ch13

The Curious Gringo

New Mariquita, Francisca 20, Ladder 1996

ALL MORNING LONG JULIA Morales had been lying in a hammock slung between two trees in the middle of the plaza, twirling her hair around one finger, taking deep breaths, looking south. She wore a tight, faded blue dress that exposed her thighs. From time to time she swung, giving a lazy push from the ground with one of her delicate feet. Once, when a beam of sunlight struck her face, she got up and carried one side of the hammock to a different tree, then lay down again, staring longingly south, the direction the smell was coming from.

One by one her three older sisters had come around to tell her to stop fantasizing and go to work. “Smell? What smell?” her oldest sister Orquidea asked harshly. “The only thing I smell is your laziness.” Gardenia took a more aggressive approach: “Get up right now, you sluggard cow. I’ll give you something to smell. Here, smell this,” she said, showing Julia her naked posterior. And Magnolia, who had the faculty of viewing everything in relation to herself, said, “I don’t smell anything. If there were something to smell, I would’ve been the first one to smell it.”

Julia was not in the least troubled by what her sisters said. She knew what she smelled, even if no one else could detect it: a robust, slightly acrid, alluring, pungent mixture of lime peels, mineral salts, perspiration and musk…large amounts of musk. The smell filled the air, getting stronger as the sun wore on. She had no doubt that a man was approaching town, and she was determined to be the first one to welcome him to the village of New Mariquita.

THE AMERICAN REPORTER wore a pale guayabera shirt that was large on him and a pair of loose khaki trousers hacked off below the knees, fraying at the edges. A canteen half filled with water was slung over his left shoulder. His hair was long and yellow and greasy and gathered in a ponytail, and he had two weeks’ growth of flaxen stubble. His sneakers were nearly hidden under coats of fresh and old mud that made it impossible to tell their color or brand name. His feet were blistered, the left one badly, causing him to walk with a limp. There was an air of refinement and intellect about his face, a severely sunburned face with sky-blue eyes and a small nose. He had been traveling the country for the past six months, interviewing guerrilla, paramilitary and national army soldiers, as well as civilians touched by the Colombian conflict. He was thirty-one and answered to the name of Gordon Smith.

Walking ahead of him were a barefoot boy and a scrawny mule loaded with a medium-sized yellow duffel bag. The boy liked to be called Pito, and his mule was Pita. Pito wore a sombrero with a chewed-off brim and ragged shorts. Nothing else.

“Slow down,” Gordon shouted to Pito. “Please.”

“We’re almost there, Don Míster Gordo,” the boy said. He stood with his legs splayed, anchored in glutinous orange mud, wondering why the funny-talking gringo insisted on being called “Gordo” when he wasn’t fat.

Gordon looked at his watch; they had been riding for almost seven hours. “I’ve heard you say that three times before,” he replied, shooting the boy a suspicious glance.

Pito ignored both the comment and the look. “Sure you don’t want to ride Pita again? She’s a little old but still very strong.”

“Gracias.” Gordon shook his head. Riding the beast had made him nervous and dizzy, but he was too proud to admit it. Instead he’d told the boy that the mule didn’t look strong at all and that he felt sorry for it, which was true enough. Pita looked starved, weak-legged and poorly watered, and had a loose shoe on her right rear foot.

They continued their journey up and down the hills, among long stretches of woods and through narrow, rarely used trails that crisscrossed capriciously and often turned to sludge, making the journey even more unpredictable and puzzling. From time to time Gordon pulled out of his shirt pocket a scrap of paper with a poorly drawn map of the region they were passing through. He stared at it, turned it upside down, looked around and put it back in his pocket.

Only two days before, while interviewing a Communist guerrilla defector in the village of Villahermosa, Gordon had been introduced to an older, neurotic, pink-faced man who claimed to know of a tribe of ferocious female warriors living in a small village deep in the cordillera. Intrigued, Gordon agreed to buy him a few drinks in exchange for the telling of the entire story.

“They’re Amazons,” the crazy-looking man said while biting his nails in a compulsive manner. “Listen to this: pigs, cows and horses have disappeared, but also men like you and I. Uh-huh, all vanished from the face of the earth after being seen near where those creatures live. Country people are terrified of them. Entire Indian tribes have moved far south to avoid them. Even guerrillas and paramilitary groups don’t go near them. Believe me when I tell you, gringo. They’re direct descendants of the Amazons.” The story turned even more fantastic with each beer the man drank. By the time their meeting ended, Gordon, somewhat drunk, had made up his mind to go out into the cordillera to look for a tribe of grotesque, man-hating, heretic, cannibalistic women of gigantic proportions.

The next day, after sobering up, Gordon recognized that the story was preposterous. Even so, there was something in it that fascinated him, something that seemed perfectly plausible in a country that had been at war for nearly forty years: the existence of a town inhabited solely by women. He went to the neurotic old man’s house and paid him to draw a map of the area supposedly inhabited by the tribe. Then he hired a boy and a mule to take him there.

At the moment, after a seven-hour ride, Gordon thought the map looked the same from every angle. Fortunately, Pito didn’t need a map. He knew all the paths and shortcuts from having led cattle along them since he was a child, and from spending the last four years delivering secret coded mail between the groups of guerrillas scattered throughout the mountainous region. He’d been the fastest, most reliable courier the guerrillas had had. But recently, the heavy presence of the national army had forced the rebels to abandon the zone, leaving Pito out of work, which is why he had agreed to take Gordon across the mountains in the first place.

They had ridden a good distance when they reached an expanse of level land. The mule hastened its pace and soon Pito saw why: a thin stream ran almost soundlessly along the flat. They washed their faces and drank some water, which had a metallic taste.

“Well, this is it,” Pito said. “See those woods over there?” He pointed to a tight clump of trees and shrubs at the end of an impressively steep rise.

“What is it?” Gordon asked, squinting to better see what the boy was pointing at.

“The entrance! That man said it was at the end of the first rise after the Tres Cruces flat. This is the Tres Cruces flat, so that must be the entrance over there.”

Gordon contemplated the sight for a moment. “It looks like we’re going to need machetes or something to get through it. It seems almost impenetrable.”

“Don Míster Gordo,” Pito said, adopting a solemn tone. “You hired me to get you up to this spot right here in one piece, not to help you go across.”

The little bastard wants more money, Gordon thought. He produced from within his crotch a small plastic bag where he kept, rolled up and secured with a thick rubber band, a wad of bank notes. He began undoing the bundle.

When the boy realized what the gringo was doing, he shook his head. “I’m not going in there no matter how much money you give me. I’ve been told what’s over there. Those women eat people like you and me for dinner.”

Gordon gave a loud laugh. “Don’t tell me you believe all that.”

