Tales from the Town of Widows

by James Canon

  The priest took a couple of deep breaths and sat again.

  “What about Julia Morales?” Rosalba said. “Underneath those skirts there’s a fine man.” She emphasized the word fine.

  The priest rolled his eyes. “Are you not listening to me, Magistrate? Procreation cannot be forced. It’s bad enough that it won’t be an act of married love, but it has to involve, at the very least, a degree of tenderness and affection that only a real man can give to a woman.”

  “I don’t know what to say then,” the magistrate confessed, crossing her arms. “Maybe we should consider the boys. Che and Trotsky will be fifteen this year.”

  “They’re children,” el padre said.

  There was a long silence in which they avoided each other’s eyes. After a while el padre sighed, shaking his head. “Well…,” he murmured. “No, I can’t do that.” He covered his face with both hands, as though he were going to cry. “I can’t do that. I can’t, I can’t, I can’t,” he kept saying between his fingers, shaking his head frantically. But then, overcoming his guilt as only good Catholics can do, he said loudly and confidently, “One must face up to one’s responsibilities. If this is God’s will, Thy will be done.” He stood up, a martyr’s expression on his pink face, and gazed through the window at the cloudy sky. “I must do it!”

  The magistrate objected to the idea. “I think it’d be terribly harmful for your and your church’s reputation, but also for our community. You’re the embodiment of—morality and chastity, Padre.” But the priest insisted it was a divine will with which they must not interfere. Rosalba didn’t pursue the matter further. She was almost certain that el padre’s idea would encounter heavy resistance among the villagers. She’d let the women argue with the obstinate priest.

  In the evening, the priest pealed the church bell strenuously, calling for a town meeting. The women of Mariquita had grown weary of such gatherings, because nothing important was ever said. Oftentimes the magistrate just reminded them to sweep and mop their floors, keep their backyards, clip their nails, comb their hair or inspect their children for lice. They attended the meetings, however, because there was nothing better to do. Tonight, Rosalba read a series of short paragraphs written by the priest for the women of Mariquita. The first paragraph informed them—rather, warned them—that Mariquita was in danger of disappearing if they didn’t reproduce. “There’s hope, though,” the magistrate said. “El padre Rafael is willing to break his holy vow of chastity to help Mariquita stay alive.”

  A murmur of confusion was heard in the crowd.

  A second paragraph explained that el padre would risk having to spend, after his death, a much longer time in purgatory than he deserved, just to give back to the community that for all these years had supported his church. Following that there was a short sentence announcing the beginning of the Procreation Campaign. “The objective of the campaign,” the magistrate read, “is to impregnate twenty women during the first cycle.” She added that she and el padre would be praying that a good percentage of the newborns were male. Then she read the rules: Only women older than fifteen and younger than forty could participate. They had to register with Cecilia Guaraya, the magistrate’s secretary. Proof of age would be requested upon registration. Once the registration was official, the participant would be placed on a waiting list and told when she could expect to receive the visitation. The list would be permanently posted in the magistrate’s office. Out of respect for God, all religious images should be removed from the room where the holy act would be consummated. No feelings would be involved in the holy act: el padre wouldn’t be making love to them, he’d just be making babies, hopefully boys. And finally, the women should consider donating any food to help el padre stay fit and strong during the entire campaign, which would last a few months.

  CONTRARY TO WHAT the magistrate supposed, the villagers didn’t publicly object to el padre’s idea. And contrary to what el padre supposed, no woman registered during the first few days after the announcement. They couldn’t even conceive of the idea of going to bed with a priest, let alone their priest. “It’d be like making love with God,” the Morales widow said. But that didn’t discourage el padre. Every day at mass, he reminded the women of their duty to the human race and accused them of being selfish. “If I’m willing to make the sacrifice, why can’t you do the same?” It wasn’t, however, until he assured them God had granted him special permission to break the Sixth Commandment that the procreation visit list began to grow.

