Huberto Naranjo was becoming one more animal in the jungle, nothing but instinct, reflex, impulse, nerves, bones, muscles, skin, frown, clenched jaw, tight belly. The machete and rifle fused to his hands, natural extensions of his arms. His hearing and sight were refined; he was constantly alert, even when he slept. He developed a limitless tenacity: fight to the death, to victory, there’s no alternative; dream, and fulfill our dream; dream or die; forward. He lost all self-awareness. Externally he was stone, but as the months went by something elemental inside him softened, opened, and something budded. The first symptom was compassion, an emotion unknown to him, something he had never received or had occasion to practice. Something was growing beneath the hardness and silence, something akin to a boundless affection for others, something that surprised him more than any of the changes he had undergone. He began to love his comrades; he wanted to give his life for them; he felt a strong desire to put his arms around each of them and say, I love you, brother. Soon that sentiment expanded until it embraced the anonymous masses of the people, and he understood then that his rage had been transformed.
In that period he met Rolf Carlé, and Carlé had only to exchange three words with him to understand that this was an exceptional man. He had a presentiment that their fates would be intertwined, but immediately rejected it; he always tried to avoid falling into the traps of intuition.
EIGHT
Two years had gone by since Kamal’s departure. Zulema’s condition had stabilized into melancholy; she had recovered her appetite and was sleeping as well as she used to, but nothing interested her. She whiled away the hours, motionless in her wicker chair, staring toward the patio—off in another world. My stories and the radio serials were the only things that brought a spark to her eyes, although I am not sure she understood them; she seemed to have completely forgotten her Spanish. Riad Halabí bought her a television set, but since she ignored it, and since there was so much interference the picture might as well have been a message from another planet, he brought it into the shop so that at least the neighbors and customers could see it. My patrona did not dwell on Kamal, or lament the loss of love; she simply settled into the indolence for which she had always been so well suited. Illness was her way of avoiding boring household duties, her marriage, herself. Sadness and boredom were more bearable than the effort of living a normal life. Perhaps the idea of death began to hover over her during that period, as a kind of higher order of lassitude in which she would not have to move the blood in her veins or the air in her lungs; her repose would be absolute—not to think, not to feel, not to be. Her husband put her in the truck and drove her to the regional hospital three hours from Agua Santa; there they administered a number of tests, gave her pills for her melancholy, and told her that in the capital she could be cured by electric shock, a treatment unacceptable to her husband.
“The day she looks in a mirror again, she’ll be cured,” I said, and I set my patrona before a large mirror to rekindle her narcissism. “Do you remember how white your skin used to be, Zulema? Do you want me to make up your eyes?” But all that was reflected in the glass was the vague outline of a jellyfish.
We grew accustomed to thinking of Zulema as a kind of enormous and delicate plant. We had settled back into the routines of the house and The Pearl of the Orient, and I had resumed classes with the schoolteacher Inés. When I began, I had scarcely been able to read two syllables in a row and my handwriting was the illegible scrawl of a three-year-old. My ignorance, however, was not the exception: most of the people in the town were illiterate. You must study so you can look after yourself, child. It isn’t good to have to depend on a husband. Remember, Riad Halabí used to say, he who pays has the say. I studied obsessively; I was fascinated with history and literature and geography. The schoolteacher Inés had never been out of Agua Santa, but she had maps on all the walls of her house, and in the evening she would explain the news on the radio, pointing out the unknown places where each event was unfolding. With the help of an encyclopedia and my teacher’s knowledge, I traveled the world. On the other hand, I had no head at all for numbers. If you don’t learn how to multiply, how can I trust you with the store? the Turk complained. I paid little attention, preoccupied only with mastering words. Reading the dictionary was a passion, and I could spend hours looking for rhymes, checking antonyms, solving crossword puzzles. As I approached my seventeenth year, I grew to my full height and my face became the face I have today. I stopped examining myself in the mirror to compare myself to the perfect beauties of movies and magazines; I decided I was beautiful—for the simple reason that I wanted to be. And then never gave the matter a second thought. I wore cotton dresses I made myself, canvas espadrilles, and I combed my hair in a long ponytail. Some of the boys in Agua Santa, and truck drivers stopping by to drink a beer, used to say things to me, but Riad ran them off like a jealous father.
“None of these peasants are right for you, my girl. We’re going to get you a husband who’s well placed, who will respect you and love you.”
“Zulema needs me, and I’m happy here. Why would I want to get married?”
“Women need to get married, because if they don’t they’re not complete. They dry up inside, their blood sours in their veins. But there’s no hurry, you’re still young. You need to be thinking about your future. Why don’t you study to be a secretary? As long as I’m alive, you’ll be taken care of, but you never know—you should have some skill. When it’s time to look for a husband for you, I’m going to buy you pretty dresses and send you to the beauty shop to get one of those permanents they wear now.”
