Tales from the Town of Widows (16 page)

“Please, Señorita Lucía, take them with you. Just in case you ever see him on the street.”

“I’ll take them. Only I can’t promise you that Pablo will ever read them.”

Santiago was now in charge of overseeing the Restrepos’ house. He kept an inventory of provisions and cleaning supplies and was given a weekly budget to keep every item up to par. He was responsible for hiring maids and gardeners and for keeping the altar of the house decorated with fresh fruit and flowers. He worked from six in the morning to six at night, making sure he didn’t have time to himself.
Himself
was a terrible word he’d been forced to learn after Pablo left; a state of solitude and desolation he confronted every night in his bedroom. What if Pablo had lost his memory, like Ernesto in Señorita Lucía’s story? What if he’d met someone else and forgotten about Santiago? From time to time the doubts overpowered his hopefulness, making him weep softly. He rewrote the ending of Señorita Lucía’s story over and over, and when he couldn’t think of one more possible way to finish it, he rewrote the entire story.

His version of the story went like this:

Once upon a time there were two young men named Pedro and Samuel, who were deeply in love with each other. Like every good loving couple they wanted to get engaged, but were too poor to afford the high cost of the rings. Pedro, then, decided to leave for Nueva York to work and save money to buy their engagement rings. They were very sad when they said good-bye. They cried and swore undying love. Pedro promised to write every week and to return to be with Samuel forever. A year passed, and Samuel didn’t receive any letter from Pedro. But Samuel didn’t worry. He trusted Pedro and was certain that he had a good reason not to write. Every time he was struck by some
doubts, he’d drive those evil thoughts out by saying to himself, “Pedro loves me. He’s coming back.” Samuel waited a long time but never gave up hope.

One night, he was bathing in the river when he heard someone call his name. He looked around and saw Pedro coming out of the bushes. He wore a perfectly pressed white suit, red tie and white patent leather shoes, and he carried two suitcases. Samuel thought he was just seeing things. But no, it was really Pedro. He rushed out of the water and kissed him. Pedro opened one of the suitcases. The inside was filled with the hundreds of letters he’d written to Samuel, all of which had been sent back to him for one reason or another. Then Pedro opened the other suitcase. Inside there was a neatly folded wedding gown.

“This is for you, Samuel,” Pedro said. “I want us to get married. Now.”

“Oh, Pedro! I don’t know what to say. We’re not engaged yet,” Samuel said.

“I’m sorry. I almost forgot,” Pedro replied, pulling a little box from his pocket. When he opened the box, a light nearly blinded Samuel. It was a gold engagement ring crowned with a big diamond. “Would you marry me?” Pedro asked.

“Yes,” Samuel answered with a smile. They kissed. Then Pedro gave Samuel the suitcase with the wedding gown and asked him to get dressed. Samuel was aware that the groom shouldn’t see the bride before the ceremony, so he went behind the bushes. The gown was really nice: all white, sleeveless, with a low-cut neckline and a long skirt shaped like a bell. The train was about three yards long. The gown came with a veil and a pair of white shoes. Samuel had no doubt this was the most expensive wedding gown in all New York
,
but he didn’t feel bad because he knew he was worth it. He put on the gown and veil and arranged wild flowers into a colorful bunch, then came out of the bushes. Dozens of people had gathered, waiting for Samuel to come out. These people were relatives and neighbors that Pedro had invited beforehand.
They clapped and cheered as Samuel walked slowly through them with the flowers in his hands. Samuel met Pedro at the end, near the bank. Pedro lifted the veil and was pleasantly surprised to see a full moon reflected in each of Samuel’s eyes. “I love you, my darling,” he said. They kissed and at that moment a brief shower of rice rained down on both of them. Pedro took Samuel in his arms and walked into the river until the warm water covered his waist.

“We’re the happiest couple on earth,” Pedro said.

“We are, my love,” Samuel echoed.

They promised that they would never again be separated and lived happily ever after.

S
ANTIAGO READ THE
story every night before going to bed, like a prayer. At length he memorized it and was able to recite it to himself throughout the day.

