The Doodler

Carmelito, at thirteen years old, handled the gift of calligraphy with the pulse of a surgeon. “He is blessed”, said Carmela, his mother. A battered pine desk decorated the small living room of his mud and cane ranch. On top of it, towers of paper and white envelopes rested. In the center, lost in thought, Carmelito wrote. The ink danced with the fluidity of the tides, creating valleys and mountains, voluptuous curves and sharp corners.

“They are invitations to the governor's wedding”, Carmela explained to the curious people leaning against the window that overlooked the living room.

During a sweltering afternoon, a curious girl who was a contemporary of Carmelito peaked through his window. She looked at him as if he was a strange creature drawing endless scribbles.

-What are you doing? –asked the visitor.

Carmelito jumped and detailed her. He became absorbed in her simplicity. She looked like a celestial apparition, bathed in two o'clock sunlight, with black hair and galaxy eyes. Then he held up one of the cards to show her the lines.

“Invitations for a wedding”, Carmelito explained finally.

"Ah!" she exclaimed, excited. "What people do when they fall in love".

Carmelito nodded. The visitor smiled and said goodbye to the scribbler, who stopped her with a question: "What's your name?" To which she responded: "Antonia", to then disappear among the almond trees.

Carmelito now lived floating to the rhythm of his arrowed heart for the first time. Antonia, Antonia, he repeated to himself from morning to night; summoning her in touching dreams, visiting a green world, very different from the aridity reality of their small-town. Then Carmelito's automaton hands stopped responding to the sketch of the invitations. Only Antonia's name was repeated over and over again in a thousand handwriting styles.

Carmela discovered to her horror that her son had not finished the invitations for the governor. She tore up the dedications to his lover and reprimanded Carmelito until he was forced to write standing up, due to the spankings. She had the window blocked with boards and nails, putting an end to the distractions from the outside. Only the light of a candle intended for the saints and a hole in the thatched roof allowed him to work. Then, in the words of Antonia herself, he remembered the importance of those endless papers: "What people do when they fall in love". Those invitations, more than pompous lines, meant an official confession of love before the world!

Two days before the shipping deadline, Carmelito woke up before the rooster crowed. He sat on the edge of the desk, lit the candle and, carried by a new and superior impulse, resumed his calligraphy. He slipped each letter into its respective envelope and sealed them with red wax as he finished them. Finally, in a matter of a few hours and before Carmela woke up, the last invitation crowned the tower of white envelopes. That same afternoon they were delivered by his mother to the post office.

A week later, the town woke up in calm, as always. But, at noon, a cloud of dust arose on the main road. The brown cloud advanced at full speed, accompanied by a mechanical roar. Dozens of luxurious cars overflowed along the narrow streets until they reached the plaza and its humble colonial church. Men in frock coats and women in long dresses and sparkling jewelry got out, bewildered. One by one they filled the narrow, suffocating nave of the church, most of them remained standing, all dizzy in the heaviness of their own breaths. The priest, overwhelmed, looked out open-mouthed from the sacristy, rubbing his eyes in the hope that the pompous mass would disappear. Next to the altar, in his first communion suit, was Carmelito, pleased, proudly remembering the moment when he decided to change the address on the invitations to make official his love for Antonia.

In that moment of confusion, at the edge of the town, in front of a cracked house, one of the luxurious cars stopped. The driver, lost in that endless dust, looked out his window and, holding up a piece of paper, shouted to a young girl sitting on the threshold of her home: “Girl! Do you know this address?" Antonia approached smiling, held the paper and answered sadly: "I'm sorry, but I don't know how to read". The driver muttered some profanity of frustration and drove away, taking another couple of guests with him in search of that ghost chapel. Antonia returned to her house, where, nailed to the wall, adorning the humility of her home like an abstract painting, hung a sheet of paper with beautiful indecipherable scribbles received in the mail a few days ago, curiously identical to the one the driver had shown her.