Their love story put the girls right to sleep. José María and Teresa went back to their bedroom and made love. The memory of the cold seawater on their flesh tightened their muscles, and their bodies interlocked once again, warming each other, until their slow moans turned to mutual release.
José María lay on his back, sweating a lagoon onto the sheets, while Teresa snored. Other stories shoved their way into him, ones that José María would never admit. Evil always balancing the good. Tales of beasts. Panic bubbled to his surface. He was convinced he would lose all of this. His wife, his children. His fingernails clutched the sheets, and paralysis set in his veins. Teresa’s snores became the growls of pigs. Boars with tusks as sharp as metal and fur like murderous spines.
WHEN TERESA LEFT the beach town in Puntarenas, José María wandered the province, looking for work. He had promised Teresa he would make enough money to properly ask for her hand in marriage. He would prove to her ornery, judgmental mother that he was worthy of her love.
After weeks of failed attempts, José María found brothers at a cantina on a Saturday night. In the town of Buenos Aires, where cool zephyrs lifted the skirts of women, like Marilyn Monroe.
The brothers were from a farm named Ojo de Tigre. On Saturday nights, they ventured from its humid grasslands to the valley town of Buenos Aires. At the cantinas, away from their father’s pigheadedness, guaro loosened the brothers’ shirts, their tongues, and their belts. Magón, the middle brother, prone to bouts of crying, howled at the splendid whores who broke his heart in brothels. The younger, Asdrúbal, couldn’t be trusted after losing a game of burro. And Aníbal, the eldest and most talented of the brothers with a machete, was banned from cantinas even before their construction.
On the night José María met them, Aníbal, Magón, and Asdrúbal were escorting their youngest brother, Héctor, to an antediluvian bar, where prostitutes with biblical names would ensure an unforgettable eighteenth birthday. They arrived at La Capilla, a cantina as run-down as it was illustrious, its new electric lighting revealing a gloss of grime and sticky alcohol on the floors. The owner, a pregnant-bellied man by the name of Zeledón, threw a violent fit—he knew exactly who these brothers were and what type of trouble they promised. He cursed their father’s mother and slammed his fists on the bar until his knuckles bruised. But the prostitutes who worked for Zeledón were eager to take advantage of Magón’s renowned sentimentality, and they purred at Zeledón to give the brothers a break.
Aníbal slipped a few bills across the bar and Zeledón agreed to let them stay, but he refused to serve Héctor alcohol. He reasoned that the kid was too skinny to be anywhere close to eighteen, and too shy, and therefore dangerous. Because everyone knows the shy ones break stools over your head when their drinks are cut off.
Héctor (admittedly skinny, though stronger than most oxen at Ojo de Tigre) feigned disappointment. The prospect of sobriety relieved his nerves—if he were to drink too much, he might have consented to losing his virginity to a prostitute, and no mythical ecstasy was worth that. While his brothers drank and became increasingly rowdy, Héctor inched closer to the exit. For a quick, efficient escape, just in case the stories about his brothers were true.
Around midnight, José María entered the bar. His fingernails dirty, but his hair immaculately quaffed with pomade. A perfect curl fell down his forehead. Forgetting Magón completely, the half dozen women flocked to José María as giddily as condors pouncing on a fresh cadaver. They cooed at him, blew wet kisses, stroked his ears. Uninterested, he apologized. There was already someone, José María said humbly. A girl, somewhere on a beach, waiting for him on the sand. José María arrived only to ask Zeledón for work. He wasn’t looking for love tonight.
Zeledón, gravely offended, refused to give José María anything. Not a whore, not a drink, and least of all a job. “I don’t hire puritanical pricks,” Zeledón spat. “Now, if you haven’t got any cash, ¡scram! ¡Go on! ¡I’ve got no use for a priest on a Saturday night!”
José María turned and left the cantina without arguing. Héctor stared at his three brothers, who looked as if they had seen a ghost from a story, from a dream they didn’t know they’d had. Héctor ran out into the dry dirt road to catch José María. A breeze stirred the dust around his ankles.
“Hey,” José María said to Héctor. “¿You looking for me?” José María leaned against the cantina wall, taking drags from a crumpled cigarette. “People are not too welcoming around here, are they.”
Héctor introduced himself. “¿What are you doing way down here in Buenos Aires?” he asked.
“I’m looking for work. I’ve been here a week, and no one is hiring. Or, probably, no one wants to hire me.”
“It is hard down here in the towns. Especially if you are a stranger. They say nothing good comes from newcomers,” Héctor said. “But my father has been looking for someone to come work on our farm. Up in the mountains, not too far on horseback. ¿You ever worked on a farm?”