“I do. And you better believe it yourself. You don’t know nothing about this country.” With a dignified expression on his small Indian face, he unloaded Pita and handed the duffel bag to Gordon.

After muchas graciases were exchanged and hands grasped and shaken several times, Pito stepped aside. He watched Gordon slowly limp up the steep rise with the bag on his back. “God be with you, Don Míster Gordo,” he whispered to himself. He walked over to Pita and took the reins, but he didn’t mount. He kept staring at Gordon, hoping the gringo would see reason and choose to return to town. If he did, Pito decided, he’d take him back for half the price.

But Gordon didn’t stop. He hadn’t come this far to flinch at the last minute. Besides, he needed a new story, something interesting and exciting. It was with this thought in his head that he began tearing his way through the undergrowth, ripping at the vines with his own large and delicate hands, pushing into the thick tangle of leaves and branches and woody material until he disappeared into it.

DURING BREAKFAST THAT morning, Doña Victoria viuda de Morales had made excuses for her daughter with Rosalba by saying that Julia didn’t feel well. Her other three daughters, she promised, would do Julia’s work in the communal kitchen until she recovered.

Orquidea protested in private: “So I have to toil all morning at the joiner’s workshop, and still come during my break to do that loafer’s work?”

“That’s right,” Doña Victoria asserted, and then, slamming a basket full of red onions on the counter, she added, “Here, chop these before you go.”

Orquidea had recently been transferred from her mother’s kitchen to the joiner’s workshop as part of a new campaign started by the council of New Mariquita, which consisted of training every worker to perform several different tasks. Gardenia had been sent to the fields and Magnolia assigned to follow the roof-patching team. Julia, however, had been allowed to stay doing kitchen work, because Doña Victoria convinced the five council members that it was Julia’s special touch that made each and every dish from her kitchen so scrumptious.

Julia Morales, the most beautiful of the four Morales girls, was despised by her sisters on account of her good looks. She had big, rounded hazel eyes flecked with gray, which glowed against her brown skin. Her nose was small and lightly turned up at the tip, like a doll’s, and her lips full and well-defined. Her gait was so spectacular that watching her walk unescorted around the plaza was often the most anticipated event of the sun. Julia was taller than most of the women in town, and she had the most refined manners. She also had beautiful black hair that rippled in long waves to her waist, and a large penis hanging between her legs.

Julia’s astounding transformation was the product of her own self-discipline, perseverance and dedication. She’d spent entire suns following her mother and sisters, paying great attention to how they moved, adopting and improving on their feminine mannerisms. And although Julia couldn’t articulate any sounds, she listened intently to her sisters’ speech patterns, which she translated into a series of smooth and delicate motions of her body and limbs. The result was an exquisite and precise sign language that to the eyes of a foreigner might have seemed as though Julia Morales was performing a mysterious dance from a faraway land.

FROM WHERE HE stood, Gordon saw a dreamlike village of white houses with bright tile roofs of orange and red, flowering mango trees, a few well-defined roads and a church, the spire of which broke the otherwise perfect harmony of the view. Green hills rose behind the village; several plots of maize, rice and coffee and the runners of potato plants dotted the stretch of fields on the hillsides.

There were no Amazons in sight, or women, or anything that resembled either. Gordon looked at the palms of his hands: they were bleeding. His lacerated arms and legs and ripped pants also testified to his struggle through the thick undergrowth. He wiped his hands on the front of his guayabera shirt and felt the bloody wounds chafing against the fabric. His face was unharmed; he had used his duffel bag to protect it from the strong prickly vines and the gigantic leaves covered in bristles that repeatedly bounced back.

Moving slowly forward, Gordon heard distant shouts and female laughter, but he didn’t see anyone. He noticed that the height of the dwellings was standard, which clearly eliminated the remote possibility of running into a giant. He kept descending the hill, cautiously, considering what he would say when he met the first group of women, and wondering what kind of reception they would give him. They’d certainly be stunned, but would they welcome him or greet him with contempt? And what if they asked the reason why he was there? Should he admit to being a reporter? That might get them on the defensive. Maybe he should claim to be lost and show them his bloody hands; surely they wouldn’t hurt an injured man.

By this time he had entered the village and was limping along a small street. The houses he passed by were all uniform: they had white facades with a front door and a large window, the frames of which were painted green. All doors and windows were open, and Gordon had the odd feeling he was being watched through the curtains. He could no longer hear the shouts and laughter he’d heard earlier. Suddenly he saw something move farther down the road: a large bundle hanging between two trees with something alive in it. Gordon kept going, a little apprehensively, looking behind him again and again. Before reaching the corner he made out that the bundle was a hammock with a handsome woman sleeping in it. Gordon drew near her, moving slowly and silently because he didn’t want to wake her up. At that moment he heard a loud cry from behind. When he looked back he saw an army of naked women rushing out of their dwellings, screaming furiously and running toward him with sticks and stones.

WHEN GORDON WOKE up, he saw nothing but the dazzling white of a ceiling. He thought he was dead, his soul floating on air, among clouds. Little by little he began tracing in his mind the sequence of events leading up to this moment. The woman in the hammock. The cry. The army of naked screaming women. Then blackness.

So, where was he now? There was only one answer: the women had captured him, and he was in prison.

Faint sunlight came through two small windows set at irregular intervals. Still dizzy, Gordon brought himself to a sitting position and examined his body. They hadn’t hurt him; he had no new wounds or injuries, and he could move all his limbs. He looked around and saw a large and empty space. It didn’t look at all like a jailhouse. Actually, it looked more like a church, but with no benches, crosses, statues or religious images of any kind. The walls were utterly stripped, and the cement floor, where Gordon lay, was impeccably clean and smelled of lavender. Lying there in his dirty clothes and shoes, with his wounds still oozing blood, Gordon thought he was the only untidy element in the room.

Realizing that he was alone, he rose and started for the door, hold ing onto the walls for support. He bent a little to look outside through the small metal grating, and his eyes opened wide at an extraordinary sight: a large crowd of naked women standing across the street, jabbering away in undertones. Some of them held hands like sweethearts. A smaller group of five older women, four of them naked, were going through the contents of Gordon’s duffel bag. He watched one of them take out his T-shirts one by one and hold them up to the light like film negatives, then pass them on to the other women. They didn’t seem interested in Gordon’s mini tape recorder. They examined it from all sides, shrugged and set it aside, unable to explain its use. A can of Coca-Cola, however, caused a sensation. They held it horizontally, with two hands, and rotated it, giving big approving smiles. Gordon watched this process with genuine curiosity, but also wariness.

