Tales from the Town of Widows

by James Canon

  But Gordon didn’t stop. He hadn’t come this far to flinch at the last minute. Besides, he needed a new story, something interesting and exciting. It was with this thought in his head that he began tearing his way through the undergrowth, ripping at the vines with his own large and delicate hands, pushing into the thick tangle of leaves and branches and woody material until he disappeared into it.

  DURING BREAKFAST THAT morning, Doña Victoria viuda de Morales had made excuses for her daughter with Rosalba by saying that Julia didn’t feel well. Her other three daughters, she promised, would do Julia’s work in the communal kitchen until she recovered.

  Orquidea protested in private: “So I have to toil all morning at the joiner’s workshop, and still come during my break to do that loafer’s work?”

  “That’s right,” Doña Victoria asserted, and then, slamming a basket full of red onions on the counter, she added, “Here, chop these before you go.”

  Orquidea had recently been transferred from her mother’s kitchen to the joiner’s workshop as part of a new campaign started by the council of New Mariquita, which consisted of training every worker to perform several different tasks. Gardenia had been sent to the fields and Magnolia assigned to follow the roof-patching team. Julia, however, had been allowed to stay doing kitchen work, because Doña Victoria convinced the five council members that it was Julia’s special touch that made each and every dish from her kitchen so scrumptious.

  Julia Morales, the most beautiful of the four Morales girls, was despised by her sisters on account of her good looks. She had big, rounded hazel eyes flecked with gray, which glowed against her brown skin. Her nose was small and lightly turned up at the tip, like a doll’s, and her lips full and well-defined. Her gait was so spectacular that watching her walk unescorted around the plaza was often the most anticipated event of the sun. Julia was taller than most of the women in town, and she had the most refined manners. She also had beautiful black hair that rippled in long waves to her waist, and a large penis hanging between her legs.

  Julia’s astounding transformation was the product of her own self-discipline, perseverance and dedication. She’d spent entire suns following her mother and sisters, paying great attention to how they moved, adopting and improving on their feminine mannerisms. And although Julia couldn’t articulate any sounds, she listened intently to her sisters’ speech patterns, which she translated into a series of smooth and delicate motions of her body and limbs. The result was an exquisite and precise sign language that to the eyes of a foreigner might have seemed as though Julia Morales was performing a mysterious dance from a faraway land.

  FROM WHERE HE stood, Gordon saw a dreamlike village of white houses with bright tile roofs of orange and red, flowering mango trees, a few well-defined roads and a church, the spire of which broke the otherwise perfect harmony of the view. Green hills rose behind the village; several plots of maize, rice and coffee and the runners of potato plants dotted the stretch of fields on the hillsides.

  There were no Amazons in sight, or women, or anything that resembled either. Gordon looked at the palms of his hands: they were bleeding. His lacerated arms and legs and ripped pants also testified to his struggle through the thick undergrowth. He wiped his hands on the front of his guayabera shirt and felt the bloody wounds chafing against the fabric. His face was unharmed; he had used his duffel bag to protect it from the strong prickly vines and the gigantic leaves covered in bristles that repeatedly bounced back.

  Moving slowly forward, Gordon heard distant shouts and female laughter, but he didn’t see anyone. He noticed that the height of the dwellings was standard, which clearly eliminated the remote possibility of running into a giant. He kept descending the hill, cautiously, considering what he would say when he met the first group of women, and wondering what kind of reception they would give him. They’d certainly be stunned, but would they welcome him or greet him with contempt? And what if they asked the reason why he was there? Should he admit to being a reporter? That might get them on the defensive. Maybe he should claim to be lost and show them his bloody hands; surely they wouldn’t hurt an injured man.

