20

by John Edgar Wideman

  ————

  After nineteen hours, at five the following morning, María Fortunato was still in labor. The baby was in a breech position and Dr. Sevilla could not get it turned around. The umbilical cord had wrapped itself around the infant and allowed no freedom of movement. Dr. Sevilla, at the end of those nineteen hours, was as distraught as Emiliano. His white silk shirt was splattered with blood, his face splotchy with perspiration.

  María was so weak and near death herself that Sevilla had no option but to sever the umbilical and pull the infant out by its feet. He carried only weak anesthetics and lacked the proper instruments to perform a cesarean. With a pair of forceps he pulled the slack out of the umbilical cord and snipped it free. For the next ten minutes he struggled, María now unconscious, to get the infant out. The baby, a boy, was of course stillborn. Emiliano ran from the house screaming, pounding his fist against the side of his head. Teresa Fortunato put her face in her hands, chewed at the calloused flesh of her palms, and wept.

  When the news of the stillborn child reached the crowd of women who had been standing vigil through the night outside Emiliano's house, Argentina Neruda burst into the house and hovered over the baby. She unwrapped the umbilical from around its neck and blew air into the baby's face. When this had no effect she seized Emiliano's sombrero off its peg in the wall and fanned the wide-brimmed hat over the infant. She fanned frantically, rocking back and forth, spitting out angry chants while Sevilla, shaking his head, slumped against the wall.

  Finally Argentina Neruda too gave up and leaned back. She laid the sombrero aside and pronounced the baby in miccatzintli, the state of death. A few minutes later she told the women outside that, had she been permitted to preside at the birthing, she could have saved the child. But without the buffer of her presence, Huitzilopochtli had sought his revenge against the village through María. Emiliano had planted a seed of tragedy and Huitzilopochtli had caused that seed to sprout. The same seed, she predicted, grew inside every pregnant woman in town.

  ————

  A pall fell over Torrentino. Though the pregnant women reassured themselves of the fallaciousness of Argentina Neruda's prediction, they lost their capacity for gaiety and spent their nights filling the front pews of the Mother of the Holy Infant church. Father Vallarte led them in somber prayers for the health of their unborn children. They each in turn made vows reaffirming their faith, and then lit candle after candle beseeching the souls of the dead to intervene on their behalves.

  Upon Dr. Sevilla they descended daily. Sevilla cautioned them against shamanism and stupidity. The older women and those not yet pregnant, though they sympathized with María's tragic loss, studiously avoided the Fortunato home. Alissa Márquez made it known that she wanted her wrought-iron birdcage and parrot back, and were it not that she would have had to confront Emiliano himself, she would have demanded that it be returned to her. Many of the other women, as they had done earlier, now avoided looking Emiliano in the eye or passing too close to him on the street.

  Emiliano did his best to console his wife, but he was little comfort to her. Her complexion remained pallid even two weeks after the tragedy. She had little appetite and slept fitfully. She sometimes walked in her sleep, sometimes screamed so loud in the middle of the night that the entire village sat up in their beds. Emiliano suspected that she was among the growing number of women who once again were surreptitiously seeking advice from Argentina Neruda, women who knelt and prayed with Father Vallarte and then ten minutes later requested that the sorceress rattle her pouch of animal teeth for them.

  And each night, after the women had silently filed home from the Mother of the Holy Infant church, Emiliano himself stepped out of the shadows and up to the altar, where he lit a candle for the soul of his neverborn son. He sought out Father Vallarte to ease the painful burning of his heart, but the timeworn chestnuts of consolation that the priest had to offer provided little solace.

  More and more frequently Emiliano took his dinner at his mother's house with Dr. Sevilla. No longer did the pretty young girls call for Emiliano to tease and arouse him. No longer did he find their doors and windows flung open for him on a Friday night.

