Tales from the Town of Widows (25 page)

Nurse Ramírez and Eloísa viuda de Cifuentes came forward next, followed by Lucrecia and Virgelina Saavedra. One by one more women began to join the group, their heads lowered in shame as they stated their support for Rosalba.

Magnolia and Julia Morales, Ubaldina and the mothers of the four dead boys had gathered on the right side of the church. They stood still and defiant, their heads held high. Rosalba realized that she had to shift her strategy if she wanted to win over the dissenters.

“How very sad,” she said in a low voice, speaking to herself rather than to those before her. “If the spirits of our beloved Vietnam, Trotsky, Che and Hochiminh were to appear among us, they’d be very disap
pointed. They wanted us to live in perfect harmony.” She stopped her discourse briefly to feel her throat with her hand, as if she were having trouble swallowing. Then she continued, “Their youth didn’t stop them from teaching me, through their noble actions, that loyalty, respect and cooperation are the answer to success. It’s very sad that they gave their innocent lives for nothing. May they forgive you.”

The mothers of the boys, united by their tragedy, joined their hands and wept together. Eventually, they too moved to stand with the crowd of women who supported Rosalba’s authority, leaving Ubaldina with no choice but to forget her magisterial aspirations and join the rest. Disappointed in Ubaldina, Magnolia and Julia left the church.

Rosalba was satisfied with how she’d handled the critical situation. This time, however, she didn’t allow pride to stop her from seeing the truth: the revolt hadn’t been an isolated incident but rather a serious warning of the extent to which the villagers were prepared to fight for food and shelter, the most basic human rights. She approached the women and personally thanked them for ratifying her as the ultimate authority in town. Then, taking advantage of the improvised gathering, she and Cleotilde explained to the villagers what they had been working on. They promised that the female calendar would be ready the next morning, and that it would mark the beginning of a new and splendorous era for Mariquita.

B
ACK IN
R
OSALBA
’
S
house, after having eaten a meal of stewed lentils and white rice, Rosalba and Cleotilde began making the sketch of Mariquita’s female calendar on a yellowed piece of paper.

First, Rosalba drew a ladder with thirteen rungs and gave each rung a female name, which she wrote in her neat and beautiful cursive handwriting. The top one she called Rosalba, of course—this time she didn’t bother to ask the schoolmistress’s opinion. The next one down she called Cleotilde, and then, in order, Ubaldina, Cecilia, Eloísa, Vic
toria, Francisca, Elvia, Erlinda, Rubiela, Leonor, Mariacé and Flor.

Then, on each rung, she drew four vertical rows of circled numbers (six on each), starting with number twenty-four and ending with number one. They represented the many suns of every rung. A fifth row with four empty circles symbolized the length of an average menstruation cycle. This last row, they agreed, would be called Transition, and it would be the most important period of every rung.

A faint ray of moonlight filtered through the grimy glass, reminding the two women that night had fallen.

“Can I tell you a secret, Magistrate?” Cleotilde said abruptly, removing her spectacles. Rosalba lifted her eyes from the sketch and nodded. “I remember feeling dirty and ashamed every time I had my period,” Cleotilde said. “There were times when I felt so ashamed that I wished I were a man.”

Rosalba also confessed to one of her secrets: “My husband slept in a separate room while I had my period, as if I had a contagious disease. To me, menstruation was a curse.”

“Well, it won’t be a curse anymore,” Cleotilde said cheerfully. “From now on menstruation will be a time to celebrate femaleness.”

The two women rose and stood across from each other, their bodies upright, their feet slightly apart and their hands by their sides. Scattered on the large table that separated them were the pieces of paper embodying the fundamental principles upon which female time was to be conducted thenceforth, and the final illustration of the first female time calendar ever, which would be set in backward motion at dawn. Standing there, Rosalba and Cleotilde looked like two statues of national heroines. The air of confidence that blazed from their eyes seemed to confirm that they, too, were women of admirable exploits; female versions of Simón Bolivar—Colombia’s glorious liberator and first president.

