by James Canon
Mariquita’s municipal office was a small house by the plaza. On the front wall was a plaque that still bore the name of the former magistrate, Jacinto Jiménez. The guerrillas had executed him in front of his horrified wife and children, then taken away his eighteen-year-old son. The poor Jiménez widow cried for days. But then, one morning, she packed her clothes and her many pairs of shoes and together with her two daughters left for Ibagué, where she soon married a butcher who made her happy again. Before she left, she gave Rosalba (they’d been very good friends) the key to the municipal office.
The magistrate was surprised at how easily the key turned in the lock after almost a year. She pushed the door open and was greeted by a number of squeaky bats that had made the office their home. She stepped aside, repelled. The hideous creatures fluttered around and crashed into the walls, disturbed by the shaft of light coming in through the door. Rosalba waited for them to quiet. Then, with an air of determination, she went inside, unlocked and opened the only window and watched the flock of bats swoop past her head and fly out of the building. She began dusting the furniture of her office, interrupting her duties now and then to write in her notebook. Organize cleaning squads to sweep the garbage off the streets. She brushed the cobwebs from the corners of the ceiling. Have a team of women sow rice, cotton and drought-tolerant sorghum. She rearranged the bookcase and the shaky coatrack and moved the desk from one corner to another. Restore electricity seven days a week. She swept and mopped the floors twice. Make the telephone work again. She brought in a beautiful begonia in a flowerpot and placed it in a corner. Reopen the school. Finally, the magistrate burned eucalyptus leaves to free the room from evil spirits.
When she was finished, Rosalba stood behind the old mahogany desk and looked around. Her office was now the cleanest and neatest place in the entire village. She was content. She squeezed her opulent behind into the chair and slid her hands across the smooth surface of the desktop. “I’m going to bring Mariquita back to what it used to be,” she said. “No, what am I saying? I’m going to transform it into a much better village than the men could have ever created. I know how to do it. After all, I’m a born leader.”
ROSALBA WAS FROM the town of Honda by the Magdalena River. When she was fourteen, her mother choked to death on a fish bone. Rosalba took charge of the house and her four younger brothers, assigning chores to each member of the family, from simple tasks like peeling potatoes to more difficult jobs like grinding corn in the wooden mortar. Even her youngest brother, who was only four, had a duty: to bring water from the river for cooking and cleaning. Rosalba’s strict enforcement of the rules earned her the resentment of her brothers. Everyone had to be up at six in the morning and in bed by eight at night. A daily sponge bath in the cold water of the river was mandatory. Prayers had to be recited before every meal and at bedtime. Bowls of steaming soup had to be eaten completely. “Por favor” and “Muchas gracias” were required at all times, while complaints, fights and curse words were considered punishable offenses.
Rosalba gave everyone haircuts the last Sunday of every month and clipped their nails every other Saturday. She cooked three meals a day for the entire family, washed their clothes and took care of her small garden, where she grew lettuce, cilantro, onions and carrots. On Saturdays and Sundays she and her brothers went to the public school, where they learned to read and write. She practiced her cursive handwriting until it was neat and beautiful.
She was extremely careful with the little money her father gave her, but the other members of her family didn’t approve of her priorities. While her brothers wore the same old plaid shirts and jeans every day, passing them down as they got too small, Rosalba had windows installed in the front of their mud shack, and the earthen floor covered with tiles. She bought herself a portable transistor radio to listen to the news and soap operas, from which she learned about wealthy landowners madly in love with beautiful young servants. Rosalba preferred the news. She was courted by several fishermen, from whom she accepted the best catches of the day, but no invitations to dinner or to the Sunday afternoon dancing party. Her expectations for herself went far beyond fishermen.
It was not until her father remarried a few years later that her dictatorship came to an end. Doña Regina, her stepmother, had rules of her own. The woman freed the boys from their duties and assigned all the household chores to Rosalba—all but the gardening. Doña Regina was an enthusiastic gardener. Rosalba thought her stepmother was wicked. How dare that odious woman come into her newly renovated house and tell her what to do? Look how well-mannered her brothers were. They were much better trained than the stepmother herself was. The woman often complained about Rosalba’s cooking, she never said “Por favor” or “Gracias,” and she cursed in front of Rosalba’s brothers. The situation worsened when Doña Regina began talking to her husband behind Rosalba’s back.
