VIOLENCE

The peasant world in which I grew up was not only a world of sexual encounters. It was also a world where violence was everywhere. Sheep would be hung by their legs to have their throats slit, and after the blood had been drawn, while they were still half alive, they would be cut into pieces. Pigs were stabbed with a long knife thrust into the heart, and before they were dead, alcohol would be poured on them and lit, to burn off all their hair before they were roasted. In order to kill young cows or heifers instantly, huge nails were hammered into their heads, and then they were quartered. Their meat would be hung in strips under a tree or in the pantry, where the flies also participated in the feast. The bulls that were to work in the fields were castrated, as were the horses. The castration of a bull was one of the most violent and cruel acts I have ever witnessed: The bull’s testicles were tied with a thick wire and then stretched out onto an iron and stone anvil. With a hammer or a sledgehammer the testicles would be pounded until the tendons and connections to the rest of the body were severed. Only the bags remained hanging and in time would wither away. The pain suffered by those bulls was so intense that one could tell when the testicles had been destroyed because the animal’s teeth would loosen. Many died, but others survived and were no longer bulls but oxen—that is, tame, castrated beasts used to pull the plow, while my grandfather would swear at them behind the plow, and prod them with a stick.

The world in which I grew up was pervaded with violence. The bulls that had not been castrated would crack each other’s heads by butting each other with their horns to assert their sexual supremacy over the herd. The stallions would kick each other savagely as soon as they saw or scented a mare.

Once my mother and I were on our way to Arcadio Reyes’s temple on my aunt Olga’s mare (in the country, women rode mares and men rode stallions). Suddenly, a stallion appeared out of nowhere and followed us, giving clear signs of his passionate intentions. We were still on the mare when the stallion tried to mount her. My mother spurred her on, but the mare refused to budge; evidently she preferred to be hacked by the spurs rather than give up her chance of being possessed by that formidable beast. She was already spreading her legs and raising her tail. We had to jump off and allow them, right in front of us, to complete their copulation, a sexual encounter that was both powerful and violent and really so beautiful that it would have aroused anybody.

After the battle, my mother and I rode in silence to the temple. Probably she, as well as I, would have liked to be the mare, who now trotted so lightheartedly over Arcadio Reyes’s land.

There was also violence in the struggle for life. At night you could hear the screeches of the frogs as they were slowly swallowed by small snakes; you could hear the squeak of a mouse being torn to pieces by a gnome owl; the desperate cackle of a hen being throttled and swallowed by a Cuban boa; the kicking and muffled cry of a rabbit quartered in the air by an owl, or the bleating of sheep cut to pieces by wild dogs. The noise, the desperate clamors, the dull stamping, all those sounds were familiar companions in the countryside where I grew up.