amnesty International, taking all over Italy the plays she has written, directed and performed in: ‘Hijos’, on the problem of refugees, and ‘Bambole’, on violence against women. She acts for the Teatro Stabile of Abruzzo and under the direction of Claudio Di Scanno - Dramma Teatro (Popoli). She is co-founder of the online literary magazine "El Ghibli" – the literature of migration”: www.el-ghibli.provincia.bologna.it. She has published the book and CD ‘Raccontando...Cantando a mezz'aria, canti e racconti da tutto il mondo dedicati ai bambini’ with CTM (Cooperazione Terzo Mondo [Cooperation with the Third World]) and the ‘Cooperativa Amandla- Bottega del Commercio equo e Solidale’ (Amandla Cooperative – Fair Trade Shop) in Bergamo.