And he almost always managed it.
Some years ago, he had decided that his fear of falling into deep sleep was not unfounded, for it came from the certainty that something would happen when he was absent from his conscious mind, with his mind’s eye asleep and disabled, vulnerable, and therefore abandoning the world around him, the world that he cared about, to its fate. He had always sensed, from a very young age, that nothing stops when the lights go out, when the eyes are closed, and one sleeps deeply. Nothing stops: what must happen will happen, without the slightest consideration and without warning. Without waiting for the first light of the morning, without a witness, without a guardian, because the guardian abandoned it all, seized by sleep.
However disciplined, however determined, Simonopio sometimes failed and slept, traveling to the place where everything was forgotten, even his senses. Sometimes—most of the time—nothing happened, and Simonopio would wake up grateful that he did not need to feel guilt or remorse for his carelessness. Most nights nothing happened. But there were other times.
Much like this new day, still wavering between the darkness of night and the first light.
Simonopio hated knowing that he did not know everything. In these circumstances especially, he hated the fact that, after the shock of being brusquely woken from deep sleep, his mind did not connect with the world’s energy as easily as it normally would.
His only certainty: something had happened. But what?
He climbed out of bed in the dark. He wet his face with the cold water from the washbowl. He dressed without needing to see. Then he took an oil lamp. He lit it. He knew that he had to go out and he knew where to go: toward the place where everything started, along Reja’s road. Of that much he was certain.
But he did not know what he would find there.
45
Revenge Is Not a Woman’s Business
Lupita’s funeral was in the past, but the pain was not. And Beatriz wondered whether her family would ever return to normal after the tragedy.
She doubted it.
Her daughters, with their husbands escorting them, made the trip to be present at the funeral of the young woman whom they had loved in life without realizing it. Now, all too late, they were grateful for every favor that Lupita, who had been only a few years older than they were, had always done for them gladly. Lupita had never said no to them, and there was never a day when they woke up and she was not already doing her chores, which she did not hesitate to interrupt to say good morning and ask them, Do you need anything, girls?
Now they wondered and regretted how many times they must have passed her by without returning the greeting, thinking only about their own things, and how many times they must have received her favors without so much as thanking her.
Now they felt devastated, understanding—for the first time, perhaps, and firsthand—the true meaning of death: that there is no going back and that anything that was not said in time would never be said.
Carmen and Consuelo did not arrive in time for the wake, which had necessarily been very brief due to the state of the body, but they were there in time for the memorial service and to witness the burial: the simple pinewood coffin slowly lowered to the bottom of the deep grave, the stomachs of more than one of them clenching when the clumsy novice gravediggers lost control of the ropes that held it up at each end, so that the feet descended more quickly one moment and, to compensate, the head did so the next.
It was a terrible occasion on which even the new Father Pedro struggled to find his voice and composure as he administered the blessings.
No other words were heard, but neither was there silence: the weeping established itself as an accompanying murmur, as if, once the cadence and tone had been set, no one dared break the harmony of their macabre chorus.
That day, there were a few dry eyes around the grave. Francisco did not cry. Beatriz did not cry. Nor did Simonopio. He had not stayed to say his final goodbyes, telling them neither where he would go nor when he would return.
Later, sitting on the armchair in her sewing room, Beatriz Morales heard her daughters’ wails, but she was tired of listening to them now. They felt obliged to remain with her and tend to her in their mourning, and she understood that, at their young age, they would want to vent their pain and horror with this unstoppable verbosity. But Beatriz wanted silence; she wanted dry eyes, so dry they burned. She wanted revenge and wanted, most of all, to be the main witness when it was wreaked.
Impossible, she knew. Revenge was not a woman’s business, she knew, and she repeated it to persuade herself. As a woman, she would keep out of the whole business, out of harm’s way, and she would accept it, because she was a woman. She would not get her hands dirty, though her soul already felt stained, despite being a woman’s.
She had already made her confession to the new Father Pedro. She had done it at home, in a moment of respite she had taken from the wake, where she had to maintain her composure standing to one side of the closed coffin they had placed on the dining table. First and foremost, she had to feign calm, resignation, and absolute faith, while the desire to kill ate away at her.
She had confessed in the half-light of her sewing room, sitting beside the priest, without the protection and anonymity of the confessional.
“Do not look at me, Father, please.”
She did not want anyone to see her in that moment of weakness. However, she had thought confessing would help her purge her body of the violent adrenaline, never before experienced, which sickened and frightened her, for it revealed elemental facets of herself that came from a part of her spirit and her mind that had escaped any attempt to train it to be a lady and the example of Christian virtue that she was supposed to be. But it had not worked.
“Remember, Sra. Morales, that Jesus Christ requires us to forgive even our enemies. As penitence, say ten Lord’s Prayers every day. Yes, for them. Forgive them in this way.”
“Yes, Father. Yes, Father.”
