Laura Restrepo: The Dark Bride

Encouraged by the miracle of the sudden dominion over letters and taking care not to destroy her student’s initiative and temperament, the madrina took upon herself the painstaking task of polishing the most offensive edges of the girl’s rebelliousness. She trained the child in the healthy customs of brushing your teeth with ashes; saying good morning, good night, and thank you very much; listening patiently to the troubles of others and keeping her own quiet; taking sips of anise tea in a glass, pretending it was aguardiente, the strong licorice-flavored liquor; chewing cardamom seeds to freshen her breath; letting down her hair every day and brushing it in the sun to infuse it with warmth and brilliance.

The child, for her part, approached the lessons with the tenaciousness of a mule that surmounted any obstacle, with a few unyielding exceptions, such as using silverware, which her manual clumsiness converted into deadly weapons, or the habit of speaking loudly and stridently at any hour and on every occasion, including when she prayed.

“Sacred Heart of Jesus, I confide in you!” the girl shouted at the painting, overcome with fervor.

“Don’t shout at him so, you’ll make him lose his hair. My holy God, how this creature howls!” complained the madrina , who knew from personal experience the advantages of a discreet and velvety tone, although the habitual consumption of tobacco had turned hers gravelly.

She begged the girl to lower her voice, then she ordered and exhausted herself with chastisements, but it was beyond the girl’s control, and despite all of her attempts, she continued bellowing and raising a ruckus like the vegetable sellers in the market.

“Let her have a taste of her own medicine,” decided Todos los Santos. And she took the girl to a loud and imposing waterfall formed by the Río Colorado near Acandai. There she made the child recite at full volume the poem “La Luna” by Diego Fallon, until her voice could be heard over the roar of the water, with the hope of filing down her vocal cords a bit. The goal was to tire her of shouting, but she tired first of Diego Fallon, so her teacher familiarized her with Neruda’s despairing song, Bécquer’s dark swallows, Valencia’s languid camels, and assorted pages of a popular collection of romances that was much in vogue at social gatherings in La Catunga.

Day after day the girl made her voice rise over the sound of the cascade, which was polishing it in tune with the musical scale and modulating its diverse gradations of volume. Once, Todos los Santos opened the book to a certain poem by Rubén Darío and indicated for the girl to begin her exercises by reading it at the top of her voice. It was about a princess who steals a star from the sky.

“Isn’t this princess Santa Catalina, our protectress?” asked the girl excitedly.

“Don’t get off track. This is a book of poems, not prayers. Don’t confuse the earth with the sky, just keep on reciting.”

“I can’t, madrina, it’s too beautiful.”

“Nonsense. Give it to me,” said the veteran, and she began reading about the king’s great anger at the theft.

“You must be punished,” brayed the sovereign. “Go back to the sky and what you have stolen you must now return.”

“The princess grows sad over her sweet flower of light,” Rubén Darío went on, “but then, smiling, good Jesus appears.”

“From my fields I offered her that rose,” clarified Jesus. “They are flowers for the girls who think of me in their dreams.”

“I think this good Jesus is the same one who lives in our bedroom,” said the girl. “He gave me a rose too the other day.”

“Hush, you’re mixing things up and making me lose the rhythm. Religion in excess makes good nuns and miserable putas, ” warned Todos los Santos.

“The princess is beautiful, because now she has the brooch in which verse, pearl, feather, and flower shine, along with the star,” rhymed Rubén Darío. The girl was suddenly overwhelmed by a sighing that was foreign to her temperament and she moved away to cry. It was then that Todos los Santos discovered in her disciple an inclination for poetry and a fascination with sad stars that alarmed her and seemed to her a dangerous symptom in a promising apprentice of the most merciless profession known to man.

“It’s not a game, child,” she said. “Prostitutes, like boxers, cannot allow themselves a weakness or they’ll get knocked out. Life is one thing and poetry is another; don’t confuse shit with face cream.”

When it became necessary to hasten the training of the girl’s voice, the two women went to stand at the edge of the brand-new Libertadores highway, where ravaging progress entered Tora, and to subject themselves to the ultimate test of infernal noise that rose up to the heavens from the river of vehicles.

“Sailors kiss and then leave!” shouted the girl to the roar of the passing trucks that in their stampede almost tore off her clothing and left reduced to wind the already volatile sailors’ love.

After such a din, when the girl returned home she appreciated being back amid the imperceptible sounds of silence, never before noticed: the faint song of the hummingbird, the whistle of light as it passes through the lock of a door, the buzzing of neighbors on the other side of the wall, the brushing of bare feet against the patio tiles. She had managed to break the tyranny of noise and in recompense was given the calming gift of intimacy, which allows one to pray in secret, to hum boleros, recite sonnets, and whisper phrases in someone’s ear with the purr of a stuffed toy tiger.

“That’s better,” said Todos los Santos. “Now you have the tone and you are ready to acquire the timbre. Your voice should sound like the great bell of the Ecce Homo. Listen to it. Look at it. The bell tower was built on top of the first derrick in Tora’s oil field. Listen to it now as it calls to Ángelus, and tomorrow also when it rings the morning prayers. Listen to it always because that is how your voice should sound, deep and tranquil, just like the great bell in your pueblo.”

“But, madrina, ” objected the girl, “this isn’t my pueblo.”

“But it will be, as soon as your voice sounds like its great bell.”

Also arduous was the challenge imposed upon them by the girl’s chronic skinniness, which was like that of a malnourished cat, because the more she ate the thinner she looked for her size, with hollow cheeks, scanty bust, and inordinately long extremities. Todos los Santos maintained that all of the food the girl ate went to her hair, which, at the expense of the rest of her body, grew robust and out of control, and if she were to cut it she would gain the pounds it had snatched from her.

“It’s alive,” said Olguita, enthralled, as she combed it into braids. “And I think it bites.”

They knew that cutting it would be a hideous crime, so they decided instead to force its owner to consume a double ration of soup, bread, and fruit, one for her and the other for her hair, which in all honesty was the only party that benefited from the overeating and ended up becoming a cascade of dark, murmuring waters.

“Since God limited you to such poverty of flesh, you have no other choice but to study dance,” recommended Todos los Santos, resolved to find a way out by another means, and she revealed the secrets of a certain dance that wasn’t performed with footsteps, wiggling, or shaking hips but with undulation, absences, and stillness. She told the girl that Salomé had managed to bewitch John the Baptist because she knew the magic of moving without movement.

The girl embraced those words, never needing to have them repeated, and surprised her teacher with the engrossed naturalness with which she let herself sway with a deep, measured rhythm that wasn’t cumbia or merengue, but the ebb and flow of her own blood along the clandestine paths of her body.