The legend of Count Quero

In the small town of Quero, south of Madrid was born Ferdinand, son of one of the wealthiest and traditional families that has proudly carried the same name of the City.

Fernando was the only son of the eldest member of the family Quero. He grew up in a silver spoon and all the comforts of the time, however experienced the emptiness of being without a father and mother since he was six years old.

His grandparents granted custody and education of Fernando to a trusted servant called Kendall due to the request of his father at the moment of his death.

Kendall was a devote catholic who balanced his devotion with a noble soul. He had a temperance and tenacity to lose his temper but kept self-control. He also was a lover of nature and literature and was athlete skilled in the use of knives, muskets and rifles which gave him his muscular physic and led to his vanity. In comparison to him other athletes would feel handicapped.

He was a genius with numbers and finance and had an innate ability with language that perfectly complemented his knowledge of three African dialects that even in our time could be called gifted. But his disadvantage was being black.

Kendall accepted the responsibility to be the celibate father of the little Fernando, before the relentless paradigm of raising a child in a world of such ignorance and differences. Kendall became the best “mother” that anyone could want. The paradox of life is to convert the young nobility of the Count Ferdinand into a white man embedded in an environment of black culture and, at the same time, facing up to keep family businesses scattered across three continents.

By observing the dewdrops Fernando, who was sensitive to nature, appreciated and discovered the simplicity of life that any prince would have liked to have. Many times of his childhood before going to the playground he painted his skin in black with the ashes of the soot from steaming cauldrons, That made him feel, by an instant, real brother of his brothers.

Ferdinand grew up between safaris and ships, crowds and silence, exercising his soul with the daily routine of work that sealed his being with the qualities and virtues that he inherited from his father Kendall, before his pass to glory, accompanied by Angeles.

He learned how to give a meaning to his title of Count: “A true Noble warrior of infinite nobility”, in a world full of multi-ethnic, multiracial and multicultural societies. His deep voice came out like a thunder, but with the tenderness and wisdom of a great man. So he could become the best trader ever. Ferdinand was a polyglot as his putative father, mastered the universal language, the language that surpasses gender, race and age, the language of a sincere smile.

Fernando, loyal to his work, faithful to women around him, slave of trade, but free of love, always under destiny’s mark … had everything but had nothing. Nomad businessman and enemy of sedentarism, Ferdinand learned to enjoy his fortune on safari expeditions conquering worlds free of hostile smells.

In his last journey the Count was infected by a terrible disease: Tuberculosis. The curse of curses. It was also known in those times as the white plague or the pott’s disease. The Cachexia (gr.: kachexía= bad) makes up the patient as a Greek sculpture with gray shades of extreme malnutrition, muscle atrophy, fatigue and weakness among the most visible. But his soul and, incredibly, his teeth were not touched by the tragedy.

After he realized time had passed, the Count, with the conviction of a good captain, changed his course to the city of Cartagena, the city of karma, as he called it. He understood that in every stone, in every rock on the fortified wall, there was the stolen breath of thousands of seraphim with the skin “painted” in black that were proudly traded as pets by his ancestors.

The Count, making a prelude to his death, decided to live in extreme loneliness in the highest floor of the house, taking care of himself from the whips of pain of his contagious disease. He just wanted to avoid infecting his brothers from their ancestral karma.

Sitting on his wounds, Ferdinand listened to the soothing voice of a young black woman who was able to unlock the bars of the gates and made him open his eyes. The Count, breathing heavily, asked the woman why she was reckless and broke into his privet property.

Ana del Mar, a beautiful but malnourished woman kneeled before the Count and begged him to let her die with him, because his father had just died from the same disease and she was also infected. The only thing she needed was a become his unconditional servant.

The Conde Quero smiled with his eyes because he had neither strength to say a word. They agreed by squeezing hands, so the agreement was made with a young woman three times younger then he was.

In times of food rationing, this house was always full of austere blessings. The day passed with laughter and more laughter in the long chats and readings, which did not respect dawns and sunsets. Among the polarity of the differences: she was poor, illiterate, young, black, and he was part of the nobility, wealthy, enlightened, white and almost five decades older, slowly they built a deep friendship crystalline, pure and sincere that no poet could describe.

The marks of charcoal on the wall, counting the days for the deep sleep, mocked the death with every mark. The tears that were shed on the balconies were contagious joy and laughter of two infants who hid their heads after launching water to the innocent street walkers.

The sunrises were increasingly expected to restart the antics of the two lost souls found again by fate. The discomforts of karma slept in these two characters, like a miracle coming, love had healed.

Thanks to the Creator who had miraculously blown on them, without leaving a trace of tuberculosis. They made the promise to change their lives for lives of fishermen and sailed to an island of the Antilles in which there is a rumor that in a walled city of batteries and guns there is a house and a street with the same Quero fisherman’s name, in which, anyone who visits with a pain in the soul and an impossible love… heal or becomes reality.