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Marcelo’s puzzle
Marcelo’s puzzle
First published: july, 2010 TEXT: Juan Sánchez Vargas TRANSLATION: Jennifer Johnson ILLUSTRATIONS: Piedad Andrés González GRAPHIC DESIGN: Jesús Allende Valcuende PUBLISHED BY: Fundación Santa María la Real www.santamarialareal.org PRINTED BY: Gráficas Campher I.S.B.N.: 978-84-89483-72-9 DEPÓSITO LEGAL: P 215-2010
Marcelo’s puzzle
‘This town needs a good haircut,’ thought Marcelo as he smiled at the tall grass growing everywhere. It seemed as if nothing had changed in Santa Maria de Mave as he walked through the streets lined with its unorganised walls.
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Everything had stopped. It looked like a run down set for a puppet show awaiting its next summer performance to come alive again. ‘Friends,’ he said in a loud voice, ‘Wake up! The puppet Marcelo has returned.’ ‘Let the show begin,’ he said as he laughed at his silly idea.
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He walked towards Miguel’s house but the grass looked like a lion’s mane taking over the entrance. Nobody was there. The same thing happened at Angel’s and Marisa’s house. ‘Why has the grass grown so high? There’s no way to get around it.’
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Even though he didn’t like problem solving, he started to think about the situation: If you have three friends that normally spend their summer in the town and you take away three than you are left with‌ zero friends to play with!
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Marcelo ran to his grandfather’s house and found him sitting on the same stone as always. ‘How great! At least I can chat with him,’ he thought. He started to realise how difficult his puppet show would be to put on that summer without puppets. Last autumn, Miguel, Angel and Marisa’s families left town. ‘I’ve never been better!’ repeated his grandfather over and over again. The baker comes around once and a while, the doctor and the priest come around sometimes too. After a while, Marcelo didn’t know what to do. His grandfather kept falling asleep in the middle of the conversation.
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While his grandfather kept nodding off, Marcelo decided to put a puzzle together. There wasn’t a picture to go with it so it was difficult for him to make out the sailboat, in the eye of the storm, with the stern high up in the air, ready to throw the crew overboard and crash against a…, a... ‘What a day!’ thought Marcelo, ‘the puzzle is missing the most important piece!’ Let’s face it: it isn’t the same to crash against a scatterbrained mermaid, a rock, a giant anchovy, or a huge white whale. Marcelo got quite angry. So he started kicking around rocks until he arrived at the church. That’s when a noise caught his attention.
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There was a man wearing some coveralls and a helmet, hammering a stone. ‘Hi,’ said another man holding some drawings, ‘What are you doing here?’ ‘I’m angry because I’m missing a very important piece to my puzzle!’ ‘I’m putting together a puzzle too.’ ‘Do you have a picture of it?’ ‘No, I’m an architect and the church is my puzzle. It broke many years ago.’ ‘And what happens if one of the pieces is missing?’ ‘Well, then my friend here, the stonemason, makes a new one.’ ‘How does he know how it fits?’ ‘Well, because these ruins can tell us many things: what type of rock they used, how they were put together… you only have to listen and follow the puzzle.’
Without even thinking, he went around the church and ran into something, well, someone. It was a person covered in dust holding a bone in his hands. Marcelo jumped back and was about to escape when… ‘Wait, don’t run away!’ said the man. ‘What’s wrong?’ ‘Well at the moment, I’m pretty scared, but before I lost a piece to my puzzle and…’ ‘Ah, you do puzzles too?’ the archaeologist said in a surprised voice. ‘Yeah, and what does your puzzle look like? ‘Look, archaeologists put together time puzzles.’ ‘Well, I only see a bunch of squares made out of rope.’ ‘Ha Ha,’ the archaeologist laughed. ‘No, I use those squares to mark where I have found each thing.
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‘In each square I dig and I find remains that are older and older. What you find at the surface is only
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a couple days old but as you dig more and more you can find ancient objects.’ ‘And what do you do with all of the things you find?’ ‘Well, I try to put them together and imagine how the people in each time period lived, worked, and slept.’
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Marcelo left the bones and sneaked into the church. At the back there was some scaffolding and two people were cleaning the walls. He saw that they were wearing masks and they had some strange lights on their helmet. Marcelo finally caught on. ‘I bet you guys also put together puzzles,’ he said sarcastically. ‘How did you guess?’ laughed the restorers. ‘Can I come up?’ They put a helmet and a harness on Marcelo and they helped him up.
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He saw all the colourful paintings on the wall. ‘What piece are you missing?’ ‘Well some of the parts have worn away because of moisture and others we have found hidden under the limestone coating.’ ‘And if something is missing do you make it up?’ ‘Sometimes yes and sometimes no. Sometimes we only clean and protect the paint so it doesn’t get lost again.’ ‘Who painted it?’ ‘Well, we don’t know who or when… but that is not our puzzle to put together. That’s the historian’s job,’ he said as he pointed out the window to a man typing on a laptop.
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Marcelo went out to talk to the historian. He explained that his puzzle was to answer why: why they lived that way and why they built the church there. But at that moment the historian was missing part of a stone that told when and who built the church. Marcelo felt bad as he watched the historian look again and again at the stone with the missing letters. He thought about how angry he became when he was missing a very important piece. He went home and found his grandfather sitting on his stone as always.
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Marcelo excitedly told his grandfather the story that they were restoring the church and that he had talked to an architect and with the archaeologist and how scared he was when he saw the bones and that everyone was “putting together a puzzle� and that the restorers were fixing some paintings
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and the poor historian was missing an important piece and‌ (his grandfather just looked at him with his mouth open). It was too much information for his grandfather to take. Marcelo was exhausted and laid back to look at the stars as he caressed the markings on his grandfather’s stone.
o t c e t i u q r a ado con el poor historian very important piece everyone
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ings
puzzles 25
He fell asleep and began to dream. He saw his grandfather, with his beret flapping in the air, flying on his stone over the town and landing next to the historian’s stone. His own laugh woke him up. Marcelo looked at his hands and saw the markings on the stone where his grandfather rested his backside. The letters were like the ones from the historian’s puzzle!
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Marcelo ran to find and bring the historian back. Marcelo knew that it was worth it when he saw the historian’s face when he saw the stone. ‘You found the missing piece!’ he shouted.
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A little while later, the group of workers were standing around the rock chatting excitedly. ‘It’s impossible to get any sleep around here’ grumbled grandfather. He didn’t understand that his stone had the letters that would solve the enigma and that thanks to him they would know by who and when the church was built. This discovery would even help solve other puzzles like the paintings, the excavation, and the type of walls… It took them quite a long time to convince Marcelo’s grandfather to give up his stone and when he did they replaced it with a nice and shiny bench. The restoration of the church lasted all summer and Marcelo didn’t miss a day of it.
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‘The town doesn’t need a haircut anymore,’ Marcelo laughed as he saw that the grass had been cut and put in neat piles that next summer in Mave. The church was finished and little by little the residents tried to finish an even bigger puzzle: putting the town back together again. They fixed up some houses, opened up the town bar, tourists came… Marcelo had a great time seeing the faces of his friends when he told them of his last adventures. Without even realising it he had learned a lot. He loved the idea of being the keeper of the church key that, as time changes, was an electronic card, and telling the tourists how complicated and fun it is to put together a restoration puzzle.
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It was his church and that made him happy.
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