“I have worked banana plantations my whole life.”
“That is good enough,” said a drunken Aníbal as he stumbled out of the cantina. He patted Héctor’s tawny hair and hiccuped. “We will take you with us. You can start tomorrow.”
“If we can convince Father,” Héctor said.
THEY ARRIVED AT Ojo de Tigre on horseback. José María had never seen such a splendid farm. Even in the overwhelming darkness, it glowed green, and nocturnal life teemed ecstatically. Ojo de Tigre lay nestled between two low peaks in the southern Talamanca mountain range, an ancient dragon’s spine slithering from the western province of Puntarenas down to the border touching Panamá. Don Amable, the patriarch at Ojo de Tigre, had purchased the land from a former president in 1926. He had originally planned to turn the valley of rain forest into a thriving ranch to raise cattle for meat and leather, but after the purchase, his pockets were empty, and his only worldly possession left was his grandfather’s sterling silver ring. With no money left to hire workers, Don proposed to the woman he had befriended as a child: Lucía, the daughter of his father’s right-hand man, an old Brunka man with gray eyes named Moisés. Lucía would bear Don Amable seven daughters with skin like balsa wood and six sons whose arms grew powerful enough to transform the discord of jungle into prosperous farmland.
The brothers escorted José María into the cabin, where Don Amable sat at a desk, reading Bible verses. Doña Lucía lay asleep, so the men whispered. Don Amable interviewed José María, asked his origins, seemingly ignored their murkiness. José María reminded Don Amable of someone, he said. The brothers, still very drunk, nodded their heads solemnly. He hired José María on the spot and set him up in Héctor’s cabin.
AFTER SEVERAL WEEKS, Doña Lucía began commenting that José María was like another son. She spoke with an adoration unfamiliar to him. Perhaps she believed him to be the reincarnation of the boy she had lost in childbirth. It would have been her first, but her hips hadn’t anticipated the size of his body. For two days Doña Lucía had labored, losing blood that ran cold in a pool on the dirt floor. Don Amable begged his wife to give up, to forget the child. To save her, the Brunka midwife performed a cesarean that left a permanent moon across her belly, but it left the baby cool and still. Even days afterward, bouts of fainting overcame Doña Lucía, and with the exception of a blur of slick blue flesh, her only memory of the baby was a perfect black curl on its forehead.
Ojo de Tigre performed the novenario for the baby in complete silence. Doña Lucía and Don Amable could muster no strength to utter the rosary. Eventually, in their lovemaking, they surrendered the memory, vowing never to mention the baby again. They poured their anguish into each other, as water is poured from one cup into another, back and forth until the quantities are equal. They went about pretending the crescent moon that cut across Doña Lucía’s stomach had always been there. A birthmark, a childhood burn. And they suppressed the memory as one suppresses a nightmare: burying it deep within the folds of their shoulders, where it would be easier to carry, and even the deepest sleep would have trouble unearthing it.
Everyone at Ojo de Tigre looked at José María’s black curls and convinced themselves he was the baby from Doña Lucía’s tale.
JOSÉ MARÍA LAY awake in Héctor’s room. Outside, small dogs barked at the shadows of the coyotes stalking the chicken coops. Above José María in the darkness, a hundred fireflies fluttered about like stars in a galaxy. He followed their movements closely; eyes wide like an astronomer, looking for meaning in their light. What illuminated Teresa in her bedroom? Maybe a candle carved the curves of her breasts out from other dark shapes. Maybe sweet starlight from Orion tickled her nape.
Next to him, Héctor stirred. For the past seven weeks, José María had shared Héctor’s bed, and every night, the space separating their bodies shrank. Tonight, José María’s chest touched Héctor’s back. Héctor reached for José María’s hand, and in the disarming delirium of sleep, José María let him. Their fingers interlocked and Héctor brought them to his abdomen. Rain thrummed on the tin roof. The fireflies, one by one, extinguished themselves. The two slept undisturbed until morning.
Life at Ojo de Tigre provided José María a necessary comfort. Besides the grueling work of razing the obstinate forest, Don Amable’s family accepted him as one of their own. The seven daughters—Thalía, Ángela, Eugenia, Urania, Consuela, Consuelo, and Rocío—flirted with him, washed his clothes, cooked his meals, massaged his feet, and even kissed him good night, one after the other. The six sons—Aníbal, Magón, Asdrúbal, Áyax, Paris, and Héctor—rumpled his hair, drank him under the table, told him tall tales, and hugged him good night, one after the other.
