ch08

THE MAGISTRATE’S ANNOUNCEMENT FOR the Next Generation decree went something like this: “In yet another effort to preserve our dear community, and after consulting with my advisers, I, Rosalba viuda de Patiño, magistrate of the town of Mariquita, resolve that as soon as all four boys in our village—Che López, Hochiminh Ospina, Vietnam Calderón and Trotsky Sánchez—turn fifteen, they’ll be compelled to enter a competition. The women of Mariquita will decide which of the young men shall be granted the right to marry a female of his choice, to constitute a family for the preservation of the moral and social purity of our town. The three unselected young men will be ordered to serve as Mariquita’s full-time begetters for an undetermined period of time, during which they’ll no longer be autonomous individuals but rather government property, workers whose sole duty will be to father boys, and who’ll be provided with food and lodging and nothing else for as long as we need their labor.”

Following Rosalba’s declaration, the four boys were ordered, on pain of banishment, to stay away from women until their fate was decided, which would be on the morning of June 21, 2000, a day after Hochiminh, the youngest of the four, would turn fifteen.

Although she was responsible for drafting the Next Generation decree, the magistrate thought the entire thing was absurd and uncivilized: How can anybody in her right mind, she asked herself, oblige one of those children to make love to someone like, say, Orquidea Morales, such an ugly thing? But she felt she had to make amends to the women of Mariquita for the “complete” and “ignominious” failure of the Procreation Campaign, in which twenty-nine women had been intimate with el padre Rafael for three months, and none had become pregnant. “I was deceived by el padre Rafael into believing that he could beget boys; or girls, for that matter.” the magistrate admitted before the crowd that swarmed into the plaza to learn about her new decree. “I would’ve never endorsed el padre’s idea had I known he was as sterile as a mule.”

Everyone in the plaza applauded Rosalba’s harangue; everyone but the priest, of course. He thought the magistrate’s remarks were a declaration of war, and in retaliation, he stopped hearing confessions and giving communion altogether. The embargo of the two sacraments worked wonders for el padre, especially on the older widows, who after two weeks without confessing their peccadilloes felt as though constipated. They begged the priest’s forgiveness again and again until, satisfied, the little man absolved them of all blame and resumed giving the customary array of those invisible graces called sacraments. Still, the magistrate refused to apologize.

DURING THE ENTIRE year after the Next Generation decree was announced, the villagers debated whether or not it was needed or even wanted. From behind the pulpit el padre Rafael declared time after time that he was against it, that it was a desperate measure from a desperate magistrate. “Forcing our boys to engage in sexual activity with women who are not their wives is wrong. It goes against the principles of Catholicism, but also against the boys’ rights.”

The older women, too, openly condemned the Next Generation decree in the market, while trading a cheap trinket for a pound of on ions or a papaya for a handmade bar of soap. They couldn’t understand why any woman—old or young—could possibly want to beget more men. Had they forgotten how the men had mistreated, ignored and diminished them? Didn’t they remember those creatures with broad-brimmed sombreros that would go drinking rather than stay home nursing a sick son? The same creatures with unkempt mustaches who’d rather pay a whore at La Casa de Emilia than make love to their devoted and decent wives.

Certain unnamed widows discussed the magistrate’s peculiar decree secretly, in the privacy of their bedrooms, under lavender-scented sheets, after making love and before one of them had to depart in the middle of the night, protected by darkness. They shared the same view as the older women, and maintained that if not having men around meant that Mariquita had to end with the present generation, perhaps an entire generation of harmony, tolerance and love would be preferable to an eternity of misery and despair—not to mention war.

Old maids also chose to talk about the Next Generation decree at night, only they did it on their doorsteps, while they spun cotton or separated good beans from bad ones for the following day’s soup. They were somewhat ambivalent toward it. Indeed they welcomed the possibility of becoming mothers, even if it involved being intimate with a callow youth. But at the same time they felt that having a child—boy or girl, it didn’t matter—wouldn’t change their despised status as old maids. What they wanted, really wanted, was to be someone’s girlfriend or fiancée, someone’s wife. They wanted to belong to a man, to be claimed as his property. They declared that the first verb their mothers had taught them wasn’t to be but to belong; therefore belonging would always come before being.

The younger women, on the other hand, didn’t talk so much about the decree. They talked about the boys, and they did it every time they saw the small cluster of them in school taking dictations from the teacher Cleotilde, or bringing water from the river in earthen containers, or working their mothers’ orchards, or playing soccer in teams of two. But they also talked about them every night during their customary after-rosary meeting, when they sat in a big circle in the middle of the plaza playing games, trying new hairstyles, or, as their mothers said, “Feeding the mosquitoes.” Oftentimes they simply rated the boys, making a parody of the anticipated competition ordered by the magistrate. In their version, which they called “Míster Mariquita,” each girl was asked to rank the four boys in trite categories, such as Cutest Face, Most Adorable Smile, Sweetest Personality, etc., and then compare their results amid peals of laughter.

But not everything the girls did during the months before the competition was amusing. Virgelina Saavedra saw in the upcoming event an opportunity for profit. She took bets of different amounts and goods on the results of the competition. She herself bet a romance novel illustrated with photos—which she treasured—that Che López would win the right to choose a wife and form a family. Meanwhile, Magnolia Morales took it upon herself to circulate three different waiting lists (one for each unknown procreator) to determine the order in which each girl would eventually have a naked boy in her bed. She purposely kept the list from old maids and widows, for she decided the former had had every chance to secure a man in their prime (and squandered it), and the latter had already enjoyed their share of men in this life. This, naturally, gave rise to controversies, quarrels, verbal confrontations and even a fistfight. As always the magistrate had to intercede, first drafting and then announcing one more of her brilliant decrees: as long as a woman was menstruating regularly, she had the right to be on any of the three lists and to marry the one eligible boy, should he happen to select her. Period.

MAGNOLIA MORALES WAS the first woman to arrive in the plaza on that fatal Sunday in June of 2000. She got there a little before daybreak, wearing a shapeless robe of sacking she’d sewed herself. The gusting morning wind made the mango trees tremble, and the many leaves on the ground caused Magnolia to slip, but she didn’t fall. She spread a blanket on the ground, in front of the improvised platform that had been built the day before by order of the magistrate. The eagerly awaited competition wouldn’t begin until eight that morning, but Magnolia had promised her sisters that she’d be the first one to show up and that she’d keep a place for them in the first row.