“Is there anything else we need to discuss?” Cleotilde asked out of courtesy.

The magistrate shook her head. She used her lips to point at the pieces of paper on the table and said, “I think it’s time to put all of
that into practice.” She offered to walk Cleotilde halfway. They hurried down the empty street until they reached the church building, which looked immaculate by the light of the moon. There they stood still, facing each other in the same way they always had: with their backs straight, their brows furrowed and a defiant look in their eyes. Only on this particular occasion nothing but a few inches and the invisible air kept them apart.

“Thank you much, Señorita Cleotilde,” Rosalba said sincerely, even though the rigid expression of her face showed no appreciation. “I simply couldn’t have done it without you.”

“I am pleased to have been of help to you and to Mariquita,” Cleotilde replied. She, too, was sincere. She, too, didn’t show it.

The two women said good night and began to walk slowly in opposite directions along the desolate road. Their bodies, although shaped differently, cast two identical silhouettes that grew closer and closer as Rosalba and Cleotilde moved apart; climbed up the white facade of the shabby house of God; reached the tower, where a forgotten clock stood motionless; and finally, as the two women disappeared in the dusk, became one gigantic shadow that spread over the sky of Mariquita, covering equally everyone and everything beneath it.

Plinio Tibaquirá, 59
Peasant

My son moved to the city as soon as he turned fifteen. He said he wanted a job where he didn’t have to carry a machete tied around his waist. There, he met his friends, the revolutionaries. The next time I heard from him, he was in jail. I traveled a whole day on foot and another day on a bus to visit him, but when I got there, they told me guerrillas weren’t allowed any visitors. Thieves could get visitors! Murderers could get visitors! But not guerrillas! I asked to speak to the sergeant in charge. They made me wait outside. They thought I’d get sick from the sun and the heat and go home. I bet none of them had fathered a child.

The sergeant told me the same thing: guerrillas weren’t allowed visitors. I said to him, “Pardon me, sir, but my boy needs me now more than ever. I can feel it. I’m his father. You see, guerrillas have fathers too.” I was crying when I said this last phrase. He made no reply, but ordered one of his men to take me to see my son. “Only for five minutes,” he said to the man. I followed a young soldier through many gates and long corridors. There were stinky cells on both sides, and behind their rusty bars, there were faces, faces with blank expressions, faces of men that were not my son.

Finally, the young soldier pointed to a dark cell. “There,” he said. I stood behind the bars, pressing my face against them, but I couldn’t see anything because there was no light inside. So I whispered his name, Felipe. Three times I whispered his name before I heard a sound, a wail. “It’s me, son. Your father. I’m here for you.” He made that terrible noise again, louder this time. He was telling me he was very happy I was there, but that he was in so much pain
he couldn’t even speak, only make that noise. I begged the soldier to let me in. He said no. I asked him for a flashlight. He didn’t have one. Besides, he thought it was better that way, because my son wasn’t “presentable” that day. I imagined my boy lying on the ground, chained and beaten up, forced to relieve himself next to where he ate and slept.

I went back the following morning. No one knew anything about my son. His name wasn’t in their files. Was I sure that was his name? They were very sorry, but no, Felipe Andrés Tibaquirá Gutiérrez had never been there. And no, they’d never seen me before.

I must have dreamed it.

Mariquita, Rosalba 5, Ladder 2000

T
HE MAGISTRATE TURNED OUT
to be particularly amiable that morning. She distributed among the crowd palm-frond fans she had made herself, and personally poured cupfuls of cool water to help mitigate the unmerciful heat. She shook hands with every curious woman who approached the large table she’d set up outside the municipal office, and promised all of them that they would never regret signing the two-page document she was so persistently waving under their noses.

“This is Mariquita’s Communal Agreement,” she said, the words rolling out of her mouth with ease, as if she were introducing her best friend to them. “By signing it, you’ll be committing yourselves to vesting the ownership of all your possessions in the community of Mariquita as a whole.”

