That was how it happened that when Antonia Sierra got home from work she found another woman resting in her hammock, and for the first time in her life, her pride was not strong enough to conceal her feelings. Her insults could be heard all down the main street; they echoed in the plaza and penetrated every house; she screamed that Concha Díaz was a filthy sewer rat, and that Antonia Sierra would make her life so miserable that she would creep back to the gutter she never should have crawled out of, and that if she thought her children were going to live beneath the same roof with a bitch like her, she had another think coming, because Antonia Sierra was no dumb yokel, and her husband had better watch his step, too, because she had swallowed all his deviltry and cheating for the sake of her children, poor innocents they were, but this was the last straw, they’d see who Antonia Sierra was. Her tantrum lasted a week, at the end of which her cries faded to an incessant muttering. She lost the last vestiges of her beauty, she even lost her way of walking, and dragged around like a whipped dog. Her neighbors tried to tell her that it was Vargas’s fault, not Concha’s, but she was in no mood to listen to advice to be kind or fair.
Life in that house had never been pleasant, but with the arrival of the concubine it became unrelenting hell. Antonia spent the nights huddled in her children’s bed, spitting curses, while next to her snored her husband, cuddling the girl. With the first light of dawn Antonia had to get up, boil the coffee, stir up the cornmeal cakes, get the children off to school, tend the garden, cook for the police, and wash and iron. She performed all these chores like an automaton, while bitterness overflowed her heart. Since she refused to feed her husband, Concha took charge of that task after Antonia left, not wanting to meet her face to face over the cookstove. Antonia Sierra’s hatred was so savage that there were those in the town who feared she would end up murdering her rival, and they went to Riad Halabí and the schoolteacher Inés to ask them to intervene before it was too late.
But that was not how things worked out. In two months, Concha’s belly was the size of a watermelon, her legs were so swollen her veins seemed about to burst, and because she was lonely and afraid she never stopped crying. Tomás Vargas grew tired of all the tears and came home only to sleep. That meant the women no longer had to take turns cooking. Concha lost the last incentive to get up and get dressed, and lay in the hammock staring at the ceiling, without the energy even to boil a cup of coffee. Antonia ignored her all the first day, but by night had one of the children take her a bowl of soup and a glass of warm milk, so no one could say that she had let anyone die of hunger beneath her roof. The routine was repeated, and after a few days Concha got up to eat with the rest of them. Antonia pretended not to see her, but at least she stopped cursing every time the girl walked near her. Little by little, pity got the best of her. When she saw the girl growing thinner every day, a poor scarecrow with an enormous belly and deep circles under her eyes, she began to kill her hens one by one to make broth, and when all the chickens were gone, she did what she had never done before, she went to Riad Halabí for help.
“I’ve had six children, and some dead before they were born, but I’ve never seen anyone so sick from a pregnancy,” she explained, blushing. “She’s wasted down to her bones, Turk, the minute she swallows a bite of food she vomits it back up. It’s not that I care, none of this is any of my affair, but what will I tell her mother if she dies on me? I don’t want anyone coming round later asking for an accounting.”
Riad Halabí put the sick girl in his truck and drove her to the hospital, and Antonia went with them. They returned with a variety of colored pills and a new dress for Concha, since she could not pull the one she was wearing down past her waist. The other woman’s misery forced Antonia Sierra to relive portions of her youth, her first pregnancy, and similar outrages she had lived through. In spite of herself, she wanted Concha Díaz’s future to be less dismal than her own. She felt no anger toward her now, but a secret compassion, and she began to treat her like a daughter who had gone wrong, with a brusque authority that barely veiled her tenderness. The girl was terrified to see the pernicious transformations in her body: the ungovernable swelling, the shame of the constant need to urinate, the waddling like a goose, the uncontrollable nausea, the wishing she could die. Some days she woke up so sick she could not get out of her hammock; then Antonia left the children to take turns looking after her while she rushed through her work to get home early and care for Concha. Other days Concha woke with more spirit, and when Antonia returned home, exhausted, she found dinner waiting and the house cleaned. The girl would serve her a cup of coffee and stand by her side waiting for her to drink it, watching Antonia with the moist eyes of a grateful animal.