Luisa arrived next, about half an hour later, then Cuba Sánchez, then Sandra Villegas and Marcela López, and by the time the first rooster crowed, women had appeared from different corners of Mariquita, as though carried along by the wind. They sat around the platform, dark rings under their eyes from not enough sleep, and alcohol on their breath from drinking too much chicha. The night before they’d celebrated Hochiminh Ospina’s fifteenth birthday with a great fanfare not seen or heard in Mariquita in a long time. It must be said that Hochiminh’s birthday was the last thing on the women’s minds (Hochiminh himself had not been invited to his birthday celebration). It was the event that would take place the morning after the boy’s birthday that they were anxiously awaiting; an unprecedented competition that would make Magnolia, Luisa, Cuba, Sandra, Marcela, Pilar, Virgelina, Orquidea, Patricia, Nubia, Violeta, Amparo, Luz, Elvira, Carmenza, Irma, Mercedes, Gardenia, Dora and many other young girls, widows and old maids of Mariquita immensely happy.

But while the women sat around the platform in the plaza, chatting merrily and making their last conjectures, Che, Hochiminh, Vietnam and Trotsky had begun to experience, separately, the adverse effects of the tremendous anxiety caused by the contest that would decide their fate. For several months the four boys had been the subject of discussions, speculations, assumptions, controversies, fights, bets and even jokes. Their thoughts and feelings about the magistrate’s decree, however, had never been consulted. Their anxiety had been building for an entire year, and they’d grown awfully apprehensive. On this memorable morning, the proximity of the event and the mounting pressure placed on each to win had worked them up to a state of near hysteria where anything was possible.

THEY SAY THAT Che López woke up at two on that Sunday morning and couldn’t go back to sleep. He didn’t suffer from insomnia—he could sleep soundly for twelve hours. The night before he’d planned to get up at six, earlier than usual, because he had to win the right to marry the girl of his choice, Cuba Sánchez. To achieve his goal, he thought, he needed to trim his hair, clip his nails, and, with a piece of coal and great care, add some density to the faint shadow he had for a mustache. He was fifteen, with black hair and eyes, a small colorless face and a full erection hidden in his white cotton pajamas.

Restless, he lay on his back, staring at the ceiling, yawning. The moonlight coming through a hole in the ragged curtain illuminated his swollen crotch. He rubbed it hard with the open palm of his hand, thinking of the warm, mushy, moist flesh of the watermelon he’d bored a hole into—and made love to—the day before. He pulled down his pajama trousers, wrapped his hand firmly around his penis, and began to stroke it zealously. But something wasn’t right; his hand felt a little too big around his penis. Maybe it isn’t fully erect, he thought. He held it between his thumb and index fingers and squeezed to check its hardness. It felt as bone-solid as only a fifteen-year-old penis can be. The boy moved slightly to the right so that the moonlight shone on his penis, and for a moment had no doubt that it looked smaller, by three-quarters of an inch at least. Maybe it’s my hand that’s growing, he supposed, and continued masturbating, imagining big, juicy watermelons lined up on the kitchen table, waiting to be penetrated. After some time, a long, unrestrained moan escaped from his mouth, and his hand stopped moving. He remained motionless for a few seconds, his lungs gasping for air. But something else wasn’t right; he didn’t feel any sticky liquid on his hand, and his penis appeared to be dry. He quickly shifted his body toward the right side of the bed and lit a candle. He looked closely for any evidence of ejaculation. He didn’t see anything on his reduced penis, nor his hands, the bed sheets or his pajamas. Armed with the candle, he checked the naked walls, the shiny floor, under his bed; he even checked the ceiling—nothing.

Every Friday after class Che and the other three boys of Mariquita went swimming in the river. They often measured, with a ruler, the size of their penises before going into the cold water, and then after. They were always amazed to see how their penises shrunk. A week before, they had decided to do something different. They held a contest to decide who could ejaculate the farthest. They picked an open space on the riverbank and marked a spot. One at a time they stood on the spot, masturbated and shot. Che won with a seven-foot-six reach, followed by Trotsky with five feet, three inches, then Vietnam with five feet, and finally Hochiminh with three feet, eleven inches. Che boasted about it for the entire week; he even called for a second contest because he wanted to break his own record, but the other boys ignored him.

On that Sunday, however, at two thirty in the morning, Che firmly believed that his penis was shrinking, and that he had no semen.

DAWN WAS BREAKING, and gusts of wind were capriciously changing the order of objects in patios and backyards: flowerpots, plastic containers, clothes from the washing lines and even washing lines themselves drifted in the air for a little while before hitting a wall or landing in someone else’s yard.

Meanwhile, they say, Hochiminh Ospina was having a frightening dream. In his dream he was swimming naked in the river with his friends from school, racing to see who was the fastest to get to the bank on the other side. Hochiminh worked his arms and legs vigorously, but his body—as fat in his nightmare as it was in real life—didn’t move forward. He saw his friends disappear in the distance, their arms and legs splashing. He tried harder, with his arms fully stretched and his hands perfectly curved as they thrust firmly into the water, and yet he didn’t advance an inch. Suddenly his body began to whirl around on the surface, faster each time. A powerful eddy had formed, and its circular movement was sucking him into its center. He struggled fiercely against it, moving his arms and legs as fast as he could. He felt a shooting pain in his chest, possibly caused by the strain he was putting on his muscles, but he didn’t stop moving; he couldn’t, or the eddy would swallow him up. The pain became acute, as if someone were pressing heavily on his chest and piercing his nipples at the same time. He continued swimming tenaciously against the whirlpool, enduring the ache, until the rooster in back of his house woke him up with its rowdy crowing.

