Tales from the Town of Widows (35 page)

With a smug smile, Rosalba called the next man.

David Pérez, in a more obliging tone than Jiménez, said that it was his wish to get back his grandparents’ little piece of land. “I want to rebuild our house for me and my grandmother. You all have taken good care of her, and I thank you for that, but now I’m back and ready to take on my responsibility.” He confessed to feeling uncomfortable with some of the changes that had taken place in Mariquita, and added, “I don’t know whether or not I’ll be able to adapt to all of your ‘special characteristics,’ but I’m willing to give it a try. Just bear in mind that we got here yesterday. It’s going to take some time.” Oh, and that, by the way, he wanted to start a family. Would anyone be interested in marrying a brave and affectionate man?

No one was interested at the moment. David’s answer, nonetheless, was received warmly.

Campo Elías Restrepo stepped forward before Rosalba called his name.

“What have you got to say for yourself, Señor Restrepo?” Rosalba said.

“As you all know,” he began, “I once owned a few properties in town and many acres of land. Well, I’m back, and I think it’s only fair that they be returned to me by whoever’s working or using them. I promise I won’t charge you back rent.” He laughed alone at his own joke, then continued, “Like Comrades Jiménez and Pérez, I also want to rebuild my house and…you know, take my wife with me. Because she’s still my wife, isn’t she? Or are you ladies going to tell me that Ubaldina also became a…you know…” The crowd stared at him with contempt.

“Why don’t you ask her yourself, Mr. Restrepo?” Rosalba suggested in a derisive tone, pointing at a small Indian woman who had been standing in the first row all this time with her back straight and her hands locked right underneath her navel.

Restrepo glanced at the woman and furrowed his brow. He looked at Rosalba in confusion, then back at the woman who was supposed to be his wife. She stood on a couple of shapely legs and, like a statue, seemed to be cast in bronze. Two graying braids framed her round little face. She had slanting brown eyes under heavy eyelids, a wide Indian nose and full lips. Her breasts, Restrepo thought, looked shy, yet firm and graceful for her age.

“Ubaldina?” he asked incredulously.

She nodded.

“You look…different,” he faltered. “Good. You look good.”

“Do you know this is the first time you’ve ever
really
looked at me, Campo Elías?” Ubaldina said. “Oh, I forgot,
Don
Campo Elías. Please forgive me for being so disrespectful.” She laughed derisively.

He stood there quietly, remembering. He’d married Ubaldina because he wanted his seven boys to have a mother, and they’d always thought of Ubaldina as family. Their master-servant relationship, however, had changed little with their wedding. Not once had Restrepo looked at Ubaldina through different eyes than those of an employer. The few times he’d made love to her, he’d been too drunk or too tired to go to the brothel. He hadn’t missed her all these years. The rare occasions he’d thought of Ubaldina, he’d pictured a homely woman in an apron silently cooking or cleaning, always looking down. But the wife he’d mistreated had gotten rid of her apron long ago. As he looked at her today, he saw a ripe, mellowing, attractive woman who’d felt deceived, cheated on and abused by him, and who was rightly rejecting him. Nothing he said or did now would change what he’d done in the past.

“Don’t you have anything to say?” Ubaldina asked, cutting short the man’s reminiscences.

Restrepo couldn’t think of any words that could convey the way he was beginning to feel. He shook his head.

“It’s better that way,” she declared.

He stepped back and hung his head.

After a short, sensible silence, Ángel Tamacá was called to state his
intentions to the villagers. As the broken man stepped forward, Rosalba couldn’t help wondering what he—the one person who’d volunteered to join the guerrillas—could possibly want from their community. He had no house to rebuild or land to claim. Perhaps his former teaching job? But what could he possibly teach them? The virtues of socialism? They were already living them.

“All I ask of you is to give me a second chance,” Ángel said humbly to the crowd without looking at anyone in particular.

“A second chance?” Rosalba asked. “To do what?”

“To be human,” he replied.