The baby was born in the hospital in the city, because he did not want to come into the world and they had to open up Concha Díaz to get him out. Antonia stayed with her a week, while the schoolteacher Inés looked after her own children. The two women returned in Halabí’s supply truck, and all Agua Santa came out to welcome them back. The mother smiled while Antonia exhibited the baby with a grandmother’s ebullience, proclaiming that he would be christened Riad Vargas Díaz in just tribute to the Turk, because without his help the mother would never have reached motherhood and, besides, the Turk had paid all the expenses when the father turned a deaf ear and pretended he was drunker than usual, to keep from digging up his gold.
Before two weeks had gone by, Tomás Vargas tried to coax Concha Díaz back to his hammock, despite the fact the woman had an unhealed scar and battlefield dressing across her belly. Antonia stepped up to him with her hands on her hips, determined for the first time in her life to keep the old vulture from getting his way. Her husband made a move to whip off his belt to give her the usual thrashing, but before he could complete the gesture, she started toward him with such ferocity that he stepped back in surprise. With that hesitation, he was lost, because she knew then who was the stronger. Meanwhile, Concha Díaz had set her baby in a corner and picked up a heavy clay pot, with the clear intention of breaking it across his skull. Vargas realized he was at a disadvantage, and left the house swearing and cursing. All Agua Santa learned what had happened, because he himself told the girls in the whorehouse, then they told everyone that Vargas couldn’t cut the mustard anymore and that his bragging about being such a stud was pure swagger with nothing to back it up.
Things changed after that. Concha Díaz recovered rapidly, and while Antonia was out working she tended the children and the garden and the house. Tomás Vargas swallowed his pride and humbly returned to his hammock—without a companion. He made up for this affront by mistreating the children and telling in the tavern that, like mules, all women really understand is the stick, but at home he never tried to punish them again. When he was drunk he shouted the joys of bigamy to the four winds, and for several Sundays the priest would have to rebut that sacrilege from the pulpit, before the idea caught on and many years of preaching the Christian virtue of monogamy went down the drain.
* * *
In Agua Santa they could tolerate a man who mistreated his family, a man who was lazy and a troublemaker, who never paid back money he borrowed, but gambling debts were sacred. In the cockfights bills were folded and displayed between the fingers where everyone could see them, and in dominoes, darts, or cards, they were placed on the table to the player’s left. Sometimes the National Petroleum truckdrivers stopped by for a few hands of poker, and although they never showed their money, they paid the last cent before they left. Saturdays the guards from Santa María Prison came to town to visit the whorehouse and gamble away their week’s pay in the tavern. Not even they—twice as crooked as the prisoners they guarded—dared play if they couldn’t pay. No one violated that rule.
Tomás Vargas never bet, but he liked to watch the players; he could spend hours observing a game of dominoes; he was the first to pick a spot at the cockfights; and he listened to the announcement of the lottery winners over the radio, even thoug
h he never bought a ticket. The magnitude of his greed had protected him from temptation. Nevertheless, when the steely complicity of Antonia Sierra and Concha Díaz nipped his manly impulses in the bud, he turned toward gambling. At first he made miserable little bets, and only the most down-and-out drunks would sit at the table with him, but he had more luck with cards than with his women, and before long he was bitten by the bug for easy money and began to change down to the marrow of his miserly bones. With the hope of getting rich at one lucky stroke and, in the process—using the illusory projection of that triumph—of mending his damaged reputation as a rake, he began to take bigger risks. Soon the boldest players were taking their measure against him, while the rest formed a circle around them to follow the turns of each encounter. Tomás Vargas did not spread his money on the table, as was the tradition, but he paid up when he lost. At home, things went from bad to worse, and Concha also had to go out and work. The children stayed home by themselves, and the schoolteacher Inés fed them to keep them from going into town to beg.
