My Uncle’s Enchanted Storeroom
Every February of my childhood seemed to come as a gift. It was a time full of joy, love, and discovery, when my father, mother and grandmother would take my siblings and me to spend a pair of weeks visiting our cousins and family in our hometowns of José Galvez and Sucre, villages less than a mile apart, located in the province of Celendín. Neither town had more than 2,000 residents back then and everybody was, somehow, in some degree, related to everyone else.
Traveling to Celendín on one of the busses of la Agencia Diaz, a bus company owned by our relatives Arturo and Sebastian Diaz, was not a pleasant trip for me. I was affected by altitude sickness - which we call soroche or mal de altura - and I would become nauseous, with an aching head and stomach. My grandmother, Mama Juana, was always the caring nurse who tended to me through the five hours of the trip: she massaged my forehead and gave me aromatic tinctures to smell - Agua Florida and Timolina. Although these tonics seldom worked, inevitably the pains would resolve themselves as soon as we arrived in José Galvez - home of my mother and her family.
Always upon our arrival, we would see my aunt, tía Dalila, coming from the portón of the big house smiling with tears in her eyes, and her arms open wide to greet each of us with a hug. My uncle, tío Anibal, would leave his post at his store (la tienda), and, with one book or another in his hands, and a pair of glasses poised on the bridge of his nose, would come to greet us as well. Finally, we would see our cousins - Mañuco, Lucho, Roger and Magnito - joyfully surrounding us, freshy dressed with clean clothes, washed faces and combed hair. And, like that, my illness - all aches and pains - would vanish. I was full of energy again, and brimming with excitement. All the more so when, after hugs and kisses, my tía Dalila would proclaim: “Let your cousins and your uncle take your bags upstairs. We will go have our hot chocolate. There is quesillo, bizcochuelo, and galletitas de main waiting for you inside …Hurry up, wash your hands and sit! It was like heaven on earth at my aunt's table: drinking and eating what she made with love, and made so well. How can I ever forget her delicious food?!
Among uncountable memories of those February visits to José Galvez, there is one that I especially cherish. It remains as vivid as if it were yesterday, full of nostalgia. I am convinced it shaped and enriched my youth and perhaps became part of who I am today.
This memory is of our childhood adventures in my uncle Anibal's store. The store occupied part of the ground floor of the large house where my aunt and uncle and cousins all lived. The house itself was located off of one of the four corners of the town’s central square - the plaza. From the house, we could easily see the church, the City Hall, and also the post-office, where people would go to not only send and receive letters and packages, but also to post telegrams and make indirect long-distance phone calls. These calls were routed through the on-site operator, the town's telefonista. At that time, the operator happened to an aunt of ours, tía Jesus Marín, whose nick name was “Jesusita” - a lady with beautiful green eyes, a characteristic of the entire Marín family. Jesusita would place calls to a call center in Celendín, the provincial capital, and, once connected, the long-distance call would begin. Holding an audio-horn next to one ear and speaking into a receiver glued to the wall, the caller would need to speak so loudly that everyone around them could hear, and listen-in. This became a kind of amusing pass-time for many!
My uncle's store was a convenience store, the only one in José Galvez, and as such, it was visited by all the town. He sold everything from sugar, rice, noodles, olive oil, lard, canned fish (tuna and sardines), beer, soft drinks, candies (which we would steal when we could, which wasn’t often), fruit, traditional healing root syrups for pains and moods, toothpaste, soap, detergent, Mejoral and Aspirin, Alka-Seltzer for indigestion , and “Buck”-brand caramelos for a cough. He had everything that people needed; in small amounts, of course. Periodically he and tía Dalila visited us in Cajamarca - visits we loved - and they would purchase goods to replenish his store.
Before making a home in José Galvez, where he had been born an only child, my uncle had left to travel and work as a young merchant in the company of his uncles, de la familia Marín. He helped them open stores in the main commercial cities of the Peruvian Andes (i.e., Arequipa, Cuzco, Huanuco) and also in Bolivia (La Paz, Paruro, Cochabamba). In all of the stores, they sold wool, including “casimires” (cashmere wools) . The Marín clan became successful and prosperous by this trade. Nevertheless, my tío Anibal decided to return to José Galvez. His wife, my tía Dalila, had tried to accustom herself to a life away from her own home and family, but she found it very difficult. Moreover, as my uncle was the only child, without the presence of his father, he himself needed to take care of his aging mother, my tía Shishe.
