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CHAPTER 5 The Widow Who Found a Fortune Under Her Bed

Mariquita, August 1, 1996

THE DREAM WAS SO incredibly vivid that when Francisca viuda de Gómez woke from it, she was awfully disappointed. In her dream she’d been in the kitchen, making lard soup for dinner, when she heard the church bell ringing insistently. She ran to the window and in the distance made out an endless line of male figures slowly coming down the mountain, toward the village. Mariquita’s men were coming back from the war!

Feeling more obliged by her moral duties than delighted by her husband’s imminent return, Francisca went outside to meet him. She stood under the mango tree across the street and waited. As the figures neared her house, Francisca noticed two things: the former guerrillas were all faceless, and except for their olive-drab peaked caps and knee boots, they were naked, with small penises and enormous testicles. Now, how would she recognize Vicente, her husband? She remembered that he had a distinctive scar shaped like a five-pointed star on the right side of his forehead. But each of these marching figures had the same flat, pale surface where his face used to be. The sun was setting, and there she stood, watching the mysterious figures march along the street, giggling nervously.

ANOTHER RAINY SEASON had begun, and a new leak had appeared in Francisca’s roof. She pulled a chamber pot from under her bed, put it next to the armoire where the roof was leaking, and watched how the rainfall mixed with her urine, creating tiny bubbles. She remembered that it was the first day of the month, and the thought put a smile on her face. With visible excitement she fetched, out of the drawer of her night table, a cloth bag and an ancient book of divinations called Veritas, which contained one thousand oracular messages. Veritas could only be consulted once on the first day of every month, by following two simple steps: First, formulate an explicit question while addressing the book. Second, pick, at random, a small numbered ball from a bag that contained one thousand of them. The chosen figure corresponded to the message that would answer one’s question. Francisca carried Veritas and the bag to her old rocking chair and sat down, and as she lifted the book from her lap with both hands, she said loudly to it, “Veritas, tell me, What’s the secret to happiness?” She had been asking the same exact question every month for the past few years. All the answers were vague and unintelligible, written in old-fashioned Spanish that Francisca could hardly read. Still, she found Veritas quite amusing and looked forward to the first day of every month.

She introduced her hand into the cloth bag and gave the thousand little balls a vigorous stir before drawing out the one with the number 739 written on it.

739. TRANSFORMATION

ARCANE:…And the light it gave off was dazzling and the heat was scorching and the flames overwhelmingly high, and yet fire and heaven never united.

EXEGESIS: All transformations in life must be considered in accord with the effect they bring about.

JUDGEMENT: If it brings you unhappiness, rid yourself of it.

Francisca repeated the prophetic message time after time, like a prayer, somehow sensing that, this time, Veritas had answered her question, and that the answer would have a great impact on her life. She put the book and the bag away and looked around the room thoughtfully. The one thing that brought her the most unhappiness was Vicente, her husband. But how to get rid of someone who dwells in one’s mind? The thought of it left her exhausted. She went back to the rocking chair.

Almost four years had gone by since the day the men disappeared from Mariquita; four years since Vicente Gómez, Mariquita’s barber, was kicked out of his house by guerrillas, brutally beaten and then forced to join them. All this time Francisca had secretly hoped that the insurgents would eventually realize that except for cutting hair, shaving beards and trimming mustaches, Vicente was of no use to a group of revolutionaries, or to the world, and kill him. She closed her eyes and made an effort to remember what Vicente looked like sitting on the toilet. This was a harmless memory exercise that she did almost every morning, the sole purpose of which was to let out some of the frustration she had accumulated over the years. To her surprise, today she only pictured the toilet—its white ceramic bowl, its hinged, plastic seat and lid, even the silvery flushing device. She tried a second time, and again she saw nothing but the deserted toilet. She was delighted to realize that without the help of his picture, she was no longer able to visualize her husband’s face. Like those of the men in her dream, Vicente’s face was nothing but a flat, pale surface with no facial traits whatsoever. Perhaps getting rid of her largest source of unhappiness was not as difficult as she had imagined.

The message had said something about transformation, and so Francisca decided she would change her life. She would introduce the changes gradually, so as not to upset the priest or the most puritan women. First, Francisca would wear her long hair down. She had beautiful coal black hair, too beautiful to be kept up in a graceless bun. Second, she’d request permission from the magistrate to wear dresses that were not black. After all, the other day she’d seen Cleotilde Guarnizo, the new schoolmistress, in a dress with yellow buttons on it. Then she’d concentrate on fixing her dilapidated house: mend the leaks and fill the chinks in the walls. She would have liked to paint her entire house bright red, but she couldn’t afford to. For the time being, all she could do to transform her house was to rearrange her scant furniture.