Tomás Vargas’s real troubles began the day he accepted a challenge from the Lieutenant and after six hours of playing won two hundred pesos. The officer confiscated his subordinates’ salaries to pay his debt. He was a stocky, dark-skinned man with a walrus mustache, who always left his jacket unbuttoned so the girls could appreciate his hairy chest and collection of gold chains. No one in Agua Santa liked him, because he was a man of unpredictable character and he granted himself authority to invent laws according to his whim and convenience. Before his arrival, the jail had been a couple of rooms where you spent the night after a brawl—there were never any serious crimes in Agua Santa and the only wrongdoers were prisoners being transported to Santa María Prison—but the Lieutenant made sure that no one left his jail without a sound beating first. Thanks to him, people learned to fear the law. He was furious about losing the two hundred pesos, but he handed over the money without a word, even with a certain elegant detachment, because not even he, with all the weight of his power, would have left the table without paying.
Tomás Vargas spent two days bragging about his triumph, until the Lieutenant advised him he would be waiting for his revenge the following Saturday. This time the bet would be a thousand pesos, he announced in such a peremptory tone that Vargas was reminded of the officer’s boot in his rear and did not dare refuse. On Saturday afternoon the tavern was filled. It was so crowded and hot that no one could catch a breath, and they carried the table outside so that everyone could witness the game. Never had so much money been bet in Agua Santa, and Riad Halabí was appointed to ensure the fairness of the proceedings. He began by directing the public to stand two steps away, to prevent any cheating, and the Lieutenant and other policemen to leave their weapons at the jail.
“Before we begin, both players must place their money on the table,” the arbiter declared.
“My word is good, Turk,” replied the Lieutenant.
“In that case, my word’s enough, too,” added Tomás Vargas.
“How will you pay if you lose?” Riad Halabí wanted to know.
“I have a house in the capital; if I lose, Vargas will have the title tomorrow.”
“Good. And you?”
“I will pay with my buried gold.”
The game was the most exciting thing that had happened in the town in many years. Everyone in Agua Santa, from ancients to young children, gathered in the street to watch. Only Antonia Sierra and Concha Díaz were absent. Neither the Lieutenant nor Tomás Vargas inspired any sympathy, so no one cared who won; the entertainment consisted of speculating on the agonies of the two players and of the people wagering on one or the other. Tomás Vargas had on his side his string of good luck with cards, but the Lieutenant had the advantage of a cool head and his reputation as a hard man.
The game ended at seven and, according to the agreed terms, Riad Halabí declared the Lieutenant the winner. In his triumph, the policeman maintained the same calm he had shown the preceding week in defeat—no mocking smile, no sarcastic word—he merely sat in his chair picking his teeth with his little fingernail.
“All right, Vargas; the time has come to dig up your treasure,” he said when the spectators’ excitement had died down.
Tomás Vargas’s skin was ashen, his shirt was soaked with sweat, and he gasped for air, which seemed to have stuck in his throat. Twice he tried to stand, but each time his knees buckled. Riad Halabí had to support him. Finally he gathered enough strength to start off in the direction of the highway, followed by the Lieutenant, the police, the Turk, the school-teacher Inés, and, behind them, the whole town in a boisterous procession. They had walked a couple of miles when Vargas veered to the right, diving into the riot of gluttonous vegetation that surrounded Agua Santa. There was no path, but with little hesitation he made his way among gigantic trees and huge ferns until he came to the edge of a ravine barely visible through the impenetrable screen of the jungle. The crowd stopped there, while Vargas and the Lieutenant scrambled down the bank. The heat was humid and oppressive, even though it was almost sunset. Tomás Vargas signaled them not to come any farther; he got down on all fours, and crawled beneath some philodendrons with great fleshy leaves. A long minute went by before they heard his howl. The Lieutenant plunged into the foliage, grabbed him by the ankles, and jerked him out.
“What’s the matter?”
“It isn’t there, it isn’t there!”
“What do you mean, ‘it isn’t there’?”
“I swear, Lieutenant, I don’t know anything about this; they stole it, they stole my treasure!” and he burst out crying like a widow woman, so overcome he was oblivious to the Lieutenant’s repeated kicks.
