Tales from the Town of Widows

by James Canon

  Both women smiled insincerely.

  Then a strange thing happened. As Cleotilde rose from the sad chair, her face lined up with the framed picture of the president of the republic hanging from the wall behind her, and the magistrate was appalled to notice that they had identical devious smiles. Cleotilde also seemed to have grown a few inches during the interview. In fact, the teacher looked taller than any woman or man Rosalba had ever seen. “Have a good day, Señorita Guarnizo,” she managed to say, while pretending to take notes in an upside-down notebook.

  AS SOON AS Cleotilde stepped out of her office, the magistrate picked up the speck of dust from the floor and disposed of it. “What is the matter with me?” she said. “I ought to be ashamed to let an old spinster intimidate me in my own office.” The last time she had felt that way was when she was sixteen and her evil stepmother was making her life miserable.

  But Rosalba was no longer a naive young girl. “I’m no longer a naive young girl.” She was a wise, sophisticated and experienced woman. “I’m a wise, sophisticated and experienced woman.” She refused to feel threatened by a weird old spinster who had come into her office putting on airs, fancying herself as someone more intelligent, more educated and more capable than the magistrate herself. “How dare she come into my office in black when she’s nobody’s widow, and wearing running shoes when she can hardly walk?”

  Rosalba ordered Cecilia to find out everything there was to know about the mysterious foreigner.

  AFTER THE INTERVIEW Cleotilde went to the market. She sat at a rustic table under a tent where the Morales widow and her daughter Julia—formerly known as her son Julio César—served meals and snacks. Cleotilde ignored the widow and the girl’s inquisitive looks and ordered breakfast. While waiting for her food, she remembered the incidents with the children and wondered whether or not she should take the job—she had no doubt the magistrate would offer it to her—and stay. Living in an isolated village without men was especially appealing to her, but she was greatly troubled by the children’s behavior, and also by their mothers, who acted as if it was nothing to worry about.

  Julia Morales placed a cup of steamy black coffee in front of Cleotilde, then went to the grill and laid a half-cooked arepa over a weak fire. The old woman followed her with her eyes, thinking that she was a strange-looking young girl. Maybe it was the extravagant makeup she had on that made her look queer. She took a sip of coffee and looked around the marketplace, trying to find something positive to make her change her mind about Mariquita. Half a dozen faded tents were scattered over an expanse of clear ground. Under them the townspeople sold—or bartered—candles, coal, kerosene and prepared foods and beverages. Among the tents, lying on empty sacks spread on the ground, were potatoes, onions, corn ears and oranges. Not much variety, Cleotilde thought, but she had seen much worse. In the middle of the market an open cooking fire burned fitfully; next to it a mad-looking old woman leaned above a metal pot filled with water, stirring and sweating; a little farther down a burro gobbled a bunch of dry plantain leaves, while dogs and cats roamed around looking for something to eat. Suddenly a group of lookalike children appeared from around a corner, running. Cleotilde immediately recognized one of them, Vietnam Calderón, “El Diablo.”

  “We’ve got one! We’ve got one!” the boys announced enthusiastically. They gathered around the mad-looking woman and handed her a birdlike creature they had just killed with their slingshots. Smiling a toothless smile, the woman dipped the bird into the hot water, took it out and started plucking it, while the children shouted out different stories of the way they had killed the bird.

  “They’re good kids,” the Morales widow said, noticing the contemptuous look Cleotilde gave the children. “They go out of their way to bring something for the Jaramillo widow to put in her pot. That poor woman is half crazy and has nobody to look after her.” She nodded repeatedly, saying, “Very good kids indeed.”

  “They’re savages, is what they are,” Cleotilde declared harshly. She hoped the widow was the mother of one of them. If she was, Cleotilde would give her a piece of her mind.

  The Morales widow got closer to Cleotilde and spoke in a whisper, “You see the two boys over there, just to the right of the burro? The taller one’s Trotsky, and the other one’s Vietnam. The poor things were forced to witness the killing of their fathers at the hands of guerrillas.”

