The Roar of Morning

SIX

I was often left by myself during the twenty months I spent on the mainland. After lunch my uncle always went out to declaim biblical texts or to convene mysterious meetings in derelict houses. He did not return until the evening, sometimes very late. His wife was constantly travelling into the city or out into the countryside to sell her contraband to wealthy people and plantation owners. This was how she supported her husband. I was left at home with an elderly maid who left at four in the afternoon. Yet I did not feel abandoned. That was the time when I learned to love solitude and books. Even now I look back on the reclusive years of my youth with a certain fondness.

On the frequent days when there was no school, my uncle would sometimes teach me math, Spanish, biblical history and chess in the mornings. In the afternoons, when he had gone out, I secretly read the books in his bookcase. This wasn’t too easy at the start, but soon Spanish ceased to present any great difficulty. With few exceptions they were religious books, and I could not always understand the difficult passages. Eventually, because I was reading so much about religion and matters of faith and how man should live, I developed an intense curiosity about the other side of the coin. I yearned for “bad” books — but I was to have a long wait. In the meantime, however, I indulged my own fantasies, creating characters that I made do things I myself had never done. These fantasies, which sometimes lasted for hours and to which I was constantly adding new episodes, gave me great satisfaction and at the same time a sense of sinfulness, a contradiction that I blamed on the empty, silent house. I lived in a no-man’s-land seemingly equidistant from bad and good. The image of my uncle would loom up before me, dressed in immaculately pressed clothes, each hair on his head kept in its place by the green pomade that he rubbed in each morning, its musty smell still reminiscent of candles that had just been snuffed out. His starched clothes emphasised the tenseness in his body. At his side, his cool, calm, stately wife was always in her Sunday best. At such moments I felt sorry for my uncle and his wife; I almost hated them and longed to be home again.

Naturally, I did not spend the entire twenty months cooped up in the house like a monk. I had two friends at school whose houses I sometimes visited, and I also went for walks through the city. I went into the country a few times too: our ten-day visit to Chimbarí was particularly memorable.

That visit took place when rioting broke out in the city. It all started with a strike at the two government factories. The workers demanded a rise, put down their tools and took to the streets. There was turmoil all day long, but by the evening everyone was drunk and then the real pandemonium began. Fires were started in the streets. The police, now supported by the National Guard, carried out baton charges and arrested a hundred or so workers. Because the police station did not have enough cells, the prisoners were taken to the officers’ club just outside town, where they spent the night under guard in the tennis courts. In the morning, the workers were released and marched back to town.

When I went to school that morning, I found the big barred gate locked. I strolled round for a while with some other boys before setting off back home. As we got to the market a long procession of workers was just passing. A few young men at the front were singing, but the market women who lined the street in small groups greeted them with jeers and shouts.

“There go the heroes! Did you get your rise?”

“Are you going to be paid for yesterday and today?”

“What’s your family supposed to eat today? Shit?”

Some of the women started to clap rhythmically and shout “Left-right, left-right, left-right,” as if soldiers were marching past. At the sight of one worker who was hobbling past on one leg with the aid of a crutch, someone started shouting “Left-left,” which was quickly taken up by the others.

That evening the alcalde’s house was stoned, one of the factories was burnt to the ground and a policeman was stabbed to death. The strike had turned into a riot.

My uncle considered it advisable to leave town until things had calmed down, so the following morning the three of us left for Chimbarí, where a good friend of his had a small farm. This was the first time I had ever been on a train and I thought it was wonderful, although I didn’t like the noise it made or the soot from the locomotive that found its way into the carriages. I was wide-eyed with wonder. While my uncle sat bolt upright in his seat holding an open book far too close to his nose, and his wife sat like a bored queen on her throne cooling herself with an ivory fan, I gazed in fascination at the landscape passing by. At the start it was not particularly interesting, as the train was travelling through an arid region, but suddenly, without any noticeable transition, everything became green. I saw hundreds of tree-covered hills dotted with bright red cottages. How could families live in such remote, inaccessible places, I wondered. What did they do all day? What happens if someone is taken seriously ill? I saw huge mountains, some half-covered in dark green but with bare, grey summits, through which flowed a vast river, apparently scarcely moving. I saw green fields stretching to the horizon, grazed by enormous herds of cattle. Sometimes it seemed as if the train was cutting straight through the middle of a herd.

