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CHAPTER 2 The Magistrate Who Didn’t Know How to Rule

Mariquita, October 29, 1993

FOR MORE THAN A week, Rosalba had been closely watching the sky. Each time she looked, the clouds and the sun, the moon and the stars, everything above her village had seemed a little farther away. Today, as she stepped outside of her house and looked up at the sky once more, she decided that her green eyes weren’t lying. It was true: Mariquita was sinking. She crossed herself and started down the street, toward the plaza.

Rosalba viuda de Patiño, as she liked to introduce herself, was the widow of the police sergeant. She was a comely woman with a pale complexion, thin arms and legs, a small waist, and the largest bottom of all the women in Mariquita. She wore her long chestnut hair gathered up in a chignon at the nape of her neck, and she had a mole between her eyebrows that looked as if a fly had settled on her forehead. When she laughed—a rare occurrence since her husband’s death—she squinted and her mouth opened in an oval wide enough that the many silver fillings of her molars flashed. She was forty-six, but the deep creases around her eyes—which now lingered after she stopped laughing—and the thin, freckled skin of her hands made her look much older.

Walking down the main street, Rosalba noticed a few new piles of garbage and rubble. They kept rising everywhere. With the village sinking, it was just a matter of time before the widows and their children found themselves immersed in trash. The rickety old man with the rickety old truck that used to come to Mariquita once a week to collect the garbage had stopped coming soon after the day the men disappeared. With the town’s treasurer and the magistrate gone, who was going to pay for his services? Not the widows. They had other priorities, like feeding their children and themselves.

“Damned old man!” Rosalba said without stopping. She turned left at the corner and encountered a new deserted house, the Cruzes’. Since the men disappeared, several women had left Mariquita with their remaining children, their elders and whatever they could manage to carry on their mules or their own backs. In less than a year Mariquita’s population had been significantly reduced. Abandoned houses had sprung up on every block and were soon dismantled. Roofs, doors, windows, flooring, everything was removed that could be removed until all that was left of them were four adobe walls with two or three openings of various shapes. Rosalba knitted her brow and kept walking.

Lately, she had gotten into the habit of sitting on a bench in the plaza to watch the villagers going about their ordinary occupations. Indifferent old women draped in black lace on their way to church; young women shouting at intervals that they were selling fresh arepas, used clothes, soap, candles, etc.; half-naked children following them, begging for the things they sold, waiting for the women to lower their guard so they could steal something, anything, from them. After a few minutes, the tediousness of the routine would prove unbearable, and Rosalba would find someone to talk to. Today she sat down on a bench half covered in bird droppings. The bench faced the distant sun, which was just breaking through the also distant morning clouds.

Three biblical-looking women wearing long nightgowns and bearing large water jugs appeared from around a corner. Orquidea, Gardenia and Magnolia, the Morales sisters, were on their way to the river, which was nearly an hour away on foot. Long ago, the men of Mariquita had dammed and channeled a nearby stream to provide running water for kitchens and laundry areas in the village. Now it was nothing but weed-infested tubes. A year of unusually dry weather had dried up the stream and the aqueduct and ruined most of the crops, leaving the women and children in the grips of famine as well as drought.

“Good morning,” Rosalba shouted to the Morales sisters.

None replied.

Rosalba looked around for someone, anyone, to talk to; to complain to about the poor manners of the three sisters and other things that bothered her. There was no one.

“Everyone must be busy doing nothing,” she said bitterly, addressing an old mango tree that stood next to her. “I’ve never seen women more passive than the widows of this village. We’re running out of food and don’t even have manure to fertilize the soil. It’s true that we’re going through a dry spell, but we can’t blame nature for our hardship. Not when we haven’t done a thing. All this time we’ve been sitting here, complaining, waiting for the news of our predicament to travel across the mountains and reach Mr. Governor. For Mr. Governor to meet with his council. For them to notify the central government. For Mr. President to meet with his congress. And for the congress to authorize Mr. President to authorize the council to authorize Mr. Governor to authorize someone else to offer some assistance to a bunch of stupid widows in some dry region somewhere…”

A small flock of half-starved pigs appeared, followed by their shepherd, Ubaldina viuda de Restrepo, who was yelling abuse at them. She was the widow of Don Campo Elías Restrepo—once the richest man in town—and she had lost him and seven stepsons to the rebels. Ubaldina kept her pigs in a little barbed-wire-fenced shed at the rear of her garden. She herded them around town twice a day so the animals could feed themselves on trash. She had marked their left ears with red paint, and she counted them several times a day to make sure none had been stolen.

