‘Who’s there?’ said a gruff voice, booming like a thunderclap against the tree sheltering them. They knew the voice. ‘What’s all that screaming? Whoever you are, come out of there!’ It was pointless to run; they would be recognised. Their hearts began to pound once more and Benicio, seeing the terror in Geru’s eyes, stepped out from the shade of the flame tree and faced the man. ‘It’s me, Papá José,’ he said standing in the moonlit clearing. ‘Benicio. What was all that howling? You sounded like an animal.’ Benicio watched as José’s face grew harder, his brows knotting into an expression of concern. ‘What . . . what are you doing out here naked?’ Silence. ‘I don’t believe it. So you finally managed to conquer Jacinta?’
Geru emerged from beneath the tree, her shoulders bare, her clothes clasped over her breasts. Her face wet, she stared shamefully at the ground. For the first time in his life, José did not know what to say. He stood, paralysed, staring at them as though they were ghosts, as though they were two phantoms returning to the forest from the river. There was not a single star in the sky although the night was cloudless: he could see every detail, every contour of even the smallest thing as though some angel had gifted him with night vision.
José said nothing. He did not howl with rage, nor did he beat them with the walking stick he had whittled from a ceiba branch. He tormented them with his silence, with the look of pained disbelief in eyes that flashed in the moonlight. Then he turned his back on them and, shoulders stooped, he hobbled away, drained of his customary vitality. Around him reigned an utter stillness, an emptiness.
When Benicio and Gertrudis arrived back at the house, José was sitting in his chair, and there he sat until the morning. He did not look at them now. His eyes were cast down. Betina did it for him, her glassy stare stabbing at her children’s eyes. There was no place for Geru and Benicio in this room. Shamefaced, they retreated to their bedroom, Benicio hugging to him a sobbing, half-naked Geru, who buried her face in his chest as in some dark refuge.
The following morning they found José where they had left him, his mouth twisted to one side, his eyes filled with tears and clotted with sleep. Betina was hunkered on the floor next to him, her hair wild as though she had just escaped from an asylum. ‘He’s paralysed all down the right side of his body,’ was the diagnosis of Juanita the santera. ‘But don’t worry, he’ll recover quickly.’
Betina and Juanita took José by the shoulders and managed to lift him out of the chair. When Benicio tried to help, José jerked at his arm and mumbled something unintelligible.
‘Owww . . . Oww of my hhhouse.’
Grandfather took a step back. He looked at Geru. They both stood, frozen. The silence was agonising and seemed to go on for ever. Grandfather could not bear it. ‘To hell with it, I’ll go then. After all, it’s not as though you are my real parents.’
Tears streamed down Betina’s face. José’s shoulders began to pump like pistons and the good side of his face shrank a little more, then he gave a curt wave of his hand to signal to Benicio to leave. Grandfather took some things from his room and left the house. Geru followed him.
‘You know that what you just said will make them miserable for the rest of their lives,’ she said, remaining a little distant.
‘It will make me miserable too,’ said Grandfather.
Once again there was silence, broken this time by a northerly breeze.
‘I don’t know if this will help, but I will say it anyway. I once knew a boy who saved a young ram that had been bitten by a dog. The poor animal was lying in the road and whimpering with fear. The boy picked it up and brought it home. He fed the ram until it could walk again. A lot of people would have raised it, fattened it up so they could kill and eat it. But this boy took it out into the Accursed Forest and, halfway up the hill, he set it free.’
‘That was me,’ said Benicio.
‘Exactly. That was you. The real Benicio.’
And then they embraced. It was only in these moments of profound remorse that the good in Benicio resurfaced. But by then it was invariably too late.
‘Think about that,’ said Gertrudis again.
Benicio kissed her passionately then set off down the path towards the Callejón de la Rosa heading nowhere. Geru stood for a while longer, watching as he slowly melted into the verdant sea of plants and trees.
Mangaleno
On the Callejón de la Rosa, Benicio encountered Ester the midwife who looked as though she had been waiting for him for some time. She was wearing the same clothes as when Grandfather had first met her outside Chinaman Li’s store. In a faltering voice she begged him to go with her to her house, insisting that he had to come right now. Having nowhere to go, Grandfather agreed and followed the midwife back down Callejón de la Rosa in the opposite direction to El Cobre.
They went into her house. Ester gestured for him to sit down on one of the four makeshift wooden chairs set around the table. The room was dark but this was partly because the day was overcast. There were two east-facing windows in front of which stood a table covered by a sun-scorched red tablecloth and a kerosene lamp. There were two more windows facing directly west. The bleached tablecloth was proof that Ester opened these windows every morning and her room was scourged by the sun from the moment it rose until the moment it set. This idea made Benicio think that, contrary to village gossip, Ester was a cheerful woman after all, or had been at some point in her life.
Ester reappeared with a can of guava juice, handed it to Benicio and then anxiously sat next to him, staring at him intently.
‘You’re the spitting image of him,’ she said, with a look that was more sad than surprised.
‘Of who?’
‘Of your father.’
‘You know my father?’
‘Of course. These hands . . .’ Ester held out her calloused hands in the lamplight. ‘These hands were the first that ever held you.’