A deafening cry sounded, and all heads, including Gordon’s, turned toward the source of it. The roar came from the young girl in the tight blue dress that he’d seen sleeping in the hammock earlier. Two women took hold of the girl while a third tried to muzzle her with a handkerchief. The girl wriggled like a worm, kicked and gnashed her teeth and made wild guttural sounds. Gordon thought she was stunning. Suddenly the girl stopped struggling, her wrath turning into a long, disconsolate wail. Exhausted from restraining her, the two women relaxed their grip. The girl immediately freed herself from them, knocking them to the ground in the process. Then she ran toward the front door of the church.

Gordon had just enough time to step aside before the girl violently pushed the door open. She cast a quick glance over the long, empty room, and when she spotted him, she threw herself upon him, locked her hands around his neck and passionately kissed him on the mouth. At that moment, the other women began entering the building in small clusters, pushing and shoving for the chance to see close up the blue-eyed foreigner while the rebellious girl clung to him like a limpet.

“Julia Morales,” a matron of majestic proportions and broad hips shouted, elbowing her way through the crowd. “Let go of the Míster and step aside. Now!” The girl did both, not without frowning and pursing her lips together. The matron stood arms akimbo in front of Gordon, who was frozen.

“Who are you where do you come from who sent you and what brought you here?” she said, all at once, as if all four questions were of equal significance.

Gordon said nothing. He was so astonished and bewildered that he couldn’t have articulated anything in his own language, much less in Spanish. Instead he observed with curiosity the women’s harmonious nakedness—their tan breasts that ended in large, chocolate-colored nipples; their long torsos and dark stomachs, some flat, some prominent; their pubes hardly covered by short, dark hair and their smooth and solid limbs. He thought that they were an exquisite race.

“Well?” the wide-hipped woman said, her face turned to the crowd, “it looks like our friend here is mute.”

Only then did Gordon realize that she was one of the five women who had been going through his bag. She had an indisputable air of authority and determination. If she could display those attributes while in the nude, he reasoned, she had to be the law. “I’m not mute,” he replied in a conciliatory tone.

“Ohhhh!” the crowd whispered in unison.

“Then who are you?” the woman asked again.

“Name’s Gordon Smith,” he replied. A few giggles came from the spectators.

“Come with me to the municipal office, Señor Esmís,” the same woman said. “You must state your business to our community’s council.”

She walked ahead, forcing the nosy women to clear the way. Gordon limped behind her, his muscles, joints and bones hurting. This time he noticed, with growing admiration, the small plaza shaded by massive mango trees and surrounded by wooden benches, half of them facing east, the other half facing west; the homogenous style of the houses, their chalky facades and bright floral decorations hanging from windows; the cleanliness of the sidewalks and unpaved roads. And amid these almost utopian sights appeared the girl named Julia. She walked along with the crowd, slightly ahead of Gordon, from time to time glancing at him over her shoulder in a coquettish fashion. Her features, he thought, were refined and delicate, like those of the women of his own race. But there was something wild, almost bestial, in her rounded hazel eyes flecked with gray, something especially alluring about her thick blue-black hair and shiny brown skin. He wished that she, too, were naked.

WHEN HE ENTERED the building, Gordon glanced around quickly. There were two rooms, the first one small and empty and the other furnished with a long rectangular table and four benches, all made of rough, bark-covered wood. A lamp sat in the middle of the table. The walls were bare except for the back one. It was half covered with a large damp patch, which, the matron explained, was a recurrent problem that the plumbers hadn’t yet tackled. “Do you happen to know anything about plumbing, Señor Esmís?” she asked. Gordon said he didn’t and apologized for it. The furnished room also had one window through which several young faces were already appearing and disappearing, blowing kisses and giggling. Gordon recognized Julia’s among them and gallantly waved his hand at her. The wide-hipped woman hastened to close the window, shutting out the flirtatious girls but also the remains of the sun.

She grabbed the lamp and took off its glass globe to light the wick. “I’m Rosalba,” she suddenly said. “I used to be the town’s magistrate. The only one who made decisions. Now it’s five of us. A council, we call it.” She lighted the wick and replaced the glass globe. “This used to be my office, only much nicer than this. My desk was one hundred percent pure mahogany. Really pretty. I had it over there.” She lifted the lamp with one hand and with the other pointed at the wall with the damp patch. Gordon looked at the wall and arched his eyebrows in a vague expression that could have been either of admiration or plain indifference. Before long they heard a knock at the door. “It must be the others,” Rosalba said. She placed the lamp on the table and went to the door. Three women entered the room, two of them carrying Gordon’s yellow bag, which they handed to him. A fourth woman, old and fully dressed, wearing thick spectacles and leaning on a cane, followed them at her own pace. “Ladies, please take your seats,” Rosalba said. They sat two on each side. Rosalba sat at one end of the table and indicated to Gordon that he should sit at the other end, across from her. “Señor Esmís,” she began. “We’re New Mariquita’s council: this here is Cecilia, over there is Señorita Cleotilde, that’s Police Sergeant Ubaldina, here Nurse Ramírez, and I’m former magistrate Rosalba.”

“Nice meeting you,” Gordon said coyly, bowing his head. This courteous gesture seemed to have made a good impression on everyone but the Indian-looking woman named Ubaldina, the police sergeant.

“What brought you here, Señor Gordonmís?” Ubaldina inquired, giving him a suspicious look.

He studied the women’s faces for a second or two, and decided that except for the police sergeant, they seemed amiable. There was no reason to lie to them. “I’m a journalist,” he said. “I work as a correspondent, writing news and articles for magazines and newspapers. I’ve been covering your war for some time now. I’ve interviewed guerrilla, paramilitary and army soldiers as well as their families, and written stories about them. Those stories I sell to newspapers and magazines mostly in the United States, but also—”

“Who sent you here?” Ubaldina interrupted. “And what do you want from us?”

“A few days ago I met a man, a crazy man who told me a bunch of lies about you and your village. He said this town was inhabited by giant, man-hating, masculine women who grew beards and mustaches and were capable of impregnating themselves. He said that you were heretics who liked to torture your enemies before eating them alive. I didn’t believe much of it, but I figured that the part about this being a town inhabited only by women had to be true. And to me that sounded like a very interesting topic to write about: a town of women in a land of men.” He paused briefly for dramatic effect. “So I asked him to draw a map for me and give me directions, and here I am.” He stopped, raised his face and cast a quick glance over the five sets of eyes that were fixed on him. “That’s the whole truth, ladies,” he said with his right hand raised, as though he were swearing an oath in a courthouse.

The five women didn’t appear surprised by Gordon’s account. They looked at one another repeatedly, displaying no feeling on their faces, saying nothing.

“So…now that my presence here has been explained, I’d like to request that I be granted permission to live in your community for a short period,” Gordon said. “I’d like to write a story about your village, and I’m willing to work in exchange for room and board.”