The pigs stopped every few seconds to ransack each pile of garbage they came across. “Move, you stupid beast!” she yelled at the skinniest one. It was well behind the rest.

“When am I getting my chops, Ubaldina?” Rosalba shouted. She hadn’t eaten meat in over three months, even though she had paid, long ago, for two full pork chops.

“Maybe next week,” Ubaldina replied. “I still haven’t sold the ears and the feet.”

Ubaldina, who had been left with two useless refrigerators at home after Mariquita’s electricity had been cut off, would only kill an animal when every part of it had been sold.

“A disaster for the poor is an opportunity for the rich,” Rosalba whispered to the tree. “You know how much that greedy woman charges for a pound of meat of those garbage-fed pigs? Three thousand pesos! To be able to afford some, I had to rent the back room of my house to Vaca. You know, the cobbler’s widow, the big-eyed Indian who’s always chewing her cud. Why, of course Ubaldina knows that! I told her myself. She simply doesn’t care. But I’m not the only one. You know Lucrecia Saavedra? The old seamstress? The poor thing had to barter her spare pair of scissors for tripe to make soup!”

As Rosalba was complaining to the tree, a small convoy of green Jeeps spattered with mud pulled into town. The women rushed out of their houses, imagining that it was relief sent by the government. Fifteen strangers in military uniforms got out of the Jeeps in complete silence. In the same silence they went about the filthy streets of Mariquita, followed closely by unclothed children and mothers with their hands outstretched, chanting, “Please, please, please…” The soldiers asked a few questions of el padre Rafael, the priest (the only man the guerrillas hadn’t taken). They wrote their findings in small notebooks. They also took photographs of the dilapidated plaza, and of the large group of women that had gathered around the Jeeps to beg.

The oldest of the military men climbed onto the hood of his Jeep and tried to appease the widows. He was a short, fair-haired fellow with an ill-favored aspect. His skin was sweaty and shiny, and his face had scars of various shapes and lengths. “My name is Abraham,” he began in a gentle voice that didn’t match his appearance. “We’re not here to give our condolences on your loss, though all of you have our deepest sympathies. We’ve come to evaluate the material damage done to your village so that you can be compensated accordingly.” He reinforced his statements with swift motions of his small hands. “Unfortunately, it’s going to take some time before any help can reach you. You see, our nation’s undergoing yet another undeclared civil war. Many villages were attacked by guerrillas and paramilitary groups before yours, and so…” Despite the disheartening news he was delivering, the little man appeared to have hypnotized the women and children. They stared at him entranced, as though waiting for him to lay eggs or sweat milk. Only one woman remained in full control of her senses: Rosalba viuda de Patiño.

“We appreciate your honesty, señor,” she interrupted Abraham’s speech. “But tell us, who’s going to provide us and our children with food until we get some rain?”

“I’m afraid that I don’t have an answer for that, señora, but—”

“And what about clothing? These rags we have on will soon fall apart.” She quickly turned toward the women and said, “Are we supposed to walk around naked like Indians for the rest of our lives?”

“Señora, listen to me—”

“No,” Rosalba interposed, turning to the man. “You listen to us. Did you by any chance take pictures of our empty cisterns and our trash piled up everywhere? Did you write in your little notebook that our village is sinking?”

“Or that we haven’t had electricity for a year?” Ubaldina, the pigs’ owner, echoed her.

“Or that the only telephone in town doesn’t work?” shouted Magnolia Morales from the back.

More women began to angrily shout their complaints, making Abraham nervous. He knew that if the storm of protests turned into a riot, he and his fourteen men alone would not be able to control it. Not only did the women outnumber them, but they and their children were also hungry. People were more likely to revolt when they had empty stomachs.

Suddenly, Rosalba broke into tears. “What are we going to do?” she wailed. “We’re all going to die of hunger, buried in rubbish, and only the vultures will notice.”

“Señora,” said Abraham, bewildered by Rosalba’s shifting attitude. “What this town needs is a strong leader like you. Why don’t you take up the office of magistrate until the government decides what to do?”

