The little boy stopped, fascinated, in front of the column of steam that poured endlessly from the dark chimney of the factory by the pier. White and unruly, the vapor gradually dissolved as it rose and drifted away. Yet the day was overcast, and it was impossible to tell exactly where the steam disappeared and where the clouds began.
His young father came up beside him with a smile and whispered, “How beautiful! That’s where they make the clouds.”
The boy looked up at him with the trusting expression of someone making a discovery. He had never thought about this before, but gazing up now, it was obvious and clear.
“And how do they make them?”
“Well, with a big machine. Inside that factory they have a machine for making clouds, and then, through that tower, they release them so they can fly up into the sky.”
“And why do they make them?” the boy asked.
“So it can rain in places that are very dry, or so they can give shade when it’s very hot.”
The boy’s questions seemed endless. “And how do they send them to those places?”
“Well…the wind does that. It carries the clouds to the places where they’re needed.”
“And where does the wind come from?”
The father realized that his playful remark was becoming increasingly complicated. His knowledge of climatology wasn’t extensive enough to give a definite answer to each of those questions—nor was his imagination, and certainly not his patience.
“Do they make it in another factory?” the boy suggested.
“Of course, son. In another factory.”
They continued along the tree-lined sidewalks surrounding the factory, but the boy kept gazing, absorbed, at the tower from which the newly born clouds emerged one after another. His gaze said everything. No book or film could reproduce what that child’s mind was imagining.
A worker walking nearby, dressed in dark blue coveralls and wearing a yellow helmet, smiled when the boy—without greeting him first and with no hesitation at all—asked him, “Is the cloud-making machine very big?”
The worker smiled and glanced at the father standing beside the boy. The father rolled his eyes upward, as if to say, Well, a little fable never hurt anyone.
Squatting so he was at the child’s height, the worker looked him in the eyes. “Look, what’s coming out of that chimney is steam—just like clouds are made of steam. But this steam dissolves right away.”
“Dissolves?” the boy repeated.
“It means it disappears—it breaks apart in the air. It doesn’t turn into the clouds you see in the sky.”
The boy’s face showed clear disappointment, while the father’s showed irritation.
“However,” the worker continued, wanting to redeem himself, “I know the place where the clouds really are made. The true clouds of the sky.”
“Really?” said the boy, hope renewed.
“Yes, but it’s far away. There’s a big white building, very old, with a very, very tall tower. It’s on an island in the bay, but the only way to get there is by boat.”
The father looked at him now with a conspiratorial expression—and a trace of forgiveness. The boy smiled at the worker and then at his father as they walked away from the factory.
“See, Dad? That man said the cloud-making machine isn’t there. But the island in the bay is where they make them. One day can we take a boat to that island?”
“Yes, son. One day we’ll go.”
Time passed, and that episode from childhood became a memory. The boy grew into a young man, and soon into an adult. He studied, worked for many years as a librarian, and formed a small family consisting only of his wife and himself, since they were never blessed with children. And just as clouds swiftly cross the sky, so passed the life of that boy.
His mind learned many things but forgot others. Yet somewhere deep within, that day at the factory with his father remained almost intact. So too did the words of the unknown worker who had told him about the island.
One summer morning, when the sky was very clear and turquoise, the boy—now eighty years old—took a bus to the harbor. He walked slowly past the old fertilizer factory, now abandoned and crumbling. He continued to the pier, where a few colorful sailboats rested at their moorings. Farther out, a handful of small fishing boats wandered across the waters of the bay. It was not a pier that had changed very much despite the passing years.
He bought a boat ticket to the small island in the bay, several kilometers from the coast. In recent days—especially since becoming a widower—he had vividly remembered the words of that worker from his childhood: A big white building, very old, with a very, very tall tower.
The old man boarded a modest red boat that had once been a fishing vessel and now served for short trips. He watched the pier recede without expression. The tall lighthouse and the rough rocks reflected perfectly in the calm water, like a postcard from some Mediterranean coast.
He walked quietly to the bow and closed his eyes as the sea breeze caressed his face and tousled his white hair. Nearby seagulls sang their traditional sailors’ songs as they circled above the boat.
After a short while of serene sailing, the small green island appeared on the horizon. Indeed, even from afar, the boy—now an old man—could see the white tower rising above the crowns of the leafy trees. Its style seemed very ancient, as if built by some ancestral civilization. Yet as they drew closer, the old man noticed that it was not deteriorated at all. And above it floated enormous castles of white cumulus.
The old man stepped off the small catamaran and walked along a tidy path bordered on both sides with small yellow and white flowers. The pier fell behind him, and suddenly the small village surrounding the white and imposing building enclosed him. The distant cries of seagulls still sounded, as if saying goodbye.
A few people walked here and there along the rising streets. Some greeted him kindly as he passed. Finally, he walked along a long stone path that crossed the park surrounding the white tower. His memories were becoming clearer and clearer, and what he had doubted for years now seemed an obvious and tangible reality.
When he reached the enormous entrance door, a gardener greeted him with a smile. He didn’t seem very old, but his face felt familiar. And though the visitor had already reached eighty years of age, the gardener greeted him:
“Hello, child. How are you?”
The old man stood still for a moment, trying to understand what was happening. He looked again toward the entrance door and read an inscription carved into the rough white stone of the lintel:
Place of Holiness
He crossed the heavy door, which closed softly behind him, and walked across the immaculate carpet with slow but steady steps. At the reception desk he saw someone standing with their back turned. The person wore white and held a particularly upright posture.
“Excuse me, sir,” he said, swallowing nervously. “Are you the cloud-maker?”
The receptionist turned around and smiled warmly, his eyes meeting those of the eighty-year-old child as if in an embrace.
“I Am.”
Maximiliano Martínez
was born in the city
of Bahía Blanca,
Argentina.
