The great man was all locked up in a corner of his horrible prison hut, up there on the plateau. It was cold but the anger that burned inside him was not enough to make him warm even outside.
Seven days had passed since the owner of the sugar cane haciendas had imprisoned him as a slave.
Being an imposing man and being unable to do anything for your own salvation is truly humiliating, especially if the one who dominates you is a frail tyrant.
He never thought it would end up like this. At that time it was normal to work the land in almost feudal conditions. But not to work until you deprive yourself of your sacred freedom.
Yet it had really happened. Anger became tears.
He raised his head to the only window of his hovel. The moon!
Where had the moon gone? A moment earlier it was there, in the middle of that modest opening towards the outside. He got up in disbelief and with his face stuck to that one outlet he searched in vain up there outside, in that heavenly, serene, starry space. Nothing.
How was that possible? Suddenly a rooster sang: was dawn about to rise?
One more song; yet. The air did not change light in the least. No aurora. He did not know the hour but, for sure, it was too early for the sun to get up.
What was going on?
While still searching for an answer to his questions, he heard the prison door open behind him. In the doorway, two beautiful brown children appeared smiling; one male and one female.
"Hi, great man, don't worry!" said the little girl.
"Who ... who are you?!?"
"We are the children of the shepherdess of the plateau. She knew that they were keeping you incarcerated here and saddened by your condition, she asked us to free you. "
The man looked at them with the amazement of an impossible night. "How did you get through the tall, barbed fence on the peaks?" "We went under it!" the girl said with a sly air.
The man smiled and didn't even think about the feeling that the land was too hard to be dug by two children. He had tried it himself, in vain, the day before.
However, now, it didn't take long to convince him to run away.
They took him by the hand and together they crossed the whole field to the fence. So they went down there, inside an space in the ground just as big as his person, they hadn't even taken the measurements on him.
He passed quickly, without getting the slightest scratch.
Then up, up; climbing on the rocks. Much higher. Up there where their mother lived. When they reached their home, the Shepherdess was waiting for them in front of a cheerful bonfire.
"Great man! What happiness to know you are free! "
“Thanks to you and your children. I thank you with all my heart! How can I ever repay you? "
"Knowing how to make you safe already makes me happy," said the Shepherdess, turning her back on him and returning to revive her bonfire. After a moment of silence, however, in an inquiring voice, she asked him: "Do you care so much to repay us?"
"Sure. With all my soul, Signora Pastora! "
"Well. One way you would have of doing it. Down south; very, very far from here, there are some lands that belong to me but that nobody has ever cultivated ".
"Do you want me to go to work on that land?"
“You would really do me a great pleasure! I would like to cultivate them with vineyards hitherto unknown to those regions: with grapes of the Malbec variety ”.
“Never heard of it in my life. On the other hand, however, I have never grown grapes and there can be a little ignorance ... "
"So?"
“So, I still have to pay you back. I will certainly find a way to do this favour for you."
He had the Shepherdess explain exactly where the place was. He got the seeds for those vines and left, without even notifying his family. The lady of the plateau would have personally thought about it.
The great man walked for long days and nights, through those mountains of incredible heights. A constant panorama of the cordillera that surrounded him from east to west, as if there were no outlet towards the plain, in a suffocating psychological grip.
During the journey, however, in contrast to this oppression, he found the disarming peacefulness of the wild animals who generously offered him milk to quench his thirst, wool to warm up and prey to support himself.
While from the other animals, usually more aggressive and dangerous, he received only indifference, as if they obeyed an improbable command of Nature.
So, after his long journey through these thousand-year-old rocky paths, he finally came to the boundless lands of the coloured clay that, with their superb show of iridescent streaks, would have filled the eyes of any customer with wonder.
When he was satisfied with looking at such beauty, he began to look for the passage of any river or stream among those plains and hills; at least the presence of a lake! Nothing. There were no homes or crops to be seen as far as the eye could see.
Without water there can be no life. That colourful expanse of beauty turned out to be a desert indeed. Depressed by this disheartening discovery and exhausted by the very long walk, he lay down to rest on the bare earth. He went to sleep immediately and dreamed of earlier times.
In the dream the Shepherdess appeared with her two children: "Thank you for giving my lands a fruitful vineyard!"
"But I haven't done anything yet, ma'am ..." The Sheperdess smiled and invited him to turn around.
Behind him the valleys had changed in appearance: long rows of flourishing vines encircled the sides of the mountains like ornaments on a beautiful bride. Trees, rivers, earth and sky perfectly placed in the infinity of those virgin spaces.
"When did this ever happen?" asked the man.
"In the time of a dream," the Shepherdess replied.
"What? So who are you really? "
"I am the Shepherdess, the Mother, the Bride, the Earth: I am the Pachamama (fertility goddess)!"
The great man instinctively knelt on the ground, in reverential prayer.
Meanwhile, the two children were raised to the sky and began to shine with their bodies, with a different light from each other.
The boy emitted a blinding light. It went up around noon and became the Sun.
The girl, with the softest and sweetest light, placed herself in the air towards the west and became the Moon.
The man opened his eyes and waking up, found himself inside an elegant house, sitting in the living room.
“Ah, you finally woke up! My poor husband: today you worked so hard, there in the fields, that you fell asleep immediately as soon as you touched the sofa! "
A child was stuck between his legs and shouted at him with a sweet face: -Babboooo !!! -
The good worker then took that child in his arms and with his heart full of emotion he left the house.
It was all like in the dream. The vineyards, the trees and the river.
Up there, behind the imposing blue mountains, the sky changed from light blue to orange to red, where the sun was lost loose between those peaks.
It was the time of the harvest. Pachamama had blessed him rich fruits, both from the earth and from his bride.
A son, would become an illustrious doctor within twenty years and a superb red wine should be grown that would have no equal anywhere in the world.
So it was that, therefore, the great man from the mountains, with the dignity of dozing, also made the desert fertile.
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