With his eyes fixed on the ceiling, relieved that it only had been a bad dream, Hochiminh thanked God for the roosters. However, as the rest of his body began to rouse, he felt an intense pain in his nipples. He brought his hands to his chest instinctively and became horrified. His hands didn’t land flat on the skin of his chest, as they generally did; this time, he thought, they arched over two large mounds that had appeared overnight, like boils. Hochiminh jumped out of his bed and quickly lit the candle that was on the night table. He lowered his head until his double chin touched his cleavage, tilting it slightly from left to right and vice versa with his eyes wide open. The proximity of the view caused him to imagine that his breasts looked larger than they were, and he wept quietly. How was he going to explain these to his mother and sisters? And what about the contest? Up on the platform he’d be nothing but an object of ridicule. This couldn’t be happening to him. He, who had been an altar boy. He, who recited a Hail Mary and a Lord’s Prayer every night before going to bed. He, who was a good student, an obedient son, a good brother to his two sisters, and a good grandson to—well, on a few occasions he’d stolen silver coins from his grandmother’s purse, right in front of her exhausted, half-blind eyes, while she said rosary after rosary. This had to be a divine punishment. After saying a few prayers with fervent devotion, Hochiminh put on his late father’s bathrobe and threw a large towel behind his neck, making sure the ends covered his breasts. He grabbed the candle, opened the door of his bedroom slightly, just enough to see that there was no one in the corridor, and hurried to the outhouse.

Outside, the boy undressed in front of a full-length mirror and gave free rein to his imagination. He saw two fleshy protuberances, each with a large nipple at the end, stare back at him. He cupped his hands under them, feeling their weight. They were as heavy as oranges. He squeezed them hard, trying to deflate them, but the excessive pressure made them hurt and the sharp new pain seemed to insist that they were a part of his body; two self-contained organs that, quite possibly, were there to perform some specific functions. Perhaps, a more pragmatic Hochiminh reckoned, they’d shrink if he soaked them in cold water, like his penis did. He ran across the patio, naked, to the large barrel they used to collect rainwater, and went into the water, immersing his pudgy body from the neck down. A few minutes later he came out, shivering. His nipples had become stiff, and the pain in his chest had stopped, numbed by the cold water. But his breasts remained large and firm—or so he believed.

THAT SAME MORNING, they say, Vietnam Calderón didn’t get up until his mother tickled his heels. The boy was redundant with laziness, slackness, tardiness and other words ending in ess that amounted to nothing good for his character. In the outhouse he found, as usual, the washing basin and towel his mother left for him every morning. He scrubbed his armpits and between his legs, cursing at her for making him wash daily; then went to his room and put on clean clothes his mother had chosen for him. A few minutes later he sat at the dining table in front of a stale piece of corn bread and a cup of hot chocolate. His mother sat beside him, holding a cup of coffee and repeating, one last time, her “useful tips” on how to win the competition.

“Listen to me, Vietnam,” she began, a hint of irritation in her voice. “When you’re up on the platform, don’t pick your nose or rub your crotch, like you always do.” The boy nodded his head mechanically. He looked rather tense, but his mother decided he was just not keen on the contest or her tips. After all, he wasn’t too keen on anything in particular. Everything he did was marked with such indifference that the teacher Cleotilde had said he’d make a good politician.

“…And please, Vietnam, for once in your life wear a smile on your face. Are you listening to me?”

“Yes, Mamá,” he finally replied in the falsetto voice of a little girl. He cleared his throat and said it again, “Yes, Mamá.” It sounded just as delicate.

The widow took a sip of coffee before asking, “What’s the matter with your voice?”

“I don’t know. It was—” He stopped, cleared his throat again and tried one more time. “It was normal last night.”

“You sound like a girl, for Christ’s sake!”

“Leave him alone,” said Liboria, Vietnam’s grandmother. “Boys’ voices start breaking when they turn fifteen.” Old Liboria lay stretched in a hammock slung from beams across the dining area. She was always in the hammock, aging slowly while suspended in the air, like a good sausage in a butcher’s shop.

Vietnam drank his hot chocolate in sips, letting every mouthful burn his throat. “It was normal yesterday,” he repeated, soprano-like.

“Stop talking like that, Vietnam!” his mother admonished him, her index finger in the air.

The boy’s face turned red. He coughed, grunted and made every guttural sound he could think of. “It was normal yesterday,” he repeated.

Visibly upset, his mother finished the coffee in one gulp, reared up and plodded into the kitchen.

In the back of the house, in front of the mirror his father had pasted up on the wall many years ago, Vietnam gargled with salty water. “Testing, uno, dos, tres.” He gargled more. “Testing, uno, dos, tres.” But his voice remained impossibly high-pitched. Desperately, he pushed his index finger down his throat and moved it in circles until he vomited his breakfast and tears came to his eyes. He wiped the tears away with the heel of his hand, then went to get water to clean the mess he’d made. It was back there, as he fetched water from the laundry sink, that Vietnam felt a stream flowing down his legs. He forgot about the water and rushed to the toilet, his legs held together from the hips to the knees. He was so embarrassed to have wetted his pants that when he pulled them down he saw not urine, but blood, staining his trousers red, running down his inner thighs. He looked at his penis and noticed blood still gushing from it. He became frightened, not just because of the scarlet color of his blood but also because of his total inability to restrain the discharge. “I’m dying,” he wailed.

“Vietnaaaaaaaaam!” shouted his mother from the kitchen. “Hurry up. You’re going to be late for the contest!”

“I’m coming, Mamá,” he shrieked.

“Stop talking like that, Vietnam! I’m warning you!”

“Leave him alone,” his grandmother grumbled from her hammock.

THEY SAY THAT when Trotsky Sánchez’s mother walked into her son’s room to wake him up, she found him weeping on the edge of his bed. He used one of his hands to cover his diminutive slanting eyes, and kept the other clenched on his chest, close to his heart.

“What’s wrong, mi cielo?”

“…!……!!……!!!” Trotsky gabbled.

She came closer to his bed and stroked his hair. “You’re frightened about what might happen at the contest, aren’t you?” She sat next to him, embraced him and wiped away his tears with her impeccable white apron. “My heart tells me you’ll win, Trotsky, and a mother’s heart is never wrong.”

The boy unclenched his hand and looked at it over his mother’s shoulder: what he was hiding was still there. He closed his hand tightly again and let out a shriek.

“Everything’s okay, cariño. Mamá’s here.”

