Costa, Sierra y Selva

Every reader will know the feeling. You spend a week or two getting to know them. Mere shades at first, translucent guazy shapes, they slowly take on human form, walk around with you a bit, weep when sad, dance when not, invite, resist, confide. You know their names, their passions, their desires and longings. You know their joy, and you know their despair. You, alone in your corner, curled or sprawled or in some other state of repose, silently and secretely invest your soul in them. And so, when you turn that very last page, where the words only come partway down the white expanse, you feel satisfied, sleepy and mournful. The last period, a black speck of finality, mocks you. That’s all there is, there isn’t anymore.

When this happens, you can’t just hop out of your reverie, slide the book into the thin space for it on the shelf and just as quickly select a new one. You wait awhile, afraid even to move less the sweetness of the experience be shaken off like sleep, forcing you to confront the reality that bounces eagerly around you like a puppy eager for play. Even the pleasures of daylight seem empty, and the assurances of a golden afternoon impossible to satisfy.

My character and personality have been enhanced and altered by the book that now rests on my knee. I am not the same man I was when I performed that sacred ritual, when I ran my hand over the roughness of the cover, wondering what adventures lay within, what lands to be concquered, what hopes to be inspired, what loves to be nurtured. Then, prayerfully and with all the energy a man of twenty something can muster in his soul, I turned those bare prefunctory pages to where Chapter One began and embarked on a journey. With the expanse of Roosevelt’s badlands, Cortez’s Mexico or Pizarro’s Andes before me, I could hardly have imagined then that the day would arrive when I, too, would reach the end of my pilgrimage. And yet I did. 

It is open now to the last page, but no majestic heroine against scarlet evening, fist clenched at cruel destiny, rises from its words. Neither does the all-knowing narrator stand dockside pulling in the wandering painters as he hums contentedly to himself. The cottage door does not close on cozy fire, the rain does not fall steadily on windblown hills, and Horatio makes no speech. But there are well-known faces, warm touch of hand on back, honey spoken with hope and vigorous resign.

I will stay my hands a while yet, reverie feigning patience, committing this book to memory until the hand of God leads me back to the shelf and I pull out the second volume, new and fresh and promising. I have every reason to believe that the sequel will rival the first, and I anticipate its wonders with pleasure.