The Farm

by Hector Abad

  Three days before, when they arrived in Fredonia, El Cojo extended another act of goodwill toward Isaías and his family. Once they’d arrived in that town, and after the long conversations they’d had on the way from El Retiro, he had to confess that Don Santiago Santamaría was very rigid in the selection of the settlers and had therefore established a sort of quarantine for all those who aspired to live in the new town. Below Fredonia, in the Marsella hermitage, he left all the new families for a couple of weeks and gave them food and shelter, but put them under the observation of a priest and a barber who lived in the village. Those who drank, the lazy ones, those who didn’t go to Mass or showed signs of bad tempers (the ones who hit and shouted at their wives, mistreated children or animals), were sent back to where they came from under the pretext that all the places in the Southwest were taken. Well-mannered, meek, hardworking, and patient Christians were allowed to carry on toward the Cauca. This quarantine was known as “the sieve,” but El Cojo wasn’t going to submit Isaías and his family to this test, and he let them go on, vouching for them, without making them fulfill Don Santiago’s prerequisite. The rest of the families who’d come from various towns he left there for the required two weeks, and continued the journey with those who had already passed through the priest and barber’s colander.

  Maybe for this reason the Ángels were even more content and enthusiastic. Isaías exclaimed, excited and happy, that he had never seen such crystal-clear waters, such delicious sabaleta fish, such colorful birds, and most of all such inspiring air or such a blue sky. He could not believe that the Toledo of his ancestors was as luminous or as green. All his descendants have continued to repeat the same things like parrots, right down to me: that nowhere in the world, not even in Greece, is there a sky as blue as that of Jericó, when it’s clear; the same blue that’s only seen in a few Italian Renaissance paintings, Fra Angelico blue (as our writer friend Von Berenberg called it), and maybe in Madrid, on a few afternoons.

  The climate – the sunny mornings – was perfect; the transparent and very clean air, the kind that dries sweat while one barely notices, refreshing the skin without cooling it down too much. Raquel, his wife, was riding sidesaddle on a little sorrel paso fino mare, a little ways behind. Pedro Pablo, El Cojo Echeverri, had lent them the mare, called Simpatía, which was his spare mount for when his main horse needed a rest, considering Raquel’s condition. A couple of years later he sent the mare to their home with saddle and reins and all the gear, as a Christmas present on the 24th, and with that mare the Ángels of my family began to raise horses, that first mare was our Eve, our equine Lucy. With this single gesture of lending Simpatía, El Cojo had earned Isaías’s eternal friendship and gratitude. They had so often mentioned their appreciation, the beauty of that first gesture, They had so often mentioned their appreciation, the beauty of that first gesture, that El Cojo ended up sending the whole horse as a gift, to reiterate the pleasure he’d derived from lending her to them. In spite of her pregnancy, Raquel had withstood the long journey from El Retiro well. They didn’t know what sex the baby growing within her body was, and would only see five months later: he would have testicles, testifying to his virility, and would be called Elías, like one of his Abadi grandfathers who’d come from the Canary Islands.

  Saying goodbye to her parents, hastily and unexpectedly, had been sad. Don Abel, her father, had blessed her four times, and four times had dried his tears with his handkerchief. Her mother, Barbarita, more phlegmatic and curt, had just said, “May things go well for you, my dear, and when you can, send news of that new town.” Raquel also liked that new land that welcomed them with a hearty stew, with cheers and songs, with hats in the left hands and right hands outstretched. At the last moment two of Raquel’s siblings had joined them as well, her younger brother Gregorio Máximo, and her older sister, Teresa, who were almost going hungry there in El Retiro. Don Abel, the shoemaker, had blessed them too, and Doña Barbarita had said the same thing to these two, “May things go well for you, my children, and Teresa, I hope you’ll write when you have time.” She hadn’t asked Gregorio because, although he spoke well and clearly, he didn’t know how to read or write. They came along under the pretext of helping their pregnant sister, and the only parting gift Don Abel could give them was a new pair of shoes each, “so they would go far.” Teresa, who was twenty-eight years old, already had a spinster’s look about her, and had been very attached to her sister since childhood. The boy was just fifteen, but tall and strong, handsome and a good worker, and El Cojo had welcomed him to the adventure of settling the Southwest. Gregorio Máximo would eventually marry one of the Restrepo girls, and would be the father of another Antonio, Antonio Abad, who would eventually be called Don Abad, the almost legendary patriarch of Jericó, who would found another lineage in these parts, of timid and kindly people, rather quiet, but not at all stupid, with lawyers, doctors, engineers, and brewers among them, and even the odd patchy man of letters.