Chimbarí turned out to be no more than a small village with a few hundred inhabitants. But I was impressed by several large and elegant though run-down buildings and by a magnificent church, a lofty structure with two square towers that reminded me of a medieval castle. Its thick walls had cracks in them caused by earthquakes. My uncle told me that Chimbarí had once been a prosperous little town, the seat of a Roman Catholic bishop, and that the church dated from the Spanish period. As we looked at it in the glow of dusk, the church seemed to be surrounded by a halo of dying light. My uncle called it “a temple of God that has withstood revolutions, earthquakes and the confessed sins of many generations.” The following morning we drove in an open carriage drawn by two horses to Sandoval’s farm, which was just outside the village.

Like most of his countrymen, Sandoval was short of stature, and he constantly wriggled his shoulders as though his shirt were uncomfortable. He had a big head and a broad, puffy face; his forehead and the loose, flabby skin on his cheeks shone as if they were coated with oil. Perhaps his head looked big only because he was so squat and had almost no chin. He was a very friendly man and I took to him immediately. His farm wasn’t that small. The spacious house was surrounded on three sides by a veranda, so that it was always cool inside. He had about twenty cows and more than two hundred goats. Everywhere there was a fresh and distinctive smell that was very different from the city.

I went for long walks in the surrounding countryside and spotted many plants, trees and birds I had never seen before. I often went into Chimbarí, where I got the impression that no one worked, because everywhere in the village there were groups of men sitting in front of houses, under trees or in the bar. Once I went into the church with a boy from the village to see the carved wooden Madonna on a side altar, the Madonna of the Sad Face, whose eyes sometimes filled with tears that rolled down her cheeks and dropped onto an oak plank that had been attached to the base of the altar. The inside of the church was quite bare, the Madonna was not beautiful and I couldn’t see any tears. The statue was in the habit of weeping during Lent, the boy told me, and at that time visitors often came from the towns to look at the Holy Virgin, to buy a candle and to light it on the little altar while praying for her intercession. Only a few of them had been fortunate enough to see the Madonna weeping, he added, but the stains of the fallen tears were clearly visible at the foot of the statue.

One afternoon I went into the bar for a glass of coconut milk. The place was packed and every so often the crowd of customers would howl or start applauding. Five men were playing a game that was being enthusiastically followed by everyone present, accompanied by a lively commentary. After watching intently for at least a quarter of an hour I still had no idea what was going on. It took a whole hour and an explanation by two strapping youths for me finally to understand, but even then I found it a silly game because none of the players wins or loses.

The game was called simply “date stones.” Four men played, plus a questioner. The questioner was always the same person, a tiny, shrivelled old man who puffed constantly on a pipe that emitted clouds of evil-smelling smoke. He had a high-pitched voice like that of a toddler. I thought that was odd: a centenarian with the voice of an infant. He asked questions that had to be answered by the players in turn. At the start of the game the old dodderer had twenty-one dried date stones clutched in his right hand. If his question was answered correctly, he would lean forward and drop a date stone into the respondent’s breast pocket. If someone did not know the answer or answered incorrectly, the same question was put to the other three players. If they did not know the answer, no one got a stone. In that case the old boy would turn to the audience, and if none of the spectators could answer either, he would beam with satisfaction and give the solution in vivid detail. If the spectators did know the answer, he would look sheepish and go quickly on to a new brainteaser. The old man went on asking questions until all the players had answered five correctly. Then he stood up rather defiantly, stretched out his arm and unclenched his fist to show everyone that there was nothing in his hand. Where was the twenty-first stone? That was what the game was all about and now the betting began. What had the old rascal done during the questioning? On an occasion when a player had answered correctly, he had slipped not one but two date stones into the man’s pocket. He was therefore the only one who knew which player had six stones in his pocket at the end of the game. All the bystanders then bet amongst themselves for drinks, cigarettes or money. Each punter chose two of the four players in the game. When all the bets had been laid, the old man gave the signal and the four players emptied their pockets. An earsplitting roar went up from the crowd and the man with the six stones was bought drinks by the winners.