S
ANTIAGO WRAPPED
P
ABLO
back up in the white towel, picked him up in his arms and started down the street with him. The widows lingering on the block glanced furtively at Santiago’s pained face as he passed them by. They shook their heads, crossed themselves, whispered prayers and rubbed their prying eyes.

“Bring him in, son,” Santiago’s mother shouted from her door. “We can spare him something to eat.”

Santiago kept walking in silence.

“He must be cold.” She sounded overly distressed. “Let me get some clothes for him.” Her shouts got louder as her son moved farther away with Pablo. From behind, they looked like a large black cross vanishing amid the dusty lights of the many candles that faintly burned on both sides of the road.

“Where are you going with that man, Santiago Marín?” the magistrate called from Cecilia and Francisca’s window. “You’ll be put in
quarantine, you hear me? Don’t go saying I didn’t warn you.”

Santiago didn’t reply, didn’t stop or look back. He gazed fondly at the bundle in his arms and brought it even closer to his own body.

The full moon lit the narrow footpath. Only once did Santiago stop to rest. He knelt on the side of the path with his buttocks on the back of his heels and Pablo in his lap.

“Where are we going?” Pablo said in a low voice.

“To the one place you ought to see.” Their deep voices did not agree with the sounds of the night, the rustling of the branches, the creaking of the trunks, the noises made by frogs, cicadas, owls and other night creatures.

“I want to see the plaza…and the church.”

“They’re all the same as when you left.”

It was hot. Beads of sweat appeared along Santiago’s forehead and ran down his face. He closed his eyes and imagined that the man in his arms was a basket filled with purple orchids; just as delicate, just as beautiful. He rose, half smiling, and went on, slower than before because enormous clouds had blocked out the moonlight and he couldn’t see well. His feet would take them to where they were going.

“Take me to see my father,” Pablo said.

“He’s gone, Pablo.”

“Then…take me to see my brothers.”

“They’re gone, too.”

S
ANTIAGO DIDN
’
T TELL
Pablo how they died. He didn’t tell Pablo that five years before Communist guerrillas had assaulted Mariquita, claiming their men. That the rebels said they were fighting so that no Colombian should go a day without eating a good meal, and then ate their food and drank their water. That they said they were leading the country toward a society in which all property would be publicly owned, and then went from house to house raping their sisters and mothers. That they demanded that every man older than twelve join them, saying they would give each one a rifle, a freedom rifle to fight
against the government, to defend their rights. But when Pablo’s father asked for his right to choose not to join the movement, they shot him dead with one of the very freedom rifles they handed out. Then they killed his two brothers, too, because “Colombia doesn’t need any more cowards.”

Santiago didn’t tell Pablo that the guerrillas took all the men away; that he, Santiago, had escaped the forced recruitment because he was still employed in Don Maximiliano’s country house; that he went back into town as soon as he heard about the assault; and that he promised his mother and sisters not to ever leave them again after what he saw: houses burned down to nothing, mad widows weeping among the rubbish, old women praying on their bare knees with their bloodstained hands pressed together and their eyes tightly shut, young girls furiously rubbing their abused bodies with mud, cursing their lives, naked little boys and girls crying and roaming the streets, shouting for their fathers and brothers.

Santiago didn’t tell Pablo any of that. He just went on, following his own feet that knew the trail better than him.

“But, Mamá…she’s in the house. I heard the driver…” Pablo’s voice grew weaker every time he spoke.

“Yes, she’s there; she hardly ever leaves her house. But when she does, a parrot’s on her shoulder and three old dogs follow her closely. She doesn’t talk to anyone.”

“Is she insane?”

“She’s happy. Happier than most of the widows in town. She’s not alone. Every relative she lost, she replaced with an animal.”

Pablo pressed his face hard against Santiago’s chest and wept softly.

T
HE MOON BROKE
through the clouds, larger and brighter, shining down on the two men. When Santiago sighted their destination at last, he slowed down, but his breathing still came fast, the warm air coming in and out of his lungs in convulsive short waves.