She began this task by pushing the shabby cedar armoire from one corner to another, except this time she placed it at an angle. She noticed that the part of the wooden floor on which the armoire had been resting, though covered with dust and cobwebs, was still smooth and glossy. It had taken her two years to convince her stingy husband to floor their house with pine boards. He’d argued that it was an unnecessary expense, and she’d replied that the dust from their earthen floor was killing her slowly. She even pretended to have a persistent cough, allergies, asthma and other respiratory problems. But it wasn’t until she claimed that the continuous inhalation of dust was keeping her from becoming pregnant that Vicente hired a carpenter, not only to floor their house with the smoothest pine boards he could find, but to polish them twice, three times, four times or, like he told the worker, “Until I can see my wife’s underwear reflected on them.”

Their marriage had not always been bad. Francisca remembered how much her husband used to enjoy making her believe he was truly guessing the color of her underwear. Eventually it became a daily game, and the merry couple agreed on a prize for the winner: every time Vicente guessed correctly he’d get a long kiss, but if he failed he’d give Francisca five hundred pesos. She found the game to be erotic, and so she bought revealing lingerie in unusual colors. Every morning he guessed right, and she rewarded him with a long kiss that usually led to passionate sex. As a result, Barbería Gómez often opened late for business. Francisca had figured out from the beginning that it was the shiny floor that gave away the color of her underwear, but she didn’t confess to him that she knew until after seven months. And even when she told him, they laughed together and kissed some more, and he gently rubbed her belly, surprised that it was almost unnoticeable. She was six months pregnant.

But now, all that was left of their love and merriment was a small, shiny rectangle on the lower part of her house, covered with dust. She dragged the rocking chair close to the window and emptied the chamber pot, which was on the brink of overflowing. She pulled and pushed the bed in every possible direction, and finally resolved to leave it in the middle of the bedroom so that her broom and mop could easily access all four corners of the room when she cleaned it.

It was then, after moving the bed around, that Francisca noticed a small piece of paper showing through the crack of a loose floorboard. It was a will signed by a Señorita Eulalia Gómez, stating that she had left her entire fortune—two hundred million pesos—to Vicente. Eulalia had been Vicente’s great-aunt, his only relative—a wealthy spinster who had died of old age in Líbano, her hometown, fifteen years before. With the help of a hammer Francisca pried up the board and found buried, under the dirt floor, underneath the bed where she had lain for many years, a large bag filled with bank notes. She felt a sudden rush of anger furiously traveling through her body. She moved randomly about the room and didn’t stop until she caught a glimpse of her own reflection in a piece of mirror hanging from the wall. She approached the mirror, cautiously, as though afraid it would cast back a monstrosity. But all she saw was a pitiful thing, a foolish woman who had spent more than half her married life living in poverty while her husband had a fortune buried under their bed. She abruptly flew into a rage and went around the house breaking dishes and glassware, knocking pictures off the walls, kicking chairs and tables and ripping down curtains. Finally, when she was completely exhausted, she fell to her knees with her hands flat, hitting the floor with her forehead, weeping.

She stayed like that for a long while, recalling how her husband had begun to change after he noticed that Javier, their son, wasn’t growing up as fast as the rest of the boys of Mariquita. And when Dr. Ramírez finally confirmed that their son was a midget, Vicente stopped talking to her for almost a year. He threw a large party for Javier’s fifth birthday, but the morning after, he locked his son in a room and forbade Francisca to let him be seen by anybody in town. He cut her weekly allowance in half, as if the size of their son dictated the amount of money she was permitted to spend. He started drinking every night and stopped eating at home, and when Francisca asked him for money to buy an extra pound of rice or a loaf of bread, he refused. Instead, he accused her of being a greedy, wasteful wife who spent her allowance heedlessly. For years Francisca lived poorly, buying only the bare essentials for the house, wearing torn clothes, looking for sales and discounts, begging for bargains, stretching to the maximum the insignificant amount of money that Vicente gave her weekly, and which he cut down even more every time he looked at his son.

And then Javier died. When the doctor pronounced his death due to malnutrition, Vicente blamed it on his wife. He told everyone in town that Francisca was a cruel, horrible mother and a coldhearted wife. And she believed it. She even wished herself dead because she’d birthed a midget and let him die and was most likely going to lose her husband too: that charming man who used to notice the color of her underwear and who was late for work every morning so that he could stay home making love to her.