“I know nothing about civil law or judicial procedures,” she confessed to Abraham, wiping the tears from her eyes with the back of her hands, “but my husband was Mariquita’s police sergeant. A very brave man who sacrificed his life fighting the rebels.”

“That alone,” Abraham replied, “makes you the perfect leader for this village.”

He didn’t intend for Rosalba to take his suggestion seriously; he only wanted to stop her from wailing. But the woman, who was not accustomed to compliments of any sort, surprised him by accepting the job. Abraham got down off the Jeep and hand-wrote a document designating her the acting magistrate. Then he made it official by singing, tunelessly and along with his soldiers, the Colombian national anthem.

ON HER FIRST full day as magistrate, Rosalba left for her office at seven. She wore a white apron on top of her black dress, and carried a broom, a mop and a bucket filled with soapy water. She also had a stub of a pencil tucked behind her ear, and, in the pocket of her apron, a small notebook and her pistol. As she went down the main street, she thought of the grand things she would do for Mariquita. Every time an idea came into her head, she stopped, put down the cleaning supplies, pulled out her notebook and pencil and wrote it down on her list of priorities. Bring back running water into town. Develop an irrigation system for crops. Send someone into the city for some fertilizer and seeds.

Mariquita’s municipal office was a small house by the plaza. On the front wall was a plaque that still bore the name of the former magistrate, Jacinto Jiménez. The guerrillas had executed him in front of his horrified wife and children, then taken away his eighteen-year-old son. The poor Jiménez widow cried for days. But then, one morning, she packed her clothes and her many pairs of shoes and together with her two daughters left for Ibagué, where she soon married a butcher who made her happy again. Before she left, she gave Rosalba (they’d been very good friends) the key to the municipal office.

The magistrate was surprised at how easily the key turned in the lock after almost a year. She pushed the door open and was greeted by a number of squeaky bats that had made the office their home. She stepped aside, repelled. The hideous creatures fluttered around and crashed into the walls, disturbed by the shaft of light coming in through the door. Rosalba waited for them to quiet. Then, with an air of determination, she went inside, unlocked and opened the only window and watched the flock of bats swoop past her head and fly out of the building. She began dusting the furniture of her office, interrupting her duties now and then to write in her notebook. Organize cleaning squads to sweep the garbage off the streets. She brushed the cobwebs from the corners of the ceiling. Have a team of women sow rice, cotton and drought-tolerant sorghum. She rearranged the bookcase and the shaky coatrack and moved the desk from one corner to another. Restore electricity seven days a week. She swept and mopped the floors twice. Make the telephone work again. She brought in a beautiful begonia in a flowerpot and placed it in a corner. Reopen the school. Finally, the magistrate burned eucalyptus leaves to free the room from evil spirits.

When she was finished, Rosalba stood behind the old mahogany desk and looked around. Her office was now the cleanest and neatest place in the entire village. She was content. She squeezed her opulent behind into the chair and slid her hands across the smooth surface of the desktop. “I’m going to bring Mariquita back to what it used to be,” she said. “No, what am I saying? I’m going to transform it into a much better village than the men could have ever created. I know how to do it. After all, I’m a born leader.”

ROSALBA WAS FROM the town of Honda by the Magdalena River. When she was fourteen, her mother choked to death on a fish bone. Rosalba took charge of the house and her four younger brothers, assigning chores to each member of the family, from simple tasks like peeling potatoes to more difficult jobs like grinding corn in the wooden mortar. Even her youngest brother, who was only four, had a duty: to bring water from the river for cooking and cleaning. Rosalba’s strict enforcement of the rules earned her the resentment of her brothers. Everyone had to be up at six in the morning and in bed by eight at night. A daily sponge bath in the cold water of the river was mandatory. Prayers had to be recited before every meal and at bedtime. Bowls of steaming soup had to be eaten completely. “Por favor” and “Muchas gracias” were required at all times, while complaints, fights and curse words were considered punishable offenses.

Rosalba gave everyone haircuts the last Sunday of every month and clipped their nails every other Saturday. She cooked three meals a day for the entire family, washed their clothes and took care of her small garden, where she grew lettuce, cilantro, onions and carrots. On Saturdays and Sundays she and her brothers went to the public school, where they learned to read and write. She practiced her cursive handwriting until it was neat and beautiful.

