Spain ordered its naval fleet to break the cordon and abandon the port of Santiago, but in less than an hour the American fleet destroyed what had once been the powerful marina española. Everyone knows what happened next: the Americans shat on their pact with Cuba and wiped their arse with the joint resolution, the Cuban national anthem was not heard again – instead sovereignty of the island was transferred to the United States and Cuba ceased to be a Spanish colony only to become an American dependency. Then came the Platt Amendment. Anyway, this is what was happening – or rather what was happening in the rest of the island since nothing ever happened in Pata de Puerco.
Demand for sugar increased. More schools and hospitals were built for the wealthy minority. Nobody took any notice of the families of a remote village that kept its existence a secret from the rest of the island. No one arrived to plant sugar cane, to lay claim to the land. No streetlights came. Since the wave of immigration that had brought the Santacruz and the Jabao families, no one left Pata de Puerco and no one arrived and quickly the families began to intermarry: cousins with cousins, uncles with nieces, everything was permitted except brothers marrying sisters which was considered a mortal sin. Over time, it became easy to identify the members of any family by their characteristic features.
When Malena and Oscar died, Betina wept continually for three weeks. She lost her appetite, she lost weight, and neglected her appearance more than ever. José too was much affected, but Betina was in such a state that he had to set aside his own grief in order to care for his wife, who was about to give birth. Several times, he tried to persuade her to take a bath, telling her he could not bear for such a beautiful woman to have a forest of hair under her arms, to smell unwashed, to look like a beggar. The Mandingas had always been a proud family. What would the neighbours say, those same people who had always thought of the Mandingas as the guiding force in Pata de Puerco? What sort of example was she setting for Gertrudis, who worshipped her mother? What had become of the radiant woman with whom José had fallen in love?
Betina talked to her husband about a conversation she had had with Juanita, a santera and wise-woman who lived alone and spent her time tending mysterious plants in her garden. Juanita thought of herself as a cynical pessimist, but she had a keen eye capable of diagnosing disease and in Pata de Puerco it was she who tended to the health of the community. More than once she had said that Cuba was a cesspool and she was simply waiting for her plants, her bird-of-paradise flowers and her orchids, to grow so she could die in peace. She invariably wore a housecoat that reeked of alcohol and wandered around with a cigar hanging from her lips.
‘Juanita told me that all this time the truth has been staring us in the face, but we would not see it,’ Betina told her husband. José said she should pay no mind to Juanita whose brain was addled by the strange herbs she smoked, but instead accept things as they are. Death sometimes comes unexpectedly, he said, and once again reminded her how his parents had perished of yellow fever, adding that his twin brothers had died of that terrible disease. ‘You have to remember you are about to give birth.’
This seemed to calm her for a while, but the following day Betina’s head was once again plagued with ghosts and suspicions; Malena had not been herself for a long time, she insisted, her sister had become more withdrawn as though afraid to speak, afraid to look her in the eye. Betina had known something was wrong, but every time she raised the subject her sister said she was imagining things.
‘Malena died in childbirth, mi amor,’ said José. ‘You know how delicate she was.’ But Betina, with the wilfulness of pregnant women, insisted no one died in childbirth just like that. To calm her, José went to fetch Ester so the midwife could tell her exactly what had happened.
‘I warned Oscar. I told him that Malena needed to eat more red meat,’ said Ester.
‘No one could have eaten more red meat than Malena did,’ said José.
‘In that case, I don’t know what happened,’ said Ester.
Neither the midwife’s statement nor her husband’s comforting could sway Betina. José had no choice but to allow time to do its work. Months passed and slowly Betina began to forget, though every week she made the pilgrimage to El Cobre, bringing sprigs of fresh roses to the church in memory of her beloved Malena and Oscar.
Melecio was born precisely four weeks after Benicio. José and Betina watched over him in the weeks and months that followed, eagerly waiting for his first word. Gertrudis’s first word had been ‘mamá’; Benicio, to be contrary, had said ‘papá’. José and Betina wondered what Melecio’s first word would be; it was a matter they took very seriously.
