You don’t know what my granddad’s like, of course. He’s a little old man with a beard and spectacles, very wise and scholarly, but a terrible grouch. I wasn’t especially close to him, because he was always trying to make me go back to school. Actually, the truth is, he’s always trying to make everybody go to school.
Which was why when we were at Ituzaingó station I’d been trying to persuade my mum that we shouldn’t go fetch him.
Meanwhile, the people who were waiting for the train started looking at us as if we were the most peculiar creatures. When we set off towards Granddad’s house, three newspaper salesmen attached themselves to our group, along with two guards, four tramps, a wafer seller and four altar boys who’d escaped from church.
At last we reached Granddad’s house, all muddy, scratched by nettles and bitten by mosquitoes, because the house is at the back of beyond—“where the devil lost his poncho”, as they say around here. The Superintendent even had to pick up my Auntie Clodomira to get her over a puddle…
Granddad was sleeping like a little cherub.
We tried waking him but it was quite impossible. He’d covered his head with a pillow and pulled his nightcap down over his ears.
My mum got him up and dressed, while Granddad, who was still half asleep, put up a fine grumbling and kicking.
When he was dressed and his face washed, he asked what all this upheaval was about, since today wasn’t a school day and anyway this, that and the other.
We explained that we’d come to fetch him to join a glorious expedition, and then Granddad livened up at last.
He went over to a cobweb-covered trunk and took out an explorer’s helmet, a pop-gun, a butterfly net, a compass, a cap-gun and a tin sword.
Thus equipped—and when it looked like he’d finally been convinced—Granddad, who’s temperamental as the devil, sat down on the floor and said:
“No, I’m just not going. I don’t want to.”
So, to persuade him, I said:
“But Granddad, you have to come, so that when we find Dailan Kifki you can make the official speech!”
Since he absolutely loves making speeches, and he loves school overalls, blackboards, herbariums and all those kinds of things, he agreed enthusiastically, on condition that we sang the San Lorenzo March on the way. Which we did quite reluctantly, as we were hoarse from so much chattering, dancing, planning, bus-riding, train-riding, arguing, etc.
Finally, with Granddad at the head of the party, and singing the San Lorenzo March, we walked across puddles, over ditches, past wire fences and through marshes till we reached a farmhouse in the middle of wide open countryside, where a sign with several spelling mistakes read:
“UNION OF KITE-FLYERS”
At last!