Laura Restrepo - The Dark Bride

Then Payanés said he would go out to verify what Caranchas had said about the closeness of the troops and he came back in a few minutes to confirm that it was true.

“Groups of workers are arming themselves with sticks, bars, and rocks, and they’re getting ready to mount resistance,” he reported, then he showed us the ground coffee beans that he was holding in his hand and a pair of tin cans for preparing it. He built a fire on the other side of the door, boiled some water, threw the coffee in, and then he poured it from one can to the other, filtering it through the cloth of his shirt. He approached Brasco with the steaming liquid, whose hands were still tied, and held it as the American drank, sip by sip, blowing on it first so he wouldn’t burn his mouth.

“But tell me why,” Brasco murmured, “why do things have to end up like this…?”

“Drink your coffee and don’t ask us questions, míster gringo,” Payanés advised, “because we can’t answer them.”

“So what do we do now?” asked Sacramento worriedly.

“Now we lock Sor Juana Inés in her cell so she can please herself,” answered Payanés, who for a while now had been mulling over the secrets that Pajabrava had said about the nuns.

“I’m serious. I wish I could find old Lino el Titi to ask him what we should do!”

“If there’s a strike, we have to support it,” mumbled one of the drunks.

“Of course, you idiot, but how? On one side we have Lino el Titi and his men, on another we have Caranchas and his men, and on yet another we have drunks like you. And you’re all proposing different things.”

“Let’s arm ourselves with sticks and go out to see who confronts us,” said another man, more drunk than the first, and then he fell asleep, conquered by the guarapo . His two friends stood up and went out to participate in the melee.

“A single shot would have been enough to ignite the wells and engulf the whole camp in flames,” Brasco says to me, “and lacking faith I gave myself up to Mohán, Patasola, Luz-de-la-Ciénaga, and to all those ghosts they had been telling me about. If they can’t save us, I thought, no one can.”

“Let’s loosen that rope necktie, míster interrogator, we’re leaving,” Payanés suddenly said to him, removing the noose from around his neck and untying his hands. “You too, Sacramento.”

“What for?” asked Sacramento. “I’m not moving until Lino el Titi gives me orders.”

“We’re going to defend Emilia until Titi comes and tells us what to do. We’re not going to let anyone hurt her, no matter what side they’re from. If they get too close, it will have to be over our dead bodies.”

Outside, night had already fallen, the world spun black, and in it reigned a chaos heavy with foreboding. The great rice uprising had just begun.

Night was falling so softly that part of its darkness melted into foam before settling. Sitting in rocking chairs, the women chatted on the patio while upon their heads, shoulders, and laps soft black flakes fell, piling up until they were completely covered. Tana warded off melancholy with the false luxury of her fake jewels. Olguita, always looking for someone to protect, was knitting a scarf for a night watchman, a lover of hers, who coughed because of the damp night air. Sayonara soared far away as she braided and unbraided her lustrous mane, dominating God knows what anxieties in that incessant doing and undoing. Ana and Susana searched for the three bright stars that formed Orion’s belt. Sitting at her older sister’s feet, little Chuza lined up a long row of pebbles on the ground. Todos los Santos served mistela in delicate pink cups. And Machuca fanned herself with the lid of a pot while she told a story from centuries earlier that half intrigued them, half annoyed them, because according to her, it involved real facts about pagan whoring.

The story took place, as Olga remembered it, in a lost, nameless country where all women, regardless of rank or age, had to go once during their lives to the temple of the goddess to give themselves to the first stranger who solicited their love, without denying anyone. They would adorn their heads with garlands of gauze and daisies and offer themselves in honor of the deity. The men, in turn, were to circulate there, also willing to give themselves to any woman for that one time. There were rich women dressed in brocades and attended by servants, beggars covered with rags, beautiful young women who were quickly chosen and could then return home free of the commitment, and ugly women that no man looked at and who had to remain there for two or three years, sitting among the multitudes that filled the temple, before they were able to fulfill their obligation. And there were as many handsome men who were pleasing to the chosen woman as there were deformed or sick men who filled her with horror.

The women of La Catunga listened to all of this openmouthed and confused, and when Machuca finished her story a silence so great fell upon the patio that you could hear, almost, the frozen humming of the three stars adorning Orion’s belt.

“That is the strangest story you’ve ever told us.” Todos los Santos’s voice emerged from the darkness. “I think it’s pure invention.”

“Wasn’t there another temple where the men sat for the women to come and choose?” asked Ana, who now participated in the women’s conversations, although no one took the trouble of answering her.

“How dare you, Machuca, say that they gathered in the temple,” said Tana angrily, who was orthodox in her convictions. “Only you would believe that, you’re so corrupt and such a heretic. And what temple could it be? It can’t be God’s temple…”

“It was the temple of the goddess.”

“There are no goddesses, you know that. Except Virgin Mary, who is pure and chaste, and doesn’t go around offering to raise her skirts.”

“They chase us out of the church when we go to pray,” someone was heard to say, “don’t even talk about going there to find a man.”

“There were goddesses before,” Machuca assures the others. “And things were different. Everything was different, because women were in charge.”

“Well, I prefer the world the way it is now,” countered Sayonara, who always took a contrary position. “What if a disgusting man with an ugly face appeared, or one with bad breath, or rough skin, and you weren’t allowed to refuse!” She burst out laughing. “What good did it do for women to be in charge if they couldn’t refuse an ugly man. I would cover my face with my hair so the man would pass right by me and go bother the next woman.”

Now the others were amused too. Suddenly everything seemed funny and they laughed so hard that they tossed their heads back and hit their legs with their palms, as they usually did when they were really happy.

“You say that now, because you’re young,” preached Todos los Santos. “It’s worse if you have to wait three years because nobody wants you.”

“Oh, no,” countered Sayonara again. “It’s always better to be alone than to be in poor company.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about. You don’t know loneliness. It really has rough skin.”

While Olga is telling me about what they talked about that night, which would be nearly the same as this one if Sayonara were still here, I try to decipher the mystery that lies beneath contact with the skin of a stranger. To not refuse a man you didn’t know? To give yourself up to the unknown, to allow yourself to be taken, would it be burying yourself or saving yourself? What hidden dimensions would be opened, of terror and of pleasure, of discovery and of loss?