Читать книгу Butterfly Winter - W. Kinsella P. - Страница 18

I have more in common with the Wizard than I ever suspected. I often feel like the Wizard skulking in the underbrush witnessing events I was not meant to see. I am collecting material for my book on the history of Courteguay, incorporating my series of articles and features; to my knowledge no such compilation has ever been published. But I am coming to realize there is good reason for that because the history of Courteguay, such as it is, is so ephemeral as to crumble like pastry when put to any kind of test, to turn from a dew-studded spider web sparkling in the dawn to a useless daub of wet, black nothingness, only to reappear as a mysterious bright object visible only to certain birds …

As he grew older, Julio was able to remember the batters he had faced in the womb. He recalled them as being grey and spectral, faceless as fog.

When Julio began pitching in the Major Leagues, he treated all batters as if seen in the translucent memory of his mother’s womb. When reporters inquired as to how he pitched to a certain batter, he replied that he did not know one hitter from another. When the press asked Esteban what pitches he called, he would shrug and say, ‘Julio knows the pitches he should throw.’ When pressed further, to mollify the questioners he would admit, ‘by reading Julio’s mind, I always know what pitch is coming.’

Hector Pimental studied his children as his calculating heart expanded in the throes of love. The ultimate battery, he thought. The perfect pitcher, the immaculate catcher, not shaped by fathers and coaches and practice, but created by the universe. Hector Alvarez Pimental was poor enough to know that God was a rich man’s device for theoretically keeping the poor happy, but always for keeping them subservient.

As a father, Hector allowed his imagination to fall in on itself, bringing him visions and memories of events in other men’s lives, as well as his own, for which he would forever claim credit.

He saw hot air balloons, exotic as jungle birds, hissing like a dragon’s breath, gliding across the sky like wondrous, garish melons. Hector Alvarez Pimental would wake in the night yowling, sweat-soaked, his mind like a box of photographs scattered callously on a floor.

He saw the Wizard dressed in harlequin-bright silks, in a flying basket, swishing over San Barnabas, the presidential machete held high in triumph. He was witness to his son Julio standing like a general in front of a row of pregnant women, fresh as cherry blossoms. A contest of some kind? He was unsure.

He also dreamed that he saw Julio pitch the final delivery of a no-hit, no-run game, then be mobbed by players and fans alike. He saw Julio in a business suit, older than Hector Alvarez Pimental was now, the sleek black hair on each side of his head tinged with grey, being inducted into the American Baseball Hall of Fame.

But the visions were not all pleasant, for he saw his Fernandella in mourning. He saw her dressed in clingy black crepe like the elderly crones who creaked into what few priestless churches were left standing, on her knees clawing at an elaborate coffin. Hector Alvarez Pimental peered with trepidation over Fernandella’s shoulder, his chest tight, afraid he was about to see himself in the coffin. What he saw, though not his own body, was equally shocking, for there lay his perfect son, Esteban, sturdy arms folded in death, called away at what appeared to be the prime of his life.

Soon after the baseball-playing twins were born, a clear brook, four inches wide, with water the cold blue of ice, began flowing down hill, passing only yards from the tin-roofed shack. The stream plashed softly and the cool waters held a plentiful supply of iridescent parrot-fish, their larkspur-blue bodies darting like shadows. A guava tree in full fruition manifested itself among the bone-dry scrub on the hillside behind the shack where the Wizard had skulked. A dozen lemon-crested cockatoos appeared in a row on the tin roof and kept the area free of insects, while the yard filled with pheasants and game hens, tame and docile, anxious to lay down their lives to provide food for Fernandella and her family.

The babies slept at the opposite ends of their crib, each in their accustomed positions: Julio as if he had just delivered a sidearm curve, Esteban as if he had just caught one.

By six months of age the twins were playing catch with passion fruit. Julio was long and lean with an oval face and forehead, while Esteban was stocky and wide-faced with a low hairline and teacup ears.

‘If they are going to be famous, they will require some education,’ said Hector Alvarez Pimental.

‘They must be able to do sums,’ nodded Fernandella, who sometimes was drawn in by the bombast of the Wizard, and the furtiveness of her husband. She changed her tone and immediately became jocular.

‘They will need adding and subtraction in order to count all the guilermos they will earn. You might give them practice carrying sugarcane so they will bear up well under the weight of their wealth.’

The Wizard agreed to become tutor to the twins.

‘In America,’ the Wizard pronounced, calling up distant memories, like a long arm reaching deep into a rain barrel, ‘in America baseball players are more powerful than Bishops, more popular than the slyest politician, more revered than the greatest inventors.

‘Every October, the best player in the American League is carried to the President of the United States. There is a monstrous golden scale in the White House palace of the President. The player is seated on the scale, and his weight – he is allowed to eat a huge breakfast first – is matched in golden coins and priceless gems. When the player and his booty are equally balanced, the president takes off his diamond ring and tosses it in among the coins and gems, sending the delicate balance …’ At that point the Wizard lost his train of thought and had to change marvels.

‘At least so the tabloid press tells me. I am also told the water faucets in the hotels where the baseball players are accommodated, are made of gold,’ he went on.

The only faucet Hector and Fernandella had ever seen was the single water pipe in San Cristobel town square with its rough, hexagonal head that screwed up and down.

‘Tell us about the food,’ said Hector Alvarez Pimental.

‘Ah, the food. Everything tastes as you wish it to. It doesn’t matter what you eat, it tastes exactly like what you crave at that moment.’

‘My cornmeal would taste like chocolate?’ said Hector.

‘Indeed,’ said the Wizard. ‘It is the American way.’