The Wild Book

Contents

The Separation

The Vial of Iron

Uncle Tito

Books that Change Their Location

Remedies from the Pharmacy

Control Your Power

The Story a Book Tells Is Not Always the Same

The Shadow Books

The Wild Book

The Story Is Erased

An Enemy

The Pirate Book

The Prince Makes the Rules

Tito Cooks Novels

Catalina in the Library

Time and Cookies

Motors that Make no Noise

A Zigzag Radiation

The Shadow Club

Juicier Bait

What Starts When Something Ends

‌

The Separation

I’m going to describe what happened when I was thirteen. It’s something I haven’t been able to forget, as if the story had me by the throat. It might sound strange, but I can feel the hands of this story upon me, a sensation that’s so specific I even know the hands are wearing gloves.

So long as the story is a secret, I am its prisoner. Now that I begin to write it, I feel a slight sensation of relief. The hands of this story are still on me, but one finger has loosened, like a promise that when I have finished I shall be free.

Everything began with the smell of mashed potatoes. My mother cooked mashed potatoes when she had something to complain about or was in a bad mood. She smashed the potatoes with more force than was necessary, with real fury. That helped her to relax. I’ve always liked mashed potatoes, even if in my house they tasted like problems.

That afternoon, as soon as I noticed the smell wafting from the kitchen, I went to see what was going on. My mother didn’t notice my presence. She cried in silence. I would’ve done anything for her to once again be the smiling woman I adored, but I didn’t know what might make her happy.

From then on, I heard her sobbing every night. I had taken to waking up at strange hours. As a child, I slept like a log, but at thirteen I began to have the scarlet dream—a nightmare that returned again and again. I found myself in a long hallway that was damp and dark. The flickering light of a flame came from the end of the hallway. I walked toward it and realized that I was inside a castle. My steps echoed in the darkness, making me aware that I was wearing iron boots. I was an armed soldier. I had to rescue someone at the end of the hallway who was crying. She had a woman’s voice—a voice that was pleasant and incredibly sad. I walked toward that sound for an unnaturally long time, because the hallway seemed to lengthen with each step I took. Finally, I entered a room with red walls. My favorite color at that time was scarlet. How I liked the sound of the word scarlet! In the dream, I didn’t see the crying woman, but I knew that she was there. Before speaking to her, I approached one of the walls, hypnotized by its scarlet color. Only then did I realize that its surface was liquid. No one had painted those walls. I placed my hands on the surface and the blood ran between my fingers. I always woke up at that moment, petrified with fear.

I turned on the light and looked at the map above the desk and at the only stuffed animal I sometimes still slept with. If someone had called me a child when I was thirteen, I would have been furious. I felt like a young man. My stuffed rabbit was there because I was fond of it. But I could sleep without him and I could defend myself on my own. Not even when I had the scarlet dream did I bring him into the bed. The rabbit watched me from his corner, with one eye lower than the other. I didn’t ask him for help, but a long time passed before I could go back to sleep.

On the nights of the nightmare, I would wake up feeling very thirsty. If I had already drank the water my mother had placed on the nightstand, I didn’t dare go into the kitchen to get some more, as if that were the location of the scarlet dream.

Then I would try to distract myself with the different countries on the map. My favorite was Australia, which was painted the color of bubble gum. My three favorite animals were Australian: the koala, the kangaroo, and the platypus.

What I liked most about koalas was how they hold on to trees. I would hug my pillow, just like a koala hugging a tree, until I’d fall asleep with the light still on.

Perhaps it was because I was growing up that I dreamed of these horrific things. My friends at school all liked stories about ghosts and vampires. I didn’t like them, but I kept having that terrible dream.

One night I woke up even more frightened than usual. I turned on the lights and looked at my hands, afraid they would be stained with blood. But they only bore the ink stains they’d had when I came home from school. I looked at the map and, before I could even imagine distant countries, I heard a sob. It came from the hallway and had my mother’s unmistakable tone.

This time I dared to leave my room and I walked barefoot to my parents’ bedroom. Her grief was more important than my nightmare.

They slept in separate beds. The curtains were open and the moonlight entered the room and fell upon my father’s bed, which was the one closest to the window. I’ve seen many beds since then, but none has affected me like this one did: my father wasn’t there.

Mama cried with her eyes closed. She didn’t realize that I was in the room. I went to my father’s bed, pulled back the covers, and got in. I breathed in a delicious scent, of leather and lotion, and I fell asleep instantly. I never slept better than I did that night.

The next day, she didn’t like finding me asleep there. I told her that I had sleepwalked and ended up there without realizing it.

This is the last thing I need, Mama exclaimed. A sleepwalking son!

On the way to school, my sister, Carmen, made fun of me because I walked in my sleep. Then she asked me if I could teach her to sleepwalk. Carmen was ten and believed everything I told her. I explained to her that I belonged to a secret club that met at night; we wandered the streets without waking up.

What is the club called? Carmen asked me.

The Shadow Club, I answered, the name coming to me suddenly.

Can I join?

First you need to pass various tests. It’s not so easy, I replied.

Carmen asked me to wake her up one night to take her to the Shadow Club. I promised that I would, but naturally I didn’t.

Worried that I was walking in my sleep, Mama spoke to her friend Ruth, who had lived in Germany during World War II and had witnessed things that were more hair-raising than a somnambulant child. When she spoke on the phone to Ruth, Mama was soothed by these stories of things that were worse than her own troubles. Our life wasn’t perfect, but at least we weren’t being bombarded.

When I got back from school, Mama was talking on the phone with Ruth. However, once again, it smelled like mashed potatoes. Her friend’s terrible stories hadn’t managed to calm her down this time.

