• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1027 0

of whose dwellings the most graceful kites in Peru were flown, beautiful objects made of tissue paper that the good nuns cloistered in the convent of Las Descalzas ran to look at through their skylights when they soared elegantly into the air over Los Barrios Altos. In fact, the birth of the child who in years to come would raise the Peruvian waltz, the marinera, the polka to heights worthy of a kite, coincided with the baptism of one, a fiesta that brought the best guitarists, drummers, and singers of the neighborhood together in the Callejón de Santa Ana. On opening the little window of room H, where the birth took place, to announce that the population count of that corner of the city had increased, the midwife predicted: “If he survives, he’ll be a popular singer.”

But it appeared doubtful that he would survive: he weighed less than a kilo and his little legs were so shrunken that he would probably never walk. The father, Valentín Maravillas, who had spent his life trying to acclimatize devotion to El Señor de Lunpias in the district (he had founded the Brotherhood in his own room and—rash act, or clever trick to ensure himself a long old age—had sworn that before his death it would have more members than that of Our Lord of Miracles), proclaimed that his patron saint would carry off the extraordinary feat: he would save his son’s life and enable him to walk like a normal Christian. The mother, María Portal, a cook with magic fingers who had never had so much as a cold in her life, was so upset on seeing that the child she had so long dreamed of and prayed to God for was this creature (the larva of a hominid? a miserable fetus? ) that she threw her husband out, claiming that he was responsible and accusing him in front of all the neighbors of being only half a man because of his sanctimonious piety.

In any event, Crisanto Maravillas survived, and managed to learn to walk despite his ridiculous little legs. Without elegance, naturally, but, rather, like a puppet that jerks ahead step by step by making three separate motions—lifting the foot, bending the knee, lowering the foot—and so slowly that to those walking along with him it seemed as though they were following a religious procession making its way through congested narrow streets at a snail’s pace. But at least Crisanto could get around without crutches and by himself, his parents (now reconciled) said. Kneeling in the Church of Santa Ana, his eyes brimming with tears, Don Valentín thanked El Señor de Limpias, but María Portal said that the one and only worker of this miracle was the most famous Aesculapius of the city, whose specialty was cripples and who had turned countless paralytics into sprinters: Dr. Alberto de Quinteros. María had prepared memorable Peruvian banquets in his house and the savant had taught her the massages, exercises, and treatments required in order that Crisanto’s legs, despite being so spindly and rachitic, would be able to support him and get him about in this world.

It cannot be said that Crisanto Maravillas had a childhood like that of other children of the traditional quarter in which he had chanced to be born. Fortunately or unfortunately for him, his weak constitution did not allow him to share in any of those activities that strengthened the bodies and minds of the boys in the neighborhood : he did not play soccer with a ball made of rags, he was never able to box in a ring or have a fistfight on a street corner, he never participated in those pitched battles fought with slingshots, stones, or kicks that in the streets of old Lima brought urchins from the Plaza de Santa Ana face to face with gangs from El Chirimoyo, Cocharcas, Cinco Esquinas, El Cercado. He was not able to go with his pals from the little public school on the Plazuela de Santa Clara (where he learned to read) to steal fruit from the orchards of Cantogrande and Ñaña, or swim naked in the Rímac or ride burros bareback in the pasture lots of El Santoyo. So short that he was practically a dwarf, as skinny as a broom, with his father’s chocolate-colored skin and his