The questions the old man asked were on all kinds of subjects. In what year did the Parce River dry up completely? Who defeated the Spanish general Annuire during the war of independence? When does the sun rise earlier, in May or September? Why is it dangerous to swim in the river on Good Friday? Sometimes there would be a series of questions on the same subject. For how long does a sow carry its young? How many young does a rabbit litter contain? Why does a rock snake sometimes not roll up at the approach of danger, but fold double instead? Sometimes the questions were about fruit. How many years does it take for a mango tree to bear its first fruit? When does the pith of a watermelon look yellow or even white, instead of red? Then he would move on to the Bible. How many children did Adam have? How many daughters did Adam have? How many sons did Noah have? How many livestock did Job have? Now and then he asked nonsense questions based on old wives’ tales and superstitions. What did the donkey say to the tortoise under the tamarind tree? What was the king of Spain changed into when he failed to attend mass on Easter Sunday? His questions about folk medicine were particularly interesting. An infusion of the leaves of which plant can be taken against dysentery when you have torn off the leaves with a downward movement, and against vomiting if you have pulled them off with an upward motion? The fisherman’s tobacco that grows on the rocks by the shore cures the clap, as we all know — after all, we’re all men together — but what other illness does it cure? What fruit, mashed with olive oil, must be given for piles? Name three emetic plants.

When I got back to the farm it was already dark. At dinner I told them about what I had seen in the village. Sandoval laughed heartily. Her Majesty smiled benignly, but my blessed uncle thought the game was ridiculous — the villagers should concern themselves with more useful matters. He found the biblical questions about the number of daughters, sheep and goats particularly inane. Sandoval told us that one of his cows was about to calve. That morning, when he had taken his cattle from their cowshed and driven them to the meadow, he had noticed that the cow with calf was moving sluggishly and looked listless. Later in the day he saw that the cow had moved away from the others and kept sniffing the fence. He decided to take her back with him and put her in the little shed he called the “maternity ward.” All day long, at regular intervals, he had gone to check on the cow, but she was still looking around in a daze. Calving could start any moment now. I said that I’d like to be present at the birth of a calf. Sandoval agreed immediately, but I expected my uncle to be against the idea. Although he did frown a little, he decided it would be a good idea for me to witness one of God’s miracles at close quarters.

There was another odd custom in Chimbarí, a very special way of settling disputes between neighbours. I did not see it myself, but was told about it in graphic detail by three youths whom I met on one of my walks near the little river at the edge of the village. All the women in the village, even the poorest, had two dresses that were worn on special occasions only: a green one that they put on to attend mass on Palm Sunday and kept on for the rest of the day, and a brilliant red one they wore when they argued with another woman. Whenever two women had a dispute, they would begin by giving each other a good tongue-lashing, exchanging the vilest insults for about half an hour. The woman who felt most offended would suddenly stop cursing and close all her doors and windows tight. This was a gross insult to the other party, as it meant the woman inside was no longer listening to what she was saying and could not be bothered to reply. In a rage, the woman left outside would put on her bright red dress, and usually a red headscarf too, and hurry to the riverbank. There she would reel of a litany of obscenities into the wind. She did this to attract the attention of the small boys who were usually playing by the river. Once she had their attention, she would let slip the name of her rival and tell them something awful about her. For example, that she played around with other men, that her mother had died of grief because her daughter had not looked after her, or that she had been caught in the market trying to slip a few bananas into her bag without paying. The boys would rush to the village to tell the woman in question what they had heard. Each boy knew it was his duty to do this — and there was reward attached to it too. When the defamed woman had listened to what the boys told her, she would start to complain loudly about the shame being heaped on her. She called on San Marco and his faithful lion to avenge her and gave each of the boys a cassava cake and sometimes a glass of syrup. The boys wolfed down their treats and hurried back to the river, anxious not to miss any of the fireworks to come. The second woman also put on her red dress and went to the river. When she arrived, she crossed the wooden bridge — this was nothing more than a plank with a railing, appropriately known as Me-First-Then-You — and took up her position on the far bank opposite her adversary. It was now her turn to do some insulting. She would claim that the whole village knew her opponent had lost her virginity long before her wedding day, that the priest had refused her communion on Easter Sunday two years previously, or that she had an illegitimate child who was being brought up by relatives in another village. These were mere preliminaries: the real slanging match now got under way. You can’t imagine the things those boys told me! One woman said that her rival had an uncle behind bars in the Castillo, to which the rival replied that the woman had an aunt locked up in a lunatic asylum. Another woman said that her opponent’s trip to Epifanía the previous year had not been to visit her son, but to have her rotting womb removed by a town doctor; in reply, the opponent accused her of having hard, unsightly lumps on her left breast. When it was her turn again, woman number one said that the woman on the opposite bank was frigid in bed, which is why her husband took the bus to Asunción every Saturday evening and did not come back until Sunday afternoon. To which number two retorted that, although she went around playing the grande dame, her husband was impotent, which is why her nerves were always on edge and she was so easily offended. Then they heard how the cousin of number two had been thrown out of the seminary in Crispo because of his filthy behaviour; a fine thing it would have been if that fellow had become a priest! Next, number one was informed that her niece was wandering around with VD at the age of thirteen. Meanwhile, half the population, most of them women and children, had turned out to watch the show. Everyone who came to the river had to take sides. Not surprisingly, relatives and friends of the women eagerly joined in the abuse. At dusk, groups of men came down to the river too, but they took no part in the dispute. They stayed in the background and passed the rum bottle from hand to hand. When darkness fell, the mudslinging began: balls of mud flew back and forth. The children made the projectiles at the water’s edge and took them to the women, who hurled them across the river. Now the boys joined in too. In the darkness most of the mud balls missed their target, but every so often there was a direct hit and a new voice would launch into a new string of obscenities. The boys who told me the story were particularly keen on this mud warfare. One of them said that his own mother had once been a protagonist. “Did I throw some mud that night! I was walking around with a stiff arm for three days!” When it got really late, the performance came to an end. All the women had become hoarse by now and could produce only an incomprehensible rattle. One camp would withdraw, followed a quarter of an hour later by their opponents. But sometimes when it got late, stones and slivers of glass were put in the mud balls, and if one of these nonstandard models hit the mark, the supporters of the injured person would rush across the bridge and there would be a general free-for-all. At this point the men would get involved and the party would end with a knife fight.

