ch06

AS HE HAD EVERY night for the past five years, Santiago Marín sat on his steps, shirtless and barefoot, staring into the darkness, waiting for Pablo. Tonight he also lit candles to the Virgin Mary, who according to tradition, traveled on December 7 from house to house and town to town, giving away blessings for every candle burned.

He heard the roar of a car in the distance. At first he remained uninterested, but when the sound became louder, he quickly gathered his long hair into a ponytail, wiped a rag over his oily face and lit one more candle. Then he saw the headlights of a car coming down the rise. The last car to drive on the unpaved streets of Mariquita had been the rattletrap of a Jeep that had brought Francisca viuda de Gómez and her numerous suitcases back from her trip to Ibagué over a year ago. Except for its black color, the car approaching town tonight was no different: an old, beat-up Jeep with a loud engine. The driver went twice around the dilapidated plaza before stopping at a corner to greet the town’s magistrate, the priest and the schoolmistress, who, together with numerous women and children holding candles, had come out of their houses to welcome the visitor. After assuring the magistrate twice that the government hadn’t sent him, and getting directions, the man drove slowly through the growing crowd, down a narrow side street, and pulled over in the middle of the block, in front of the Jaramillo widow’s house, across from Santiago’s.

“Let me out,” the driver said to the half-naked children surrounding the car, a hint of irritation in his voice. The women pulled their children aside and waited quietly. “Get out of my way,” he yelled. He sounded arrogant and contemptuous despite his slanting eyes and dark skin, despite his straw hat, ragged poncho and sheathed machete at his waist that clearly indicated he was a man of Indian descent—nobody important. He stood in front of the Jaramillo widow’s doorway, thinking perhaps that the noises made by his car and the crowd were enough to draw the woman out. The widow hadn’t lit any candles tonight because she’d lost hope of blessings a long time ago (she had gone mad after her husband and two of her sons were shot dead by guerrillas, and at present she had nobody to look after her). When the Jaramillo widow didn’t come out, the arrogant driver knocked on the door and waited. He knocked a second time, then a third and a fourth, louder each time until the widow finally opened the door, barely poking her nose around it. The man whispered something to her, and without replying the insane woman slammed the door in his face.

“Bitch!” the man shouted. He began kicking the door with his pointy leather boots. “Open the door, you bitch. It took me hours to find this damn hole.” The crowd stepped back. The enraged man continued kicking the door and shouting abuse. “If you don’t pay me right now, I’m going to dump that sickening piece of shit on your steps,” he yelled, pointing toward the car with his index finger. “And you know what else I’m going to do? I’m going to take the damn suitcase with me. That’s what I’m going to do.”

Santiago quietly observed the scene from across the street. He asked his two younger sisters to go inside the house, and his mother to observe from a prudent distance. He didn’t move. He remained on the same spot where he’d been every night for the past five years, lighting more candles to the Virgin, hoping for more of her blessings, staring into the darkness, waiting for Pablo to return to him.

PABLO AND SANTIAGO had both been born on the morning of May 1, 1969. Pablo was older by two and a half hours. Dr. Ramirez, the physician who delivered them, liked to say that except for a dark birthmark under Pablo’s right eye, the two boys looked identical when they were born: “Like twins, only born to different mothers.”

Growing up, Pablo and Santiago were the only children on a lonely street of Mariquita. The street was narrow and unpaved and lined with young mango trees. The houses had mud tile roofs, their adobe facades forever hidden under layers of dust. This street was known as Don Maximiliano’s street, because he owned all the houses up and down each side. He also owned three coffee farms near town. During harvest season, most of the men he hired to pick the crops were from around Mariquita. The women stayed home and tended their children, along with their cassavas, potatoes, cilantro and squash.

The two boys spent most of the day playing in the backcountry. They always went to one or the other’s house for meals, then went out again. It was not unusual for their mothers to see Pablo and Santiago walking around Mariquita hand in hand. “They’re like blood brothers,” their mothers agreed.

The two boys’ favorite game was playing father and mother by the river.

“I’ll be the father,” Pablo said.

“You’re always the father. I want to be the father, too,” Santiago complained. But he gave in every time. Pablo disappeared behind the bushes and pretended he was on Don Maximiliano’s coffee plantations. Santiago stayed by the bank impersonating his own mother: carrying water from the river in big clay pots, cooking, watering the garden, cooking again, washing clothes, cooking one last time. After a few minutes Pablo came out of the bushes, acting dirty and tired.

“Buenas tardes, mi amor,” he said, kissing the back of Santiago’s neck.

“How was your day?”

“Oh, just the same. Too much work.”

The two boys sat on the ground and ate a pretend meal of rice and beans. After dinner, Pablo took his shirt off and lay in the grass, facing the sky, his hands beneath his neck. “I’ll do the dishes later,” Santiago said, and quickly moved on to a part of the game he liked better: the massage. He began with Pablo’s feet, gently rubbing each of his twelve toes (the boy had inherited his father’s six-toed feet). Santiago worked his way up slowly, massaging Pablo’s calves and knees and thighs, spending a good amount of time on his chest. When Santiago pinched Pablo’s little brown nipples, Pablo began to howl. And when Pablo began to howl, Santiago knew it was time to start playing with his friend’s small penis, pulling on it as if it were a tit on an udder, laughing heartily at the way Pablo’s body wriggled with pleasure, like a puppy. When Santiago stopped, Pablo took him in his arms and walked with him into the river. There, with the water up to his waist, Pablo rewarded Santiago with a tender kiss for being a good wife. They spent the rest of the day swimming naked in the river, drowning crickets, peeing on anthills, throwing stones at wasps’ nests and running back into the water. The kiss, however, was the part of the day Santiago liked the best, a true expression of love that to him was worth the boredom of impersonating his mother every day.