Francisca rose from the floor and walked around the house collecting all her husband’s belongings—clothes, pictures, hats and shoes, shaving cream and his small collection of long-playing records. Then she gathered her own mourning apparel—dresses, veils, stockings, mantillas, scarves and any other piece of black cloth she came across. All these she crammed into a cardboard box and set in the doorway, then kicked it out violently, shouting: “If it brings you unhappiness, rid yourself of it!” Feeling proud of herself, she went back to her bedroom and dug her fortune out of the hole. The bank notes were all the same denomination––ten thousand––and they’d been arranged with the face of Colombian heroine Policarpa Salavarrieta facing up. Francisca had never seen so much money. She couldn’t imagine how she would ever spend two hundred million pesos. Perhaps she should move away from Mariquita; go to a big city where she could start a new life, a real life with a large house, a handsome husband and healthy children. Mariquita had nothing to offer a rich woman like herself. Yes, it was true that these days some women were farming and that food, though sometimes limited, was not lacking. But with food or without it, Mariquita was a miserable village where nothing happened. The only reason she’d stayed was because of her friends. She had very good friends; kind and loyal friends, like Victoria viuda de Morales, Elvia viuda de López and Erlinda viuda de Calderón, to name a few. What would happen to them if she left? Perhaps she should take some of them with her. Six or eight. Six sounded more realistic. But which six? Oh, what a dilemma! To think she had to wait a whole month before being allowed to consult Veritas again.

So many things could happen in a month…

She looked through the window. The rain had stopped, the sky had cleared and already someone had taken away the box she had thrown out onto the street. A bright new world was awaiting Francisca. She stacked her money on top of shelves and tables and chairs. Then she went to her room to get dressed.

When Francisca left her house, she had on a pair of red slacks and a yellow blouse that revealed a lot of cleavage. She’d brushed her hair long and smooth and put makeup on her face, and she had a bag slung over her right shoulder. She strode purposefully toward the market where she was known as “La Masatera,” because it was there, under a faded green tent, that she had sold the best masato in town for some four years. Her recipe for the fermented maize drink had been passed down among her ancestors for generations. When Francisca arrived, her friends and neighbors were meekly setting up their stalls and bringing out their scanty merchandise for selling and bartering. Some stretched their necks, some strained their eyes; all wanted to make certain that the woman violating the magistrate’s ban on bright-colored clothing was indeed “La Masatera.” Walking among her friends, Francisca, with her handbag full of pesos, felt somewhat different—a little prettier, a little more interesting.

She stood in the middle of the market and waited for the crowd to gather around her. Once she got everyone’s attention, she bluntly said, “I found a fortune buried under my bed.” She paused and waited for her friends’ reaction, which had already occurred in the form of astonishment, a form that Francisca, a rather thoughtless individual, mistook for incredulity. “Don’t you believe me?” she asked, her hands on her narrow hips. Before the women had the opportunity to reply, she opened her bag and flashed large rolls of bills. “And this is not even a hundredth of it,” she boasted in case there were any doubts. “I’m having a dilemma, though. Shall I stay in town or leave? What do you all think?” Disconcerted, the women looked at one another, Francisca’s words jumbled up in their minds. Francisca observed them long and hard. Poor things! she thought. They could never help me find an answer because they’re content here. They’re convinced that this is all they can manage. They’re so doubtful and insecure, so poor. She gave money to all her friends, then excused herself and headed for the magistrate’s office.

“The magistrate wishes not to be interrupted this morning,” Cecilia said without taking her eyes off of the typewriter. “Come back in the afternoon.” But Francisca was determined to see the magistrate. She took a couple of bills from her bag and with feigned discretion placed them on top of Cecilia’s typewriter.

“Perhaps if we pretend that you didn’t see me…” Francisca said. It took Cecilia a few seconds to establish the connection between the pesos in front of her eyes and the widow’s unfinished sentence––after all, no one had ever bribed her before––but once she understood the deal she snatched the money and made it disappear between her generous breasts.

The last time Francisca had been inside the magistrate’s office, she had brought a live pig and offered it in exchange for the schoolmistress’s job. Naturally, she’d been thrown out of the building. But today it was different: Francisca was rich. She straightened her shoulders and pushed out her chest and went inside the office. She found Rosalba sitting at her desk, writing what looked like a letter on a piece of yellowed paper.

“Magistrate, I came to see you because I’m in a quandary,” Francisca said at once. “And since you’re the most rational person in this town…”

Rosalba looked up when she heard this flattery.

“You see, I found a fortune under my bed this morning, and now I can’t decide whether or not I should leave Mariquita.”

The magistrate’s eyes traveled quickly from the widow’s groomed hair to her knees—which was all she could see from behind her desk. “It looks like someone needs to be reminded about Mariquita’s law,” she said, looking aggravated.

“Magistrate, this morning I learned that if something brings you unhappiness, you ought to rid yourself of it,” Francisca went on. “Unhappiness is all this town brings me. So on the one hand I think I should leave, but on the other hand I don’t want to abandon my dear friends to their terrible fate here.”

“Did you hear what I just said, Francisca?”

