Hot tortillas for half a córdoba a dozen
…..
Chapter VII: About the trenches and the multiplying tables
Leon City,Leon, Nicaragua
A few years after their marriage, Grandfather Jairo bought the stately and colonial mansion from his mother. She had inherited the house from her parents after her own marriage. The house was in the historic center of the old colonial city of León, and it was only two blocks away from the Central Park.
Although the house was more than a hundred and fifty years old, and many people lived in it, the splendid house, with its three spacious living rooms and the four pleasant and copiously tree-covered gardens, was in perfect mint condition. It would seem the house had been tailor-made to order for my grandmother Manuela. The high gabled roofs, with their brick-red tiles, kept the house nice and cool indoors all day long, though outside the tropical sun would shine relentlessly.
Located on a corner of the block, the house was separated from the street, to its north, by a long corridor. The main entrance was at the front of the house. It opened to a bright and sunny reception with comfortable wicker-wrought rocking chairs she had bought in the colorful Masaya market. There, during those sun-filled warm beautiful León mornings,
Grandmother would enjoy listening to the street’s sounds, always with a book in her hands. Occasionally she’d interrupt her reading for the benefit of the street peddlers, as they cheerfully hawked and cried out their wares. Around eight in the morning, the woman with the tortillas could be heard, as she offered her cakes made from fresh ground corn:
“… Buy the corn tortillas, so nice and hot, half a córdoba for the dozen! Come and get them, they´re warm and they’re fresh…” She would stop with Grandmother, who had the two córdobas readily available, to sell her the fresh tortillas, carefully wrapping them, still steaming, in a brightly colored, cotton kitchen cloth.
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