Tales from the Town of Widows (28 page)

Señora Pérez brought her clenched hands to her waist and gave Rosalba a disapproving look. “Is that it? You interrupted my prayers because you want to talk with Eloísa?”

“Actually, I want to give her this camellia tree. Isn’t it beautiful?”

The Pérez widow heaved an impatient sigh. “Eloísa’s not here, so you and your bush can go look for her someplace else.”

“I’d rather leave the tree with you. If you don’t mind, that is.”

“Well, I do,” the woman snapped. “Bring it in yourself and put it wherever it pleases you.” She went inside, muttering trifling complaints.

Rosalba laid the flowerpot in the hallway and left.

Ubaldina, Third Sun of Transition

In the beginning of female time, the magistrate and the schoolmistress had insisted that on the third sun of Transition, each woman find something about herself that made her unhappy and apply her mind to it. But the women decided against it, claiming that unless a woman’s traits affected her relations with others, she should simply accept herself the way she was. Rosalba and Cleotilde weren’t happy with the decision, but since the majority had agreed on it, they let it go. As a result of that, on the third sun of Transition the villagers had half a sun for themselves.

Rosalba knew that in her spare time Eloísa liked to go swimming. On her way to the river, Rosalba imagined Eloísa coming out of the water, the sun shining on her wet skin, her long black hair dripping cool water down her back. Once there, Rosalba stood on the bank, next to a large rock, scanning the clear waters for the woman she wanted to see. She made out five heads floating on the surface like large bubbles, the bodies connected to them distorted in the water. Eloísa wasn’t one of them.

“Get into the water, Magistrate,” Virgelina Saavedra called. “It’s nice and warm.”

Rosalba waved at her and smiled but didn’t move. She felt unsure of herself in the girl’s presence. Virgelina, the gaunt little girl who’d once put a stop to el padre Rafael’s Procreation Campaign, had grown into the most beautiful woman in Mariquita. Rosalba resolved to go back home, but when she turned around, she saw Eloísa coming down the road.

“I didn’t know you liked swimming, Magistrate,” Eloísa said.

“Oh, I love swimming. I just never bring myself to do it.”

“Well, let’s swim, then.”

Rosalba soon found herself surrounded by six women younger than herself, which made her very uncomfortable. She kept her body as low as she could and raised nothing but her head from the water; not even her arms, because suddenly she was all too aware of the stubborn wiggles of loose skin that hung from her underarms. Her body, she remembered nostalgically, was the same body that once had driven the three bachelors of Mariquita wild, to the point that they tossed a coin to decide who would have the chance to approach Rosalba first. It was the same body that kept her husband Napoleón home, next to her, while most married men were getting drunk at El Rincón de Gardel, or visiting the prostitutes of La Casa de Emilia. That body was now older, softer, grown a little square and wider at the hips. What a mistake this had been, coming to the river! She wanted to dissolve into the water. But she couldn’t, so she let the current take her down a little farther from the group. Eloísa followed her.

“Thank you for the beautiful camellia, Magistrate.” The clear water covered her body up to a little underneath her breasts, accentuating their shape and color.

“Thank
you
for the poem and for the beautiful daisies, Eloísa. And please, call me Rosalba.”

“I’d like to call you something else.”

Rosalba blushed. “And what would that be?”

“I don’t know…maybe Corazoncito?”

“Ha, ha!” Rosalba wiped the excess water off her face with both hands. “I think I’d prefer it if you made up a word. A word that’s just for me.”

“But why? Corazoncito must be the sweetest word in the whole world.”

“In the world you created with Marco Tulio,” Rosalba replied, feeling somewhat jealous of Eloísa’s dead husband.

Eloísa considered this for a moment. “You’re right,” she said. “I never thought about it that way. How about…Ticú? No, Ticuticú? How about Ticuticú?”

“Ticuticú? Does it mean anything?”

“I just made it up. It means my sweetheart, darling Rosalba.”

“Well, then I love it.”

Eloísa laid her hands on Rosalba’s shoulders, and at the count of three, they submerged themselves together in the water, like little girls. Eloísa cupped her hands and gently slid them down to Rosalba’s breasts, which floated round and smooth in the water, and it was precious and extraordinary to discover how well hands and breasts fit each other. Eloísa’s fingers pressed, feeling the throbbing of Rosalba’s flesh, then let go, leaving on them ten slight indentations that presently vanished on the paleness of Rosalba’s skin.

