Collected Stories

‘The whale.’

  They both laughed at the mistake, but Eréndira picked up the thread again.

  ‘No one can leave for anywhere without my grandmother’s permission.’

  ‘There’s no reason to say anything.’

  ‘She’ll find out in any case,’ Eréndira said. ‘She can dream things.’

  ‘When she starts to dream that you’re leaving we’ll already be across the border. We’ll cross over like smugglers,’ Ulises said.

  Grasping the pistol with the confidence of a movie gun-fighter, he imitated the sounds of the shots to excite Eréndira with his audacity. She didn’t say yes or no, but her eyes gave a sigh and she sent Ulises away with a kiss. Ulises, touched, whispered:

  ‘Tomorrow we’ll be watching the ships go by.’

  That night, a little after seven o’clock, Eréndira was combing her grandmother’s hair when the wind of her misfortune blew again. In the shelter of the tent were the Indian bearers and the leader of the brass band, waiting to be paid. The grandmother finished counting out the bills on a chest she had within reach, and after consulting a ledger she paid the oldest of the Indians.

  ‘Here you are,’ she told him. ‘Twenty pesos for the week, less eight for meals, less three for water, less fifty cents on account for the new shirts, that’s eight fifty. Count it.’

  The oldest Indian counted the money and they all withdrew with a bow.

  ‘Thank you, white lady.’

  Next came the leader of the band. The grandmother consulted her ledger and turned to the photographer, who was trying to repair the bellows of his camera with wads of gutta-percha.

  ‘What’s it going to be?’ she asked him. ‘Will you or won’t you pay a quarter of the cost of the music?’

  The photographer didn’t even raise his head to answer.

  ‘Music doesn’t come out in pictures.’

  ‘But it makes people want to have their pictures taken,’ the grandmother answered.

  ‘On the contrary,’ said the photographer. ‘It reminds them of the dead and then they come out in the picture with their eyes closed.’

  The bandleader intervened.

  ‘What makes them close their eyes isn’t the music,’ he said. ‘It’s the lightning you make taking pictures at night.’

  ‘It’s the music,’ the photographer insisted.

  The grandmother put an end to the dispute. ‘Don’t be a cheapskate,’ she said to the photographer. ‘Look how well things have been going for Senator Onésimo Sánchez and it’s thanks to the musicians he has along.’ Then, in a harsh tone, she concluded:

  ‘So pay what you ought to or go follow your fortune by yourself. It’s not right for that poor child to carry the whole burden of expenses.’

  ‘I’ll follow my fortune by myself,’ the photographer said. ‘After all, an artist is what I am.’

  The grandmother shrugged her shoulders and took care of the musician. She handed him a bundle of bills that matched the figure written in her ledger.

  ‘Two hundred and fifty-four numbers,’ she told him. ‘At fifty cents apiece, plus thirty-two on Sundays and holidays at sixty cents apiece, that’s one hundred fifty-six twenty.’

  The musician wouldn’t accept the money.

  ‘It’s one hundred eighty-two forty,’ he said. ‘Waltzes cost more.’

  ‘Why is that?’

  ‘Because they’re sadder,’ the musician said.

  The grandmother made him take the money.

  ‘Well, this week you’ll play us two happy numbers for each waltz I owe you for and we’ll be even.’

  The musician didn’t understand the grandmother’s logic, but he accepted the figures while he unraveled the tangle. At that moment the fearsome wind threatened to uproot the tent, and in the silence that it left in its wake, outside, clear and gloomy, the call of an owl was heard.

  Eréndira didn’t know what to do to disguise her upset. She closed the chest with the money and hid it under the bed, but the grandmother recognized the fear in her hand when she gave her the key. ‘Don’t be frightened,’ she told her. ‘There are always owls on windy nights.’ Still she didn’t seem so convinced when she saw the photographer go out with the camera on his back.

  ‘Wait till tomorrow if you’d like,’ she told him. ‘Death is on the loose tonight.’

  The photographer had also noticed the call of the owl, but he didn’t change his intentions.

  ‘Stay, son,’ the grandmother insisted. ‘Even if it’s just because of the liking I have for you.’