It was another day before Sandoval’s cow gave birth. It was one-thirty in the morning when the little farmer came to wake me. “It’s about to happen, but you don’t have to come — you can stay in bed if you like.” I quickly pulled on some trousers and followed him to the maternity ward. He had two oil lamps with him; one he hung on the wall, the other he placed on the ground next to the cow, which lay against the wall, clearly in labour. It would soon be calving, Sandoval said. Time passed, but the contractions still had no effect and the panting cow was becoming exhausted, so that Sandoval concluded that something was wrong. From that moment on he talked nonstop, explaining to me in the minutest detail what he was doing and why. He knelt down by the animal’s hindquarters and, plunging two strong arms into the fleshy mass of its genitalia, pulled the lips apart. He could not see anything. He inserted a clenched fist into the orifice and slid his arm along the warm, slimy tunnel, deeper and deeper, until he could feel the head of the unborn calf. Slowly but powerfully he pushed against the wall of the tunnel with the back of his hand. At first he felt resistance, but then the wall of flesh gave way and his hand slid back over the calf’s head. At that moment Sandoval grunted that he had a terrible pain in his back; his own stupid fault, he said, he shouldn’t have started in a kneeling position, but should have lain full length on the floor before putting his arm in. But there was nothing to be done about it now, and with a great effort he shoved his arm even deeper into the cow. When his hand had found the folded front leg, which was protruding into the wall of the tunnel, he knew he had reached the right spot. Taking great care, so as not to break the fragile bones, he straightened the leg. As soon as the leg was in the correct position he felt the head of the calf slide forward a little way past his arm. He withdrew his arm until his hand was resting behind the head and waited. Then he felt the tunnel begin to contract again and as soon as the movement started, he carefully pulled the calf forward. After two more contractions Sandoval withdrew his arm completely from the cow. Nature would take its own course. It was not long before the animal’s head appeared at the now gaping orifice and was thrust out. A little later the body of the calf slid onto the shed floor.

Relieved of her burden, the cow turned her head and licked Sandoval’s bloody hand. The creature realised its mistake — perhaps it wasn’t a mistake at all, but a token of gratitude? — and began licking the newborn calf clean. The calf dragged itself forward and the mother ran her tongue along its entire body. She then gave it a few prods, which made it slide even further forward; another shove and the calf was up on its feet. It was trembling all over. It slumped down, received another prod, got to its feet once more, but then collapsed again. Finally the calf stood up under its own power, wobbled, took a few uncertain steps backwards and fell against its mother’s belly, its snout searching eagerly for the udder.