“Of course I could take a few of them with me, but which ones? And what would happen to the ones left behind? Please tell me, Magistrate, what would you do in my situation?”

“Well, first I’d change back into mourning clothes, and then I’d contribute half of my fortune to Mariquita’s ruined treasury.”

It was obvious to Francisca that the magistrate, like her friends, wouldn’t help her choose from the equally undesirable alternatives with which her new wealth had presented her. She abruptly turned and walked out of the office, thinking that, after all, Rosalba was not as rational as she’d thought.

Outside a large crowd awaited her. The rumor had spread that Francisca had found a fortune and was giving money away. “Please help us!” they all said, their hands outstretched. The youngest one stroked Francisca’s hair, another one massaged her hands; one even knelt before her as in worship. Francisca got furious because these women had no self-respect. Why did they have to demean themselves? When she was poor, Francisca had never kowtowed to anyone for money. Not even her husband. “Have some pride!” she yelled at them, swatting at their obsequious hands as if they were stinkbugs.

She hurried back to her house. Three of her friends were sitting on the steps, waiting for her.

“We need to talk to you, Francisca,” said the Marín widow, whose head and upper face were wrapped in a black veil, making her broad nostrils look as though they were her eyes. Francisca invited the group into her house.

“You shouldn’t leave Mariquita,” Police Sergeant Ubaldina said in a solemn voice.

“You must wait for your husband’s return,” the Calderón widow added.

“Vicente’s dead,” Francisca declared. “And so are your husbands.” She told the women about her dream and what the book had said, and then, to give some credibility to her outrageous statement, she asked each woman to close her eyes and imagine her husband’s face. After a short while, she asked them to tell her what they had seen. The three women were horrified to discover that all they remembered was hair coming out of a long nose or a large cataract in a black eye; that they had been weeping over an unkempt mustache, a gold tooth, or a hairy mole on a prominent chin. They couldn’t remember their men’s individual smells either, or the sound of their voices. Their husbands were but dusty pictures and trunks filled with wrinkled clothes that sooner or later would be eaten by insects. The three widows realized that their men had died in their hearts, and this thought filled them with guilt.

But the guilt didn’t last very long. Encouraged by Francisca—who now, being wealthy, was also assumed to be smart—the three widows went home and changed into bright-colored dresses. Before noon they met Francisca on the outskirts of Mariquita. Each widow had brought a bag filled with her husband’s belongings and her own mourning clothes. They piled up clothes, pictures, books, baseball caps, unopened packs of cigars and even a billiard cue. At the count of three, Francisca shouted, “If it brings you unhappiness, rid yourself of it!” and set fire to the pile. They sat there, staring into the growing blaze, giggling nervously as the flames gave forth light of various brilliant colors.

Before the end of the day Francisca went to church, confident that el padre Rafael would give her some good advice. The little man was fond of expressing his opinions and making recommendations. She knelt down behind a side panel of the basketwork folding screen that for years had served as the confessional. The screen, which had three panels, was intentionally folded in the shape of a letter U. Every evening before mass, the priest sat inside the U to hear confessions through the long, narrow openings he had cut on each side. Francisca didn’t need to tell el padre her story or ask for guidance—the magistrate had already told the priest everything he needed to know, as well as what counsel to give the confused woman.

“You should stay in town, dear,” el padre began, his tone more a subtle mandate than a wise word of advice. “Mariquita’s biggest problem is not the lack of men but the lack of resources. How much money is it you found?”

“Two hundred million pesos.”

“Very good. Now, if you invest a part of your money in a lucrative business here, you’ll be reactivating the town’s economy. Say, for instance, that you decide to reopen your husband’s barbershop. First you’ll need to hire people to do the construction work, which means you’ll create jobs, which means people will get salaries and spend their money in our own smaller businesses, which means there will be demand for other products and services. You’ll be helping Mariquita tremendously, and at the same time you’ll profit from your investment.” El padre’s voice was low-pitched, his sentences calculated. “Trust my words, dear!” he said with fervor.

From where she was kneeling Francisca couldn’t see the man who spoke the words she was compelled to trust, and she thought it was for the best. Ever since the first time she met him, Francisca had been somewhat troubled by the priest’s strange looks: his bald head never seemed a part of him—it was too large for his small frame—and his face, flaming pink, contrasted sharply and oddly with a black soutane that concealed the rest of him as if something deceitful and mysterious were living underneath it. Francisca had no other choice but to trust the man’s words. After all they were the only words of advice she’d been given concerning her quandary. She was silent for a while, contemplating her options. And then, as she glanced at the background of fading images and pews riddled with woodworm, she said, “How much do you want for the church, Padre?”

The question caught the priest by surprise. “I beg your pardon?”

“I’m taking you up on your recommendation, Padre. I want to have my own business, and your church seems to be the most lucrative house in town.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “How much do you want?”