At night, the two boys sat on logs of wood outside Santiago’s house and listened to his grandmother’s magical tales, like the one about the old woman who turned into a cat to deceive death, or the one about the rich princess who didn’t know how to laugh. Almost every night Pablo and Santiago slept together on the bumpy earthen floor of Santiago’s house, wrapped in the same white blanket, dreaming different dreams.

RESOLUTELY, THE DRIVER went back to the Jeep. He opened the back door and pulled out a shabby leather suitcase, unzipped it, took out a large white towel and zipped it back up. Before carrying on with whatever he was doing, the angry man looked toward the Jaramillo widow’s door, as though giving the woman a last chance to come out and settle up with him. Then he set the bag aside and from inside the Jeep he carefully pulled out a body by the legs. The body didn’t move, didn’t make any sound. The women stepped a little closer, illuminating the scene with the light of their candles. “Back off!” the driver yelled. He hastily stripped the body naked, revealing a scrawny man covered in sores and bruises, and took a cap off the man’s head with a swipe: he was almost completely bald.

“I’m cold,” the unclothed man cried softly.

“Ohhh!” the crowd whispered in unison, relieved to find out that the stranger wasn’t dead. The driver removed a golden chain from the naked man’s neck and a flashy watch from his wrist and put both things in the front pocket of his own dirty pants. Then he tried to pull off two rings from one of the man’s bony fingers.

“No,” the naked man moaned. “Not the rings, please.” He firmly clenched his hand.

“Shut up,” the driver ordered. “You swore she was going to pay me for bringing you here, but she’s not, so you’d better let go of those damn rings now.”

“Please, not the rings.”

“Let go, or I’ll cut off your hand,” the driver shouted, reaching for his machete.

“Ohhh!” the crowd whispered again.

“Stop, please. Don’t do it. For the love of God, don’t.” The despairing voice belonged to el padre Rafael, who had just been notified of the situation and now rushed to the scene together with the magis trate and the police sergeant. “Please let that poor soul die in peace.” He halted some distance away from the sordid sight and, producing a chaplet from within the pocket of his soutane, began murmuring a rosary. A few widows promptly joined him.

The frustrated driver ignored the priest’s request and kept struggling to open the scrawny man’s hand, but he wouldn’t let go.

“You leave that ill man alone right now, or I’ll blow your brains out.” The threat came from the magistrate, Rosalba viuda de Patiño. She stood right behind the driver, pointing a pistol at his head. Next to her, holding a revolver with both hands, was the police sergeant, Ubaldina viuda de Restrepo.

The driver turned his hateful eyes on the women and spat on the ground. He seized the white towel and wrapped it around the scrawny man, then carried the bundle of bones on his shoulder to the Jaramillo widow’s door, laid it on the ground near the steps and kicked the door three more times. “He’s outside your door,” the driver yelled. “Naked, because I’m taking his clothes. You hear me?” He went back to the Jeep, ignoring the two guns that followed his every move, and collected the ill man’s clothes and shoes and stuffed them into the shabby leather suitcase. He closed the back door, got inside the Jeep and started the engine. Through the window he screamed the words Santiago, sitting across the street, had been so afraid of hearing: “It’s your own son dying outside, you heartless bitch. You’re going to hell!”

Santiago remained still, staring in an absent way at the mass of familiar faces crowded before him; unable to see how they abruptly went from distressed to solemn. He didn’t see the women put their heads in their hands, or hold their quivering lips with the tips of their fingers. He didn’t hear their crying, or the loud engine of the Jeep as it drove away. At the moment, the throbbing of his heart in his chest was the only movement there was about him.

PABLO AND SANTIAGO began working the lands of Don Maximiliano Perdomo on a cloudy day in 1981. It was common for parents to send their male children to work as soon as they turned twelve, and sometimes even before if they were required in the fields. Harvest season had begun and hands were needed at Yarima, Don Maximiliano’s largest coffee farm. The two boys arrived at the farmhouse early in the morning and met with Doña Marina, an unfriendly midget who was in charge of the workers’ housing. She looked at the boys with disdain, grumbled something they didn’t understand, and, with her tiny fat hand, gestured that they follow her. Pablo and Santiago walked behind Doña Marina along a narrow, muddy path, kicking away the geese that chased the little woman as if she were one of them. Doña Marina took the boys to a large shelter where Yarima’s coffee pickers stayed during harvest season. She told them where to find the straw baskets they would tie around their waists, and sent them over to the plantation. “Follow this path until you see coffee trees,” she squeaked, and then, giving them an obliged look, she added, “Thank you for keeping those beasts away from me.”

The beans on most of the coffee trees had turned a dark cherry color. From the highest part of the hill the farm looked like thousands of Christmas trees decorated with little red lights. The steward ordered Pablo to follow, for half a day, an older Indian man with a long ponytail hanging down his back. Santiago followed a man nicknamed Cigarrillo, because he always had a cigarette in his mouth. The two men were to teach the two boys the easiest, fastest way to collect beans. Pablo and Santiago wished they could trail their own fathers, each with more than thirty years of experience in the coffee plantations, but they had been sent to Cabrera, a smaller coffee farm where bad weather was causing the crop to fail.

“Watch my hands, son,” Cigarrillo told Santiago. His fingers fluttered like birds among the branches, hardly touching them, as dozens of red beans fell into his basket. “We only want the coffee cherries that are ready, the ones you can pluck with your own hands.” His face was sunburned, his mustache unkempt. “If there are any green cherries mixed, the coffee will taste bitter, and if there are any overripe cherries, it’ll taste sour.” Santiago checked the man’s basket for green or overripe cherries and found none. “A skilled picker will pluck the entire ripe crop in just one pass,” Cigarrillo went on, “and he should collect no less than one hundred pounds of coffee beans per day.” When the basket got full, he said, the picker must take it to the coffee mill, next to the storage building, where Doña Marina, the midget, would weigh and mark down the amount of coffee gathered, then he should go back to the plantation and do it all over again. Coffee pickers got paid, partly in cash and partly in produce, every Saturday according to the amount of pounds each man had picked during the week. “The most important thing,” Cigarrillo added, “is to have fun while you’re working. Sing songs, talk to the trees, tell them jokes. Pretend the trees are hundreds of naked women lined up, waiting for you to pull their tits.” The man guffawed. Santiago feigned a smile. He would think of pulling Pablo’s penis instead.

