Selections from FM GALICIA
15.12
Many of us possess a secret map—it could be a real map, it could be one that’s been painted by hand, it could be a certain photograph or an illustration in a book, some kind of painting in an atlas, a diagram in an encyclopedia. It could be an old photo featuring unknown people or someone’s painting. Sometimes this map could even be a picture of a certain author, a statue, or, perhaps, even a city-square. This map could exist in the form of an old sweater, a spoon, a beat-up knife, or a chipped cup. It could be dissolved in a certain type of wine or chopped up and ground with coffee of a certain quality. I won’t even mention spices and perfumes, a few words written in a certain font, herbariums, numismatic, or philatelic collections. Or attics and basements, beds and dressers, melodies and pianos.
It could be carried in someone’s face, sometimes in that of a stranger, or it could be chiseled onto somebody’s tombstone. Thus, that secret map could be hidden in just about anything. What unites all of them, however, is that they all show you the path to your own lost paradise. It’s a chart of your paradise and the means of getting there.
I also possess such a map. I grew up on a balcony. My aunt transformed this balcony into something that was incredible. It was large and covered with vines. It faced three of the cardinal directions. And my aunt was the most amazing floriculturist in the world. She was never concerned with the size of the flowerbed, because it was never about having a lot of flowers. She was only concerned with having a lot of different kinds of flowers. In a few boxes and reinforced large pots grew several hundred of the most exotic plants. Searching far and wide, she would find at least one seed of a certain very strange plant. One seed—one plant. That was the principle. Floriculturists from various corners of the world would send her letters containing seeds. The balcony on which I grew up was like a tropical coastline. All that was missing were coral reefs. I bathed in basins that had been set up in the sun in order to warm up the water. Later, this water, like in the jungles, was used to water the plants.
When my aunt died, I sketched a chart of her garden. I wrote out all the names. This is the map of my lost paradise. I warm myself with the thought that someday I will be able to reproduce that whole paradise on a different balcony.
Translated by Mark Andryczyk