Tales from the Town of Widows

by James Canon

  But the nurse wasn’t finished. She reported that she had found something. A lead, she said, in an old medical reference book that was like a Bible to her. “I presume that our boys are suffering from a condition known as…” She signaled to Santiago to come closer with the book. “Let’s see,” she said, opening it on a page marked with a corn husk, pulling her face away from it to better see the small print. “Here it is: Babaloosi-Babaloosi. A mysterious condition seen once in the late 1800s in a remote region of southern Africa. Babaloosi-Babaloosi is believed to have gradually turned infants of the Zukashasu tribe into exceptional creatures that were neither men nor women. The creatures, known as Babas, eventually became the tribe chief’s advisers due to their impartiality in all matters.”

  “Please stop,” el padre Rafael called. “This whole thing is absurd. Are you all blind? Can’t you see that this is a punishment from God?” He walked up to the magistrate, looking as though he was experiencing muscular dystrophy on his face. “You must do something about all this nonsense,” he hissed.

  “Ramírez, please continue,” Rosalba said to the nurse. Furious, the priest stepped aside. He crossed his arms and shook his head repeatedly. The nurse went on.

  “Babaloosi-Babaloosi was confirmed by the English doctor Harry Walsh, who began studying it during the last decade of the nineteenth century. Unfortunately, Dr. Walsh died of malaria in 1903, leaving inconclusive theories about the selective disease. The Zukashasu believed it to be a miracle, but medical records classified it simply as a mysterious condition of unknown origins.” The nurse stopped and asked if anyone had questions.

  “Where’s Africa?” Francisca said, raising her hand in the air.

  The nurse shrugged her shoulders and scanned the crowd, looking for Cleotilde. The schoolmistress always had an answer for every question.

  “Africa is located south of Europe, between the Atlantic and the Indian Oceans,” the old woman answered from the back. Francisca was just about to ask where Europe was when the priest spoke.

  “Does your book say what happened to this wondrous tribe?” His words were filled with contempt.

  The nurse took notice of el padre’s question but overlooked his sarcastic tone. She faced the book again and read, “The Zukashasu tribe was exterminated by their neighbors, the Shumitah tribe, in an ethnic war that killed thousands of native Africans in 1913. Nevertheless, they are remembered as one of the most successful forms of society ever seen in that continent.” She paused to look up and then said, in the ingenuous voice of a young girl, “Imagine that: an impartial human being, someone who won’t take sides because they are neither male nor female. I think the world needs people like that.” She closed the book, convinced she’d ended her speech with a profound sentence.

  An absolute silence spread throughout the plaza as the women began speculating. First, they tried to picture what an impartial human being would look like; and then they tried to conceive of a society with no prejudices, ruled with fairness and honesty. But nothing materialized. They had never seen either.

  “No one’s as impartial as God. He doesn’t judge us,” the priest interrupted their thoughts, in the same tedious and sermonizing tone he used daily in church.

  “But your God doesn’t live in this town, Padre,” Nurse Ramírez returned, feeling under attack. “He gave up on us, and you’re very stubborn to still believe in Him.”

  “You’ll burn in hell, you blasphemous woman!” the priest shouted. He turned to face the crowd and said, “Turn a deaf ear to foolish fairy tales. The Bible says—”

  “The Bible says nothing we can understand or relate to,” the nurse interposed suddenly, her cheeks flaming with rage. “How many times has manna rained from heaven when we’ve been hungry? How many of our dead relatives have been brought back to life? Your fairy tales are no more believable than mine, Padre.” Both the nurse and the priest turned to the magistrate, as though seeking support, and the crowd, which had detected the delicious prospect of a serious confrontation, also looked at the magistrate (nothing made their problems smaller than witnessing the difficulties of others).

  But Rosalba didn’t respond immediately. She seemed to be considering both el padre’s and the nurse’s arguments. Whatever she said next, she knew, could calm them down or infuriate them even more. “I say we should write our own Bible,” she finally proposed with a giggle. “A Bible that speaks to us, that tells about towns devastated by guerrillas and paramilitaries. About doomed villages of widows and spinsters and penises that disappear overnight.”