“She spends most of the money on lottery tickets,” Doña Regina lied. “Meanwhile we have to eat rice and chicken gizzards every day. Look how hungry your sons are.” She pointed at the youngest one, who was naked on the floor, eating the scraps he found inside his own nose. In the face of such evidence, Doña Regina was immediately authorized to manage the family budget. She went food shopping that same day and came back with bags full of delicacies they hadn’t seen in more than three years: steaks, pork chops, cheese and even a cake. The next day she bought shirts for the four boys and her husband, and a dress for herself. She bought nothing for Rosalba. Not even batteries for her portable radio, which Doña Regina considered an extravagance.
The tension between the two women kept growing, and after countless arguments and fights, Rosalba finally left on a sunny Monday morning. She took only her radio and a sharp knife and walked south, ignoring the many truck drivers who offered her a ride in exchange for her favors. Before the end of the day she made out a village in the distance: Mariquita, at that time a settlement of less than one hundred people. Rosalba could never explain to herself how or why, but at that precise moment she knew that there, in that distant village, she would live for the rest of her life; and there, in that village, she would never be just an ordinary woman. Never.
TWENTY-EIGHT YEARS LATER, Rosalba found herself sitting in the most important chair in Mariquita, surrounded by its four most significant walls. The wall on the left displayed the Colombian flag, frayed at the edges, its three colors almost faded into one. The wall on the right was blessed with a large wooden crucifix with a headless Jesus (the woodworms had been nibbling at it for quite a while). The wall in front of her desk was adorned with a framed picture of the current president of the republic. And the one behind her had a replica of the national coat of arms, which read “Libertad y Orden”—Freedom and Order.
Rosalba rose and walked to the window. She felt daunted by what she saw: a dilapidated plaza surrounded by dying mango trees, stone benches covered in bird droppings, a few broken lampposts and a tangle of wires that once had brought electricity into town five days a week, and which now dangled pointlessly between moss-covered poles. She went back to her desk, disappointed. Not so much in the view as in herself. She had seen this same ruin every day for the past year. Had she really expected the plaza to look any different through the window of her magisterial office? What a fool she was! Mariquita would only show improvement when she, Rosalba, put her management skills to work. She was a strong and capable woman. Have a team prune and water the mango trees. She’d always been the decision maker. Get the benches cleaned.
A voice in the distance interrupted her train of thought. “Compañeras!” she heard a woman yell. “We’re all suffering from hunger and from the loss of our male relatives. Let’s put ourselves in the hands of the Lord. Only He can save us.” Rosalba rushed back to the window. The voice belonged to the Jaramillo widow. She stood, a little stooped, in a corner, inviting the community to join her in saying a public rosary. She was wearing a red dress and had an oversized chaplet tied around her waist. The magistrate was incense
d. First, how dared the Jaramillo widow wear a red dress when the entire town was in mourning? And second, how could she expect so much from God? What had He done for Mariquita? Their village was in wretched poverty, marked for doom as surely as the Jaramillo widow. And what had the Lord done for that pious woman? She had lost her entire family: her husband and two younger sons had been shot dead by guerrillas when they refused to join them, and Pablo, her eldest, had left for New York long ago in search of a better life and never been heard from again. The Jaramillo widow was thinner and poorer than ever. There was even talk about her going mad. And yet there she was, shouting that only the Lord could save Mariquita…. Suddenly, the magistrate realized that she had a very strong rival and that it wasn’t the Jaramillo widow. The Lord Himself was out to defeat Rosalba.