The vagueness of the explanation made the women’s expressions change. Most older widows didn’t read and barely knew how to sign their names; therefore, when it came to signing documents, they mistrusted everyone—especially the magistrate, with her elaborate sentences and preposterous decrees that almost always got someone, if not everyone, in trouble. They eyed Rosalba with suspicion and began
whispering to each other, alternating nods with shakes of their heads. Finally, the Solórzano widow, who owned Perestroika, ventured to say, “We’d like to know what
vesting
means, Magistrate.”

“Oh,
vesting
is just a fancy word,” Rosalba said at once, throwing her hand in the air. “It’s kind of like…bartering, only better because you only have to give once, but you’ll keep receiving benefits for the rest of your life.” She smiled an almost maternal smile.

“Hmmm…,” the Calderón widow murmured. She owned three mules, which she hired out for carrying loads of harvested products in exchange for half of the products the mules carried. “What am I expected to trade?”

“Whatever you own, Calderón,” Rosalba replied with a shrug. “Anything.” She was making a great effort to look and sound casual about the hidden implications of the agreement.

“And what do we get in return?” the Sánchez widow inquired. She owned a good number of chickens and brood hens that earned her, her two daughters and her old mother a living.

“Whatever you don’t have, Sánchez,” Rosalba replied. Then, in a strategically smart move, she put the document aside and grabbed a water jug. “Vesting is a good thing for everybody,” she said, and began refilling the women’s cups with fresh water. “A really good thing for everybody.” She kept repeating this over and over as she walked among dozens of large palm-frond fans that moved rhythmically in the women’s hands, blowing Rosalba’s words into the thick, humid air.

B
EFORE THE SUN
reached its highest point in the sky, all the villagers, including Rosalba, had signed the Communal Agreement; or, if they were illiterate, said out loud, “Sí, acepto,” in front of the schoolmistress, who signed their names and served as the official witness.

Except for the magistrate, all the women went back to their houses to hide from the sun. Rosalba preferred to lie down in the shade of a tree in the plaza, hoping for an unlikely breeze. She was pleased to realize that contrary to Señorita Guarnizo’s predictions, developing a
collectivist economic system in Mariquita was going to be an easy task after all. She began to outline, in her mind, the general plan that would help her accomplish this goal. First, she would collect all domestic animals and take them to join Perestroika in the Solórzano widow’s backyard, which would become Mariquita’s first communal farm. Next she would divide the arable land into parcels of different sizes, each of which would be assigned to a group of women with specific instructions on what to cultivate. Then she would hold an early meeting to inform the villagers that everyone was required to work and/or produce something, in her own capacity, for herself and for the benefit of the community. Those who had no special skills, like the half-deranged Jaramillo widow, would be assigned to clean the houses and wash the clothes of those who did, or sweep streets and alleyways. And if a woman were too old or physically disabled, like the Pérez widow, she’d be asked to entertain the villagers every evening by telling them old stories or folktales, so that Mariquita’s traditions would remain alive. She was so lost in her thoughts that she no longer felt the implacable noon heat, or heard the unbearable buzzing of the mosquitoes in her ears, or felt their painful sting that after so many years still left festering wounds on her fair skin. The worst is over for Mariquita, she thought. The storm’s finally abating.

B
UT WHEN
R
OSALBA
, Cecilia and Cleotilde started going from house to house to collect all domestic animals, they encountered heavy resistance among the villagers.

“You touch one of my chickens, and I’ll wring your neck,” the Sánchez widow said.

“That piece of paper I signed didn’t mention Perestroika’s name,” the Solórzano widow argued. Even Ubaldina, the police sergeant, refused to part with her pigs.

Doors were slammed. Threats were made. Insults were shouted.