  Many years after this triumphant arrival in the new town, one of our ancestors, our great-grandmother, Merceditas Mejía, wanted to refute the rumors circulating in Jericó, that the Ángels and the Mejías (Mexías or Mesías, odious tongues claimed they were called), or the Abads (who, it was said, had been called Abadi), were descendants of converted Jews, the deicide race. For that reason, she spent the last old Spanish gold coins she had hidden behind a special tile in the kitchen, in an old velvet pouch, and gave them to Father Cadavid so that he would take them to Monsignor Arango Posada, who was thinking of traveling to Spain to undertake genealogical studies of various Antioqueña families. Through Father Cadavid, José Antonio’s widow, great benefactress of the Jericó cathedral (her family had donated the Virgin’s crown of precious gemstones) at the beginning of the century, began to receive little by little the replies arriving from the Iberian Peninsula. And the news was not very rosy, not for the Ángels or the Mejías or for the Abads or the Santamarías, whose children all bore these surnames and repeated them from memory, like a litany of saints. The Ángels could be traced back to a certain Rabbi Yehuda Abenxuxán, which didn’t seem like very pure blood, to tell the truth, for all they’d done was change Abenxuxán to Santángel, which later in the Americas got shortened to Ángel, and the Abads descended from a certain Abadi sent into confinement in the Canary Islands, for religious fickleness, and the ancestors of the Santamarías and the Mejías he dared not even utter, more conversos than anybody. In light of this information, Monsignor Arango Posada recommended, from the dry and distant lands of Castille where he found himself, following a very old custom, dictated by modesty and prudence: “If you allow me to say so, esteemed Doña Merceditas, in this matter it would be best to let sleeping dogs lie, as they say over here, and I would rather counsel you and your family to be content in knowing that since the ancestors of your husband’s family, and your own, arrived in Jericó, no one has ever doubted that you have all behaved with the utmost decorum, and very Christianly. Don’t forget that after all Jesus was also of that wretched race, or at least his mother was, and that didn’t prevent him from redeeming us all as brothers nor does it prevent us from venerating his sainted Virgin Mother and her patient husband Saint Joseph, or her mother Saint Anna, who taught him to read. But as far as the certificate that you wanted, it will be very difficult to get an authentic one, and in order to obtain it we would have to invent it, or pay a very high price to get them to give us one here in Spain, homemade, for certificates of cleanliness of blood are still issued, but the less authentic they are the more onerous the price, and I don’t know if you want to leave Don Antonio’s sons without any property, only in order to reply to murmurs you could simply ignore.” Those monies were lost, Mamaditas used to say about those old coins that were not silver or nickel, but pure, solid gold. And meanwhile she kept giving alms to the poor, every Friday afternoon, and prayed to a litany of saints, and said her holy rosary, every day, and begged our sainted Virgin Mary and her sainted mother Anna and her h
usband the patient Saint Joseph, that no one find out that the surname Ángel used to be Santángel and before Santángel even worse, Abenxuxán.

  PILAR

  Lucas almost wasn’t born; I was in labor for four days. The contractions started on Sunday night, and on Monday morning we called the doctor. Alberto went to the university because he was still studying back then. My obstetrician, Dr. Henao Posada, said that it was just starting and that first-time mothers’ labors tended to be very long. I spent Monday at home, with contractions, but still with lots of time between each of them. My papá, who was very excited about his grandchild, stayed with me – more nervous than I was – and occasionally called the doctor to tell him how things were going. On Wednesday we went to the El Rosario Clinic and Dr. Henao examined me and said I was I don’t know how many centimeters dilated; he declared that the baby would be born at dawn.

