Peruvian story :The gentleman Carmelo

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"A good book is not one that thinks for you, but one that makes you think." James McCosh

The gentleman Carmelo

 

Abraham Valdelomar

One day, after breakfast, when the sun began to warm, we saw, from

the fence, at the bottom of the square, a horseman in a beautiful horse of passage, handkerchief  neck that waved the wind, of silky black hair, and swollen

Saddlebag, which spurs in the direction of the house. We recognize him.

 It was the brother greater than, in recent years, returned.

 We went out crashing screaming:  -Robert! Robert!

The traveler entered the paved courtyard where the Florbo and the bell ranged in the columns like veins in one arm, and descended in all of us. How I know

my mother rejoiced! Touch him   caressed his toasted skin, found it old, sad,

thin. With his clothes still powdered, Roberto walked through the rooms surrounded by

us .  He went to his room, went to the dining room, saw the objects that had been purchased during his absence and arrived at the garden:

- And the castor? - said:

He sought, saddened, that tree whose seed he sowed before leaving.

We laugh all:  - Under the castor are you! ...

The tree had grown and rocked harmoniously with the sea breeze.

 He touched him,  

My brother, he gently wiped the leaves that brushed his face and then we went back to the

dining room. On the table was the overflowing saddlebag.  He took out, one by one, the objects that  he brought and delivered them to each one of us. What great things!

Where there was  traveled! Fresh and white cheeses, wrapped around the waist with barley straw, from the  Quebrada de Humay; panella ( made with coconuts, nuts, peanuts and almonds; Beans  strained in their round zucchini, painted on top with a rectangle of their own  sweet, which indicated the cover, of Chincha Baja; biscuits, in their paper boxes,  egg yolk and potato flour, light, fluffy, yellow and sweet;  "stone of Huamanga" carved in the mountain fair; white manjar boxes, tiles  stuffed, and a rooster lock with white and red colors. We all received the gift, and he was saying when delivered:

-For Mom... for Rosa... For Jesus...For Hector...

- And for dad? -we questioned him, when he finished: and for dad?  said nothing !!

!How? Nothing for daddy?

 "The beloved smiled, called the servant and said: -" The Carmel "!

A little later he returned with a cage and took out a rooster, who freed, stretched his tired  members, he waved his wings and sang loudly: -Cocorocóooo! ...

-To Dad! said my brother.

So this intimate friend of our past childhood came into our house, to whom

story worthy of story, whose memory still remains in our home as a

shadow winged and sad: the Knight Carmelo.

II

It dawned, in Pisco, happily. To the agony of the nocturnal shadows, in the freshness

of dawn, in the radiant awakening of the day, we felt the steps of my mother in the

dining room, preparing coffee for dad. He was going to the office. She woke up to

the maid squeaked the door of the street with its moldy hinges; I heard the song of the rooster  that it was answered at intervals by all those in the neighborhood; felt the noise of the sea,  freshness of the morning, the healthy joy of life. Then my mother came to

we were made to pray, kneeling on the bed with our white shirts

sleep; then come to us, and at the end of our playing, the voice of the

baker. He arrived at the door and greeted. He was an old sweet and good, and he

many years, according to my mother, who arrived every day, at the same time, with the

hot and appetizing bread, mounted on his donkey, behind the two leather "capachos",

full of all kinds of bread: loaves, French bread, butter bread, donuts ...

Mother chose the one we had to take and my sister Jesus received it in the basket.

The old man left, and we, leaving the provision on the dining room table,

covered with shiny rubber, we were going to feed the animals. We picked the ears

of tight teeth, we threw them in a basket and entered the corral where the

animals surrounded us. The pigeons flew, the chickens pecked at the grain, and

among them, rabbits scuttled. After their frugal meal, they made a group

around us. The goat came to us, scrubbing his head in our

legs; the chicks chirped; timidly the white rabbits came with their long

her ears, her round bright eyes and her presumptuous girl's mouth; The ducklings, just

"removed", yellow as the egg yolk, climbed in a panto water, sang,

from his corner, entered, the Carmel; and the turkey, always proud, ravenous and

unfriendly, he did for us, while the ducks, swaying like fat owners

they made, in a low voice, comments about the unkind attitude of the petulante.