Before returning to the wake, Beatriz took another few minutes when the priest went away. She needed to recover a little before going out into the lamentation that had overtaken her house. The confession had not helped: she would not say one—let alone ten—Lord’s Prayers for the murderer or murderers, because she would not forgive their savage act. That was the truth. She admitted it. If she followed the priest’s instruction, pretending that she was praying for Lupita’s murderers, the first person to see her hypocrisy would be Christ Himself, and Beatriz Morales did not want to stoop so low as to try to deceive Him.
It would take her years to move on from this newly discovered impulse for revenge, and while she stopped short of praying for evil to happen, she would pray for herself. She would make her Singer her confessor. She would pray. She would pray while she sewed. She would sew confessing. She would confess sewing. She would pray and confess to the rhythm of her feet on her Singer’s pedal and the brush of her hands against the material.
She would confess her wrongdoing: she would pray asking for forgiveness for the promise she had broken.
Lupita had arrived seventeen years ago by way of her aunt, a former employee who, on the cusp of a war that would destroy men in one way and women in another, was looking for a safe place for her niece, no longer such a young girl at the age of twelve.
“We’ll take care of her here, Socorro. Don’t worry.”
We’ll take care of her here. Don’t worry. We’ll take care of her. Here, me, us, Francisco, the nanas. But one night: no one. No one took care of her that night. And she went. She went violently. They tortured her in life. They tore out her hopes along with her eyes. They sucked the laughter from her mouth. They squeezed her until her very soul escaped through her pores. They ripped her from life.
Someone did.
They did not know who. It could have been anyone in those hills, where a willingness to kill over something or nothing still prevailed. In those hills that were still infested with a plague of bandoleros who, with no tr
ade or principles, roamed surreptitiously and without permission across land that, though they did not want—or it was not convenient for them—to accept it, was privately owned.
That Tuesday morning, they had woken up as normal, with no hint that anyone was hurrying anywhere, in trouble, or absent. Francisco, as ever, set off to perform his duties almost with the first light of the day. Beatriz, as ever, had taken longer, enjoying the unusual silence of the morning: for the first time, Francisco Junior had gone to spend the night at the Cortés cousins’ house. Otherwise, the house would already have been filled with his noisy energy. She had given him permission to go on the condition that he be obedient for Aunt Concha.
“And no sliding down the banister, eh. You saw what happened last time.”
By copying his cousins—or were his cousins copying him?—he’d ended up with a wound on his forehead that had to be stitched, while she held him down and he cried out and cursed at the same time. Later they had been forced to apologize to the doctor and his nurse, as well as to Beatriz’s sister-in-law, who was pregnant with her fourth.
“Don’t worry. It was bad luck. My sons are always doing the same thing.”
And Concha never lost her patience or her cool. Beatriz pictured her then, surrounded by children running rings around her, yelling like revolutionaries. Better her than me. She sighed.
She left the bedroom and headed to the kitchen, surprised at the absence of the usual sounds of the morning routine in the house. She found Nana Pola there talking to Mati.
“What is it?”
“Have you sent Lupita on some errand?”
No. Beatriz had not seen her since she gave her permission the previous evening to go to a cousin’s quinceañera celebration in Villaseca.
“Mati says she wasn’t here when she woke up this morning.”
“They must’ve snatched her, Señora.” Mati, who shared a room with Lupita, had not waited up for her. “I always hear her when she gets back, because she makes more noise than a train. But today I opened my eyes, it was daytime, and there was no Lupita.”
The clothes she had left on her bed, in her rush to get to the party, were still there: Lupita had not returned in the night.
“Send Martín to see if she’s with her cousin or friends. Perhaps she stayed there to sleep.”
Martín returned without Lupita, but with the news that she had said goodbye before eleven o’clock, and not even at her cousin’s insistence had she stayed longer to dance: she was very tired and wanted to sleep. Martín had seen her there, too, from afar, but when he looked for her at midnight to head back to La Amistad, she was no longer there. He had not seen her on the way home. No one else saw her.
“Martín, go tell Sr. Francisco.”
The search began in the Villaseca area, going door-to-door along the most common route between the house where the dance had been and the house where they were anxiously waiting.
“They’ve taken her,” Mati said and repeated without understanding why they told her to be quiet every time she did so, given that, with each hour that passed, it seemed like the best possible fate for the poor missing girl. What she had started saying as a prediction had gradually become a wish: better that she had been snatched, taken as a live-in lover, and impregnated, than something worse.
By midday Simonopio had arrived, in a state. Earth from the hills covered his face, except where his tears, dry by then, had made paths of clean skin. Beatriz knew: Lupita was no longer missing.
Simonopio did not want to stay to rest or drink sweet chocolate for the shock. He just turned around and headed in the direction of the coach house. By the time Francisco arrived, looking for him, Simonopio had the cart ready. Nobody questioned him.
Martín refused to go with the rest of the men to recover the body. He did not want to see her like that, he said. Then Beatriz remembered Francisco’s warning years before to his worker, after finding him flirting with Lupita: “Watch it, Martín. Not with the women of the house, understood?”
