Tales from the Town of Widows

by James Canon

  I waited long enough and then shouted, “Hands up.” The guerrilla raised his hands in the air. I approached him cautiously. He looked terrified. “You’re crying,” I said harshly, as though accusing him of something awful. “Why?” The guerrilla didn’t reply. I took a step back and lowered my gun. “Why are you crying?” I insisted, my voice surprisingly soft this time. He said his mother had died. She’d died three months ago, but he’d only found out that morning. “You’re making that shit up,” I said, leveling my gun. He shook his head and asked me for permission to reach into his pocket. In it, he said, he had a letter from his sister. “Okay,” I said. He threw a folded piece of paper at my feet, and I picked it up and read it. “I’m sorry,” I said. Then I told him that I’d never met my mother, that she had abandoned me on a church pew when I was three days old. He said the same had happened to his father and began telling me the story as if we were old friends. Soon I found myself sitting next to him on the ground, under the tree, listening to his story, telling him mine. We laughed at ourselves, at the war, at life, at our guns that for a moment were forgotten on the grass.

  Suddenly, we heard steps approaching. We snatched up our rifles. I climbed up the tree, and he followed swiftly. Only when we were up in the tree did we realize that we weren’t alone, that there was another man hidden in the tree, a paramilitary soldier. All this time he’d been hiding up there in his green uniform and ranger hat, watching us and listening to our tales. He smiled at us, lowered his gun and placed his right hand on his heart as a sign of peace. We had to trust that smile, that hand, that sign. There was nothing else we could do.

  The three of us stayed still, holding our breaths, our chins tucked in just enough to see four men in green uniforms creep along in the scrub beneath us. Were they army soldiers? Guerrillas? Paramilitaries? We never knew, and we let them pass unharmed.

  From above, all we saw was four men, men like us, running away, looking for places safe enough to cry.

  CHAPTER 14

  The Men Who Asked for a Second Chance

  New Mariquita, Eloísa 13, Ladder 1993

  DAWN WAS SLOWLY BREAKING over the small valley, and in the sky the moon still shone. In house number one, which occupies the entire block where the municipal office and the police station used to be, fifteen female couples slept placidly in the privacy of their compartments. Suddenly, in the one closest to the door, Virgelina Saavedra woke up, startled.

  “Magnolia,” she called softly to her partner, her delicate voice resonating in the emptiness of the room. Their compartment was furnished with nothing but a large bed made of planks, topped with a handcrafted mattress stuffed with cotton and straw.

  “What?” Magnolia replied sleepily.

  “Did you hear something outside?”

  “Nothing.”

  Virgelina went to the window and peeped out. “I see shadows moving around the plaza,” she whispered.

  “It must be dogs.”

  “And I hear voices.”

  “I only hear yours. Come back to bed.”

  “Male voices.”

  Frightened, Magnolia sat up hastily. Together, hand in hand, she and Virgelina listened to the low, indistinct sounds carried by the wind.

  MEANWHILE, ACROSS FROM them in house number two, where the infirmary and the old barbershop used to be, thirty-one women and Santiago Marín slept soundly.

  House number two is a long and enormous room with no partitions except the ones established by the scant furnishings. In the rear of the building, three rows of hammocks hang parallel to each other and a few feet apart. All hammocks are suspended from hooks inserted into solid upright poles. The poles also serve to steady the house frame, and the hooks double as hangers for baskets or bags containing the villagers’ only personal belongings: bracelets, necklaces, pieces of cloth used during Transition, clothing (if any), pictures and other surviving objects that remind the villagers of their departed loved ones.

  The dwellers of house number two were the youngest women of the community, all single and rowdy, plus Santiago Marín and his mother Aracelly, the kitchen caretakers. The house’s dormitory had been arranged in the very back, so that the youngest women’s constant chattering would not be heard from the other two houses. Perhaps that’s why, on the morning of Eloísa 13, 1993, no one in house number two heard or saw the men return.