 That day,  while we contemplated the discreet animals, El Pelado escaped from the corral, a  cock without feathers, who looked like one of those young people of seventeen hoops, skinny and

sweet tooth But El Pelado was more quarrelsome and scandalous, and that day,

while peace was in the corral and the others ate the modest grain, he, after

best food, had perched on the dining table and broken several pieces of

our limited tableware.

 At lunch I tried to suppress it, and, when my father knew

his misdeeds, he said slowly:

-We'll eat it on Sunday ...

Defended it my third brother, Anfiloquio, his possessor, supplicant and tearful said :

It was a rooster that would make splendid offspring. He added that since Carmel had arrived

all looked badly at Pelado, who used to be the hope of the corral and the only one who

it maintained the aristocracy of the hobby and the fine blood.

- How do not kill, he said in his defense of the cock - the ducks that do nothing but

dirty the water, not the kid that crushed a chicken the other day, nor the pig that everything  muddy and only knows how to eat and scream, or pigeons that bring bad luck. ..? It was adduced  reasons The kid was a beautiful animal, soft skin, cheerful, friendly, restless, whose

 -Nothing horns just pointed; besides, it was not proven that the chicken had died.

The chubby pig had been raised at home since childhood, and the pigeons, with their

fan wings, they were the white note, they climbed to the cornice to converse in a low voice,

they made their nests with loving care and took the corn out of the crop to give it to their

chicks . Poor Pelado was condemned. My brothers asked that he be forgiven, but the

breakages were valuable and the unhappy had only one lawyer, my brother and his lord, of little  influence.

Seeing his defense lost and the audience being at the end, they were going to split the watermelon .

He inclined his head. Two thick tears fell on the plate, like a sacrifice, a

sob drowned in his throat. We all shut up. My mother got up, approached the

boy, he kissed him on the forehead, and said:

-Do not Cry; we will not eat it...

III

Who leaves Pisco, from the square without a name, salty and calm, next to the Station

and it returns by the street of the Castle that towards the south lengthens, it finds, when finishing a  plazuela, where they burned Judas Easter Sunday of Resurrection, desolate

place in whose sand the wild mallows are wild at intervals. Next to the west, in

instead of houses, the sea extends its green mantle, whose foam weaves complicated lace

kiss the wet shore.

The port ends there and, continuing south, it goes along a narrow and sandy path,

having to the right hand the sea and to the left hand very narrow belt, now fertile, now sterile,

but always steep, behind which, to the east, extends the desert whose entrance

they watch, from place to place, as sentinels, the occasional palm tree, some

wiry and dwarf fig tree and the "toñuces" always fuzzy and fragile. Wave on the ground

the "grass of the scorpion", green a at birth, brittle in its best days, and in the

old age, red like ox blood. In the depths of the desert, as if they feared their

silent aridity, palm trees join in small groups, as do the

pilgrims crossing it and, faced with danger, men.

Following the path, you will see yourself on the coast, in the blurred and vibrant marine vagueness,

San Andres de los Pescadores (fishermen) , the village of simple people, who raise their huts between  the rumbling shore and the barren desert. There the palms multiply and the fig trees give  shadow to the homes so placid and fresh, it seems that they were not cursed of the good  God, or that his curse had expired - that enough punishment he received the one he held  in its branches to the traitor- and all its flowers bear fruit that when ripe ripen.

In such a pilgrim village, on a whimsical level, the huts of frail and  light mat, next to the palm trees that guard the door. Clean and bright, resting in  the soft sand its wide hips, the fisherman boat sleeps at the door, with its sails

folded, their oars lying like quiet resting arms, among which

lies with its silent and symbolic majesty the graceful rudder, the head that "shrinks" the water  sea ​​outside and ropes twisted like snakes that sleep. It covers, piously, the

small ship, like a white mantilla(cloth cloth cover), the net fisherwoman surrounded by lightweight caireles  cork.