The first night in Yarima’s shelter Pablo and Santiago pushed their straw mats together to sleep close, like they always had. They held each other’s hands to say their prayers, and when finished they kissed good night.

From a corner, sitting on his mat, Pacho, a short, pudgy young man with rosy cheeks, watched the two boys by the light of a Coleman lamp. “Look what we got here, guys,” the young man shouted so that everyone in the shelter could hear him. “Two fags kissing each other and praying to God.” He stood up, seized the lamp and strode toward the boys. “Kissing and praying—you know how fucking wrong that is?” he asked, in a tone that seemed much more like an answer than a question. He shook his head censoriously before adding, “It’s very fucking wrong.” Santiago and Pablo didn’t comprehend what the man was saying, but whatever it was, he’d made it sound as though they had committed a terrible sin. They leaned into each other, distressed. The man stood over them now, his torso enlarged and distorted by its proximity. “That’s so sweet,” he said, imitating a woman’s voice. “Come on, I want to see the two of you kissing again.”

“Shut up, Pacho,” Cigarrillo grumbled from his mat, half asleep. “Leave those kids alone and let us sleep.”

But the men, who in the past few weeks had done nothing except work, were eager for any kind of entertainment. A few of them sat on their mats and made ready to watch the spectacle from a distance; others got up and gathered around the boys, calling for the show to begin immediately.

“Come on, mariquitas. We don’t have all night,” said a guy missing nearly all of his front teeth. He stroked Santiago’s bottom with his bare foot.

“I’m frightened, Pablo,” Santiago whispered in his friend’s ear. “Let’s kiss one more time so we all can go to sleep.” Pablo shook his head.

“Kiss him, kiss him,” the aroused spectators sang in unison.

“Please, Pablo, just one more kiss,” Santiago whispered again, his soft voice choked with panic, his heart pounding against his small, bony chest.

“Kiss him, kiss him—”

Santiago asked so insistently that Pablo felt he must do it. All right, he said with his head. The two boys held each other tightly. Santiago glanced at the men, from the one to the other, to indicate that he and Pablo were ready to please them, then gently kissed his friend’s trembling lips for just a moment, until the first kick separated their faces. The stirred men fell upon the two boys like hungry beasts, thrashing their slight bodies with furious fists, stomping them with enraged, crusty feet. Numbed by fear, the boys didn’t feel the heavy blows that came from every side. They hardly screamed, hardly cried, hardly saw or heard anything.

“Stop it now!” The sudden shriek came from the door. “Get out of the way! Move!” The voice was unmistakable. Carrying a lamp that was half her size, Doña Marina was pushing her tiny body through the crowd. The men went back to their mats, laughing and whispering. Pablo and Santiago raised their beaten faces from their mats and began to cry. “Good Lord! What have you done to these poor kids?” Doña Marina laid the lamp on the earthen floor and stroked the boys’ heads with her little hands. “These kids just got here today,” she said to no one in particular. “They haven’t done anything to you. Why would you hurt them?” she shouted. “Why?”

“Because they’re faggots,” a voice replied from the back. “That’s why.” She looked toward the corner from which the voice had come, but there was no one to see: the men had blown out the light of their lamp, leaving most of the room in complete darkness. “You’re all going to pay for this,” she yelled into the darkness. “No breakfast for anyone tomorrow.” Doña Marina kindly helped the boys rise from their mats. She took them back to the farmhouse where she lived with the cooks and the maids. She disinfected their cuts gently and without making any comments or asking questions, but when she began dressing their wounds, she suddenly said, “I know you boys aren’t that, what that rascal said.” Her voice had an undernote of warning that the boys, still utterly distressed by the thrashing, couldn’t recognize. “I know you’re not. I just do.” She was quiet again, as if she were finished talking, although in her mind she was choosing her next round of words carefully. Only when she started applying cold compresses to their swollen faces did she continue, “If you were that, what the man said you were, I’d advise you first to keep it to yourselves, and second to be very careful around here. The countryside is rough. But since you’re not that, I won’t advise you nothing.” She gave them a conspiratorial smile and continued treating their wounds. When she finished she took them to the storage building where, she said, they would sleep from then on.

When she left, Pablo and Santiago hugged each other and wept quietly. One stroked the other’s broken nose with the tips of his fingers. The other kissed his friend’s swollen eyes time and time again.

They slept together inside a coffee sack.

EL PADRE RAFAEL and his followers had stopped reciting the rosary and joined the rest of the crowd in relentless gossiping. Now and then they glanced over their shoulders at Santiago, wondering when the full impact of the tragedy would hit him and what his reaction would be. Nurse Ramirez warned the entire group not to get near the ill man, then pulled el padre Rafael and the magistrate aside to talk to them.

“Whatever illness Pablo has, it might be contagious,” the nurse began in a small voice, shooting the magistrate a warning glance. Mariquita’s children, she argued, hadn’t been vaccinated against anything in over six years. They would not survive an epidemic. She recommended locking Pablo up in Francisca’s burned-out shack until he died—which from the man’s looks should be soon—then incinerating his body. The magistrate and the priest seemed appalled by the nurse’s advice.

“We can’t leave one of our own to die like that—isolated, in a dump, surrounded by…rats and creatures,” the magistrate said, her agitated voice rising above a whisper.