I kept devouring all the books I could get my hands on, tending the house and the sick woman, and helping my patrón in the shop. I was too busy to think about myself, but a yearning and restlessness began to appear in my stories that I had not known were in my heart. The schoolteacher Inés suggested I write them down in a notebook. So I began spending part of the night writing, and I enjoyed it so much that the hours sped by and I often got up in the morning with red eyes. But those were my best hours. I began to wonder whether anything truly existed, whether reality wasn’t an unformed and gelatinous substance only half-captured by my senses. There was no proof that everyone perceived it in the same way; maybe Zulema, Riad Halabí, and others had a different impression of things; maybe they did not see the same colors or hear the same sounds I did. If that were true, each of us was living in absolute isolation. The thought terrified me. I was consoled by the idea that I could take that gelatin and mold it to create anything I wanted; not a parody of reality, like the musketeers and sphinxes of my Yugoslavian patrona, but a world of my own populated with living people, a world where I imposed the rules and could change them at will. In the motionless sands where my stories germinated, every birth, death, and happening depended on me. I could plant anything I wanted in those sands; I had only to speak the right word to give it life. At times I felt that the universe fabricated from the power of the imagination had stronger and more lasting contours than the blurred realm of the flesh-and-blood creatures around me.
Riad Halabí lived the life he always had, worrying over his neighbors’ problems, standing by, counseling, organizing—always at the service of others. He was president of the sports club, and in charge of almost all the projects in that small community. Two nights a week he left the house without explanation, and returned very late. When I heard him trying to tiptoe in the patio door, I turned out the light and pretended to be asleep, to save him embarrassment. Apart from those escapades, we shared everything like father and daughter. Together we attended Mass; we went because the town did not approve of my scant devotion—as the schoolteacher Inés had often told me—and because he had decided that in the absence of a mosque it would do no harm to worship Allah in a Christian temple, especially considering he need not follow the service too closely. Like all the men, he stood in the back of the church, slightly aloof, because genuflections were not considered manl
y. There he could recite his Muslim prayers without attracting attention. We never missed a performance at the new movie theater in Agua Santa. If something romantic or musical was playing, we took Zulema with us, supporting her on both sides, like an invalid.
When the rainy season was over and they had repaired the road washed out by the river in the last flood, Riad Halabí announced a new trip to the capital; The Pearl of the Orient was low on stock. I never liked staying alone with Zulema, but my patrón always used to tell me before he left, It’s my job, child. I must go because if I don’t I’ll lose business, but I’ll be back soon and bring you lots of presents. I never mentioned it, but I was still afraid of the house; I felt that the walls held the spell of Kamal. Sometimes I dreamed of him, and in the shadows I sensed him, his scent, his fire, his naked erect sex pointed directly toward me. Then I would call on my mother to make him go away, but she did not always hear my call. In fact, the absence of Kamal was so powerful that I could not imagine how we had ever borne his presence. At night the emptiness left by the cousin filled the silent rooms, possessed objects, permeated the hours.
Riad Halabí left on Thursday morning, but only on Friday at breakfast did Zulema notice her husband was gone, and murmur his name. It was her first show of interest in a long time, and I was afraid it might signal the beginning of a new crisis, but she seemed relieved to know he was away on a trip. That afternoon, to distract her, I put her in a chair in the patio, and went to dig up her jewels. It had been several months since we had sunned them and I could not remember exactly where we had last hidden them; I had to look for more than an hour before I found the box. After I dug it up, I brushed off the dirt and set it before Zulema, removing the jewels one by one, polishing them with a rag to make the gold shine and the stones glow with color. I put earrings in her ears and rings on all her fingers, hung chains and necklaces around her neck, covered her arms with bracelets, and, when she was decked in all her treasures, brought her a mirror.
“See how pretty you look—you look like an idol . . .”
“Find a new place to hide them,” Zulema commanded in Arabic, removing the jewelry and sinking back into apathy.
It seemed a good idea to change the hiding place. I put everything back into the box, wrapped it in a plastic bag to protect it from the damp, and carried it behind the house to a hilly piece of ground covered with thick undergrowth. I dug a hole near a tree and buried the package, stamped down the dirt, and with a sharp knife carved a mark on the tree trunk to identify the place. I had heard that was how country people hid their money. This method of saving was so common that years later when the main highway was being built, tractors unearthed more than one cache of jugs stuffed with coins and bills made worthless by inflation.
That night I prepared Zulema’s dinner, put her to bed, and then sat sewing in the corridor until very late. I missed Riad Halabí; inside the dark house I could hear only faint sounds of nature; the crickets were silent, no breeze was stirring. At midnight I decided to go to bed. I turned on all the lights, closed the shutters to keep out the frogs, and left the back door open so I could flee if the ghost of Kamal or any other denizen of my nightmares appeared. Before I went to bed, I checked Zulema one last time: she was sleeping peacefully, covered only by a sheet.
As always, I awakened with the first light of dawn and went to the kitchen to prepare the coffee; I poured it into a cup and crossed the patio to wake the invalid. As I went, I turned out the lights that had been burning all night and noted that I needed to wash the incinerated fireflies off the light bulbs. I opened my patrona’s door quietly, and went in.
