Tales from the Town of Widows

by James Canon

  The large crowd stood watching the driver bring into Francisca’s house bag after suitcase after bag. Watching them go past, each woman began condemning, in her own mind, Francisca’s extravagance.

  When the driver was gone, Francisca invited a small group of her friends inside her house. The rest of the people took turns looking through the window as Francisca tried on clothes and shoes and piled them up in every corner of her house, reminding them of their hardship. Among the women watching the spectacle from the outside was Rosalba. She was feeling guilty about having issued the questionable decree that would dramatically tax Francisca’s fortune, so she’d come out in search of vindication for her behavior. But after gazing intently through the window Rosalba realized that Francisca had enough clothes to dress, at least once, the entire population of Mariquita, and as many pairs of shoes as a centipede had legs. Meanwhile nearly all the women in town had worn, day after day for almost four years, the same black dresses presently brimming with darns and patches. And those who had been stupid enough to listen to Francisca and burn their mourning outfits soon discovered that their colorful clothes were now too loose or too small, or had been eaten by moths. Most women had already worn the soles of their shoes so thin that they could feel the bumps on the ground. Some had even chosen to walk barefoot. Rosalba had no reason to feel guilt. Francisca’s avarice had vindicated the magistrate’s maneuver.

  The next day was Saturday, market day. Early in the morning some women went fishing, others hunting, a few chicken throats were slit, grain was gleaned and the largest oranges and guavas picked from the trees. Products that were in short supply suddenly became available, and only the freshest, best produce found its way to the marketplace, where shortly after six all kinds of buyers and sellers convened to trade their goods. Francisca got out of bed early. She was hungry, but there was nothing edible in her house—before leaving for Ibagué she had purposely emptied her pantry. Now it was time to stock up her kitchen with the best products she could find. As she was preparing to leave, she heard a couple of knocks at the door. She opened it and found the magistrate, the priest and the police sergeant standing rather solemnly at her threshold. Francisca showed them in.

  “I’d gladly pull a chair for you to sit if I could find any,” she said, scrutinizing the room—filled with piles of goods—for some sign of a seat.

  “That’s not necessary,” the magistrate interposed. “I’ll be brief.” She produced a slip of paper from her handbag and handed it to Francisca before beginning her formal statement: “A law has been passed that entitles the administration of Mariquita and the Roman Catholic Church to tax any amount of money found within the village’s perimeters.”

  “Is that so?” said Francisca, showing no surprise.

  “The document you’re holding contains all you need to know about the law, including the percentages you must pay,” el padre Rafael added, ratifying the magistrate’s notification.

  Francisca flushed but didn’t answer at once. She was aware of the seriousness of the notice, which, of course, called for a sensible answer given in a seemly choice of words, a refined lady’s reply. “Get out of my house, you rabble!” she shouted at Rosalba, then tore the slip of paper and threw the pieces at her.

  Police Sergeant Ubaldina stood between the two women in a conciliatory manner. This wasn’t necessary, however, because the magistrate remained surprisingly composed.

  “I warn you, Francisca,” Rosalba said. “I will no longer allow any woman of Mariquita to go to sleep with an empty stomach while another is belching pork chops.”

  “To hell with the women of Mariquita! I’m not sharing my money with anyone. Out!” She now pointed at the door, which she had left open.

  “Think about it, dear,” el padre Rafael intervened. “Your good looks and fine clothes might make you stand out for a while, but you’re still a widow in a town of widows. Your soul, on the other hand—”

  “To hell with you and your stupid church. Out!”

  “You have until sunset to come to my office and pay the applicable taxes on every centavo you found, or I’ll have you banished from Mariquita,” the magistrate declared. Then the police sergeant, who until then had been quiet, couldn’t contain herself any longer. With a sardonic smile, she said to Francisca, “If it brings Mariquita unhappiness, we’ll rid ourselves of it.” The three turned at once and walked out of the room.

  Francisca leaned her back against the door, feeling restless. What was she going to do now? She couldn’t report less than what she had unearthed because el padre Rafael knew the exact amount. Should she stay in town and contest the magistrate’s resolution? Or should she leave? She was in the same dilemma as two weeks before. No, it was worse now because the magistrate had only given her until dusk to make a decision. It was the magistrate’s threat, however, that incidentally helped Francisca decide that she would not go anywhere. Who did Rosalba think she was, to determine who got to stay in the village and who had to leave? If anyone should be asked to leave, it was Rosalba herself. She hadn’t even been born in Mariquita. Francisca would stick to her original plan of opening her beauty parlor, and she’d fight the magistrate. There had to be a law that protected a rich widow from being banished from her native village.