“I agree,” el padre Rafael interposed. “Pablo Jaramillo must die like a Christian and get a Christian burial.”

“The future of our village is uncertain as it is,” the buxom nurse retorted. “I only know our children is all we have. If we lose them—” She didn’t finish her sentence. Instead she put a fatalistic look on her face, a face with a large witch’s nose and sad fish eyes. “Just think about it,” she added.

They thought about it, together and for less than a minute, and concluded that they had no alternative: Mariquita’s future must come first. “But who’s going to take Pablo to Francisca’s old house?” the magistrate asked. El padre shrugged and the nurse shrugged and the magistrate, shrugging, asked yet another question: “Wouldn’t that person have to be quarantined?”

At that precise moment Santiago rose, a candle in his hand, and began walking slowly across the street, toward Pablo. Pablo lay curled up on his side, his face turned to the door of his mother’s house as though waiting for it to open. Santiago stood next to him, contemplating by the light of the candle the little there was to contemplate, struggling to recognize his old friend. Perhaps this was an error. Perhaps the Jeep driver had mistakenly driven into the wrong town, the wrong street. It had to be an error. Pablo was such a handsome man: tall, dark, well built, with thick, black hair…

“Santiago? Is it you?” Pablo said, somehow sensing his friend’s presence.

Santiago nodded mechanically as Pablo turned himself languidly onto his back. With great difficulty Pablo drew his left arm from under the towel in which he was wrapped, uncovering the upper part of his body, and stretched it out to touch Santiago, but Santiago was a little too far away, and Pablo’s arm fell limply to the ground with a graceless plop. “The rings,” he mumbled.

Santiago looked at Pablo’s skeletal hand wiggling like a worm in the dirt. Two solid gold bands clung to his ring finger. “What about them?”

“Take one,” Pablo said in a whisper. “I promised you a ring. Remember?”

IT WAS JUNE of 1984. Pablo and Santiago had just turned fifteen. They’d left Yarima to work, on Doña Marina’s recommendation, at Don Maximiliano’s country house, located about three hours away on foot from Mariquita. The wealthy landowner had had it built on a mesa five years ago, and it was a monument to his poor taste and lack of imagination. Casa Perdomo was a wide, graceless box with interconnecting rooms and few windows, as if purposely designed to prevent light from invading its dwellers’ privacy. It had taken Don Maximiliano several months to convince his wife to leave the city and move into it. To compensate for its ugliness, Doña Caridad had stuffed the house with furniture of remarkable quality, turning each room into a jumble of fancy tables and chairs and cabinets and beds, all of which largely contributed to a permanent state of confusion.

Following Doña Marina’s indirect advice, Pablo and Santiago had introduced themselves as first cousins. They were soon entrusted with the house’s maintenance—painting and repainting the walls, fixing broken doors, replenishing the stoves with firewood, keeping up the plumbing system, stocking the storage room. There was always something to do. The two young men shared a small windowless bedroom in the back of the house, next to the maid’s room, furnished with two trunks for their few clothes, two folding beds and a lamp. At the end of the work day, Pablo and Santiago had only to enter that room and close the door to experience a mighty sense of calmness, safeness and intimacy. The room’s absolute quiet, its refreshing lack of adornment, the lamplight casting shadows that swayed on the white walls—it all created an isolated world where everything seemed possible for the two young men, even their secret love and growing desire. Inside that bedroom, massaging each other’s feet, calves and knees was no longer part of a childish game, but an essential part of their life together; kissing was no longer a reward but a desirable way of reminding one another, without words, of their most intimate feelings. Inside that bedroom there was no husband or wife, only two young men, each in love with the other.

The Perdomos’ only daughter, Señorita Lucía, had recently arrived from New York, where she was attending college. She came every June and stayed until the end of August. This time, however, she hadn’t traveled alone: a twenty-seven-year-old man named William had come along to ask for her hand in marriage. William was neither ill-featured nor handsome but somewhere in between: tall and pink, with a small nose and green eyes. His face, conspicuously covered with freckles, at first bore a haughty expression, but after noticing the genuine affection and hospitality of his hosts, it revealed an air of innocence and modesty that made a lasting good impression on the Perdomos. William wore nothing but khaki trousers and heavily starched light-colored shirts. He spoke atrocious Spanish in a voice almost imperceptible, as though to prevent listeners from noticing his poor pronunciation. Doña Caridad thought this quite charming and took every opportunity to make conversation with him. He stayed for only five days, long enough for mosquitoes and other insects to scar his foreign skin and scalp. The night before he left, William made his engagement to Señorita Lucía official by putting a golden ring on one of her long fingers during a formal dinner.

Once her fiancé was gone, Señorita Lucía became demanding. “Pablo, bring my breakfast to the porch.” “Santiago, brush my hair.” “Pablo, get my sunglasses.” “Santiago, massage my feet.” She was rather unattractive: lanky, with dark shadows under sleepy brown eyes and thin lips that disappeared every time she smiled. And though she was barely twenty-three, her teeth already had lost their original color and now looked as though partially covered with rust; the result, Doña Caridad used to say, “of that nasty smoking habit that you must quit before your fiancé finds out.” The girl’s eyebrows were the subject of criticism and mockery: she had plucked all the hair from them and replaced it with two fine tattooed lines that she made thicker, darker, or longer—but always uneven—every morning using eyebrow pencils. The Perdomos’ only daughter also had a personality unsuited to the countryside: she was gentle and sensitive, with refined manners, perhaps too refined for rural life. The summer heat was “abominable,” mosquitoes “insufferable,” local running water “filthy,” and so on. She wore high heels, makeup, and jewelry every day and sat out on the porch smoking, browsing through bridal magazines and reading love stories.