  A WHILE LATER, in house number three across from the church, Cleo tilde Guarnizo woke up Ubaldina, who was sleeping on the hammock next to hers. Ubaldina grumbled something unintelligible and turned onto her side. “It’s your duty to the community. Get up right away!” Cleotilde scolded.

  “All right, all right, I’m coming,” Ubaldina retorted. She yawned and scratched her head. Eight small, identically framed pictures hung on the wall before her. They were pictures of Ubaldina’s family: her seven stepsons and her husband, all taken away by Communist guerrillas. She approached the first picture and heaved a sigh. In it, her youngest stepson, Campo Elías Restrepo Jr., smiled as he cut a sad-looking cake. “My sweet baby, listen to me,” she whispered. “Don’t ever go to bed without saying the Indian prayers I taught you.” She slowly moved along the wall, murmuring motherly advice to each of the first seven photos: “Remember to brush your teeth.” “Eat your vegetables.” “Don’t bite your nails.” “Get enough sleep.” “Keep smiling.” “Look after your brothers.” When she stood in front of the last one, her husband’s, she said, “Rest in peace.”

  “Hurry up!” Cleotilde shouted from the other end of the row. “You’re making me look bad.” Cleotilde was now old and too weak to peal the church bell. Her biological clock, however, was still intact, so her present job was to make sure that someone, anyone, rang the bell on time throughout the sun. Today, for the third consecutive morning, Cleotilde had chosen Ubaldina to be the one to chime the community’s time to rise and get ready for work.

  For a brief moment Ubaldina considered objecting to old Cleotilde’s unfair treatment. Why couldn’t she pick someone else to ring the morning bell? “I’m coming,” she said calmly, and put on a poncho of sacking and grabbed a lamp. Walking between the two rows of hammocks filled with sleeping and snoring women, Ubaldina was suddenly overcome with longing for her own house, or at least her own bedroom. At the next meeting, she decided, she would express to the entire community her growing need for privacy. She could almost hear the women’s answer: “What’s the purpose of a cooperative house if its dwellers live in individual compartments? Privacy is only justified for couples.” If only things between her and Mariacé Ospina had worked out, they’d be sharing a private room in house number one. But after failing twice in her attempts to make love to Mariacé, Ubaldina had decided that she simply couldn’t love another woman. Not in the sense Eloísa and her “Ticuticú” loved each other.

  She walked through the rest of the cavernous house and pulled the front door wide. Four figures stood across the street like ghosts, startling her. She lifted the lamp in the air with a trembling hand. “Who’s there?” she called.

  “Good morning, señora,” the figure on the left replied in a throaty male voice. He took off what appeared to be a hat as a sign of respect. “Sorry to bother you this early, but—”

  “If you’re guerrillas or paras, you’ve come to the wrong place,” she interrupted. “No men here.” She immediately regretted saying the last three words. A town of women surely sounded like an easy target for outlaws.

  “We’re neither, señora. We’re good men.”

  “How many is we? Where’s everyone else hiding?” She looked past them, blinking repeatedly.

  “It’s just us,” the same voice declared. “Just the four of us.”

  “Uh-huh,” she mumbled suspiciously, still looking around. “What do you all want?”

  “We’re lost, señora. We’re heading to Mariquita. Do you know which way it is?”

  The man’s reply frightened her, and her heart started pounding rapidly. “No,” she said instinctively, thinking that
they must have been sent over by that wicked man, el padre Rafael. “Who are you, anyway?”

  “Name’s Ángel Alberto Tamacá,” answered the same man, his face barely visible. The name sounded familiar to Ubaldina, but before she could place it, a different man spoke in a somewhat younger, more melodious voice.

  “David Pérez,” he said, touching the tip of his hat with his hand.

  “Jacinto Jiménez Jr. here,” the third man said. He simply raised his hand in the air, indicating where he was.

  “And I’m Campo Elías Restrepo, your humble servant,” the last man said, bowing his hatted head.