The next morning Rosalba called for a meeting in the plaza to clarify, once and for all, what “vesting the ownership of one’s posses
sions in the community of Mariquita as a whole” meant, and the implications of having signed the agreement. But the meeting soon turned unpleasant. When the women heard in simple, unadorned words what Rosalba’s plan was all about, they divided into two groups: the majority, who owned nothing but their meager wardrobe and therefore supported the plan; and a smaller group of seventeen who claimed they’d been misled into signing a vague, wrongful document to deprive them of what little they had. And while the former group gave three cheers for the magistrate, the latter group rebelled, calling her a liar and a thief.

Rosalba remained calm until the tension abated. Then she made an unexpected announcement: “Each one of you has two choices: to stay in Mariquita and abide by the rules of the agreement you signed, or to leave. If you decide to go, I’ll give you until sunrise tomorrow to collect whatever you own and leave once and for all.” She paused briefly to loosen the lump that had formed in her throat, and then, raising her voice gradually, she added, “Now, if you decide to stay, know that you’ll be a part of a prosperous community where no one will ever again miss a meal. You choose!”

Immediately after the confrontation, the rebellious villagers secretly met at Ubaldina’s house.

“If we’re going to leave, we must leave as soon as possible,” Ubaldina remarked. “Rosalba’s insidious and vindictive, and she’ll set the village against us.”

“She already has,” the Sánchez widow said in her successful voice, the voice of a widow who had started out with a single brooding hen and currently had twelve hens, seventeen chickens, and at least a dozen eggs every morning. “I hate the idea of giving up my house, but I hate even more the idea of sharing with everyone what I have earned all alone.”

Comments were made, explanations given, questions asked and answered and at length a decision was reached: “We’ll leave before sunset. Everyone, go home and start packing.”

When the magistrate was informed about the dissidents’ plan for a hasty departure, she secretly met with the schoolmistress to draw up a plan.

“We must do something to retain them, Señorita Guarnizo,” Rosalba began in a frantic tone. “If they go, Mariquita might not survive. They’ll take our milk and cheese and butter, our pigs and goats, our eggs.”

Cleotilde listened carefully, without interrupting, and when the magistrate stopped, she said, “I think the ethical way of dealing with this crisis is by—”

“I don’t care whether or not it’s ethical,” Rosalba burst out. “I haven’t accomplished one thing in my life without having to lie or cheat some.” She turned her back on Cleotilde and, addressing a nonjudgmental wall, added, “Every time I tried to do something the right way, I failed miserably. I try to be honest with everyone and to lead a life of good moral principles, but I can’t.”

“Well, perhaps you can use your
notorious
persuasion powers to talk the rebels into staying,” Cleotilde suggested.

But the situation, Rosalba reasoned, was too crucial to be dealt with honorably, and after proposing a number of dishonest ways to get her way (which ranged from kidnapping the three most influential widows to using the last bullet in her pistol to threaten them) she ended up using her “notorious” persuasion powers to convince Cleotilde to tell a lie with her. “A small, white lie,” she said. “For the sake of Mariquita.”

B
EFORE SUNSET
,
A
long procession hurried down the main street. Santiago Marín, the Other Widow, his mother and two sisters led the caravan, followed by a group of young women who carried on their backs large bundles of corn and stacks of raw cotton. The heavy produce—yuccas, potatoes, plantains and coffee beans—they put in sacks, which they distributed among the Calderón widow’s three mules. Behind the mules came a group of thick-bodied matrons carrying rolled-
up blankets on their wide shoulders, and pots, pans and kettles tied around where their waistlines ought to have been. The Sánchez widow struggled with a cardboard box filled with clothes on her head, and what seemed to be a whole poultry farm concealed upon herself. The Solórzano widow dragged Perestroika along the street, or maybe it was Perestroika—loaded with its owner’s personal belongings—who dragged the widow. More widows with more household goods, pigs and goats, cats and dogs and even an old parrot that would eventually make a decent soup, marched down the street in a boisterous and colorful farewell to Mariquita.