She was extremely careful with the little money her father gave her, but the other members of her family didn’t approve of her priorities. While her brothers wore the same old plaid shirts and jeans every day, passing them down as they got too small, Rosalba had windows installed in the front of their mud shack, and the earthen floor covered with tiles. She bought herself a portable transistor radio to listen to the news and soap operas, from which she learned about wealthy landowners madly in love with beautiful young servants. Rosalba preferred the news. She was courted by several fishermen, from whom she accepted the best catches of the day, but no invitations to dinner or to the Sunday afternoon dancing party. Her expectations for herself went far beyond fishermen.

It was not until her father remarried a few years later that her dictatorship came to an end. Doña Regina, her stepmother, had rules of her own. The woman freed the boys from their duties and assigned all the household chores to Rosalba—all but the gardening. Doña Regina was an enthusiastic gardener. Rosalba thought her stepmother was wicked. How dare that odious woman come into her newly renovated house and tell her what to do? Look how well-mannered her brothers were. They were much better trained than the stepmother herself was. The woman often complained about Rosalba’s cooking, she never said “Por favor” or “Gracias,” and she cursed in front of Rosalba’s brothers. The situation worsened when Doña Regina began talking to her husband behind Rosalba’s back.

“She spends most of the money on lottery tickets,” Doña Regina lied. “Meanwhile we have to eat rice and chicken gizzards every day. Look how hungry your sons are.” She pointed at the youngest one, who was naked on the floor, eating the scraps he found inside his own nose. In the face of such evidence, Doña Regina was immediately authorized to manage the family budget. She went food shopping that same day and came back with bags full of delicacies they hadn’t seen in more than three years: steaks, pork chops, cheese and even a cake. The next day she bought shirts for the four boys and her husband, and a dress for herself. She bought nothing for Rosalba. Not even batteries for her portable radio, which Doña Regina considered an extravagance.

The tension between the two women kept growing, and after countless arguments and fights, Rosalba finally left on a sunny Monday morning. She took only her radio and a sharp knife and walked south, ignoring the many truck drivers who offered her a ride in exchange for her favors. Before the end of the day she made out a village in the distance: Mariquita, at that time a settlement of less than one hundred people. Rosalba could never explain to herself how or why, but at that precise moment she knew that there, in that distant village, she would live for the rest of her life; and there, in that village, she would never be just an ordinary woman. Never.

TWENTY-EIGHT YEARS LATER, Rosalba found herself sitting in the most important chair in Mariquita, surrounded by its four most significant walls. The wall on the left displayed the Colombian flag, frayed at the edges, its three colors almost faded into one. The wall on the right was blessed with a large wooden crucifix with a headless Jesus (the woodworms had been nibbling at it for quite a while). The wall in front of her desk was adorned with a framed picture of the current president of the republic. And the one behind her had a replica of the national coat of arms, which read “Libertad y Orden”—Freedom and Order.

Rosalba rose and walked to the window. She felt daunted by what she saw: a dilapidated plaza surrounded by dying mango trees, stone benches covered in bird droppings, a few broken lampposts and a tangle of wires that once had brought electricity into town five days a week, and which now dangled pointlessly between moss-covered poles. She went back to her desk, disappointed. Not so much in the view as in herself. She had seen this same ruin every day for the past year. Had she really expected the plaza to look any different through the window of her magisterial office? What a fool she was! Mariquita would only show improvement when she, Rosalba, put her management skills to work. She was a strong and capable woman. Have a team prune and water the mango trees. She’d always been the decision maker. Get the benches cleaned.