  As each day passed it became more and more obvious to Emiliano that his wife was losing her senses. For hours at a time she would sit and stare at him, not even bothering to brush away the flies as they crawled across her face. When he could stand her gaze no longer he would jump up and bolt out of the house. More than once he awoke in the dead of night to find María leaning over him, eyes wide open, mouth snarling. She took to wearing a foul-smelling leather pouch hung on a string around her neck. She became so slovenly and unkempt that Emiliano could barely tolerate the sight and smell of her. And when she wasn't staring unblinkingly at Emiliano she was sitting cross-legged on her bedroom floor, watching with a catlike patience the green and white parrot in its pagoda-shaped cage.

  Only Dr. Sevilla and Teresa Fortunato seemed willing to share Emiliano's company. But after only three weeks Sevilla announced that he would have to return temporarily to his own village. He would require additional medicines and equipment, he said, if he wished to prevent a similar tragedy in the future. Emiliano begged to be taken along. But Sevilla suffered a great deal of guilt over the death of María's child and her subsequent deterioration, and he insisted that Emiliano remain in Torrentino long enough to nurse his wife back to health.

  “No matter what,” Sevilla warned him, “don't touch another woman. I'll be back in a week or so to stay until your last child is born. And on that day you and I will ride off together and leave this cursed village behind like the pile of chicken dung it is.”

  Emiliano, nearly paralyzed with grief, could only nod quiescently.

  ————

  Four mornings later Rosarita Calderón was spotted walking out of Torrentino, flanked on her right by María Fortunato, on her left by Argentina Neruda. Behind this solemn vanguard trailed ten or twelve other village women, a few of them, like Rosarita, pregnant young girls, the rest older widows, aunts and mothers and even a grandmother or two.

  Teresa Fortunato watched with horror as this gloomy entourage filed past her house. It was barely nine in the morning; what could these women be up to? Argentina Neruda wore a red blouse with the design of a spider web stitched across its front, and of all the women in the crowd, only her face was void of fear and dread.

  Rosarita Calderón, who was expecting her child any day now, walked with downcast eyes, practically dragging her feet through the dust. She walked awkwardly and with obvious discomfort, for as she walked she clutched a squealing piglet to her turgid breasts.

  Hurrying back inside the house, Teresa Fortunato rushed to her son's bedroom to shake him awake. He had had a lot of pulque the night before and did not appreciate being disturbed. He cursed under his breath and tried to push her away. Finally Teresa had no choice but to grab him by the hair and yank him into a sitting position, holding him upright as he tried to pry her fingers loose. Undeterred, she described for him the scene she had witnessed and explained its implications. At last Emiliano understood. He rose and, still fully dressed from the night before, stumbled out of the house and ran after the women.

  A few yards beyond the Mother of the Holy Infant church the women had turned off the street to ascend a narrow, winding mountain path. On a broad ledge of rock that stuck out of the side of the mountain like a tongue and overlooked the village, Emiliano caught up with them. He was out of breath and nauseous from the effort of running, his head throbbing as though a thunderstorm raged inside. Panting and heaving he made his way over the last hundred feet.

  A half-circle of women stood grouped near the inner edge of the overhanging rock, partially obscuring Emiliano's view of Rosarita and María, who stood facing one another ceremoniously, the squealing piglet held by four hands against a flat pedestal of rock. Standing with her back to the outer rim of the ledge, Argentina Neruda faced these two women and, with a broad gleaming knife
clutched in her right hand, raised her arms in supplication and loudly invoked the name of Huitzilopochtli.

  Emiliano shoved his way through the half-circle of women and grabbed Rosarita by her hair. He yanked her around to face him, María struggling now to hold onto the piglet alone.

  “What is this?” Emiliano demanded. “What are you doing here? You should be at home, lying in bed. Do you want to have your baby before Dr. Sevilla returns?”

  Rosarita stared at him with a blank look. Her usually sparkling eyes were clouded and dull in a way he had never seen on her before.

  “Huitzilopochtli must be appeased,” she said. Her voice was peculiar, monotonic, so dreamlike that Emiliano felt certain that the old hag Argentina Neruda had fed her some herbal drug.

  “If Huitzilopochtli doesn't have blood,” Rosarita said, “my baby will end up like María's.” For blood she said an ancient Nahuatl word, a word which in the Aztec language could also be interpreted as flowers. But with Argentina Neruda standing nearby, the morning sun glinting off her knife blade, there was no question as to the proper translation.