“Was that story about death, Señorita Lucía?” Santiago asked her one day, after the girl had put her book down.

She smiled. “No, silly. It was about love.” She was lying stretched in a hammock, alternating the reading with short puffs of a thin cigarette dangling from her slender hand. Santiago stood beside her, fanning away the mosquitoes and gnats that buzzed around her.

“But you looked like you were in pain.”

“Love can make you feel pain sometimes.”

Santiago thought about this for a moment. It wasn’t love that had caused him and Pablo pain; it was hate, the unjustified hate that the coffee pickers felt toward them, and which—despite Doña Marina’s opportune intercessions—had cost them more than one beating and continuous verbal abuse. Perhaps he should tell Señorita Lucía that he and Pablo were not first cousins, but two boys in love. She would certainly understand. She seemed like a woman who understood things. Besides, she was getting married, which made her an expert on matters of love. But Santiago had promised Pablo he wouldn’t tell anyone.

“What’s the story about?” he asked.

Señorita Lucía let the cigarette smoke dribble out the side of her mouth, making a sound like a gentle breeze. “It’s about a man who goes to war.” She paused briefly to think. “No, it’s rather about the girl the man is in love with…forget about it, Santiago. It’s too complicated.”

“Please, Señorita Lucía. I want to know.”

She looked at him curiously. Unlike his cousin Pablo, Santiago looked delicate, almost effeminate. His voice hadn’t broken yet, and there was no sign to indicate that an Adam’s apple would ever protrude from the front of his neck. He was slender, smooth-faced, and he clearly had a great feeling for love stories and dramas. She stubbed out what remained of the cigarette in an ashtray.

“All right,” she said. “The story is about Ernesto and Soledad, a young man and a young woman who are deeply in love. They’re engaged and already planning their life together—where they’d like to live, how many children they’d like to have, that sort of thing. But then a war breaks out, and Ernesto’s ordered to go far away, across the ocean, to fight the enemy. Soledad swears undying love to him, and he promises he’ll return and marry her. But weeks and months go by without any word from Ernesto. Every night poor Soledad stands in front of her window wishing to see Ernesto’s green eyes glow in the night, but she doesn’t see them. One day, after years of waiting, Soledad learns from a war veteran that Ernesto was badly injured and as a result lost his memory. He now lives in a remote country, happily married. She’s brokenhearted, but her love for him is so strong that she decides to keep her promise to him. And so every night Soledad stands by her window lighting candles, waiting for Ernesto to come back to her.”

By now Señorita Lucía wore the same mournful expression Santiago had noticed earlier. She lighted another cigarette and took several puffs. “That’s it,” she said.

“That’s it? What about Ernesto? Does he ever come back?” He was clearly disappointed with the ending.

“Nobody knows. That’s what I love about this story; one must imagine what happens after.”

Santiago didn’t know what to say. He continued fanning her, thinking about a satisfying ending for the story, then said, “I think Ernesto ought to get his memory back somehow, then go back and marry her.”

Señorita Lucía gave him a sympathetic look. “I think he’ll never go back.” She paused briefly. “And Soledad will stand by that window, waiting, for the rest of her life.”

Santiago thought that was a cruel and absurd ending. “That wouldn’t be right, though,” he said. “That man promised to go back and marry her. He must keep his word.”

“I have an idea,” she said with a refreshing gesture. “Take the book with you, read the story, and then we will each write our own endings and compare them.”

“I can’t read or write,” he said.

Santiago’s confession was no surprise to her, and although she was far from being socially concerned, it disturbed her conscience. “How old are you?”

“Fifteen.”

“Well, at least you seem to know the numbers.”

“I know some.”

“What about Pablo? Can he read?”

Santiago shook his head, but his face remained calm and content. Señorita Lucía held the cigarette close to her mouth, and without inhaling she, too, shook her head.

SEÑORITA LUCÍA TURNED out to be a great tutor: charismatic, dynamic, articulate and patient. Every night after work, Pablo, Santiago and two maids joined the Perdomos’ daughter in the kitchen for a two-hour lesson. First they learned the vowels, then the consonants, and then the construction of simple phrases and sentences. Pablo was a fast, eager learner. He quickly memorized the alphabet and soon began writing long, intelligible sentences. Santiago was the opposite. He scribbled letters and grouped them in no particular order, making no effort to learn. His nonchalant manner disconcerted Pablo—Santiago had always been enthusiastic about learning anything. Perhaps he just learned reading and writing at a different pace, slower than Pablo’s, slower than the two maids’. Or perhaps he was jealous of the attention Pablo frequently received from Señorita Lucía, who was unstinting in her praise for his intelligence and willingness to study.

After each class, the maids went to their room and Santiago went to his room and Pablo and Señorita Lucía moved to the porch. She was quite talkative, and Pablo was a good listener. They had long conversations, mostly about her life in the United States, and she showed him pictures and postcards of impressive cities and exotic places. Sometimes Pablo asked questions about New York, and the girl’s detailed and embellished answers made him fantasize about a majestic city with high-speed cars flying in the air; massive, indestructible towers touching the sky; lush gardens suspended from the clouds; a land flowing with money, where gold coins grew out of holes in the ground everywhere, like weeds.

Living in such a place was at first merely an idle reverie, but it soon became an obsession with Pablo. He thought about moving to New York day and night. He visualized himself dressed in khaki trousers and starched shirts, like Don William, walking along broad avenues; or sitting behind a desk in his own office; or contemplating the city skyline through the large windows of his own house, his pockets permanently filled with bank notes. He thought about moving to New York so much that it began to seem achievable. He wished for it with such devotion that at length the opportunity to fulfill his dream arose. One night, after a serious conversation with Señorita Lucía and before going to bed, Pablo broke the news to Santiago.

“I’m leaving with Señorita Lucía. She said she’d help me get there. She knows how.”