“We’re here,” he whispered. They were by the river, where he and Pablo had played father and mother so many times. Santiago stood on the bank, watching the water flow steadily, listening to its bold splashing sound. “Look how beautiful it is,” he said. Pablo looked up, and it was extraordinary and moving to see a full bright moon reflected in each of his sunken eyes, lighting up an otherwise lifeless face. “I love you,” Santiago said, tightening his grasp on Pablo and walking purposefully into the river as they used to do when they were children. The cold water gradually covered his naked feet, his ankles and calves, his knees and thighs, his waist. Then he stopped, kissed Pablo lightly on the lips and watched him smile, watched his eyes grow wide and his nostrils swell like they had when he’d wanted to leave for New York.

Pablo was ready to leave again.

Santiago looked up at the moon and stretched out his arms, as if he were offering a sacrifice. He fixed his gaze on Pablo’s face, filling himself full of the man he loved, and gently began to release his hold on him, his solid arms slowly separating from the smallness of his lover’s back, giving him to the current like a gift. Pablo’s flimsy figure drifted away from him, down the river, now disappearing into the water, now rising back to the surface, until all that was left of him was a white towel caught up in an eddy, bobbing up and down.

Or maybe it was the full moon now shining on the water.

Manuel Reyes, 23
Guerrilla soldier

When I came to, I was lying on my stomach in a field of grass. My body hurt, and my nose, mouth and throat burned. I lifted my head. A man was sitting in front of me, his face painted black and green. It took me a few seconds to notice other things about him: a patrol hat, a lit cigarette dangling from his mouth, a camouflage uniform, a Galil rifle held between his hands, aimed at my forehead.

“You have no idea how happy I am you’re alive,” he said cynically.

I slowly began to trace, in my mind, the events leading up to that moment. Falling overboard, water rushing in my mouth and nose, my arms struggling desperately against the current, trying to stay afloat. I couldn’t remember anything else.

The man identified himself as a paramilitary soldier. He told me he’d get two hundred thousand pesos if he brought me back to his camp alive. “You ought to be thankful. You’re the lucky one,” he said, the cigarette smoke dribbling out the side of his mouth. “See that guy next to you?” I turned my head to the side. A half-naked man lay flat on his stomach, hardly a yard away from me. “The poor bastard drowned. He’s still worth a few thousand pesos, though.”

He got up and ordered me to pick up the corpse and carry it. His camp was about two hours away on foot. When I turned the body over to put it on my shoulder, I realized it was Campo Elías Restrepo Jr., my best friend in the guerrillas. Right then I remembered the rest: Campo Elías and I had developed a perfect plan to escape from the guerrillas, from the war. The night before, while on guard duty, I’d handed my gun to a comrade (deserting with his gun
is the worst offense a fighter can do against his former group) and told him, “Look, comrade, I’m gonna be taking a crap behind the shrubs over there.” I couldn’t tell him I was fleeing. The guerrilla rule is to kill anyone who proposes to sneak off, even if he’s your commander. I rushed down to the abandoned shack, where Campo Elías was waiting for me with the makeshift raft he’d built. We’d been crossing the river when our raft got caught up in a whirlpool and overturned.

He’s just pretending to be dead, I thought—that was part of our plan—but when I picked him up, his head went limp. His face was pale, his lips purplish. His eyes were wide open, but only the whites were visible, like he’d decided there was nothing else worth seeing and turned them backward.

I began to walk quietly with Campo Elías on my shoulder, wondering what would happen to me, thinking that he—not me—was the lucky one: he’d escaped from it all.

Mariquita, April 22, 1998

I
T WAS THE PRIEST
’
S
own idea to break the Sixth Commandment of God’s law. One day he decided to pay a visit to the magistrate to discuss what he called “a pressing need for procreation.” He went to her office early in the afternoon, wearing his black polyester soutane despite the relentless heat that followed a fierce three-day storm. He brought his altar boy, fourteen-year-old Hochiminh Ospina, who was on probation for eating an entire week’s supply of hosts. The boy, who was fat and soft and flabby, hated the job, especially when, as on this day, he had to carry around el padre’s gigantic Bible. “Can’t we take a smaller Bible?” he asked every time, and every time he heard the same answer: “No.” El padre was convinced that a big Bible made him more important and added weight to his moralizing discourse.