  By this time he had entered the village and was limping along a small street. The houses he passed by were all uniform: they had white facades with a front door and a large window, the frames of which were painted green. All doors and windows were open, and Gordon had the odd feeling he was being watched through the curtains. He could no longer hear the shouts and laughter he’d heard earlier. Suddenly he saw something move farther down the road: a large bundle hanging between two trees with something alive in it. Gordon kept going, a little apprehensively, looking behind him again and again. Before reaching the corner he made out that the bundle was a hammock with a handsome woman sleeping in it. Gordon drew near her, moving slowly and silently because he didn’t want to wake her up. At that moment he heard a loud cry from behind. When he looked back he saw an army of naked women rushing out of their dwellings, screaming furiously and running toward him with sticks and stones.

  WHEN GORDON WOKE up, he saw nothing but the dazzling white of a ceiling. He thought he was dead, his soul floating on air, among clouds. Little by little he began tracing in his mind the sequence of events leading up to this moment. The woman in the hammock. The cry. The army of naked screaming women. Then blackness.

  So, where was he now? There was only one answer: the women had captured him, and he was in prison.

  Faint sunlight came through two small windows set at irregular intervals. Still dizzy, Gordon brought himself to a sitting position and examined his body. They hadn’t hurt him; he had no new wounds or injuries, and he could move all his limbs. He looked around and saw a large and empty space. It didn’t look at all like a jailhouse. Actually, it looked more like a church, but with no benches, crosses, statues or religious images of any kind. The walls were utterly stripped, and the cement floor, where Gordon lay, was impeccably clean and smelled of lavender. Lying there in his dirty clothes and shoes, with his wounds still oozing blood, Gordon thought he was the only untidy element in the room.

  Realizing that he was alone, he rose and started for the door, holding onto the walls for support. He bent a little to look outside through the small metal grating, and his eyes opened wide at an extraordinary sight: a large crowd of naked women standing across the street, jabbering away in undertones. Some of them held hands like sweethearts. A smaller group of five older women, four of them naked, were going through the contents of Gordon’s duffel bag. He watched one of them take out his T-shirts one by one and hold them up to the light like film negatives, then pass them on to the other women. They didn’t seem interested in Gordon’s mini tape recorder. They examined it from all sides, shrugged and set it aside, unable to explain its use. A can of Coca-Cola, however, caused a sensation. They held it horizontally, with two hands, and rotated it, giving big approving smiles. Gordon watched this process with genuine curiosity, but also wariness.

  A deafening cry sounded, and all heads, including Gordon’s, turned toward the source of it. The roar came from the young girl in the tight blue dress that he’d seen sleeping in the hammock earlier. Two women took hold of the girl while a third tried to muzzle her with a handkerchief. The girl wriggled like a worm, kicked and gnashed her teeth and made wild guttural sounds. Gordon thought she was stunning. Suddenly the girl stopped struggling, her wrath turning into a long, disconsolate wail. Exhausted from restraining her, the two women relaxed their grip. The girl immediately freed herself from them, knocking them to the ground in the process. Then she ran toward the front door of the church.

  Gordon had just enough time to step aside before the girl violently pushed the door open. She cast a quick glance over the long, empty room, and when she spotted him, she threw herself upon him, locked her hands around his neck and passionately kissed him on the mouth. At that moment, the other women began entering the building in small clusters, pushing and shoving for the chance to see close up the blue-eyed foreigner
while the rebellious girl clung to him like a limpet.

  “Julia Morales,” a matron of majestic proportions and broad hips shouted, elbowing her way through the crowd. “Let go of the Míster and step aside. Now!” The girl did both, not without frowning and pursing her lips together. The matron stood arms akimbo in front of Gordon, who was frozen.

  “Who are you where do you come from who sent you and what brought you here?” she said, all at once, as if all four questions were of equal significance.

  Gordon said nothing. He was so astonished and bewildered that he couldn’t have articulated anything in his own language, much less in Spanish. Instead he observed with curiosity the women’s harmonious nakedness—their tan breasts that ended in large, chocolate-colored nipples; their long torsos and dark stomachs, some flat, some prominent; their pubes hardly covered by short, dark hair and their smooth and solid limbs. He thought that they were an exquisite race.