Héctor’s grandfather, Moisés, remained the only one wary of José María’s presence. Moisés came from a long line of caciques: proud, feather-crowned leaders of the Brunka tribe. For centuries they resisted the Spanish and their guns and murder, crosses and conversion. Moisés had been groomed to be the next, but his father was disgraced after selling land to criollo coffee barons, who forced his people off. A new cacique was anointed, and earlier this year, the tribe moved to a protected baldío, barring Moisés and his mestizo family from entering.
José María reminded Moisés of his treacherous father. He predicted betrayal somewhere deep in his heart. Moisés would walk by, his staff taller than himself, without acknowledging José María’s presence, whistling to himself a tune José María had never heard before.
“Do not mind him,” Héctor said one day.
“¿You noticed it too?”
“Of course. Have patience. When he is convinced of something, it just takes time for his mind to change. Most of us grew up thinking that nothing good comes from newcomers, especially his generation. His people.
“But you’re different,” Héctor corrected himself. “Even if my grandfather doesn’t accept you because you’re new here, the rest of us love you.”
José María did as Héctor suggested and waited. They became inseparable. José María and Héctor ate together, rode their horses side by side, slept in the same bed. Moisés found the latter especially troubling. He watched his grandson’s eyes brighten whenever José María came to him with new machete techniques or slang from up north. He watched Héctor’s stance change—slowly, he put more weight on one hip, and his hands spent far too long at his waist. A dangerous thing was awakening inside him.
The new boy, Moisés decided, could not stay.
THE PENULTIMATE DAY of 1956 brought with it an ancient ritual. An orange gibbous moon rose in the afternoon. José María descended a steep hill through the rain forest, following Aníbal, Magón, and Asdrúbal, who in turn followed Moisés as he led a gargantuan hog to a clearing. The pig weighed no less than seventy kilos and was ready for slaughter.
“We are not allowed to kill it close to the house. My mother cannot stand the screams,” Magón whispered to José María.
The hog remained abnormally calm. A pig’s intelligence is like that of a man, José María once heard, and it knows perfectly well when it’s going to die. How rare that an animal accepts its fate.
At the clearing, Aníbal practiced sledgehammer swings, leaving deep dents in thick-trunked trees. The pig stoic beside Moisés, who leered at José María. His gray eyes almost completely white this evening. Asdrúbal sharpened a long knife with a spherical rock. Magón and José María chatted, pondered the existence of Man and of pigs, how similarly they are set up to be butchered.
When the time came, Asdrúbal held the pig’s head in place by its jowls. Several small children came out from the forest in every direction. Their arms dangled from their shoulders like broken branches. They attempted to disguise their mouths, already gobbling in anticipation. Aníbal readied his hammer and swung down, cracking the pig’s skull, sending its body limp to the grass. Asdrúbal drove the knife into its jugular, and a geyser of blood erupted, frothing like soap. As the brothers carved its body open, the children tossed rocks at the intestines, which exploded with excrement and bile. The children tugged the ears from the dogs and wore them as their own. Magón retched onto the roots of a large tree. He had taken after his mother.
As dusk settled on the horizon, Moisés led everyone back up the hill. He carried the ribs folded in banana leaves. Between the three brothers and José María went the chops, the pig’s feet, its fatty belly and jowls. At the top of the hill, José María noticed a tall, dead tree. Dozens of vultures crowded its branches like upright fruit. Their feathers black and lustrous. Obsidian blades on their wings.
That night, the locals from the Brunka tribe put on their famous dance of the Diablitos. Moisés sacrificed the hog in honor of the ceremony, and the dancers chewed mouthfuls of pork behind their balsa-wood masks, painted every color one finds in the forest; the dyed wood shimmering in the aura of the bonfire around which everyone crowded to watch.
First, a horde of men dressed in gangoche cloth and dried banana leaves filed onto the stage—their masks of jaguars, mongooses, parrots, and other spiritual protectors. Flutes whistled into the night, harmonizing with the crackling fire. Drums and the players’ stomping decided heartbeats tonight.
The Brunka people had come to this land almost a millennium ago, hunting a sounder of giant boars over hundreds of kilometers of rain forest, sharp arrows and spears in hand. Eventually they ended up here in Boruca in the Talamanca mountain range. The conquistadors found them five hundred years ago. When they stumbled upon the tribe’s worship and dances, they called them devils.