I left my backpack in my room. I went to the bathroom and then washed my hands (the annoying ink stains were still there). I went into the kitchen, following that wonderful smell that always heralded problems.

I stopped in the doorway and saw my mother crying in silence. Then I asked the question that I had been turning over and over in my head at school: Where is Papa?

She looked at me through her tears. She smiled as if I were a landscape, lovely and ruined.

We need to talk, was her answer, but she didn’t say anything else. She continued pounding the potatoes, then lit a cigarette, smoking haphazardly, so the ash fell into the food.

I remained standing there like a statue until she said:

Your father is going to live outside the house for a while. He’s rented a studio. He has a lot of work and we make too much noise. When he finishes all this work, he’s going to Paris to build a bridge.

Something made me think that my father would never return to that bed beneath the moonlight.

Mama knelt down and hugged me. She’d never hugged me like this, kneeling on the floor.

Nothing will happen to you, Juanito, she told me.

Every time she called me Juanito, something terrible happened. It wasn’t an affectionate name, but a crisis name, the mashed potatoes of names.

I wasn’t worried that something might happen to me, but rather that something might happen to her. I wanted her to be smiling like when she came to my school and I knew she was the prettiest of all the mothers.

Don’t worry, I answered, I’m here with you.

It was the worst thing that I could have said to her. She cried more than ever, hugging me to her tightly for so long that the mashed potatoes with cigarette ash burned on the stove.

My sister arrived home later after piano lessons and she found us eating pizza. For her, the afternoon was lots of fun. Mama had no appetite and let Carmen eat as much as she wanted.

I have something to tell you two, Mama said, chewing every word. Papa went on a trip.

Carmen thought this was just grand, believing Papa would bring her back a stuffed toy as a souvenir.

I felt sad to see my sister happy because she didn’t know the truth, but I would’ve done anything for her to never discover it.

Back then, divorce wasn’t fashionable. None of my friends had divorced parents. However, I knew that it could happen. I had seen a very fun movie about a boy who had a great time because he had two homes and he managed to get everything he wanted in both of them.

My parents didn’t fight but they also didn’t speak as if they loved one another. They never kissed each other or held hands.

One afternoon, while looking through the papers on my father’s desk, I found inside a book an envelope with wonderful drawings all across it: pink spirals, blue asterisks, zigzagging green lightning bolts. It looked like the cover of a rock album.

The envelope contained a letter. It was from a lady friend of Papa’s who loved him very much and hoped to travel to Paris with him. I felt a hollow in the pit of my stomach and gave the letter to my mother.

That was two months before the mashed potatoes were burnt. Sometimes I thought it was my fault that Mama had become sad. Everything had happened because I gave her that terrible letter.

Are you doing to get a divorce? I asked Mama, when Carmen couldn’t hear us.

I didn’t want to have a good time in two homes like the boy in that movie. The truth is, I didn’t want to see my father either. I just wanted things to go back to the way they were when my mother was content. Nothing more.

I don’t know what will happen. Papa loves you very much; that’s what’s important.

I didn’t care if he loved me or not. I wanted him to love her. I went to my room to swear an important oath. I took the map and I swore by Australia we would be happy in that house, even if it took a lot of effort for me to achieve that.

That night I didn’t have nightmares, but I also couldn’t sleep.

I went to the room that had been my parents’, where now there was one bed too many. Well, where I’d thought there was one bed too many. I was about to lie down when I saw that Carmen had beat me to it. As always, she seemed very content. Perhaps she dreamed they had let her into the Shadow Club.

‌

The Vial of Iron

My mother began to leave cigarettes everywhere. She didn’t even smoke them all the way. She was so nervous and made so many phone calls that the cigarettes piled up in the ashtray in little mountains without her having finished smoking a single one of them. There were smoke signals everywhere, as if we lived in an Indian camp.

Everything smelled of smoke and mashed potatoes. During the week of the separation, we ate meatballs with mashed potatoes from Monday through Saturday. On Sunday, my mother left us with her friend Ruth, who gave us some delicious German sausages, sprinkled with something I didn’t recognize then: nutmeg.

Mama came to pick us up very late. Carmen was already asleep, hugging her stuffed beaver. I was about to collapse from exhaustion as well, but I managed to hear the conversation between her and her friend:

The worst part is the summer holidays, my mother said. I don’t know what to do with them.

Them were Carmen and myself.

Something will come up, Ruth said. I can keep Pinta.

Pinta was our dog, a black-and-white Maltese. I was surprised, and somewhat relieved, that Ruth offered to have the dog stay with her and not us.

Why couldn’t we spend the summer at home? There were two weeks until the end of classes. We barely studied anything at school anymore. The teacher had stopped being in a rush; he gave us each a sheet of paper to draw whatever we wanted, for hours on end. Then we sang very long songs, and it didn’t matter if we made mistakes. It was as if our real classes were already over and we were just there out of obligation, filling up the days that remained until summer—the long vacation, as we called it.

The best moment in life was the first day of vacation. The sun entered my bedroom differently: a lively sun, honey-colored, that warmed the curtains and announced that there were two months without school ahead. Anything could happen on that first day, as if the light were arriving all the way from Australia and its deserts of reddish sand.

If for an entire year you stop eating something you like a lot (chocolate or spaghetti or roast chicken) and then suddenly you try it again, you’ll like it even more than before. That’s what the first day of vacation was like.

Pablo, my best friend, lived two streets away from us. We had planned all sorts of games for the summer, even going into an abandoned house with broken windows where wild cats lived. It was going to be the best summer of my life. But Mama had other plans.

One afternoon I came back from playing with Pablo and found the hallway full of boxes.

Your father’s things, Mama explained.

I looked into one box and saw books. My fathered studied engineering and