In the midday hours, when the air in the shade invites you to sleep, next to the ship

the fisherman grandpa weaves the net; his rough fingers knot the linen that has to entangle  surprised fish; the grandmother scrapes the silver spine of

they jump in the sun, like sparks, the scales, and the dog sniffs at those who the vespers brought the ship; the spoils. Next, in  the pen that encloses huge whale bones, the naked children climb on the  pensive ass, or toast to the sun on the shore; while, under the ramada,  (garden cover) the strongest   polish the oar, the fresh and agile wench draws water from the well and the elated gulls.

They go through the humble mansion giving strange cries.

The man of the sea sleeps beside the boat, the strong young man intoxicated by the breeze  hot and by the warm emanation of the sand, his sweet sire of just, with the trousers

short, the muscular calves crossed in whose hard feet of round fingers,

lose, like scales, the tiny nails, the face toasted by the air and the sun, the mouth

half-open that lets pass the calm breathing, and the strong bare chest that

rises rhythmically, with the rhythm of Life, the most harmonious that God has placed

about the world.

People do not pass through the streets at noon and nothing disturbs peace in that village,  whose inhabitants are no more numerous than the dates of their twenty palms. Church.  

In my time, the people of San Andrés had been alive. On Sundays, at dawn,

they went to the port, with the juices loaded with fresh corvinas and then, in the chapel,

they fulfilled God. Good people, sweet faces, quiet look, mild and

simple, Indians of the purest strain, remote descendants and certain of the children of the  sun, they crossed on foot all the roads, as in the Happy Age delinque, crossed in

immense caravan the coast to reach the temple and oracle of the good Pachacamac, with the

offering in the saddlebag, the question in memory and Faith in the simple spirit.

Never a quarrel stained his clear annals; moral and austere, lips of husband

they always kissed wife's lips; and love, inexhaustible source of hatreds and curses,

he was among them, as normal and peaceful as any of his wells. From strong parents,

they were born, without midwives, beauties boys, in whose members the skin did

thick wrinkles; marine air swelled his lungs, and grew on the sand

heated, under the sun, until they learned to throw themselves into the sea and

Picket boats that, capsizing in the waves, taught them to watch the navy fury.

, muscular, innocent and good, spent their youth until the priest of

Pisco united the couples that formed a new nest, bought a donkey and launched

to happiness, while the centenarian turtles of the paternal home saw themselves unwinding,  impassive, hours-philosophical, tired and pessimistic, looking with tearful eyes  from the beach, the sea, which they never tried to return to- and the twilight of each day,  they cried, but when the sun sank, they put their heads under the polyhedral shell and left  

spend their lives full of experience, without Faith, always lamenting the perennial evil, but  inactive, immobile, infertile, and alone.

IV

Slender, lean, muscular and austere, his sharp red head was that of a haughty hidalgo,

Gentlemanly, righteous and prudent. Red galls, thin ridge of color,

eyes alive and round, fierce and forgiving gaze, steely sharp peak. The line made

an arc of iridescent feathers, her carmel-colored body moving forward in the audacious chest and

hard. The strong legs that Muslim and sharp stakes defended, covered with

scales, they looked like those of an armed medioeval knight.

One afternoon, my father, after lunch, gave us the news. I had accepted one

bet for the rooster play of San Andrés on July 28. I could not help it.

He had been told that Carmel, whose prestige was greater than that of the mayor, was not a rooster of race. My father was upset. They changed phrases and bets and accepted. Within  one month I would meet Carmelo with the Ajiseco from another fan, famous rooster winner,  like ours, in many singular issues.

.We received the news with  deep pain The Carmel would go to a fight and fight to the death, hand to hand, with  a stronger and younger cock.

He had been home for three years, he had  aged while we grew up.

 Why the cruelty of making him fight? ...

The terrible day arrived. Everyone at home was sad. A man had come six days

followed to prepare Carmel. We were not allowed to see it anymore.

 On the 28th of

July, in the afternoon, the preparer came and from a box full of cottons he took out a half  Steel moon with small straps: it was the knife, the sword of the soldier.