“What’s the name of the man who told you about us?” Ubaldina asked, ignoring the reporter’s request.

“Rafael. Rafael Bueno. He said he used to be a priest and that this was his parochial district for a long time, until you tried to eat him alive.”

The women looked at one another again. They now wore an expression of pure rage on their faces.

“Infamous wretch,” said the oldest woman, the señorita, hitting the floor with her stick.

“We should’ve thrashed him good and hard.”

“We should’ve killed the bastard.”

“Yes, and fed him to the dogs.”

“Or to the pigs.”

It was obvious to Gordon that Rafael Bueno had done something very hurtful to the women. He wouldn’t ask what, though. Not now, anyway. At this moment he could only hope that his request had registered with the council and that their reply was a positive one.

“We need to discuss this man’s request,” Ubaldina said. Then, addressing Gordon, she added, “Privately.” He grabbed his bag and started toward the door.

“Julia Morales is going to eat him alive out there,” Rosalba warned the council. Gordon stopped abruptly and looked back. “I didn’t mean it that way, Señor Esmís.” She giggled. “I assure you we don’t feast on human beings.”

After realizing that sending the reporter out would create even more commotion, the councilwomen asked Gordon to remain in the room and went outside themselves. He watched them through a crack in the door. They stood together under a mango tree, surrounded by the restless crowd, discussing their views and jerking their heads like disturbed chickens. After a while, they came back into the municipal office wearing solemn faces and sat in their respective places without giving the reporter any hint about the decision they had reached. Contrary to what he expected, Ubaldina, not Rosalba, was the one who ultimately stood up and spoke.

“I’ll be straight and brief, Señor Gordonmís. I’m responsible for maintaining peace and security in our community. Your uninvited presence has caused a great deal of disorder, and quite honestly we can’t expect anything good from an individual sent over by the man who murdered four of our children. We’d ask you to leave now, but it’s getting dark, and someone as white as you can easily be spotted by all sorts of dangerous night creatures. We’ve decided to give you until sunrise tomorrow to leave our community, and we hope never to see you again.”

“Señora Upaultina, I assure you that I—”

“Ubaldina,” she said. “My name is Ubaldina.”

“I’ve come in peace, Señora. Ubaldina. I’m a good guy.”

“Nothing good has ever come through that thicket,” Ubaldina retorted, and then sat down with her arms crossed, signaling the end of the discussion.

Before Gordon could say anything more, the woman they called Nurse Ramírez asked him to follow her to the town’s infirmary. “I’m responsible for the community’s health care, and so I’ll clean and dress your wounds and sores.”

“After that, you’ll follow me,” the one named Cecilia said. “I’m responsible for the community’s diet, and so I’ll take you to one of our communal kitchens, where you’ll eat a warm meal.”

“I’m the administrator,” Rosalba said. “I oversee everything, but especially our community’s farming and housing. I’ll make sure that you get a clean room furnished with everything you might need for tonight.”

“And I’m responsible for the community’s school and the town’s bell,” said the old Señorita Cleotilde. “In other words, I’m the clock of New Mariquita. I’ll see to it that you get up early enough to leave our village before sunrise.”

AFTER BEING RELEASED from the infirmary, Gordon was taken to the community’s second best kitchen: the Villegas’s. The Morales kitchen was rated number one, Cecilia said, but she had been instructed to keep him away from Julia Morales.

By the time Gordon and Cecilia arrived, only three couples were in the dining room, feeding one another what remained of their meals. Wearing matching aprons on top of their nude anatomies, Flor (formerly the Villegas widow) and her spouse Elvia (formerly the López widow) welcomed Gordon and sat him in a corner table all by himself. The reporter was fascinated with the community, its operating system, its people and customs. Since Ubaldina had forbidden him to speak to any of the villagers more than was necessary, he dictated his thoughts, in English, into his miniature tape recorder. Cecilia didn’t object to it. She was unusually friendly and kind toward him, and soon Gordon understood why:

“Señor Esmís, you said you’ve been interviewing guerrillas. I was wondering if perhaps…if maybe you’ve come across my son. His name’s Ángel Alberto Tamacá, and he joined the guerrillas a long time ago. He’s tall, and—”

“Do you know for sure if he…if he’s alive?”

“My heart tells me he is,” she said. “Do you think there’s any way that I can get news to him that I’m alive too?”

“I have some connections. Write him a note and give me all his information. I’ll do my best to have it delivered to him. If he’s around, you know?”

The few diners present looked curiously at Gordon, as though surprised to see him eat the same things they were eating: a meal of rice, fried yucca and a small piece of a roasted, strong-flavored meatlike thing the origins of which he didn’t dare ask because he was afraid to learn the answer. When he was finished, he complimented the cooks. Elvia said it was an honor to have such a distinguished gentleman dining in their humble kitchen.

Gordon and Cecilia were getting ready to leave when Julia Morales arrived. She now had on a red polka-dot dress. The dress was old-fashioned and had a few patches, but was tight in all the right places. The girl stood by the door with her hands on her hips and gave Gordon a daring look followed by a timid smile, disconcerting him. It all appeared to be part of a well-devised seduction plan that was working beautifully. His eyelid began twitching, and this symptom, as well as an erection that wasn’t as visible on account of his loose pants, clearly indicated how much he desired her. Cecilia hastened to stand in front of the reporter, as though her small figure could keep the long-legged man from seeing anything. “Hurry up, son,” she said to Gordon, though addressing Julia. “Rosalba is waiting for us in the church.” Julia crossed her arms and leaned her back against the doorframe, making room for them to pass. As he went by, all Gordon managed was a wink. He walked off with Cecilia right next to him, thinking that Julia was the most exotic creature he’d ever seen.

THE REAR OF the church had been fitted out with a hammock and a blanket. Next to it, on an upside-down wooden crate that served as a night table, sat a lit lamp, a rag and a piece of soap.

“Is there a bathroom in here?” Gordon said.

“No, Míster Esmís. Not in here,” Rosalba said. “We only have one bathroom in the village. It’s a communal bathroom with ten showers and ten latrines, so clean you wouldn’t believe it.”

“Great! Can you show me where it is?”

“I’m sorry, Míster Esmís, but you’re not allowed to use it. Another council decision. You’ll have to use that empty bucket.” She pointed at two buckets, one filled with water, which had been set to the side. “There are more blankets in that corner if you need them. Nights are getting much cooler. I hope you have a good night and a safe trip back tomorrow.” She said this with a lingering smile. Her lips parted, as though she wanted to say something else but couldn’t. She waited for Gordon’s reply—a close-lipped smile—and then turned around and walked toward the door looking somewhat sad.