  ‘But I won’t pay for the music,’ the photographer said.

  ‘Oh, no,’ the grandmother said. ‘Not that.’

  ‘You see?’ the photographer said. ‘You’ve got no love for anybody.’

  The grandmother grew pale with rage.

  ‘Then beat it!’ she said. ‘You lowlife!’

  She felt so outraged that she was still venting her rage on him while Eréndira helped her go to bed. ‘Son of an evil mother,’ she muttered. ‘What does that bastard know about anyone else’s heart?’ Eréndira paid no attention to her, because the owl was calling her with tenacious insistence during the pauses in the wind and she was tormented by uncertainty. The grandmother finally went to bed with the same ritual that had been de rigueur in the ancient mansion, and while her granddaughter fanned her she overcame her anger and once more breathed her sterile breath.

  ‘You have to get up early,’ she said then, ‘so you can boil the infusion for my bath before the people get here.’

  ‘Yes, Grandmother.’

  ‘With the time you have left, wash the Indians’ dirty laundry and that way we’ll have something else to take off their pay next week.’

  ‘Yes, Grandmother,’ Eréndira said.

  ‘And sleep slowly so that you won’t get tired, because tomorrow is Thursday, the longest day of the week.’

  ‘Yes, Grandmother.’

  ‘And feed the ostrich.’

  ‘Yes, Grandmother,’ Eréndira said.

  She left the fan at the head of the bed and lighted two altar candles in front of the chest with their dead. The grandmother, asleep now, was lagging behind with her orders.

  ‘Don’t forget to light the candles for the Amadíses.’

  ‘Yes, Grandmother.’

  Eréndira knew then that she wouldn’t wake up, because she had begun to rave. She heard the wind barking about the tent, but she didn’t recognize it as the wind of her misfortune that time either. She looked out into the night until the owl called again and her instinct for freedom in the end prevailed over her grandmother’s spell.

  She hadn’t taken five steps outside the tent when she came across the photographer, who was lashing his equipment to the carrier of his bicycle. His accomplice’s smile calmed her down.

  ‘I don’t know anything,’ the photographer said, ‘I haven’t seen anything, and I won’t pay for the music.’

  He took his leave with a blessing for all. Then Eréndira ran toward the desert, having decided once and for all, and she was swallowed up in the shadows of the wind where the owl was calling.

  That time the grandmother went to the civil authorities at once. The commandant of the local detachment leaped out of his hammock at six in the morning when she put the senator’s letter before his eyes. Ulises’ father was waiting at the door.

  ‘How in hell do you expect me to know what it says!’ the commandant shouted. ‘I can’t read.’

  ‘It’s a letter of recommendation from Senator Onésimo Sánchez,’ the grandmother said.

  Without further questions, the commandant took down a rifle he had near his hammock and began to shout orders to his men. Five minutes later they were all in a military truck flying toward the border against a contrary wind that had erased all trace of fugitives. The commandant rode in the front seat beside the driver. In back were the Dutchman and the grandmother, with an armed policeman on each running board.

  Close to town they stopped a convoy of trucks covered with
waterproof canvases. Several men who were riding concealed in the rear raised the canvas and aimed at the small vehicle with machine guns and army rifles. The commandant asked the driver of the first truck how far back they had passed a farm truck loaded with birds.

  The driver started up before he answered.

  ‘We’re not stool pigeons,’ he said indignantly, ‘we’re smugglers.’

  The commandant saw the sooty barrels of the machine guns pass close to his eyes and he raised his arms and smiled.

  ‘At least,’ he shouted at them, ‘you could have the decency not to go around in broad daylight.’

  The last truck had a sign on its rear bumper: I THINK OF YOU, ERÉNDIRA.

  The wind became drier as they headed north and the sun was fiercer than the wind. It was hard to breathe because of the heat and dust inside the closed-in truck.

  The grandmother was the first to spot the photographer: he was pedaling along in the same direction in which they were flying, with no protection against the sun except for a handkerchief tied around his head.

  ‘There he is.’ She pointed. ‘He was their accomplice, the lowlife.’