The  man cleaned it, testing it on the nail, in front of my father. After a few minutes, in

silence, with a tragic calm, they took out the rooster that the man carried in his arms

as a child. A servant carried the blade and my two brothers accompanied him.

- What cruelty! said my mother.

My sisters were crying, and the youngest, Jesus, told me in secret, before leaving:

-Hey, go with him ... Take care ... iPobrecito! ... (poor guy).

He put his hand to his eyes, burst into tears and I rushed out, and I had to run

a few blocks to reach them.

We arrived in San Andrés. The town was partying. Peruvian flags waved over

the houses for the day of the Fatherland, which they knew how to celebrate with a great play of roosters  the one that used to go all the landowners and rich men of the valley.

 In ventorrillos, to whose

entrance there were willow arches wrapped in hangings, and from which hung joyfully

glass candlesticks, they sold chicha  (ferment drink) de bonito, (fish) butifarras, (sandwish) fresh fish roasted in  embers and drowned in onions and vinegar.

 The people invaded them, talkative and  dressed in his best suits.

The men of the sea wore new T-shirts of  horizontal red and white stripes, rush hats, espadrilles and handkerchiefs  knotted around the neck.

We are heading to "the field". A leafy fig tree gave access to the circus, under its

branches raised. My father, surrounded by some friends, settled down. In front was the

judge and on his right the owner of the paladin Ajiseco.

 A bell rang, they settled down  the people and the party began.

 Two men came out in opposite directions, carrying each  one a rooster.

 They threw them into the ring with a singular gesture. The blades shone,

The adversaries looked at each other, two cocks of weak build, and one of them sang.

Choleric responded the other by going to the circus; they stared at each other; they lengthened

Necks, bristling feathers, and rushed. There was a noise of wings, feathers that flew,

shouts of crowd and, to the few seconds of panting fight, one of them fell. its

little sharp and red head kissed the ground, and the judge's voice: -

He has buried the peak, gentlemen!

The victor blew the wings. He applauded the enraged crowd, and both cocks bleeding,

They were taken out of the ring. The first day  fight was over. Now came the

ours: the Knight Carmelo. A buzz of expectation vibrated in the circus:

- The Ajiseco and Carmelo!

- One hundred betting suns! ...

The judge's bell rang and I began to tremble. In the midst of general expectation,

The two men came out, each with his rooster. There was a deep silence and they let go

to the rivals. Our Carmel ally of the other was an old and infirm rooster; everyone

They bet the enemy, as an omen that our rooster was going to die. I do not miss

amateur who announced the triumph of Carmel, but most of the bets

favored the adversary. Once in front of the enemy, Carmel began to peck, waved

the wings and sang loudly. The other, who really did not look like a fine rooster

distinguished blood and lineage, he did things as smug as human: he looked with

disrespect to our cock and he walked like owner of the field.

The  spirits of the adversaries, they reached the center and lengthened their bristling necks, touching  the peaks without losing ground. The Ajiseco made the first attack; the fight began; the  people silently witnessed the singular battle and I begged the Virgin to take  with good to our old champion

He beat himself with all the airs of an expert fighter, accustomed to random arts
from the war. He took care to put the armed legs in the enemy chest, never pitched his
adversary - that such thing is cowardice - while this one, brave and foolish, everything wanted do it with flapping and forceful blows. Panting, they stopped for a second:
 A trickle of blood ran down the leg of Carmel. He was hurt, but he seemed not to notice his pain. New bets were crossed in favor of the Ajiseco and the people congratulated the possessor of the dwindling one.
In their new meeting, the Carmel sang, remembered their times and rushed with such
fury that dispelled the other with a single impulse. This one was raised and the fight was cruel and indecisive. Finally, a serious wound caused Carmelo to fall, panting ... "Bravo!"
Bravo the Ajiseco! - shouted his supporters, believing the test won.
But the judge, attentive to all the details of the fight and with agreement of canons said:
"He has not buried the peak yet, gentlemen!"
Indeed, Carmel was incorporated. His enemy, as if to humiliate him, approached him,
without hurting her He was born then, in the midst of the pain of the fall, all the courage of the
"Caucato" roosters. Incorporated the Carmel, like a wounded soldier, rushed
front and final on his rival, with a thrust that left him dead on the site.
 It was then that the Carmel that was bleeding, was dropped, after the Ajiseco had buried the peak. The play was won and an incessant clamor rose on the court. They congratulated my father for the triumph, and, as that was the most interesting play, they left the circus, while an enthusiastic shout resounded:
- Long live Carmel!
I and my brothers received it and we drove it home, crossing the shore of the
mar the heavy road and blowing brandy under the wings of the winner
dying
V

