The Linio Milagro Family

It was as if the night had spread blue tracing paper across the windows when the Linio Milagro family gathered around the kerosene heater in that room on the top floor. The front foyer was certainly cold, with its marble statue bearing garlands of lights; the living room with its decorative cushions was also cold, unused. The slow elevator was a sanctuary, smelling of food and surrounded by dark wooden staircases where invisible feet would climb. Those cold regions of the rooms on the ground floor were forbidden, lit only on holidays, birthdays, or unlikely weddings. For the Linio Milagro family, gathering around a kerosene heater was as indispensable as their midday lunch.

The six sisters wore different shades of green cardigans: Veronese green, emerald green, Nile green, olive green, almond-tree green and myrtle green. The six of them garnered praise for having knit the sweaters themselves. They all had the same haircut and spoke at the same time about their most recent acquisition—a hat adorned with fiberglass ribbons—until they stood up from their chairs, leaving the room empty save for the portrait of their ancestor, dressed as a hunter with a rifle in hand and a dog at his feet.

From time to time the purchase of a plot of land would unsettle the mood of this family whose only outings were to the colorful, eternally sad landscapes of movies, where blues and greens stretched across skies with yellow bell towers, embalmed in a setting sun.

Aurelia had not knitted a cardigan: she was the sister who provoked secrets, screams contained behind closed doors, awful arguments at meal times and prolonged siestas in the winter: she was the cause of dreams that arrived too late at night. Since when? Ever since the six sisters could remember. Aurelia, wearing the organdy gauze of old-fashioned lady automobile drivers, would descend the stairs at four in the morning, turn on all the lights in the living room, and play the upright piano, constantly pressing the pedals to expand the notes. Vast mysteries washed over that nocturnal music that awoke in Aurelia’s dream and on the sleepless nights of her sisters. One day, after a long family conclave where the enraged insomnia victims grew bold, the sisters decided to lock the piano up with a key. At four in the morning they heard the banging of furniture and broken glass. When they got to the living room, Aurelia was lying on the floor, her eyes closed, her hands bloodied by broken mirrors. Five terrified sisters opened the piano and deliberately lost the key under a piece of furniture. Eight silent years passed without protests about the piano.

When dinner was over, the voices grew louder over dessert with the usual sounds of crunchy meringues.

Everyone went to bed early that night.

In their dreams the most faraway hours were close by, and they walked embracing one another. Before their eyes had even closed they heard Aurelia at the piano. No they didn’t. The night was silent. A strange smell of burned paper entered the rooms, wrapped in the silence of fire. The house filled with black smoke.

The entire family leapt from their beds and rushed to grab coats, pants, and shoes from the closets. It was four in the morning: Aurelia was moving toward the piano, and they had to drag her to the street door. The flames grew, the neighbors called the fire department. Everyone peered from windows to see the fire, but Aurelia’s eyes were dreamily swimming up remote streams of music.

The Linio Milagro family, huddled on a street corner, watched the frightening flames. Nobody realized that Aurelia was missing. The flames climbed steadily to lick the sky as the walls crumbled to the ground. Suddenly they heard the piano, the same music as always, serene in the night. “Aurelia! Aurelia!”

The house was old and insured, and no one had ever wanted to rent it. The timid hope of an opportune fire occurred to them. “Aurelia! Aurelia!” Aurelia was nowhere to be found, only the piano could be heard, fading away as the fire grew.

Aurelia was not saved from the fire. Shrouded in the organdy gauze of an old-fashioned lady automobile driver, she died like Joan of Arc, hearing voices. The Linio Milagro family, pursued by the piano at four in the morning, would keep changing houses over and over and over again.