LITMIR.BIZ

      Once I start talking about my Popo, there’s no way to shut me up. I explained to Manuel that I owe my love for books and my rather impressive vocabulary to my Nini, but everything else I owe to my grandpa. My Nini forced me to study, saying “Spare the rod and spoil the child,” or something just as barbarous, but he turned learning into a game. One of those games consisted in opening the dictionary at random, closing your eyes, pointing to a word, and then guessing what it means. We also used to play stupid questions: Why does the rain fall down, Popo? Because if it fell up, your underwear would get wet, Maya. Why is glass transparent? To confuse the flies. Why are your hands black on top and pink underneath, Popo? Because the paint ran out. And we’d go on like that until my grandma ran out of patience and started howling.

      My Popo’s immense presence, with his sarcastic sense of humor, his infinite goodness, his innocence, his belly to rock me to sleep, and his tenderness, filled my childhood. He had a booming laugh that bubbled up from the bowels of the earth and shook him from head to toe. “Popo, swear to me that you’ll never ever die,” I used to demand at least once a week, and his reply never varied: “I swear I’ll always be with you.” He tried to come home early from the university to spend some time with me before going up to his desk and his big fat astronomy books and his star charts, preparing his classes, correcting proofs, researching, writing. His students and colleagues would visit and they’d shut themselves up to exchange splendid and improbable ideas until dawn, when my Nini would interrupt in her nightie with a big thermos of coffee. “Your aura’s getting dull, old man. Don’t forget you’ve got to teach at eight,” and she’d proceed to pour out coffee and push the visitors toward the door. The dominant color of my grandfather’s aura was violet, very appropriate, because it’s the color of sensibility, wisdom, intuition, psychic power, and vision of the future. These were the only times my Nini entered his office, whereas I had free access and even my own chair and a corner of the desk to do my homework on, to the rhythm of smooth jazz and the aroma of pipe tobacco.

      According to my Popo, the official education system stunts intellectual growth; teachers should be respected, but you don’t need to pay them much attention. He said that Leonardo da Vinci, Galileo, Einstein, and Darwin, just to mention four geniuses of Western culture, since there were lots more, like the Arab philosophers and mathematicians Avicenna and al-Khwarizmi, questioned the knowledge of their era. If they’d accepted the stupidities their elders taught them, they wouldn’t have invented or discovered anything. “Your granddaughter is no Avicenna, and if she doesn’t study she’ll have to earn her living flipping burgers,” my Nini answered back. But I had other plans; I wanted to be a pro soccer player, they earn millions. “They’re men, silly girl. Do you know any women who earn millions?” my grandma asserted and swiftly launched into a lecture on inequality that began in the field of feminism and veered into social justice, to conclude that I’d end up with hairy legs if I kept playing soccer. Later, as an aside, my grandpa would explain that genes and hormones cause hirsutism, not sports.

      For the first years of my life I slept with my grandparents, at the beginning in between the two of them and later in a sleeping bag we kept under the bed and the existence of which the three of us pretended to ignore. At night my Popo took me up to the tower to examine the infinite space strewn with lights, and I learned to distinguish between the blue approaching stars and the red ones moving away, the clusters of galaxies and the superclusters, even huger configurations, of which there are millions. He explained that the sun is a small star among the hundred million stars in the Milky Way and there were probably millions of other universes, aside from those we can only glimpse now. “So, in other words, Popo, we are less than the sigh of a louse,” was my logical conclusion. “Doesn’t it seem fantastic, Maya, that these little louse sighs can comprehend the wonder of the universe? An astronomer needs more poetic imagination than common sense, because the magnificent complexity of the universe cannot be measured or explained, but only intuited.” He talked to me about the gases and stellar dust that combine to form beautiful nebulae, true works of art, intricate brushstrokes of magnificent colors in the heavens. He told me how stars are born and die. We talked about black holes, about space and time, about how everything might have originated with the Big Bang, an indescribable explosion, and about the fundamental particles that formed the first protons and neutrons, and thus, in increasingly complex processes, the galaxies, planets, and then life were born. “We come from the stars,” he used to tell me. “That’s exactly what I always say,” my Nini added, thinking of horoscopes.

      After visiting the tower with its magical telescope and giving me my glass of milk with cinnamon and honey, an astronomer’s secret to help develop intuition, my grandpa made sure I brushed my teeth and then put me to bed. Then my Nini would come and tell me a different story every night, invented as she went along, stories I always tried to make last as long as possible, but the moment inevitably arrived when I’d be left alone, then I’d start counting sheep, alert to the swaying of the winged dragon above my head, the creaking of the floor, the footsteps and discreet murmurs of the invisible inhabitants of that haunted house. My struggle to overcome my fear was mere rhetoric, because as soon as my grandparents fell asleep, I’d slip into their room, feeling my way through the darkness, drag the sleeping bag into a corner, and lie down in peace. For years my grandparents went to hotels at indecent hours to make love secretly. Only now that I’m grown up do I realize the extent of the sacrifice they made for me.

      Manuel and I analyzed the cryptic message O’Kelly had sent. It was good news: the situation at home was normal, and my persecutors hadn’t shown any signs of life, although that didn’t mean they’d forgotten about me. The Irishman didn’t say that in so many words, as is logical, given the situation, but in a code similar to that used by the Japanese during World War II, which he’d taught me.