But the boy had empowered his imagination to take him to a place where nothing was okay. Earlier that morning, before sunrise, Trotsky had awakened wanting to urinate. He pulled the chamber pot from under his bed and placed it on the mattress. He stood in front of it, still somnolent, and inserted his right hand into his pants, looking for his penis. His hand landed on his young pubic hair and quickly traveled the pubes, hunting for his member. It moved all over, his five fingers extended in every direction. He found his testicles, warm and shriveled, but not his penis. Annoyed, he lit a candle. His sleepy eyes and hand were now in search of the elusive penis, but they couldn’t find it. Trotsky became fully awake, almost alert. He pulled his trousers down to his knees, and with wide eyes and both hands he examined his pubic area thoroughly, splitting small sections of his pubic hair. His penis simply wasn’t there. In fact, there was no indication of any penis ever having been between his legs. In his state of confusion he even looked for it in sections of his body where ordinarily it wouldn’t be, like his navel, his armpits, and behind his ears. Trotsky opened his eyes wide and covered his mouth with both hands the way his mother did when someone mentioned guerrillas and paramilitary soldiers. He still felt the need to urinate, but how? Perhaps his penis had retreated beneath his skin like his testicles did sometimes, leaving the scrotum empty and wrinkled. He pulled up his pants and walked to the outhouse.

There he stood in front of the latrine, not knowing what to do, until at length he squatted on his heels, hoping that his penis would pop up from under his pelvis. But his urine found a different way out of his body. It came out in a steady flow through his rectum, just as warm and yellow as always. Trotsky cried all the way back to his bedroom. He sat on the edge of his bed waiting to wake up from his nightmare. He even pinched his arm to make sure he was awake. Then he saw it: his penis! Trotsky saw his penis lying on the floor, next to a pair of beat-up black shoes he’d inherited from his late father. Perplexed, he bent over to get a better look at it: a flaccid outgrowth the size of a silkworm with a dark mole in the center. Somehow it had detached itself from his crotch while he was sleeping, and traveled from the bed to the floor.

Contemplating his apathetic penis in his mind’s eye, Trotsky discovered he was afraid of it. If it had been able to remove itself, it might be capable of much more. It might crawl and twist like a worm; it might fly sightless, like a bat; it might even attack the boy, its master. After some time, and after convincing himself that his penis wasn’t qualified to perform such difficult tasks, Trotsky overcame his fears and picked it up from the floor. He held it tenderly in the palm of his hand, observing it from every possible angle. It didn’t appear to have been cut off; its base was perfectly sealed, and the top looked exactly as it had when Trotsky saw it last, its head covered with extra skin contracted into folds. Holding his loose penis in his palm made the boy feel deeply sad.

He wept and wept until his mother entered his room.

THEY SAY THAT the four boys met at the doorstep of Nurse Ramírez’ house sometime before eight. They’d rushed, separately and without telling anyone, to the infirmary, which was, in fact, the nurse’s living room, soberly decorated with her late husband’s medical school certificates and a large, cobwebby picture of the human skeletal frame, and which had a separate entrance also on the street. The nurse answered the infirmary’s door in her late husband’s pajamas. She was rather buxom and had a mass of shining black curls that clustered about her rotund face.

“Shouldn’t you all be heading to the plaza?” she asked in a squeaky voice, visibly bothered by the boys’ early presence. They hid their faces without replying. “You’re just terrified of all those silly girls and their stupid competition, aren’t you? Go on! You’ll get over it.” The boys whined and didn’t move. Nurse Ramírez rolled her eyes at them and said, “All right, all right, damn it! Has anyone been shot?” They shook their heads. “Good, because I can’t stand the sight of blood. Come inside and wait until I get dressed.”

Mariquita’s nurse was squeamish about blood, vomit, diarrhea, pus, rashes and other people’s genitalia—her own she found quite desirable. Needless to say, she wasn’t a good nurse. In fact, she was not a nurse at all. She was the widow of Dr. Ramírez, Mariquita’s only physician for over thirty years, and she’d half learned, from him, only the very basics of medicine—how to take a patient’s pulse and blood pressure, how to read a thermometer and use the stethoscope, and how to give injections. She refused to learn how to give mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Eight years before, after the guerrilla attack in which Mariquita’s men disappeared, the widow of Dr. Ramírez had been of no help. That day she tried to assist her neighbors and friends in treating their wounds, but she became nauseated after seeing so much blood and went home to grieve over her own losses. A few weeks later a serious epidemic of influenza arrived, killing seven children and three old women in the first week. That time, however, she treated several patients and succeeded in stopping the epidemic from spreading. The Pérez widow even claimed that “Nurse” Ramírez had saved her life. Since, every time someone was injured or fell ill, “Nurse” Ramírez was called in.

While waiting for the fastidious nurse to come back, the boys pretended they weren’t in the infirmary waiting for the fastidious nurse to come back. Che bragged about his powerful, far-reaching ejaculation, “Be ready, guys, because I’ve been practicing for our next contest. I’m shooting farther each time.” The comment echoed in Trotsky’s ears. He tried to remain calm, though he couldn’t help biting his nails. “That was a dumb competition,” he grumbled. “I’ll never do it again.” Meanwhile Hochiminh, in one of his late father’s shirts—which looked rather large on him—and with a huge book clutched firmly against his breasts, occupied himself by memorizing the names of bones from the skeleton’s picture: “Ster-num, il-i-um, sac-rum…” Vietnam, for his part, refused to talk. He wrote on a piece of paper, “I caught a severe throat infection and lost my voice,” and held the note up for his friends to see it.

NURSE RAMÍREZ COULDN’T bring herself to examine the boys. She called them into her office one at a time and listened to their symptoms. What she heard was so terrifying that she immediately locked them in the waiting room. In her mind there was no doubt that she was faced with some mysterious, ghastly epidemic. She grew apprehensive, her hands began shaking involuntarily, and she felt a compulsive de sire to wash herself. She took off her clothes, put them in a bag and sealed it, then gave herself a sponge bath, scrubbing her entire body several times. She got dressed again, feeling a little calmer, and took out of a drawer an old medical reference book, a relic that had been handed down from generation to generation in her husband’s family. She wanted to look up the disease, but where to start? It occurred to her that someone else should get involved.

