Night Vision

Bernardo opened one eye at 4:54 am--and remembered. Exactly two weeks and five days ago his gift for cooking had vanished. He knew the precise date because it was the day after he had seen Saturn, rings and all, in the southern sky. "Estás loco," his friends said at the little restaurant where he cooked. "Nobody can see the rings of Saturn."

"I saw them," Bernardo said, "from the balcony of my house." It was 10:37 pm. He was sitting on a low chair, wrapped in a woolen ruana against the cold mountain air. He called Elvira, his wife, to come see, but she was asleep in the four-poster bed and couldn't be roused--strange, because she was usually a light sleeper. By the time Bernardo was able to wake her--dousing her eyes with some consomé al jerez--it was too late. Saturn was gone. Bernardo cursed the consommé for making him waste important moments rummaging through the icebox, then warming it to just 16 degrees centigrade--he didn't want to scorch his wife's still-pretty face--while the planet whirled crazily out in the sky, then disappeared, perhaps forever. When he returned to the balcony, towing Elvira by the hand, only a sparkle of stars remained low on the horizon. One of them was larger and brighter than the rest, Elvira conceded. But it was still just a star.

Bernardo would have doubted his own eyes, particularly because Elvira was not able to corroborate, had it not been that his suflé de salsifís failed to rise the next day at a luncheon for the interim mayor. Soufflés in his hands never failed, not even at this altitude, three kilometers up the Andes Mountains. As his assistant scrambled about flinging together a last-minute salad of papaya and black olives, Bernardo stared in dismay at his flattened dish. He could feel the tips of his moustache quivering.

Bernardo's culinary ability had come to him as a child, in the minute village of Anapolaima. The day after he was born, his great-grandmother took him gently from the arms of his mother--a frail creature, unable to nurse her son--and placed him in a crate of Valencia oranges. There the child sucked placidly on a piece of sugar cane while the old lady tottered around the kitchen squashing garlic cloves with a knife and chopping cilantro as fine as powder. This changua, steeped in boiling water, would nurse Bernardo's mother back to life and Bernardo to childhood. When his father came into the kitchen to fetch him every evening, the child carried with him the pungent odor of garlic, orange rind, wood smoke, and sweet, heady herbs.

Bernardo was not a model student. He daydreamed through the fifth grade--that was as far as education went in the asbestos-cement schoolhouse--and had to be switched with a bulrush out of his distraction rather often. He liked numbers, though. By age five he could multiply any recipe in his head to make double or triple the amount. His mother taught him to read from a thick book of recipes she never used. Great-grandmother didn't use the recipes either. She grasped no connection between books and cooking. Father explained patiently: "Look, it tells you, for example, how many eggs to use for a caramel flan, or what herbs to add to a fine soup."

"How can it tell me the number of eggs if it doesn't know how many my hens laid yesterday?" great-grandmother replied scowling. "And how can it tell me what herbs to use if it doesn't know which ones have the right aroma today?"

Bernardo's fiasco with the soufflé was just the beginning. Two days later, at the wedding of a prominent emerald smuggler to the daughter of a sergeant, the puerros gratinados were tough as bamboo and the roast goose wouldn't pry loose from the pan. Then the tomato soup curdled in the pot. When his rice went up in smoke, Bernardo vanished from the restaurant. The waiters found his white apron, pressed and starched, hanging from a nail behind the kitchen door.

Twenty-six years earlier, Bernardo had arrived in Oiba, a mind-wandering boy touched with a wizardry for pots and pans. Though barefoot and somewhat intimidated by the large town of almost 3,000 people, he soon found a job. Now Bernardo owned a necktie, and people nodded to him on the street. His gift had given him respectability, discipline, and a wife. He'd met Elvira at the restaurant. He was just an assistant then, and she a city girl who wore leather shoes every day and a bow in her long black hair. Yet she blushed when she saw the heart-shaped rolls he tucked on her plate, and smiled at the tiny bouquet of wildflowers hidden under her lettuce. They were married two years later.