A voice in the distance interrupted her train of thought. “Compañeras!” she heard a woman yell. “We’re all suffering from hunger and from the loss of our male relatives. Let’s put ourselves in the hands of the Lord. Only He can save us.” Rosalba rushed back to the window. The voice belonged to the Jaramillo widow. She stood, a little stooped, in a corner, inviting the community to join her in saying a public rosary. She was wearing a red dress and had an oversized chaplet tied around her waist. The magistrate was incensed. First, how dared the Jaramillo widow wear a red dress when the entire town was in mourning? And second, how could she expect so much from God? What had He done for Mariquita? Their village was in wretched poverty, marked for doom as surely as the Jaramillo widow. And what had the Lord done for that pious woman? She had lost her entire family: her husband and two younger sons had been shot dead by guerrillas when they refused to join them, and Pablo, her eldest, had left for New York long ago in search of a better life and never been heard from again. The Jaramillo widow was thinner and poorer than ever. There was even talk about her going mad. And yet there she was, shouting that only the Lord could save Mariquita…. Suddenly, the magistrate realized that she had a very strong rival and that it wasn’t the Jaramillo widow. The Lord Himself was out to defeat Rosalba.

Her biggest challenge now would be to persuade the women to forget about miracles and put their faith in the only flesh-and-blood leader there was in Mariquita. She knew she’d have to work hard to convince them that it was she, not the Lord, who’d eventually bring back the electricity and running water. She, the magistrate, who’d reopen the school. She who’d procure the seeds and fertilizers that would provide the villagers with food. Rosalba walked back to her desk, straightening her shoulders with each step. She seized her list of priorities, and, feeling the fear rise up in her, she wrote: Win the villagers over to my side. Forbid the use of bright-colored garments at any time. Finally, Change the plaque outside the municipal office to read “Rosalba viuda de Patiño, Magistrate.”

THE PROSPECT OF competing against the Lord was terrifying. Until today, Rosalba’s relationship with Him had not been entirely bad. In fact, going to church had been the first thing she did the night she arrived in Mariquita in 1964. She remembered clearly how el padre Bartolomé, a ninety-three-year-old priest, had listened patiently to her sad story and offered her shelter in exchange for work in his kitchen. Rosalba quickly organized the priest’s untidy house and created a weekly schedule of hearty meals, which were highly praised by the priest.

At the same time, her green eyes and generous behind caught the attention of the only three single men in town. They saw her every Sunday afternoon sitting alone on a bench by the plaza, reading or listening to the news on her portable radio. She seemed unapproachable in her fluffy white dress and straw hat that the priest had bought for her, and for that reason the three young men contented themselves with watching her from the ice cream parlor. It was Rosalba who took the first step by showing them her perfect teeth. They waved. She closed the book she was reading—the life of Joan of Arc—and looked the other way. The nervous men tossed a coin to decide who would have the opportunity to approach her first.

Vicente Gómez was the lucky one. He smoothed down his bushy eyebrows with his forefingers and walked boldly in her direction. After the formal greeting, Vicente found himself answering a list of questions for which he wasn’t prepared: “What do you want to be in five years?” “How many children would you like to have?” “Will you let your wife manage your family budget?” “What do you think of wives ruling their homes?” “How often do you bathe?” “Do you like listening to the radio?” Vicente couldn’t understand why she asked so many questions, but he answered all of them: He wanted to be a barber, have six children, manage the budget himself, and let his wife rule the house. He bathed every other day and thought the radio was the greatest invention of all times. Rosalba sent him home with a kiss on his cheek. Do I want to be a barber’s wife? she thought.

Rómulo Villegas came next and wasn’t even allowed to finish the inquisition. He said he was going to open a cafeteria, have at least a dozen children, manage the budget and rule his house. At that point Rosalba turned on her radio, brought it to her ear and opened her book, pretending Rómulo wasn’t there.

At last it was the turn of Napoleón Patiño. He was a slender man with long, greasy hair and bulging eyes. He looked vulnerable with his hands hidden inside his pockets and his head sunken between his shoulders.

“How often do you bathe?” Rosalba asked right away, detecting a peculiar stink.

“Every Monday.”

“I’m not surprised.” She sniffed once again and wrinkled her brow. “And your fingernails. How often do you clip them?”

“I don’t clip them. I eat them.” His voice was low-pitched, and he avoided Rosalba’s eyes. She proceeded with her questions and found out that Napoleón would like to be a police officer, have one child, allow his wife to manage the budget and rule the house, and he owned a radio. He’s not bad looking, she thought, but he cannot be just a police officer. He’ll be the police sergeant of Mariquita.