  The commandant ordered one of the policemen on the running board to take charge of the photographer.

  ‘Grab him and wait for us here,’ he said. ‘We’ll be right back.’

  The policeman jumped off the running board and shouted twice for the photographer to halt. The photographer didn’t hear him because of the wind blowing in the opposite direction. When the truck went on, the grandmother made an enigmatic gesture to him, but he confused it with a greeting, smiled, and waved. He didn’t hear the shot. He flipped into the air and fell dead on top of his bicycle, his head blown apart by a rifle bullet, and he never knew where it came from.

  Before noon they began to see feathers. They were passing by in the wind and they were feathers from young birds. The Dutchman recognized them because they were from his birds, plucked out by the wind. The driver changed direction, pushed the gas pedal to the floor, and in half an hour they could make out the pickup truck on the horizon.

  When Ulises saw the military vehicle appear in the rearview mirror, he made an effort to increase the distance between them, but the motor couldn’t do any better. They had traveled with no sleep and were done in from fatigue and thirst. Eréndira, who was dozing on Ulises’ shoulder, woke up in fright. She saw the truck that was about to overtake them and with innocent determination she took the pistol from the glove compartment.

  ‘It’s no good,’ Ulises said. ‘It used to belong to Sir Francis Drake.’

  She pounded it several times and threw it out the window. The military patrol passed the broken-down truck loaded with birds plucked by the wind, turned sharply, and cut it off.

  It was around that time that I came to know them, their moment of greatest splendor, but I wouldn’t look into the details of their lives until many years later when Rafael Escalona, in a song, revealed the terrible ending of the drama and I thought it would be good to tell the tale. I was traveling about selling encyclopedias and medical books in the province of Riohacha. Álvaro Cepeda Samudio, who was also traveling in the region, selling beer-cooling equipment, took me through the desert towns in his truck with the intention of talking to me about something and we talked so much about nothing and drank so much beer that without knowing when or where we crossed the entire desert and reached the border. There was the tent of wandering love under hanging canvas signs: ERÉNDIRA IS BEST; LEAVE AND COME BACK – ERÉNDIRA WAITS FOR YOU; THERE’S NO LIFE WITHOUT ERÉNDIRA. The endless wavy line composed of men of diverse races and ranks looked like a snake with human vertebrae dozing through vacant lots and squares, through gaudy bazaars and noisy marketplaces, coming out of the streets of that city, which was noisy with passing merchants. Every street was a public gambling den, every house a saloon, every doorway a refuge for fugitives. The many undecipherable songs and the shouted offerings of wares formed a single roar of panic in the hallucinating heat.

  Among the throng of men without a country and sharpers was Blacamán the Good, up on a table and asking for a real serpent in order to test an antidote of his invention on his own flesh. There was the woman who had been changed into a spider for having disobeyed her parents, who would let herself be touched for fifty cents so that people would see there was no trick, and she would answer questions of those who might care to ask about her misfortune. There was an envoy from the eternal life who announced the imminent coming of the fearsome astral bat, whose burning brimstone breath would overturn the order of nature and bring the mysteries of the sea to the surface.

  The one restful backwater was the red-light district, reached only by the embers of the urban din. Women from the four quadrants of the nautical rose yawned with boredom in the abandoned cabarets. They had slept their siestas sitting up, unawakened by people who wanted them, and they were still waiting for the astral bat under the fans that spun on the ceilings. Suddenly one of them got up and went to a balcony with pots of pansies that overlooked the street. Down there the row of Eréndira’s suitors was passing.

  ‘Come on,’ the woman shouted at them. ‘What’s that one got that we don’t have?’

  ‘A letter from a senator,’ someone shouted.

  Attracted by the shouts and the laughter, other women came out onto the balcony.

  ‘The line’s been like that for days,’ one of them said. ‘Just imagine, fifty pesos apiece.’

  The one who had come out first made a decision:

  ‘Well, I’m going to go find out what jewel that seven-month baby has got.’

  ‘Me too,’ another said. ‘It’ll be better than sitting here warming our chairs for free.’