  There was a tremendous rainstorm that evening, as there always is when something important is going to happen in my life, and at nine at night they took me into the delivery room because by then I was nine centimeters dilated. After pushing for more than an hour I was in so much pain that they had to give me an anesthetic. What happened after that I don’t remember, but I’ve been told. It seems that after struggling for a long time with their hands, they tried to get the baby out with forceps; afterward with something like a plunger, like they use to unblock drains, a giant suction cup they attach to the baby’s head and that deformed poor Lucas’s skull. The forceps gave him a black bruise on his brow and damaged his left ear. There was no way: my pelvis was too narrow to have a baby the way you’re supposed to. Dr. Henao went downstairs to ask permission of Alberto and my father to perform a caesarean. They pushed the baby back in, by hand, and sliced me open with an enormous incision, not like the caesareans they do these days, so discreet and slick they barely leave a scar, but a dreadful gash, like from the First World War. Alberto started to cry because he’d just read some old novel about a woman who dies in childbirth. Women were always dying in childbirth in the past, and children too. Papá says our species pays a high price for our big brains: with a lot of pain, lots of tearing, and high mortality at birth, because of the exaggerated dimensions of our heads. And that, on top of our being born before we can fend for ourselves, without being fully gestated, making for such a long rearing of such defenseless newborn creatures. Thank God my son was born in the second half of the twentieth century. When the anesthetic wore off and I came to back in the room, I saw a monster lying in the crib, with a horrible, pear-shaped head, covered in bruises all over his body. Giving birth isn’t like that easy happiness they show in some movies; giving birth is tough, painful, full of blood, smells, and sweat and danger. A hundred years earlier we both would have died during that labor, my son and I. Not only that, but a hundred years ago I would have died seven times by now. And yet, there are still people who miss the past, the marvels of natural childbirth and the blessings of life in harmony with nature, without technology or science. Idiots.

  A pediatrician came and started to examine Lucas. She looked worried and immediately took him to the special care nursery. She said he wasn’t breathing properly, that his reflexes weren’t perfect. She told me the baby was probably going to have some cerebral problem, with mental disabilities, because he had a lot of lesions on his head, deformed by the forceps. That was the day my mother-in-law began to suffer from colerín calambroso, that illness she never managed to get rid of. Papá told me, in dismay, that it didn’t matter if the baby died, that I could have another one. That night the obstetrician, Henao Posada, came again, but he didn’t agree with the pediatrician’s diagnosis (“I was gentle. What happens is that babies are very delicate and noisy: they look like they’ve been mistreated, but they’re strong too; they’re tough, and the work of childbirth helps them to become pluckier.”) and he went into the special care nursery. He went in without saying anything to anybody, without permission. He saw the infant wide-awake and restless, hooked up to an I.V. to keep him hydrated, and stuck a finger in my baby’s mouth, to see if he’d suck. Right there the boy sucked strongly, and the doctor told a nun to bring a couple ounces of milk in a bottle, and gave them to him. When he came out, he asked that we not say anything to the pediatrician about what he’d said, but he reassured us by saying: “The child is perfect, what was wrong with him was hunger.” The pediatrician went to examine him in the evening and found him looking much improved, and lively. She brought him to me in my room, saying that thanks to her care the baby was safe and sound, and all his vital signs were much better. When she handed him to me, Dr. Henao Posada winked at me from the corner of the room.

  But in any case, Lucas was hideous; he looked like a boxer after losing a fight, with his eyes swollen and his whole face covered in bruises, scrapes, and scabs. He wasn’t beautiful ’til he was about three or four months old. Luckily, everything he did was normal. He nursed normally, crawled normally, walked normally, started saying words at twelve months, and spoke perfectly by the age of three. The only strange thing was when he got a very high temperature he had convulsions. Later it happened again, at the worst moment.

