Tales from the Town of Widows (30 page)

Faint sunlight came through two small windows set at irregular intervals. Still dizzy, Gordon brought himself to a sitting position and examined his body. They hadn’t hurt him; he had no new wounds or injuries, and he could move all his limbs. He looked around and saw a large and empty space. It didn’t look at all like a jailhouse. Actually, it looked more like a church, but with no benches, crosses, statues or religious images of any kind. The walls were utterly stripped, and the cement floor, where Gordon lay, was impeccably clean and smelled of lavender. Lying there in his dirty clothes and shoes, with his wounds still oozing blood, Gordon thought he was the only untidy element in the room.

Realizing that he was alone, he rose and started for the door, hold
ing onto the walls for support. He bent a little to look outside through the small metal grating, and his eyes opened wide at an extraordinary sight: a large crowd of naked women standing across the street, jabbering away in undertones. Some of them held hands like sweethearts. A smaller group of five older women, four of them naked, were going through the contents of Gordon’s duffel bag. He watched one of them take out his T-shirts one by one and hold them up to the light like film negatives, then pass them on to the other women. They didn’t seem interested in Gordon’s mini tape recorder. They examined it from all sides, shrugged and set it aside, unable to explain its use. A can of Coca-Cola, however, caused a sensation. They held it horizontally, with two hands, and rotated it, giving big approving smiles. Gordon watched this process with genuine curiosity, but also wariness.

A deafening cry sounded, and all heads, including Gordon’s, turned toward the source of it. The roar came from the young girl in the tight blue dress that he’d seen sleeping in the hammock earlier. Two women took hold of the girl while a third tried to muzzle her with a handkerchief. The girl wriggled like a worm, kicked and gnashed her teeth and made wild guttural sounds. Gordon thought she was stunning. Suddenly the girl stopped struggling, her wrath turning into a long, disconsolate wail. Exhausted from restraining her, the two women relaxed their grip. The girl immediately freed herself from them, knocking them to the ground in the process. Then she ran toward the front door of the church.

Gordon had just enough time to step aside before the girl violently pushed the door open. She cast a quick glance over the long, empty room, and when she spotted him, she threw herself upon him, locked her hands around his neck and passionately kissed him on the mouth. At that moment, the other women began entering the building in small clusters, pushing and shoving for the chance to see close up the blue-eyed foreigner while the rebellious girl clung to him like a limpet.

“Julia Morales,” a matron of majestic proportions and broad hips shouted, elbowing her way through the crowd. “Let go of the Míster
and step aside. Now!” The girl did both, not without frowning and pursing her lips together. The matron stood arms akimbo in front of Gordon, who was frozen.

“Who are you where do you come from who sent you and what brought you here?” she said, all at once, as if all four questions were of equal significance.

Gordon said nothing. He was so astonished and bewildered that he couldn’t have articulated anything in his own language, much less in Spanish. Instead he observed with curiosity the women’s harmonious nakedness—their tan breasts that ended in large, chocolate-colored nipples; their long torsos and dark stomachs, some flat, some prominent; their pubes hardly covered by short, dark hair and their smooth and solid limbs. He thought that they were an exquisite race.

“Well?” the wide-hipped woman said, her face turned to the crowd, “it looks like our friend here is mute.”

Only then did Gordon realize that she was one of the five women who had been going through his bag. She had an indisputable air of authority and determination. If she could display those attributes while in the nude, he reasoned, she had to be the law. “I’m not mute,” he replied in a conciliatory tone.

“Ohhhh!” the crowd whispered in unison.

“Then who are you?” the woman asked again.

“Name’s Gordon Smith,” he replied. A few giggles came from the spectators.

“Come with me to the municipal office, Señor Esmís,” the same woman said. “You must state your business to our community’s council.”

She walked ahead, forcing the nosy women to clear the way. Gordon limped behind her, his muscles, joints and bones hurting. This time he noticed, with growing admiration, the small plaza shaded by massive mango trees and surrounded by wooden benches, half of them facing east, the other half facing west; the homogenous style of the houses, their chalky facades and bright floral decorations hanging
from windows; the cleanliness of the sidewalks and unpaved roads. And amid these almost utopian sights appeared the girl named Julia. She walked along with the crowd, slightly ahead of Gordon, from time to time glancing at him over her shoulder in a coquettish fashion. Her features, he thought, were refined and delicate, like those of the women of his own race. But there was something wild, almost bestial, in her rounded hazel eyes flecked with gray, something especially alluring about her thick blue-black hair and shiny brown skin. He wished that she, too, were naked.

