Tales from the Town of Widows (18 page)

Step three
:
Grab his hands and put one on each of your breasts
.

She didn’t need to aim the priest’s shaky hands anywhere. They knew what to look for, where to go, what to do, when to rest and how to stroke. They traveled slowly across her back, stopped at the knot she made with the ends of the pieces of cloth she wore as a brassiere, and untied it with great skill. Next, they yanked down her underwear faster than she could say no. Virgelina tried to blow air toward the candle on the night table, but it was too far away. Instead she shut her eyes as firmly as she could. And then she felt his lips again, this time sucking the angry little ants that had just begun to bite her breasts again, making her nipples itch.

Step four
:
Undress him
.

The soutane el padre Rafael wore for his procreation visits was the kind worn exclusively by bishops, archbishops and cardinals. He’d bought it at an auction when he was young and optimistic, thinking one day he’d rise to the highest echelons of the clergy. Later, when he finally understood that he had neither the connections nor the determination to get ahead in the Roman Catholic Church, he started wearing the special soutane whenever it pleased him. It was tailored in black linette and featured purple and gold metallic brocade cuffs, five pleat inserts front and back, gold metallic piping, a removable tab collar and a full button-front closure, which served a good purpose in el padre’s nocturnal duties.

Virgelina decided to wait for the priest to rise before disrobing him. At the moment he was on his knees, his slimy tongue between her legs, causing her to make little nervous flutters with her entire body. But when it became obvious that the man wasn’t going to stand up anytime soon, she drew him up by holding her hands in his armpits. Sweating
profusely, el padre removed the tab collar—which he liked very much, since it eliminated the need for an underlying clerical shirt. He unfastened the top button of his soutane, but was promptly interrupted by Virgelina’s dexterous knitter’s fingers.
That’s our job
,
Padre
, they seemed to say, and moved downward, freeing the first seven buttons from their holes. She knelt down and continued undoing the lower ones, her fingers gracefully descending along the golden piping. When she unfastened the last one, she looked up and watched the naked little man come out of his soutane with a majestic gesture, like an arrogant queen dropping her velvet mantle for her vassals to pick up.

Step five
:
Check how excited he is.

Standing in front of him, Virgelina remembered what her grandmother had told her to look for: “His penis will be erect, and you must touch it to make sure it’s hard.” The old woman had added, “If his penis isn’t stiff, kiss him some more and touch him here and there, like I told you.”

The priest was excited, very excited, Virgelina concluded after touching his swollen penis and hearing his howling. He gently pushed her onto the bed, and without taking off his white socks and worn sandals, positioned himself on top of her. El padre was smaller than she was and had a paunch, and yet his body fit into hers almost perfectly: a fist into an open hand.

Step six
:
Commend yourself to God and let him do the rest.

Virgelina’s grandmother had been vague about what “the rest” was. The girl had seen dogs mating as well as cats, and thought “the rest” would be the same: a game of power played by two in which the male scored by putting its member inside the female’s sexual organ, while the female scored by getting pregnant. Virgelina’s biggest fear was the pain she might feel during the bout—the cry of the cats she’d seen mating was terrifying—and her grandmother’s advice, “Bite the pillow and hold back,” hadn’t given her any comfort. She decided she’d let el padre score at once and get the game over with as quickly as possible.

Mounted on top of her, el padre rocked his hips in a way that was everything but sensual, more like scouring, like scrubbing off a stain.

“Do you like it?” he whispered in her ear. She didn’t reply. He kissed her mouth, her nose and eyes, her chin. “Do you like it?” he insisted, a bit louder this time, for she might not have heard him before. Not a word back, a gesture. Virgelina was striving to make herself believe that the man lying atop her was an entirely different man from the one who had given her first communion not so long ago. He kept scrubbing and kissing, asking the same question and getting the same silent answer.

But then, without a warning, he thrust down on her with all his might, until a part of him disappeared in her flesh, and blood flowed down Virgelina’s legs. She screamed. She felt her insides being split, as if by a giant nail, and she screamed with pain.