  The widow’s disclosure shocked Cleotilde. She frowned and bit her nails. “I’ll take my arepa now,” she demanded. Julia turned around and gestured to her mother that the arepa wasn’t fully cooked. “It isn’t done yet,” the widow said.

  “That’s all right,” Cleotilde said. “Give it to me the way it is!” Julia sneered at her and turned the corn griddle over and waited for it to cook longer. But Cleotilde didn’t see this because her eyes were again fixed on the children. “Their mothers don’t seem to care much about them,” she went on.

  “That might be true, lady,” the Morales widow replied, “but God knows those poor women work day and night just to put a piece of bread on their tables.” She heaved a sigh. “Being a widow is not an easy thing. I’m sure you know that.”

  “No, I don’t,” Cleotilde snapped. “And before I lose my temper, let me ask you one more time, may I please have my arepa now?”

  The widow walked over to the grill and scolded her daughter for not listening, then put the arepa on a plate and placed it in front of the old woman. “I’m Victoria viuda de Morales,” she said, holding out her hand to Cleotilde.

  “I’ll have some more coffee,” Cleotilde replied rudely, slamming the empty cup on the widow’s outstretched hand.

  While eating her breakfast, Cleotilde reflected on the Morales widow’s observation. Perhaps the children of Mariquita were not consciously evil. Maybe the war and the violence they’d witnessed had made them oblivious to the pain they caused others. Most killers started that way, hurting their animals and slinging pebbles at defenseless old women, and before you knew it, they were shooting guns and killing people in the most atrocious ways, because the scoundrels didn’t even bother learning how to kill. But Cleotilde could save them from such dire future. If she took the job, she could teach them discipline and manners and turn them into honorable citizens. With regard to the mothers, she decided that they were just ignorant country people who took for granted that their only responsibility as parents was to feed their children. If she chose to stay in Mariquita, Cleotilde would have a word or two with them.

  The Morales widow was gone by the time Cleotilde finished eating. Julia was sitting alone in a small table in the back, peeling fat red potatoes. “How much do I owe you?” Cleotilde asked. She hoped it wasn’t more than five hundred pesos. She was running out of cash.

  But cash wasn’t on Julia’s mind. The girl walked over to Cleotilde’s table and relentlessly scrutinized her for valuables. She pointed at a gold ring on the old woman’s right hand.

  “I beg your pardon?” The teacher was outraged. “You can’t put a price on this ring, dear. It was a present from my mother, and I’ve never removed it from my finger.”

  Julia lowered her head and began counting on her fingers, then gestured that she would serve Cleotilde three meals a day for fifteen days in exchange for the piece of jewelry.

  Cleotilde looked at the ring. If she decided to stay in Mariquita, it was an offer worth considering. But the ring was her only connection to her past. Then again, it was also her only connection to that horrible and recurrent dream of men and blood and red velvet curtains. “Feed me three meals a day for two months, and the ring’s yours,” she said. “It’s twenty-four-karat gold!”

  Julia drew near the teacher and bent over to take a closer look at the ring: it was shaped like a python, with two tiny red stones for eyes. Julia had never seen anything like it before. All right, two months it is, she gestured with a long sigh.

  After shaking hands on their deal, Cleotilde started pulling the ring off her finger, but it wouldn’t come off. J
ulia, who was very diligent when she wanted to be, fetched a tin can where they kept the old stinky lard that was to be reused. She scooped some, rubbed it around Cleotilde’s finger, and tried to remove the ring. At that moment, while Julia twisted and pulled, Cleotilde felt like her memory was being squeezed, forcing out a jumble of indistinct images: angry men, machetes, a gold ring, marigold flowers, blood, screams. Soon, however, the flashbacks started coming together, slowly and clearly, turning into a vivid recollection of the most traumatic episode of her life.

  Like a film being played back in her mind, Cleotilde saw a small village of white houses roofed with terra-cotta tiles, and front yards overflowing with bright golden marigold flowers. The village, she remembered, was called San Gil. There, in a little house, lived a young woman named Milagro with her parents and brothers. She was a history teacher; a good teacher who could recount everyone of her nation’s many civil wars as though she had fought in each one, and narrate, year by year, the inconclusive strife between the two traditional political parties.