He followed her with his eyes till she left the building, and was surprised to realize that he had paid no heed to her nudity. Amazing how quickly the human eye adjusts, he thought, and for a moment he imagined himself and hundreds of people walking naked down Fifth Avenue in New York City, stopping now and then to see their genitals and buttocks reflected in the tall show windows of fancy stores that sold everything but clothes. He chuckled, then walked over to the empty bucket and peed in it. Next he took off his dirty sneakers and socks and got in the hammock with his long legs hanging down on each side of it and a beat-up copy of García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, which he’d been reading and rereading for some time now. There he lay stretched out, looking at the white ceiling upon which the light of the lamp had created an immense sun in soft yellow tones. He read for a little while, then put out the light of the lamp and in utter darkness swung himself a little with his feet till the motion gradually sent him to sleep.

GORDON WOKE UP in a sweat in the middle of the night, removed his clothes and shoes out of instinct, and then, completely naked, tossed and turned in the hammock, breathing heavily and moaning. He was ill. Suddenly, he felt a soft, small hand on his burning forehead and cheeks. Then a wet cloth, patting his face and neck, his arms, his chest. It must be a dream, he thought in his delirium. A few drops of water fell on his lips, which parted to let them in. He felt more patting on his face and neck, more water falling on his lips, and then a kiss: smooth, fleshy lips lightly pressing against his, traveling to his ear, down his neck and back to his mouth, where they lingered. A wild scent in the air made him think of Julia, and he quickly realized he wasn’t dreaming. She leapt onto the hammock, and he felt her light and smooth naked body struggling to settle itself on top of him. She was twisting her bony hips like a cat. Gordon also twisted his hips, passionately at first and then violently—for he had just felt an unexpected and unwelcome swelling in the midsection of the body lying over him. Theirs was a furious battle, a battle of aroused hips in which Gordon, betrayed by his libido, eventually lost all his power of resistance. The soft and small hands that just a while ago had stroked his forehead now landed firmly on his chest for support, while a couple of muscular calves encircled his waist with rocking motions. Julia sat on his crotch and began to dance in a seductive way, drawing all of him toward her with increasing strain as though something inside her was claiming him. And so he moved inside her and she wailed, and she wriggled and squirmed and her muscular calves tightened around his waist as she pushed herself down on him. They moved together in an invisible mambo, the hammock swaying under the weight of their restless bodies, he moaning, she wailing, until they exploded, he inside her, she on his abdomen, and a wild feline scent instantly filled up the otherwise empty room.

Julia glided over Gordon’s body and quietly laid her head on the man’s chest, listening to the throbbing of his heart. He ran his long fingers through her long, thick hair. “What’s your real name?” he asked. She didn’t answer. Or perhaps she did in her own language of graceful motions that Gordon never saw, for there was no light to see them by. And so they lay there in a feverish silence, listening to each other’s hearts, until Gordon fell into a deep sleep that kept him from hearing the click of the door when she left.

BEFORE SUNRISE, THE teacher Cleotilde found Gordon lying naked outside the church, shivering. An army of red ants surrounded his body, determined to carry it back to their nest. The old woman knelt down to feel his forehead: he was burning with fever. His lips trembled and his teeth chattered as he mumbled something incomprehensible. She grabbed him by one of his arms with the intention of dragging him inside the building, but her bones were too old and his too heavy. She frowned under her thick spectacles, less concerned with the reporter’s condition than with the impossibility of his leaving town at sunrise as he’d been ordered. She went inside the church and rang the bell, signaling rising time. Then she went to Rosalba and Eloísa’s house and told them about the sick reporter. “I suggest we call a council meeting to decide what to do with that man,” she said.

“There’s no time for meetings,” Rosalba replied in her former magisterial tone, which reappeared occasionally and involuntarily, to the annoyance of the other council members. “Eloísa and I will assist Míster Esmís. You go get Nurse Ramírez,” she ordered Cleotilde. “And hurry up.” Cleotilde was no longer brave enough to confront Rosalba as she used to do. Off she went, tapping her cane and muttering a long and incomprehensible complaint. Outside the church, Rosalba swept the ants off Gordon’s body, then grabbed him by the legs while Eloísa seized him by the arms. Together they carried him inside, both women stealing furtive glances at the man’s large genitalia, but acting as though they saw penises and testicles every sun. They couldn’t lift Gordon back in the hammock, so they piled up a few blankets in a corner, laid him on them and tried to cover him with a thin blue sheet, but he was sweating profusely and refused it. He complained of an excruciating headache and pain in his muscles, joints and behind his eyes.

Before long, Cleotilde arrived with Nurse Ramírez, who wore nothing but a mask and a pair of gloves she had made long ago from a discarded white plastic tablecloth patterned with a variety of colorful fruits and vegetables. She brought along her late husband’s old medical reference book and bag of instruments, and a notebook in which she’d been recording her own findings and herbal remedies for every malady she’d seen and treated. When the nurse saw the naked man lying on the pile of blankets, she stood in awe. The only naked man she had ever seen was her late husband. Seeing another one after so many ladders suddenly stirred up something in her, a sort of desire that was similar—though not quite the same—to what she recurrently felt toward Erlinda, her present partner. The difference lay in its intensity. The desire she was feeling at the moment was much stronger, almost irrepressible, shameful. She made a tremendous effort not to reveal it to the other three women in the room. With her brow sweating and her hands shaking, Nurse Ramírez knelt down next to Gordon and examined him thoroughly to the best of her ability, which wasn’t much. And when she pressed her ear against the man’s chest to listen to his heart, her aroused nipples brushed the man’s feverish skin, making her own vital signs go out of control. She found that the man’s pulse was accelerated, his blood pressure low and he had a high fever. (She couldn’t tell exactly how high his fever was, because every line and number above forty degrees Celsius had faded from her husband’s thermometer with use and time.) Once she finished her examination, she covered Gordon from his waist down with a sheet and asked him a series of questions, some of which were completely irrelevant to his affliction, like, “Is everyone in your country as pale as you are?” She wrote all his answers in her notebook, including, “No, they’re paler,” and then compared them against previous notes and against the medical reference book. Finally, through the piece of plastic covering her mouth she gave her diagnosis: dengue fever.

“Please tell me it isn’t contagious.” Rosalba said.

The nurse replied that it wasn’t. The dengue virus could only be transmitted from the bite of an infected mosquito, and a mosquito could only catch the virus after biting an infected human. Therefore the one precaution they must take was to make sure that the Míster didn’t get bitten by any kind of mosquito.

“Is it hemorrhagic dengue?” Gordon asked in a faint voice. He knew that type of dengue was often fatal.

She said that it wasn’t, but that it could turn into it if they weren’t careful. She would prepare a potion to ease the intensity of his symptoms, but he should know that there was no specific treatment for dengue. He had to rest and drink plenty of fluids until he recovered, which would take ten to fifteen suns.