  “Well?” the wide-hipped woman said, her face turned to the crowd, “it looks like our friend here is mute.”

  Only then did Gordon realize that she was one of the five women who had been going through his bag. She had an indisputable air of authority and determination. If she could display those attributes while in the nude, he reasoned, she had to be the law. “I’m not mute,” he replied in a conciliatory tone.

  “Ohhhh!” the crowd whispered in unison.

  “Then who are you?” the woman asked again.

  “Name’s Gordon Smith,” he replied. A few giggles came from the spectators.

  “Come with me to the municipal office, Señor Esmís,” the same woman said. “You must state your business to our community’s council.”

  She walked ahead, forcing the nosy women to clear the way. Gordon limped behind her, his muscles, joints and bones hurting. This time he noticed, with growing admiration, the small plaza shaded by massive mango trees and surrounded by wooden benches, half of them facing east, the other half facing west; the homogenous style of the houses, their chalky facades and bright floral decorations hanging from windows; the cleanliness of the sidewalks and unpaved roads. And amid these almost utopian sights appeared the girl named Julia. She walked along with the crowd, slightly ahead of Gordon, from time to time glancing at him over her shoulder in a coquettish fashion. Her features, he thought, were refined and delicate, like those of the women of his own race. But there was something wild, almost bestial, in her rounded hazel eyes flecked with gray, something especially alluring about her thick blue-black hair and shiny brown skin. He wished that she, too, were naked.

  WHEN HE ENTERED the building, Gordon glanced around quickly. There were two rooms, the first one small and empty and the other furnished with a long rectangular table and four benches, all made of rough, bark-covered wood. A lamp sat in the middle of the table. The walls were bare except for the back one. It was half covered with a large damp patch, which, the matron explained, was a recurrent problem that the plumbers hadn’t yet tackled. “Do you happen to know anything about plumbing, Señor Esmís?” she asked. Gordon said he didn’t and apologized for it. The furnished room also had one window through which several young faces were already appearing and disappearing, blowing kisses and giggling. Gordon recognized Julia’s among them and gallantly waved his hand at her. The wide-hipped woman hastened to close the window, shutting out the flirtatious girls but also the remains of the sun.

  She grabbed the lamp and took off its glass globe to light the wick. “I’m Rosalba,” she suddenly said. “I used to be the town’s magistrate. The only one who made decisions. Now it’s five of us. A council, we call it.” She lighted the wick and replaced the glass globe. “This used to be my office, only much nicer than this. My desk was one hundred percent pure mahogany. Really pretty. I had it over there.” She lifted the lamp with one hand and with the other pointed at the wall with the damp patch. Gordon looked at the wall and arched his eyebrows in a vague expression that could have been either of admiration or plain indifference. Before long they heard a knock at the door. “It must be the others,” Rosalba said. She placed the lamp on the table and went to the door. Three women entered the room, two of them carrying Gordon’s yellow bag, which they handed to him. A fourth woman, old and fully dressed, wearing thick spectacles and leaning on a cane, followed them at her own pace. “Ladies, please take your seats,” Rosalba said. They sat two on each side. Rosalba sat at one end of the table and indicated to Gordon that he should sit at the other end, across from her. “Señor Esmís,” she began. “We’re New Mariquita’s council: this here is Cecilia, over there is Señorita Cleotilde, that’s Police Sergeant Ubaldina, here Nurse Ramírez, and I’m former magistrate Rosalba.”

  “Nice meeting you,” Gordon said coyly, bowing his head. This courteous gesture seemed to have made a good impression on everyone but the Indian-looking woman named Ubaldina, the police sergeant.

  “What brought you here, Señor Gordonmís?” Ubaldina inquired, giving him a suspicious look.