Among the citizens of José Galvez, my uncle Anibal was one of the most knowledgeable. He loved to tell us stories about the events he had witnessed during his merchant days: he talked about the Guerra del Chaco, a war fought between Bolivia and Chile, as well as about the APRA, a socialist political party he embraced with such ardor he named his second child Luis Alberto, after one of APRA’s principal intellectuals. When he had no customers, we would always find our tío Anibal in the store reading a book or listening to programs on his short wave radio - the “Telefunken”. For him, the books and the radio were windows onto the world, and a way to know what was happening far away. He was proud to have us listen to Radio Atalaya from Ecuador; Radio Caracol, from Colombia; Radio Atlanta from Iquitos, in Peru; and to Radio La Habana from Cuba, and the BBC de Londres, from the UK! My uncle kept abreast of all the latest news.
Behind the retail space of the store, where customers could see and inspect items and wares, there was the back-room, what we call a trastienda. If you asked my cousins, my siblings and me to tell you the thing that most enchanted us out of all the wonders of the store, we would say it was the trastienda. It was a dark room, with no windows, and only an entrance from the store; though it did have another door facing the street, this was always locked.
It was a magical room. I loved how the sunlight barely entered through the cracks in the door, just allowing our eyes to adapt to the darkness to eventually half-see what the room contained. The trastienda was, for us, a secret space, a large cabinet of wonders, and a treasure chest of mysteries and delights. We loved to explore its darkness, and like bees to nectar, we were attracted, practically blind, by the most delicious smells. Above all: the aromatic scent of ciruelas balseras - very sweet and aromatic red plums, just ripe and ready to be eaten. They came from their namesake region, Balsas, close to the Marañon river, where my grandparents left a small farm under the care of local growers, who periodically would supply produce to my uncle. There they would grew cacao (to make chocolate), oranges, avocados, bananas, and ciruelas. February was the month when the ciruelas were in season; as well as the oranges and avocados! When these fruits arrived, my uncle would keep them in the trastienda wrapped in tercios (rustic containers made with dry and flexible bunches of subtropical trees, covered and tied with dry banana leaves: a perfect bed to keep the fruits fresh as long their own ripening allowed.) And from within those bundles, came the miraculous scent of sweetening plums.
From other corners of the room, other captivating aromas would call to us. Some came from large baskets covered by white sheets. We already knew that inside were a delicious assortment of baked goods, the product of days of baking by our tía Dalila, in anticipation of our visit! The largest of the baskets contained delicious panes con anis (anise-infused bread) so traditional in Celendín. In a medium-size basket with a wider rim were our beloved bizcochuelos - cakes made with well beaten egg yolks, chuño (potato flour), and brown sugar. Each bizcochuelo was kept wrapped in newspaper. They were so delicious and soft that, without chewing, each bite melted in your mouth. The other two baskets were also of a smaller size but narrower. One contained galletitas de Vainilla (crisp vanilla cookies), and the other was filled with panecitos de maiz (little cookies made with corn flour).
All of this delicious treasure, hidden in the darkness of the trastienda, proved an irresistible allure. We children would sneak and disappear inside to eat and sample these many treats without being seen by the grownups. And though we did not take much on any one visit, yet as days passed, the levels in each basket would begin to drop. Fortunately for us, the kind spirit and words of our tía Dalila mitigated and healed our guilty conscience. When she found us snacking on her store of goods, she would smile and say: Eat, Eat, children! I knew you would like them! Eat, your aunt made them just for you!
Last but not least, I want to share with you what for me was the most valuable treasure that I discovered on the shelves of the trastienda. It was a set of classic books that my tío Anibal had collected, and which he kept organized by country and author! They were not hardcovers; but they were elegantly printed by “Tor”, a publishing house based in Buenos Aires, Argentina. I never learned how my uncle had come in to their possession, but there they were. And, amazingly to me, he gave me permission to read them! I was perhaps 10 or 11 years old at that time, and my uncle helped me to choose the first one. I remember clearly: it was Maria, a novel written by Jorge Isaac, a Colombian writer. Composed in simple and beautiful Spanish, it told a romantic story, and I loved it.
Through my years of adolescence I read many more books from my uncle’s collection. Among them, I remember especially: Los Tres Mosqueteros (The Three Musketeers) by Alexander Dumas; some of the more well-known works of Shakespeare; La Guerra y la Paz (War and Peace) by Leo Tolstoy; Crimen y Castigo by Fyodor Dostoyevsky; El Cantar del Mio Cid (the famous Spanish legend). The last book I read, which was a little difficult for me to understand, was Madre (Mother) by Maxim Gorky.
Now that I am getting older, living far from Peru, and from the hometowns of my parents, I feel that I had the great fortune to live my childhood surrounded by circumstances that few children seem to have. High in the Andes, in that remote village of José Galvez, my body and soul, my mind and imagination were nourished by great and genuine love: by food and by books, and by people and places all the more. Who would believe that such precious gifts - exquisite food made with love; and a rich cultural and intellectual life - existed, and still exist, in such remote places as José Galvez, the little town where I spent those wonderful Februaries of my childhood.
With gratitude to all you readers,
Mama Doris
A picture of my family with tía Dalila (at the center of the back row) in José Galvez