Inside Rosalba’s office, the priest stood next to the window reading aloud an extensive selection of excerpts and psalms about procreation. The magistrate thought they were rather tedious and wondered why the priest didn’t just get to the point.

“Praise be to God!” he exclaimed after he finished. He slammed the Bible closed, peered over the tops of his reading spectacles and declared, “It’s our obligation to ensure the survival of our species.”

“I agree with you, Padre,” the magistrate replied. “Bringing men back to Mariquita has been one of my priorities since I was appointed magistrate. More than once I have requested the government, even the Lord, to send us a truck full of them.”

“The Lord can only do so much,” the priest said. “But what about the commissioner and the governor? Have they written back to you?” he added insincerely. He knew the answer.

“Who knows? They might have,” she replied, in a tone that suggested rather a yes than a no. “But now that the storm has swept every access road to our village, I doubt we’ll ever again see a postman around here—or anyone else, for that matter.” She thought about the actual implications of what she had just said: no more merchants, no more occasional visitors, no more passing travelers, no more men ever again. The dismal prospect made her anxious. “We must do something about those roads immediately,” she asserted, fetching her notebook and a stub of a pencil from a drawer.

“First things first, my child,” the priest suddenly interposed, before the magistrate could add
Have access roads rebuilt
to her long, useless list of priorities. “Procreation must be our number-one priority.” He motioned to the altar boy to step outside, then sat across from Rosalba. Together they discussed the issue at length, concluding that Mariquita’s women had to bear boys soon, or else their village would disappear with the present generation. The magistrate suggested that Santiago Marín “do the job.”

El padre shook his head, looking as if he’d just been cursed. “May God forgive that…man.”

“Oh, Padre Rafael,” Rosalba groaned. “Are you still bearing Santiago Marín a grudge for what he did?” She rolled her eyes and breathed an impatient sigh, oblivious to her condescending manner. “Wouldn’t you agree that being in quarantine, alone with his grief, was enough punishment for that poor man? Good Lord! It must take a great deal of courage,
and love
, to do what he did. And that’s exactly why I’d rather think of Santiago as one of us, a widow. The Other Widow.”

Feeling offended, el padre met Rosalba’s comment with impervious silence. He looked the other way and began playing with his fingers, which lay on top of his prominent stomach.

“Besides,” Rosalba continued heedlessly, “he’s the best chance we have to get a woman impregnated.”

El padre abruptly stood up. “Never!” he roared, hitting the magistrate’s desk with his palm. “A man who’s sinned against the Lord by lying with another man will never father the future people of Mariquita!” He reached into his pocket for a handkerchief and patted his forehead with it, his hands trembling.

The magistrate observed the priest quietly and decided she’d wait for the little man to calm down. She was used to el padre’s bad temper. One time, long ago, he’d torn out the few strands of hair left on his head because he’d run out of wafers for the Eucharist. “Oh, what a disgrace!” he had said. How did they expect him to celebrate mass without the Body of Christ to offer? Was he supposed to just skip Holy Communion, the most significant part of the liturgy? In the end Rosalba, as always, had solved the problem. She made tiny, thin arepas and suggested that el padre bless them. At first he was insulted: “The Body of Christ a piece of corn bread?” But Rosalba made him understand that hosts were nothing but thin pieces of bread, and at length he accepted her offer. With all the confusion, however, the priest forgot to bless the arepas, and as a result the women swallowed in church the same thing they’d eaten for breakfast at home, only smaller. Ever since that day arepas had become Mariquita’s hosts, sometimes sweet, sometimes salty, and, when available, flavored with cheese.

The priest took a couple of deep breaths and sat again.

“What about Julia Morales?” Rosalba said. “Underneath those skirts there’s a fine man.” She emphasized the word
fine
.

The priest rolled his eyes. “Are you not listening to me, Magistrate? Procreation cannot be forced. It’s bad enough that it won’t be an act of married love, but it has to involve, at the very least, a degree of tenderness and affection that only a real man can give to a woman.”