  One night she was sitting on her steps when she saw a large group of men armed with machetes rushing up her street, shouting out slogans against Liberals. She ran inside and hid behind a red velvet curtain. Soon the men burst into her house and forced her family into the living room. From her hiding place, Milagro watched the men gouge out her father’s eyes and pull out her mother’s nails before hacking them to death. After that, the men beheaded her younger brothers and dismembered their bodies. Before leaving, one of the men heard Milagro’s sobs. He found her shaking behind the curtains with her hands wrapped over her mouth. He laughed and eased her down on the floor. Milagro didn’t resist. She went soft and limp, staring blankly past him, grinding her teeth furiously. He ripped her skirt, and she firmly crossed her legs. He hit her across the face, and she tensed her body. He fastened his mouth on hers, forced himself inside her, and she just lay there, grinding her teeth. When he was finished, he noticed a gold ring on Milagro’s finger. He grabbed her hand and tugged on the ring, but it wouldn’t come off. He got angry and cursed her and tugged some more, harder each time, without results. He cursed her again, twisting and pulling and twisting…

  “Stop!” Cleotilde yelled at Julia, who was still trying to remove the ring from the woman’s finger. Cleotilde’s body was now trembling. She reared up and glanced around, trying to reorient herself to the present. She noticed the people near her, the color of the sky, the shapes of things. She listened to her own heavy breathing, to the chirping of birds and the barking of dogs. She touched her arms and face and hair and rubbed her palms against the sides of her own legs to feel her clothes. Suddenly, she stamped her feet on the ground and, addressing no one in particular, shouted, “This happened long ago, and she survived. Milagro survived!”

  Thinking she was facing a lunatic, Julia rose and moved away from Cleotilde, slowly and without taking her eyes off of her.

  Cleotilde sank into the chair from which she had risen, closed her eyes and let the rest of her memories take the form of pictures, sounds, smells, body sensations and feelings, and come out of her mind once and for all.

  She saw Milagro weep as she buried the bodies of her relatives in the back of her house. She saw her join hundreds of refugees from several towns who were fleeing to safer places. Then she saw Milagro cut her hair short and heard her change her name to Cleotilde Guarnizo. As Cleotilde she went from town to town hating men and teaching children the nation’s history, which she recited from memory. She had a prodigious memory. However, when she was asked about her birthplace, her family, or the reason for her aversion to men, Cleotilde’s memory didn’t serve her well. She couldn’t remember a thing about her past.

  “She’s pale.” “She’s shaking.” “Maybe we should call the nurse.” The old woman could hear different small voices in the distance, whispers that seem to come from nowhere. “I think she’s just dreaming.” “Lady, wake up!” Did they belong to her past or to her present? “Who is she, anyway?” “A traveler. She’s staying with the Saavedras.” “I think she’s on her way to Dorada, or maybe Honda.”

  Cleotilde now recalled that when she turned thirty-seven (or maybe it was thirty-eight), she decided to settle down in Dorada (or maybe it was Honda). Soon she found a job in a respectable school where she was given an updated textbook of history to teach. As she started preparing her lessons, poor Cleotilde realized that some of the tragic historic events that she was about to teach, she herself had witnessed: the political civil war of 1948 known as La Violencia, where urged on by the ruling classes, thousands of peasants armed with machetes had begun massacring other peasants (Liberals beheaded Conservatives, and Conservatives butchered Liberals), and the military dictatorship that came after it. Chaos, pain, hunger and devastation were recounted in the book, supplemented with terrifying photographs and testimonials of people who, like Cleotilde, had seen their families and friends being mutilated and killed. Cleotilde immediately stopped teaching Colombian history, and before long found herself on the road again going from village to village, running away from her past, eluding new civil wars that in this country never ended, loathing men, dreaming that horrible dream. Then, one night, she arrived in Mariquita.

  The memories, though intense, were no longer frightening. Cleotilde’s breathing had become regular, and a healthy rose color appeared in her cheeks. She opened her eyes and saw a number of faces clustered around her.

  “Are you feeling all right?” the Morales widow said. “You were shaking.”

