My dear Germán:
If it’s true that certain moments in our childhood mark us forever, then that ride was one of them. It signaled the end of our lives in that room in Barrio San Cristóbal (patron saint of travelers) and was the beginning of a life that would take me along America’s most difficult roads, and later the fabulous ones of Europe.
The buggy took us to the Sabana station. Mrs. María didn’t say a word for the entire trip. She was so pale and so sad that I asked her again if she was going to die, and with a wave of her hand she answered no. We rode along so many grand streets, past houses with balconies, and churches, that I didn’t know where to look; the fright from having seen Mrs. María stretched across the street like General Rebollo on the garbage pile had left me with a stomachache and an urge to vomit.
At the station, Mrs. María called some men to carry our trunks. There were people running in every direction, all weighed down with suitcases, bags, and backpacks; I held on to Mrs. María’s dress, and Helena took my other hand. We walked in circles; Mrs. María spoke with various people and opened her handbag again and again, giving out money in exchange for little pieces of paper that she would put away. At last we boarded a train, and she sat by the window. She made Helena sit next to her and sat me on her knees. It was the first time she’d carried me. I didn’t know what to do. She smelled strongly and unpleasantly of medicine, and I was afraid my head might touch her face. People kept shoving their way onto the train, bulging with packages. Some men came aboard, shouting and carrying tiny four-stringed tiples* and a bottle. They began to sing, and I fell asleep before the train even departed.
They woke me when it was time to get off. It was already dark when Mrs. María showed up at the door of a big house. We were received by the owner, a very fat woman with a red nose who was dressed in all black.
The fat woman took us to a large room that faced an inner courtyard full of plants hanging from the ceiling, as if they’d been planted in the sky. She summoned an unkempt teenage boy who had a toy top in one hand and told him to go to the kitchen and let them know that there would be three more people for dinner. Mrs. María told the owner what had happened with the horse before we’d left. The owner said she’d call a healer who cured people by applying heated frogs wherever there was pain. Mrs. María wouldn’t agree to this, so we ate and then went to bed.
We stayed in that village, whose name I never learned, for many days. Mrs. María went out almost every day and got in the habit of taking Helena with her, leaving me in the care of the ratty teenager, who’d sit beside me, playing with his spinning top. One day he made it dance on his hand, and I was so frightened I started to cry; another day he asked me if I had a dad and a mom, and I asked him what those were, and he said he didn’t know either.
On the last day Mrs. María left very early. When she returned she was weighed down with packages and called us to the room and had us undress. She’d bought us new dresses. Helena’s was blue—which I liked more—and mine was pink; both had buttons and lace. They were lovely. Once we were dressed, Mrs. María made us go out to the patio. A while later she came out of the room and we almost didn’t recognize her. She was so beautiful and looked so young. She’d bought a gray dress with many pleats and buttons and washers, black boots that also had many buttons, and a large gray hat with a kind of veil that cinched below her chin. Everyone came up to her and congratulated her; the owner touched her everywhere. They called the kid so he could help us carry the packages. We walked many blocks and came to a kind of pasture full of horses and other scary animals I’d never seen before, and Helena told me that these animals made the milk we drank with our coffee at breakfast. There were groups of men called Indians because they were dressed differently from the men of Bogotá. Mrs. María spoke to many of them and asked each for Mr. Toribio.
Toribio was an Indian, much larger than the rest, strong, almost fat, with small eyes that you could hardly see. He said the horses were nearly ready and that all we had to do was wait for the Indians to come with the trunks. Another Indian came with the horses, all of them big except a little one with long ears, which Toribio said was called Burro.
Burro had two seats tied to him, one hanging from each side of his belly. Above the seats was a kind of tent made from a sheet hanging between poles tied to the backrests of the seats. Toribio said this was so the sun wouldn’t sting. We were picked up and put in the seats, one on either side. Since Helena was bigger, her seat went down and mine went up. Toribio said we’d have to tie a sack full of rocks to my seat, so both sides would stay level.
Mrs. María was helped up onto a horse as gray as her dress. The Indians tied the trunks to the other horses, which they called mules. When everything was ready, Toribio rode a big horse the color of milky coffee; a very dark-skinned Indian with a puffy face lassoed Burro and started to slap him so he’d walk; slowly we left the village behind, until we could see nothing, not even the houses or the church.
