Laura Restrepo - The Dark Bride

“And you would go off again like that, with one hand in front of you and the other behind you, without knowing if you would find a roof to shelter you at night?”

“I would go like that, madrina, because you know that life in this pueblo is no bed of roses, and because I don’t need any more protection than his loving chest.”

“Ay, Virgen santa ! An umbrella in a hurricane would protect you more than his loving chest. And the remaining matter of that wife of his in Popayán, have you solved that?”

“That will be dealt with, madrina , along the way.”

“Along the way, along the way! The way to sorrow is where you’ll be heading again…”

“What are you saying, Todos los Santos?!” says Olga indignantly. “As if there were any ways in this life that didn’t lead to sorrow. But it’s still worth the trouble of following them; no, child, don’t be discouraged.”

One by one the slowest hours of the century filtered past and Sayonara was barely surviving her own hopefulness, always besieged by the certainty that something — or everything — was in play; that something — or everything — could be won or lost. Until the last Friday of that last month of the year dawned, brushing lightly against first the smokestacks at the refinery, then the tops of the highest trees, next the roofs of the houses, and finally the naked backs of the sleeping women, to find Sayonara already bathed and dressed and finished with breakfast, kneeling before the Christ with the blond beard.

“Today is the day, Señor Jesús,” she prayed, “and I have come to ask you for something: Either you make that man love me, or you give me the courage to forget him. One of the two. All-powerful Señor, you who take everything and give everything, allow us to love one another until the end of our days, which isn’t much to ask, since the lives of humans are short. I won’t demand a commitment from him, or marriage or any other word, just true and clear proof. Send me a signal: If Payanés can’t offer me great love, then don’t let him appear today at the river. If it is otherwise, then give him swift feet, Señor, so he will arrive quickly.”

“Careful, girl,” Todos los Santos told her, listening to Sayonara’s prayer from the doorway, “don’t ask for supernatural announcements, they are almost always deceiving. Understand this, girl, you were born to be a nun or a puta, because no man exists who can put out that fire of longing inside you, or calm such a jumble of hopes.”

“Don’t teach me to resign myself, madrina, because I don’t want to learn. It’s already too late in life for me to accept defeat. I want to die peacefully knowing that I loved and was loved, and I assure you that it is not going to be a lack of faith that interferes with my efforts. Señor Jesús,” she began to pray again, “help me to prove those wrong who believe that this is a valley of tears, amen.”

They took stools, umbrellas, and cold drinks and sat at the edge of the Magdalena to wait, in respectful silence, as befits great occurrences. Sayonara was wearing her tight skirt and silk blouse, but she had traded her spike heels for some sandals, in case things turned out well and she needed to walk a long distance.

“Do you think you can make it all the way to Saudi Arabia in this suffocating heat?” one of the women joked, and they all laughed nervously.

Toward ten that morning they saw a group of people walking toward them and Sayonara’s heart stopped, but they turned out to be pilgrims on their way to the sanctuary of Las Lajas.

“Have you come across anyone?” Todos los Santos asked them.

“Because of the stifling heat today, everything is very quiet,” they responded.

Between that hour and eleven-thirty, the women didn’t notice anything worthy of mention, and later they saw moving down river, at more or less regular intervals and for a period that stretched until noon, a pair of men fishing from a chalupa , a few fur merchants, and a champán rushing in an injured woman. Nothing more. Except for Sayonara, all of the women withdrew to eat lunch and came back down later with a plate of food that she wouldn’t even taste. The afternoon heat put them to sleep at their watch posts, all but Sayonara, who remained painfully alert. Five o’clock came without event and discouragement began to invade the women, except for Sayonara, who ran to brush her hair and rinse her face with cool water.

Toward six-thirty a serene apocalypse of fires began to softly descend, one of those sunsets in Tora that, as Olga says, are so beautiful they hurt; one just like that other one with pink hues that Sacramento sent on one of his postcards of hopeless love; or copied from that bloody sky that convinced beautiful Claire of the sweetness of death; or like the ones that don Enrique painted to please his clientele, adorned with birds in flight and a glimmering horizon: a sunset just like those that Todos los Santos is able to contemplate in spite of not being able to open those other heavy eyelids that have been born under her eyelids.

“Here he comes!” Olguita suddenly shouted, and everyone stood up in unison, as if they had heard the national anthem. “Here he comes! He looks strong and handsome, all dressed in white!”

But she hadn’t finished her announcement when his image vanished, like an inopportune cloud in the middle of the rays of the sunset.

“In white, yes, like a phantom,” grumbled Todos los Santos, trying to lower the volume on the scene. “Don’t embellish or exaggerate, Olga, you only saw his ghost. To me, Payanés is slippery, one of those who goes through life without underwear on under his trousers. You notice that he doesn’t even have a name, Payanés, the man from Popayán, because his presence is nothing more than a gust of freedom. Which is what this girl has always pursued deep down,” she said, but Sayonara, in agony, wasn’t listening to her, “but she disguises her impulse and tries to make an appearance of refuge, of a loving chest, of protection, of paternal love, of anything: This girl only loves her own flight.”

“But that is love,” Olguita, the cripple, defended her, pounding her withered, steel-clad legs against her stool. “To run off using someone else’s feet!”

“It’s him,” said Sayonara, now without the shadow of worry, shrouded in an old dignity and a new security, as if she had just deciphered some serious riddle or the key to something profound, and they knew the hour of the myth had come: the puta and the petrolero .

It is true that in a strict sense she was no longer a prostituta and he was no longer a petrolero, but maybe one day they would be again — he a prostituto and she a petrolera , as a favorite poet of Machuca’s named Rafael Pombo would have said — but if that didn’t happen it wasn’t a waste, because the sworn truth was that the women saw them depart, with the eyes that God put in their heads, together up along the Magdalena, one behind the other and the other behind the one, and both following the trail of life, or, better still, the force that pulls life from outburst to outburst without letting us know where it is carrying us, he dressed in white, with the rose incarnate wounding his chest and his profile facing forward, and she with her hair in the wind, gazing backward, clinging to what she is leaving behind and with the aura of death’s beloved child reverberating around her more now, but it had surrounded her as long as they had known her. United at last, the puta and the petrolero , joined as one in the warm rapture of an embrace, while before them stretched the road to an uncertain future, like any worthwhile future.