To Santiago the idea was preposterous. “That must be an expensive trip, Pablo. Where are you going to get the money to pay for it in two weeks?”

“She’s going to lend it to me.”

“But where would you live?”

“She’ll let me stay at her house for a month or so, until I get settled.”

“And how’re you going to find work over there?”

“She’s going to help me get a job.”

“But you don’t speak their language.”

“She said I’m smart. I can learn it fast.”

“But all you know how to do is fix things.”

“She said that’s a well-paid job in New York.”

“I don’t know, Pablo…it can’t be that easy.”

“It’s not impossible.”

The silence that gathered between Pablo’s last answer and Santiago’s next question was long, unbearable.

“What about us?”

“Don’t worry about us, Santiago. I’ll come back to get you. And I’m going to bring enough money to buy my family and yours their own coffee farms.” His eyes grew wide with excitement, his nostrils swelled. “Oh, and I’m going to write you a letter every week; that way you’ll know I’m thinking about you all the time.”

Santiago sank into his bed without speaking.

SEÑORITA LUCÍA HAD never looked as hideous and wicked as she did, in the eyes of Santiago, during the two weeks prior to Pablo’s departure. It was her fault that Pablo was suddenly going away, her fault that from then on Santiago’s days and nights would seem endless. She must have found out that Pablo and Santiago were in love and thought it “abominable,” “insufferable,” and “filthy.” She might look friendly and caring on the surface, but deep inside, she was just as evil and hateful as the coffee pickers who used to beat them up. She couldn’t separate them with her fists, so she had opted to use her cleverness.

Santiago avoided coming across Señorita Lucía during the day. In the mornings, as usual, he brushed her long hair, though not as gently as he used to. And in the afternoons he stood by her, fanning away mosquitoes while she read, except now he refrained from asking what made her chuckle, heave long sighs or shed tears. He, however, didn’t miss any of the reading and writing classes she taught at night. In fact, he made an effort to learn fast because, he reasoned, he must be able to read the letters that Pablo would send him every week and write him back. During the course of the two weeks Pablo didn’t talk about anything except his forthcoming adventure, and that made Santiago furious. Santiago didn’t care to know that in New York every house had a television set, or that people in New York could afford to eat chicken every day if they wanted to. A week before leaving, Pablo made a two-day trip to Mariquita to collect his legal documents and say good-bye to his parents and two brothers. It was then that Santiago truly understood what his life would be without him. For a short time he entertained the idea of going to New York with Pablo, but he soon abandoned the thought. He was the oldest of three children and the only son, and he’d promised his father he’d help support the rest of the family in Mariquita. And he, Santiago Marín, was a man of his word.

The Saturday before Pablo left, Santiago stole Señorita Lucía’s engagement ring. He only wanted to try it on his own finger to see what it felt like to be engaged. He had learned from the maids that she removed the ring from her delicate finger every morning before taking a bath, and that she placed it on top of her night table, next to a framed picture of her future husband. That morning, Santiago waited to hear the water of her shower running, then tiptoed into her bedroom. The room smelled heavily of cigarettes, and her clothes and shoes were scattered all over the floor. Standing in the middle of the room, he broke out in a cold sweat, and his hands began shaking. What was he doing? He started thinking about the grave consequences his brave act might have for him and for Pablo, but then he saw the ring in the exact place the maids had said. He stared at it for a moment or two, his hands tightly clasped behind his back. Then he snatched it and held it up to the light: a solid gold band crowned with three tiny clear stones. He tried it on each of his ten fingers but didn’t think it looked particularly good on any. It’d certainly look good on Pablo’s, though. He fancied Pablo’s hand writing a letter, My dearest Santiago—the three stones sparkling on his ring finger—and decided, in a moment of excitement, that Señorita Lucia’s ring would be his and Pablo’s engagement ring. He put it in his pocket and hurried out of the bedroom.

Back in their room, Santiago told Pablo to close his eyes. “Don’t open them until I tell you so,” he said. “Now give me your hand. The right one.” He put the ring on Pablo’s little finger, the only one that was small enough. “Before you open your eyes, you must promise me that you’ll always keep this on your finger; that you will never take it off, not even when you bathe.”

“I promise,” Pablo impatiently said, and then, opening his eyes, he hollered, “This is Señorita Lucía’s engagement ring! Did you steal it?”

“Don Míster William can buy her another one.”

Pablo quickly removed the ring from his finger and slapped it in Santiago’s hand. “This is wrong. You should be ashamed of yourself.” He walked out of the bedroom, shutting the door with a slam. Santiago lay on his bed and wept softly against the pillow. The world he and Pablo had built together was suddenly shattering around him. He was about to lose the one person he loved.

A few minutes later Pablo came back into the room. “I know why you took that ring, but that doesn’t make it right,” he said. “You must return it right away before she notices that it’s missing.” Santiago sat on the bed and nodded. “Look at me,” Pablo whispered, turning Santiago’s chin toward him with his hand. “I’m going to make lots of money, and I’m going to buy us two rings, you hear me? And they’ll be ten times, a hundred times, better than that one, you’ll see. And when I come back, I’ll put one ring on your finger, and you’ll put the other one on mine…no, don’t cry. Please don’t. I promise I’ll be back and we’ll be together. Yes, forever. Shhh…it’ll be all right, Santiago, my Santiago. I’ll be back soon. I promise. Shhh…”

THE CROWD HAD dispersed after the nurse’s warning. Only a handful of women had remained near the pitiful scene, watching through their windows and doors. Among these women was the magistrate. Rosalba was keeping an eye on the two men from the window of Cecilia and Francisca’s house—after setting her own house on fire, Francisca had been allowed to move into Cecilia’s late son Ángel’s bedroom in exchange for working in the garden and kitchen.