Rosalba ordered Cleotilde to ask the cleaning and maintenance team to shut the two windows of the church and hang a large mosquito net over Gordon’s improvised mattress. Eloísa excused herself and left for work. She led a team of sturdy plumbers who had taken on the almost impossible task of restoring the old aqueduct. Nurse Ramírez asked Rosalba to please watch over the Míster for a while. She had to collect all the herbs she needed for the potion and then pay a visit to the Pérez widow, who had sent word that this time she was really dying.

“You go ahead, Ramírez,” Rosalba said. “Do what you need to do. I’ll take care of Míster Esmís until you’re back.”

UPON HEARING THE news about Gordon’s condition, Julia Morales went to the church with a pot of soup and gestured to Rosalba that she wished to volunteer to take care of him.

“We don’t need help taking care of him,” Rosalba told Julia through the small metal grating. “Leave the soup on the steps if you want. I’ll make sure Míster Esmís knows it’s from you.”

Julia shook her head. She wanted to feed him the soup herself, herself, herself. Three times she beat upon her chest with her palm.

“I already told you, Julia. Leave the soup on the steps and go back to work.”

The girl turned red with anger. She began making a series of swift gestures with her free hand—and especially with her middle finger—which she complemented with a variety of grotesque sounds in an insufferably high-pitched tone. Finally she sat on the sidewalk with the container of soup between her legs and buried her face in her hands, crying and sobbing.

Softened by such pitiful scene, Rosalba offered to let her in on the condition that she leave as soon as Gordon ate the soup. Julia agreed and went in, all smiles after her tantrum. She laid a blanket next to Gordon, under the mosquito net, and fed him very slowly so that she could stay longer tending to him. She made him drink cup after cup of dark grape juice that the López-Villegas couple had delivered. “A natural virus-killer,” Flor Villegas had said. Gordon fell asleep, and when he woke up he stared at Julia indifferently, as if she were painted on the wall. But that didn’t discourage her; she continued patting his sunburned face with a wet rag, bringing relief to his red, swollen eyes and his parched, chapped lips.

From the opposite corner, sitting on a wooden folding chair with her arms crossed over her stomach, Rosalba watched the ingenuous girl with sympathy. Poor silly girl! she thought. As soon as that gringo is cured, he’ll go, and you’ll be left with a broken heart. Even if he likes you now, once he finds out what’s between your legs, he’ll despise you for having the same thing he’s got.

Before going home, Julia gave Gordon a passionate kiss on the mouth—a lost kiss that was never acknowledged nor noticed, because the recipient of it was delirious, and Rosalba had fallen asleep on the chair. A while later, when Rosalba woke up, she found Gordon on his knees fighting with the mosquito net, struggling to get up. She ran to his side.

“What are you doing, Míster Esmís? You’re going to hurt yourself.”

“I’ve got to pee,” he mumbled, a hand covering his genitalia.

“Here, do your business in here.” She grabbed the bucket, already reeking with Gordon’s urine from the night before, lifted a corner of the net and handed it to him.

He took the bucket in one hand and turned around on his knees and breathed deeply. A loud, prolonged splash filled the room.

“It’s getting dark in here,” he said, setting the bucket at the lower end of the mattress, within the netted area. “What time is it?”

Rosalba hadn’t been asked that question in ladders. “It’s almost the end of the working day.” She noticed Gordon was going through his bag, looking for something. He took out a pair of boxer shorts and swiftly slipped into them. He was having a lucid moment, she thought, but before night fell he’d be burning with fever again.

Still on his knees, Gordon began to scrutinize each corner of the spacious room. “What makes this building a church?” he suddenly said. “There isn’t one thing in here that makes me think of God.”

Rosalba also looked around the room and smiled, obviously pleased with the emptiness of the view. “We call it the church out of habit,” she said, “because that’s what it once was. Just like we used to call God God and heaven heaven.”

“What do you call God now?”

“We don’t call it anything. It’s just an empty word, like this church.”

“And heaven?”

“Also empty. Without God there’s no heaven, or hell. Life’s better that way.”

Gordon gazed curiously at her. “Do you worship anything?”

“Nature. We’ve learned to fully appreciate the beauty and benefits of our land, our plants and animals.”

Gordon sat on the mattress with his back against the wall. He was too tired to pursue a discussion about belief. “Where did she go?” he said.

“Who?” Rosalba reached for the lamp.

“The girl who was here before.”

“Julia? I expect she went back to work.” She lit the lamp and set it on the upside-down crate next to him.

The nearness of the light reduced Gordon’s visibility beyond the net but let him see clearly everything within. He noticed several holes in the fabric. “She can’t talk, can’t she?”

“No.”

“What’s her real name? I mean, his real name?”

Rosalba stared at the reporter through the meshed fabric, as though she wanted to see or learn something personal and unique about him. So he knows about Julia, she thought. He might be a different kind of gringo after all: a curious one, who’s willing to experiment with new things, new sensations. All gringos can’t be narrow-minded, materialistic and full of themselves.

“Julio,” Rosalba emphatically said. “His name’s Julio something. I don’t remember his middle name. We’ve been calling him Julia for so long that I—”

“How long?”

“Hmmm.” She shrugged. “I lost track of it. All I know is that it all started on the day the men disappeared.”

“The men, right. How did they disappear?”

“Guerrillas.”

“Did the guerrillas kill them all?”

“They might as well have.”

“They took them away, didn’t they?”

“It’s too long a story to tell,” she said, making an effort to look weary and uninterested.

She was playing hard to get; Gordon was sure of it. Two could play that game. “Don’t worry, then,” he said. “Maybe some other time.” He let his body slide down the wall until his back was flat on the mattress and his body partially covered by the thin blue sheet. Soon afterward, the bell announced the end of the working day; five thunderous and reverberating strokes that, from inside the empty church, sounded more like the beginning of the end of the world.

While the echo of the last chime was still resounding in their ears, Rosalba shouted, “Do you really want to hear how our men disappeared?”

“Only if you feel like telling,” he shouted back, a cunning smile on his face.

She straightened her spine against the chair’s back, shifting her matronly extra weight. She looked up at the white ceiling as though for inspiration, then began the telling of her story:

“The day the men disappeared started as a typical Sunday morning in Mariquita….”

ELOÍSA, NURSE RAMÍREZ and her spouse Erlinda Calderón stopped by after dinner. They had on ponchos of sacking that old Lucrecia, the community’s seamstress, had tailored for every villager to wear on chilly evenings. Eloísa kissed her Ticuticú and handed her a plate with her dinner and an extra poncho.

“How’s the Míster doing?” the nurse asked. She held a small earthen container in her hands.