The villagers nodded affably: Ángel’s petition seemed genuine. He deserved a second chance. Amparo Marín was especially touched by Ángel’s appeal, by his manly voice, his politeness, and the sad expression of his face. How could a man convey his feelings in such a sensitive way with so few words to say and only one eye to glint?

B
EFORE BREAKING UP
the meeting, Rosalba informed the four men about what would happen next. “We’ve had visitors in the past; mostly passing travelers and displaced families heading for the city. No one, however, has attempted to stay. This is all new to us, and naturally your acceptance in our community will have to go through consensus discussion. Only when we reach consensus will we be able to give you an answer.”

“An answer to what?” Jiménez shouted. “We haven’t asked any questions or made any requests. Have we? We’re here to stay, and we don’t give a damn about your consensus. You keep forgetting that Mariquita is our village too.”

“Señor Jiménez,” Rosalba said calmly. “Look around and tell me whether this is the same village you’re claiming to belong to.”

He looked nowhere but into her eyes, his lips trembling with rage. “We own property here. We’re not going anywhere.” He glanced at the other three men for support.

“We’re peaceful people here, Señor Jiménez, but don’t be mistaken:
we’ll do whatever it takes to defend our community and our principles from rude intruders like you.” Rosalba’s voice now had a menacing edge to it.

He laughed derisively. “I’d like to see that. A bunch of delicate women fighting four
merciless
warriors like us. You know how many people we’ve slain? Hundreds! Thousands! A handful of you won’t make any difference to our criminal records.”

“Speak for yourself, Jiménez,” Ángel Tamacá abruptly said. “I’m done with fighting. And I thought you were too.” He moved aside, separating himself from the other three. David Pérez looked at Restrepo first, then at Jiménez, and finally shrugged his shoulders and joined Tamacá.

“You two are fucking unbelievable!” Jacinto said to Tamacá and Pérez. “After all the shit we went through to escape from the guerrillas, now you’re letting a bunch of women court-martial you like you’re criminals.” He shook his head repeatedly, then, addressing Restrepo, demanded, “Are you turning against me too?”

Restrepo put his hand on Jiménez’s shoulders. “I’ve got to take my chances here, son,” he said under his breath. “I’m too old to start anywhere else.”

“Don’t let them fool you,” Jiménez whispered back. “You know how women are. They’re just taking revenge on us for being gone all this time, like we had a choice.”

But Restrepo had made up his mind. He lowered his head and joined the other two. Jacinto stood there, all alone, staring at his comrades. His eyes filled with tears, and his expression softened. But when everyone thought he was about to give in and join the other three, he shouted at them, “You all can go to hell, you worthless traitors! Stay here, rot in this fucking hole with these barbarian lesbians. This will be your prison!” Tears began streaming down his face, but he kept shouting, his voice now choked with emotion. “Me? I’m going to clean my record. And I’ll become a respectable citizen. And I’ll be far better off than all of you, traitors!” Saying this, he started down the road, backward so that he could see their faces become blurry and smaller and
finally disappear, sobbing and shouting, “Traitors!” again and again, his frantic calls blending with the shrieks of a flock of crows that at that moment flew past the village.

B
EYOND THE THREE
large communal houses of New Mariquita there are vestiges of the old town: roofless houses, or rather roofless adobe rectangles, because everything that once made them houses—doors, windowpanes and frames, and even the flooring—was removed and put to use in the new dwellings. The insides of these empty rectangles were originally infested with aggressive weeds that grew in grotesque forms of extravagant proportions, like aberrations of nature. But once the industrious women finished the construction of the three main houses, they turned their eyes toward the remains of the old village. Together they decided to knock down all the inside walls of every former house, then transform each carcass into an enclosed farming lot. The resulting lots were plowed and soon turned into productive gardens.

If on a given sun you have the fortune to sight New Mariquita from the top of a hill, you will feel like you’re standing on top of an immense blanket patched together out of many remnants of fabrics in different shades of green.

T
HE SUN WAS
already high in the sky when the customary log fires were kindled in the middle of the plaza. Breakfast was cooked and served, and as soon as the villagers finished eating, they were summoned to the church.