  With that thought in mind, Francisca went to the old Barbería Gómez. The place looked just the same as when she had left for Ibagué. The Morales sisters hadn’t done a thing. Furious, Francisca went to the market looking for new employees, but no one there accepted her offers. Then she went about the village asking every person to work for her, increasing the salary as she moved from door to door, turning friendly, even pleasant, but no woman wanted to work for Francisca. She felt tired and hungry—with all the problems of that morning, she had forgotten to eat. She went to the Morales widow’s tent and ordered breakfast from Julia. The girl gave Francisca one of her worst looks, which said, among other things, that her presence was no longer welcome in their eatery. Francisca moved around the market attempting to purchase food from her old friends, but her business wasn’t wanted anywhere. She offered to pay twice as much money for a couple of plantains, three times as much for a yucca, and still the merchants refused to sell to her. She thought that her friends from the market, like the magistrate, were testing her pride. But Francisca viuda de Gómez had never gone down on her knees to anyone, and she was not just about to start doing it now that she was rich.

  She went home hungry, feeling as though parasites were eating her intestines. All she had left in her kitchen was some water in a vessel and a gallon of kerosene for the stove. She boiled the water, poured it into a cup and added the last scrapings of salt left in a plastic container. She took small sips of the tasteless infusion, hoping that the strong feeling of hunger would go away. But it only became stronger as the clear liquid reached her insides.

  Evening was nearing. Francisca sat on the floor and started playing with her nostrils: she covered the one on the right, and with the left one she smelled the stew of giblets that was being cooked next door. Then she covered her left nostril, and with the other one she detected the smell of tripe soup. She closed her eyes and continued this, her senses traveling from kitchen to kitchen until she was able to tell what each family would be having for dinner that night, and even which families were going to bed with nothing in their stomachs, like herself. Maybe she should pay the taxes so that everyone in Mariquita could eat well and wear clean clothes. Or maybe not. Why should anyone be given something if they hadn’t worked for it? She had offered them a well-paying job, and they had all refused her offer. Well, then, they deserved to go to bed hungry, she concluded.

  She took the last few sips of boiled water, and suddenly started seeing, one by one, her own fears entering the house. Loneliness was the first to arrive—alone, of course. Francisca recognized it immediately because it coyly scoured the entire house for the right place to dwell. It finally settled inside the inner pocket of one of Francisca’s new fur coats and didn’t move
again. Guilt came soon afterward, pointing at her with long reproachful fingers. It slid itself into a red silk blouse and, poking its fingers through the long sleeves, continued nagging at Francisca. Then, hand in hand, came Rejection and Abandonment. They moved freely about the room, disregarding Francisca. Before long they picked a pair of fancy spike-heeled shoes and each disappeared into a different shoe. Francisca realized that her fears had come together with her fortune. They had only been waiting for the right occasion, a moment of complete weakness and despair, to reveal themselves. At present they hid among her dear new garments, from where they watched the swelling unhappiness of her eyes. There was only one thing to do.

  She rose from the floor with trembling hands and legs and undressed completely. She piled up, in the middle of her living room, all her new clothes and shoes, her expensive accessories and her stacks of pesos, all of them. Then she drizzled, with the only liquid left in her house, the heap of goods in a ritualistic fashion: her right arm turned into a long feather flying gracefully in the air. She stepped back from the pile and looked around her house, giggling. She went inside the kitchen, grabbed a box of matches, walked toward the door, opened it, turned around, struck a match and threw it onto the drenched pile. She waited for the flames to swallow the pile and sear the roof. Then she stepped out, shut the door and walked slowly across the street to the mango tree, giggling, giggling. The sun was now setting, and there she stood, stark naked, watching the smoke and the flames come out through the holes in the roof and the open window; hearing the church bell peal insistently and the many voices of neighbors and friends calling for water; giggling, giggling, giggling.

  Jesús Martínez, 48

  Ex-colonel, Colombian National Army

  A man had just moved into the room down the hall, but no one in the house had seen him yet. “He’s an ex-guerrilla who suffers from amnesia,” our landlady confided to one of the lodgers. “Please don’t tell the colonel. He’s crazy!” I’m not crazy, just pissed off. Ten years ago, a guerrilla land mine blew off my feet in combat, ending my military career. But in this second-rate lodging house, secrets aren’t kept much longer than a few minutes. And when I heard about it, I thought, Amnesia? I’ll help that motherfucker get back his memory, and then I’ll blow his fucking head off.

  In my room, I loaded my pistol and hid it under a white poncho neatly folded on my lap. I drank half a glass of rum and lit a cigarette, took two drags on it and stubbed it out in the ashtray. I checked my hand. It was steady enough to shoot him. I wheeled myself to the door and opened it slowly, wincing when it squeaked. After looking in both directions, I wheeled myself down the narrow hallway. I wasn’t nervous. My heart didn’t beat any faster than it usually does, and I didn’t gasp for breath. My hands worked the wheels until they put me barely two inches away from my victim’s room. I heard him cough, the bastard. I knocked three times on his door with my left hand. My other hand was under the poncho, clutching the pistol so tightly that it was beginning to hurt. He coughed again. I’d soon put a stop to his coughing, I thought. There was a brief silence. Then I heard a familiar sound, but before it registered in my mind, the door opened abruptly and there he was, right in front of me, the new lodger, the ex-guerrilla, the monster. He had no legs, only stumps, and he, too, was sitting on a wheelchair.