“He was quite alert for a good part of the afternoon,” Rosalba said. “I even told him a story, and he loved it. But he’s delirious again.”

“That’s typical of dengue fever,” the nurse declared. She walked over to Gordon, relieved to see he was now wearing shorts. She felt his forehead and checked his body for rashes, which, she explained, were also typical of the disease. Had he vomited? No? Very good! Had he complained of headaches? Well, that was common. Muscle pain? Sure, that was also common. Nurse Ramírez poured into a cup some of the formula she had prepared—an infusion of chrysanthemum and honeysuckle flowers, marijuana and mint leaves, and burdock and anise seeds—and forced the thick mixture down Gordon’s throat. “I’ll tend to him tomorrow,” she volunteered.

“Good,” Rosalba said. “I’ll make sure he gets plenty of juices, maybe even a good soup from the Morales’s kitchen. And I’ll stop by after dinner to tell him another story.” She put out the light of the lamp and sang, “Good night, Míster Esmís.” Soon they were gone.

AFTER HEARING THE first story, Gordon told Rosalba that he’d like to write a book about New Mariquita. And so every evening after that and for eleven consecutive suns, Rosalba made it her duty to tell Gordon a story about her town of widows, and Gordon made it his to listen to it and tape it and, when feeling strong enough, take notes. Rosalba’s privileged memory covered the better part of Mariquita’s history since long before the men disappeared, but her stories were to some extent unreliable; a singular combination of her own experiences coupled with several different versions and—this was the unreliable part—assumptions she had put together in the absence of facts. Fortunately for Gordon, it was easy to tell when Rosalba was speculating by her passionless tone and lack of details, but also because Rosalba—who otherwise was a confident storyteller—would stumble over the words or look the other way as she told them. Every time Gordon was seized by doubt, he would discreetly pencil in a question mark next to the suspicious line, or cue himself on the tape if he was recording it. He’d check her version against that of Julia—his special friend—when he had the opportunity.

Rosalba’s telling was interrupted many times each night. Councilwoman Ubaldina, for instance, often stopped by to examine and evaluate Gordon’s improvement. Aroused women of different ages also came around every evening after dinner, hoping to catch a glimpse of the semi-naked man, bringing presents of flowers, mangoes, oranges, bananas, hearty soups or blood sausages and puddings—the mere appearance of which nauseated Gordon. He himself interrupted Rosalba often to repeat a word he didn’t know or hadn’t caught, to ask her specific questions about the story, to clarify a confusing anecdote or have her repeat a section of the story that he liked. It was not unusual for Rosalba to jump from one story to another, or to wander from the point and begin endless discussions about herself. On those occasions, the reporter had to resort to his journalist’s subtle ways to lead her back to the subject matter: “That’s most interesting, Señora Rosalba, but you were saying that…”

And so it was in this way that Gordon learned about how Mariquita’s men disappeared and Julio got to be Julia, but also about the crisis that followed the men’s withdrawal from the village: the prolonged dry spell and the cutting off of electricity, the shortage of food and water, the epidemic of influenza that killed ten people, and the gradual departure of nearly half the adult population and their children. He learned from Rosalba about the passing military commission that had designated her as the town’s new magistrate; and about the brothel madam’s persistent attempts to keep her business afloat in a town of widows and spinsters. He learned about the mysterious schoolmistress who refused to teach history, and about how Santiago Marín became the town’s Other Widow. About the hypocritical priest who first developed a procreation scheme and later killed the town’s only four boys. About the widow who found a fortune under her bed just as the town’s economy was slowly reverting to a bartering system. About the day time stopped, and the sun time became female, and about how a cow named Perestroika saved the magistrate’s plan of economic, political and social restructuring that turned a rotten, meager town into a prosperous and self-sufficient community.

IN THE SAME way Rosalba made it her duty to tell the reporter a story every evening, Julia Morales made it hers to create, together with Gordon, one more story for him to write about: theirs. Every night after the village had gone to sleep, Julia scurried along the desolate streets toward the church. The first few nights she contented herself with running the tips of her delicate fingers all over Gordon’s body in the absolute darkness of the room, while he slept under the narcotic effect of the nurse’s concoction. But as the man’s health began to improve, the girl demanded more from his hands and fingers, from his hips and tongue and lips. And when they kissed and made love, she sucked him in, breathed in the air he breathed out, and filled herself full of him night after night after night.

TWELVE SUNS LATER, Nurse Ramírez informed the councilwomen that Gordon had fully recovered from his illness. She made the announcement over breakfast in the Morales’s communal kitchen.

“Well, then, I’d better go escort him up to the thicket right now,” Ubaldina said. “I want to make sure he leaves once and for all.” She put down the arepa she was eating and stood up.

“I have a proposal to make,” Rosalba said suddenly. She looked at Ubaldina and pointed to the wooden bench, prompting her to sit down again. The other three women turned inquisitive eyes to Rosalba. “As we all know, Míster Esmís is the first real man we’ve seen in many ladders.” Rosalba thrust her head forward and lowered her voice to avoid being heard by the people in the table next to theirs. “Naturally, some of our finest women have shown interest in him. I propose that we take advantage of his being here to get two or three women pregnant. I’m sure Míster Esmís wouldn’t mind doing us a favor after all we’ve done for him.” Ubaldina looked as though she was ready to object, and so Rosalba went on whispering reasons why the council should consider her proposal. “Our population is getting old; with every ladder that goes by, another woman in our community loses her ability to bear children. In about forty ladders, our youngest girls will be menopausal, and all of us will be dead, and there will be no one to continue what we started.” Once again Ubaldina attempted to express her disapproval, but Rosalba wasn’t finished. “Besides, can you imagine how beautiful Míster Esmís’s children would be, with his golden hair and blue eyes? With his tiny nose and white complexion? Especially with his white complexion. They’d be absolutely gorgeous!”

The nurse and Cecilia looked at the color of their own limbs and stomachs and awkwardly folded their arms, covering a small part of their brown nakedness with more of the same. Cleotilde remained still. She’d been in her skin for too long to suddenly be ashamed of it. But Ubaldina, the darkest, most Indian-looking of all five, seemed to be insulted by Rosalba’s comment. “I feel very fortunate to look the way I do,” she said in a dignified matter, her chin raised just enough to show her impressive cheekbones in all their grandeur. “I think of it as a blessing from the gods, and I strongly believe that our future generations should look like us: black-haired and brown-eyed, with a beak like ours, and their skin should be dark so that it can endure the harshest sun, and thick so that it will last much longer.”

