Читать книгу Butterfly Winter - W. Kinsella P. - Страница 15

There is a certain heat in the city of San Cristobel. The daytime sky is always high and white, a carnivorous sun reflects blindingly off whitewashed adobe walls. Heat waves bounce from the walls and the red dust of the streets, until the air looks like it is filled with wavy spider webs.

The heat of San Cristobel saps the strength. Birds fall silent. Insects drone like overloaded aircraft. The heat of San Cristobel touches the mind. Eyes squinting against the fierce glare do not always see what is before them. The heat of San Cristobel is a magician pulling rabbits from hats, birds from concealed pockets, coins from ears. The temperament of the land is regulated by heat. Sudden and casual violence is a way of life, flaring like lightning, as quickly forgotten.

There are rumors in San Cristobel that Dr Lucius Noir while he was El Presidente of Courteguay could command lightning to strike his enemies.

I’ve also been told of a woman who sold lightning, claimed she had learned the trick in Haiti. For a fee she would sell a lightning bolt from the storm that perpetually dumped torrents of rain on San Cristobel every evening. Your personal lightning bolt would strike wherever the buyer desired. But, as with all magic, there were risks: if the mood of the people was bitter, sellers of lightning were sometimes stoned, other times tied to trees and burned alive.

It is said that nothing in San Cristobel has ever been exactly normal. At least not since baseball arrived, the accoutrements carried by a ragged, starved, fiery-eyed fanatic with a few chittering baseballs in a canvas bag, hanging from a bat. I have heard the Wizard’s own story, but there is great confusion over whether a man named Sandor Boatly ever existed let alone brought baseball to Courteguay.

Easier to remember is the Wizard descending from the sky in a multicolored balloon, distributing baseballs like party favors. In this part of Courteguay, time is measured since the arrival of baseball. It was not all that long ago, and one or more of the versions of Courteguayan History begins just before the first baseball season. Those who remember the event, or claim to remember, sometimes refer to it as the Teaching Time. After-history being almost as interesting as history itself, the stories told by liars are often more entertaining, contain more truth than those told by people who actually witnessed events.

From the research of the Gringo Journalist:

A FIRSTHAND ACCOUNT OF BASEBALL COMING TO COURTEGUAY

The Teaching Time, perhaps a year, perhaps considerably longer, depending on whose story you believe. It is speculated that Time in Courteguay began on the opening day of the Courteguayan National Baseball Association, at the moment when the Old Dictator, who may or may not have been Octavio Court (I have so far been unable to determine if there ever was an Octavio Court, so ephemeral is his memory, so steeped in fog the short history of Courteguay), threw out the first pitch at Jesus, Joseph and Mary Celestial Baseball Palace, in San Barnabas, inaugurating the four-team league encompassing two teams each from San Cristobel and the capital city, San Barnabas.

During the baseball season, a cloud in the early evening sky is an occasion. The temperament of the land is regulated by the heat. The season, which is theoretically year round, is curtailed during the rainy months by hurricanes and torrential downpours, but not shut down. I am told that there was a law enacted against rain falling before nine in the evening, (but who enacted it?) a time when all but the longest extra-inning game was in the records and the fans and players had safely returned to their homes.

Sandor Boatly, the Wizard, as well as some historical sources, claims that Boatly demonstrated baseball by first teaching a would-be player to hit, first grounders, then flies. Boatly then played at every position on the field, showing how each player should conduct himself. He even visited the priests enclosed behind chain-link fencing and before long, though there were not enough for a single team, let alone two, they laid out a diamond and enjoyed a rousing game of scrub.

It is said that years later, Dr Noir repeatedly mouthed the words, ‘There is no need for God in a warm climate,’ as he personally shot priest after priest where they were trapped inside their chain-link prisons.

As one must have in any odd or experimental project, Sandor Boatly had luck on his side. Just as the people in some societies have no resistance to alcohol, or religion, the people of Courteguay were seemingly born with no resistance to baseball, and it seems they were born with an innate knowledge of the game that only had to be scratched to bloom fully. Many of the young men were blessed with uncanny ability, the pitchers, with no training, able to throw 90 mph fastballs, the hitters, equally untrained, able to club five-hundred foot home runs, the infielders capable of performing contortions like gymnasts, able to retrieve sharply hit baseballs from the short outfield grass and throw accurately to first base, always a hairsbreadth ahead of the fleet runner.

But how much of this is true? The Wizard is at best a charlatan. Could he, as many claim, actually be Sandor Boatly? It seems unlikely, but just as I feel I have a handle on him, he does something that makes me want to believe everything he tells me. For instance, no matter how many times I change it back, when I next open my manuscript my description of the Wizard in the second sentence has been changed to charming charlatan.