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A broken heart in a broken house

The house was for me, a summer-vacation fantasy since the legs of my

pants reached just above my knees and the sleeves of my shirt kept my

nose dry despite the admonitions of my mother of always to carry a clean

handkerchief, as well as a clean underwear in case something happen;

she will let it at that, without explaining why, and it as been that way since.Mothers and why kites wouldnt fly without a tail is to every child a mystery.

The house was placed in a paradise for a tree-climbing boy. Surrounded

by more trees than anybody could climb, the sweeties berries and

peaches a tongue ever tasted and near a river for do some fishing or dive

into the warm waters.

If you lied on the grass looking up at the sky, it will have offered a show of

thousand faces and fantastic forms by never stopping clouds.

And the sounds! Gentle winds whispering in your ears with an occasionally

murmur from a bee or the nearly inaudible clap-clap of butterflys wings

flying by or the soft rustling of tree leaves flirting with the sun.

No claxons blares from angry cabbies, no roaring busses black fuming

along, no trash cans been overturned by dogs or the old steel rumbling

every time the elevated train jolted the peace out of every tenement.

The sound of silence, the same silence your ear had, when resting in the

lap of your mother, slowly and peacefully you went to sleep.

The same torpor will overcome you once more, when the long strands of

grass warm the back of your head and the eyelids become heavy.

Then, life in thousand forms, colors and sounds will assault the senses.

A wild atmosphere, capable to prod into high gear the imagination and

fantasies of any kid, even those long intoxicated by city noises, gangs and

fumes.The house became a safe haven.

Perhaps it was the first place of intoxication rehab from civilization.

Forgotten were walls graffiti against the clean faces of trees, the broken

glass of windows (hooligans souvenirs) or the odd bicycle missing a

wheelor two, chained to a lamppost with a chain that could hold King-

Kong, but not a thieve.

Not a cop walking his beat and barking that it is forbidden to go on the

grass or lying on it impeding the free fall of pollution.

Going there, to the house, was like to go in remission from the city

sickness.

From the railroad station, a dirty road that pretended to be a roller-coast,

intruded into a forest of pine and birch trees to reach the house.

With maple, elms and oak trees scattered here and there.

Figs and berries trees were dense at the riverbanks.

The little road had so many bends around the hills that it could make you

dizzy.Its potholes vigorously shaking any doubts one could entertain at not been

traveling by the countryside.

Always, kind of suddenly, when turning left around an enormous boulder,

(we liked to call Goliaths head, dont ask me why?),covered with moss

and wild flowers, the place exploded into view below the bend and fifty

yards down as if a rainbow had broken in million pieces and stained the

forest, then, you were descending fast in a long curve following the hills

side.

There would be birds chirping at a squirrel, busy trying to make a burrow

from a vacated woodpecker dueling.

Delicate ballet of butterflies, giving a physical structure to the summer

breeze, and in the houses front yard, a couple of young dogs, wildly

chasing their tails in a show of happy welcome, will get forever printed in

your memory.

The time was always when summer pushed spring away, like a spoiled

child will do, pushing away intruders from his toys.

Through the trees branches, from afar, will come the sound of church bells

calling the faithful on Sunday's morning, disturbing the sleep of some of

the no so faithful, trying to hide under the pillow a head paying for a wet

and late Saturday.

Children didnt care very much for the Sunday Service, but it paid to be adevotee for Grandma if one wished to deep his toes in the river later on.

In summertime, noon was marked by he sun pricking our faces with

golden needles and spotlighting the front of the house, with a cat dozing

somewhere out of the reach from the playful puppy dogs.

Summer was like a woolly blanket protecting the house from the cool

shadows of the surrounding forest.

The House was built in a sunny nook. An elongated pavilion forked at both

ends, two parallel wings formed a wide U, which embraced a well-kept

"Grannys garden", with flowers beds and vegetables patches blushing

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with ripe tomatoes and crimson roses.

The perfume was rich and overwhelming.

The garden was crisscrossed with red gravel paths ending in the center of

the yard by a round stonewalled well, fitted with a black wrought-iron arch

and a white enameled bucket on a rope.

The water was always deliciously cold.

We, the children, believed that it was a wishing well, and throwing pennieswe waited until a "plop!" reassured us that our wish was received and paid

for.

At the wells bottom, if we looked hard, we could see the center of the

earth.

Then, a war came and I couldn't return, until now.

As before, the trip up to the house filled me with a kind of expectancy that

cut short your breath and give a funny feeling in the pitch of the stomach.

The approach was by the usual twisted and jumping way until the big rock,

Goliaths head, came into view.

The boulder was naked of moss.

In a way it looked extremely old, wasted away, blackened by fire, with a

fresh deep furrow, like the one left by pulling out the Excalibur sword from

its granite scabbard, but this one made by anger.