  A young girl named Virgelina Saavedra was number twenty-nine.

  VIRGELINA AND LUCRECIA, her grandmother, lived in a shaky house across from the market. As a child, Virgelina had been left in the care of her grandmother, who’d brought her up to be a housewife, servile and submissive. Shortly after Virgelina turned twelve, Lucrecia’s health deteriorated, and the girl was required to take care of both of them. The old woman spent her days peering through the curtains at the women in the market, guessing what they’d be saying and fabricating amusing stories she later told her granddaughter as if the women themselves had shared them with her. Virgelina listened to the stories while she did housework, nodding from time to time. The girl had a morning routine: she woke up at the crack of dawn, mouthed her prayers, started the fire in the kitchen, made breakfast, swept the floor with a bunch of leaves and bathed if there was water. Occasionally she’d bring water from the river, but most of the time she relied on the rain to fill up three water barrels they kept in the back of the house. After completing her morning chores, the young girl went to school, where the schoolmistress had named her “Best Student” two years in a row. Virgelina only had three dresses, all black and conservative, which she had inherited from her late mother. She was small, quiet and well-mannered, and she was only fourteen.

  Lucrecia had managed to convince Cecilia that, though underage, Virgelina was fit to bear a boy. “My great-grandmother bore nineteen boys,” she’d said to Cecilia. “And my great-aunt’s second cousin bore eleven boys. We come from a family that knows how to make boys.”

  Cecilia, who was notorious for her rudeness and inflexibility, surprisingly made an exception. She had a soft spot for two kinds of people, the elderly and the ones who paid her compliments.

  IN THE MORNINGS Lucrecia looked like a mummy. She had arthritis, which was exacerbated by the night wind that blew in through the cracks in the doors and roof. So every night before bedtime, Virgelina wrapped her up from neck to toes in ten yards of white cloth. Her grandmother had kept the fabric from when she was Mariquita’s best seamstress. But regardless of the effectiveness of the therapy on her joints, the old woman promptly found new afflictions to grumble about: food never agreed with her stomach, noise gave her headaches, her kidneys hurt when it rained. Or pettier complaints: too cold, too hot, too sweet, much too sweet.

  SINCE THE VISITS had begun, twenty-eight women had made room in their beds for the little priest, who, as rumors went in the market, was blessed with a large penis though he was a mediocre lover. “He finishes before you notice he’s started,” Magnolia Morales had told her friends during their nightly meeting at the plaza. One widow had had a late period, but it proved to be a false alarm. No one had yet claimed to be pregnant.

  THE DAY VIRGELINA was to receive her visit, Lucrecia woke up complaining more than usual: “I can’t breathe,” she said. “My leg hurts.” “I’m drowsy.” “I’m nauseated.” At least twice Virgelina was on the brink of telling her to stop fussing, to be quiet for a minute or two, to shut her old beak because today, especially today, she wasn’t in the mood for her whining. But instead she kicked Fidel and Castro every time they crossed her way, and when she left for school, she slammed the door with all her might. After lunch, when the old woman woke up from her customary siesta crying and saying that she couldn’t open her eyes, Virgelina ignored her. She dragged a chair outside and started knitting a quilt, worrying about the visit: that night would be her first time with a man.