WHEN THE MAGISTRATE arrived and learned the bad news, she wanted to see the boys, but the nurse wouldn’t let her. Rosalba insisted.

“But you didn’t examine them. How do you know they’re not lying?”

“Lying? Would you lie about something like that, Magistrate? If you had only seen their faces. They looked terrified. Hochiminh was covering his breasts with a large book, poor thing. And Vietnam couldn’t even talk. How disgraceful!”

“Ramírez, I must see the boys,” Rosalba requested firmly.

“Magistrate, you go inside that room, and you’ll have to stay in it with those infected boys for forty days,” Nurse Ramírez returned, in a harsh tone that to the magistrate’s autocratically trained ears invited confrontation. But the circumstances were so dire that even Rosalba recognized that they called for serenity and compliance. She gave the nurse her word that she wouldn’t see the boys but demanded the key to the room where they were kept. That way she could feel as though she were in control of the situation. She hid it in her bosom, then went to get the police sergeant, Ubaldina viuda de Restrepo.

The sergeant wasn’t given specific details about the boys’ medical condition—discretion wasn’t among her attributes. She was sent to look for the other three men of Mariquita (Julio Morales, Santiago Marín and el padre Rafael), and to bring them to the infirmary for a full medical examination.

THE SERGEANT FOUND Julio Morales—Julia, as he was better known—among the crowd of women waiting for the contest to begin. He was, as usual, dressed as a girl, her black hair arrayed with colorful flowers. “The magistrate wants to see you immediately,” the sergeant whispered in the girl’s ear. Julia gestured to her to go ahead; she’d follow her. Which she did with her back perfectly straight, her hips swinging side to side rhythmically, and each of her bare feet landing exactly in front of the other with every step—a bewitching gait that put the ungainly sergeant, with her linen pants, plaid shirt and worn leather boots, to shame.

Santiago Marín, the Other Widow, was found in his backyard, working on his small but flourishing garden, where he grew the best tomatoes in town. Ever since the night he sent his lover Pablo on his last, nonreturn trip, Santiago had grown introspective and quiet. He hadn’t turned mute like Julia; he just didn’t talk unless he had something meaningful to say. Today, after listening to the sergeant, Santiago put on a clean shirt, let his long hair down and left for the infirmary, escorted by Ubaldina.

El padre Rafael was the last man brought to the infirmary. The sergeant had found the priest eating breakfast at Cafetería d’Villegas, and after she informed him about “something terrible” scourging Mariquita, he begged for a few minutes with the Lord. Ubaldina walked him to the back entrance of the church. They didn’t want to be seen by the crowd gathered in the plaza—the women, by now, were getting impatient with both the boys’ tardiness and the fiery sun’s promptness. The sergeant waited outside the church, whistling old songs and stroking the butt of the old revolver she carried in her waistband. Four songs later el padre came out, and together they walked toward the infirmary.

THE BOYS’ MOTHERS were also sent for. They needed to be notified about the boys’ medical condition and the ordained quarantine. The four widows demanded to see their children, threatening to kick down the door of the room in which they were kept if the magistrate didn’t let them in. While Nurse Ramírez and the sergeant occupied themselves with the potential multiple detentions, Rosalba decided it was time to confront the crowd of women at the plaza. They’d become so rowdy and unrestrained that their uproar could be heard from every corner of Mariquita. It was hardly ten in the morning, and the sun was already flaming. Rosalba went along dreary streets carpeted with thousands of leaves the wind had snatched from the mango trees earlier that morning. There was not a soul in sight. The contest had paralyzed the village’s activities, which on a regular Sunday morning weren’t many anyway: a few street vendors and a handful of God-fearing widows who attended the early services. Rosalba wondered how the women gathered at the plaza would react to the news. They’d grown resilient after enduring so many adversities over the years, but this really was the end of their hopes. If Nurse Ramírez was right about the boys’ disease, the women would never be with a man again. Or bear boys. Or girls. Or anything else. After today, they’d have to decide whether they wanted to rot in this wretched village waiting for male relatives or suitors that might never come back, or boldly cross those intimidating mountains clustered around them and find not a village, but a large city where guerrillas couldn’t kidnap every man at once, where there were enough healthy men to impregnate them, and electricity and running water and cars and telephones. Maybe even one of those electric machines that made cold air and blew it on you. Rosalba would give anything to sit next to one of those right now.

But what would these poor peasants do in a large city with no land for sowing? They’d end up working as domestics or prostitutes, the only professions for which countrywomen seemed to be qualified when they moved to the city. What would those provincial women do among so many sophisticated ladies and cultured gentlemen? People would laugh at them, at their ragged clothes and bare feet. They’d make fun of their plump, corn-fed bodies, their coarseness, their legs covered in mosquito bites. And if the plain women were to say that they’d come all the way from Mariquita, the sophisticated ladies would ask, “Mari what?” and roar with laughter.

No. These poor, simple women would never leave Mariquita. They’d stay right here, immersed in this routine where even the musty air they breathed smelled the same day after day after day; where everyone knew their names and their weaknesses; where no one was rich or sophisticated—merely less poor, less unrefined—and it didn’t matter anyway because in the end they were all marked for doom. Yes. They’d stay here, in purgatory. Because that’s what Mariquita really was. Purgatory. Only no one had realized it yet. No one but the magistrate.

“I have dire news,” Rosalba said to the crowd, looking unusually composed. “The boys,” she added, watching the women’s puzzled expressions, which in a second or two would turn into suffering. She proceeded to explain in great detail what had occurred to each boy, or rather what the nurse had told her. She told the women about breasts that mysteriously appeared and penises that shrank or left without so much as a warning. For an instant she considered taking advantage of the improvised gathering to ask the women to sweep the streets and alleyways. The many leaves made it unsafe for people to walk. But when her announcement was greeted by hysterical shrieks, Rosalba realized asking the women to sweep leaves might not be the most sensible thing to do.