“Pig! I’ll get my money. On your mother’s grave, I’ll get my money!”
Riad Halabí hurled himself down the slope of the ravine and removed Vargas from the Lieutenant’s clutches before he kicked him to a pulp. He calmed the Lieutenant, arguing that blows would not resolve anything, and then helped the old man back up the ravine. Tomás Vargas was racked with fear; he was blubbering and staggering and swooning so that the Turk almost had to carry him to get him home. Antonia Sierra and Concha Díaz were sitting in the doorway in rush chairs, drinking coffee and watching it grow dark. They showed no sign of dismay when they learned what had happened, but continued sipping their coffee, unmoved.
For more than a week Tomás Vargas had a high temperature, during which he raved about gold nuggets and marked cards, but he was robust by nature, and instead of dying of grief as everyone expected, he regained his health. When he could get out of his hammock, he did not venture out for several days, but finally his habit of dissipation was stronger than his prudence, so he took his Panama hat and, still shaky and frightened, went down to the tavern. He did not return that night, and two days later someone brought the news that his mutilated body had been found in the very ravine where he had hidden his treasure. He had been quartered with a machete like a steer, the end everyone had known would be his sooner or later.
Antonia Sierra and Concha Díaz buried him without grief and with no funeral procession except Riad Halabí and the schoolteacher Inés, who had come to accompany them, not to pay posthumous tribute to a man they had never respected in life. The two women lived on together, happy to help each other in bringing up their children and in the many vicissitudes of life. Not long after the burial they bought hens, rabbits, and pigs; they rode the bus to the city and returned with clothes for all the family. That year they repaired the house with new lumber, they added two rooms, they painted the house blue, they installed a gas stove, and then began a cookery business in their home. Every noon they went out with all the children to deliver meals to the jail, the school, and the post office; and if there was any extra, they left it on the store counter for Riad Halabí to offer to the truckdrivers. And so they made their way out of poverty and started off down the road to prosperity.
IF YOU TOUCHED MY HEART
Amadeo Peralta was raised in the midst of his father’s gang and, like all the men of his family, grew up to be a ruffian. His father believed that school was for sissies; you don’t need books to get ahead in life, he always said, just balls and quick wits, and that was why he trained his boys to be rough and ready. With time, nevertheless, he realized that the world was changing very rapidly and that his business affairs needed to be more firmly anchored. The era of undisguised plunder had been replaced by one of corruption and bribery; it was time to administer his wealth by using modern criteria, and to improve his image. He called his sons together and assigned them the task of establishing friendships with influential persons and of learning the legal tricks that would allow them to continue to prosper without danger of losing their impunity. He also encouraged them to find sweethearts among the old-line families and in this way see whether they could cleanse the Peralta name of all its stains of mud and blood. By then Amadeo was thirty-two years old; the habit of seducing girls and then abandoning them was deeply ingrained; the idea of marriage was not at all to his liking but he did not dare disobey his father. He began to court the daughter of a wealthy landowner whose family had lived in the same place for six generations. Despite her suitor’s murky reputation, the girl accepted, for she was not very attractive and was afraid of ending up an old maid. Then began one of those tedious provincial engagements. Wretched in a white linen suit and polished boots, Amadeo came every day to visit his fiancée beneath the hawklike eye of his future mother-in-law or some aunt, and while the young lady served coffee and guava sweets he would peek at his watch, calculating the earliest moment to make his departure.
A few weeks before the wedding, Amadeo Peralta had to make a business trip through the provinces and found himself in Agua Santa, one of those towns where nobody stays and whose name travelers rarely recall. He was walking down a narrow street at the hour of the siesta, cursing the heat and the oppressive, cloying odor of mango marmalade in the air, when he heard a crystalline sound like water purling between stones; it was coming from a modest house with paint flaked by the sun and rain like most of the houses in that town. Through the ornamental iron grille he glimpsed an entryway of dark paving stones and whitewashed walls, then a patio and, beyond, the surprising vision of a young girl sitting cross-legged on the ground and cradling a blond wood psaltery on her knees. For a while he stood and watched her.