“It feels good,” the priest said, lying still on her stomach. She dug her nails into his back and shouted to him to please remove
that
from within her, “Please.” But he didn’t; instead he started moving in and out of her. She tried to push him aside. “For the love of God!” He didn’t hear her supplication; he continued thrusting into her, gathering speed inside her body, and so she fiercely scratched his face and sank her teeth into his chest. “Stop!” He stopped abruptly and shouted, “How dare you?” He slapped her twice across the face, then grabbed her hands, spread her arms and held them down firmly with his own hands, his fingers twined in hers, before resuming the furious motion of his hips: up and down, right to left, back and forth and around again (she wept, thinking of her grandmother’s sacrifice), fuming, biting, breaking, tearing, (she wept, thinking of her mother’s sacrifices), digging into her flesh, faster and faster until his legs tightened and he exploded inside her, chanting, “Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, God…” (she wept some more, this time thinking of her own sacrifice).

Step seven
:
Close your legs and cross your feet so that the seed won’t escape from within you. Stay in that position for a reasonable length of time.

Beneath the priest, Virgelina sobbed and shivered. “Is there any
thing wrong, dear?” el padre asked, suddenly noticing her wailing. She shook her head. He let go of her arms slowly, as though afraid she might attack him again, but the girl didn’t move. Then he got down off her, picked up his soutane and promptly enrobed himself in it, his back to Virgelina. “I enjoyed myself very much,” he said softly as he fastened the tab collar. “I hope that your grandmother considers putting your name down for a second visit.” He introduced each button in its respective loop, bending down slightly to reach the lower ones. “I promise it won’t hurt next time,” he said, addressing the wall, and that’s when he saw it. Before his eyes, hanging on a rusty nail, was the picture of Jesus dying on the cross. With all the distress caused by her grandmother’s confession Virgelina had forgotten to remove it. El padre was stunned to see it.

“It is finished,” Virgelina suddenly said and sighed with relief. The three Biblical words made the priest shudder. He swiftly turned around, and what he saw filled him with horror: lying face upward with her head slightly tilted to the right, her arms stretched out to the sides, her legs joined together and her feet crossed, Virgelina looked like Jesus crucified, bleeding and moaning, dying half naked upon an imaginary cross.

The priest hastily crossed himself and ran off, stumbling first over Fidel and Castro, who had the peculiar habit of sleeping by the doorway, and then, when he was out of the house, over stones the size of dogs and dogs that lay like stones in the street. He ran and ran without looking back, shouting, “Lord, oh Lord, have mercy on me. I’ll never do it again!”

Indifferent to the priest’s reaction, Virgelina collected the little strength she had left and sat up on the bed, wincing. Her body shook, and her hands trembled. She gathered the white, bloodstained bedspread from underneath her and used it to wipe down her inner legs, rubbing the thick cloth so harshly against her skin that it hurt. She slowly rose and began folding the bedspread with great care, until it was but a small, compact square of red-stained fabric. Then she knelt
down in front of the altar and placed the cloth on its top level, next to the white candle that tonight burned fitfully.

And finally, as she confidently waited for her grandmother to walk into her room shouting that God had worked her a miracle, that all her pains were gone and she could see and hear again, Virgelina, hands clasped under her chin, began mouthing prayer after prayer until the white candle died and the night covered their house with absolute darkness.

Bernardo Rubiano, 26
Right-wing paramilitary soldier

“What’s going to happen to me?” I asked the guerrilla. I was on my knees, drinking water from a creek we’d just found. He was taking me to his camp.

He yawned, stretching his arms one at a time, then said, “They won’t kill you, if that’s what worries you.” Earlier that day I’d walked into a guerrilla ambush, and the rebel had made me his prisoner. He moved a little closer to me and squatted down, his gun firmly held in one hand. “You’ll be
interrogated
, though,” he added in a sinister tone. “If you spit out everything you know about the paras’ whereabouts, they won’t hurt you much. But if you don’t—” He paused, brought his index finger up to his throat and made a dramatic slicing motion.

He was now hardly a yard away from me, squatting. He looked thin and gaunt. I thought I could take him. I intentionally gulped more water to make him thirsty. He cupped his free hand, and without taking his eyes off me stretched his arm out to get some water from the creek. But he was a bit too far away, so he stretched his arm a little farther, just enough to lose his balance and fall on his side. I threw myself upon him, lashing at him with my fists. He fought back hard and somehow ended up on top of me, panting, sweating and shouting that he was going to shoot me, although his gun had disappeared in the struggle. I fumed and roared. I bit and tore and raked until I was on top of him. Then I started hitting him. On the head and back and face and stomach, as hard as I could. He shouted and panted and yelped and sweated and writhed in pain, but I didn’t stop. Not until I saw the gun, lying on the grass. I jumped up, took hold of the Galil, and pointed it at him.