“I don’t know what to say then,” the magistrate confessed, crossing her arms. “Maybe we should consider the boys. Che and Trotsky will be fifteen this year.”

“They’re children,” el padre said.

There was a long silence in which they avoided each other’s eyes. After a while el padre sighed, shaking his head. “Well…,” he murmured. “No, I can’t do that.” He covered his face with both hands, as though he were going to cry. “I can’t do that. I can’t, I can’t, I can’t,” he kept saying between his fingers, shaking his head frantically. But then, overcoming his guilt as only good Catholics can do, he said loudly and confidently, “One must face up to one’s responsibilities. If this is God’s will, Thy will be done.” He stood up, a martyr’s expression on his pink face, and gazed through the window at the cloudy sky. “I must do it!”

The magistrate objected to the idea. “I think it’d be terribly harmful for your and your church’s reputation, but also for our community. You’re the embodiment of—morality and chastity, Padre.” But the priest insisted it was a divine will with which they must not interfere. Rosalba didn’t pursue the matter further. She was almost certain that el padre’s idea would encounter heavy resistance among the villagers. She’d let the women argue with the obstinate priest.

In the evening, the priest pealed the church bell strenuously, calling for a town meeting. The women of Mariquita had grown weary of such gatherings, because nothing important was ever said. Oftentimes the magistrate just reminded them to sweep and mop their floors, keep their backyards, clip their nails, comb their hair or inspect their children for lice. They attended the meetings, however, because there was nothing better to do. Tonight, Rosalba read a series of short paragraphs written by the priest for the women of Mariquita. The first paragraph informed them—rather, warned them—that Mariquita was in danger of disappearing if they didn’t reproduce. “There’s hope, though,” the magistrate said. “El padre Rafael is willing to break his holy vow of chastity to help Mariquita stay alive.”

A murmur of confusion was heard in the crowd.

A second paragraph explained that el padre would risk having to spend, after his death, a much longer time in purgatory than he deserved, just to give back to the community that for all these years had supported his church. Following that there was a short sentence announcing the beginning of the Procreation Campaign. “The objective of the campaign,” the magistrate read, “is to impregnate twenty women during the first cycle.” She added that she and el padre would be praying that a good percentage of the newborns were male. Then she read the rules: Only women older than fifteen and younger than forty could participate. They had to register with Cecilia Guaraya, the magistrate’s secretary. Proof of age would be requested upon registration. Once the registration was official, the participant would be placed on a waiting list and told when she could expect to receive the visitation. The list would be permanently posted in the magistrate’s office. Out of respect for God, all religious images should be removed from the room where the holy act would be consummated. No feelings would be involved in the holy act: el padre wouldn’t be making love to them, he’d just be making babies, hopefully boys. And finally, the women should consider donating any food to help el padre stay fit and strong during the entire campaign, which would last a few months.

C
ONTRARY TO WHAT
the magistrate supposed, the villagers didn’t publicly object to el padre’s idea. And contrary to what el padre supposed, no woman registered during the first few days after the announcement. They couldn’t even conceive of the idea of going to bed with a priest, let alone
their
priest. “It’d be like making love with God,” the Morales widow said. But that didn’t discourage el padre. Every day at mass, he reminded the women of their duty to the human race and accused them of being selfish. “If I’m willing to make the sacrifice, why can’t you do the same?” It wasn’t, however, until he assured them God had granted him special permission to break the Sixth Commandment that the procreation visit list began to grow.

A young girl named Virgelina Saavedra was number twenty-nine.