“The house of God is not a commercial establishment!” he burst out.

“Oh, Padre, you know very well it is too. People come here to buy peace of mind. They pay you to intercede for them with your invisible Lord.” The words poured easily from her, arousing el padre’s ire.

“Be silent!” he shouted, his face redder than usual. “I will not have you speak about the Holy Church in your worldly terms.” He rose hurriedly and started to leave. But then stopped suddenly, as if he had forgotten something important in the confessional, and turned back. Addressing the screen behind which Francisca knelt, he said, “By God, you’ll be sorry you said that.”

IF SHE COULDN’T have the church, Francisca would have to make do with renovating Vicente’s old barbershop and reopening it as a beauty parlor. Of course she wouldn’t rely on Mariquita’s women to support her business—they were too plain. Instead she would attract refined women from other villages. They would be so pleased that the next time they would bring their friends, who would in turn bring theirs, and before long Francisca’s salon would have its own distinguished patronage. Very soon I’ll be a business owner, she thought before going to bed, and that thought stayed with her even in her sleep that night.

The next day she hired Orquidea, Gardenia and Magnolia Morales to repair the run-down barbershop for her. Francisca asked them to remove from the walls two yellowed posters—one advertised pocket combs, the other brilliantine—and several hooks where men used to hang their hats and coats. She ordered them to take down the unpolished framed mirrors, the counters and shelves and drawers, and to take out the two old conventional barbershop chairs. She continued having things removed and thrown out until the old Barbería Gómez was nothing but an empty room with a rusty metal door. As Francisca exited the shop, she was suddenly reminded of her husband; not by his personal equipment and furniture, which now lay in a defiant heap in front of the building, nor by the two incomplete words cheaply printed on the glass window: BARBE ÍA G MEZ; but by a crack between the doorway and the sidewalk, which was still filled with burnt matches, cigarette butts, candy wrappers and large amounts of dirty hair. She ordered her three employees to clean the crack and fill it in with putty.

Before going to bed that night, she looked at herself in the mirror. She wasn’t pleased with what she saw: a slender forty-six-year-old woman hoping to look thirty but actually looking over fifty. Her hair was smudged with gray, and the deep creases under her eyes looked more like ostrich’s feet than crow’s. Her hands were scarred by burns and cuts that would forever remind her that, unlike most women in Mariquita, she was unfit for the kitchen. She decided that, like the old Barbería Gómez, she too needed a major renovation.

The following morning Francisca put on her best dress and shoes and packed a large amount of money in a bag. The rest of her clothes and food supplies, she put in boxes and left on her doorstep for someone poor to take. She went to the old barbershop and assigned specific duties to each of the three Morales sisters. She’d be back in two weeks, she told them. She stopped by the school and, after having an argument with the rigid schoolmistress, got permission to take Vietnam Calderón for a few hours. The boy carried her on one of his mother’s three mules to the main road, where Francisca took a bus to Ibagué, the closest city.

When she arrived in Ibagué, she hailed a taxicab and asked the driver to take her to the best hotel in town. There she took a room. Later that day she went shopping at fashionable clothing stores. “I’d like to see trousers,” she said to the sales clerk. “Trousers and blouses in bright colors.”

She spent several hours trying on pants and blouses and coats of different styles, lengths and colors. She paid dearly for dozens of outfits and pairs of shoes with heels so high she couldn’t walk in them. Then she bought purses and belts to match them, and costly brooches and jewelry and silk scarves and gloves and hats and stockings to complement them. That night, when Francisca got back to her suite in the hotel and her new wardrobe was delivered, she unpacked all the bags, unwrapped each item and carelessly threw everything on the large bed. She lay naked on top of the jumble of clothes and accessories and luxuriated in the feel of silk blouses and scarves against her skin. She covered herself with a fur coat and closed her eyes. As her fingers traced the soft fur and the scent of animal skin mixed with the sharp smell of her perspiration, she began to fantasize. She pressed the tips of her fingers into her cheeks and fancied that her face was covered with animal fluff. She stroked her long hair and imagined that it, too, had turned into fur; that that magnificent coat, those clothes and shoes and belts surrounding her, had changed her into something else, a wild creature she’d always longed to be. Feeling afraid of her own reveries, Francisca opened her eyes. The coat still wrapped around her body, she rose from the bed and looked at herself in the mirror. She was still the same Francisca: old looking, with wrinkles around her eyes and scarred hands. What the mirror didn’t reflect and she couldn’t yet recognize, however, was another woman, a completely different Francisca growing fast inside the old one. That night she fell asleep thinking about what she would do next.