Their heads now rose above the water, and their lips quivered as they smiled at each other nervously. Under the water their hands joined, taking turns to stroke and be stroked, fast, clumsily, acting on a wild impulse they could contain no more: Eloísa and Rosalba were two widows in love.

Ubaldina, Fourth Sun of Transition

On the last sun of Transition nobody worked. Not even the cooks: the villagers were encouraged to eat fresh fruits and raw vegetables. At sundown, everyone was asked to come to the plaza to take part in a celebration that honored femaleness. Feeling restless in her bed, Rosalba decided that she was in no mood for celebrations. She had
come to realize that her feelings for Eloísa were much stronger than she’d originally thought, and it filled her with fear and some anger. For ladders her obsession with tying little knots in a string without ever weaving a shawl had worked just fine, but when she’d tried to apply the same notion to her feelings for Eloísa, she discovered that doing the little things that brought her pleasure alone, without wanting to go further, was simply impossible. She now wanted to make beautiful love to her. But it was unnatural.
Is it really?
And she was the magistrate, a public figure.
But I have feelings just like anyone else.
She spent the entire sun in bed, trying to come up with a solution to her problem. Eventually she did.

Every rung a different household was in charge of organizing the celebration. Tonight it was the Ospinas, and they had exceeded all expectations. The plaza was brightly lit, its four sides surrounded by tallow candles and festooned with chains of flowers: purple orchids, yellow daisies and white lilies dangled from the lowest branches of the mango trees.

When the women arrived, they split up into four groups that at first glance appeared to have been improvised, but that in reality had long ago been determined by the women themselves in direct ratio to their ages, and, less frequently, according to the type of work they did, their liking of potatoes or their disliking of onions, the number or kinds of maladies that constantly affected them, and many more factors.

The actual celebration was quite predictable, and this rung’s wasn’t an exception. It started, like it always did, with a drink. The women stood in line to get a full cup of chicha from the Villegas widow. The widow prepared the fermented maize drink at least five suns prior to the event to ensure its characteristic sharp, peppery flavor. Next, as always, the schoolmistress made everyone yawn by reading poems by some Alfonsina Storny. When Cleotilde was finished, the attention focused on Francisca, who entertained the audience with her usual jokes and imitations. “Do the teacher,” a woman would say, and Francisca would walk slowly with her back straight and her neck thrust forward,
twirling an invisible mustache with two of her fingers. On this occasion, Francisca did the Pérez widow, Vaca, Julia Morales, the magistrate and, though no one requested it, a woman that was long gone: Doña Emilia, the town’s madam. The music was by the four Morales sisters’ “band.” The girls only knew half a dozen tunes, which they played over and over with their curious instruments made of old cooking pots and pans and lids. The women sang along and danced to the band’s lively rhythm. When the music stopped, the four groups of women quickly settled down to listen to the magistrate’s customary discourse. She always started with the same sentence: “A new rung is about to begin, and with it comes a new opportunity to improve ourselves as individuals….” By now most women had memorized it.

Rosalba rose from within the crowd and advanced slowly toward the front row, from where she was to deliver her speech. Before leaving her house, she had coated her entire body with eucalyptus-scented oil to repel the mosquitoes and other insects. As she walked among the women, the flickering light of the tallow candles reflected all over her shiny skin, making her look like a mythical goddess about to go up in flames.

She stood in front of the crowd, a blissful look on her face, and began talking:

“I’d like to express my gratitude toward the Ospina family for the effort they put into organizing this term’s celebration of womanhood.” The variation of her speech aroused the immediate suspicion of the villagers that the magistrate was up to something. “I don’t think our plaza has ever looked as beautiful or felt as cozy as it does tonight.” She looked around, smiling gracefully at the chains of assorted flowers hanging from the trees. “I’d also like to make an announcement,” she continued. The villagers were now certain that Rosalba was about to surprise them with a shocking statement: maybe an outrageous new decree. They held their breath and listened attentively.

“I’m in love with Eloísa,” she said, plainly and simply, holding her head up high. The crowd stared at her in stunned silence, then started bowing their heads, slowly, as though with growing shame.

“And I’m in love with Rosalba,” Eloísa shouted from the back. The women turned their heads, again slowly, toward where the voice had originated. Their prying eyes followed Eloísa as she walked toward Rosalba and planted a kiss on her mouth.

“I’m in love with Cecilia,” Francisca said out loud.