The three men stayed in the plaza, waiting for their fate to be decided. In Tamacá’s ears, the word
traitors
kept resonating, and that made him remember that it had been Jiménez’s idea to escape from the guerrillas. Jiménez had discussed his plan with Tamacá first, then with
Pérez, and finally with Restrepo. All four swore to stay together and be loyal to their plan, and for over a year they talked about it secretly and separately, going over each step of the escape, considering the grave consequences they would face if their plan was discovered. Jiménez made arrangements with a local peasant, and one day, before sunrise, all four met at the man’s shack and changed into noncombatant clothes and ate whatever it was the peasant’s wife cooked and took some food for the road and then started moving along the rocky shore of the large river that eventually led them to their final destination.

Perhaps Pérez and Restrepo, Ángel thought, were also feeling bad for having let Jiménez down. Maybe if they saw together the amazing things the villagers had done for the community (all of which his mother had described to him in detail), then all three would remain secure in their decision. “Let’s take a walk around the village,” he suggested.

Walking around New Mariquita, Ángel felt like a little boy in an amusement park. He pointed at every blooming garden on either side of the street with growing excitement. “Look, yucca!” he shouted. “Look over there, squash!” He went on and on, as if his only eye had suddenly gained the power of seeing things the other men couldn’t see with theirs. Restrepo was most impressed by the community’s aqueduct: a skillful artificial channel built where La Casa de Emilia used to be, which currently provided running water for all three cooperative houses, the communal bathroom, and the small laundry area. It was so ingenious that even the gray water was used for latrines built on stilts above the running water. The sheltered communal bathroom startled Pérez: ten individual showers and latrines built on a platform where the market used to be. The entire structure was made of fine wood treated with resin. They visited the infirmary, the granary, and the community’s animal farm, then walked through plots of maize, rice and coffee on the hillsides that rose behind the village.

When they finished their tour, they went back to the plaza and lay
in the shade of a mango tree. They were tired, and the sun made them somnolent, but their anxiety kept them from falling asleep.

I
NSIDE THE CHURCH
, sitting in a big circle, the villagers were struggling to reach consensus on the first consideration. “We can’t discuss any man individually,” Cleotilde, the moderator, said, “until we all agree to having male members in our community.” In the past, all the community’s decisions had been voted on, which made the process quick but always left a group of people unsatisfied. Cleotilde had recently introduced the idea of consensus. “Our objective shouldn’t be to count votes, but to come to a unanimous decision that all of us can live with, through civil discussion,” she’d said in the philosophical tone she had adopted with age. Cleotilde’s recommendation was ironically put to the vote, but a large majority quickly approved it.

At the moment, a large majority was in favor of having male members, but two women still opposed the idea: Ubaldina and Orquidea Morales.

“This might be our last opportunity to have descendants and keep our community alive,” Rosalba said to the dissenters. She reminded Ubaldina that long ago she had rejected Rosalba’s idea of having Don Míster Esmís impregnate a few women on account of his being white. “These men are your own color, Ubaldina. Think about it. It doesn’t have to be Campo Elías.”

Cecilia pleaded with Orquidea Morales to agree. “Please, Orquidea, don’t deny me the chance to be with my son,” she sobbed. Francisca, Cecilia’s partner, adopted a more aggressive strategy with the stubborn woman. “Just bear in mind that you might need our approval if your sister Julia ever wants to be admitted back.”

Ubaldina eventually agreed. Orquidea, on the other hand, said she would never ever agree to any man living in their community, and demanded that the villagers quit trying to convince her to agree and that the meeting be stopped or the subject changed. Orquidea was one of the community’s oldest spinsters and arguably the most unattractive.

But when it seemed as if a decision against men living in Mariquita was imminent, the Other Widow, once again, came up with a solution that after some further consideration pleased the entire group: “Why don’t we help the men establish a new community nearby, where those who want to live with them can do so? We can make the offer conditional on their accepting our terms.” The idea was met with a profound, ambiguous silence that could have been either pure astonishment or dry skepticism.

“And what would be our terms?” Ubaldina wanted to know.

“We’d have to define them,” said the Other Widow.