W
HEN HE ENTERED
the building, Gordon glanced around quickly. There were two rooms, the first one small and empty and the other furnished with a long rectangular table and four benches, all made of rough, bark-covered wood. A lamp sat in the middle of the table. The walls were bare except for the back one. It was half covered with a large damp patch, which, the matron explained, was a recurrent problem that the plumbers hadn’t yet tackled. “Do you happen to know anything about plumbing, Señor Esmís?” she asked. Gordon said he didn’t and apologized for it. The furnished room also had one window through which several young faces were already appearing and disappearing, blowing kisses and giggling. Gordon recognized Julia’s among them and gallantly waved his hand at her. The wide-hipped woman hastened to close the window, shutting out the flirtatious girls but also the remains of the sun.

She grabbed the lamp and took off its glass globe to light the wick. “I’m Rosalba,” she suddenly said. “I used to be the town’s magistrate. The only one who made decisions. Now it’s five of us. A council, we call it.” She lighted the wick and replaced the glass globe. “This used to be my office, only much nicer than this. My desk was one hundred percent pure mahogany. Really pretty. I had it over there.” She lifted the lamp with one hand and with the other pointed at the wall with the damp patch. Gordon looked at the wall and arched his eyebrows in a vague expression that could have been either of admiration
or plain indifference. Before long they heard a knock at the door. “It must be the others,” Rosalba said. She placed the lamp on the table and went to the door. Three women entered the room, two of them carrying Gordon’s yellow bag, which they handed to him. A fourth woman, old and fully dressed, wearing thick spectacles and leaning on a cane, followed them at her own pace. “Ladies, please take your seats,” Rosalba said. They sat two on each side. Rosalba sat at one end of the table and indicated to Gordon that he should sit at the other end, across from her. “Señor Esmís,” she began. “We’re New Mariquita’s council: this here is Cecilia, over there is Señorita Cleotilde, that’s Police Sergeant Ubaldina, here Nurse Ramírez, and I’m former magistrate Rosalba.”

“Nice meeting you,” Gordon said coyly, bowing his head. This courteous gesture seemed to have made a good impression on everyone but the Indian-looking woman named Ubaldina, the police sergeant.

“What brought you here, Señor Gordonmís?” Ubaldina inquired, giving him a suspicious look.

He studied the women’s faces for a second or two, and decided that except for the police sergeant, they seemed amiable. There was no reason to lie to them. “I’m a journalist,” he said. “I work as a correspondent, writing news and articles for magazines and newspapers. I’ve been covering your war for some time now. I’ve interviewed guerrilla, paramilitary and army soldiers as well as their families, and written stories about them. Those stories I sell to newspapers and magazines mostly in the United States, but also—”

“Who sent you here?” Ubaldina interrupted. “And what do you want from us?”

“A few days ago I met a man, a crazy man who told me a bunch of lies about you and your village. He said this town was inhabited by giant, man-hating, masculine women who grew beards and mustaches and were capable of impregnating themselves. He said that you were heretics who liked to torture your enemies before eating them alive. I didn’t believe much of it, but I figured that the part about this being a
town inhabited only by women had to be true. And to me that sounded like a very interesting topic to write about: a town of women in a land of men.” He paused briefly for dramatic effect. “So I asked him to draw a map for me and give me directions, and here I am.” He stopped, raised his face and cast a quick glance over the five sets of eyes that were fixed on him. “That’s the whole truth, ladies,” he said with his right hand raised, as though he were swearing an oath in a courthouse.

The five women didn’t appear surprised by Gordon’s account. They looked at one another repeatedly, displaying no feeling on their faces, saying nothing.

“So…now that my presence here has been explained, I’d like to request that I be granted permission to live in your community for a short period,” Gordon said. “I’d like to write a story about your village, and I’m willing to work in exchange for room and board.”