  At that time, Eva was in her second year of university and in love with Jackie; when her classes finished for the day, she’d come and visit me in the evenings and watch me feed Lucas, so beautiful, so chubby, so cute, and I know that she would have liked to have a baby too. Even though she was at the top of her class at university, just like at school, she looked at me and said, without saying it out loud, but in silence in the darkest part of her skull: me too, I want to have a baby too and breast-feed. But she had to wait ’til she graduated, got married for the first time, separated from her first husband (a selfish womanizer, only interested in power), got married again, and finally, when I already had three children, had her first pregnancy, which I was the only one to know about, and later made the decision not to have the baby. How sad, a baby that would have been an Einstein, a great doctor or a great physicist, I think, because he would have been the son of her husband the banker, who hated being a banker and would have liked to have been a mathematician, and of Eva, who won all the medals at school, but one day she told me, “I lost it,” with a long, deep, dark look. “I lost it,” and it was as if the baby had drowned at sea, as if that child had sunk to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.

  I don’t know why she did it. I’ve always known that she didn’t lose it but had it removed – and may God forgive her – out of fear of having so much responsibility, out of the terror of not being able to decide everything for herself but having to think about a child. I’m going to say just to myself here, without anyone hearing, and may God forgive me as well: out of selfishness. I’ve never told her, but on the subject of abortion I’ve never been in agreement with her. I accept abortions in cases of rape or if it’s certain that the child is going to be born deformed or with some horrible illnesses that will make him suffer for his whole life, him and his family. But just like that, no. Maybe a fetus isn’t the same as a person, but it’s the same as a seed of a mango, and not even the most convinced abortion campaigner is going to deny that. Women know, even women who’ve had abortions. They would do it again, if necessary, yes, but they know it’s a very difficult, very serious decision, almost impossible to make, and not because it’s murder, but because it’s the denial of something very beautiful, a life, a life that’s just beginning, and life is better than death, always. Or not always, then, okay, but almost always. Eva came to understand later, much later, and she finally had a gorgeous child, Benjamín, Benji, but she had him without a father. I mean, without a father she was married to, because she had him with one of her husbands, the second one, but a long time after separating from him, and that’s why Benji’s last name is Bernal. Eva chose his father carefully, of that I am sure, for he’s the director of an orchestra, and is cultured and good, though bad-tempered, and Eva asked him only for fertilization and his surname, as a special favor, because he hadn’t
had any children either, and he wanted them, even more if he didn’t have to inconvenience himself by living with them, as he’s a person who’s always preferred to live alone. There are fathers like that, who prefer a more sporadic and less intense relationship with their children, not like Alberto, who seems like another mother to mine. Sometimes I think Eva, in her life, might have lost other babies, unintentionally or by choice, but without telling us. It’s one of those mysteries that nobody really knows, and that some women take to the grave. I, on the other hand, have almost no mysteries, I tell almost everything.

  I’ve never had an abortion, and it would never, ever occur to me to have one. After Lucas I had four more children, all normal, all caesareans. This used to be the usual thing, to have lots of children in a row, but not so much anymore. More and more I notice that I’m the unusual one. “It’s just that you live according to the traditional family model,” Eva said to me once, Eva, who sometimes talks like a book. According to the traditional family model, what a ridiculous phrase. She means I lived like Grandpa Josué and Grandma Miriam, married by the Church for life, without the slightest intention of ever separating, wedded not so much to each other, but to marriage, and giving birth to as many babies as God wanted to send them. She was trying to tell me that I’m a very conservative, old-fashioned stick-in-the-mud. Well so I am, but that’s like saying I like to eat by candlelight, I get around by horse-drawn carriage, wear a wig and crinolines…I’m the odd one, yes, the only one who’s only married once, as a virgin and in the church, and the only one who never thinks of separating, no matter what happens. The one who had five children by five caesareans and would have had more if Dr. Henao Posada hadn’t told me that my uterus wall was as thin as paper and if I got pregnant again he wasn’t going to keep me as a patient so he wouldn’t have to watch me bleed to death.