‘If you were there when I was born, then you must have seen my parents die.’ At this, Ester felt a lump in her throat, a lump that twisted her words, forcing her to swallow hard. ‘My family would never tell me what happened. Papá José used to talk to me about his friend Oscar, but he never talked to me about Oscar being my father. They told me my mother’s name was Malena and that she died giving birth to me. Were you there when my father killed himself?’
The midwife hesitated a moment.
‘No, but I know what happened.’
‘What did happen?’
‘He cut his wrists.’
‘Cut his wrists! That’s a coward’s way out.’
‘Not everyone has the courage to go on living.’
They sat in silence for a moment. Grandfather did not want to keep digging up the past, he wanted to bury it. Now that José and Betina had thrown him out of the house, he felt as though he too were buried. It was perhaps the only thing he shared with his real parents.
‘I had a premonition it would happen,’ Ester went on, ‘I knew it would happen sooner or later. I wanted to tell you that you are not alone.’
‘What do you mean I’m not alone?’
‘I mean you’ve got us.’
‘And who exactly is “us”?’
‘El Mozambique and me.’
Grandfather burst out laughing and got to his feet.
‘Don’t make me laugh, Ester. El Mozambique? The most hated man in these parts? I still haven’t forgotten how he tried to rob my amulet. That man has never cared for anyone in his life.’
‘You’re wrong. Nobody knows him as I know him. Believe me when I say that you and he have a lot more in common than you might think. Starting with the fact that you’re both utterly alone.’
‘I’m not alone. I have Geru.’
‘You have Geru, that’s true. But absence makes the heart grow cold. You’ll see how things change, now you’ve been thrown out of the house. At first, you’ll see each other every other day. Then days will turn into weeks until lack of physical contact chills your bodies and one day, when
you least expect it, you’ll find yourself no longer caring and in time forgetting. Give El Mozambique a chance, everyone deserves that. Besides, I know he likes you because you are the only person he has ever allowed into his house. The only one. That’s why I think there’s still a chance.’
‘A chance?’
‘To save you both.’
‘Listen, Ester, I’m not going to waste my time on El Mozambique. You said I was the spitting image of my father, so I assumed what you had to say to me was about him. So, are you going to tell me the story or not?’
‘When he was ten years old,’ Ester began, ‘Oscar was sold to the owner of a large plantation named Giacomo Benvenuto. In 1868 war broke out. Oscar and José joined the mambí army under the command of General Antonio Maceo and, a few years later, they met Malena and her sister Betina. They pledged undying love beneath an avocado tree and, as time passed, Geru, Melecio and you were born.’
‘I know all that, Ester.’
‘Do you want me to tell you how . . .’
‘No, I want you to tell me everything.’
‘Everything?’
‘Everything.’
The midwife took a deep breath, so deep that for a moment she seemed to suck all of the oxygen from the room.
‘Very well, Benicio, I shall tell you everything. Macuta Dos, Oscar’s mother, was as short as he was. She had two older brothers. Their parents had long since passed away long ago and had to be buried together because they were both found dead one morning with their arms so entwined around each other no one could prise them apart. When she was a little girl, Macuta Dos was convinced that the edge of the earth was somewhere on the outskirts of Pata de Puerco, that beyond the bounds of the slave quarters there was nothing but shadows and forests of flame. The idea had come to her in a dream she had while afflicted by a strange rash that almost killed her. Her dreams began with this mysterious disease which some people blamed on the urine of a large yellow hutia that appeared one day in the slave quarters and was never seen again. Others claimed it was the result of some magic by the Efik people with their ganga drums or the machinations of the Mayombe tribes, because it was not just Macuta Dos, but a dozen other slaves who fell ill, all of whom were immediately placed in quarantine to be cured of the rash, the itch and the fever brought on by the disease.
‘In her fever dreams, Macuta Dos saw the past and the future, and sometimes she saw secrets and mysteries entangled in the trees of Pata de Puerco. One of those who appeared to her in these dreams was a wije – a spirit – named Bonifacio who wore a loincloth and claimed to be her guardian angel. No taller than a gnome, with frizzy hair and gleaming teeth, the wije Bonifacio knew everything: he revealed to her the precise day on which her brothers – who since the age of ten had been her only relatives – would die, and everything about the slave revolt which would bring about ruin on the Santisteban sugar plantation. He told her that she had something evil in her belly, that she would never know the love of a man and that her life would be empty and meaningless. All this Macuta Dos learned, just as she learned that she would live to see all those she loved perish and that before she got to heaven she would endure hell.
‘On the very day she became a woman, the wije vanished from her dreams. Macuta Dos would talk to him in dark corners when she was alone, though she could not see him and did not expect him to trouble to reply, but the world is full of miseries, after all, compared to which her wishes were insignificant. She had but one wish in life: she wanted a child.
‘She began working on the plantation, feeding the animals, cleaning and drawing water from the well. Since she was a strong, muscular Negress, they set her to cutting cane with the menfolk and gave her so many backbreaking chores that often she worked twenty-two hours a day.