Brokenhearted, Magnolia propped herself against a robust tree and wept. Not far from her, Luisa buried her face in Sandra’s bosom. Elvira and Cuba nursed their mutual sorrows on each other’s shoulders. Other women hid their faces behind their hands and wept through their fingers. What now? The four boys had been the only hope for all of them. From now on they wouldn’t have any expectations. They’d sit and watch days run into weeks into months into years…. And then one day, after a lifetime of loneliness, they would die; bitter old maids who never knew what it felt like to have a man other than the priest panting around their necks, his bristly face brushing against their breasts or between their legs.

“What has befallen me?” Magnolia Morales cried, kicking and hit ting the blameless tree with her fists. “What a disgrace! What a terrible misery! I’ll never be happy.” But with her sobs came a certain relief: for the very first time in her life Magnolia confronted her biggest preoccupation. She tenderly stroked the scabrous surface of the tree as though it were her man bidding her a sad farewell. And she cried some more.

At that moment Nurse Ramírez arrived from the infirmary. Her face was shiny and sweaty and her eyes sunken. She was followed by el padre Rafael, Julia and Santiago. Santiago carried a large book between his hands. The nurse stood on the platform next to the magistrate and announced that she had examined the three men. But in reality, since they hadn’t complained of any symptoms, she’d merely asked them to undress and, from a certain distance, verified that everything was what it should be and where it should be. “None of them is missing anything. They’re complete and intact,” she announced to the crowd, under the obvious impression that she was the bearer of good tidings. But her tidings didn’t bring any relief to the women’s grieving. They’d never thought of Julio and Santiago as men—neither had Julio and Santiago—and as for el padre Rafael, that was all in the past; a nasty, shameful past of which no woman wanted to be reminded.

But the nurse wasn’t finished. She reported that she had found something. A lead, she said, in an old medical reference book that was like a Bible to her. “I presume that our boys are suffering from a condition known as…” She signaled to Santiago to come closer with the book. “Let’s see,” she said, opening it on a page marked with a corn husk, pulling her face away from it to better see the small print. “Here it is: Babaloosi-Babaloosi. A mysterious condition seen once in the late 1800s in a remote region of southern Africa. Babaloosi-Babaloosi is believed to have gradually turned infants of the Zukashasu tribe into exceptional creatures that were neither men nor women. The creatures, known as Babas, eventually became the tribe chief’s advisers due to their impartiality in all matters.”

“Please stop,” el padre Rafael called. “This whole thing is absurd. Are you all blind? Can’t you see that this is a punishment from God?” He walked up to the magistrate, looking as though he was experiencing muscular dystrophy on his face. “You must do something about all this nonsense,” he hissed.

“Ramírez, please continue,” Rosalba said to the nurse. Furious, the priest stepped aside. He crossed his arms and shook his head repeatedly. The nurse went on.

“Babaloosi-Babaloosi was confirmed by the English doctor Harry Walsh, who began studying it during the last decade of the nineteenth century. Unfortunately, Dr. Walsh died of malaria in 1903, leaving inconclusive theories about the selective disease. The Zukashasu believed it to be a miracle, but medical records classified it simply as a mysterious condition of unknown origins.” The nurse stopped and asked if anyone had questions.

“Where’s Africa?” Francisca said, raising her hand in the air.

The nurse shrugged her shoulders and scanned the crowd, looking for Cleotilde. The schoolmistress always had an answer for every question.

“Africa is located south of Europe, between the Atlantic and the Indian Oceans,” the old woman answered from the back. Francisca was just about to ask where Europe was when the priest spoke.

“Does your book say what happened to this wondrous tribe?” His words were filled with contempt.

The nurse took notice of el padre’s question but overlooked his sarcastic tone. She faced the book again and read, “The Zukashasu tribe was exterminated by their neighbors, the Shumitah tribe, in an ethnic war that killed thousands of native Africans in 1913. Nevertheless, they are remembered as one of the most successful forms of society ever seen in that continent.” She paused to look up and then said, in the ingenuous voice of a young girl, “Imagine that: an impartial human being, someone who won’t take sides because they are neither male nor female. I think the world needs people like that.” She closed the book, convinced she’d ended her speech with a profound sentence.

An absolute silence spread throughout the plaza as the women began speculating. First, they tried to picture what an impartial human being would look like; and then they tried to conceive of a society with no prejudices, ruled with fairness and honesty. But nothing materialized. They had never seen either.

“No one’s as impartial as God. He doesn’t judge us,” the priest interrupted their thoughts, in the same tedious and sermonizing tone he used daily in church.

“But your God doesn’t live in this town, Padre,” Nurse Ramírez returned, feeling under attack. “He gave up on us, and you’re very stubborn to still believe in Him.”

“You’ll burn in hell, you blasphemous woman!” the priest shouted. He turned to face the crowd and said, “Turn a deaf ear to foolish fairy tales. The Bible says—”

“The Bible says nothing we can understand or relate to,” the nurse interposed suddenly, her cheeks flaming with rage. “How many times has manna rained from heaven when we’ve been hungry? How many of our dead relatives have been brought back to life? Your fairy tales are no more believable than mine, Padre.” Both the nurse and the priest turned to the magistrate, as though seeking support, and the crowd, which had detected the delicious prospect of a serious confrontation, also looked at the magistrate (nothing made their problems smaller than witnessing the difficulties of others).

But Rosalba didn’t respond immediately. She seemed to be considering both el padre’s and the nurse’s arguments. Whatever she said next, she knew, could calm them down or infuriate them even more. “I say we should write our own Bible,” she finally proposed with a giggle. “A Bible that speaks to us, that tells about towns devastated by guerrillas and paramilitaries. About doomed villages of widows and spinsters and penises that disappear overnight.”

Except for el padre Rafael—who rolled his eyes—and a handful of pious widows, the crowd found the idea amusing. The women nodded and murmured to one another, and some even laughed quietly. And so Rosalba, encouraged by the somewhat positive response to her witty remark, went on, “We perform our own miracles, after all. Don’t we feed great crowds with very little food? Don’t we walk on water every October and November, when we have those hideous floods?” She chuckled.

“The only miracle we haven’t mastered yet is how to cast out demons,” Nurse Ramírez interrupted, giving the priest a vicious look. The crowd had a good laugh at this last comment.

“I want a Bible that doesn’t disgrace women who love women,” demanded Francisca from the crowd.

“Or men who love men,” the Other Widow echoed from the platform.

