by Luis de Lión
He would have to go into the church before the sacristan went up to the bell tower to recite the afternoon prayer. He would have to wait until the sacristan finished saying the prayer and came down, closed up the church and left. He would have to hide behind one of those pillars or in between the pews, no, better in the empty space between the altarpieces and the wall, yeah, in that altarpiece right there. He’d have to break the glass with a rock, a piece of wood, with whatever shit was lying around because the glass case has a lock. He’d have to take her out of the glass case carefully, wrap her up carefully, too, take her in his arms, climb the stairs to the bell tower. He would have to tie a rope around her, let her down carefully until she touched the ground, and then tie the end of another rope to one of the brick columns on the front of the bell housing; tie the other end of that second rope around his own waist and let himself down until he, too, touched the ground. He would have to untie himself first, then untie her, take her again in his arms, and take off through the back streets—where no one would be around—until he got to his own house.
Now he had her in front of him and he was looking at her—alone, defenseless, within arm’s reach.
He sat down on the bed and started to take off his clothes.
While he was undressing, he thought: according to what they say, she’s a virgin in spite of the fact that she’s already borne a son; but maybe it’s true; after all, her cheeks are the color of a peach.
He finished taking off his clothes . . .
Then, he got up from the bed, went over to her, and proceeded to take her clothes off, one by one, slowly, like a Ladino might undress his bride on their wedding night, full of desire, burning with passion, until she was left clean, pure, brilliant in all of her nakedness, on every inch of her wood, with nothing more than the clothes painted on the wood itself, a simulated thin cloth, barely anything at all, that the sculptor—¿an Indian?, yes, an Indian—had left covering her with the sole purpose of disguising his love and his hate. He backed away from her to get a look at her, to see her better, to want her more; then, he went back over to her again, took her in his arms, squeezed her with all the strength in his flesh, kissed her below, above, and on the sides, put out the candle, murmured something into her ear, and mounted on top of her.
The wood creaked beneath the man’s weight.
He spent the whole night in constant struggle against the wood, polishing it, wanting to pierce it by pure force, but the wood resisted. Sometimes it seemed as though she was going to turn into flesh, as though she was about to bleed; and then his member would respond: more nerve, more member, more insistent.
Eleven thirty at night . . . One, two, three in the morning . . .
When the roosters crowed for the last time, and the light and heat of day began to give hints of the coming sun over Cucurucho Hill, he couldn’t do it anymore. And, exhausted, haggard—his member bruised, bloodied, aching, his face older, as though he had come from a terrible place—he sat down on the bed; and, with his eyes half open, fighting against exhaustion to keep them from closing all the way, he kept looking at her the way someone looks at an enemy who has defeated him. But she also looked like she had lost; she also looked sad, old; haggard, too, her cheeks no longer with the slightest hint of color and her lips now were in need of some lipstick to make them appear fresh. She looked like a used-up slut; she looked like a whore.
He took her out of his bed and threw her on the floor, on the mat.
He closed his eyes.
The mayor said:
—Turn every house in the town inside out; search them meter by meter, inch by inch—because he thought that she must still be there somewhere in the town.
The incident was not without precedent.
Every year the two leaders of the Cofradía of the Virgen would fight over which of their respective houses she would stay in for the next year; each claimed to have more of a right to house her because his lineage was older; because he had more money to buy her her flowers and her candles, to have new clothes made for her for the processions, to throw a bigger party on her festival days; because he had a better house; because he had more daughters to care for her; because he needed a miracle that he had asked of her and that he couldn’t wait for it to be fulfilled until the next year. And she would stay in one house or the other according to which cofradía leader came up with the most money and booze, until finally one December, the vote came down to a dead even tie between the two; and machetes and insults in equal measure were drawn on both sides, but it didn’t escalate beyond that because, when the first drop of blood was about to be spilled, somebody suggested that the priest break the tie and decide whose house the Virgen should go to that year. And the priest came; first, he listened to all of them; then he scolded all of them . . . and finally he voted for the one he knew had the most money.
The night of the big ceremonial procession everything went along peacefully; but the next night, the night of the little procession, when the group moving the image got to the door of the leader chosen to house the Virgen for the year, after they had taken all the flowers, candles, lights, decorations, and angels off of the image carrier, and after they had untied her from where they had her anchored so that she wouldn’t fall; and as she stood alone, unfettered so that they would be able to take her down, the cofradía leader who would be without her for a long year—or two or three—climbed up onto the carrier, took her in his arms and kissed her fiercely.
—¡Jesus! ¡On the mouth!—some people said.
—¡No! ¡It was on the forehead!—said the wife and the daughters of the cofradía leader who had kissed her.
The supporters of the other cofradía leader took out their machetes and said:
—¡You motherfucker!
Then the supporters of the cofradía leader who had profaned the lips of the Virgen did the same thing and said the same thing, but in plural.
So it was the women on both sides that separated them with tears and pled with them, saying they weren’t acting much like Christians.
The next day, the priest came back to town and made the following declaration in order to resolve the matter:
First: That this time his vote was not for one, nor for the other, of the cofradía leaders.
Second: That as a consequence, the Virgen would stay in the church year-round and only come out for the day of the big ceremonial procession around town; because there would no longer be the little procession on the following day since they would not be taking her to the cofradía leader’s home anymore.
Third: That they should not forget that she was not just any old woman, but their Mother.