Pablo lay on the ground with Santiago standing over him. Both wept, their suffering partly illuminated by the pale light of the candle in Santiago’s hand.

Santiago knelt down and planted the candle on the ground. He held Pablo’s hand, damp and flaccid, in his. Pablo was nothing but bones, bones that might have collapsed if his skin hadn’t encased them. His arm, his neck and the exposed part of his body were covered with purple blotches and bright red sores. A thin layer of translucent skin clung to the bones of his face. His eyes were sunken and gloomy, and his thick eyebrows had turned into flimsy lines of sparse hair. Only the birthmark under his right eye remained whole, dark, defined, its intense blackness magnifying the cadaverous paleness of a face that held no trace of the man Santiago loved, the one he had been waiting for.

“Take one,” Pablo muttered. “The rings. Take one.”

Santiago carefully slid the top ring off Pablo’s finger and rubbed it in circles on the ill man’s palm. “I want you to put it on my finger,” he said. “You promised you would.”

Pablo nodded. Yes, he remembered his promise. He, too, wanted to put the ring on Santiago’s finger. If only his arm had a bit of strength left…

Santiago made him hold the golden band while he slid the ring finger of his right hand all the way through it. Then he took the second ring off Santiago’s finger. “Give me your right hand,” he said, though by now he knew that Pablo had lost control of most of his muscles. He said it just to hear his own voice; to make sure he was Santiago Marín and the man before him was Pablo Jaramillo and this long-awaited moment was really happening. He reached for Pablo’s right hand and gently put the gold band on the man’s ring finger. For a little while the two rings were side by side, sparkling in the candlelight. Two solid circles of gold with no stones to detract from their plain beauty. Pablo smiled, his trembling smile a series of muscular contractions.

Santiago held his own hand up, turned it around, made a fist and released it without taking his triumphant eyes off the golden band on his finger. It was official: he was finally engaged to Pablo.

NINETEEN EIGHTY-EIGHT. FOUR Augusts had gone by, and Santiago still hadn’t heard a word from Pablo. Señorita Lucía and her husband had visited once, but they had no news of him. “I don’t know where he is,” she said. “William and I moved to a new house, and we haven’t heard anything from him since.” But Santiago wouldn’t give up. Before the couple went back to the States, he gave them the stack of letters he’d written to Pablo. “New York is a big city, Santiago. It’ll be impossible to give him your letters without knowing his address.”

“Please, Señorita Lucía, take them with you. Just in case you ever see him on the street.”

“I’ll take them. Only I can’t promise you that Pablo will ever read them.”

Santiago was now in charge of overseeing the Restrepos’ house. He kept an inventory of provisions and cleaning supplies and was given a weekly budget to keep every item up to par. He was responsible for hiring maids and gardeners and for keeping the altar of the house decorated with fresh fruit and flowers. He worked from six in the morning to six at night, making sure he didn’t have time to himself. Himself was a terrible word he’d been forced to learn after Pablo left; a state of solitude and desolation he confronted every night in his bedroom. What if Pablo had lost his memory, like Ernesto in Señorita Lucía’s story? What if he’d met someone else and forgotten about Santiago? From time to time the doubts overpowered his hopefulness, making him weep softly. He rewrote the ending of Señorita Lucía’s story over and over, and when he couldn’t think of one more possible way to finish it, he rewrote the entire story.

His version of the story went like this:

Once upon a time there were two young men named Pedro and Samuel, who were deeply in love with each other. Like every good loving couple they wanted to get engaged, but were too poor to afford the high cost of the rings. Pedro, then, decided to leave for Nueva York to work and save money to buy their engagement rings. They were very sad when they said good-bye. They cried and swore undying love. Pedro promised to write every week and to return to be with Samuel forever. A year passed, and Samuel didn’t receive any letter from Pedro. But Samuel didn’t worry. He trusted Pedro and was certain that he had a good reason not to write. Every time he was struck by some doubts, he’d drive those evil thoughts out by saying to himself, “Pedro loves me. He’s coming back.” Samuel waited a long time but never gave up hope.

One night, he was bathing in the river when he heard someone call his name. He looked around and saw Pedro coming out of the bushes. He wore a perfectly pressed white suit, red tie and white patent leather shoes, and he carried two suitcases. Samuel thought he was just seeing things. But no, it was really Pedro. He rushed out of the water and kissed him. Pedro opened one of the suitcases. The inside was filled with the hundreds of letters he’d written to Samuel, all of which had been sent back to him for one reason or another. Then Pedro opened the other suitcase. Inside there was a neatly folded wedding gown.

“This is for you, Samuel,” Pedro said. “I want us to get married. Now.”

“Oh, Pedro! I don’t know what to say. We’re not engaged yet,” Samuel said.

“I’m sorry. I almost forgot,” Pedro replied, pulling a little box from his pocket. When he opened the box, a light nearly blinded Samuel. It was a gold engagement ring crowned with a big diamond. “Would you marry me?” Pedro asked.

“Yes,” Samuel answered with a smile. They kissed. Then Pedro gave Samuel the suitcase with the wedding gown and asked him to get dressed. Samuel was aware that the groom shouldn’t see the bride before the ceremony, so he went behind the bushes. The gown was really nice: all white, sleeveless, with a low-cut neckline and a long skirt shaped like a bell. The train was about three yards long. The gown came with a veil and a pair of white shoes. Samuel had no doubt this was the most expensive wedding gown in all New York, but he didn’t feel bad because he knew he was worth it. He put on the gown and veil and arranged wild flowers into a colorful bunch, then came out of the bushes. Dozens of people had gathered, waiting for Samuel to come out. These people were relatives and neighbors that Pedro had invited beforehand. They clapped and cheered as Samuel walked slowly through them with the flowers in his hands. Samuel met Pedro at the end, near the bank. Pedro lifted the veil and was pleasantly surprised to see a full moon reflected in each of Samuel’s eyes. “I love you, my darling,” he said. They kissed and at that moment a brief shower of rice rained down on both of them. Pedro took Samuel in his arms and walked into the river until the warm water covered his waist.