Over the drumming, a player dressed as a bull charged into the group of dancers, ramming its horns into the jaguar, knocking the mongooses to the ground. A bestial Spaniard conquering the Indians, feeling their fresh blood on its fur and liking it. Moisés, the leader of the group, clad in an extravagant feathered jaguar mask, entered the dance and began to shriek. He blew into a conch, calling ancestors and the animals of the forest to vanquish the Spanish bull and its lust for conquest. Moisés’s gray eyes fixed on José María, who sat in the front row next to Héctor. The boys, in awe of the performance, scooched closer to each other, their terrified mouths wide open with fibers of pork strung from their teeth. This sent Moisés’s rage spraying in all directions, and the audience cheered, mistaking it for a dedicated performance.
Doña Lucía smoked the rest of the pork, and after five hours of merriment and congratulations to the dancers, everyone headed to their respective bungalows to sleep.
José María and Héctor lay down quietly together. There was enough space between them to fit another person. In the silence, José María admired the fireflies, while the performance of the Little Devils replayed in his mind.
“José María,” Héctor said, shifting to face him. “¿What is the matter?”
“Nothing. Just ate too much, I guess.”
“Yeah, me too. I feel heavy.”
José María laughed and stared up at the dark. A firefly landed on his lips. Héctor brought his hand to José María’s face and caressed his jaw. The firefly danced away.
“Héctor,” José María said. “¿What are you doing?”
“I do not know…”
José María felt Héctor’s cool breath on his chin. José María sprang up.
“¿What the fuck are you doing, Héctor?”
Héctor trembled and stood up from the bed. The darkness that had at first brought them closer now pushed them apart. Both their bodies shook with rage, confusion. Something warm spread throughout their leg muscles and lower parts. Héctor ran out of the cabin, leaving José María alone and fuming, his jaws and teeth clenched like a trap.
From outside the compound came whistling, both familiar and unfamiliar. José María left the cabin and followed it down the path that connected all the houses at Ojo de Tigre. Every structure stood on stilts, designed specifically for mudslides and snakes. Their gabled tin roofs sparkled in the orange moonlight. It must have been four in the morning, and there was no sign of Héctor anywhere.
When José María turned to go back to his cabin, he heard an oncoming flood. The rain forest surrounding Ojo de Tigre rustled as if a powerful river rushed through it. The sound woke everyone, and they came out of their sleeping quarters with torches and lanterns, their eyes still sticky with dreams. From the sloping eastern hill, a stampede of wild boars—the size of oxen, their bristles long, protruding needles—hurtled through Ojo de Tigre, ramming their tusks into the houses’ stilts, attacking its residents with their white, gnarled mouths.
Screams shook the night, echoing the dance of the Little Devils. Hooves clacked, tusks percussed into wood, and the dark was alive with frantic footsteps. Dancers who’d stayed awake celebrating around the bonfire backed away from the boars, so close to the flames their shirts singed. But the beasts ignored them—avoided all the Brunka residents, for that matter. The animals only attacked Don Amable’s family and workers with light skin.
Aníbal, Magón, and Asdrúbal each took on a boar, swinging their machetes with swordsmen’s strokes. The younger brothers ran to protect their mother and sisters, who in turn threw pots at the herd. Doña Lucía aimed knives into hides, covering Don Amable, who led his sons in battle. He flailed the sledgehammer about, breaking legs, smashing hooves.
Alone on the path, José María stood motionless, urine trickling down his leg. He watched helplessly as a monstrous boar with white eyes, the largest of the herd and with tusks as long as an elephant’s, charged at him. In that moment, José María resigned himself to death. He’d been powerless throughout this life. He’d cowered with his siblings underneath the bed as his father’s shadow beat their mother’s every night. He’d run away from his home. He’d not been living but rather floating through this life, clinging to survival, with no happiness in sight. Only Teresa on that beach promised him hope, but before the giant boar, that seemed so far away. A future snatched from him yet again. Everything in his life, including this final moment, was rife with defeat. Life had defeated him, and he would face that defeat with dignity, as a real man does.
But before the boar could reach José María, Héctor appeared, pushing him out of its path. He gave José María a faint smile before the tusks ran through his chest and his left arm. They sank into his flesh as effortlessly as nails into wood, and José María heard his friend’s bones crumble. The boar, its white mouth stained crimson, looked on as if frightened, as if contrite, at José María; it shook Héctor from its tusks. The three elder brothers arrived and chased it off with their machetes, while Don Amable and Doña Lucía howled into the dawn, cradling what was left of their boy.
José María couldn’t stand the sight and ran away as fast as he had ever run, lunging through kilometers of jungle until he found a road. He was never sure if he had run all the way to Barrio Ávila. That night’s color, its smell of embers and liquid iron, and the feeling of warm blood on his face, would stay in his memory forever.