One day, Melecio looked up into his parents’ eyes and said, ‘Architecture!’
‘Architecture? What do you mean, architecture? What does he mean, Betina?’
Betina folded her arms but could not say anything. A little later, they both came to the conclusion that it could mean only one thing: Melecio was the strangest child in the world.
Physically, the two boys were similar in complexion and in size, and both had a thin mop of hair; but in character, they were utterly different. Melecio liked to sleep. He was a quiet child who never woke his parents in the middle of the night; nor was he a guzzler like Benicio – because unlike his half-brother, my grandfather was born with the appetite of a lion, suckling Betina’s breasts until they were wizened dugs.
A goat had to be bought because Betina could not provide milk enough for both children. Juanita the santera advised them to take care, warning them that mixing milk could make a newborn ill. Neither boy fell ill; both grew up hale and hearty.
‘They’re not boys at all,’ said Juanita six months after Melecio was born, ‘they’re a pair of mules,’ adding that José and Betina had no need to worry about their health. Juanita, in her role as sorceress, had recently consulted her cauldron and for now the future seemed clear and cloudless. Smiling from ear to ear, she told José and Betina that Melecio had a brilliant future ahead of him but that they should keep a close watch on Benicio because, she said, he was different. ‘Of course he’s different, Juanita. We are Mandingas and Benicio is a Kortico,’ said José. The santera explained that she had good reason to say what she had said and once again advised them to keep a close eye on the son of Oscar and Malena.
José and Betina’s first strategy was to ask their neighbours to say nothing to my grandpa Benicio about his real parents until he was old enough to understand and not become confused. Until that time, Benicio was treated like another member of the Mandinga family, although his surname was Kortico.
Benicio slept in the bed next to Geru while Melecio had his own room. Grandpa used to say that at night he and his sister curled up in the old bed made of tree branches and told each other their deepest secrets. Geru wanted to be a santera like Juanita, but said that no one was allowed to know. My grandfather had no dreams, no aspirations. He was mischievous, as children are, but he was affectionate with his brother, his sister and his parents and in his first seven years did nothing that marked him out as different from other children in the village as Juanita had foretold. Melecio on the other hand had been born with an insatiable curiosity, eager to learn everything – something curious and strange in a child his age. He spent hours poring over Betina’s old magazines or peering at the cans of tomatoes that came from the store, trying to read the words without knowing how. There was nothing unusual in a boy wanting to know how to build a cart, to fish and work the land; skills proper to a man. But Melecio also wanted to learn to cook, to sew and clean the house as his mother did, while Benicio and Geru preferred playing games with their little friends. By the tender age of seven, Melecio had learned to slaughter a pig and wring a chicken’s neck.
One day Geru and Benicio headed off to the Chinese store on an errand for Betina, who was going to El Cobre to lay flowers at the church for Oscar and Malena. José was out working in the field.
When they got to the store, Geru and Benicio joined the queue. They
asked for two pounds of rice, two pounds of black beans, three pounds of chickpeas and jars of cumin, oregano and salt. Li, the Chinese shopkeeper, poured the beans and pulses into the sacks they had brought and parcelled everything else up with paper. Benicio paid the three reales and brother and sister set off home. On their way to the store they had met a fat woman with huge breasts wearing a smock smeared with coal dust and a brightly coloured headscarf. The woman looked about fifty, though from the expression in her wounded eyes she could have been much older. She stood staring at Benicio and her face slowly seemed to age. ‘You are a sad child, Benicio,’ Ester told my grandfather with a thin-lipped smile. Then she quickly hurried away along a narrow winding path that led into the mountains, vanishing into the undergrowth until she became just one more leaf in a sea of plants.
‘Who is that woman?’ Benicio asked. Whoever she was, Gertrudis said, she wasn’t right in the head; the whole area was full of lunatics. Her answer did little to convince her brother. Grandpa set his sacks on the ground and went back to the store to ask Li. ‘I think she lives in Pata de Puerco,’ Li said. ‘But run on home now. You are too young to be sticking your noses in other people’s lives.’