Now it was Rosalba who felt discriminated against, her pale skin and green eyes excluded from Ubaldina’s prototype of Mariquita’s people of the future. “I only mentioned Míster Esmís because I happen to think he’s a handsome man, but if you don’t agree, that’s fine with me. I still think someone here must bear a male child or two if we want our community to survive.”

“I say we should try our luck again with our two men,” Ubaldina said. She was referring to the one occasion, two ladders back, when Santiago Marín and Julio Morales had been persuaded to make an effort to impregnate a woman of their choice. Santiago picked Magnolia Morales, while Julio, as though returning the favor, chose Amparo Marín, Santiago’s youngest sister. The two women were instructed by their own mothers to treat the men gently, because Santiago and Julio would only respond to tenderness and love. The encounters took place on the first waxing moon of the ladder, when the women’s probabilities of becoming pregnant were at their best. Magnolia and Amparo did everything they could and knew to excite their respective men, but neither their grace and kindness first, nor their sensuality and lechery later, aroused any response.

Rosalba gave an affected laugh. “You do that. Try your luck again with those two.” She pushed the plate with her untouched breakfast away from her. At that precise moment, Julia Morales came up to their table with a fresh pot of coffee, offering refills.

“The Míster has to go today,” old Cleotilde emphatically said. Julia’s hand, the one holding the pot of coffee, began trembling, but the councilwomen were so absorbed in their discussion that they didn’t even notice the girl’s presence. “But we should wait until after breakfast, when the women are at work, or his departure will end in uproar.”

Nurse Ramírez and Ubaldina indicated with their heads that they were in accord with Cleotilde. Cecilia remained still, neutral. “Let it be on your heads then,” Rosalba said, throwing her hands in the air. As for Julia, she quickly disappeared through the kitchen door.

GORDON LOOKED UP and noticed enormous dark clouds filling the sky. He was sitting on a bench in the plaza, his duffel bag on his lap and his arms resting on top of it, like a resigned traveler waiting for his bus to arrive. He had bathed and shaved and put on clean clothes that Julia had washed for him. His sneakers, too, had been cleaned by the diligent girl, exposing their Nike logo, fading blue color and heavy wear. The dark bags under his eyes had faded, and a healthy rose color bloomed in his cheeks.

The smell of freshly brewed coffee was still in the air, though breakfast was long over. His had been delivered to the church from the Morales’s kitchen, and it had arrived with a little surprise: a neatly folded note hidden underneath a fat arepa. The note was from Julia, and it read, “Today is our day.”

So when Gordon saw Ubaldina appear from around a corner with a derisive smile on her unfriendly face, and Rosalba, Cecilia, Nurse Ramírez and Cleotilde following her, he wasn’t the least bit surprised.

“Your time’s up, Míster!” Ubaldina shouted from a distance. She shooed him with the backs of her hands quickly and repeatedly. Gordon remained still on the bench, undisturbed, self-controlled, staring at the small Indian woman as she moved closer. He knew his aplomb would make her nervous, and so he decided it’d be his little revenge for her constant and unjustified hostility toward him. But the woman, sensing that Gordon was up to no good, stopped a few meters away from him and pulled the ugliest, most frightening face she could manage: her slanting eyes popping out of their sockets; her mouth stretching wide enough to expose her remaining four or five teeth—so pointed and separated that they appeared to serve more as weapons than for chewing—and her long tongue coming out, making a repulsive twist, drawing back and coming out again, like a lizard’s.

Gordon thought the sight was amusing. “I’m leaving now, Señora Ubaldina,” Gordon announced. He placed his bag on the bench and rose. “But first I’d like to say good-bye to the señoras behind you.”

“Well, you’d better be quick,” Ubaldina said in a softer tone. “It looks like rain.” She stepped aside and indicated to Gordon, with a polite gesture, that he could safely walk by her, toward the women.

There was nothing extraordinary about the reporter’s farewell. He respectfully bowed before each woman—including Ubaldina—and kissed her hand, saying “Gracias” time and again. Cecilia handed him a letter he was supposed to deliver to her son Ángel Alberto Tamacá, and a bundle of food as big as the man’s head. “It should last you a couple of days.” She sounded and looked motherly. Gordon kissed her hand a second time. He walked up to the bench and grabbed his bag and began walking toward the rise. The five women stood at the bottom. Before walking into the thicket, Gordon looked at New Mariquita one more time, as though fixing the town in his memory to make sure he hadn’t imagined it. Against the gray sky the village looked like a multicolored painting. He saw every red roof, every white house and every ash-colored road, the green plaza and the ivory church, the plots of maize, rice and coffee, and the women working them. The branches of the tallest trees swayed in the wind, and for a moment Gordon thought he saw every woman of New Mariquita stop what she was doing to wave a hand at him. He waved back.

IT WAS POURING rain. Julia Morales pulled her loose skirt up above her knees and waded through the brown water and leaves and branches that the thundershower brought down the small rise. She carried, tied to her waist, a small bundle of clothes and a smaller one of food, both of which she covered with the bottom of her folded skirt. She also carried a sheathed machete. She walked fast, though no one was chasing her. When she reached the top of the rise, Julia looked back. After today none of this would exist; she would never again walk up and down the same narrow streets lined with plain mango trees. Beyond the thicket, on the other side of the world, there would be many large cities with thousands of broad, paved avenues lined with rows of stately trees and bordered by impressive buildings. She would indeed miss her sisters and especially her mother, that loving woman who had devoted half her life to looking after her children. But Julia preferred missing them terribly to ending up like her sisters, embittered spinsters living on hopes of better suns, or rather dying with them.

The rain was now falling with great rapidity and violence, beating her face fitfully. Julia turned to face the path Gordon had hacked out earlier that morning. If she could speak, she would call Gordon’s name right now. Scream it. Just to hear him say, one more time, “I can clear a path for you, Julia, but I can’t help you go across the thicket. That you must do on your own. Only when you’re strong and courageous enough to make it to the other side of the world will you be prepared to live in it.” He was a good man, Gordon. A good and honest man who had confessed to feeling something very special for Julia; a kind of love beyond description—even for a writer like himself—that he refused to label. He’d promised Julia that he’d give their relationship a chance, and that he’d help her start a new life over there.

Before entering the path, Julia looked back one last time: in the middle of the torrential downpour her village had turned dim and blurry, indistinct. And at that moment, before her eyes, New Mariquita began to fade little by little until all Julia could see was the spire of the empty church that soon would disappear.

She turned around, but instead of following Gordon’s path, she moved away from it, to the right, until she found herself facing the thicket, that dense clump of trees and shrubs that for ladders had blocked her way to a new life. She now unsheathed her machete and felt its sharpness on the back of her hand, then raised the long blade high above her head, over her right shoulder, and resolutely began hacking her way through the coarse vegetation, clearing her own path.

CHAPTER 13

The Curious Gringo