1000 words from
The Quest of Melitón González Trejo
Melitón was struggling to find a comfortable position on the centenary oak tree he was sitting on when he heard someone walking. From his vantage point, he saw a foreigner making his way through some low branches. There was no doubting that this was a foreigner—his dress was nothing like that of the locals. The most striking elements of his attire were a leather helmet with a white plume crest and a crimson cape fastened over his right shoulder. Everything about his clothes came from a different land. He wore a red tunic on which he had put on segmented armor. His were thick-soled sandals. On his hips he had a leather belt which held a double-edged sword that was less than half a meter long. As he walked past the oak on which Melitón sat, the foreigner stopped, as if noticing he was being observed, and looked up. His skin was fair, his eyes were green, and his nose was rather sharp. He locked gazes with the young man and, after saying some incomprehensible words in a language that Meliton somehow managed to recognize as Latin, he continued his path through the forest. He seemed determined to get somewhere.
Melitón jumped down from the tree and smiled. He headed back home, eager to tell his parents that he had now made the most important decision in his nearly fifteen years of life. Some distance away, toward the middle of the Valley, he saw the small town of Garganta de la Olla emerge with its red and orange rooftops. The village was surrounded by lush green trees and white cherry trees that would soon bring forth their scarlet fruit. From where he stood, the young man could see the one-towered church with its adjacent graveyard, the vineyards past the houses, and, with some difficulty, his own house near the town square. He followed the main road toward the center of town, walking past a group of laundresses who chatted as they scrubbed bundles of clothing in one of the pools. Once he was inside the town, he crossed paths with a few villagers who greeted him on their way to market.
Following the usual narrow, dusty roads he made it home. It was a three-story construction, with an adobe, lime-covered facade crisscrossed by stubborn, dark chestnut beams. The second floor stretched daringly several meters farther out than the first floor, supported by four oakwood beams cemented on stone bases. The second story had a roomy balcony with a chestnut handrail on which could be seen a row of pots with red and pink flowers. It was a dignified home for a family that descended from that low-ranking gentry known as hidalgos.
Meliton walked into the inner courtyard, where some sheep lay in a pen, went past the cellars, and headed up the stairs to the living room on the second floor. There he found his mother Gerónima Moreno sitting at the table and his father Gerardo González y Trejo standing next to her, moving his hands excessively as he explained something in a loud voice. Gerónima held in her arms a baby girl she had brought a few weeks earlier from an orphanage in the walled town of Plasencia. Coming up the stairs, Melitón had heard his mother mention the girl’s name—Francisca—and realized his parents were arguing about the child. As soon as the young man walked into the room, Gerónima and Gerardo became silent. Gerónima stood on her feet and cradled baby Francisca, who babbled as if she were uncomfortable in her diapers. There was a certain resemblance between the baby and the adult holding her. Both had curly light-brown hair, fair complexion, elongated faces, and rather small constitutions. Gerónima wore a one-piece, white dress with a red ribbon fastened around her waist. Gerardo, as if avoiding his son who just walked in, placed his hands on his hips and looked away at a flower vase that decorated the bare table with red and green colors.
Young Melitón lacked social skills, so he went straight to the point and asked his parents if they had any Roman ancestors. Surprised by the unexpected question, Gerardo leaned on the upholstered back of one of the chairs and explained that yes, he descended from an illustrious family whose forebearers included Roman governors in old Hispania. Melitón persisted. He wanted to know their names, their life stories. Lacking an answer, Gerardo simply said that no one cared about that anymore.
“But I care. I just saw one that looked like a legionnaire,” explained young Melitón.
“Oh, right, because this one sees the dead, like your grandmother Agustina,” said Gerardo to Gerónima.
“No, Granny Agustina heard the voices of gnomes under the roots of the trees where they keep their gems. It was Grandpa Luis who saw his dead,” retorted Gerónima, some irritation coming through in her voice.
Gerardo clicked his tongue and waved his hand dismissively.
The book I’m writing is not a biography. I repeat this motto over and over as I continue to write the life of Melitón González Trejo. The protagonist was a real person. He was a Spanish man born in mid-19th-century Spain who gained a spot on the pages of history as the translator into Spanish of the Book of Mormon. I speak of the pages of history literally. There are several articles written about him, and volume two of Saints tells a bit of his story. He’s also found a place on the pages of literature with a brief cameo in the novel Eleusis. Even so, no one has ever used the novel as a vehicle to tell his story.
So I decided to do just that. I’m not sure why. I admit that this thick-bearded Spaniard has caught my attention since the first time I heard of him. We share the same paternal surname—González—and the same religious belief. We are both translators and both have translated things for the Church. Above all, we are both exiled—thistles that have been ripped from their soil and tumble about the surface of the planet without a set destination. He was pushed by a mythical, divine wind. I hope my wind is of the sort too. In other words, Melitón is my brother, and perhaps all of this is what now makes me write his story.
But the thing is, I don’t know if this is his story. I mean to say that I’m not sure previous writings on Melitón González Trejo, who is often misnamed as Meliton Trejo, are very accurate. As I draft my novel, I spend hours on end researching his times, his places, his anecdotes. The truth is a lot of the information available is contradictory, even when found in reputable sources. In addition, there are some major gaps in his life. What we don’t know is more than what we do know. So in order to narrate his life, I have to decide which stories make more sense (whether they in actuality happened) and I have to fill in the blanks (with plausible but ultimately fictitious tales). This makes me uncomfortable sometimes. Thus, in order to put some distance between my novel and historical reality, I introduce highly unlikely elements. For example, my Melitón has a strong connection with his dead, so much so that he sees them. I also feel a strong connection with my dead. I don’t actually see them, but how I wish I could!
I get to take such liberties because I’m not writing a biography. For some time, I had considered writing in fact a historical text, a true biography, with sources cited, footnotes, a peer review, etc. But I also know that biography, as a genre, has the limitation of not being able to tell things as they surely happened. So when the folks at the Mormon Lit Lab made a call for book pitches, I dared propose this novel. They considered my submission kindly, and now, thanks to their encouragement, I am writing Melitón’s life story as a book. Except it’s not a biography. It’s a fiction as uncertain as any biography, and therefore every bit as true, or perhaps even more so. 🕮