El árbol de oro

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El árbol de oro (The Tree of Gold) is a short story (roughly three pages) by Ana María Matute, written in Spanish. It is part of her collection of short stories, set in the Spanish countryside, called "Historias de Artamila" (1961). The story is set during or shortly after the Spanish Civil War.

[edit] Plot summary

The main character and first-person narrator of the story is a young student, presumably a girl (and possibly the author as a child), who befriends a boy named Ivo Márquez. The story is set in the schoolhouse of a small, country town during one autumn. At school, many of the children envy Ivo as he is something of a teacher's pet to Miss Leocadia, their teacher.

Ivo has been assigned the coveted task of going to get the students' textbooks from the small tower in the corner of the schoolhouse each morning, returning them there each afternoon. All of the other children feel a mysterious excitement associated with the tower, though none except Ivo have been inside. Another classmate, Mateo Heredia, asks to be entrusted with the key to the little tower; however, after Ivo speaks to Miss Leocadia, Mateo's request is denied.

Ivo later tells the narrator that he had spoken to the teacher about the "tree of gold" and explains that when one looks through a crack in the wall of the tower, at the right angle, one can see a tree made entirely of bright, blinding gold with leaves that never fall. Over a long period of time, he continues telling the narrator of the tree, including how birds turn gold when they perch on the tree and how some golden flowers have grown next to the tree, resembling the "arzadú."

One day, Ivo has fallen ill and does not come to class, allowing Mateo to receive the key. When the narrator asks the unfriendly Mateo if he is able to see the golden tree, he scoffs at her. Later, the narrator pays Mateo to borrow the tower key during recess. In the tower, when she looks through the crack she sees only the normal, barren countryside.

Time goes on and the narrator moves back to the city, where she came from. Two years later, she returns to the same small town and is walking past a cemetery in which she sees a large tree illuminated by a dying sunset, causing it to appear to be made of gold. She enters the cemetery and at the base of the tree finds the grave of Ivo, who had died at the age of ten, presumably from his illness. The narrator finds the irony of the golden tree and the grave not to be upsetting, but strangely joyful.