  As she knitted
and purled she recalled, one by one and in perfect order, the seven steps her grandmother had contrived for her defloration. Virgelina had been forced to recite them several times, and each time her grandmother made her reverse the order of them, or combine two steps into one, or cut or add new steps in case something didn’t work. Her first sexual experience had been meticulously planned, leaving no room for impulse, intuition, or the sudden passion that recently she’d begun to feel. Virgelina didn’t know why, but lately her nipples had begun to itch. Now, every night after blowing out the candle in her room, she found herself stroking her nipples with the tips of her fingers until she felt as though she had a colony of angry little ants marching inside each breast, biting her flesh, eating her up. As she knitted, she imagined the priest’s hands cupped on top of her small breasts, and the thought was so vivid that she could actually feel his fingers squeezing them hard. Suddenly, an electric current traveled briskly through her body, making her throw her hands and needles in the air. She rose and rushed inside the house, covering her bosom with her arms. She’d never felt anything like it before. She stood against the wall in the kitchen and took a deep breath, then another, and then another. Eventually she forced herself to remember that those fingers—el padre’s—were connected to a couple of flabby arms, which were connected to a small trunk with a protruding belly, which was connected to a large bald head with an ugly pink face, with a long nose and tiny chicken eyes half covered with drooping eyelids. When at length she went outside to retrieve her sewing instruments, she felt somewhat relieved.

  In the afternoon Virgelina rubbed her grandmother’s eyes with warm water, but it didn’t help. The woman’s eyes were hermetically sealed. “I’ll go get Nurse Ramírez,” Virgelina said. The old woman replied that it wasn’t necessary, that it was a sign from heaven, a warning that God was still mad at her for something only she knew.

  Later on that night, the following conversation took place in their kitchen.

  “Thank you for dinner, mija. Your soups are much better than your mother’s, may her soul rest in peace.”

  “Drink your coffee, Grandmother. The cup is right in front of you.”

  “I can’t drink coffee this late anymore. Last night I was up until dawn hearing the cries of all those poor men.”

  “What men, grandma?”

  “Mariquita’s men. Haven’t you heard their poor wandering souls? May God have mercy on them.”

  “May God have mercy on us. We’re still here, suffering.”

  “My child, you’re too young to talk about suffering. When I was your age I was the happiest girl—”

  “Yes, I know. A handsome man was courting you, but your father didn’t approve of him because he was a Liberal. Two years later you were forced to marry my grandfather, who, of course, was a Conservador, and who, of course, beat you day and night. You see? I’ve learned the whole thing by heart now. Instead, why don’t you tell me once and for all how Mother and Father died?”

  “This kitchen is too cold. Where’s my blanket?”

  “You have it wrapped around you. Let me look for some cinnamon to make you a hot tea. That’ll warm you up.”

  “And my walking stick? Where’s my walking stick?”

  “It’s in your hand.”

  “Are you ready for your visitor, mija?”

  “I am, but he won’t be coming until eight.”

  “I just heard eight bells.”

  “I counted seven.”

  “It’s better to be ready ahead of time. Remember that he’s a busy man these days.”

  “I know, Grandmother. Where did I put the cinnamon?”

  “Are you wearing rouge on your cheeks?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Do you remember all the steps, mija? Tell me all the steps.”

  “Not again, Grandmother. Instead you tell me how Mother and Father died. I don’t understand why it’s such a secret.”

  “Did you clean the entire house like I told you?”

  “Every corner.”

  “What about the bedspreads?”

  “All clean. And I burned eucalyptus leaves in the outhouse and brought enough water in case he wants to wash. Oh, here it is: the cinnamon. It was mixed with the panela. Let me heat the water.”

  “Did you remove the picture of Jesus on the cross from your bedroom?”

  “No. Why should I do that? You said it would be a holy act.”

  “It will be, but the Lord doesn’t need to witness it.”

  “I’ll remove it, then, but before I do that, please tell me how Mother and Father died.”

  IT TOOK VIRGELINA a great deal of perseverance to get her grandmother to tell her, in an exceptional moment of lucidity, the story she wanted to hear. The old woman had avoided talking about it for years, but today Virgelina would become a woman, and she was entitled to know the truth.

  “Your father killed your mother,” Lucrecia said straightforwardly, as though that was both the beginning and the ending of the story.

  Stunned, with her hands joined over her mouth, Virgelina fell into an old rocking chair she kept next to the stove.

