Tales from the Town of Widows

by James Canon

  Rosalba remained calm until the tension abated. Then she made an unexpected announcement: “Each one of you has two choices: to stay in Mariquita and abide by the rules of the agreement you signed, or to leave. If you decide to go, I’ll give you until sunrise tomorrow to collect whatever you own and leave once and for all.” She paused briefly to loosen the lump that had formed in her throat, and then, raising her voice gradually, she added, “Now, if you decide to stay, know that you’ll be a part of a prosperous community where no one will ever again miss a meal. You choose!”

  Immediately after the confrontation, the rebellious villagers secretly met at Ubaldina’s house.

  “If we’re going to leave, we must leave as soon as possible,” Ubaldina remarked. “Rosalba’s insidious and vindictive, and she’ll set the village against us.”

  “She already has,” the Sánchez widow said in her successful voice, the voice of a widow who had started out with a single brooding hen and currently had twelve hens, seventeen chickens, and at least a dozen eggs every morning. “I hate the idea of giving up my house, but I hate even more the idea of sharing with everyone what I have earned all alone.”

  Comments were made, explanations given, questions asked and answered and at length a decision was reached: “We’ll leave before sunset. Everyone, go home and start packing.”

  When the magistrate was informed about the dissidents’ plan for a hasty departure, she secretly met with the schoolmistress to draw up a plan.

  “We must do something to retain them, Señorita Guarnizo,” Rosalba began in a frantic tone. “If they go, Mariquita might not survive. They’ll take our milk and cheese and butter, our pigs and goats, our eggs.”

  Cleotilde listened carefully, without interrupting, and when the magistrate stopped, she said, “I think the ethical way of dealing with this crisis is by—”

  “I don’t care whether or not it’s ethical,” Rosalba burst out. “I haven’t accomplished one thing in my life without having to lie or cheat some.” She turned her back on Cleotilde and, addressing a nonjudgmental wall, added, “Every time I tried to do something the right way, I failed miserably. I try to be honest with everyone and to lead a life of good moral principles, but I can’t.”

  “Well, perhaps you can use your notorious persuasion powers to talk the rebels into staying,” Cleotilde suggested.

  But the situation, Rosalba reasoned, was too crucial to be dealt with honorably, and after proposing a number of dishonest ways to get her way (which ranged from kidnapping the three most influential widows to using the last bullet in her pistol to threaten them) she ended up using her “notorious” persuasion powers to convince Cleotilde to tell a lie with her. “A small, white lie,” she said. “For the sake of Mariquita.”

  BEFORE SUNSET, A long procession hurried down the main street. Santiago Marín, the Other Widow, his mother and two sisters led the caravan, followed by a group of young women who carried on their backs large bundles of corn and stacks of raw cotton. The heavy produce—yuccas, potatoes, plantains and coffee beans—they put in sacks, which they distributed among the Calderón widow’s three mules. Behind the mules came a group of thick-bodied matrons carrying rolled-up blankets on their wide shoulders, and pots, pans and kettles tied around where their waistlines ought to have been. The Sánchez widow struggled with a cardboard box filled with clothes on her head, and what seemed to be a whole poultry farm concealed upon herself. The Solórzano widow dragged Perestroika along the street, or maybe it was Perestroika—loaded with its owner’s personal belongings—who dragged the widow. More widows with more household goods, pigs and goats, cats and dogs and even an old parrot that would eventually make a decent soup, marched down the street in a boisterous and colorful farewell to Mariquita.

  At the end of the main street, the caravan turned onto a long, narrow path that took them up a small rise and ended in “the border,” an almost impenetrable clump of trees and shrubs that had sprung up where the road that led to the south used to be, and which now served to separate, or rather hide, Mariquita from the rest of the world. But when Santiago Marín and his mother were about to enter the dense thicket, they heard the unmistakable commanding voices of Rosalba and Cleotilde. “Halt! Halt!” they shouted repeatedly. The two women tried to walk fast, but the soles of their shoes were so thin they felt like socks on their feet, making them move slowly and clumsily on the unpaved road.