  We stared silently at each other for a while. As if looking at ourselves in a mirror.

  “Hi,” he finally said, a friendly smile on his face. “Vicente Gómez, at your service,” he added, holding out his hand to me.

  I let go of my pistol, still hidden under my poncho, and involuntarily waited a moment before shaking his hand. “Jesús,” I said. “Jesús Martínez. I rent the room at the end of the corridor.”

  “It’s a pleasure meeting you,” one of us said.

  “The pleasure’s all mine,” the other replied.

  CHAPTER 6

  The Other Widow

  Mariquita, December 7, 1997

  AS HE HAD EVERY night for the past five years, Santiago Marín sat on his steps, shirtless and barefoot, staring into the darkness, waiting for Pablo. Tonight he also lit candles to the Virgin Mary, who according to tradition, traveled on December 7 from house to house and town to town, giving away blessings for every candle burned.

  He heard the roar of a car in the distance. At first he remained uninterested, but when the sound became louder, he quickly gathered his long hair into a ponytail, wiped a rag over his oily face and lit one more candle. Then he saw the headlights of a car coming down the rise. The last car to drive on the unpaved streets of Mariquita had been the rattletrap of a Jeep that had brought Francisca viuda de Gómez and her numerous suitcases back from her trip to Ibagué over a year ago. Except for its black color, the car approaching town tonight was no different: an old, beat-up Jeep with a loud engine. The driver went twice around the dilapidated plaza before stopping at a corner to greet the town’s magistrate, the priest and the schoolmistress, who, together with numerous women and children holding candles, had come out of their houses to welcome the visitor. After assuring the magistrate twice that the government hadn’t sent him, and getting directions, the man drove slowly through the growing crowd, down a narrow side street, and pulled over in the middle of the block, in front of the Jaramillo widow’s house, across from Santiago’s.

  “Let me out,” the driver said to the half-naked children surrounding the car, a hint of irritation in his voice. The women pulled their children aside and waited quietly. “Get out of my way,” he yelled. He sounded arrogant and contemptuous despite his slanting eyes and dark skin, despite his straw hat, ragged poncho and sheathed machete at his waist that clearly indicated he was a man of Indian descent—nobody important. He stood in front of the Jaramillo widow’s doorway, thinking perhaps that the noises made by his car and the crowd were enough to draw the woman out. The widow hadn’t lit any candles tonight because she’d lost hope of blessings a long time ago (she had gone mad after her husband and two of her sons were shot dead by guerrillas, and at present she had nobody to look after her). When the Jaramillo widow didn’t come out, the arrogant driver knocked on the door and waited. He knocked a second time, then a third and a fourth, louder each time until the widow finally opened the door, barely poking her nose around it. The man whispered something to her, and without replying the insane woman slammed the door in his face.

  “Bitch!” the man shouted. He began kicking the door with his pointy leather boots. “Open the door, you bitch. It took me hours to find this damn hole.” The crowd stepped back. The enraged man continued kicking the door and shouting abuse. “If you don’t pay me right now, I’m going to dump that sickening piece of shit on your steps,” he yelled, pointing toward the car with his index finger. “And you know what else I’m going to do? I’m going to take the damn suitcase with me. That’s what I’m going to do.”

  Santiago quietly observed the scene from across the street. He asked his two younger sisters to go inside the house, and his mother to observe from a prudent distance. He didn’t move. He remained on the same spot where he’d been every night for the past five years, lighting more candles to the Virgin, hoping for more of her blessings, staring into the darkness, waiting for Pablo to return to him.

  PABLO AND SANTIAGO had both been born on the morning of May 1, 1969. Pablo was older by two and a half hours. Dr. Ramirez, the physician who delivered them, liked to say that except for a dark birthmark under Pablo’s right eye, the two boys looked identical when they were born: “Like twins, only born to different mothers.”

  Growing up, Pablo and Santiago were the only children on a lonely street of Mariquita. The street was narrow and unpaved and lined with young mango trees. The houses had mud tile roofs, their adobe facades forever hidden under layers of dust. This street was known as Don Maximiliano’s street, because he owned all the houses up and down each side. He also owned three coffee farms near town. During harvest season, most of the men he hired to pick the crops were from around Mariqui
ta. The women stayed home and tended their children, along with their cassavas, potatoes, cilantro and squash.

  The two boys spent most of the day playing in the backcountry. They always went to one or the other’s house for meals, then went out again. It was not unusual for their mothers to see Pablo and Santiago walking around Mariquita hand in hand. “They’re like blood brothers,” their mothers agreed.

  The two boys’ favorite game was playing father and mother by the river.

  “I’ll be the father,” Pablo said.

  “You’re always the father. I want to be the father, too,” Santiago complained. But he gave in every time. Pablo disappeared behind the bushes and pretended he was on Don Maximiliano’s coffee plantations. Santiago stayed by the bank impersonating his own mother: carrying water from the river in big clay pots, cooking, watering the garden, cooking again, washing clothes, cooking one last time. After a few minutes Pablo came out of the bushes, acting dirty and tired.