Zulema was lying half off the bed, arms and legs outflung, her head toward the wall, her blue-black hair spilling over the pillows; a pool of red was spreading over her nightgown and sheets. I smelled an odor stronger than the flower petals in the pottery bowls. I walked forward slowly, set the coffee cup on the table, and bent over Zulema and turned her over. She had placed the barrel of a pistol in her mouth; the shot destroyed her palate.
I picked up the weapon, wiped it off, and put it back in the dresser drawer among Riad Halabí’s underclothes, where it was always kept. Then I eased the body to the floor and changed the sheets. I brought a pan of water, a sponge, and a towel; I removed my patrona’s nightgown and bathed her, because I did not want anyone to see her in that state. I closed her eyes, carefully painted her eyelids with kohl, combed her hair, and dressed her in her best nightgown. I had great difficulty pulling her back onto the bed, because in death she was as heavy as stone. When order was restored, I sat beside Zulema to tell her one last love story, while outside the morning quiet was being shattered by the sound of the Indians arriving with their children, elders, and dogs to beg—like any ordinary Saturday.
* * *
The chief of the tribe—an ageless man wearing white cotton pants and a straw sombrero—was the first to reach Riad Halabís house. He had come for the cigarettes the Turk gave out every week, and when he found the shop closed he had gone around to the back door I had left open the night before. He walked into the patio, still cool at that hour, past the fountain and down the hallway to the door of Zulema’s room. He saw me from the threshold and recognized me instantly because he had seen me so often behind the counter in The Pearl of the Orient. His eyes took in the clean sheets, the dark shining wood, the mirrored dressing table with its ornate silver hairbrushes, the body of my patrona laid out like a chapel saint in her lace-trimmed nightgown. He also noticed the heap of bloody clothing beside the window. He came to me and without a word put his hands on my shoulders. I felt as if I were returning from a great distance, with an undying scream trapped deep inside.
When the police rushed in later as if they were making a raid, battering doors and pounding out orders, I had not moved; the chief was still there beside me, arms crossed, and the rest of his ragged tribe huddled in the patio. Behind them were arrayed the townspeople of Agua Santa, whispering, pushing, peering, invading the home of the Turk, where they had not set foot since the fiesta of welcome for his cousin Kamal. One look at the scene in Zulema’s room and the lieutenant immediately took charge. He began by shooing away the curious and quieting the hubbub with one shot in the air; then he emptied the room, in order, he explained, not to spoil the fingerprints; and last he put me in handcuffs, to the amazement of everyone, including his subordinates. Since the time several years ago that convicts from the penal colony on Santa María had been brought to build the road, no one in Agua Santa had seen a person in handcuffs.
“Don’t move,” the lieutenant told me, while his men searched the room for the weapon. They discovered the basin and towels, confiscated the silver hairbrushes and the money from the store, and manhandled the Indian, who was still in the room and kept stepping in front of them whenever they came near me. At that moment the schoolteacher Inés came running in, still in her bathrobe because it was her day to clean house. She tried to talk to me, but the lieutenant would not permit it.
“We must notify the Turk!” the teacher exclaimed, but no one knew where he was.
The spirit of the house was transformed by the bedlam of noise, by the running back and forth and the shouting. I reckoned it would take me two days to scrub the floors and clean up the mess. I wondered, completely forgetting that he was away on a trip, why Riad Halabí was allowing such disrespect, and when they picked up Zulema’s sheet-wrapped body, I still could not find a reasonable explanation. The protracted scream was still in my chest, cold as winter wind, but it would not come out. The last thing I saw before being dragged to the police jeep was the face of the Indian, who leaned over and whispered something in my ear I did not understand.
They locked me in a cell at headquarters, a small, hot cave. I was thirsty, and I tried to call out to ask for water. The words were born within me, grew, ascended, resonated in my head, and reached my lips, but I could not expel them; they clung to the roof of my mouth. I tried to concentr
ate on happy images: my mother braiding my hair as she hummed a song; a young girl riding the patient back of a stuffed puma; waves breaking in the dining room of the spinster and the bachelor; the comical sham funerals with Elvira, my beloved abuela. I closed my eyes and prepared to wait. Many hours later, a sergeant to whom I had served rum only the day before in The Pearl of the Orient came to get me. He left me standing before the officer on duty, and he sat down at a school desk at one side to record my statement in his slow and laborious handwriting. The room was painted a drab green; there was a row of metal benches along the walls, and a dais to lend the proper authority to the chief’s desk. The blades of a ceiling fan stirred the air, repelling mosquitoes without relieving the unrelenting, humid heat. I thought of the Arabic fountain in Riad Halabí’s house, the crystalline water running over stones in the patio, the large pitcher of pineapple juice the schoolteacher Inés prepared when I came for my classes. The lieutenant entered and planted himself squarely before me.