Arriving at Nelly Oesterheld's house is like slipping into another universe. A trip back to childhood, with the smell of school, glittery figurines, bright colors, and above all, the light our eyes used to see when we were 9 or 10 years old. I breathe it all in as I knock on her door amid plants and barking coming from the inside or from the back of the jouse. She opens the door with a smile, followed by an expression of surprise: she didn't quite believe me when I told her I was going to bring her an apple pie that would brighten up that Saturday afternoon in October, amid words and memories.
Nelly Oesterheld: Look, I used to draw before started to wrote, like most kids. There were five of us in my family, and I used to play with my brother Héctor the most. But he didn't draw, he wasn´t able to! It was really hard for him! (laughs) He wrote stories, of course, but came was later. Do you know who he was?
Patricia Arano: ¡Of course! The author and scriptwriter of The Eternaut, the most famous among the vast number of stories he has written. But going back to your childhood, and later in life when you two worked together, was he the one who liked writing best?
Nelly: He loved drawing, but he was terrible at it! So he devoted himself to writing, and later on I illustrated his stories for children. Oh! Here, I've prepared something to show you about my work.
Nelly shows me drawings from colorful children's books. She unfolds them delicately, and fairies, bears, and princes dancing on a cardboard machine spring from the page, and then another and another. They all unfold and grow in size, and the kitchen ends up filled with characters that always look at you no matter where you place them.
Patricia: This is an ancient art, die cutting, perhaps?
Nelly: The ones you're looking at, I gave them to the publisher with all the instructions for cutting. I had to measure and fold them, and I specified where the publisher should cut, and they followed the instructions.
Patricia: So, except for the printed colors, you practically put them together yourself, which is very difficult work.
Nelly: It's almost a kind of engineering, I don't know (she laughs). In Brazil, the publishers called them “toy books” (She opens a larger book and it's a whole carousel with horses, straps, and a roof; the book touches the front and back covers, forming a perfect merry-go-round; two little girls watch me, laughing). As I was saying, the technique involved die-cutting, drawing by drawing! All these are samples that I kept. Over time, I gave most of them away to schoolchildren. That was before my coming here, to Trelew. Back when I worked in schools, there was a theory in education at the time that you have to introduce young children to reality through stories, and I think that even fairy tales are a way of showing reality; illustrated stories make the clash with reality less harsh.
Nelly proceeds to shows me an album of stickers with glitter in the shape butterflies and all kinds of characters from traditional stories. They look just perfect, and I think I would have done anything to play with them when I was eight. Maybe I did play with them, back then, in a schoolyard I have now forgotten. Nelly keeps showing me her original pencil drawing. Suddenly the Tin Man from The Wizard of Oz appears, with his axe and one hand wiping away a round tear, a flower crowns an inverted funnel that is his hat, he looks to the left of the picture, into the distance, and I feel I´m falling in love with him at first sight.