Her biggest challenge now would be to persuade the women to forget about miracles and put their faith in the only flesh-and-blood leader there was in Mariquita. She knew she’d have to work hard to convince them that it was she, not the Lord, who’d eventually bring back the electricity and running water. She, the magistrate, who’d reopen the school. She who’d procure the seeds and fertilizers that would provide the villagers with food. Rosalba walked back to her desk, straightening her shoulders with each step. She seized her list of priorities, and, feeling the fear rise up in her, she wrote: Win the villagers over to my side. Forbid the use of bright-colored garments at any time. Finally, Change the plaque outside the municipal office to read “Rosalba viuda de Patiño, Magistrate.”
THE PROSPECT OF competing against the Lord was terrifying. Until today, Rosalba’s relationship with Him had not been entirely bad. In fact, going to church had been the first thing she did the night she arrived in Mariquita in 1964. She remembered clearly how el padre Bartolomé, a ninety-three-year-old priest, had listened patiently to her sad story and offered her shelter in exchange for work in his kitchen. Rosalba quickly organized the priest’s untidy house and created a weekly schedule of hearty meals, which were highly praised by the priest.
At the same time, her green eyes and generous behind caught the attention of the only three single men in town. They saw her every Sunday afternoon sitting alone on a bench by the plaza, reading or listening to the news on her portable radio. She seemed unapproachable in her fluffy white dress and straw hat that the priest had bought for her, and for that reason the three young men contented themselves with watching her from the ice cream parlor. It was Rosalba who took the first step by showing them her perfect teeth. They waved. She closed the book she was reading—the life of Joan of Arc—and looked the other way. The nervous men tossed a coin to decide who would have the opportunity to approach her first.
Vicente Gómez was the lucky one. He smoothed down his bushy eyebrows with his forefingers and walked boldly in her direction. After the formal greeting, Vicente found himself answering a list of questions for which he wasn’t prepared: “What do you want to be in five years?” “How many children would you like to have?” “Will you let your wife manage your family budget?” “What do you think of wives ruling their homes?” “How often do you bathe?” “Do you like listening to the radio?” Vicente couldn’t understand why she asked so many questions, but he answered all of them: He wanted to be a barber, have six children, manage the budget himself, and let his wife rule the house. He bathed every other day and thought the radio was the greatest invention of all times. Rosalba sent him home with a kiss on his cheek. Do I want to be a barber’s wife? she thought.
Rómulo Villegas came next and wasn’t even allowed to finish the inquisition. He said he was going to open a cafeteria, have at least a dozen children, manage the budget and rule his house. At that point Rosalba turned on her radio, brought it to her ear and opened her book, pretending Rómulo wasn’t there.
At last it was the turn of Napoleón Patiño. He was a slender man with long, greasy hair and bulging eyes. He looked vulnerable with his hands hidden inside his pockets and his head sunken between his shoulders.
“How often do you bathe?” Rosalba asked right away, detecting a peculiar stink.
“Every Monday.”
“I’m not surprised.” She sniffed once again and wrinkled her brow. “And your fingernails. How often do you clip them?”
“I don’t clip them. I eat them.” His voice was low-pitched, and he avoided Rosalba’s eyes. She proceeded with her questions and found out that Napoleón would like to be a police officer, have one child, allow his wife to manage the budget and rule the house, and he owned a radio. He’s not bad looking, she thought, but he cannot be just a police officer. He’ll be the police sergeant of Mariquita.
After exchanging glances, love letters and poems for nearly three months, Napoleón and Rosalba got married and rented a house near the plaza. Many years later they would buy it in partial payments from Don Maximiliano Perdomo, a rich landlord who owned half the houses of Mariquita and the surrounding coffee farms. The young couple witnessed the slow growth of Mariquita: they helped build the first elementary school in 1968, and the telephone office in 1969. They encouraged their friends Vicente Gómez and Rómulo Villegas to pursue their dreams. In 1970, Napoleón became the first man to have his hair cut at Barbería Gómez, and early in 1971, the couple ate the first meal ever served at Cafetería d’Villegas. In 1972, together with their neighbors and friends, they planted young mango trees along each side of the unpaved streets. The following year they watched the first lampposts being installed around the plaza. Theirs was also the first home in Mariquita with a black-and-white television set—an enormous apparatus standing on four thick feet, like a cow, with a small screen encased in the middle and three round dials on the right side. Rosalba bought it on her first trip to Ibagué in 1973. In 1974, Rosalba and Napoleón ate lunch at the same table with the governor of the moment, who came into town to inaugurate a paved road that connected Mariquita with larger cities in the south.