  On the way others joined them and when they got to Eréndira’s tent they made up a rowdy procession. They went in without any announcement, used pillows to chase away the man they found spending himself as best he could for his money, and they picked up Eréndira’s bed and carried it out into the street like a litter.

  ‘This is an outrage!’ the grandmother shouted. ‘You pack of traitors, you bandits!’ And then, turning to the men in line: ‘And you, you sissies, where do you keep your balls, letting this attack against a poor defenseless child go on? Damned fags!’

  She kept on shouting as far as her voice would carry, distributing whacks with her crosier against all who came within reach, but her rage was inaudible amongst the shouts and mocking whistles of the crowd.

  Eréndira couldn’t escape the ridicule because she was prevented by the dog chain that the grandmother used to hitch her to a slat of the bed ever since she had tried to run away. But they didn’t harm her. They exhibited her on the canopied altar along the noisiest streets like the allegorical passage of the enchained penitent and finally they set her down like a catafalque in the center of the main square. Eréndira was all coiled up, her face hidden, but not weeping, and she stayed that way under the terrible sun in the square, biting with shame and rage at the dog chain of her evil destiny until someone was charitable enough to cover her with a shirt.

  That was the only time I saw them, but I found out that they had stayed in that border town under the protection of the public forces until the grandmother’s chests were bursting and then they left the desert and headed toward the sea. Never had such opulence been seen gathered together in that realm of poor people. It was a procession of ox-drawn carts on which cheap replicas of the paraphernalia lost in the disaster of the mansion were piled, not just the imperial busts and rare clocks, but also a secondhand piano and a Victrola with a crank and the records of nostalgia. A team of Indians took care of the cargo and a band of musicians announced their triumphal arrival in the villages.

  The grandmother traveled on a litter with paper wreaths, chomping on the grains in her pouch, in the shadow of a church canopy. Her monumental size had increased, because under her blouse she was wearing a vest of sailcloth in which she kept the gold bars the way one keeps cartridges in a bandoleer. Eréndira
was beside her, dressed in gaudy fabrics and with trinkets hanging, but with the dog chain still on her ankle.

  ‘You’ve got no reason to complain,’ her grandmother had said to her when they left the border town. ‘You’ve got the clothes of a queen, a luxurious bed, a musical band of your own, and fourteen Indians at your service. Don’t you think that’s splendid?’

  ‘Yes, Grandmother.’

  ‘When you no longer have me,’ the grandmother went on, ‘you won’t be left to the mercy of men because you’ll have your own home in an important city. You’ll be free and happy.’

  It was a new and unforeseen vision of the future. On the other hand, she no longer spoke about the original debt, whose details had become twisted and whose installments had grown as the costs of the business became more complicated. Still Eréndira didn’t let slip any sigh that would have given a person a glimpse of her thoughts. She submitted in silence to the torture of the bed in the saltpeter pits, in the torpor of the lakeside towns, in the lunar craters of the talcum mines, while her grandmother sang the vision of the future to her as if she were reading cards. One afternoon, as they came out of an oppressive canyon, they noticed a wind of ancient laurels and they caught snatches of Jamaica conversations and felt an urge to live and a knot in their hearts. They had reached the sea.

  ‘There it is,’ the grandmother said, breathing in the glassy light of the Caribbean after half a lifetime of exile. ‘Don’t you like it?’

  ‘Yes, Grandmother.’

  They pitched the tent there. The grandmother spent the night talking without dreaming and sometimes she mixed up her nostalgia with clairvoyance of the future. She slept later than usual and awoke relaxed by the sound of the sea. Nevertheless, when Eréndira was bathing her she again made predictions of the future and it was such a feverish clairvoyance that it seemed like the delirium of a vigil.

  ‘You’ll be a noble lady,’ she told her. ‘A lady of quality, venerated by those under your protection and favored and honored by the highest authorities. Ships’ captains will send you postcards from every port in the world.’

  Eréndira wasn’t listening to her. The warm water perfumed with oregano was pouring into the bathtub through a tube fed from outside. Eréndira picked it up in a gourd, impenetrable, not even breathing, and poured it over her grandmother with one hand while she soaped her with the other.