  “What can they possibly want from us?” Aracelly viuda de Marín said.

  “I think we should keep going,” one of the Ospina girls suggested. “It’s getting cloudy.”

  “Let’s wait for them. Maybe they want to come with us,” Santiago said, giggling.

  They all agreed and began laying their bundles and sacks on the ground.

  When they reached the border, Rosalba and Cleotilde stood side by side before the group. “First, I want to thank you all for pausing your…abrupt journey,” Rosalba began in a conciliatory tone. She had a large book clutched against her chest. “Since it looks like rain, and I know you want to reach a safe place before nightfall, I’ll be brief. Earlier this afternoon, Señorita Cleotilde and I were leafing through a history book when we came across a section that narrates a very important episode in the history of our village. Isn’t that true, Señorita Cleotilde?”

  “Uh-huh,” the schoolmistress uttered, addressing the women as well as their animals, all of whom stood in uproarious disorder over the small rise. “It’s a wonderful story that every Mariquiteña should know. We wish to read it to all of you before you leave town.” Santiago and the women looked at one another, saying, with their mute expressions, that they wouldn’t stay for another one of the magistrate’s tedious lectures. “Please,” the teacher begged, staring at Santiago. She knew he couldn’t refuse an old lady’s request, especially one asked in beseeching tones.

  Looking exasperated, Santiago sat on the large bundle of corn he had been carrying. His action signaled to the women to do the same. They began settling on rolled-up blankets, pots and boxes, finally ending in a rough semicircle with their belongings next to them. Perestroika and the mules moved to the sides to eat tall grass and leaves. The magistrate handed the book she was holding to the teacher. “I think it’s better if you start,” she whispered. “I’m a little nervous.” Rosalba had deliberately told all kinds of lies to all kinds of people in her life, but she couldn’t remember anything as important as Mariquita’s future ever depending on one of her fabrications. At the moment she doubted the effectiveness of the fiction she and Cleotilde were about to tell, and regretted not having thought up something much more spectacular.

  Cleotilde reached for her spectacles, which lately she kept hanging from a silver chain around her neck, put them on, cleared her throat, opened the book (an atlas, of all things!) on a random page, and began telling the story:

  “Once upon a time, in a small village called…Taribó, currently known as Mariquita, there was a beautiful young girl named…Caturca, who was the only child of a celebrated Indian chief. One morning, after coming back from a tour around her village, Caturca went up to her father and asked, ‘Father, why do you and I have leftovers on our table when some of our own people have nothing to eat?’ Her father was a well-intentioned man, but not very smart, and so he couldn’t answer Caturca’s questions. The young girl asked her father’s advisers the same questions, but they also weren’t too bright.”

  Cleotilde had been addressing small and large crowds her entire life. She knew when to raise or lower the tone of her voice, when to pause, when to look at her audience, which words to emphasize. It was not surprising then, that at the moment everyone seemed captivated by her telling.

  “The next morning, escorted by a group of servants, Caturca left Mariquita in search of answers. She traveled through exotic lands where she learned about many different cultures, customs, beliefs and governments. She dwelt with the very poor as well as the very rich; spent suns among the civilized and the barbarous; had long conver
sations with intellectuals and ignorant country people. When Caturca finally returned to Mariquita, she was no longer a young, ingenuous girl but a cultivated, wise woman. Her father, now a feeble old man, abdicated and made her the new chief of the village.”

  At this point Cleotilde stopped. “The magistrate will continue now,” she said. Rosalba took the atlas with both hands and turned the page, as though expecting to find the continuation of the story in it. Faced with the map of North Central Europe, she had no alternative but to continue the telling.

  “During Turca’s reign—”

  “Caturca,” the teacher interrupted. “Her name was Caturca.”