The road made the village an attractive stop for people traveling between Fresno and Ibagué. People stopped to drink batidos of fresh fruit, use the public lavatory, stretch their legs, or just appreciate, and even take pictures, of the color-coordinated houses with their facades painted yellow, blue and red, like the nation’s flag, and their roofs covered with terra-cotta tiles.
With its warm days and cool nights and the genuine hospitality of its inhabitants, Mariquita was a pleasant place to live. For that reason, some of the visitors who stopped by never left, like Don Jacobo Morales and his pregnant wife Doña Victoria, who arrived in 1970. They were on their way to Ibagué to deliver their third child in a private hospital, but after she drank a guava shake, Doña Victoria’s contractions began, and she was immediately admitted to Mariquita’s cozy infirmary. Seven hours later, she gave birth to a little girl and named her Magnolia. Doña Victoria spent the customary forty-five days recovering in the Patiños’ home, until she managed to convince her husband to sell their country house and move to Mariquita.
POOR VICTORIA, THE magistrate thought, as she dusted the framed picture of the president one more time. After all she went through to keep her son Julio César from being taken by the guerrillas, and now he won’t speak or stop dressing like a girl. I should pay her a visit soon. The shrill cry of a cat outside made her go to the window and peep out. The cry could have come from any of the four corners of the plaza. Rawboned dogs and cats rummaged about in the piles of garbage, fighting Ubaldina’s pigs and Perestroika, the Solórzano widow’s cow, over rotten scraps of food, corn husks, plantain leaves and human waste. Watching them, she became nauseated. The magistrate decided that everything looked much worse through the window of her new office.
She vowed to clean up the plaza. After all, she was Rosalba viuda de Patiño: competent, efficient, resourceful. She had spent her life cleaning up messes. This wouldn’t be any different. Besides, it would put her ahead of the Lord in the eyes of the villagers.
She rushed back to her desk, and as her posterior landed on the chair, the zipper o
f her dress broke. Annoyed, she shook her head and went over her list of priorities. Organize cleaning squads to sweep the garbage off the streets was number four. She frowned. With great care and the help of an eraser, she shifted the order, so that cleaning the streets became her number-one priority without hurting, in any way, the aesthetics of the list. Her handwriting really was exquisite. Another cat cried in the distance. She rolled her eyes and kept working on her list: Visit Victoria viuda de Morales. Have my two black dresses mended.
Rosalba owned many dresses, but only two of them were entirely black. She’d been wearing them ever since her husband was killed, and now they were frayed at the collar and hem. Before she hadn’t cared. She was in mourning—what did it matter if her clothes were tattered? But now she was the magistrate. She had to maintain a neat appearance. She’d have the old dresses patched over until they gave way. Then she’d have a new one tailored. Black, of course. It was the least she could do to pay her respect to the exceptional husband she had once had.
NAPOLEÓN PATIÑO HAD done everything in his power to please Rosalba. He’d have been content to remain a police officer for life, but Rosalba wanted more for him, and so he had worked diligently to earn the respect of his superior. Rosalba vividly remembered the proud look in his eyes when, after ten years, he was finally promoted to sergeant.
Her friends also regarded Rosalba very highly, and her husband’s salary allowed her to refurnish her house and buy a record player. The only thing marring her happiness was that after their third year of marriage, Napoleón was unable to get an erection. He tried eating bull’s penis soup and fish eggs, and drinking a fermented corn drink with honey and brandy. He also visited doctors in Fresno and Ibagué, but Rosalba’s sexual life remained limited to the sporadic caresses of Napoleón’s fingers, or her own. She consoled herself by thinking, At least I have his devotion.