  Except for el padre Rafael—who rolled his eyes—and a handful of pious widows, the crowd found the idea amusing. The women nodded and murmured to one another, and some even laughed quietly. And so Rosalba, encouraged by the somewhat positive response to her witty remark, went on, “We perform our own miracles, after all. Don’t we feed great crowds with very little food? Don’t we walk on water every October and November, when we have those hideous floods?” She chuckled.

  “The only miracle we haven’t mastered yet is how to cast out demons,” Nurse Ramírez interrupted, giving the priest a vicious look. The crowd had a good laugh at this last comment.

  “I want a Bible that doesn’t disgrace women who love women,” demanded Francisca from the crowd.

  “Or men who love men,” the Other Widow echoed from the platform.

  And as more people began to enthusiastically shout their ideas for Mariquita’s Bible, the priest began gabbling away in Latin: “Sanctus Dominus Deus Sabaoth…” He slowly fell on his knees. “Miserere nobis. Dona nobis pacem.” Stretched his arms to their full length. “Pater noster, qui es in coelis…” He turned his face toward the sky, hoping for a violent thunderstorm to break at that moment, but the sky had never before looked so clear.

  LATER THAT DAY, kneeling alone on the bare floor of the chapel, el padre pleaded, “Why, Beloved Father? Why are You letting them abuse Your name? They’re only swearing against You so as not to face the truth in a dignified way. And why don’t You allow Your humble congregation to be fruitful and multiply? All we want is to follow Your mandate, oh Lord, to replenish the earth with Catholics and have dominion over every living thing upon it. Why have you sent this plague to scourge us?”

  He went on and on with his litany.

  Then something unusual happened: while contemplating a painting of Moses with the two stone tablets of God’s law, which hung askew on the wall, el padre was imagining how onerous it must have been for poor Moses to be entrusted with such a burden, when a radiant sunbeam filtered through the window, blinding him, and at the same time, miraculously, laying the truth before his eyes. He remembered that in the Old Testament, God rescued His chosen people from slavery with twelve dramatic plagues, and then parted the waters of the Red Sea so that they could escape from the land of Egypt. Why, of course! That’s what God had intended when he sent that first plague, the guerrillas, to Mariquita in 1992. The rebels forcibly recruited and kidnapped most of the men, sinful creatures who skipped mass and went wenching to that house of sin, Doña Emilia’s. Why, of course! The boys’ sudden disease was the Lord’s way of punishing the women for their horrible sins; for lying with each other and not believing in God. Everything made sense now: his own mysterious barrenness, Che’s shrinking penis, Hochiminh’s breasts, Vietnam’s menstruation, Trotsky’s self-ruling genitals—they were all plagues. The Plagues of Mariquita.

  “The light!” he murmured, his eyesight already cleared. “I’ve seen the light!” God may not have made Himself manifest in the middle of a flame, or talked to him directly from on high (that was a privilege of real saints that he could not expect), but the Lord had disclosed His will to el padre nonetheless. He’d done it through a modest sunbeam and el padre’s prodigious mind and perception. “I’ve been chosen by God to be the Moses of Mariquita!” he concluded ecstatically. “Praise be to God!”

  Overwhelmed with his new knowledge, but unsure as to what his mission in Mariquita might be, el padre de
cided to look for guidance in God’s Book itself. He sat on a pew with the massive Bible resting on his lap, and eagerly began reading the second book of Moses called Exodus. Meanwhile, the crowd in the plaza outside got louder. Their impertinent noise crept against the walls of the chapel and rumbled like a draft through the cracks and crevices of it. El padre rose and looked into the plaza through the metal grating. Dozens of women sat by the platform under the mango trees, jabbering about new Bibles, Babaloosi-Babaloosi, and Zukashasu. Before long, el padre thought, they’ll be worshiping idols in human form, like those plagued boys. Or even worse, idols of animal likeness, like…like themselves!