“Please don’t,” he begged, his hands up. “Please.” I’d heard many men beg for their lives. This one was no different. “Take my watch. Here.” He took it off, laid it on the grass and gently pushed it toward me. “Please don’t kill me. My boots. Take my boots.” He started undoing the laces of his black jungle boots, but then remembered something even more valuable to trade. “Want this?” He ripped his shirt open, exposing a silver chain with an array of little amulets hanging from it. “It’ll protect you from misfortune.” He tore it off his neck. “Here.” And threw it at my feet. “Please don’t kill me. Please don’t. Please—”

I squeezed the trigger. Gently, but the bullet went through his mouth and shut him up just the same.

Mariquita, June 20, 1999

T
HE MAGISTRATE
’
S ANNOUNCEMENT FOR
the Next Generation decree went something like this: “In yet another effort to preserve our dear community, and after consulting with my advisers, I, Rosalba viuda de Patiño, magistrate of the town of Mariquita, resolve that as soon as all four boys in our village—Che López, Hochiminh Ospina, Vietnam Calderón and Trotsky Sánchez—turn fifteen, they’ll be compelled to enter a competition. The women of Mariquita will decide which of the young men shall be granted the right to marry a female of his choice, to constitute a family for the preservation of the moral and social purity of our town. The three unselected young men will be ordered to serve as Mariquita’s full-time begetters for an undetermined period of time, during which they’ll no longer be autonomous individuals but rather government property, workers whose sole duty will be to father boys, and who’ll be provided with food and lodging and nothing else for as long as we need their labor.”

Following Rosalba’s declaration, the four boys were ordered, on pain of banishment, to stay away from women until their fate was decided, which would be on the morning of June 21, 2000, a day after Hochiminh, the youngest of the four, would turn fifteen.

Although she was responsible for drafting the Next Generation decree, the magistrate thought the entire thing was absurd and uncivilized: How can anybody in her right mind, she asked herself, oblige one of those children to make love to someone like, say, Orquidea Morales, such an ugly thing? But she felt she had to make amends to the women of Mariquita for the “complete” and “ignominious” failure of the Procreation Campaign, in which twenty-nine women had been intimate with el padre Rafael for three months, and none had become pregnant. “I was deceived by el padre Rafael into believing that he could beget boys; or girls, for that matter.” the magistrate admitted before the crowd that swarmed into the plaza to learn about her new decree. “I would’ve never endorsed el padre’s idea had I known he was as sterile as a mule.”

Everyone in the plaza applauded Rosalba’s harangue; everyone but the priest, of course. He thought the magistrate’s remarks were a declaration of war, and in retaliation, he stopped hearing confessions and giving communion altogether. The embargo of the two sacraments worked wonders for el padre, especially on the older widows, who after two weeks without confessing their peccadilloes felt as though constipated. They begged the priest’s forgiveness again and again until, satisfied, the little man absolved them of all blame and resumed giving the customary array of those invisible graces called sacraments. Still, the magistrate refused to apologize.

D
URING THE ENTIRE
year after the Next Generation decree was announced, the villagers debated whether or not it was needed or even wanted. From behind the pulpit el padre Rafael declared time after time that he was against it, that it was a desperate measure from a desperate magistrate. “Forcing our boys to engage in sexual activity with women who are not their wives is wrong. It goes against the principles of Catholicism, but also against the boys’ rights.”

The older women, too, openly condemned the Next Generation decree in the market, while trading a cheap trinket for a pound of on
ions or a papaya for a handmade bar of soap. They couldn’t understand why any woman—old or young—could possibly want to beget more men. Had they forgotten how the men had mistreated, ignored and diminished them? Didn’t they remember those creatures with broad-brimmed sombreros that would go drinking rather than stay home nursing a sick son? The same creatures with unkempt mustaches who’d rather pay a whore at La Casa de Emilia than make love to their devoted and decent wives.

Certain unnamed widows discussed the magistrate’s peculiar decree secretly, in the privacy of their bedrooms, under lavender-scented sheets, after making love and before one of them had to depart in the middle of the night, protected by darkness. They shared the same view as the older women, and maintained that if not having men around meant that Mariquita had to end with the present generation, perhaps an entire generation of harmony, tolerance and love would be preferable to an eternity of misery and despair—not to mention war.