This time the women turned their heads not toward the confessed lover, but toward her woman. The pressure was such that Cecilia had no alternative but to stand up and, with her eyes fixed on the ground, admit to her sin: “I’m…in love with…with Francisca.”

“Virgelina and I are also in love,” Magnolia Morales declared. Both women rose to their feet and each put her arm around the other’s waist, smiling.

“And so are Erlinda and I,” said Nurse Ramírez. She extended her hand to the Calderón widow, and together they rose from the ground.

Other couples timidly disclosed their secrets, and when they ceased, a few single women started declaring their love for one another. The feeling was so contagious that some decided, at that very moment, that they were in love with the women sitting next to them and told them so. Even the ancient women, who hadn’t loved or been loved in ages, felt once again the strength of passion burning in their shrunk bodies.

The new couples as well as the old ones slowly began to disappear behind doors or vanish into the darkness of the night. And the few women who remained single, whether it was their choice or not, soon went back to their houses, to their bedrooms with their empty beds and clean sheets that would never get stained with blood or perspiration other than their own.

Only Santiago Marín and Julia Morales remained in the plaza, surrounded by orchids, daisies and lilies, and by the dying flames of tallow candles. They lay on the ground gazing at the sky, waiting for the twinkling light of a star to shine so that they could make a wish. And when the stars finally came into sight, Santiago wished that somesun, somewhere, he could be reunited with Pablo. Julia wished for the sun
when she, too, could shout, like the women had done tonight, that she was in love—only with a man.

The flames of the candles surrounding the plaza died one by one, each with a hissing sound and a rapid succession of blue and yellow sparks.

The melting tallow solidified on the ground, leaving behind a strong smell of burned fat that presently dissolved into the thin air.

And the night, now full of stars, swallowed the fierce moaning of New Mariquita’s passionate women, and the gentle murmuring of its widows in love.

Gerardo García, 21
Right-wing paramilitary soldier

A mass grave had been dug, and most of our enemies’ bodies thrown into it. Only a dismembered corpse still lay on the ground waiting to be accounted for. I was on my knees beside it. A little farther to my right, smoking a cigarette, there was “Matasiete,” a commander who was notorious for his harshness. (He was a war machine who killed guerrillas and then sat to eat his ration next to their dead bodies.) My job was to strip the bodies, check them for dog tags or ID cards, birthmarks, eye and hair colors and other distinctions, and report them to Matasiete, who wrote these findings in a large notebook for our own records.

The corpse I now had in front of me was small, a boy’s. It was missing both legs from the knees down and the left arm, and I couldn’t make out much about the face, which was completely smashed. “Young,” I said to Matasiete. “Seventeen, maybe younger.” The jacket pockets were empty, but a Swiss Army knife hidden on the belt had miraculously survived the soldiers’ search for valuables. I slipped it into my pocket.

“Strip it down,” Matasiete said indifferently. I removed the boy’s tattered jacket and what was left of his pants. Most of his torso was smeared with dried blood. A small, laminated image of a baby Jesus was hanging from a cord around his neck. It wasn’t unusual (we soldiers carry all sorts of charms and amulets), except this one looked exactly like mine: the same size and length, the same brown leather cord, and, affixed to its back, the same black-and-white photograph of my mother.

My mother had given my little brother and me identical charms
when we were younger to protect us from misfortune. I suddenly felt a lump in my throat. He’d only just turned sixteen. (When had he joined our enemies’ ranks? Why hadn’t I stayed in touch with him?) I couldn’t admit to Matasiete that he was my brother—I’d have been labeled as a guerrilla informer and most likely executed—but I also couldn’t let my brother become just one more “unidentified person” on our ever-increasing list.

“García Vidales,” I mumbled, pretending to be reading a dog tag.

“What? Speak louder,” Matasiete commanded.

I choked back, waited a little, then said, “García Vidales Juan Diego. Born 1982.” My voice shook a little. Matasiete wrote down the information and got up and motioned for me to dump the body into the grave. I suddenly wanted to smell flowers, marigold and carnations, because my little brother was about to be buried, and that was what Christian burials smelled like. I only smelled blood and death.

“Forgive me, Dieguito,” I whispered. I knew he could hear me. I dragged him to the edge by his only arm and gave him a gentle push with the tips of my fingers. I watched his body tumble down the wall and land awkwardly on top of his comrades.

Then I began shoveling dirt over his grave, saying the Lord’s Prayer in my head.