  Emiliano was furious. Stepping up to María he yanked the piglet from her hands and, tossing it to the ground, set it free. The pig scurried away squealing, darting wildly back and forth until it found an opening through the groping hands of the women. Emiliano spun María around and kicked her rear end. “Get home!” he shouted at her. “Enough of this nonsense. Get home where you belong and start taking care of yourself!”

  Both Rosarita and María turned to look back at the shrunken old woman who stood near the rim of the ledge, her back to Torrentino fifty feet below. “You old bag of bones,” Emiliano hissed at her. He approached cautiously, keeping an eye on the knife she clutched and mentally calculating the extent of her reach.

  Stopping at what he determined to be a safe distance, he said, “Why don't you sacrifice yourself, you pile of filth? You stinking old corpse. You walking excrescence. Why don't you slit your own throat and offer your own stinking blood to your stupid god?”

  The wrinkled old woman, though angered by Emiliano's cruel epithets, was also extremely frightened. She did not say a word. She stood with the knife poised in front of her, just in case Emiliano decided to come any closer. Glancing over her shoulder at the buildings far below she had a chilling mental image of a body tumbling end over end to shatter on the hard ground. She clutched her knife with both hands and settled into a defensive crouch.

  But Emiliano did not venture any closer. He drew back his head and, like a snake ejecting venom, spit a gob of phlegm in her face. Then he spun around and herded María and Rosarita side by side, shoving or kicking one and then the other as he pushed them past the other women and back down the mountain path.

  At María's house he kicked open the door and roughly shoved his wife inside. “You stay put and don't go out!” he ordered, and slammed the door. From her window she watched as her husband escorted Rosarita up the street.

  With Rosarita he was gentler. He spoke soothingly and guided her toward her house with his hand against the base of her spine.

  “María's crazy,” he told her, as though imparting a secret. “Her mind has been all stirred up like a sopa seca. We'll find another place for your mother to live and then I'll move in with you. We'll be the king and queen of Torrentino, guapa. You'll be the first mother and I will be papacito grande.”

  Rosarita said nothing. Her eyes remained dulled and troubled. Emiliano led her into her house and put her to bed, then lay beside her, knowing that her mother was still among the women gathered on the ledge.

  Stretched out beside Rosarita, Emiliano nuzzled her neck and stroked her huge belly. “You don't need to worry about our baby,” he told her. “It's going to be a strong and healthy boy. You wait and see. It was only because of María and her stupidity that we lost the first one. But I've been lucky all my life and I can feel in my bones that this baby is going to be fine. He'll grow up to be just as handsome and brave as his father.”

  Emiliano unbuttoned Rosarita's blouse and kissed her breasts. Suckling her right breast he tasted the sweet rich milk, too sweet at first but then warm and delicious.

  “You're more beautiful than María,” he told her. “And you're younger too. You have nothing to worry about. Stop letting those stupid women frighten you with their nonsense.” He licked her breast and then ran his tongue over her stomach to her protruding navel. She lay unmoving, eyes open, palms flat on the bed.

  “Even with your big belly,” Emiliano said, kissing her stomach, “you still excite me. Right now I want you more than ever. Just forget about what that crazy old witch told you. Give me your hand and let me show you how much I want you. See how hard you make me by just letting me touch you.”

  He pressed her hand between his legs and moved against it. But when he released her hand to undo his trousers, her hand fell away from him, lifeless. Pushing himself to his knees he saw that she still regarded him with the same blank, unresisting expression. She looked, he thought, almost like an animal frozen in fear, a wounded deer lying on the ground and waiting fatalistically for the stroke of death.

  “Jesus,” he muttered, and crawled off the bed. “You women are all alike, you know that? You'd better just lie there and don't move until Sevilla gets back. Jesus, you're all so stupid that I can't believe it.”