All this Bernardo owed to his cooking. And yet in a moment of vexation that night when Saturn appeared and disappeared, he'd cursed his one gift. Cursed it for a glimpse of an unstable planet whirling out of its orbit!

"You must go to the Clínica Moderna," Elvira pleaded.

"No," said Bernardo, "I am fine." For a week he did nothing but play solitaire and walk around the block, talking to himself. At night, he huddled in the big bed, trembling lest he have some dreadful disorder inside... so dreadful he didn't dare go to the doctor for fear of finding out.

Word of Bernardo's misfortune spread rapidly. His friends clipped recipes from newspapers to cheer him up. One of the neighbors started coming over to pray the rosary for him every day. Elvira, quiet and sad, made hot tisanes for him to drink: ferns to preserve the body, geranium leaves to quiet the soul. But the morning when Bernardo awoke at 4:54 am, he refused his tisane. Before the sun was fully out, Elvira found him packing a leather traveling bag.

"Where are you going?" she asked.

"To Anapolaima," he said.

"But why? And look, why is your tisane untouched?"

Bernardo lifted the cup and took a sip. "It is very good," he said. Then he was gone. That night, Elvira found a note in her slipper: "My dearest Elvira, Don't cry for me. Since I can no longer cook, I do not know who I am. I feel inside like an avocado that rattles when you shake it. I am very afraid."

The bus to Anapolaima--a rusty brown bus with traces of once-glorious red--wound slowly down the Andes mountains. By noon it reached sea level with a sun so hot the pavement gave off steam. Through the window of the bus Bernardo thought he saw women setting their pots of plantain soup out on the sidewalk to cook. From Papuri the bus groaned its way up another mountain. By evening it reached the top, where the cold wind whipped right through the walls and the passengers shivered under their ruanas, drinking great gulps of aguardiente out of a bottle to keep warm. Halfway down the other side of the mountain, Bernardo got off the bus. By the time he'd walked the six kilometers to Anapolaima, the waning stars in the east told him morning was near.

Great-grandmother's house was smaller and poorer than he remembered. It stood balanced precariously on a strip of land between the narrow mountain road in front and the majestic Andes dropping abruptly down in back. It still smelled the same--of wood and hemp and herbs. And great-grandmother was still in the kitchen, kneading. She hadn't seen her great-grandson in 26 years, but she recognized him, she said, by the way he swayed from side to side as he walked. "Eres Bernardo!" she exclaimed, the wrinkles on her face wagging happily in recognition. Bernardo wasn't a tall man, but he lifted her clear off the ground as she planted a humid kiss on his stubbly brown cheek.

"I knew you would return to Anapolaima," she said.

"I am here to visit you."

"Is that all?" great-grandmother looked at him with little black eyes not a whit dimmed by age.

Bernardo was too exhausted to answer. Without another word, he dropped onto her cot and fell asleep.

When he awoke, it was late afternoon. A great orange sun filled the window. Nothing stirred. Bernardo sat on the cot for a long time, watching the sun rays spill over the palm mat onto the floor and trying to remember how old he was. He got up slowly and wandered through the two small rooms of the house. Then his legs carried him outside and down packed dirt roads familiar to the soles of his feet. A few whitewashed buildings came into view, and a gray iguana, which turned out to be a cat, dragging itself across the street. Bernardo's legs stopped in front of a wooden door with a painted sign that read Farmacia. His hand pushed open the door. From inside came a thick whiff of eucalyptus leaves and verbena. As his eyes grew used to the dim interior, he made out the walls lined with thousands of jars. Behind the counter, an old man in a black vest looked up from something he was measuring with an eye-dropper. "I am Doctor Zapatero," he said. "And you must be Arturo's son."

"I am," said Bernardo, surprised that everyone else seemed to know who he was.

"Lo sabía!" said the man, pointing his eyedropper at Bernardo. "Arturo used to visit me every afternoon when you were a child."