But ever since the night of that kiss, the men realized they wanted her, hungered for her, desired her. No, even though the priest had said so, she was not their mother. That’s why they had all kissed her on the mouth vicariously through the mouth of the cofradía leader.
And it didn’t take long for the women to begin to see this kind of love for her in their husbands, to notice that their men only used them to release their sexual tension, to have their children, to cook their food; and even though the men had of course always known: that their women weren’t white; that they didn’t have her blond, flowing hair—instead always
pulling theirs back in tight braids; that they didn’t have thin bodies; and that they certainly were not Ladinas like her; now these differences seemed to weigh on them, hurt them. And the women began almost to hate her with respect, to complain about her to her sons, to her multiple sons there in the church—sepulchered, crucified, baby, cross-carrying. ¿What was it that made the men fall in love with the Mother of us all?
So that was when they began to regret having intervened that year in the incident with the image there in the door of the cofradía leader who had been chosen to house her; they began to think that it would have been better to let the men go at it; let them smash her in the middle of their fracas, break her to pieces; even if she were just a piece of wood, a splinter would have been all each would have gotten for himself, just one more coal for the fire. Things had gone so far that their jealousies triggered fights in all of the houses in town; and when the children intervened on the side of their mothers, they began to see the Virgen as a stepmother and the various christs in the church as stepbrothers—but not common, everyday stepbrothers; instead they seemed to the sons like invaders, hungry for the land that their fathers would leave them as an inheritance; like future oppressors. And they stopped going to the church and loving their stepbrothers, and they started to notice the differences that they had only vaguely been aware of before: that the christs, in spite of their darker skin and their miserable lives, had different physical features that they, the sons, didn’t. But, for that same reason, they also started to love the Virgen and to unlove their girlfriends, to hate their fathers for not loving their own women, because then their fathers were robbing from them, stealing the love of the only Ladina in town.
But all of them—fathers, mothers, children—always made sure to keep their love, their resentment, their hate, or their jealousy silent, beneath the surface, buried in their hearts, never letting these feelings out onto their lips: the women, eternally on their backs, passive but hateful while they received the men; the men—doing their women, moving on top of them, but loving the Virgen all the while—would pant, and empty themselves; the sons, still holding their girlfriends’ hands, but only because they couldn’t hold the hand of the other one.
¿Who was this man who had finally not been able to stand it anymore? ¿Which of them had refused to go on loving the Ladina only in silence?
Let them go ahead and turn all the houses inside out looking for her. ¡What a bunch of bullshit!
—Don’t think for a minute that I’m not happy about it. I mean, really, ¿what is that? ¡fighting over a saint made of wood! They finally showed that they are hopelessly hung up on her.
—And look at you, vos, full of envy.
(In fact, you were the most envious of all the women in the town. What got to you so much was that they worshiped a Virgen and not you, vos—you, the one who had been there for them to spill their desire out on—and now they wouldn’t even look at you. A Virgen—before and after giving birth—shall be their mother; ¡Here she is! Yes, ¡she’s still a Virgen! And then there’s you, vos: a whore your whole life who any old guy could plant a son in any old time. But you’re no good for that, your womb is dead forever; not like hers, where all it took was a dove—a white, smooth-necked dove—and it opened her legs and left her the son. And to think that what they were putting in you were penises—real penises: veined ones, long ones, round ones, fat ones, thick ones, skinny ones, small ones—and real half children, too; half children who died inside you because the other half you were supposed to contribute was already long dead. ¡Bullshit you cried from pure happiness! ¡Bullshit you sterilized yourself! ¡Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit! The men want her. Her, the Ladina, the one they say is a Virgen despite her son, despite her burning thighs . . . and despite the fact that she is just a chunk of sterile wood.)
And you, vos, full of envy—he had said; but he, too, felt envy. (Because you remember, vos, that you, too, had fallen in love with her; that several times you were tempted to leave your isolation, to join the Cofradía of the Virgen so that they would elect you leader and you would have the opportunity to take her home with you. You remember that for a good while there you would visit her when she was alone; that you would frequent the cofradía house where she was; that you would say you were just going because you needed to pray for a miracle; that you would take her flowers, candles of different kinds; that you had declared your love for her in silence; that you wished she would answer you; that, back at your house, you dreamed about her, naked in your bed; that you felt her, heard her start to pant, and then cum; that you would taste her and, not even thinking about whether she was a virgin or a mother or a whore, but thinking she was a white woman, a Ladina, a woman from the other side, from that other race, the race you wanted to become a part of by way of your wealth, by way of the whiteness of your house, of your soul; and despite the Indian-ness of your face, your Mongolian spot, and your hair. You remember, one time, you said that with her you would have a child: a brother of the mother of the invader of these lands, a divine mestizo, even though later he would deny you were his father. Remember: that, because you knew a union between you and her was impossible—what with the wood and all—, you searched in the city for a relative of hers who would love you; that you sought out many of them; that you told them you had land, money, a nice house in your town; remember that they all rejected you, that they wouldn’t even look at you, that only the ones in the cantinas would so much as listen to you, but that even they called you: ¡Indian!; and that was when you chose this one, who will talk to you; who will listen to you, who loved you and who could still love you again; this one, who is an Indian, but at least she has the name and the nickname of the one you worshipped; this one, but you didn’t choose her to be your woman but to be your servant. Yes, you envy the one who made off with the Virgen, the other Concha, the real one. You envy him because you know who he is, because he is you yourself, vos, but backward: he’s the one with the balls, not the coward.)