for
illustrated by IRENE SINGER translated by Lawrence Schimel
Para Olguita, que siempre encuentra la forma de sorprendernos.
for illustrated by IRENE SINGER
Olga Arriola de Geng es guatemalteca, aunque nació en París en 1928. Viajera incansable, investigadora, ceramista, escritora, pintora y escultora, conoce como pocos los misterios y secretos de los textiles guatemaltecos que ha estudiado toda su vida. Hace unos años decidió bordar una colección de decenas de huipiles en miniatura (huipilitos) para preservar los diseños de la tradición guatemalteca en una escala reducida. La colección, que se exhibe en un museo de la Ciudad de Guatemala, ha inspirado esta historia.
translated by Lawrence Schimel
When she was three years old, Olga and her parents went to the central square of TotonicapĂĄn. There was a fair there. The baskets were full of fruits and vegetables: carrots and jocotes, pitayas and cabbages, chilacayotes and caimitos, gĂźisquiles and guanabas, loroco blossoms and lemons; the street sellers offered sweets and candies of every color; a green parakeet with an orange crest emerged from its cage and pulled little bits of paper from a small box. People laughed when they read them.
Suddenly Olga heard a shout of admiration. Everyone looked up toward the sky. She did, too. And there up high, she saw the kites: many kites, in every imaginable color, that looked like bits of embroidery between the blue of the sky and the white of the clouds. That was the first memory of her life. Of course, back then she didn’t know that it was a memory, because she had no others. Nor did she know then what embroidery was.
When she turned four, Olga saw her grandmother embroidering as she hummed a song. Many-colored threads passed through her hands. The needle went in and out, crossing the white fabric. And in the center of the round frame, flowers appeared and grew and grew. Olga’s grandmother lifted her onto her lap and told her a story while she continued embroidering.
One Sunday morning when everything seemed silent, for even the distant bells of the town church had fallen silent, Olga placed her rag dolls on the bed, one beside the others, and decided that they needed something new, fun and pretty. She thought of all the colors of the market, of the kites, of her grandmother’s embroidery, of some story she wanted to tell them, but she couldn’t think of anything. She saw the open door, day was beginning, the mountain, the forest... And then she went outside, running along the path, in search of a story to tell.
She found birds that were blue, orange, yellow. They were traveling birds, they told her, tourists. They came through there twice a year, escaping from the cold of the North and the cold of the South. They knew many stories but they didn’t have time to tell them to Olga. “We have good weather today,” they told her. “Lots of visibility and a tailwind. We need to take off now. Come with us! As we fly, we could tell you lots of stories. Flying can be boring, sometimes. “But I don’t have wings,” Olga answered. “It’ll have to be another day. Today I am very busy.”
Olga continued walking. She heard a whisper from the tops of the trees. She saw some long green and blue feathers that fell between the branches. She recognized the quetzal, which was preening its red chest and combing its emerald crest. She didn’t want to talk with him because she knew that he was a very vein and unfriendly sort, so she waited until he had finished his morning’s ablutions and had left before continuing on her way.
Some orchids, which looked like yellow butterflies stained with red spots, turned toward her and asked her not to make so much noise, because she frightened off their Sunday visitors, the insects who came to share their pollen. “How disagreeable they are!� Olga thought, and changed direction to go to the other side of the mountain.
As she wove her way around the blue brook that zigzagged down between the yellow stones she saw some white-tailed deer pass by, with their tall antlers. The cinnamon color of their fur blended in with the trees; the antlers seemed like moving branches. Some small white herons accompanied them. From the other shore, Olga greeted them. The doe, very elegant, lowered her head politely. “We are going to the top,” she said carefully, looking all around her. “Some herbs have sprouted there which are very tasty for the children, who have a sweet tooth. We always travel cautiously and we never talk to strangers; one never knows where a hunter might be hiding.”
Olga understood; she didn’t want to distract them any longer, and so continued on her way. It seemed that everything in the field was very busy doing their own thing and they had little time to share stories. The coatis lowered their tails; the raccoons put on masks; the owls turned their heads and emitted a critical “Whoo!” And the birds, parrots, parakeets, and macaws, showing off the green, yellow, blue and red plumage, passed by overhead, flying very high, making a great ruckus, so much noise that it was impossible to have a conversation with them!
Very bothered by such an unhelpful attitude from the neighbors, Olga decided that enough was enough and that it was time for her to go back. Surely at home they would already be awake and preparing breakfast. But as she turned around, she realized that she was lost. Instead of one path, she saw many paths; instead of one brook, three or four streams came down the mountain. The ground was covered with grass, with little white and yellow flowers, with purple morning glories around which brilliantly-colored hummingbirds buzzed. All the sides of the mountain looked alike on the way down.
She was about to begin to cry when she saw that coming up one of the paths was an old lady. Her dress was a deep blue color, spotted with sparkles. The huipil she wore shone with all the colors of the plants, of the animals, of the birds, as if these colors had stuck to her as she walked along the mountain and through the forest. On her head she wore a headdress that seemed like an enormous red and yellow flower, being nibbled at by insects and hummingbirds. The old woman’s smile reminded Olga of her grandmother, so Olga followed her. They stopped a little higher up, in a clearing, from which one could see the white towns, with their churches, the valleys, the fields of crops, more mountains and volcanoes and some very shy clouds.
The old woman sat down. From the bundle on her back, she pulled out a strange apparatus that she tied to a tree and to her waist. The colored threads passed through her hands and began to take shape as she wove them. “What are you doing? Who are you?” Olga asked, curious. The old woman didn’t answer. Old women are not obliged to answer. “What are you looking for?” the old woman asked in return. And Olga, who didn’t miss a chance to have a conversation, said, “I am looking for a story to tell it to my rag dolls.”