"Oh. I have come to visit you too," Bernardo said courteously. Doctor Zapatero led him to a little back office with a chair and a desk cluttered with papers, vials, scales, tweezers. Bernardo hesitated, then sat down. Dr. Zapatero sat behind the desk, picked up a magnifying glass, and waited. Bernardo wasn't sure what to say. He told the doctor about Elvira--how her skin glowed when she put on her yellow silk dress to go out dancing on a Saturday night. How proud she was of their rented house with running water. And a real icebox. The doctor nodded. Bernardo thought he seemed impressed, so he went on. He told him about Saturn. "Of course I cannot see Saturn from the restaurant," he explained. "The restaurant has no sky." Dr. Zapatero took notes on a pad of ruled white paper. When Bernardo paused, he waved to him to continue. Bernardo told him about his soufflé (though not about cursing the consommé), and how he could no longer even boil potatoes, and where the great hole was, somewhere between his chest and his stomach. Dr. Zapatero went on writing long after Bernardo had finished. Finally, he looked up and said, "Please take off your shirt." Bernardo clambered onto the narrow metal cot. The doctor listened to his lungs, tapped his knees with a triangular hammer, and inspected his ears and tongue. After each test, he nodded his head approvingly and said, "Muy bien. Muy bien."

When he was through, he said, "I can do two things. I can send you to a specialist. He will take samples of your blood and urine." Bernardo winced. "He will look at your insides with an x-ray machine."

"My insides?"

"He will take pictures of your insides. The x-ray machine will see right through you, everything."

"Everything?" Bernardo shivered, covering his bare chest with his arms.

"Or I can give you a prescription right now," Dr. Zapatero said. Bernardo reached for his shirt and buttoned it quickly.

"I'm going to prescribe several remedies," Dr. Zapatero went on. "Get plenty of rest, drink fresh water."

"And when I can't sleep at night?"

"Sleep in the open air."

That evening, Bernardo wrote: "My dear Elvira, Dr. Zapatero has examined me and found nothing. I feel better now. But I still don't know who I am."

"So you've been to the doctor," said great-grandmother when he came in. She had baked a huge loaf of bread for supper, in the shape of a chubby baby with fat cheeks and pudgy hands sleeping in a wicker crib. They ate the whole loaf together, great-grandmother seated on a high stool at the wooden table, Bernardo across from her, picking off ears, toes, pieces of cradle and dunking them in a bowl of sweet milk and coffee. Bernardo had never tasted anything so delectable. "This is all I will eat while I am here," he told Great-Grandmother.

"This is all I make," she answered.

That night, Bernardo lay in a weather-worn hammock strung between the veranda and a mango tree. The warm night air smelled of coffee berries, and the grass hummed all around. He kept his eyes open as long as he could, counting the stars, but by the time he got to six thousand, seven hundred and two, he was asleep.

The next day, great-grandmother baked the town notary for breakfast--a fat gentleman in a business suit with a round hat and puffy tie. The day after that, a huge reclining nude propped up on one elbow with a blissful expression on her face. Back in Oiba, Elvira was surprised to get a letter from Bernardo that said, "My dear wife, great-grandmother makes supernatural people. No, I am not loco. It really is so."

In the afternoons Bernardo went to the cafe where the men drank black coffee and argued about politics and the radio news. Evenings, he lay on his hammock and watched the sky off the mountainside go from blue to lilac to midnight. As the stars lit up in turn, he thought they clustered into forms that chased each other across the sky--strange beasts and warriors, and a tall lopsided volcano that spun slowly around its crater as the hours wore on. "Dearest wife," he wrote, "Last night I saw a beautiful lady with a long, long braid running away from a mad cocodrilo. I have named her Elvira."

The next day at the cafe, Bernardo told the men about the stars and figures that inhabited the sky over Anapolaima. Some were doubtful. Others believed, wide-eyed. "What if the cocodrilo catches that poor, poor lady?" asked one.

Bernardo took a long sip of his coffee. "We will see," he said. Soon, because of his abundant observations and because he had lived in a real city, Bernardo became the final authority in Anapolaima on all celestial matters. He wrote to Elvira: "Dear wife, Please send me a book about the stars as soon as you can. I think I will become an astronomer." Elvira worried about sending him such a book. She showed the letter to her neighbor, a good, level-headed woman. "Poor Bernardo," said the neighbor shaking out her apron. "He is going loco. He cannot tell reality from his own imagination." Elvira tucked the letter away in a brown coffee tin with all the others. That night she cried herself to sleep.