I don’t remember the whole trip, because I slept almost the entire way, and when I woke up I cried because I was tired and had blisters on my legs. My entire body hurt, and on the last day I threw up many times. Toribio was very kind. He would come down from his horse, carry me, and have me walk a little.
It rained all of the last day, and the horses had mud up to their bellies. We barely moved, and it was almost ten in the evening before we’d arrived in. Toribio was furious with the Indians, and with Burro because he walked so slowly. In Guateque we went straight to a large, two-story house very close to the plaza. There was a church and a large fountain with figurines spewing water from their mouths, as if they were vomiting.
Toribio got off his horse and went to knock on the front door, but no one answered. We waited awhile, until finally a woman from the house across the street came out and said she had a letter for Mrs. María. In the envelope was the key.
Beyond the front door, there was a corridor of white pebbles, and then a second door that led to a garden lush with plants and trees. The corridors around the garden were wide, with wooden columns, and the bedrooms faced the garden. Beyond the garden, the house was two stories high; everything else was just a single floor. There was a second interior courtyard—more of a brick patio—where there were two large ovens for baking bread, a kitchen, and more bedrooms. Behind the patio through a large door was where they kept everything for the horses. It was huge, and there were fruit trees—rose apple, mango, and guava.
The Indians unloaded the horses and left. Toribio came in with us and started opening doors and bringing chairs out to the corridor so we could sit. He told us not to go into the bedrooms since we were hot and the rooms were cold—after all, the house had been closed for many years.
Toribio asked if he could stay until the doctor arrived; Mrs. María asked him to sit and began to ask him lots of things about the town. Then someone threw a small white dog over the garden wall, and it landed in the middle of the garden. Its stomach was like a drum, and its eyes were open wide. Toribio said not to touch it because it had been poisoned. We were gathered around the little dog when we heard the raspy voice of a man asking if the travelers from the capital had arrived yet. Mrs. María hurried to greet him. He gave her a hug, patting her on the back. Toribio took off his hat and bowed his head.
“How are you, Toribio? Have you taken good care of the lady and the girls? What the hell took you so long?”
“Yes, Doctor. We added a day because of Burro. That’s what the girls call him. The plain was difficult because of the rains, and that burro has always been a pain when it comes to bad roads.”
“It’s all right, Toribio. Go to the smoke shop and wait for me there. And not a word in town about the travelers, if you ask me . . .”
“Yes, Doctor.”
When Toribio left, the doctor sat at the edge of the patio. He took off his poncho, placed it on the ground, and told Mrs. María to sit next to him.
His name was Roberto. He was a lovely man, tall, thin, bronzed by the sun, with very pretty teeth and straight hair like an Indian. He wore tall leather boots with spurs, a wool suit, a kerchief tied around his neck, a white poncho, and a hat that Mrs. María called a cork hat. He carried a kind of whip in his hand, with which he gave his boots little snaps as he spoke. When Mrs. María sat next to him, he said to her, “You look lovely, miss.”
She laughed. “I’m going to introduce you to the girls,” she said. “Come. Get closer. This is the oldest; her name is Helena.”
“She’s very pretty,” he said. “What beautiful eyes. Come. Give me your hand.” Helena approached him and sat on his lap. “And the other one, what’s her name?”
“The other one is Emma, the baby, that’s what Helena calls her. The poor thing, she’s very ugly. Can you believe that every day she gets a little more cross-eyed?”
“Don’t worry, María. I have a friend here. Dr. Vargas. He’ll straighten out her eyes.”
I started to cry.
“Why are you crying?” Roberto asked.
“Because you’re going to take out my eyes.”
The two of them started to laugh. “Dumb little girl, straighten doesn’t mean take out.” Through my tears I saw the dead dog again, the one who’d fallen from the sky. I ran to him, grabbed him with both hands, and threw him against Roberto’s knees. That was the beginning and the end of our relationship. I didn’t see him ever again, but his presence was never erased from my life.
Sir:
You make no corrections, and I don’t even know if what I’m writing is comprehensible. There are moments that seem confusing to me, and I don’t know if you can follow the story. I don’t have a copy because I write to you directly, and I don’t remember what I’ve written before.
Kisses for all.
Emma
Paris 9/69