  He studied the women’s faces for a second or two, and decided that except for the police sergeant, they seemed amiable. There was no reason to lie to them. “I’m a journalist,” he said. “I work as a correspondent, writing news and articles for magazines and newspapers. I’ve been covering your war for some time now. I’ve interviewed guerrilla, paramilitary and army soldiers as well as their families, and written stories about them. Those stories I sell to newspapers and magazines mostly in the United States, but also—”

  “Who sent you here?” Ubaldina interrupted. “And what do you want from us?”

  “A few days ago I met a man, a crazy man who told me a bunch of lies about you and your village. He said this town was inhabited by giant, man-hating, masculine women who grew beards and mustaches and were capable of impregnating themselves. He said that you were heretics who liked to torture your enemies before eating them alive. I didn’t believe much of it, but I figured that the part about this being a town inhabited only by women had to be true. And to me that sounded like a very interesting topic to write about: a town of women in a land of men.” He paused briefly for dramatic effect. “So I asked him to draw a map for me and give me directions, and here I am.” He stopped, raised his face and cast a quick glance over the five sets of eyes that were fixed on him. “That’s the whole truth, ladies,” he said with his right hand raised, as though he were swearing an oath in a courthouse.

  The five women didn’t appear surprised by Gordon’s account. They looked at one another repeatedly, displaying no feeling on their faces, saying nothing.

  “So…now that my presence here has been explained, I’d like to request that I be granted permission to live in your community for a short period,” Gordon said. “I’d like to write a story about your village, and I’m willing to work in exchange for room and board.”

  “What’s the name of the man who told you about us?” Ubaldina asked, ignoring the reporter’s request.

  “Rafael. Rafael Bueno. He said he used to be a priest and that this was his parochial district for a long time, until you tried to eat him alive.”

  The women looked at one another again. They now wore an expression of pure rage on their faces.

  “Infamous wretch,” said the oldest woman, the señorita, hitting the floor with her stick.

  “We should’ve thrashed him good and hard.”

  “We should’ve killed the bastard.”

  “Yes, and fed him to the dogs.”

  “Or to the pigs.”

  It was obvious to Gordon that Rafael Bueno had done something very hurtful to the women. He wouldn’t ask what, though. Not now, anyway. At this moment he could only hope that his request had registered with the council and that their reply was a positive one.

  “We need to discuss this man’s request,” Ubaldina said. Then, addressing Gordon, she added, “Privately.” He grabbed his bag and started toward the door.

  “Julia Morales is going to eat him alive out there,” Rosalba warned the council. Gordon
stopped abruptly and looked back. “I didn’t mean it that way, Señor Esmís.” She giggled. “I assure you we don’t feast on human beings.”

  After realizing that sending the reporter out would create even more commotion, the councilwomen asked Gordon to remain in the room and went outside themselves. He watched them through a crack in the door. They stood together under a mango tree, surrounded by the restless crowd, discussing their views and jerking their heads like disturbed chickens. After a while, they came back into the municipal office wearing solemn faces and sat in their respective places without giving the reporter any hint about the decision they had reached. Contrary to what he expected, Ubaldina, not Rosalba, was the one who ultimately stood up and spoke.

  “I’ll be straight and brief, Señor Gordonmís. I’m responsible for maintaining peace and security in our community. Your uninvited presence has caused a great deal of disorder, and quite honestly we can’t expect anything good from an individual sent over by the man who murdered four of our children. We’d ask you to leave now, but it’s getting dark, and someone as white as you can easily be spotted by all sorts of dangerous night creatures. We’ve decided to give you until sunrise tomorrow to leave our community, and we hope never to see you again.”

  “Señora Upaultina, I assure you that I—”

  “Ubaldina,” she said. “My name is Ubaldina.”

  “I’ve come in peace, Señora. Ubaldina. I’m a good guy.”

  “Nothing good has ever come through that thicket,” Ubaldina retorted, and then sat down with her arms crossed, signaling the end of the discussion.

  Before Gordon could say anything more, the woman they called Nurse Ramírez asked him to follow her to the town’s infirmary. “I’m responsible for the community’s health care, and so I’ll clean and dress your wounds and sores.”