Turning left, we kind of stopped. I saw the house, down, nestled among

the old trees bearing the scars of man's senseless atrocity.

The house was badly damaged by war and weather ravages.

It was like an abandoned vessel, half destroyed by many battles, the other

half destroyed by storms, now in the middle of a quiet ocean, without

sounds, movements or life. It was just a "something" which once containedhappiness, sorrows, triumphs, defeat and hope.

This morning, only its pathetic cracked shell was left standing.

Descending, my eyes couldnt keepaway from the many windows with

missing frames, like open mouths singing the last deep note of some

pathetic chorus.

No puppy dogs chasing its tails in exited welcome.

We parked besides a bomb crater filled with murky and smelly water.

Going through the shrubbery and into the house I missed the alarmed

barking of the dogs and the figure of Grandma, with a flapping apron,

hurrying from the kitchen to welcome me.

The hall facing the garden had no windows. Only gaping holes of raged

glass, like frozen fingers, was left of the multicolored stained-glass-roses,

delicately crafted by a now long forgotten ancestor.

The walls were more than naked by the absence of family pictures.

Nothing was left untouched.

What the looters weren't able to carry they had smashed. But they couldn'tdelete all, because the scattered broken pieces of Grandmas old rocking

chair were part of memories, which no bullet could kill or erase.

Moving from room to room I saw that part of the masonry was knocked

inside, strewing gray dust over everything, like a shroud, mercifully

covering all, with its gray color of sadness.

On what was left of the doorframe of what used to be my room, among

new scars was the first notch Grandpa carved when I was 31 inches tall.

In another room, under a broken chair was a little yellow Teddy bear,

which had bleed sawdust from a gash along its side.

It was like a tiny small child with its raised arms begging for help.

The silence around was so total that I believed I could have heard the

whispers of butterflies wings, but there was none.

In the grand hall, someone afraid of words had burned all the books, or

tried to, in the fireplace. The books were so many, that they had spilled

into the room from a literary volcano spewing lava made of burning letters.

Against the wall near of what once was a grand window were the rest of

the piano, the one that gave us happy-birthdays-to-you, Christmas carols

and the ever-present For Elise again and again.

From generations it had shed f lakes of varnish and black paint, showing

wear and tear after so many hands loved Beethoven and maltreatedRachmaninoff.

I remember its ivory keys being yellow, some with small holes, like teeths

ravaged with caries.

But it sounded well, at least to us, because it was a happy instrument.

Then, some soldier was mad at Mozart or had a bad memory from his

dentist, because he tried to smash every key with the fury of a patient after

receiving the doctors bill.

The piano was totally smashed, in its place, remained the echoes of its

voice.

Not even burglars leave behind a broken room.

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I saw steel splinters in the ceiling, the floor and the battered furniture; a

chair by a corner was left halting on one leg.

I could feel the pain inside the rooms, and reverberating from the walls

long gone distraught voices asking "why?

Outside, in what was left of the garden, an indefinable assortment of

brown stems was trying not to bend to the indignity. A brown blotch of

dead plants, colored by a tired and sad God, have no chance to showwhat they were like, with competing hues to make each morning more

welcomed to a house smelling of freshly baked bread.

Intruders boots had walked there, ignoring the red gravel pathways,

trampling down Grandmas tomatoes plants and perhaps getting a gash

from a roses torn revenge.

I left by the double heavy doors that opened to the marbled floor of what

were the Grand-hall, where boys learned how to bow and girls how to

curtsy in well mannered greeting to visiting strangers.

It wasnt a building, itnever was. It was the home of forgotten generations,

which planted trees and had their portraits painted and hanging in the

walls, it was the home of my grandparents childhood.

It was my home away from home.

From far away I could hear a chapels littlebell calling telling of mourners.

Now, the ruin of a house with much less roof despite the trees that offered

their wood protecting this broken box, which once contained all my

childhood treasures.

Suddenly, I looked around and noticed that I was part of a landscape

devoid of life, and understood why my father had so much respect for

silence. Because it mean so many things to so many people; a moment of

meditation, a short pause between the words I love you and a kiss; the

end of the world when you cried for help and nobody came.Silence is the absence of birds, squirrels, butterflies, the yappy of puppy

dogs.

Silence is the muteness of pianos in New Years Eve.

Silence is the void of an empty crib.

Silence is what comes after war.

In the middle of the yard, in front of the main entrance, the water well was

still there, but with half of the circular stonewall blown away.

The wrought-iron arch was twisted beyond recognition with a shredded

stump of rope waving now and then to a gust of wind.

The well was in a pitiful state to offer water or to grant the smallest of the

wishes.

I didn't toss a penny and make a wish as I went by, resisting the impulse to

look down the well and see if the center of the earth was still there.