Spring: -I- -II- -III-
The Stamp Album: -IV- -V- -VI- -VII- -VIII- -IX- -X- -XI- -XII-
In the Municipal Park: -XIII- -XIV- -XV- -XVI-
Springtime Twilight: -XVII-
The Villa: -XVIII- (XIX) -XX- -XXI- -XXII- -XXIII- -XXIV- -XXV- -XXVI- -XXVII-
Bianka’s Lineage: -XXVIII- -XXIX- -XXX- -XXXI- -XXXII- -XXXIII-
Hiatus: -XXXIV- -XXXV- -XXXVI- -XXXVII-
Finale: -XXXVIII- -XXXIX- -XL-
XIX
ONLY TO the attentive reader of The Book is the nature of that spring clear and legible. Those morning preparations for the day, all of its early-hours ablutions, hesitations, doubts and scruples of choice — they lay bare their essence only to an initiate of postage stamps. Postage stamps are an introduction to that intricate game of morning diplomacy, those protracted negotiations, the atmospheric revisions that precede the conclusive draft of the day. From the ruddy mists of that ninth hour — it is clear to see — a variegated and spotted Mexico strives to erupt, a snake writhing in the beak of a condor, a glaring splash, hot and desiccated. And in an azure pause, in the lofty green of the trees, a parrot is continually repeating ‘Guatemala!’ stubbornly and at regular intervals, with its unmistakeable intonation. And slowly, at the uttering of that green word, everything turns cherry red, fresh and leafy. And so, unhurriedly amid all the difficulties and conflicts, an election is held. The schedule of the ceremony is established, the list of its parades, the diplomatic protocol of the day.
In May, the days were pink, like an Egyptian stamp. In the market square, brilliance ran out from every side, and undulated. An accumulation of summer clouds knelt down in the sky, swirling under fissures of brilliance, volcanic and brilliantly drawn in outline. And everything emerged in red as if seen through ruby spectacles — Barbados, Labrador, Trinidad. And through those two or three pulses of darkness, through that red eclipse of the blood pounding in my head, the great corvette of Guiana, all of its sails thundering, sailed clear across the sky. Dragged heftily along amid thrown out lines and shouts from the tugboats, it glided with bulging, rumbling sails through a commotion of seagulls and the red splendour of the sea. Then its enormous, tangled rigging of ropes, ladders and poles appeared and spread wide, over the whole sky, and a convoluted, many storeyed spectacle of lofty sails, spars and braces, its unfastened canvas booming, clamoured in the heights, where for a moment, in the gaps, tiny, nimble Negro boys could be seen, before being swamped by that linen labyrinth, and lost amid the signs and figures of a fantastic tropical sky.
Then the scenery changed. In the sky, in the massifs of the clouds, pink eclipses culminated three at a time — glistening lava smoked, drawing the menacing contours of the clouds in a luminous outline. And the core of the world sank into the depths — Cuba, Haiti, Jamaica. It grew riper and riper, and finally reached its quintessence. And suddenly, the pure essence of those days poured out, their roaring, tropical oceanicness, their archipelago sky-blues, their happy currents and whirlpools, their equatorial and briny monsoons.
I read that spring with the stamp album in my hand. For was it not a great commentary on the times, a grammar of their days and nights? That spring was declined through all Colombias, Costa Ricas and Venezuelas. For what is the essence of Mexico, Ecuador or Sierra Leone if not some concocted specific, some sharpening of the taste of world, some elaborate and conclusive extreme — a blind alley of aroma where the world presses on with its experiments, rehearsing its scales and practice pieces, playing on all of the keys?
The most important thing not to forget, like Alexander the Great, is that no Mexico is final, that it is a point of passage that the world crosses over, and that beyond every Mexico, a new Mexico opens up, ever more vivid, super-coloured and super-fragrant...
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