And as more people began to enthusiastically shout their ideas for Mariquita’s Bible, the priest began gabbling away in Latin: “Sanctus Dominus Deus Sabaoth…” He slowly fell on his knees. “Miserere nobis. Dona nobis pacem.” Stretched his arms to their full length. “Pater noster, qui es in coelis…” He turned his face toward the sky, hoping for a violent thunderstorm to break at that moment, but the sky had never before looked so clear.

LATER THAT DAY, kneeling alone on the bare floor of the chapel, el padre pleaded, “Why, Beloved Father? Why are You letting them abuse Your name? They’re only swearing against You so as not to face the truth in a dignified way. And why don’t You allow Your humble congregation to be fruitful and multiply? All we want is to follow Your mandate, oh Lord, to replenish the earth with Catholics and have dominion over every living thing upon it. Why have you sent this plague to scourge us?”

He went on and on with his litany.

Then something unusual happened: while contemplating a painting of Moses with the two stone tablets of God’s law, which hung askew on the wall, el padre was imagining how onerous it must have been for poor Moses to be entrusted with such a burden, when a radiant sunbeam filtered through the window, blinding him, and at the same time, miraculously, laying the truth before his eyes. He remembered that in the Old Testament, God rescued His chosen people from slavery with twelve dramatic plagues, and then parted the waters of the Red Sea so that they could escape from the land of Egypt. Why, of course! That’s what God had intended when he sent that first plague, the guerrillas, to Mariquita in 1992. The rebels forcibly recruited and kidnapped most of the men, sinful creatures who skipped mass and went wenching to that house of sin, Doña Emilia’s. Why, of course! The boys’ sudden disease was the Lord’s way of punishing the women for their horrible sins; for lying with each other and not believing in God. Everything made sense now: his own mysterious barrenness, Che’s shrinking penis, Hochiminh’s breasts, Vietnam’s menstruation, Trotsky’s self-ruling genitals—they were all plagues. The Plagues of Mariquita.

“The light!” he murmured, his eyesight already cleared. “I’ve seen the light!” God may not have made Himself manifest in the middle of a flame, or talked to him directly from on high (that was a privilege of real saints that he could not expect), but the Lord had disclosed His will to el padre nonetheless. He’d done it through a modest sunbeam and el padre’s prodigious mind and perception. “I’ve been chosen by God to be the Moses of Mariquita!” he concluded ecstatically. “Praise be to God!”

Overwhelmed with his new knowledge, but unsure as to what his mission in Mariquita might be, el padre decided to look for guidance in God’s Book itself. He sat on a pew with the massive Bible resting on his lap, and eagerly began reading the second book of Moses called Exodus. Meanwhile, the crowd in the plaza outside got louder. Their impertinent noise crept against the walls of the chapel and rumbled like a draft through the cracks and crevices of it. El padre rose and looked into the plaza through the metal grating. Dozens of women sat by the platform under the mango trees, jabbering about new Bibles, Babaloosi-Babaloosi, and Zukashasu. Before long, el padre thought, they’ll be worshiping idols in human form, like those plagued boys. Or even worse, idols of animal likeness, like…like themselves!

He went back to the pew and continued reading Exodus with increased devotion until, in chapter 32, verses 26 and 27, he found the answer to his question. Filled with awe, el padre abruptly brought his hands to his mouth, closed his eyes and stayed like that for a few minutes. Then he rose, straightened his back and lifted his chin, and, addressing the window through which God’s sunbeam had enlightened him, he softly said, “Thy will be done.”

EL PADRE RAFAEL wasn’t a wicked man, just plain stupid. He’d gotten an idea into his head. Two ideas, in fact: he was a modern Moses, and he was on a divine mission to save the people of Mariquita. On that account, he overcame his pride and went to see the magistrate in her office.

“I want to pay a religious visit to the boys,” he began with certain haughtiness. But after meeting the magistrate’s stern gaze, he quickly reconsidered his approach and softened his tone. “The nurse said you have the key to the room where they’re kept, and I think it’s very important that they receive the Holy Eucharist. They need to be at peace with God, Magistrate.”

“You can’t go in there, Padre,” she replied lethargically.

“And why is that? Is it because you dread my presence will…interrupt the boys’ mutation into—”

“Spare me your sarcasm, Padre,” Rosalba interrupted. “I don’t believe in any of that Babaloosi business any more than you do.” She rose and walked slowly up to the window. There she stood, with her arms folded on her chest, looking at nothing in particular.

“Why, I’m relieved to hear that!” he returned. The magistrate’s confession had lifted his spirits. “A brilliant community leader like yourself can’t give credence to mundane explanations of divine mandates.”

“I’ve also stopped believing in your God, Padre,” Rosalba replied instantly and with absolute conviction, as if saying the first line of the Creed.

El padre Rafael walked about the room silently. He made different faces and quick gestures with his hands and head, all of which suggested that he was having an earnest conversation with himself. The magistrate’s revelation hadn’t taken him by surprise. In the past few years he’d noticed a significant decrease in the women’s faith. The great majority of them still attended mass once a week, but el padre knew that at least half of them did it for a different reason. In a small community of thirty-seven widows, forty-four old maids, ten teenagers, five children, Julia Morales, Santiago Marín and the priest himself, going to mass was a social duty. Women must be seen in church or else openly declare themselves nonbelievers—as Francisca had done after she found a fortune under her bed—and bear the consequences of being excommunicated. The fact that Mariquita’s highest authority had candidly admitted to not believing in God meant that soon it’d be socially acceptable for anyone not to attend the religious services, and consequently el padre Rafael would no longer be needed. He, however, would not be discouraged by that (hadn’t Moses had to endure a similar situation?). El padre Rafael had been assigned a divine mission by the Lord Himself, and he would carry it to its logical conclusion.

“Magistrate,” he said ceremoniously. “You said you don’t believe in the nurse’s tale, but you also don’t believe in…my God. Then, may I ask, how do you explain the boys’ strange condition? Because you know their condition is real.”

“No, Padre. I don’t know if it’s real. I haven’t seen them. No one has. They merely mentioned their symptoms to Ramírez, and she immediately locked them up, without examining them. You know how squeamish and fastidious she can be.”

