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By Root 584 0

Zigzags, spirals, crosses. And it’s true that forms produce a sound, a sound that’s already inside you, lying in wait, in the gorge of your throat. I realised this the first time I drew a large triangle. A large triangle demands the sound of a large triangle. In this way, my voice followed the line drawn by my hand. So that letters, when they arrived, were also forms of nature, as t is the mast of a boat and l a cypress. O can be lots of things. An o can be the sun or moon. We had a washerwoman called O. In the calendar of saints, there was Our Lady of Expectation, Mary of the O. I used to laugh when my mother saw her in the distance and exclaimed, ‘Here comes Our Lady of Expectation!’ She was easy to spot since she carried a huge O on top of her head. An O full of clothes. When she arrived, her face was also a smiley O, with two clear eyes, so that her presence recalled the sun and circles of water.

‘Hello, O.’

O, the washerwoman, was one of the women Chelo painted. A series that seemed unending, and in fact was, which she called Women Carrying Things on Top of Their Heads.

O and Harmony

He wasn’t a baby any more. When he was five or six, he wet the bed. Not before. It was around that time. It wasn’t something to shout about. You didn’t come for the clothes, only to be told, ‘I’m afraid the boy’s wet the sheets, he can’t control himself.’ The thing is clothes tell their own stories, like a book. Not that I go about repeating what they say. It’s our secret. The clothes’ and ours. Which is why the bit I like most about washing is laying the clothes in the sun. The point when the sun puts colour back in the clothes and things, the way it shines you’d think you washed the whole place. Puts colour back. In clothes, right, but also in the landscape, in objects, in people’s expressions. So you’re the one who puts black and canary yellow in ears of maize and the football shirts of Elviña Wanderers. Purple in heather. We sometimes think of happiness as being impossible. Between you and me, the closest thing to an unhappy person is someone who’s happy. I’ve heard Brevo, not a bright lad, I’ve heard Brevo called happy and unhappy. What does it matter? The children just call him stupid. Children. Who’d believe it? I’m not surprised some people get stuck on words. Some words are like insects, they change, they seem one thing and in fact they’re another. Polka reckons we’ve got it wrong. Words did not come into being to name things. Words existed first and things came later. So someone said ‘centipede’ and out came the insect. I know it doesn’t have a hundred feet. It’s the intention that counts. Whoever invents the word sets the trap. I wouldn’t want to think of a name for something bad. Imagine you say it and it works. You have to watch what you say. Or not. Maybe the boy, the painter and judge’s boy, maybe he wanted to take the words inside and they turned into a ball, a plug. Because words are like crumbs. When I’m alone with my thoughts, sitting quietly at the table, my fingers make beads with the breadcrumbs on the oilskin tablecloth. By the time you realise, snap out of it, those spherical forms, polished like stars, are watching you. I don’t know about you, but what I do is eat them, the words of bread, of silence, very slowly so as not to choke. Lucky for me I had Polka. Papa. Had it not been for him, I don’t think I’d have got off the ground. I’d be happy. Unhappy. Dumb. I’d still wet the bed. I’ll have to take him to see the boy, Gabriel, one of these days. I bet he’ll know what to do. The painter smiles more than she talks. Not that I like to gossip. About other people. You won’t hear me saying, ‘This boy wets his bed!’ I suppose this business of wetting the bed, this incontinence, has something to do with his stutter. His mother told me it was a nervous thing, some fear inside his head. Which got worse when he started speaking. Stuttering. The body’s full of channels and sluice-gates, I’m well aware of that. What I can’t handle is laughter. If I burst out laughing and can’t stop myself, however tight I squeeze