“We’re the happiest couple on earth,” Pedro said.

“We are, my love,” Samuel echoed.

They promised that they would never again be separated and lived happily ever after.

SANTIAGO READ THE story every night before going to bed, like a prayer. At length he memorized it and was able to recite it to himself throughout the day.

SANTIAGO WRAPPED PABLO back up in the white towel, picked him up in his arms and started down the street with him. The widows lingering on the block glanced furtively at Santiago’s pained face as he passed them by. They shook their heads, crossed themselves, whispered prayers and rubbed their prying eyes.

“Bring him in, son,” Santiago’s mother shouted from her door. “We can spare him something to eat.”

Santiago kept walking in silence.

“He must be cold.” She sounded overly distressed. “Let me get some clothes for him.” Her shouts got louder as her son moved farther away with Pablo. From behind, they looked like a large black cross vanishing amid the dusty lights of the many candles that faintly burned on both sides of the road.

“Where are you going with that man, Santiago Marín?” the magistrate called from Cecilia and Francisca’s window. “You’ll be put in quarantine, you hear me? Don’t go saying I didn’t warn you.”

Santiago didn’t reply, didn’t stop or look back. He gazed fondly at the bundle in his arms and brought it even closer to his own body.

The full moon lit the narrow footpath. Only once did Santiago stop to rest. He knelt on the side of the path with his buttocks on the back of his heels and Pablo in his lap.

“Where are we going?” Pablo said in a low voice.

“To the one place you ought to see.” Their deep voices did not agree with the sounds of the night, the rustling of the branches, the creaking of the trunks, the noises made by frogs, cicadas, owls and other night creatures.

“I want to see the plaza…and the church.”

“They’re all the same as when you left.”

It was hot. Beads of sweat appeared along Santiago’s forehead and ran down his face. He closed his eyes and imagined that the man in his arms was a basket filled with purple orchids; just as delicate, just as beautiful. He rose, half smiling, and went on, slower than before because enormous clouds had blocked out the moonlight and he couldn’t see well. His feet would take them to where they were going.

“Take me to see my father,” Pablo said.

“He’s gone, Pablo.”

“Then…take me to see my brothers.”

“They’re gone, too.”

SANTIAGO DIDN’T TELL Pablo how they died. He didn’t tell Pablo that five years before Communist guerrillas had assaulted Mariquita, claiming their men. That the rebels said they were fighting so that no Colombian should go a day without eating a good meal, and then ate their food and drank their water. That they said they were leading the country toward a society in which all property would be publicly owned, and then went from house to house raping their sisters and mothers. That they demanded that every man older than twelve join them, saying they would give each one a rifle, a freedom rifle to fight against the government, to defend their rights. But when Pablo’s father asked for his right to choose not to join the movement, they shot him dead with one of the very freedom rifles they handed out. Then they killed his two brothers, too, because “Colombia doesn’t need any more cowards.”

Santiago didn’t tell Pablo that the guerrillas took all the men away; that he, Santiago, had escaped the forced recruitment because he was still employed in Don Maximiliano’s country house; that he went back into town as soon as he heard about the assault; and that he promised his mother and sisters not to ever leave them again after what he saw: houses burned down to nothing, mad widows weeping among the rubbish, old women praying on their bare knees with their bloodstained hands pressed together and their eyes tightly shut, young girls furiously rubbing their abused bodies with mud, cursing their lives, naked little boys and girls crying and roaming the streets, shouting for their fathers and brothers.

Santiago didn’t tell Pablo any of that. He just went on, following his own feet that knew the trail better than him.

“But, Mamá…she’s in the house. I heard the driver…” Pablo’s voice grew weaker every time he spoke.

“Yes, she’s there; she hardly ever leaves her house. But when she does, a parrot’s on her shoulder and three old dogs follow her closely. She doesn’t talk to anyone.”

“Is she insane?”

“She’s happy. Happier than most of the widows in town. She’s not alone. Every relative she lost, she replaced with an animal.”

Pablo pressed his face hard against Santiago’s chest and wept softly.

THE MOON BROKE through the clouds, larger and brighter, shining down on the two men. When Santiago sighted their destination at last, he slowed down, but his breathing still came fast, the warm air coming in and out of his lungs in convulsive short waves.

“We’re here,” he whispered. They were by the river, where he and Pablo had played father and mother so many times. Santiago stood on the bank, watching the water flow steadily, listening to its bold splashing sound. “Look how beautiful it is,” he said. Pablo looked up, and it was extraordinary and moving to see a full bright moon reflected in each of his sunken eyes, lighting up an otherwise lifeless face. “I love you,” Santiago said, tightening his grasp on Pablo and walking purposefully into the river as they used to do when they were children. The cold water gradually covered his naked feet, his ankles and calves, his knees and thighs, his waist. Then he stopped, kissed Pablo lightly on the lips and watched him smile, watched his eyes grow wide and his nostrils swell like they had when he’d wanted to leave for New York.

Pablo was ready to leave again.

Santiago looked up at the moon and stretched out his arms, as if he were offering a sacrifice. He fixed his gaze on Pablo’s face, filling himself full of the man he loved, and gently began to release his hold on him, his solid arms slowly separating from the smallness of his lover’s back, giving him to the current like a gift. Pablo’s flimsy figure drifted away from him, down the river, now disappearing into the water, now rising back to the surface, until all that was left of him was a white towel caught up in an eddy, bobbing up and down.

Or maybe it was the full moon now shining on the water.

CHAPTER 6

The Other Widow