At the end of the main street, the caravan turned onto a long, narrow path that took them up a small rise and ended in “the border,” an almost impenetrable clump of trees and shrubs that had sprung up where the road that led to the south used to be, and which now served to separate, or rather hide, Mariquita from the rest of the world. But when Santiago Marín and his mother were about to enter the dense thicket, they heard the unmistakable commanding voices of Rosalba and Cleotilde. “Halt! Halt!” they shouted repeatedly. The two women tried to walk fast, but the soles of their shoes were so thin they felt like socks on their feet, making them move slowly and clumsily on the unpaved road.

“What can they possibly want from us?” Aracelly viuda de Marín said.

“I think we should keep going,” one of the Ospina girls suggested. “It’s getting cloudy.”

“Let’s wait for them. Maybe they want to come with us,” Santiago said, giggling.

They all agreed and began laying their bundles and sacks on the ground.

When they reached the border, Rosalba and Cleotilde stood side by side before the group. “First, I want to thank you all for pausing your…abrupt journey,” Rosalba began in a conciliatory tone. She had a large book clutched against her chest. “Since it looks like rain, and I know
you want to reach a safe place before nightfall, I’ll be brief. Earlier this afternoon, Señorita Cleotilde and I were leafing through a history book when we came across a section that narrates a very important episode in the history of our village. Isn’t that true, Señorita Cleotilde?”

“Uh-huh,” the schoolmistress uttered, addressing the women as well as their animals, all of whom stood in uproarious disorder over the small rise. “It’s a wonderful story that every Mariquiteña should know. We wish to read it to all of you before you leave town.” Santiago and the women looked at one another, saying, with their mute expressions, that they wouldn’t stay for another one of the magistrate’s tedious lectures. “Please,” the teacher begged, staring at Santiago. She knew he couldn’t refuse an old lady’s request, especially one asked in beseeching tones.

Looking exasperated, Santiago sat on the large bundle of corn he had been carrying. His action signaled to the women to do the same. They began settling on rolled-up blankets, pots and boxes, finally ending in a rough semicircle with their belongings next to them. Perestroika and the mules moved to the sides to eat tall grass and leaves. The magistrate handed the book she was holding to the teacher. “I think it’s better if you start,” she whispered. “I’m a little nervous.” Rosalba had deliberately told all kinds of lies to all kinds of people in her life, but she couldn’t remember anything as important as Mariquita’s future ever depending on one of her fabrications. At the moment she doubted the effectiveness of the fiction she and Cleotilde were about to tell, and regretted not having thought up something much more spectacular.

Cleotilde reached for her spectacles, which lately she kept hanging from a silver chain around her neck, put them on, cleared her throat, opened the book (an atlas, of all things!) on a random page, and began telling the story:

“Once upon a time, in a small village called…Taribó, currently known as Mariquita, there was a beautiful young girl named…Caturca, who was the only child of a celebrated Indian chief. One morn
ing, after coming back from a tour around her village, Caturca went up to her father and asked, ‘Father, why do you and I have leftovers on our table when some of our own people have nothing to eat?’ Her father was a well-intentioned man, but not very smart, and so he couldn’t answer Caturca’s questions. The young girl asked her father’s advisers the same questions, but they also weren’t too bright.”

Cleotilde had been addressing small and large crowds her entire life. She knew when to raise or lower the tone of her voice, when to pause, when to look at her audience, which words to emphasize. It was not surprising then, that at the moment everyone seemed captivated by her telling.

“The next morning, escorted by a group of servants, Caturca left Mariquita in search of answers. She traveled through exotic lands where she learned about many different cultures, customs, beliefs and governments. She dwelt with the very poor as well as the very rich; spent suns among the civilized and the barbarous; had long conversations with intellectuals and ignorant country people. When Caturca finally returned to Mariquita, she was no longer a young, ingenuous girl but a cultivated, wise woman. Her father, now a feeble old man, abdicated and made her the new chief of the village.”