  He went back to the pew and continued reading Exodus with increased devotion until, in chapter 32, verses 26 and 27, he found the answer to his question. Filled with awe, el padre abruptly brought his hands to his mouth, closed his eyes and stayed like that for a few minutes. Then he rose, straightened his back and lifted his chin, and, addressing the window through which God’s sunbeam had enlightened him, he softly said, “Thy will be done.”

  EL PADRE RAFAEL wasn’t a wicked man, just plain stupid. He’d gotten an idea into his head. Two ideas, in fact: he was a modern Moses, and he was on a divine mission to save the people of Mariquita. On that account, he overcame his pride and went to see the magistrate in her office.

  “I want to pay a religious visit to the boys,” he began with certain haughtiness. But after meeting the magistrate’s stern gaze, he quickly reconsidered his approach and softened his tone. “The nurse said you have the key to the room where they’re kept, and I think it’s very important that they receive the Holy Eucharist. They need to be at peace with God, Magistrate.”

  “You can’t go in there, Padre,” she replied lethargically.

  “And why is that? Is it because you dread my presence will…interrupt the boys’ mutation into—”

  “Spare me your sarcasm, Padre,” Rosalba interrupted. “I don’t believe in any of that Babaloosi business any more than you do.” She rose and walked slowly up to the window. There she stood, with her arms folded on her chest, looking at nothing in particular.

  “Why, I’m relieved to hear that!” he returned. The magistrate’s confession had lifted his spirits. “A brilliant community leader like yourself can’t give credence to mundane explanations of divine mandates.”

  “I’ve also stopped believing in your God, Padre,” Rosalba replied instantly and with absolute conviction, as if saying the first line of the Creed.

  El padre Rafael walked about the room silently. He made different faces and quick gestures with his hands and head, all of which suggested that he was having an earnest conversation with himself. The magistrate’s revelation hadn’t taken him by surprise. In the past few years he’d noticed a significant decrease in the women’s faith. The great majority of them still attended mass once a week, but el padre knew that at least half of them did it for a different reason. In a small community of thirty-seven widows, forty-four old maids, ten teenagers, five children, Julia Morales, Santiago Marín and the priest himself, going to mass was a social duty. Women must be seen in church or else openly declare themselves nonbelievers—as Francisca had done after she found a fortune under her bed—and bear the consequences of being excommunicated. The fact that Mariquita’s highest authority had candidly admitted to not believing in God meant that soon it’d be socially acceptable for anyone not to attend the religious services, and consequently el padre Rafael would no longer be needed. He, however, would not be discouraged by that (hadn’t Moses had to endure a similar situation?). El padre Rafael had been assigned a divine mission by the Lord Himself, and he would carry it to its logical conclusion.

  “Magistrate,” he said ceremoniously. “You said you don’t believe in the nurse’s tale, but you also don’t believe in…my God. Then, may I ask, how do you explain the boys’ strange condition? Because you know their condition is real.”

  “No, Padre. I don’t know if it’s real. I haven’t seen them. No one has. They merely mentioned their symptoms to Ramírez, and she immediately locked them up, without examining them. You know how squeamish and fastidious she can be.”

  “I sure do. But if the boys went to see her in the first place, it was because…” He narrowed his eyes and, lowering his voice, said, “You’re not suggesting that they made it all up?”

  Rosalba shrugged. “I only say they’ve been known for their shrewdness.”

  “Well, there’s only one way to dispel your doubts, Magistrate,” el padre said confidently.

  Rosalba considered the priest’s proposition for a short while, then turned aside, reached into her bosom and took out the key to the padlock that kept the four boys captives. “I want it back in an hour,” she said, handing it to him.

  EL PADRE WENT back to his dwelling, located in the back of the church. It was a small, stuffy chamber with bare walls and a single window that had been jammed for years. Not a single image or crucifix hung there. On top of his chest of drawers were a basket full of tiny arepas and a jug half-filled with chicha. The corn tidbits and the fermented corn beverage were donated and delivered to him every Sunday morning by the Morales widow. She also tidied up his room.