And the old woman smiled again, and didn’t say anything more, but continued weaving without stopping and without getting tired. It was obvious that she enjoyed her work. Olga watched how her hands moved like birds, watched the threads that grew like vines, the shuttle that moved through the material. The fabric that emerged from the old woman’s work looked like the valleys located at the foot of the mountain, but it had more colors and shone brighter.
When the fabric was ready, the old woman took from her bundle some more thread, needles and thimbles, like those Olga’s grandmother used, and began to embroider. And Olga saw how, on that field of color, there appeared color after color that she recognized: the flowers, the birds, the animals, the river, the sky... They were all there! Finally, the old woman embroidered the edges, and added some pretty sleeves and a neck surrounded by flowers.
Olga realized that the old woman had made a small huipil, just her size. “Put it on,” the old woman said. And Olga put it on and it fit her perfectly, made to measure. “That is the story you’re looking for. It’s in the fabric and in the embroidery. Now you can return home and tell everyone the stories that are in the huipil. It is the story of all the things that you have seen and will see.” “But I don’t know how to return home. I got lost in the forest,” Olga said. And the old woman laughed, caressed Olga’s hair, and told her: “The huipil will guide you All stories have a path. And all huipils have wings.”
The wings of the huipil opened. A gentle wind blew and lifted Olga above the mountain. The old woman grew smaller as she gathered her things in the clearing in the forest and continued on her way. Olga flew like a kite without a string, led be the wings of the huipil which knew where they should go: down the mountain, around the stream, across the field, and to Olga’s house with its open door and to her bed, where her rag dolls were waiting for, seated one beside the other.
The dolls saw her enter the bedroom flying, dressed with all the colors of the huipil, and they began to laugh, and they continued to laugh as Olga told them the story that was there, written with threads of color. And each of the dolls asked Olga to make them a huipil. Outside, in the hallway, her grandmother embroidered. She had also seen Olga arrive. This time she didn’t sit Olga on her lap, but instead had her sit on a little chair, on top of a cushion she had embroidered. She gave Olga a piece of fabric, a frame, needles, threads, thimbles... and she showed her how to embroider.
And thus, Olga began to make huipilitos, many huipilitos, which contained all the stories she could think of, all the things that she saw, and had all the colors imaginable. Her grandmother and the old woman from the mountain had showed her to how to make others laugh, how to add color to their lives, how to make them fly.
The wings of the huipilitos that Olga embroidered led her, one day, to fly with the flocks of migratory birds that passed by her home twice a year. She flew everywhere: to the North, to the South, beyond the sea, to places where other women embroidered other stories, but that is another tale, because what is important is that the wings of her huipil always brought Olga home again.
Rubén E. Nájera nació en Guatemala en 1954. Pasó buena parte de su infancia y adolescencia entre libros de aventuras y novelas históricas. Luego quiso ser escritor. Aunque escribió cosas serias y ganó algunos premios, en secreto siempre quiso escribir historias fantásticas, con muchas ilustraciones. Ama los libros y la música clásica, cultiva orquídeas y sus mascotas incluyen dos patos pequineses, varias aves y dos perros, que serán protagonistas de su siguiente cuento. Irene Singer nació en Buenos Aires, donde vive y trabaja; pero no siempre fue así. Hace algunos años, después de estudiar Bellas Artes, se fue de viaje por Latinoamérica. Trabajó en Ecuador, Costa Rica, México, Ushuaia, siempre en ámbitos relacionados a su profesión. En su recorrido, pasó por Guatemala, donde conoció de primera mano los sabores y texturas de este país que tiempo después, quién iba a saberlo, ilustraría en “Alas para Olga”. En 1992 se instaló de regreso en Buenos Aires y desde entonces no ha parado de crear. Hoy Irene vuelve a viajar por todo el continente y más allá de la mano de su obra maravillosa. Juan Carlos Menéndez es fotógrafo. Nació en Guatemala en 1972. Empezó a tomar fotos a los 8 años porque su papá era fotógrafo y su mejor maestro. Con el paso del tiempo el juego se volvió su trabajo profesional y lo llevó a conocer a muchas personas y lugares de su país y el mundo. Jugando con la luz aprendió a resolver todos los acertijos que lleva una buena fotografía. Siempre imaginó ser un ojo gigante que registra imágenes con pequeñas historias de lugares y personajes que se graban en el corazón como en una cámara de cine; 41 años después lo sigue haciendo.
Publicado por: Grupo Amanuense, S.A. Dirección: 3ra. Avenida, Tronco 2, Sección A, Lote 5, El Encinal. Zona 7 Mixco. Guatemala, Centroamérica. Teléfonos: (502) 2434-7831 / 2431-8243 editorial@grupo-amanuense.com www.grupo-amanuense.com ISBN: 978-9929-633-05-6
Primera edición 2014 ©2014 Grupo Amanuense, S.A. Texto: ©2014 Rubén E. Nájera Ilustraciones: ©2014 Irene Singer Fotografías de las ilustraciones: ©2014 Juan Carlos Menéndez Asesora literaria: María Cristina Stábile Todos los derechos reservados. Cualquier solicitud de derechos podrá hacerse a: literaria@grupo-amanuense.com Impreso en MAYAPRIN, Guatemala.
“What are you doing?” Olga asked. “Embroidery,” answered her grandmother. “What’s embroidery?” Olga asked. Her grandmother stopped, closed her eyes and said, “Embroidery is a smile that you draw with needle and thread on a scrap of fabric that feels very bored because it is only one color.”
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