Two days the rooster was subjected to all kinds of care. My sister Jesus and I
we gave corn, we put it in the peak; but the poor thing could not eat it or
get up A great sadness reigned in the house. That second day, after the
school, when it was me and my sister to see it, we found it so decayed that
Made someone cry. We gave him water with our hands, we caressed him, we put red pomegranate grains in his beak.

Soon the rooster got up. It was late afternoon and, through the window of the room where I was
The bloody light of twilight entered. He went to the window, looked at the light, waved
weakly wings and was long in the contemplation of heaven.
 Then he nervously opened his golden wings, and lord and sang.
 He backed away a few steps, tilted the iridescent neck over the
chest, he trembled, he collapsed, and stretched out his feeble scaly feet and, looking at us,
Looking at us loving, he expired peacefully.
We start crying. We went looking for my mother, and we did not see him anymore. Shady was the
food that night. My mother did not say a single word and, in the yellowish light of the
We all looked at each other in silence. The next day, at dawn, in the agony of
the night shadows, his cheerful song was not heard.
That is how the ignored hero passed through the world, that dear friend of our childhood:
The Knight Carmelo. flower and cream of paladins and last scion of those roosters
blood and race, whose unanimous prestige was pride, for many years, of all the green and
Fecund Valley of Caucato.

The author.

Abraham Valdelomar was born in Ica, Peru, on April 27, 1888. He started his studies in Pisco, in 1900, and finished them in Lima, in 1904. In 1905, he enrolled at San Marcos Major University but his interest in becoming a illustrator for different magazines (among others Aplausos y silbidos, Monos y monadas, Actualities) postponed his academic plans. He published his first poems in the Contemporaneous magazine, in 1909.

In 1912 he joined the presidential campaign of Guillermo Billinghurst, who, after being elected, named Valdelomar as a diplomatic in Italy in may 1913. During his stay in Rome he wrote a series of journalistic articles called Chronics de Roma, published by the newspapers The  Nation National, both based in Lima. During 1914, still living in Europe, the author took part in a short story contest organized by La Nation (The Nation) with his tale “El Caballero Carmelo”, which won the first prize.

After his comeback to Peru in 1915, he worked as a journalist for the newspaper La Prensa and in 1916 founded his own magazine, Colónida, with the main objective of represent the new generation of Peruvian writers. With this publication Valdelomar imposed himself the challenge of leaving a renewed way of making autonomous literature in his country for the future, far away from European models. Despite having released only four issues, the magazine had a great impact on the national cultural circle, which increased author's influence far beyond his own literary work.

In 1918 some of his most well-known short stories were published under the name of

El Caballero Carmelo. That year he quitted his job as an editor at La Prensa and was elected to the Center Regional Congress to represent his hometown. On November 1, 1919 Valdelomar had an accident which broke his spine and died a few days later. The wake and burial took place in Lima. The short-tales book Los del sol and the patriotic collection of poems titled Triptych heroic were published posthumously in 1921.

Even with the brevity of his life and work, Valdelomar has an essential place in Peruvian literature due to the broad range of genres he developed. His work, which covered chronic, essay, drama, novel, short story and poetry, is found to be quite relevant as it is seen as a key moment of Latin American modern writing, especially because of the close exam of habits in his books, through which he tried to vindicate rural-indigenous Peruvian culture from the early 20th century.

With affection,
Ruben