  When she heard the last man’s name, an electric shock traveled briskly through Ubaldina’s body. She strained her eyes to better see him, but in the faint light of the lamp, all she could make out was his small silhouette. This can’t be true, she thought. It must be a mean coincidence, a mistake. She started walking slowly across the street, holding the lamp aloft, hoping to recognize nothing about the four figures shrouded by the dawn mist. As she got closer the men took on definite human forms. A dust-caked arm appeared here, a leg there, then torsos and half-lighted faces of men that bore a certain resemblance to men Ubaldina had once known. She moved a little to the right, toward the last man, wanting to see him clearly. He was older than the rest, stooped and white-bearded, his lower lip jutting out and his eyes hooded under overhanging bushy brows. And though he wore his hat low over his forehead, a scar shaped like a tilde was visible above his left eyebrow. An old scar, Ubaldina knew, left by a stone thrown at him in a street fight when he was younger. She’d heard the story many times from the same man who now stood before her, aged and half broken, her husband.

  She dropped the lamp with a crash, her entire body shaking as though with cold, and began walking backward, awkwardly, stumbling over invisible objects, her lumbering footsteps loud in the dawn quiet. When she reached the house, she held on to the doorway and said in a low, supplicating voice, “Please, go away.”

  Confused by her demeanor, the four men made no reply.

  “Go away. Please,” she said again.

  But they were motionless.

  “Go away,” she said over and over, raising her voice each time. Her plea turned into a blaring cry that woke up the entire community right on schedule.

  MOST VILLAGERS OF New Mariquita would agree that of all thirteen rungs of the ladder, Eloísa is the most delightful. The rains have already passed, but the dry season hasn’t quite begun. Temperatures are mild and pleasant. The tree leaves are irresistibly green. In the mornings, the air is cool with dew, and the fragrances of grass and wildflowers waft through the village. During the rung of Eloísa most of New Mariquita’s cooking is done outside. At sunup, after the first set of rings of the church bell, three large log fires are kindled in the middle of the plaza. Three cooks—one from every house—and their helpers bring out corn dough, eggs, chopped onions and tomatoes. Pots and pans are crowded together above the fire. Coffee is brewed, arepas molded and grilled, omelets prepared. Two sets of five chimes summon the villagers for breakfast. All ninety-three villagers squat around the pots. Breakfast is served in handcrafted earthenware of great quality. Some eat with their hands or holding their plates to their lips; others use utensils carved out of wood. Some say grace to their gods; others talk about the dream they had the night before. Some listen; others laugh. The church bell rings again, and the villagers start heading for their specific workplaces.

  ON ELOÍSA 13, 1993, the three cooking fires weren’t kindled until the sun was high in the sky and the great excitement caused by the return of the four men had diminished.

  Immediately after hearing Ubaldina’s frantic cries, the villagers had rushed out of their houses. Tamacá, Pérez, Jiménez and Restrepo heard their strident shouts first, then watched the women appear from every corner of the plaza, naked, brandishing heavy clubs and fishing spears. The men drew closer to one another, each facing a different side, a different group of wild creatures, and finally stood dumbfounded in the middle of the large circle that the savage-looking women had created around them. Tamacá and Pérez thought themselves among a tribe of angry native Indians. Jiménez imagined he was hallucinating as a result of his extreme exhaustion and weakness. Restrepo was too shocked to think.

  The villagers started walking around the intruders, quietly and cautiously, scrutinizing their faces as though the men belonged to a different race they had never seen before. Suddenly, Cecilia Guaraya, who had just caught sight of Ángel Tamacá, dropped her spear and brought her hands to her face dramatically.

  “Ángel!” she cried out loud, taking a few steps toward him. She had recognized him at first glance despite the deep hollow where Ángel’s right eye used to be, and which now made that side of his face look like a skull. He’d gone bald, except for a few threads of hair that curled awkwardly on the sides of his head. He wore mean clothes, ragged and filthy and dampened with a mix of perspiration and night dew. “Ángel Alberto!” she shouted again, just to make certain that every woman present heard her good news: that after all these ladders Mariquita’s former teacher, her son, had come back from the war. “I’m your mother, don’t you recognize me?”