The following morning Francisca mistakenly wore a blouse that didn’t match her trousers that didn’t match her shoes that didn’t match her belt that didn’t match her purse, and she put on colorful makeup that, somehow and separately, matched everything she had on. She made an appointment with Ibagué’s most renowned hairstylist, a tall and strong man with long, black hair, who was nicknamed Sansón. Francisca walked into the salon looking like something which was in the process of transforming into something else, but was still far from achieving it, like an egg being hatched.

“I want to look like that,” she told Sansón, pointing at a stunning woman on a shampoo advertisement taped to the wall. The man glanced at the picture and back at her.

“It will cost you a fortune to look like her,” he earnestly said.

“Then you’d better start right away,” she retorted. Sansón dyed Francisca’s hair, cut it, brushed it and blow-dried it; his assistants plucked out her eyebrows, curled her eyelashes, clipped her nails and toenails, painted them, massaged her feet, removed her light mustache, gave her a facial and applied fresh makeup to her face. By the end of the day she not only felt like a completely different woman, she looked like one too. She didn’t resemble the woman on the advertisement in the slightest, but her new appearance gave her an unquestionable air of refinement far beyond her expectations.

The following day she registered for an intense one-week etiquette course with Don José María Olivares de Belalcazar, an old man who had fled his native Spain after the kingdom fell into the dictatorship of General Franco. Once in America, Don José María gave himself a noble title, marquess of Santa Coloma, which automatically made him a member of the small privileged upper class of Ibagué. (As the old adage says, “He who goes abroad presents himself as count, duke, or lord.”) The marquess made his living teaching etiquette because, according to him, “We discovered South America some five hundred years ago, and still these barbarians don’t know how to hold a fork.” Francisca was indeed the perfect illustration of his prejudiced statement: uncultured, unrefined, even vulgar. She learned from the marquess the most conventional rules of dining out. “First rule: Unfold your napkin on your lap soon after the host, not before. Second rule: The napkin remains on your lap throughout the entire meal and should be used to gently blot your mouth.” And so on. She also learned to use the correct silverware by starting with the utensil that was farthest from the plate. In her house in Mariquita there was only one fork, and it hadn’t been used since her husband had disappeared. Francisca preferred to eat with her fingers and a wooden spoon.

With her fine clothes, new looks and good manners, Francisca finally hatched out. She dined at fancy restaurants and visited exclusive social clubs. She went to bars and cocktail lounges. She got drunk more than once, vomited inside a taxicab and in the lobby of the hotel, and had sex with another woman.

Francisca had secretly wanted to have sex with a woman since she was young. She had once tried to make a sexual advance to a mildly retarded girl who came to her door selling blood sausages, but when Francisca tried to feel her breasts, the girl dropped the sausages and ran away screaming. But here in Ibagué, she was a foreign woman in a foreign city. Most importantly, she had money to buy whatever she wanted, including sexual favors from one of the hotel’s chambermaids. What happened was this: After Francisca threw up in the lobby of the hotel, the desk clerk called a young chambermaid and asked her to take Francisca back to her suite. In her room, Francisca couldn’t contain herself. She threw herself upon the maid. The maid refused her instantly, but after Francisca put a wad of pesos in the pocket of her apron, not only did she surrender to Francisca but she also seemed to enjoy herself.

Francisca liked having sex with a woman. Perhaps when she got back to Mariquita she could order one of her employees—Magnolia, most likely—to have sex with her, and then have her mend the leaks in her roof, and have sex with her again, and then make her paint the walls of her house blue, and then repaint them red, then yellow, then green, and have sex with her in between each color, and when she ran out of colors she’d go into shades, a little lighter, a little darker, and so on.

Before going back to Mariquita, Francisca ordered new equipment, furniture and supplies for her beauty parlor. She gave the salesman a deposit, and he promised to deliver everything within two weeks to an address in Mariquita––a village he had never heard of and couldn’t locate on a recently updated map.

IN THE MEANTIME, in the unheard-of village of Mariquita, the magistrate had met privately with the priest to mastermind a legal way of taxing Francisca’s fortune (currently there were no written laws pertaining to fortunes found under someone’s bed). They agreed that since the money had been found in Mariquita’s territory, Francisca was required to pay a percentage of her fortune for the support of the local government. Rosalba asked el padre Rafael how he felt about making the tax a round 50 percent. The priest said he liked that number very much because he had just turned fifty. He added in a brooding tone that Francisca should also be enforced to pay a percentage of her fortune for the support of the local church and the clergy. He asked the magistrate how she felt about making the tithe 20 instead of the customary 10 percent. The magistrate said that twenty was a lovely number, that when she was twenty she’d been the most beautiful woman in Mariquita. The priest said that she still was. They enacted the agreed percentages into law before Francisca came back.

