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By Root 1006 0

he suffered from a chronic lack of appetite, and if María Portal, with her military determination, had not been around to stuff him full of food, the young bard would have wasted away to nothing. Yet this frail creature did not know the meaning of the word “fatigue” when it came to music. The guitarists of the neighborhood would collapse on the floor, exhausted, after playing and singing for hours and hours, get cramps in their fingers, and become so hoarse they might have been mistaken for mutes, but the cripple would remain seated on a little chair with a straw bottom (little Japanese feet never quite touching the floor, tiny tireless fingers), drawing exquisite harmonies from the strings and singing as though the fiesta had just begun. He did not have a powerful voice; he would have been unable to emulate the prodigious feat of the celebrated Ezequiel Delfín, who, on singing certain waltzes in the key of G, shattered the windowpanes opposite him. But the lack of strength of his voice was compensated by his faultless intonation, his maniacal perfectionism, his richness of shading that never slighted or botched a note.

Nonetheless, it was his talents as a composer rather than as an interpreter that were to make him famous. The fact that the young cripple of Los Barrios Altos knew how to compose Peruvian music as well as play it and sing it came to light one Saturday night during a tumultuous fiesta that filled the Callejón de Santa Ana with colored streamers, noisemakers, and confetti as the whole neighborhood celebrated the cook’s saint’s day. At midnight the musicians surprised the revelers by playing a polka that no one had ever heard before, with words in the form of a clever dialogue:

¿Cómo?

Con amor, con amor, con amor

¿Qué haces?

Llevo una flor, una flor, una flor

¿Donde?

En el ojal, en el ojal, en el ojal

¿A quién?

A María Portal, María Portal, María Portal…*

The catchy rhythm made all those present feel an irresistible urge to dance, hop, skip, and the words amused and touched them. Everyone was consumed with curiosity: who had composed the polka? The musicians turned their heads and indicated that it was Crisanto Maravillas, who (modesty of the truly great) lowered his eyes. María Portal smothered him with kisses, Brother Valentín wiped away a tear, and the entire neighborhood rewarded the new composer with an ovation. In the city of La Perricholi, a creative artist had been born.

Crisanto Maravillas’s career (if this pedestrian athletic term is the proper one to describe a mission bearing the stamp of—the divine afflatus?) was meteoric. Within the space of a few months, his songs were known all over Lima, and within a few years they had entered the memory and the heart of all Peru. He was not yet twenty when Abels and Cains alike conceded that he was the most beloved composer in the country. His waltzes enlivened the fiestas of the rich, were danced at the feasts of the middle class, and were the staple fare of the poor. The orchestras of the capital vied with each other as intrepreters of his music, and there was not a man or woman who, on deciding to embark upon the arduous career of a professional singer, did not include in his or her repertory the marvels of Maravillas. His compositions came out on records and circulated in song sheets, and in view of his vast following, radio programs and magazines were obliged to feature him regularly. In the popular imagination, in the gossip that made the rounds, the crippled composer of Los Barrios Altos became a legendary figure.

Fame and popularity did not turn the head of the unpretentious youngster, who greeted this adulation with a swanlike indifference. He left high school a year before graduating, in order to devote himself to his art. With the gratuities pressed on him for playing at fiestas, giving serenades, or composing acrostics, he was able to buy himself a guitar. The day it became his he was happy: he had found a confidant for his troubles, a companion for his loneliness, and a voice for his inspiration.

He did not know