After exchanging glances, love letters and poems for nearly three months, Napoleón and Rosalba got married and rented a house near the plaza. Many years later they would buy it in partial payments from Don Maximiliano Perdomo, a rich landlord who owned half the houses of Mariquita and the surrounding coffee farms. The young couple witnessed the slow growth of Mariquita: they helped build the first elementary school in 1968, and the telephone office in 1969. They encouraged their friends Vicente Gómez and Rómulo Villegas to pursue their dreams. In 1970, Napoleón became the first man to have his hair cut at Barbería Gómez, and early in 1971, the couple ate the first meal ever served at Cafetería d’Villegas. In 1972, together with their neighbors and friends, they planted young mango trees along each side of the unpaved streets. The following year they watched the first lampposts being installed around the plaza. Theirs was also the first home in Mariquita with a black-and-white television set—an enormous apparatus standing on four thick feet, like a cow, with a small screen encased in the middle and three round dials on the right side. Rosalba bought it on her first trip to Ibagué in 1973. In 1974, Rosalba and Napoleón ate lunch at the same table with the governor of the moment, who came into town to inaugurate a paved road that connected Mariquita with larger cities in the south.

The road made the village an attractive stop for people traveling between Fresno and Ibagué. People stopped to drink batidos of fresh fruit, use the public lavatory, stretch their legs, or just appreciate, and even take pictures, of the color-coordinated houses with their facades painted yellow, blue and red, like the nation’s flag, and their roofs covered with terra-cotta tiles.

With its warm days and cool nights and the genuine hospitality of its inhabitants, Mariquita was a pleasant place to live. For that reason, some of the visitors who stopped by never left, like Don Jacobo Morales and his pregnant wife Doña Victoria, who arrived in 1970. They were on their way to Ibagué to deliver their third child in a private hospital, but after she drank a guava shake, Doña Victoria’s contractions began, and she was immediately admitted to Mariquita’s cozy infirmary. Seven hours later, she gave birth to a little girl and named her Magnolia. Doña Victoria spent the customary forty-five days recovering in the Patiños’ home, until she managed to convince her husband to sell their country house and move to Mariquita.

POOR VICTORIA, THE magistrate thought, as she dusted the framed picture of the president one more time. After all she went through to keep her son Julio César from being taken by the guerrillas, and now he won’t speak or stop dressing like a girl. I should pay her a visit soon. The shrill cry of a cat outside made her go to the window and peep out. The cry could have come from any of the four corners of the plaza. Rawboned dogs and cats rummaged about in the piles of garbage, fight ing Ubaldina’s pigs and Perestroika, the Solórzano widow’s cow, over rotten scraps of food, corn husks, plantain leaves and human waste. Watching them, she became nauseated. The magistrate decided that everything looked much worse through the window of her new office.

She vowed to clean up the plaza. After all, she was Rosalba viuda de Patiño: competent, efficient, resourceful. She had spent her life cleaning up messes. This wouldn’t be any different. Besides, it would put her ahead of the Lord in the eyes of the villagers.

She rushed back to her desk, and as her posterior landed on the chair, the zipper of her dress broke. Annoyed, she shook her head and went over her list of priorities. Organize cleaning squads to sweep the garbage off the streets was number four. She frowned. With great care and the help of an eraser, she shifted the order, so that cleaning the streets became her number-one priority without hurting, in any way, the aesthetics of the list. Her handwriting really was exquisite. Another cat cried in the distance. She rolled her eyes and kept working on her list: Visit Victoria viuda de Morales. Have my two black dresses mended.

Rosalba owned many dresses, but only two of them were entirely black. She’d been wearing them ever since her husband was killed, and now they were frayed at the collar and hem. Before she hadn’t cared. She was in mourning—what did it matter if her clothes were tattered? But now she was the magistrate. She had to maintain a neat appearance. She’d have the old dresses patched over until they gave way. Then she’d have a new one tailored. Black, of course. It was the least she could do to pay her respect to the exceptional husband she had once had.

NAPOLEÓN PATIÑO HAD done everything in his power to please Rosalba. He’d have been content to remain a police officer for life, but Rosalba wanted more for him, and so he had worked diligently to earn the respect of his superior. Rosalba vividly remembered the proud look in his eyes when, after ten years, he was finally promoted to sergeant.

