THE SLEEPING PRINCE


   Temprano levantó la muerte el vuelo,
 (Death took an early flight)
Temprano madrugó la madrugada,
(Dawn rose early in the morning)
           -Miguel Hernández: “Elegía”.  

I think I had been watching him for several hours, sleeping so peacefully. I say I think, because I don’t know how to measure time very well. Perhaps I had been watching him all day. The fact is that he was sleeping, so beautiful, dressed in his beautiful clothes. He looked like a prince, asleep
     We were always together, doing things together. It was already daylight, I had already been up for hours, but he was still asleep. I was becoming impatient. I wanted him to wake up, so that we could be together, doing things together.
     What I do not understand is why he would not wake up; why he was still asleep; why the neighbours came to see him; why he was sleeping in a different bed, so ugly, painted white and grey; why he had two laurel leaves covering his eyes.
    Well, I am only three years old, there are many things I do not understand, and the adult people do not explain them to me. But, when those men put a lid on the cradle of my little brother, and they were going to lift it, to take him away, I saw my mom dash towards them, like a wild animal. She hugged the cradle, clung to it, and began to scream like a crazy woman. And what scared me the most was that, Dad was also crying. I had never seen my dad cry. I thought that men did not cry. It was then that I realized that something very bad was happening.
    Well, when Mom calmed down, those men lifted my little brother’s ugly bed, and placed it inside a carriage that was waiting outside. A most ugly carriage, painted black, with grey glass windows, and two black-furred horses in front of it.  Then they took him away.      
    I never saw him again, since that day. I ask Mom where is my little brother, and when will he return. She says he is in heaven, because up there the air is clean; that as my little brother’s lungs were sick, and he could not breathe well, the dirty air, down here, was harming him, specially the air in our neighbourhood, with so much dust raised by the trucks as they drive on the dirt road. Mom says that in heaven, he is well, that he can breathe well, because up there the air is clean. Mom says that one day, we'll go visit him.   

© Text and photograph: William Almonte Jiménez, 2011