“I sure do. But if the boys went to see her in the first place, it was because…” He narrowed his eyes and, lowering his voice, said, “You’re not suggesting that they made it all up?”

Rosalba shrugged. “I only say they’ve been known for their shrewdness.”

“Well, there’s only one way to dispel your doubts, Magistrate,” el padre said confidently.

Rosalba considered the priest’s proposition for a short while, then turned aside, reached into her bosom and took out the key to the padlock that kept the four boys captives. “I want it back in an hour,” she said, handing it to him.

EL PADRE WENT back to his dwelling, located in the back of the church. It was a small, stuffy chamber with bare walls and a single window that had been jammed for years. Not a single image or crucifix hung there. On top of his chest of drawers were a basket full of tiny arepas and a jug half-filled with chicha. The corn tidbits and the fermented corn beverage were donated and delivered to him every Sunday morning by the Morales widow. She also tidied up his room.

He pulled, from under his bed, a wooden trunk filled with all sorts of junk: plastic washbowls, rusty tubes and iron fittings, empty bottles of different sizes, a hairpiece he’d used when he started losing his hair, a wig he’d worn when he lost it all, a table lamp and even lightbulbs from when Mariquita had electricity. He rummaged about in the trunk, clearly searching for something. He emptied the whole trunk before happening upon the object he was looking for: a medium-sized bottle with the screw top tightly wrapped in adhesive tape. He held the bottle up to the light coming in through the window. It was filled with some liquid. “Hallelujah!” he said, kissing it. Then he put it in the pocket of his soutane.

Disregarding the mess he’d created on the floor, el padre went to the chest of drawers. He clutched the jug against his body as best he could, grabbed the basket of arepas and hurried out to the street, toward the infirmary.

CHE, HOCHIMINH, VIETNAM and Trotsky were overjoyed when they saw the priest. They were true Catholics; they knew that when everything else failed, they could always count on God—or at least on one of His emissaries. El padre promptly padlocked the door from the inside and began scrutinizing the boys, one by one, for some sign of the dramatic plague the Lord had sent on them. Aside from their reddened eyes and frantic expressions, they looked perfectly normal. But el padre knew better than to trust his own eyes: the devil worked in deceptive ways. He laid the inoffensive basket and the inoffensive jug on an old desk and stood behind it, facing the boys. He made them sit and began speaking about God and His will. He spoke in the language of the Bible, a language too sophisticated for them to understand. Something about darkness and kingdoms, madness and plagues, destruction and chaos. And maybe angels. Then he talked about the Holy Eucharist. Again incomprehensible. So much that Hochiminh wondered if el padre were speaking in tongues. When he was finished, he made each boy go to a corner and say three Hail Marys and a Creed. “For penance,” he said, though he hadn’t heard their confessions. Meanwhile he took the bottle out of his pocket and opened it. With great caution he emptied its contents into the jug of chicha and watched it dissolve quickly. He replaced the top tightly on the bottle and put it back in his pocket.

Once absolved from all their sins, the boys were asked to line up in a row facing the improvised altar. They arranged themselves according to height. Vietnam, the shortest, on the far left, then Trotsky, Che and finally Hochiminh. They bowed their heads, and each one clasped his hands before his chest. The priest thought they looked like angels—except they didn’t have wings or blond hair. To be real angels, they had to have blond hair.

El padre raised his hands in the air and began a conversation with the Almighty. “We come to You, Father,” he said, “with praise and thanksgiving, through Jesus Christ Your Son.” He made the sign of the cross over both the basket and the jug. Then he added, “Through Him we ask You to accept and bless these gifts we offer You in sacrifice.” He joined his hands, closed his eyes and remained silent for a moment.

When Hochiminh noticed that the priest was getting ready to break the bread, he, who had been an altar boy—a mediocre one, but an altar boy nonetheless—instinctively began singing, “Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world: have mercy upon us…”

El padre took an arepa out of the basket, and since he didn’t have a paten in which to place it, broke it over the desk. He carefully let a little piece of it fall in the jug and mouthed a few more of his incomprehensible words. He took the arepa, raised it up before his face and asked the boys to come closer, and closer still, until the obedient creatures were up against the edge of the desk, hit in the face by el padre’s sour breath. He took a tiny arepa out of the basket and showed it to them. “The body of Christ,” he said.

“Amen,” they replied in unison. One by one the four boys received communion.

Then, the priest grabbed the jug with both hands and gave it to Vietnam, saying, “The blood of Christ.”

“Amen,” the boys answered again. Each boy lifted the jug to his lips, swallowed a generous gulp of chicha—sweet, aromatic, slightly peppery—and retired to a corner where he knelt down.

“Let us pray,” said el padre. He extended his hands and closed his eyes tightly. But instead of praying, he anxiously waited for the churchlike silence of the room to be broken by the first warning sound.

Vietnam’s breathing became very rapid, then slow and irregular. He began coughing in spurts.

The priest chanted, “May the blessing of Almighty God…”

Trotsky felt numbness in the throat. His heart pounded disorderly against his constricted chest. Bewildered and fearful, he ripped off his shirt, muttering angrily.

“…the Father…”

Che wanted to scream for help—his insides were burning—but his jaw was stiff, and the words drowned in his throat.

“…and the Son…”

Hochiminh shrieked with pain. He vomited violently, his face beaded with sweat.

“…and the Holy Spirit…”

The four boys managed to straighten up and take a few steps toward one another. They didn’t want to die on their knees.

“…come upon you…”

One by one they collapsed on the floor, where they convulsed in pools of vomit before falling unconscious.

“Go in the peace of Christ!” el padre commanded, his voice a strident scream. Then silence. A silence so funereal that a chill ran up his own spine. He opened his eyes: the room was dark, empty of life. He hastened to kiss the surface of the desk and made the customary reverence. Then he went to the door. As he put the key in the padlock, he turned and glanced over his shoulder at the macabre scene: Four boys with protruding eyeballs and purplish, sweat-drenched skin. Four boys with their mouths covered in foam and blood. Four still boys.

El padre heaved a long sigh.

The key turned easily in the lock.

The room became icy cold.

And in the misty air, a strong smell of shit and bitter almonds.

CHAPTER 8

The Plagues of Mariquita