Old maids also chose to talk about the Next Generation decree at night, only they did it on their doorsteps, while they spun cotton or separated good beans from bad ones for the following day’s soup. They were somewhat ambivalent toward it. Indeed they welcomed the possibility of becoming mothers, even if it involved being intimate with a callow youth. But at the same time they felt that having a child—boy or girl, it didn’t matter—wouldn’t change their despised status as old maids. What they wanted, really wanted, was to be someone’s girlfriend or fiancée, someone’s wife. They wanted to belong to a man, to be claimed as his property. They declared that the first verb their mothers had taught them wasn’t
to be
but
to belong
; therefore belonging would always come before being.

The younger women, on the other hand, didn’t talk so much about the decree. They talked about the boys, and they did it every time they saw the small cluster of them in school taking dictations from the teacher Cleotilde, or bringing water from the river in earthen containers, or working their mothers’ orchards, or playing soccer in
teams of two. But they also talked about them every night during their customary after-rosary meeting, when they sat in a big circle in the middle of the plaza playing games, trying new hairstyles, or, as their mothers said, “Feeding the mosquitoes.” Oftentimes they simply rated the boys, making a parody of the anticipated competition ordered by the magistrate. In their version, which they called “Míster Mariquita,” each girl was asked to rank the four boys in trite categories, such as Cutest Face, Most Adorable Smile, Sweetest Personality, etc., and then compare their results amid peals of laughter.

But not everything the girls did during the months before the competition was amusing. Virgelina Saavedra saw in the upcoming event an opportunity for profit. She took bets of different amounts and goods on the results of the competition. She herself bet a romance novel illustrated with photos—which she treasured—that Che López would win the right to choose a wife and form a family. Meanwhile, Magnolia Morales took it upon herself to circulate three different waiting lists (one for each unknown procreator) to determine the order in which each girl would eventually have a naked boy in her bed. She purposely kept the list from old maids and widows, for she decided the former had had every chance to secure a man in their prime (and squandered it), and the latter had already enjoyed their share of men in this life. This, naturally, gave rise to controversies, quarrels, verbal confrontations and even a fistfight. As always the magistrate had to intercede, first drafting and then announcing one more of her brilliant decrees: as long as a woman was menstruating regularly, she had the right to be on any of the three lists and to marry the one eligible boy, should he happen to select her. Period.

M
AGNOLIA
M
ORALES WAS
the first woman to arrive in the plaza on that fatal Sunday in June of 2000. She got there a little before daybreak, wearing a shapeless robe of sacking she’d sewed herself. The
gusting morning wind made the mango trees tremble, and the many leaves on the ground caused Magnolia to slip, but she didn’t fall. She spread a blanket on the ground, in front of the improvised platform that had been built the day before by order of the magistrate. The eagerly awaited competition wouldn’t begin until eight that morning, but Magnolia had promised her sisters that she’d be the first one to show up and that she’d keep a place for them in the first row.

Luisa arrived next, about half an hour later, then Cuba Sánchez, then Sandra Villegas and Marcela López, and by the time the first rooster crowed, women had appeared from different corners of Mariquita, as though carried along by the wind. They sat around the platform, dark rings under their eyes from not enough sleep, and alcohol on their breath from drinking too much chicha. The night before they’d celebrated Hochiminh Ospina’s fifteenth birthday with a great fanfare not seen or heard in Mariquita in a long time. It must be said that Hochiminh’s birthday was the last thing on the women’s minds (Hochiminh himself had not been invited to his birthday celebration). It was the event that would take place the morning after the boy’s birthday that they were anxiously awaiting; an unprecedented competition that would make Magnolia, Luisa, Cuba, Sandra, Marcela, Pilar, Virgelina, Orquidea, Patricia, Nubia, Violeta, Amparo, Luz, Elvira, Carmenza, Irma, Mercedes, Gardenia, Dora and many other young girls, widows and old maids of Mariquita immensely happy.

But while the women sat around the platform in the plaza, chatting merrily and making their last conjectures, Che, Hochiminh, Vietnam and Trotsky had begun to experience, separately, the adverse effects of the tremendous anxiety caused by the contest that would decide their fate. For several months the four boys had been the subject of discussions, speculations, assumptions, controversies, fights, bets and even jokes. Their thoughts and feelings about the magistrate’s decree, however, had never been consulted. Their anxiety had been building for an entire year, and they’d grown awfully apprehensive. On this memorable morning, the proximity of the event and the mounting pressure placed
on each to win had worked them up to a state of near hysteria where anything was possible.