Bernardo forgot all about cooking--except to help great-grandmother bake. So many were the loaves she made, and so large, she had to call in the neighbors, who gratefully carried them away. Most ate their loaves. Others--like the notary--placed them in their living rooms for all to see. One middle-aged man, who owned five volumes of an encyclopedia, took the nude and placed it on a wooden platform in his patio. When it rained, she became soft and spongy, her mighty breasts water-logged, her eyes more benign than ever under thick wet eyelids. The priest, despite his advanced myopia, was shocked. Bernardo wrote to Elvira: "My dear wife, The priest did not like Señor Enciclopedia's beautiful statue. He made great-grandmother go to confession." Elvira read the letter several times, with an anxious frown.

Actually, Bernardo had not told Elvira everything. The truth was, the priest had scolded Bernardo as well. He said he must control himself, or the whole town would run amok. Most people agreed. One afternoon Bernardo found Dr. Zapatero arguing with several men in the cafe. "I am telling them," said the doctor, "that you, Bernardo, have seen Saturn in the sky with rings all around it."

"That's impossible," broke in one robust man, gesticulating so hard he nearly knocked over his little cup of black coffee. "Saturn may be in the schoolmaster's book. But you can't see it in the sky. If you could," he concluded looking around triumphantly, "I would see it, and so would everybody else." Dr. Zapatero was quiet. So was Bernardo.

That evening, Bernardo wrote to Elvira, "Dearest wife, Now I know what is the matter with the people in Anapolaima. They have very bad vision." Elvira hesitated, but ended up showing the letter to her wise neighbor. "Bad vision is not a problem," the neighbor said. "Too much vision is." She looked at Elvira with one eyebrow raised, and began praying the novena for Bernardo in addition to the rosary.

Others joined her. Every evening Elvira's house was invaded by a host of neighbors, come to give her sound advice. Some came from several blocks away. Some brought their own chairs. The men played dominos in the living room while the women whispered about Bernardo and debated what Elvira should do. The house buzzed with their words of comfort: "Poor Elvira." "Bernardo está loco." Out of gratitude for their intentions at least, she served them cups of hot agua de panela with cheese and bread. But to tell the truth, their presence was driving her to distraction. And she was tired of bumping into people all over her house.

Not long afterwards, the postman brought Elvira the following letter: "Dearest wife, The beautiful figure is not there, only the cocodrilo. I am afraid. Please do not worry. I, Bernardo, will take care of you." This time, Elvira didn't show the letter to anyone. Nor did she put it in the brown coffee tin with the others. She read it very carefully, twice. Then she placed it in a little cedar chest alongside a faded sprig of tiny wildflowers. She was not surprised when Bernardo walked in the door two days later.

"I found my mother's recipe book," Bernardo said as they sat together, finally, holding hands.

"Did you bring it?" she asked.

"I forgot."

Elvira looked out at the evening sky. "Your assistant has asked for you," she said.

Bernardo sighed. "I will talk to him tomorrow."

"Where is your book of stars?"

"I no longer have it." He looked away so she couldn't see his eyes. "I'm tired of watching the stars. Tomorrow I will go back to the restaurant."

They were quiet for a moment. Then he said, "I brought a gift for you." Out of his traveling bag he pulled a blue and yellow shawl. "Now you won't shiver again in the cold night of Oiba." Elvira looked at the shawl with genuine surprise, then smiled softly, stroking it with her hand. After a long time, she said, "I have a gift for you too. From under the cushion she pulled a worn but perfectly good leather case.

"Binoculars!" he almost shouted, fumbling in his haste to pull them out. "Look, look how beautiful!" He held them up to his eyes. "Venus! Look! The Volcano!" He jumped up from his chair. "The lady! Look! Can you see?"

"Yes, I can see," she whispered, stroking her shawl.

Copyright © 2001 The President and Fellows of Harvard College.
All rights reserved. Comments. Last modified Thu, Sep 20, 2001.