  He went out of the house and slammed the door behind him. As he stalked down the street he saw coming toward him the small pack of women who had been on the mountain. Upon seeing him they all stopped in their tracks, and then, as a flock of birds suddenly wheels around in the sky with no apparent signal, they turned as a group and fled into the nearest house. Emiliano muttered angrily to himself and continued down the street to his mother's house. There he drank the last of the pulque and fell into a drunken, restless sleep.

  ————

  At four in the afternoon, just when the heat of the day was beginning to relent, Emiliano was once again awakened by his mother's screaming. She shook him violently and, tugging him by the arm, dragged him off the bed. With his head still throbbing, feeling now as though a team of burros were kicking at his skull, he could not understand anything she said. She wailed hysterically and at the same time shouted and pleaded with him.

  Emiliano allowed his mother to lead him by the hand outside, then down the street and behind the Volutad house. There the entire village had already gathered. They stood peering upward, necks craned to the overhanging tongue of rock fifty feet above. On the edge of the rock stood Rosarita Calderón. She was dressed in her finest clothes, in an azure blue pleated skirt, black toeless shoes, and the lavender silk shirt Emiliano had given her.

  From beneath the ledge a chorus of pleadings rose up to her. “Stay where you are!” some of the villagers shouted. “Don't move!” Others urged her to step back, away from the dangerous edge. But to all these remonstrations Rosarita seemed oblivious. She stared straight ahead, her palms resting flat against her swollen belly.

  Argentina Neruda ordered that a pig or a chicken or even a scrawny dog be brought to be sacrificed on the spot, and two small children ran off to find an unlucky animal. María Fortunato, standing beside the old woman, stared silently up at the ledge, her face as expressionless as Rosarita's. Standing next to her, Father Vallarte fingered his rosary beads and mumbled a prayer. Halfway through he lost his place and was forced to begin again.

  In the meantime Emiliano was running down the street toward the narrow path that ascended the mountainside. Having grown overweight and out of shape during the past months, he ran laboriously, out of breath, his lungs burning and his vision blurred by the throbbing pain inside his head. As he ran he mumbled aloud and tried to communicate telepathically with Rosarita. “Don't jump,” he muttered. “Don't jump. Stay where you are, guapa, I'm coming, please stay where you are. Don't jump, don't jump, don't jump, don't jump!”

  He struggled up the path, thinking with each stride that he could not go a step further. Finally he ro
unded the top and came within sight of the rock ledge. The ledge was empty, a flat platform leading to empty sky. Emiliano sank to his knees on the hard ground. He felt paralyzed, unable to move. He could not make himself crawl to the rim of the ledge and peer down. From below came a wailing of voices, a keening that filled his skull with a ballooning, cutting pain. He fell face forward onto the ground, determined never to rise again.

  ————

  Only vaguely was Emiliano aware of the women approaching him. He knew that a great deal of time had passed since prostrating himself on the ground, for night had fallen more than an hour ago. At dusk he had listened to the screech of a white-breasted hawk, had even felt its shadow pass over him as the bird wheeled and circled through the sky. And now, more than an hour later, he heard the approaching footsteps of a dozen or more women. In his dazed, self-pitying state he imagined the sound to be the thumping of wings of a huge predatory bird, the women's sibilant whispers the rustle of wind across a hawk's feathers.

  With his cheek to the ground Emiliano felt the women gathering around him. He smelled the fire from their torches of grease-soaked rags. He lay absolutely still for several minutes. Then it occurred to him that these women must be very worried about him, that to them he must appear dead. He pushed himself up on his elbow and turned his head to reassure them.

  The first blow of a heavy stick caught Emiliano squarely between the shoulders. The sudden pain, flashing like lightning through his body and brain, immediately brought him back to full consciousness. Rolling away he curled like an armadillo, his arm protecting his head. A dozen other sticks came lashing down upon him.

  “Diablo!” someone hissed, and kicked at his head. “Muerte!” said another, and rammed a thick club into his anus.

  Emiliano tried to struggle to his feet but was struck successively on the head, the face, the groin, the stomach. “It wasn't my fault!” he tried to say. “It was the will of God! I'm not to blame!” But his protests were punctuated by his own involuntary yelps of pain, which rendered his words unintelligible.