  Rosalba feigned a smile and began again, “During Caturca’s reign her village became the most prosperous community in the area. She freed the slaves and abolished servitude, and though she remained their chief she declared all villagers equal. She redistributed all the land and houses so that each family had a house in which to live and a piece of land to work. Women were asked to teach men how to cook, clean and do other housework, and men taught women how to farm, hunt and fish. Then, men and women took turns working the land and keeping house, and the villagers became more considerate toward each other.”

  The women were becoming restless and distracted. The Sánchez widow had noticed a new line on her left palm and now wondered what sort of things it might tell about her future. Meanwhile Ubaldina watched, with increasing interest, a dog trying to mount one of her pigs.

  “Only then did Caturca take the one last step that would make her ruling system perfect: she eliminated the position of chief and became a regular Indian in the village, and a regular Indian she remained up to a ripe old age.”

  Rosalba closed the book in a dramatic fashion and, putting on a cheerful expression, asked, “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if Mariquita went back to Capurca’s ruling system?” She scanned the crowd looking for an answer. “What do you all think?”

  “I think that you mispronounced the Indian’s name again,” Santiago Marín observed relentlessly. “It’s Caturca. Ca-tur-ca.” The two Ospina sisters got the giggles.

  “Can you think of anything…better to say?” Rosalba said in a challenging tone.

  “Sure. I think that it’s going to rain and that we should get going.” He rose, and the women rose, and they quietly began to collect their goods and gather their animals with the clear intention of continuing their journey. To the magistrate, their indifference felt as if someone had spat in her face. She wanted to hurl all kinds of insults at them—to tell them that they were hard-hearted, rapacious vultures; that they were much more stupid than Caturca’s father and his advisers; that, by the way, Señorita Cleotilde and herself had made up that ridiculous story about Turca, Purca, Catapurca or whatever they wanted to call that damned Indian; and that as far as she was concerned, they could all go to hell with their scrawny chickens and stinky goats, the selfish, ugly, greedy bitches…. But she had promised Cleotilde she would remain calm and handle this special situation with the composure and grace of the distinguished lady she ought to be.

  And so poor Rosalba stood there for a while in silence. Her face showed lassitude, a tangible consequence of both the tension produced by the confrontation with the women and the extreme heat. Her body assumed a relaxed, comfortable posture, as if she were waiting to be lifted by the wind. When the crowd was about ready to resume their journey, Rosalba suddenly began to speak in a soft but resolute voice: “Do you really think that behind those mountains you’ll find a paradise without violence or poverty awaiting you?” She shook her head several times. “A place like that, you must create yourselves. And you can’t do it with just a few people. It takes an entire community, like the one Señorita Cleotilde and I imagined for Mariquita. When we imagined that community, we were counting on your willingness to sacrifice a little to create here, where you and your children were born, that paradise you think is waiting for you somewhere else.

  “If you still want to leave, I wish you good luck, but be aware that you’re merely changing one kind of misery for another, and in the end, choosing the kind of misery you can live with will be the only freedom you’ll have left.” Rosalba handed the atlas to Cleotilde and gently touched the old woman’s shoulder in a subtle demonstration of gratitude for having lied for her. Then she started walking down the rise, back to Mariquita, devastated by sadness.

  Cleotilde marveled at what the magistrate had said. Rosalba was notorious for her incompetence, her eccentric and capricious decrees that resolved nothing and complicated everything, and her long speeches in which nothing meaningful was ever said. The speech she’d just given, however, had come from a different Rosalba—an older, seasoned and more intellectually mature Rosalba who, Cleotilde sensed, was growing aware of the corrosive effect of passing rungs and ladders on her flesh; but who, instead of seeking relief in invisible gods, was strongly binding herself to reality, doing work that justified her existence, but that also empowered her to go on living.

  Suddenly a heavy rain began to pour down. It fell fast and in enormous drops while streaks of lightning rent the sky. The women seized their belongings and ran to the closest building, Doña Emilia’s abandoned brothel, to take shelter.