  “And gasping for breath,” Francisca viuda de Gómez added. The other women nodded.

  Cleotilde rose and moved vaguely among the women, glancing from the one to the other with a blank expression. “I feel well,” she said. “I feel really well, thank you.” After hearing this, the women went back to their tents.

  “Where’s the girl?” Cleotilde asked the Morales widow. “Your daughter. Where is she?” The widow pointed at the back table, where Julia was slicing potatoes. Cleotilde walked up to her. “I have something that belongs to you, Julia.” She slipped the ring off her finger in one smooth motion and put it on the table, next to the girl’s hand. “It was the heat,” she whispered. “My fingers swell up in the heat.”

  Julia put the ring on her middle finger and held her hand up for Cleotilde to see, gesturing that she really, really liked the ring. Cleotilde smiled, then started down the mango-shaded street, followed by the many sets of eyes that watched her suspiciously from tents and corners.

  MEANWHILE, IN HER office, Rosalba debated whether or not she should offer the job to Cleotilde. She had already met with four other candidates so far that week, none of whom had a portfolio, a résumé or even teaching experience. One of them, Magnolia Morales, had arrived at the interview wearing shorts, slippers and rollers in her hair. When Rosalba asked her, “What makes you think you are qualified for the job?” Magnolia replied, “I read and write and I can recite the alphabet backward faster than anyone I know.” Another candidate, Francisca viuda de Gómez, had brought a live, scrawny pig with her. After an intense verbal encounter with Rosalba’s secretary, Francisca had dragged the noisy animal inside the magistrate’s office and offered it in exchange for the job.

  In the magistrate’s mind there was no doubt that Señorita Guarnizo was the only applicant capable of doing the job. She was confident and experienced; perhaps too confident and too experienced. What if she wanted to enforce her own rules in town? What if she secretly aspired to be a magistrate? Besides, Rosalba knew nothing about her whereabouts before 1973, and the reason why she refused to teach Colombian history. Rosalba had been so intimidated that she’d forgotten to ask Cleotilde the most basic questions, like “Where are you from?” “Do you have any living relatives?” “Are you a hermaphrodite?”

  THE FOLLOWING MORNING, Rosalba got to her office earlier than usual and immediately began to clean. She had learned, through her gossipy secretary, that Cleotilde Guarnizo had arrived in town two nights befo
re and that she was staying at Lucrecia and Virgelina Saavedra’s home. The woman’s origins were unknown, but Rosalba was determined to find out from the teacher herself. With that in mind, she had invited Cleotilde for a second interview. This time, however, Rosalba would be in control. She’d be the one leading the interview, asking questions and demanding answers. She’d rehearsed her introductory speech at home, in front of a large piece of mirror that hung in her bedroom, and then at the office in front of Cecilia.

  When Cleotilde showed up, Rosalba’s office was spotless, and the framed picture of the president of the republic had been removed from the wall. The magistrate herself looked elegant in her long-sleeved black dress with a lacy collar. Even her hair, gathered in the same old chignon at the nape of her neck, seemed neater and smoother than before. Cleotilde, dressed in a navy blue pants suit and pointed leather boots, walked inside the office with a vigorous stride. She sat rigidly across from the magistrate’s desk, her legs slightly apart.

  Rosalba began her speech with aplomb: “You are one of two finalists for the job, Señorita Guarnizo. I must admit that I’m very impressed with your portfolio. I can’t think of a better candidate to fill the post. I am, however, a little troubled, since I’ve been informed that you are not formally settled in Mariquita, and we don’t really know much about your former life…” She paused, giving Cleotilde the opportunity to disclose a few details about her mysterious life.

  But Cleotilde didn’t. Instead she fixed her eyes on the magistrate’s, making Rosalba fix hers on her own restless hands lying on her lap. They sat silent till after a while Rosalba went on, “As you can understand, our children’s education is vital to us here in Mariquita.” She couldn’t remember any of the questions she had prepared for Cleotilde. “I don’t doubt for a second that you are—educated and experienced, but I was just wondering, I’d like to know. Well, we would like to know, after all I’m nothing but the voice of the villagers…”