‘On one of the countless days that Macuta Dos prayed and hoped the wije might hear her prayers, in one of the countless murky corridors on the plantation she encountered a small black man she recognised as the wije Bonifacio. He smelled of charred forests and he wore the same loincloth and had the same frizzy hair and gleaming teeth as when he appeared in her dreams. The wije told her he had been sent to her by Yusi the Warrior since God did not intend to answer her prayers. Bonifacio told Macuta Dos not to worry, because he would give her a child. He gestured for her to come close and whispered, ‘Tombo,’ then he kissed her gently on the lips. The moment she touched the wije’s thin lips, which tasted of ripe mango, Macuta Dos knew that she would bear a son to a man named Tombo, but she had no idea who this man might be.
‘One week later, a new consignment of slaves arrived at the plantation. Among them was Tombo, a pureblood Kortico four feet tall with velvety black skin and an impulsive character. The attraction between them was almost instantaneous and nine months later Macuta Dos gave birth to Oscar. Just as the wije had predicted, there was no love between them. Tombo was cruel and quick-tempered and the few times they had sex, he would cover her head with a sack or push her underwater so that she could not breathe. But Macuta Dos expected these things because the wije Bonifacio had forewarned her. Just as she knew that Tombo’s days were numbered.
‘“Oscar, say goodbye to your papá,” Macuta Dos said to her son on the last night they spent together as a family. Tombo picked the boy up and kissed him on the cheek. The child wailed, he could sense something; but his parents simply looked at him in silence. The following morning at dawn, Tombo escaped into the hills. He was brought back that same afternoon dead, the skin flayed from his body, his face unrecognisable. They dragged him from the dense scrubland and strung him up in the middle of the plantation to serve as a lesson to others. Then they buried him in a secret place halfway up the mountain to obliterate any trace of him. Never again would anyone mention the name of the Kortico Tombo.
‘Time passed. Macuta Dos went on with her backbreaking chores and Oscar went on growing. Every night, Macuta Dos would shrug off her tiredness and tell her son stories from her native Africa, about how the Korticos were a tribe of fearsome warriors who knew the secret ways of plants. She told him that in Africa, even boys hunted with spears, though during their training many ended up in the maws of lions. Macuta Dos raised Oscar until the day she was locked away in a dark room with Tampico, a man who had the misfortune to have two metal bars by way of arms and a pillar of chiselled black marble by way of a torso. His legs were thick trunks of ebony, the very sight of him instilled terror.
‘On the Santisteban plantation, Tampico was the man who turned the wheel for the sugar mill and the coffee mill. This task, which usually required three or more slaves, he did alone. He could carry fifty buckets of water a day, in addition to cutting cane. He was a clumsy, gruff, slow-witted Negro like a sleepy giant and he stammered when he talked. But he was very useful, according to Don Manuel who, from the moment he first bought the slave, recognised that Tampico had been born into this world to toil and sweat until he died. And so this muscular Negro lived his life exhausted and in pain because of his work on the Santisteban plantation.
‘Manuel Santisteban had bought him in Havana; he had bought only Tampico, not his wife or his children. When he arrived in Pata de Puerco, Tampico found that everything was barren and desolate. No one knew him, no one spoke to him, people looked at him fearfully and in the slave quarters kept as far away from him as possible. And so, gradually, he began to grieve for the life he had left behind before he had been captured and shipped to Cuba.
‘In the first few weeks, he obeyed every order and was meek as a lamb. But precisely a month after he arrived, he suffered a bout of depression and began to strangle any living thing that crossed his path. The steward and the overseers believed he was possessed, but on the strict orders of Don Manuel no one dared lay a finger on him. “We must find him a mate. Lock him in a dark room with Macuta Dos,” suggested Don Manuel, and this they did.
‘As she was torn away from Oscar, Macuta Dos realised that her dreams of shadows and forests of flame were nothing more than shadows of her own life. Noth
ing could compare with the pain of losing her beloved son Oscar. This is why she did not flinch when the giant Tampico pinned her to the wooden floor, nor when he straddled her like a rutting bull, biting at her breasts and sucking at her neck like a vampire. She allowed herself to be dragged along by the whim of destiny and nine months later a son was born.
‘“We’ll call him Satanás,” suggested one of the female slaves. Macuta nodded her head in approval. “Satanás is the name of the devil. Damián is nicer,” said another woman in the barracks. Again Macuta nodded in agreement. In the end the dozen or so slave women, fighting to pick an appropriate name for the boy, decided upon Mangaleno. For the fourth time Macuta gave her consent. She did not care because she already sensed her own life ebbing away. Reluctantly, she suckled the child, feeding him her frustrations and her pain at having lost her beloved son Oscar.
‘Mangaleno grew up in the shadow of his brother. He knew no love, except for the love his mother daily professed for Oscar. She would talk about Oscar to herself and sometimes referred to Mangaleno as Oscar so that from his earliest childhood he learned to despise the name. “I’m not Oscar, I’m Mangaleno,” the boy would say furiously, but nothing changed.
‘So it was that Mangaleno grew up longing for a life he never lived, a life that for him could never exist. He had no choice but to rise from the ashes of his miserable existence and add more suffering to the suffering he had already amassed.
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