  He shook his head and moved back a little. Who was this crazy woman claiming to be his mother? Who were these other naked Indians clustering around him? Why did they look at him in surprise? Where was he?

  “I’m your mother, Ángel,” she repeated. “Cecilia Guaraya.”

  Ángel examined the woman’s face carefully; then suddenly he threw his arms around her and began weeping. “I’m sorry, Mamá,” he sobbed, tears falling copiously from his one eye. “I’m so sorry.” Cecilia didn’t weep, didn’t say anything. She simply held him tight and rocked him as he cried. Her poor son had spent half his life fighting for a hopeless cause, and all he had to show for it was the empty socket of his right eye.

  The villagers now approached the men with increasing interest.

  “Jacinto Jiménez, is that you?” Marcela said after taking a closer look at Mariquita’s former magistrate’s son. “I’m Marcela. Marcela López.” She beat upon her chest repeatedly with her palm, then kissed him on the lips, as if her kisses were all the dumbfounded man could remember her by. When Jiménez finally understood that he was in his native village and the girl kissing him was indeed his fiancé, his first instinct was to cover her naked body with his own shirt. He didn’t want the other three men to see his girl’s breasts and shapely curves. She accepted the shirt cheerfully but refused to button it up. This upset Jiménez and caused the couple to have their first argument.

  Marcela was disgruntled to discover that her fiancé had only changed physically: he was taller, his face was more gaunt, and his body looked stronger in the sleeveless T-shirt he wore. His hair had thinned and begun to recede, and his skin showed the consequences of having been overexposed to the perverse tropical sun. But Jacinto’s nature was the same as always: hot-tempered, jealous and possessive.

  By now the villagers had already identified the other two men: David Pérez, old Justina Pérez’s grandson, and Campo Elías Restrepo, Ubaldina’s husband and one of former Mariquita’s wealthiest men. Rosalba quickly took charge: “Welcome to New Mariquita. I’m Rosalba viuda de Patiño. Do you remember me? My husband was Police Sergeant Napoleón Patiño.” A few other women reintroduced themselves, but most chose to remain quiet. The men merely nodded, struggling to match the burly nude figures standing before them to the pictures of the women they had in their minds.

  After reacquainting themselves with the men, the villagers began to feel more at ease among the visitors, and after a while they sat on the ground to hear some of the moving accounts of the men’s experiences, ask them questions and answer theirs. Jiménez was sad to learn that his mother and two sisters had left Mariquita soon after the men disappeared. Pérez was happy to find out that his grandmother Justina, the Pérez widow, though awfully aged, crippled with arthritis and mentally unsound, was still ali
ve. David Pérez was now twenty-nine and had turned out to be handsome: tall and big-eyed with an olive complexion. His long face and wavy, slicked-back hair gave him a refined, almost elegant appearance that set him apart from the other three men.

  AT MIDDAY, A hearty meal of boiled root vegetables, rice and cured meat was served. Jacinto Jiménez Jr. sat next to his stubborn fiancée, still not speaking to her, and David Pérez by his insane grandmother, who had to be fed on account of her stiffened fingers. Ángel Tamacá sat beside his mother, his knees pressed together against his small chest, his sad left eye fixed on the ground. He felt quite uneasy with his mother’s nudity, which looked magnified in the heat—swollen, droopy and sticky. Cecilia, who had barely spoken earlier, now became particularly chatty, and with every sentence she uttered, Ángel’s mouth dropped further: “…And so el padre Rafael developed an absurd schedule to make love to every young woman…. He poisoned all four boys in the name of God…. The two of them came up with the concept of female time, and…” Ángel sat there quietly and expressionless, thinking, What happened to the Mariquita I knew? “…When Francisca and I realized we were in love with each other, we decided to…” What happened to my mother?

  Sitting between Rosalba and Nurse Ramírez, Campo Elías Restrepo found himself engulfed in the acrid odors emanating from the two women’s bodies. He knew he didn’t exactly smell like fresh flowers himself, but he’d traveled a huge distance on foot and in the brutal sun, climbing steep ridges and walking through thick undergrowth. These women had just started their day and already smelled like horses.