Francisca and her shopping bags and new suitcases arrived in Mariquita in a rickety 1947 red Jeep Willys a little before sunset. The Jeep went sluggishly up and down the main street, from the church to the market, from the market to the school and twice round the plaza, its obnoxious horn beeping incessantly. Everybody stopped what she or he was doing and took to the streets, the women wishing the driver was a handsome man, the children hoping they could get a free ride. They drew near the slow car, giving whoops of joy. The chauffeur was a hoary man about as rickety as the car he drove, who kept his head so close to the steering wheel that it looked as though the tip of his chin, not his hands, was directing the course of the Jeep. Alongside him, her back and shoulders squared against the passenger seat, was Francisca, smiling at her friends and neighbors. But no one recognized her. Not when the Jeep stopped in front of her house and the ancient driver walked around the car to open the door for her; not when one of her feet came out of the car, high-heeled, followed by one of her hands, well manicured, and a forearm full of rattling golden bracelets; not even when Francisca stood firmly on the ground, smoothing with the palms of her hands the creases that the long trip had left around the waist of her silky crimson dress. Only when Francisca opened the door of her house did a woman ecstatically groan, “Why, if it isn’t Francisca, La Masatera!”

The large crowd stood watching the driver bring into Francisca’s house bag after suitcase after bag. Watching them go past, each woman began condemning, in her own mind, Francisca’s extravagance.

When the driver was gone, Francisca invited a small group of her friends inside her house. The rest of the people took turns looking through the window as Francisca tried on clothes and shoes and piled them up in every corner of her house, reminding them of their hardship. Among the women watching the spectacle from the outside was Rosalba. She was feeling guilty about having issued the questionable decree that would dramatically tax Francisca’s fortune, so she’d come out in search of vindication for her behavior. But after gazing intently through the window Rosalba realized that Francisca had enough clothes to dress, at least once, the entire population of Mariquita, and as many pairs of shoes as a centipede had legs. Meanwhile nearly all the women in town had worn, day after day for almost four years, the same black dresses presently brimming with darns and patches. And those who had been stupid enough to listen to Francisca and burn their mourning outfits soon discovered that their colorful clothes were now too loose or too small, or had been eaten by moths. Most women had already worn the soles of their shoes so thin that they could feel the bumps on the ground. Some had even chosen to walk barefoot. Rosalba had no reason to feel guilt. Francisca’s avarice had vindicated the magistrate’s maneuver.

The next day was Saturday, market day. Early in the morning some women went fishing, others hunting, a few chicken throats were slit, grain was gleaned and the largest oranges and guavas picked from the trees. Products that were in short supply suddenly became available, and only the freshest, best produce found its way to the marketplace, where shortly after six all kinds of buyers and sellers convened to trade their goods. Francisca got out of bed early. She was hungry, but there was nothing edible in her house—before leaving for Ibagué she had purposely emptied her pantry. Now it was time to stock up her kitchen with the best products she could find. As she was preparing to leave, she heard a couple of knocks at the door. She opened it and found the magistrate, the priest and the police sergeant standing rather solemnly at her threshold. Francisca showed them in.

“I’d gladly pull a chair for you to sit if I could find any,” she said, scrutinizing the room—filled with piles of goods—for some sign of a seat.

“That’s not necessary,” the magistrate interposed. “I’ll be brief.” She produced a slip of paper from her handbag and handed it to Fran cisca before beginning her formal statement: “A law has been passed that entitles the administration of Mariquita and the Roman Catholic Church to tax any amount of money found within the village’s perimeters.”

“Is that so?” said Francisca, showing no surprise.

“The document you’re holding contains all you need to know about the law, including the percentages you must pay,” el padre Rafael added, ratifying the magistrate’s notification.

Francisca flushed but didn’t answer at once. She was aware of the seriousness of the notice, which, of course, called for a sensible answer given in a seemly choice of words, a refined lady’s reply. “Get out of my house, you rabble!” she shouted at Rosalba, then tore the slip of paper and threw the pieces at her.

Police Sergeant Ubaldina stood between the two women in a conciliatory manner. This wasn’t necessary, however, because the magistrate remained surprisingly composed.

“I warn you, Francisca,” Rosalba said. “I will no longer allow any woman of Mariquita to go to sleep with an empty stomach while another is belching pork chops.”

“To hell with the women of Mariquita! I’m not sharing my money with anyone. Out!” She now pointed at the door, which she had left open.

“Think about it, dear,” el padre Rafael intervened. “Your good looks and fine clothes might make you stand out for a while, but you’re still a widow in a town of widows. Your soul, on the other hand—”

“To hell with you and your stupid church. Out!”

“You have until sunset to come to my office and pay the applicable taxes on every centavo you found, or I’ll have you banished from Mariquita,” the magistrate declared. Then the police sergeant, who until then had been quiet, couldn’t contain herself any longer. With a sardonic smile, she said to Francisca, “If it brings Mariquita unhappiness, we’ll rid ourselves of it.” The three turned at once and walked out of the room.

