In Hometown, things often began with a sound no one could quite place. That February morning, it was a sharp, crystalline crack — like glass breaking somewhere behind the sky. I had just left my breakfast at Maribel’s and was walking back toward the studio when I heard it. For a moment I stopped, half-expecting to see a windowpane glittering with fresh cracks, or a jug dropped by a careless hand. But the street was empty except for two lazy cats stretched in the sun, and nothing seemed broken.
I told myself I must have misheard — a carriage wheel over loose cobblestones, perhaps, or a bottle rolling in the dust — and, distracted by my own thoughts, I let it go. Yet later, I would remember that instant and wonder if it had not been the true beginning: the moment the stone took flight, the moment the hourglass in Don Nicanor Aguado’s workshop gave way.
That morning, the tall window of Don Nicanor’s workshop stood open for the first time in months. He had thrown it wide to let the crisp breeze from the Plaza chase away the damp air that had settled inside during long winter nights.
It was through this open window that a stone came flying, as if flung carelessly from some unseen hand. It landed not with a thud, but with a brittle, crystalline sound—striking an antique hourglass that had stood for years on the shelf beneath the sill. The glass split cleanly in two, and the sand, once captive in its narrow waist, spilled across the workbench, sifting into the delicate gears and cogs awaiting repair.
From that moment, Don Nicanor noticed, everything began to fall apart. Time no longer flowed in the orderly measure of his clocks, but broke into fragments, folding over itself like the pages of a book caught in a sudden gust. Different years overlapped in his gaze. A morning spent repairing the church clock now sat beside the memory of his mother calling him in from the riverbank, and beside a day he could not yet place, when he stood beneath an unfamiliar sky. The world, as Nicanor saw it, had become a collage of torn scraps of paper — mismatched in colour, size, and age, yet pressed together into a single, trembling surface. (...)
Full story available in 'Portraits for No One'.