They had not had a problem of this kind with him since, but now Beatriz wondered what would have been had they allowed him to court her. Perhaps Lupita would not have gone out alone that night. Perhaps she would already have her own family. Perhaps right now she would be making her children lunch. But there was no sense in Beatriz allowing her mind to continue down such recriminatory paths.
It would never happen now.
Martín, on the other hand, had remained sitting in the kitchen, motionless, staring blankly, drinking—at Pola’s insistence—the hot chocolate originally meant for Simonopio. Nana Pola was trying her best to console him, but he did nothing to help her as she cried silently, without trying to hide it.
Beatriz left before her mouth and eyes could pour out her feelings—it would offer no comfort and serve only to darken the atmosphere in the kitchen even more.
She went to look for Nana Reja. Perhaps with her it would be acceptable to sit and say nothing. When she arrived, she saw that the nana had left her rocking chair, which now rocked by itself, as if missing the weight and shape of its habitual occupant. Beatriz, alarmed, went to look for her in the semidarkness of her bedroom: she found her lying in bed, her eyes closed as always, and not making a sound, as she never did. Beatriz did not know how, but it was clear to her that Reja knew what had happened. Her silence and motionlessness, the way she barely seemed to breathe, away from the air and light that she enjoyed from her rocking chair, were her way to express her grief: alone, as ever, but away from the hills that called to her. And in turning her back on them, she punished herself; she repented.
Too much pain for such a slight body.
“We’ll find whoever did this, Nana Reja.”
Beatriz made a promise without thinking. Later she regretted it: what right did she have to make promises of such magnitude, if she had not fulfilled such a simple one made years before?
The nana did not react to her words or her intentions. Maybe she did not hear, Beatriz thought with relief.
Mati was in her own bedroom, crying noisily. Though she was much older, she had shared her space with Lupita since the girl had arrived. Beatriz decided not to go in. What for? For now, she did not have any words of comfort. She was grateful, then, that Francisco Junior was not at home that day. Who would have looked after him? Who would have explained it to him? She did not feel up to it. They would do it when everything was over. In two or three days, when her voice regained its strength and steadiness.
Today she felt neither strong nor steady.
Practical as ever, though she had to try hard to remember that trait of hers, Beatriz made a mental list of what they would need that day. With everyone busy recovering the body or struggling with their grief, Beatriz decided to carry out all the tasks herself.
“I’ll be back soon.”
After informing them, she went out on foot in search of the doctor, whom she found easily at the clinic. There was no rush. It was not a health emergency, but in any case, Dr. Cantú promised her he would come right away.
Finding the new Father Pedro did not prove so easy: the cathedral and all the churches had been closed by order of the government. Now the priest lived and conducted services illegally, dividing his time between various houses, including the Morales Cortéses’, rotating his residence to avoid being an imposition or putting anyone at risk. Beatriz could not remember which family he was staying with at that moment, and while she did not want to speak to anyone, there was another visit she had to make: she knocked on her brother’s door, though she did not want to go in.
“You’d best tell Sra. Concha to come, yes?”
“She’s sleeping.”
“Tell her to come.”
She informed Concha succinctly, with no details, no drama, of Lupita’s death. Concha did know where the priest was.
“I’ll go find him. Please, keep Francisco Junior for a few days, until everything’s over.”
Then Beatriz went to look for the clergyman, who also ga
ve his word that he would be there to receive and anoint the body. She thanked him, because it was no small thing: at that time, being a priest was a dangerous business, especially if the soldiers caught him administering a sacrament.
From there she went to order a coffin, whatever she could find: whatever was available that very day. She did not go to report the death to the Guardia Rural. She would leave that to Francisco.
When she returned home, she was surprised to find that, although the doctor and priest were already there, the men had not yet returned with the body. Later, she learned that they had stopped to clean it up a little by the side of a pool of water, so that, as far as possible, they would spare the women the horror of the appalling task.
Their well-meaning efforts proved futile: when a body had been subjected to so much violence, nothing could be done to clean it.
When the doctor arrived, he asked them to spread a blanket out on the kitchen table and lay the damp, half-naked body on top so he could examine it.
“Sra. Morales, if you do not want to be here, I can find someone else to help me.”
“I’ll stay. And Pola will too.”
Lupita had been found at the edge of La Amistad, on the road to La Petaca, under the little bridge where Nana Reja had found the newborn Simonopio covered in bees. They had thrown her there, perhaps hoping the body would never be found, devoured by every insect or animal that took a fancy to it.
Simonopio had found her, and she had returned home. Now, how could they not stay by the side of this girl who had clearly suffered so much in the last moments of her life?
Her dancing clothes had been shredded. Her hair, which Lupita usually wore in a braid, was untied, tangled, and full of leaves and clods of earth. Her face, beaten and scratched, was beginning to show signs of rigor mortis, so there was no way to deceive oneself by pretending that the girl was sleeping peacefully. What’s more, her eyelids, closed and bruised, no longer protected the absent eyes. Her neck was imprinted with marks from the murderous hands that had wrung it mercilessly. When they removed her clothes, they saw the bite marks on her upper body.
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