Carmen Boullosa - Leaving Tabasco

I ran toward him. Smiling and talking nonstop, he once again created the tent of colors around us. He sealed us off from the outside world completely before launching into a story I did not ask to hear.

“Your father, Delmira, was born in the south of Italy. On a small Mediterranean island, inhabited by easygoing shepherds. Good folk. Peace-loving souls, who liked to take things easy more than to go looking for trouble. But their ancestors, the ones who’d first settled the island, had been a very different kettle of fish. They were a gang of pirates. In the heyday of the glory that was Greece, they used to attack the ships of Ulysses, Agamemnon, or Hector. On that island, the notorious brigand, Fire-Mouth, ruled the roost, after he had sacked the Medina of Hammamet and the Grand Palace in the rich but already decadent city of Carthage. The gang had earlier plundered two towns in Persia. With the profits of their pillage, they built a small armada, centuries before the Spanish version, which they called the ‘Invincible,’ because this one really was so.

“Twelve in number, like the Apostles, were the men who founded the defenses of that steep-cliffed island. These fortifications were constructed with a skill you could hardly believe. You see, Fire-Mouth’s gang had captured the legendary fortress-city of Oran, near the source of the Nile, and had enslaved its best stonemasons. The citizens of Oran were not warlike, so they had fortified their city with a patient cunning that kept it safe from assault. Our pirates had managed to capture it only by sinking to the basest of tricks. They got inside disguised as a troupe of northern comedians, singing Etruscan songs, dancing wildly, enchanting the women with their good looks, and bringing smiles to the faces of the kids. But once inside, they brandished their weapons and forced the people to name the best masons and describe what they looked like. Within no time they had rounded up the three smartest architects and twenty-five builders. These poor souls slaved away on the white cliffs of your father’s island, constructing a famous defensive wall that nobody would even dream of attempting to assault. Its appearance was formidable. It gave an impression of being almost alive and that alone scared off would-be attackers. All they needed was one look at it to decide that the smart thing was to turn around and go back home. Those walls eliminated any need to ward off attacks. The three wise men of Oran also built a huge reservoir of water, so that the pirates didn’t have to worry about being besieged, even for months on end. Inside the fortress lived the twelve founders. They alone knew all its secrets. Because once the building was finished, all the slave labor and the three architects had been put to the sword. They say that one after another these men were decapitated on the top of the walls so that their blood could stain it red and add to its sinister appearance. The stink of human blood was so rank that the birds and ducks that used to be the island’s sole inhabitants no longer paused there on their annual migration south. The wise men must have realized that their dying blood would bring death to the pirates also. By scaring off the birds, the pirates had lost their natural food supply in case of a siege. Trapped inside their walls, they could not reach the fish in the sea. Maybe the three wise men of Oran were glad to die, happy to perish, since there was no practical possibility of rebuilding here the city at the source of the Nile. Maybe they knew of a door that opened on to Oran from the kingdom of the dead. Anything is possible.

“In the daily lives of the present inhabitants, people who are as gentle as they are indolent, nothing remains of that blood-thirsty character. They seem to have inherited the lifestyle of the people of Oran, perhaps because for generations they have lived in contact with the structures those people had built. There is only one vestige of the pirates still to be found. Each family, even though they are shepherds by trade, owns a small boat in which they honor a custom passed down from those piratical times. On summer nights, when the moon is full, they board their boats and make their leisurely way toward the horizon. Once they are on the open sea, they sing violent, discordant chanties, swaying crazily to the rhythms, the way their ancestors did prior to boarding a ship and plundering it. Then, all violence put aside, they head back to the coast, bathed in sweat from all that shouting and dancing, relieved to set foot again on the peaceful island.

“It’s their custom to keep their boats tied up to the land, fastened to beams sunk into the sea especially for that purpose. They remain all year-round moored to the rocky cliffs, firmly anchored to the seafloor. They never pull them out of the water, like the people around here do, turning them upside down on the riverbanks to give them a chance to dry out once in a while. They’re wet all the time, constantly in seawater. And there’s a good reason for it. Nobody knows when this island, with its thirst for blood, with its grateful allegiance to the first inhabitants who brought to its shores the best engineers of their day to fortify and beautify it — I mean, from time to time the island loses weight, and from time to time it demands its ration of blood. Once a year, as the dry summer is ending, the rough, reddish sand that lines all its beaches demands its tribute. The sand, looking more each day like dry, corrupted blood, calls out for its annual ration of new blood to maintain the weight of the island. The shepherds frantically sacrifice whole herds of adult and kid goats. They pretend it’s a celebration, but really they’re exorcising their fear. They dry the meat and then sell it in salty slices packed in baskets, offering it on the mainland as ‘donkey meat’—it’s got a good reputation for its exquisite taste — but first they let the blood run along narrow channels cut in the rocks and down to the sandy beaches and the sea. Once a year the island is surrounded by a ring of blood that takes months to finally dissolve.

“Till that happens, the island is in danger of losing weight. If there’s some delay in slaughtering the animals, as well there can be because the inhabitants are such a laid-back lot, the island rises completely out of the sea. It would go drifting off through the air if it wasn’t tethered by the boats. Their ropes stop it from floating away completely. But it hangs in the air there, trembling, till the shepherds sacrifice in tribute to their ancestors enough goats and lambs to satisfy its thirst and calm its itch to fly away.”

The seller of scarves had ended his story, which he’d told without a pause, and he took a deep breath.

“I’ve told you where your father was born,” he added. “You’ll have to ask around to find out where he met your mother and how he fell in love with her. Ask Gustavo, if you like. I think you’re old enough now to know the facts. You’re a woman now, Delmira. The folks here are already picking out a husband for you, I bet. Get out in time. Go off with your father. I’ll find him for you.”

“You gave me a number to call. I still have it.”

“Then it’s up to you.”

The words were barely out of his mouth before he began to pull down the tent, gathering in one scarf and shawl after another, till we found ourselves back in the noisy marketplace. He did not speak again, but he kept the smile on his face. I didn’t speak, either.

Get out of here! The idea was delightful. Why not get out of here? I felt stained by the blood he had spoken of in his story. I was sure the hour for my departure had come. I would cross the ocean, seek the other side of my personal truth, nothing like the truth this salesman had tried to sell me. I didn’t want adventures. I’d had enough of them already. I realized that the salesman had told me his story not because it was true but to offer me a connection, to build a bond between the two of us, because nobody in Agustini could tell you a story without plunging into fantasy. Maybe because of the climate or the proximity of the jungle or for reasons well beyond us, we all felt driven to tell ourselves tall tales. Personally, I yearned to see what the world was like where the world was logical, where nature obeyed the laws of physics without fail, where storytelling wasn’t a universal habit but the prerogative of a few specialists with the designated task of studiously examining the nature of man and his world.