“What’s the name of the man who told you about us?” Ubaldina asked, ignoring the reporter’s request.

“Rafael. Rafael Bueno. He said he used to be a priest and that this was his parochial district for a long time, until you tried to eat him alive.”

The women looked at one another again. They now wore an expression of pure rage on their faces.

“Infamous wretch,” said the oldest woman, the señorita, hitting the floor with her stick.

“We should’ve thrashed him good and hard.”

“We should’ve killed the bastard.”

“Yes, and fed him to the dogs.”

“Or to the pigs.”

It was obvious to Gordon that Rafael Bueno had done something very hurtful to the women. He wouldn’t ask what, though. Not now, anyway. At this moment he could only hope that his request had registered with the council and that their reply was a positive one.

“We need to discuss this man’s request,” Ubaldina said. Then, addressing Gordon, she added, “Privately.” He grabbed his bag and started toward the door.

“Julia Morales is going to eat him alive out there,” Rosalba warned the council. Gordon stopped abruptly and looked back. “I didn’t mean it that way, Señor Esmís.” She giggled. “I assure you we don’t feast on human beings.”

After realizing that sending the reporter out would create even more commotion, the councilwomen asked Gordon to remain in the room and went outside themselves. He watched them through a crack in the door. They stood together under a mango tree, surrounded by the restless crowd, discussing their views and jerking their heads like disturbed chickens. After a while, they came back into the municipal office wearing solemn faces and sat in their respective places without giving the reporter any hint about the decision they had reached. Contrary to what he expected, Ubaldina, not Rosalba, was the one who ultimately stood up and spoke.

“I’ll be straight and brief, Señor Gordonmís. I’m responsible for maintaining peace and security in our community. Your uninvited presence has caused a great deal of disorder, and quite honestly we can’t expect anything good from an individual sent over by the man who murdered four of our children. We’d ask you to leave now, but it’s getting dark, and someone as white as you can easily be spotted by all sorts of dangerous night creatures. We’ve decided to give you until sunrise tomorrow to leave our community, and we hope never to see you again.”

“Señora Upaultina, I assure you that I—”

“Ubaldina,” she said. “My name is Ubaldina.”

“I’ve come in peace, Señora. Ubaldina. I’m a good guy.”

“Nothing good has ever come through that thicket,” Ubaldina retorted, and then sat down with her arms crossed, signaling the end of the discussion.

Before Gordon could say anything more, the woman they called Nurse Ramírez asked him to follow her to the town’s infirmary. “I’m responsible for the community’s health care, and so I’ll clean and dress your wounds and sores.”

“After that, you’ll follow me,” the one named Cecilia said. “I’m responsible for the community’s diet, and so I’ll take you to one of our communal kitchens, where you’ll eat a warm meal.”

“I’m the administrator,” Rosalba said. “I oversee everything, but especially our community’s farming and housing. I’ll make sure that you get a clean room furnished with everything you might need for tonight.”

“And I’m responsible for the community’s school and the town’s bell,” said the old Señorita Cleotilde. “In other words, I’m the clock of New Mariquita. I’ll see to it that you get up early enough to leave our village before sunrise.”

A
FTER BEING RELEASED
from the infirmary, Gordon was taken to the community’s second best kitchen: the Villegas’s. The Morales kitchen was rated number one, Cecilia said, but she had been instructed to keep him away from Julia Morales.

By the time Gordon and Cecilia arrived, only three couples were in the dining room, feeding one another what remained of their meals. Wearing matching aprons on top of their nude anatomies, Flor (formerly the Villegas widow) and her spouse Elvia (formerly the López widow) welcomed Gordon and sat him in a corner table all by himself. The reporter was fascinated with the community, its operating system, its people and customs. Since Ubaldina had forbidden him to speak to any of the villagers more than was necessary, he dictated his thoughts, in English, into his miniature tape recorder. Cecilia didn’t object to it. She was unusually friendly and kind toward him, and soon Gordon understood why:

“Señor Esmís, you said you’ve been interviewing guerrillas. I was wondering if perhaps…if maybe you’ve come across my son. His name’s Ángel Alberto Tamacá, and he joined the guerrillas a long time ago. He’s tall, and—”