  Then, in a small but firm voice, Lucrecia gave her granddaughter the details: “One morning, some thirteen years ago, your father woke up and found his breakfast cold on the night table. Next to the cup of coffee there was a note from your mother saying, ‘My dear husband: these are the last eggs I cook for you. I’m leaving you for someone who’ll never beat me. All best, Nohemí.’ Your father went crazy.” Lucrecia said that the enraged man had gone from village to village looking for his wife and daughter—Nohemí had taken little Virgelina with her—until he found them near Girardot. And that he had brought them back to Mariquita on a rainy night in the middle of June. “The morning after,” Lucrecia went on, “I found a bundled-up little baby crying at my doorstep. It was you. I picked you up and rushed to Nohemí’s house, only a couple of blocks down. But it was too late.” When she arrived, she said, the house was in a terrible mess: broken glass everywhere, broken vases and chairs, broken everything. She had found Nohemí in a puddle of blood in the kitchen, her throat slit, and in back of the house, Virgelina’s father hanging from a tree, with Nohemí’s note lying on the ground right below his dangling feet.

  When Lucrecia finished the telling, Virgelina wondered: Who was the man with whom her mother had fled? Had she been in love with him? What had become of him? She wanted to ask her grandmother, but the woman had slipped back out of lucidity and was shouting to the ceiling, “Lord, oh Lord. Forgive me for begetting a sinful daughter. Forgive me, for I didn’t bring the lost sheep to Your flock.” And then, with her sealed eyes toward Virgelina, she bitterly said, “Your mother’s behavior brought shame to my name. That’s why God’s sending misfortune unto me!”

  EL PADRE RAFAEL knocked on their door with the first ring of the church bell, and by the time the eighth ring was heard, he and his altar boy were already sitting in the living room with Virgelina. The priest had his legs crossed and a delighted expression on his rosy face, like he’d just tasted candy. Hochiminh’s round face, on the other hand, was perfectly blank. He’d laid the enormous Bible on his lap and rested his plump arms on it. The Bible itself was much more likely to display a trace of a smile than he was. The light of a candle on the table illuminated Virgelina’s face, which was indeed smeared with rouge, making her fearful expression even more dramatic.

  When asked, Hochiminh mumbled that he was neither hungry nor thirsty. He didn’t want coffee or cinnamon tea. He was fine. El padre said he’d take a “sip” of water. Just a “sip,” for he knew how arduous it was to carry it all the way from the river. He spoke condescendingly, addressing Virgelina’s breasts, smiling salaciously. The girl disappeared into the kitchen, where her grandmother sat unmoving and wrapped in her blanket like a poorly carved statue.

  “He wants water,” Virgelina grumbled. She went about the kitchen, looking for the vessel where they kept their drinking water. It was on top of the only table, be
fore her eyes, but the girl was so agitated that she didn’t see it. “Where did you put the water?” she asked, in a tone that betrayed her foul temper. The old woman turned her head to the right and then to the left, but didn’t acknowledge the question. Virgelina rolled her eyes at the bundle of clothes her grandmother was, and kept looking for it, slamming pots and pans and banging skillets. She couldn’t find it. “Where’s the water?” she yelled. Lucrecia didn’t reply. Virgelina walked up to her, grabbed her by the shoulders and shouted the same question once again.

  Lucrecia pushed her away, brandishing her walking cane as if it were a sword. “What? What’s happening?” she said in a small, broken voice. “Who’s there?”

  “It’s me! Where’s the damn water vessel?”

  “Who’s there? Say something,” repeated Lucrecia.

  “Oh, dear Lord,” Virgelina groaned.

  Evidently their Lord had decided, in the past few minutes and on top of everything else, to take away her grandmother’s hearing. Virgelina sat at the table, weeping, then she saw the vessel sitting in front of her. She reared up, poured water into a cup, spit in it, stirred it with her index finger and ran from the kitchen, stumbling along the dark hall that separated the rooms. When she was gone, Lucrecia opened her eyes wide and walked to the door and pressed her ear against it to better hear the conversation taking place in her living room.