  He pulled, from under his bed, a wooden trunk filled with all sorts of junk: plastic washbowls, rusty tubes and iron fittings, empty bottles of different sizes, a hairpiece he’d used when he started losing his hair, a wig he’d worn when he lost it all, a table lamp and even lightbulbs from when Mariquita had electricity. He rummaged about in the trunk, clearly searching for something. He emptied the whole trunk before happening upon the object he was looking for: a medium-sized bottle with the screw top tightly wrapped in adhesive tape. He held the bottle up to the light coming in through the window. It was filled with some liquid. “Hallelujah!” he said, kissing it. Then he put it in the pocket of his soutane.

  Disregarding the mess he’d created on the floor, el padre went to the chest of drawers. He clutched the jug against his body as best he could, grabbed the basket of arepas and hurried out to the street, toward the infirmary.

  CHE, HOCHIMINH, VIETNAM and Trotsky were overjoyed when they saw the priest. They were true Catholics; they knew that when everything else failed, they could always count on God—or at least on one of His emissaries. El padre promptly padlocked the door from the inside and began scrutinizing the boys, one by one, for some sign of the dramatic plague the Lord had sent on them. Aside from their reddened eyes and frantic expressions, they looked perfectly normal. But el padre knew better than to trust his own eyes: the devil worked in deceptive ways. He laid the inoffensive basket and the inoffensive jug on an old desk and stood behind it, facing the boys. He made them sit and began speaking about God and His will. He spoke in the language of the Bible, a language too sophisticated for them to understand. Something about darkness and kingdoms, madness and plagues, destruction and chaos. And maybe angels. Then he talked about the Holy Eucharist. Again incomprehensible. So much that Hochiminh wondered if el padre were speaking in tongues. When he was finished, he made each boy go to a corner and say three Hail Marys and a Creed. “For penance,” he said, though he hadn’t heard their confessions. Meanwhile he took the bottle out of his pocket and opened it. With great caution he emptied its contents into the jug of chicha and watched it dissolve quickly. He replaced the top tightly on the bottle and put it back in his pocket.

  Once absolved from all their sins, the boys were asked to line up in a row facing the improvised altar. They arranged themselves according to height. Vietnam, the shortest, on the far left, then Trotsky, Che and finally Hochiminh. They bowed their heads, and each one clasped his hands before his chest. The priest thought they looked like angels—except they didn’t have wings or blond hair. To be real angels, they had to have blond hair.

  El padre raised his hands in the air and began a conversation with the Almighty. “We come to You, Father,” he said, “with praise and thanksgiving, through Jesus Christ Your Son.” He made the sign of th
e cross over both the basket and the jug. Then he added, “Through Him we ask You to accept and bless these gifts we offer You in sacrifice.” He joined his hands, closed his eyes and remained silent for a moment.

  When Hochiminh noticed that the priest was getting ready to break the bread, he, who had been an altar boy—a mediocre one, but an altar boy nonetheless—instinctively began singing, “Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world: have mercy upon us…”

  El padre took an arepa out of the basket, and since he didn’t have a paten in which to place it, broke it over the desk. He carefully let a little piece of it fall in the jug and mouthed a few more of his incomprehensible words. He took the arepa, raised it up before his face and asked the boys to come closer, and closer still, until the obedient creatures were up against the edge of the desk, hit in the face by el padre’s sour breath. He took a tiny arepa out of the basket and showed it to them. “The body of Christ,” he said.

  “Amen,” they replied in unison. One by one the four boys received communion.

  Then, the priest grabbed the jug with both hands and gave it to Vietnam, saying, “The blood of Christ.”

  “Amen,” the boys answered again. Each boy lifted the jug to his lips, swallowed a generous gulp of chicha—sweet, aromatic, slightly peppery—and retired to a corner where he knelt down.

  “Let us pray,” said el padre. He extended his hands and closed his eyes tightly. But instead of praying, he anxiously waited for the churchlike silence of the room to be broken by the first warning sound.

  Vietnam’s breathing became very rapid, then slow and irregular. He began coughing in spurts.

  The priest chanted, “May the blessing of Almighty God…”

  Trotsky felt numbness in the throat. His heart pounded disorderly against his constricted chest. Bewildered and fearful, he ripped off his shirt, muttering angrily.