T
HEY SAY THAT
Che López woke up at two on that Sunday morning and couldn’t go back to sleep. He didn’t suffer from insomnia—he could sleep soundly for twelve hours. The night before he’d planned to get up at six, earlier than usual, because he had to win the right to marry the girl of his choice, Cuba Sánchez. To achieve his goal, he thought, he needed to trim his hair, clip his nails, and, with a piece of coal and great care, add some density to the faint shadow he had for a mustache. He was fifteen, with black hair and eyes, a small colorless face and a full erection hidden in his white cotton pajamas.

Restless, he lay on his back, staring at the ceiling, yawning. The moonlight coming through a hole in the ragged curtain illuminated his swollen crotch. He rubbed it hard with the open palm of his hand, thinking of the warm, mushy, moist flesh of the watermelon he’d bored a hole into—and made love to—the day before. He pulled down his pajama trousers, wrapped his hand firmly around his penis, and began to stroke it zealously. But something wasn’t right; his hand felt a little too big around his penis. Maybe it isn’t fully erect, he thought. He held it between his thumb and index fingers and squeezed to check its hardness. It felt as bone-solid as only a fifteen-year-old penis can be. The boy moved slightly to the right so that the moonlight shone on his penis, and for a moment had no doubt that it looked smaller, by three-quarters of an inch at least. Maybe it’s my hand that’s growing, he supposed, and continued masturbating, imagining big, juicy watermelons lined up on the kitchen table, waiting to be penetrated. After some time, a long, unrestrained moan escaped from his mouth, and his hand stopped moving. He remained motionless for a few seconds, his lungs gasping for air. But something else wasn’t right; he didn’t feel any sticky liquid on his hand, and his penis appeared to be dry. He quickly shifted his body toward the right side of the bed and lit a candle. He looked closely for any evidence of ejaculation. He didn’t see anything
on his reduced penis, nor his hands, the bed sheets or his pajamas. Armed with the candle, he checked the naked walls, the shiny floor, under his bed; he even checked the ceiling—nothing.

Every Friday after class Che and the other three boys of Mariquita went swimming in the river. They often measured, with a ruler, the size of their penises before going into the cold water, and then after. They were always amazed to see how their penises shrunk. A week before, they had decided to do something different. They held a contest to decide who could ejaculate the farthest. They picked an open space on the riverbank and marked a spot. One at a time they stood on the spot, masturbated and shot. Che won with a seven-foot-six reach, followed by Trotsky with five feet, three inches, then Vietnam with five feet, and finally Hochiminh with three feet, eleven inches. Che boasted about it for the entire week; he even called for a second contest because he wanted to break his own record, but the other boys ignored him.

On that Sunday, however, at two thirty in the morning, Che firmly believed that his penis was shrinking, and that he had no semen.

D
AWN WAS BREAKING
, and gusts of wind were capriciously changing the order of objects in patios and backyards: flowerpots, plastic containers, clothes from the washing lines and even washing lines themselves drifted in the air for a little while before hitting a wall or landing in someone else’s yard.

Meanwhile, they say, Hochiminh Ospina was having a frightening dream. In his dream he was swimming naked in the river with his friends from school, racing to see who was the fastest to get to the bank on the other side. Hochiminh worked his arms and legs vigorously, but his body—as fat in his nightmare as it was in real life—didn’t move forward. He saw his friends disappear in the distance, their arms and legs splashing. He tried harder, with his arms fully stretched and his hands perfectly curved as they thrust firmly into the water, and yet he didn’t advance an inch. Suddenly his body began to whirl around on the surface, faster each time. A powerful eddy had formed, and its circular
movement was sucking him into its center. He struggled fiercely against it, moving his arms and legs as fast as he could. He felt a shooting pain in his chest, possibly caused by the strain he was putting on his muscles, but he didn’t stop moving; he couldn’t, or the eddy would swallow him up. The pain became acute, as if someone were pressing heavily on his chest and piercing his nipples at the same time. He continued swimming tenaciously against the whirlpool, enduring the ache, until the rooster in back of his house woke him up with its rowdy crowing.