Her friends also regarded Rosalba very highly, and her husband’s salary allowed her to refurnish her house and buy a record player. The only thing marring her happiness was that after their third year of marriage, Napoleón was unable to get an erection. He tried eating bull’s penis soup and fish eggs, and drinking a fermented corn drink with honey and brandy. He also visited doctors in Fresno and Ibagué, but Rosalba’s sexual life remained limited to the sporadic caresses of Napoleón’s fingers, or her own. She consoled herself by thinking, At least I have his devotion.

Being the police sergeant of Mariquita had been an easy job at the beginning. Except for the sporadic fights among drunkards in El Rincón de Gardel—the town’s bar—and the disputes of prostitutes over the wealthy patrons in Doña Emilia’s brothel, Mariquita was a peaceful town. There was no record of any person being killed or even seriously wounded. The doors and windows of every house remained wide open, except when it rained, and at night to keep wandering bats from landing on the beds. Nobody argued about politics. Everyone got along because their magistrate was designated by the central government. No matter what party he belonged to, he got equally drunk with supporters of the Partido Liberal and of the Partido Conservador. Naturally, there was some envy and hostility in Mariquita, especially among single women. On warm evenings they gathered in small groups around the plaza and savaged one another with caustic remarks about hair, outfits and reputations. But, as el padre Bartolomé used to say in his tuneless voice, “Overall, the good men and women of Mariquita observe each one of the Ten Commandments.”

“WHAT A GOOD soul el padre Bartolomé was,” Rosalba said, staring, vigilant, at the crucifix on the wall. She remembered how peacefully the old priest had died after falling asleep in the middle of a mass.

And then el padre Rafael had taken his place. When she’d first met him, Rosalba thought he was a virtuous and educated man endowed with celestial gifts. But throughout the years she’d realized that el padre Rafael was much more astute than he was virtuous or educated. She didn’t like him, but she had respect for him, especially now that he was the only “real” man left in town. One “real” man and God knew how many women. Wasn’t it the job of a magistrate to find out how many men had been taken and how many women were left? She would think so. The figures needed to be reported to the central government. Perhaps if they saw the count they would speed up the financial assistance. Take a census, she wrote in her list. She’d simply ask el padre Rafael to ring the church bell many times. People would rush to the plaza, and then she’d count them.

At that precise moment el padre Rafael rang the church bell, summoning the devoted to attend the early service. Since the men disappeared, he’d become lazy. He rose late, and he’d cut the daily religious services from three to two. He also was no longer fond of fixed schedules because, he would say, “Any time is good for God.” Mass was celebrated whenever it pleased him, and lunchtime was the only time of the day he announced with twelve resounding chimes. Now that Rosalba was at odds with the Lord, she could demand that el padre stop celebrating mass altogether. She could even run the idle priest out of town. But that wouldn’t be right, and she wanted to compete fairly. Instead, she wrote, Demand that el padre celebrate mass at seven in the morning and at six in the evening seven days a week.

“Rosalba,” a woman called through the window.

Who could it be bothering her this early? And why couldn’t they come knock on her door? Make myself available only by appointment, she wrote.

“Rosalba, you there?” a different voice shouted.

She moved to the window. About a dozen women in black, and a few naked, lice-ridden children with snotty noses, had crowded together outside the municipal office. They held their cupped hands, empty baskets, pots and gourds out to the magistrate. All of them had the same sorrowful look on their faces, as though they were in the most horrendous pain and Rosalba had the cure.

“What’s happening here?” said Rosalba, annoyed by the unexpected company. “What do you all want?”

“Help us, Rosalba,” the old Pérez widow begged, waving her container in the air.

The others joined her, “Help us. Help us.”

“If you want to talk to me, you must form a line,” the magistrate demanded.

The sight was quite overwhelming, even for a woman of her strength and bravery. Rosalba thought they should all be taken into custody for begging. But who was going to do it? Ever since her husband got killed, Mariquita hadn’t had anybody to maintain the public order and enforce the laws.

“You’re the magistrate, Rosalba. You must help us,” the Jaramillo widow demanded.

She wanted to yell at them to be quiet, to go away, to leave her alone.

“We’re hungry,” a different woman shouted.

She wanted to scream that she was no Jesus Christ to feed great crowds with little food.

“Help us. Help us.”