Francisca leaned her back against the door, feeling restless. What was she going to do now? She couldn’t report less than what she had unearthed because el padre Rafael knew the exact amount. Should she stay in town and contest the magistrate’s resolution? Or should she leave? She was in the same dilemma as two weeks before. No, it was worse now because the magistrate had only given her until dusk to make a decision. It was the magistrate’s threat, however, that incidentally helped Francisca decide that she would not go anywhere. Who did Rosalba think she was, to determine who got to stay in the village and who had to leave? If anyone should be asked to leave, it was Rosalba herself. She hadn’t even been born in Mariquita. Francisca would stick to her original plan of opening her beauty parlor, and she’d fight the magistrate. There had to be a law that protected a rich widow from being banished from her native village.

With that thought in mind, Francisca went to the old Barbería Gómez. The place looked just the same as when she had left for Ibagué. The Morales sisters hadn’t done a thing. Furious, Francisca went to the market looking for new employees, but no one there accepted her offers. Then she went about the village asking every person to work for her, increasing the salary as she moved from door to door, turning friendly, even pleasant, but no woman wanted to work for Francisca. She felt tired and hungry—with all the problems of that morning, she had forgotten to eat. She went to the Morales widow’s tent and ordered breakfast from Julia. The girl gave Francisca one of her worst looks, which said, among other things, that her presence was no longer welcome in their eatery. Francisca moved around the market attempting to purchase food from her old friends, but her business wasn’t wanted anywhere. She offered to pay twice as much money for a couple of plantains, three times as much for a yucca, and still the merchants refused to sell to her. She thought that her friends from the market, like the magistrate, were testing her pride. But Francisca viuda de Gómez had never gone down on her knees to anyone, and she was not just about to start doing it now that she was rich.

She went home hungry, feeling as though parasites were eating her intestines. All she had left in her kitchen was some water in a vessel and a gallon of kerosene for the stove. She boiled the water, poured it into a cup and added the last scrapings of salt left in a plastic container. She took small sips of the tasteless infusion, hoping that the strong feeling of hunger would go away. But it only became stronger as the clear liquid reached her insides.

Evening was nearing. Francisca sat on the floor and started playing with her nostrils: she covered the one on the right, and with the left one she smelled the stew of giblets that was being cooked next door. Then she covered her left nostril, and with the other one she detected the smell of tripe soup. She closed her eyes and continued this, her senses traveling from kitchen to kitchen until she was able to tell what each family would be having for dinner that night, and even which families were going to bed with nothing in their stomachs, like herself. Maybe she should pay the taxes so that everyone in Mariquita could eat well and wear clean clothes. Or maybe not. Why should anyone be given something if they hadn’t worked for it? She had offered them a well-paying job, and they had all refused her offer. Well, then, they deserved to go to bed hungry, she concluded.

She took the last few sips of boiled water, and suddenly started seeing, one by one, her own fears entering the house. Loneliness was the first to arrive—alone, of course. Francisca recognized it immediately because it coyly scoured the entire house for the right place to dwell. It finally settled inside the inner pocket of one of Francisca’s new fur coats and didn’t move again. Guilt came soon afterward, pointing at her with long reproachful fingers. It slid itself into a red silk blouse and, poking its fingers through the long sleeves, continued nagging at Francisca. Then, hand in hand, came Rejection and Abandonment. They moved freely about the room, disregarding Francisca. Before long they picked a pair of fancy spike-heeled shoes and each disappeared into a different shoe. Francisca realized that her fears had come together with her fortune. They had only been waiting for the right occasion, a mo ment of complete weakness and despair, to reveal themselves. At present they hid among her dear new garments, from where they watched the swelling unhappiness of her eyes. There was only one thing to do.

She rose from the floor with trembling hands and legs and undressed completely. She piled up, in the middle of her living room, all her new clothes and shoes, her expensive accessories and her stacks of pesos, all of them. Then she drizzled, with the only liquid left in her house, the heap of goods in a ritualistic fashion: her right arm turned into a long feather flying gracefully in the air. She stepped back from the pile and looked around her house, giggling. She went inside the kitchen, grabbed a box of matches, walked toward the door, opened it, turned around, struck a match and threw it onto the drenched pile. She waited for the flames to swallow the pile and sear the roof. Then she stepped out, shut the door and walked slowly across the street to the mango tree, giggling, giggling. The sun was now setting, and there she stood, stark naked, watching the smoke and the flames come out through the holes in the roof and the open window; hearing the church bell peal insistently and the many voices of neighbors and friends calling for water; giggling, giggling, giggling.