V
IRGELINA AND
L
UCRECIA
, her grandmother, lived in a shaky house across from the market. As a child, Virgelina had been left in the care of her grandmother, who’d brought her up to be a housewife, servile and submissive. Shortly after Virgelina turned twelve, Lucrecia’s health deteriorated, and the girl was required to take care of both of them. The old woman spent her days peering through the curtains at the women in the market, guessing what they’d be saying and fabricating amusing stories she later told her granddaughter as if the women themselves had shared them with her. Virgelina listened to the stories while she did housework, nodding from time to time. The girl had a morning routine: she woke up at the crack of dawn, mouthed her prayers, started the fire in the kitchen, made breakfast, swept the floor with a bunch of leaves and bathed if there was water. Occasionally she’d bring water from the river, but most of the time she relied on the rain to fill up three water barrels they kept in the back of the house. After completing her morning chores, the young girl went to school, where the schoolmistress had named her “Best Student” two years in a row. Virgelina only had three dresses, all black and conservative, which she had inherited from her late mother. She was small, quiet and well-mannered, and she was only fourteen.

Lucrecia had managed to convince Cecilia that, though underage, Virgelina was fit to bear a boy. “My great-grandmother bore nineteen boys,” she’d said to Cecilia. “And my great-aunt’s second cousin bore eleven boys. We come from a family that knows how to make boys.”

Cecilia, who was notorious for her rudeness and inflexibility, surprisingly made an exception. She had a soft spot for two kinds of people, the elderly and the ones who paid her compliments.

I
N THE MORNINGS
Lucrecia looked like a mummy. She had arthritis, which was exacerbated by the night wind that blew in through the
cracks in the doors and roof. So every night before bedtime, Virgelina wrapped her up from neck to toes in ten yards of white cloth. Her grandmother had kept the fabric from when she was Mariquita’s best seamstress. But regardless of the effectiveness of the therapy on her joints, the old woman promptly found new afflictions to grumble about: food never agreed with her stomach, noise gave her headaches, her kidneys hurt when it rained. Or pettier complaints: too cold, too hot, too sweet, much too sweet.

S
INCE THE VISITS
had begun, twenty-eight women had made room in their beds for the little priest, who, as rumors went in the market, was blessed with a large penis though he was a mediocre lover. “He finishes before you notice he’s started,” Magnolia Morales had told her friends during their nightly meeting at the plaza. One widow had had a late period, but it proved to be a false alarm. No one had yet claimed to be pregnant.

T
HE DAY
V
IRGELINA
was to receive her visit, Lucrecia woke up complaining more than usual: “I can’t breathe,” she said. “My leg hurts.” “I’m drowsy.” “I’m nauseated.” At least twice Virgelina was on the brink of telling her to stop fussing, to be quiet for a minute or two, to shut her old beak because today, especially today, she wasn’t in the mood for her whining. But instead she kicked Fidel and Castro every time they crossed her way, and when she left for school, she slammed the door with all her might. After lunch, when the old woman woke up from her customary siesta crying and saying that she couldn’t open her eyes, Virgelina ignored her. She dragged a chair outside and started knitting a quilt, worrying about the visit: that night would be her first time with a man.

As she knitted and purled she recalled, one by one and in perfect order, the seven steps her grandmother had contrived for her defloration. Virgelina had been forced to recite them several times, and each time her grandmother made her reverse the order of them, or combine two
steps into one, or cut or add new steps in case something didn’t work. Her first sexual experience had been meticulously planned, leaving no room for impulse, intuition, or the sudden passion that recently she’d begun to feel. Virgelina didn’t know why, but lately her nipples had begun to itch. Now, every night after blowing out the candle in her room, she found herself stroking her nipples with the tips of her fingers until she felt as though she had a colony of angry little ants marching inside each breast, biting her flesh, eating her up. As she knitted, she imagined the priest’s hands cupped on top of her small breasts, and the thought was so vivid that she could actually feel his fingers squeezing them hard. Suddenly, an electric current traveled briskly through her body, making her throw her hands and needles in the air. She rose and rushed inside the house, covering her bosom with her arms. She’d never felt anything like it before. She stood against the wall in the kitchen and took a deep breath, then another, and then another. Eventually she forced herself to remember that those fingers—el padre’s—were connected to a couple of flabby arms, which were connected to a small trunk with a protruding belly, which was connected to a large bald head with an ugly pink face, with a long nose and tiny chicken eyes half covered with drooping eyelids. When at length she went outside to retrieve her sewing instruments, she felt somewhat relieved.