Rosalba thought that the baskets, pots and gourds were getting too close to her. And that the women’s bony hands were bound to strangle her. She felt short of breath, terrified. She walked a few steps back and slammed the window closed, padlocked it and threw the key in the wastebasket. Those women were awfully impatient. Couldn’t they wait until she was settled? Limp with exhaustion, she leaned with her back against the window and let her body slide down the wall until her buttocks landed softly on the immaculate floor of her office. She felt like weeping, but she didn’t. If a man could do this job, so could she. There was no such thing as the weaker sex. Women were made of flesh and bone, just like men. A woman with her two feet planted where they should be could work like a man, or even better. She imagined what a man would and wouldn’t do in a situation like this. A real man would never be scared of a bunch of starving women. And he’d never hide from them. A man would go out there and confront them, scold them, threaten to imprison them. And if a man were smooth, like a politician, he’d promise them the universe. Rosalba too could do that. Yes, she would go out there and confront the women. She would tell them that they had to be patient until she could figure things out. She might even promise them food and clean water. Maybe electricity. Although she knew that in a poor, broken town like Mariquita, any promise would be hard to keep.

Resolute, she rose and walked up to the door, but the memory of her husband’s last words kept her from turning the knob: “Never go anywhere without a gun,” he had said to her. Then he’d put on his sombrero, kissed her on the cheek and began taking chairs and tables outside so that he could play Parcheesi with his neighbors. Months later, Rosalba learned from a neighbor that her husband had won the first game before he got shot.

The magistrate opened the first drawer on the right side of her desk and searched for her pistol. She checked it for bullets. There were three, which was all that remained from her late husband’s ammunition. She held it firmly with both hands and looked around for a proper target. Her eyes found the picture of the president of the republic hanging on the wall. He was sitting behind a desk, his arms wrapped around his chest and his head leaning slightly to the right. His graceful posture and confident, almost sardonic smile disturbed Rosalba. “What are you smiling about, Mr. President?” she said out loud. “Are you making fun of a poor woman who doesn’t know how to manage a town full of widows? And you, where were you that day our men were taken away?” She stopped, as though waiting for the picture to reply. “All this time you’ve been sitting on your scrawny ass on your comfortable chair, hiding behind your stupid desk with your arms crossed and that phony smile of yours.” She turned her eyes slightly to the right. “And you,” she said to the crucifix on the wall. “Where were you the first night we went to sleep and realized that our husbands would never again be in bed with us? Where were you when we wandered around the streets with our noses close to the ground, ransacking the entire damn village for food?” Soon she decided that it was no use talking to a headless crucifix, and so she looked back at the picture and fixed her eyes on the small white spot between the president’s eyebrows. “You scumbag!” She lifted her gun slowly. “You piece of crap!” She was lost in reverie when she saw, from the corner of her eye, a dazed bat fluttering around. But she wasn’t finished with the picture: “Mr. President, you’re not even worth one of my bullets.” She waited until the bat landed on top of the bookcase. Then she aimed the gun at it and shot it.

The loud discharge caused the women and children gathered outside to flee, and Rosalba to get in a fluster. She grabbed her list and added the following tasks:

Hire a policewoman. Ubaldina viuda de Restrepo? Cecilia Guaraya?

Demand that no woman complain ever again.

Forbid gatherings of more than two people.

Prohibit the use of the word “Help.”

The church bell rang in the distance, announcing noon. So far Rosalba had cleaned her office thoroughly, relocated each piece of furniture, written a thoughtful and comprehensive list of priorities, and shut, permanently, that terribly harmful window of her office.

But she wasn’t entirely comfortable with her performance.

She closed her eyes and tried to visualize the ideal view of Mariquita through that window: a clear blue sky; the air perfumed with the scent of magnolias and honeysuckle; nightingales and canaries singing melodious tunes on her windowsill; a lively plaza surrounded by tall mango trees full of ripe fruit; little girls jumping rope on the sidewalk; healthy boys playing soccer on the clean main street; young men and women walking about hand in hand, in love; older couples sitting on immaculate benches, feeding each other flavored ice cones.

The magistrate opened her green eyes and sighed with resignation. She was now ready to acknowledge what in her heart she had known all along. Finally, she had clearly seen and understood what her first priority truly was, and how to achieve it.

She reached for her notebook and her pen, and at the top of the list, above everything else, she purposefully wrote:

Beg the Lord to send us a truck full of men.