As they headed home, Grandpa Benicio could not get Ester’s face out of his mind and her words echoed inside his head. When they came within ten metres of their house, both children smelled something strange. Surely Betina could have arrived back before them, unless someone had given her a ride in their cart. Pushing open the door, they found Melecio in the living room, hands stuffed in the pockets of his shorts, smiling a mischievous dazzling smile, as though he had just done something naughty.
‘Is Mamá home already, Melecio?’ said Gertrudis, setting her bags down on the wooden table. ‘She must have been inspired today because it smells even more delicious than usual.’
‘Mamá’s not here. But it does smell delicious, doesn’t it?’
‘What are you talking about?’
Geru and Benicio ran to the kitchen where they found rice and a chicken Melecio had cooked, and a lettuce and tomato salad. There was a vast quantity of food. Melecio tried to explain that he had taught himself to cook but Geru and Benicio said he must have gone mad, that cooking was woman’s work and José would beat him to within an inch of his life.
They were right. Five minutes later José arrived and, when he found the mountains of food, gave Melecio such a beating his screams could be heard as far as Santiago. ‘Who told you to cook for the whole village, huh? You know very well that chicken was to commemorate Malena and Oscar’s anniversary. I swear I’ll kill you.’ José went on beating Melecio, shaking him like a rag doll. Benicio tried to intervene, grabbing his father by his belt.
‘Get out of here, Oscar,’ roared José and gave him a clout.
‘I’m not Oscar, I’m Benicio and she’s Gertrudis.’
‘You’re right, you are Benicio and she’s Geru and you . . . you’re Melecio, the little bastard who just cooked a whole month’s worth of food. Out of my sight, the three of you, and Melecio, I don’t want you setting foot in the kitchen again, do you hear? Now get out!’
When Betina got home, she scolded Melecio some more. She didn’t know how she was going to feed her family the following week since they did not have a peso and the beans and pulses Benicio and Geru had just bought would barely last three days. What Melecio had cooked was bound to be inedible, but they would have to make do, or sell it to a neighbour as pig fodder.
Betina and José were the first to taste the food. As the fragrant flavours of Melecio’s cooking melted in their mouths, they were overwhelmed by an indescribable feeling. José got up from the table, rushed to find Melecio, fell to his knees and said, ‘Forgive me, hijo . . . I promise I’ll never beat you again. You can cook all the chickens you want.’
José wept as Betina rained down blows on him, calling him an ill-bred lout for doing such a thing to his own son and swearing that the next time she caught him beating Melecio she would cut his balls off. Benicio sat, his spoon hovering before his mouth, unable to believe what he was seeing. Melecio himself did not understand what was happening. He sat in silence trying to work out which of the spices he had used could have produced such an effect.
Too late Grandpa Benicio screamed, ‘Noooo!’, but Gertrudis had already put a spoonful in her mouth.
‘From now on I’m not going to share a bed with you,’ his sister immediately announced and ran from Benicio’s side to sit next to the little chef. ‘I’ll only sleep next to my brother Melecio.’
Benicio and Melecio were the only ones who did not eat. They decided that they would never speak about what had happened and that Melecio would never cook again. They made this vow in silence, locking their lips with invisible keys they tossed over their shoulders towards the mountain. The following day when they woke up, José, Betina and Geru remembered nothing. Geru woke up next to Melecio and ran to ask Benicio why she had not slept next to him as usual. Benicio suggested that perhaps the food had disagreed with her, but privately vowed that this could not happen again.
The following day was El día del Nacimiento – the Festival of Birth – something celebrated every Sunday in the village. Fathers would set out stools and earthenware bowls filled with food beneath the flame tree, garlanded with flowers, a table would be set with a tablecloth and the place turned into a rustic tavern with drums, cans, dogs and people who came along with the sole intent of forgetting their constant gloom and celebrating their miserable lives. José and Betina told their neighbours about the bad luck they had been having, how two nights earlier a wild animal crept in and devoured their only chicken, leaving bones and feathers strewn all around.