  And then something extraordinary happened.

  With an abrupt motion, Perestroika freed herself from the Solórzano widow’s grip and started walking down the slope after the magistrate, dragging along the road a thick rope that was tied around her neck, mooing loudly. Then, as if the cow’s lowing were a secret call to revolt, mules, pigs, goats, cats, dogs, the parrot and other loose birds scurried away across the road to join Perestroika and Rosalba. The women left the protection of the former brothel and ran after their animals, shouting at them to come back. Only the dogs stopped, but not to show obedience. They bared their teeth, ready to snap at their mistresses’ legs if they came any closer. The remaining creatures, the ones that were tied up, became extremely agitated. They grunted, growled, barked, howled, or made whatever sound they could in open solidarity with the others. The uproar was such that the women, afraid it all might end up in an unfortunate tragedy, turned the protesting animals loose. The creatures immediately joined the riotous caravan led by the magistrate.

  Rosalba couldn’t help being slightly moved by such a display of loyalty. Suddenly, she remembered a famous story from the Bible she’d heard many times, and though she no longer believed in God, she allowed herself to feel like Noah, leading the animals toward a safe haven from the Flood that would drown the world. She continued walking, now with increasing confidence and a jubilant smile that sparkled in the night with each strike of lightning.

  Meanwhile, the crowd of women had rejoined the schoolmistress beneath the eaves of the brothel. They stood against the discolored stucco walls, contemplating the merciless rain that washed away leaves, branches and tree trunks mixed with earth, gravel and stones.

  “I’d never seen anything like it,” the Calderón widow said. “Those dogs acted like they were possessed.”

  “We can’t leave without our animals,” the Solórzano widow declared. She paused to wipe the excess water from her forehead with the ragged sleeve of her dress. “They are the reason why we decided to leave Mariquita.”

  “I don’t know about you, but if Perestroika wants to stay here, I’ll stay with her,” the Solórzano widow announced. “It’s better to share her milk than to lose her.”

  The group grew quiet, but after a long silence filled only by the rain, the Sánchez widow spoke her mind. “I think she’s right. If my hens won’t follow me, I’ll follow them. All I ask for is to be provided with four eggs every sun, one for me, one for each of my daughters and one for my mother. The rest you can share among yourselves.”

  “My sister and I can make arepas and tamales for everyone,” Irma Villegas declared. She looked at her sister for approval.

  “Yes, indeed,” Violeta Villegas returned. “As long as we can get enough maize and some meat.”

  �
��You can have as much of our maize as you want,” the Ospina widow volunteered.

  “Well, then the same goes for my pigs,” Ubaldina said coyly. “I think I’d rather share their meat with my own people than sell it to strangers.”

  “If anybody would like tomatoes, onions, yuccas or potatoes, please come to us,” the Other Widow offered.

  The sharing disposition appeared to be contagious. Each family announced what they would contribute: farm and homegrown produce, home-cooked food, manufactured merchandise and knitted goods. They soon realized that there wouldn’t be enough of everything for every woman in town, which they decided wouldn’t be fair. Therefore, they agreed to cultivate more fruits, nutritious vegetables and grains. “We’ll need more people to work the land,” the Ospina widow said, and almost immediately two sturdy young girls volunteered. The women also agreed to increase the production of domestic animals and dairy products. Perhaps even start a farm where they could keep all the animals, collect the eggs, raise chickens, turkeys and pigs, milk Perestroika and make butter and cheese. “I’ll be glad to run the farm,” the Solórzano widow said. “But I’ll need…”

  Look at them, Cleotilde said to herself. Talking about creating an animal farm, sharing their produce and working together, like it’s their original idea. What geniuses!

  But as difficult as it was for her, Cleotilde kept her thoughts to herself. Let them think it was all their idea; let them take all the credit. That, she concluded, was what wise women did.