‘We don’t have anything to bring. We’re sorry,’ said José, ashamed. Abel Santacruz said it did not matter, that in Pata de Puerco the Mandingas were almost a royal family, and Evaristo the kite-maker immediately sat them next to Silvio and Rachel Aquelarre from where they had a perfect view of the faces of everyone in the village, with the exception of El Mozambique and Ester the midwife who never joined in these feasts.
‘Today’s game involves telling tales. Old and young alike are welcome to take part. The person to tell the funniest story will be the winner,’ said Evaristo, sitting in the crook of the red flame tree where everyone could see him.
‘What kind of stories?’ asked Pablo el Jabao.
‘Any kind of tale at all,’ Evaristo replied, ‘anything that will make people laugh.’
‘In that case,’ said Epifanio Vilo, ‘I’ll start.’ He stood up on his stool and began. ‘A tomato was walking with a lettuce along the Callejón de la Rosa. “Hurry up, tomato, there’s a cart coming,” said the lettuce. But the tomato, being stubborn, refused to listen and the cart rolled right over him. “Tomato!” yelled the lettuce, but it was too late. As the cart trundled off into the distance, the lettuce looked at the red splodge on the road, walked over to his friend and said, “I told you ketchup!”’
There was general hilarity. People slapped their thighs and doubled over with uncontrollable laughter.
‘That’s nothing,’ said Justino the coal merchant, and clambering on to his stool he began: ‘A little black boy wanted to know what happens to Negro children when they die. “They go to heaven, where God gives them a pair of wings and they become little black angels,” his father told him. The little boy thought for a minute and then asked his father curiously, “And what happens to white children, Papá?” “Exactly the same,” his father replied. “They go to heaven, God gives them a pair of wings and they become barn owls.”’
This time the laughter became hysterical. Betina clapped her hand over her mouth. José laughed until he cried. Some people collapsed on the ground and were writhing with glee. ‘That’s a good one, Justino.’ Evaristo raised a hand to calm the bedlam. ‘Let’s see if anyone can beat it. Who else has got a tale to tell?’
‘I do,’ said Juan Carlos el Jabao, the eldest of Pablo and Niurka’s children. He was a tall lad wi
th hair as red as fire. ‘A man went to the doctor complaining that his son had died from a strange fever that made his face turn yellow. The doctor, who was a drunk, looked at him and said, “There’s no need to be sad, señor, at least he died with a beautiful colour.”’
Juan Carlos’s joke did not elicit the same reaction. José did not laugh at all. He felt his muscles tense and from that moment on he bore Juan Carlos a grudge. The next person to speak was Ignacio el Jabao, the brother of Juan Carlos, and the rudest, most foul-mouthed boy in the village.
‘A little boy was sitting under a tree crying and a drunk stopped and asked him what was wrong. The boy said his papá had fallen out of the avocado tree, landed on his dick and now he was in heaven. The drunk looked at the boy, then the avocado tree, then looked up to heaven and said, “Fuck! Your papá must have had a dick like a spring.”’
Niurka el Jabao leaped from her seat, grabbed Ignacio by the ear and dragged him off, slapping and kicking him. Pablo apologised, explaining that the boy was the spawn of the devil. He asked Juan Carlos to look after the rest of the Jabao brood and make sure they behaved themselves then followed his wife home, cursing his son Ignacio. ‘Boys will be boys,’ said Evaristo. ‘Justino the coalman is still in first place. Would anyone else like to beat him?’
Now it was Melecio who spoke up.
‘I’d like to tell a story,’ he said, getting to his feet. ‘What story, Melecio?’ said Betina. ‘You’re a little young to be telling stories.’ She gestured at him to sit down again. The kite-maker said it did not matter, that the game was for all ages. ‘It’s true, Betina,’ said José. ‘Let the boy tell his joke. Maybe he inherited my sense of humour.’ Betina rolled her eyes to heaven. ‘Let him, señora . . .’ everyone chorused, ‘let the boy tell his joke.’
Betina had no choice but to agree. Melecio clambered on to his stool, stuffed his hands in the pockets of his shorts and in a thin, falsetto voice began:
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