Sandoval watched with a smile and wiped his arm clean. Then he knelt down again and lifted a hind leg of the suckling creature with one hand and its tail with the other. Among the still-wet hairs he saw not two but only one orifice. He turned to me and said, happy and proud, “It’s a bull! I’m damned if it isn’t a bull!” I couldn’t understand his enthusiasm. A new cow was more profitable, surely? Then he told me that twenty years earlier his wife had died giving birth to their only child. It was a daughter, who was now married and living in Crispo. And he confessed that he had always wanted a son. “Tonight my son was born!” he shouted, and burst out laughing.

Returning home on the train was less interesting and took longer than the outward journey. All was quiet once more in our town. A new alcalde had been appointed, a few troublemakers were in prison and the workers from the burnt-out factory were out of a job. Apart from that, everything was back to normal. Even the schools were open again. At home too, everything continued as before. Whenever I wanted a glass of water and opened the door of the fridge to get it, I saw a silver mug inside containing my uncle’s spare dentures.

About six months earlier my uncle had come home one evening with his upper lip strangely caved in. He told us that for the first time in his life he had been to see a dentist, who was now in the process of extracting all the teeth from his upper jaw. He was to be fitted with a complete set of top dentures. I could hardly stop myself laughing at the strange hissing noise he made when he spoke. Sensibly, he had ordered two identical sets. “These things can break at any moment and then you’re stuck. I can’t keep interrupting my work to go to the dentist for new dentures. So I’m having two sets made at the same time.” When he got his dentures, he put the spare set at the back of the fridge to protect them from dust and germs. This fridge was a wooden contraption lined with sheets of aluminium. Every day two large blocks of ice were placed on a grille and the space beneath was filled with bottles of water, meat and other food that needed to be kept cool. Although the false teeth were not visible when you opened the door, you could see the mug. I often slammed the fridge shut without drinking a thing.

Two months after our stay on Sandoval’s farm my uncle’s wife died. He came home earlier than usual, and I realised at once that something was wrong, because he did not take off his hat until he got to the middle of the room and then wiped his neck and brow with a handkerchief and placed the hat on a chair. His unvarying nightly routine was to take his hat off as he came through the front door, hang it on the top peg of the coat rack just inside, and only then wipe his neck and brow. My uncle quickly realised he had departed from his usual routine, so he went back to the chair, picked up the hat and hung it on the peg. Then he wiped his forehead and neck a second time.

He sat down on the big sofa and motioned me to sit next to him. He put his arm round my shoulders and asked if I had heard about the train crash that afternoon near Crispo. No, I knew nothing about it. Then he said softly, “A terrible disaster. Twenty-nine people were killed. Your aunt was one of the victims.” At first I didn’t understand what he meant. Had a sister of my father or mother come to the mainland and been killed in the train crash? He saw my confusion and said even more softly, “My wife, my dear wife has departed this life.”

When I heard this, I cried and expected him to do the same. But he hugged me and said in an almost accusing tone, “It is God’s will. We must be strong at a time like this. He knows what He’s doing, even when we can’t fathom His mystery.” At that moment I conceived a great dislike of the man who was hugging me. How could anyone talk so coolly when his own wife had died a terrible death a few hours before?

After the death of his wife, while I was waiting for a ship back to my island, I had to sleep in my uncle’s room, although I could not see why this was necessary. My narrow bed was placed in a corner of the huge room. It was a cheerless place with spotless linoleum on the floor, containing my uncle’s enormous bed with a tall chair at its foot, a washbasin with strange curled legs and a solid mahogany wardrobe with a brass keyhole plate. On the white walls hung two paintings, one a portrait of some nineteenth-century preacher who had been killed and probably eaten by an Indian tribe — he served as a model to my uncle — and the other a depiction of the Last Supper, or as my uncle called it, “Our Lord’s Holy Supper.” Many homes have a Last Supper hanging in the dining room, but here it was in the bedroom, right at the foot of my bed, so that I was forced to gaze at it every evening. On the print I could identify only Jesus and Judas — Iscariot, as my uncle called him — but he could name all thirteen figures from right to left. I’ve never understood how my uncle could be so sure who was who. I preferred the preacher in the other picture, with his flabby face, shifty stare and silly hat.

When my uncle came to bed, he always opened the door of the bedroom carefully, shuffled in and put the light on. I would wake with a start and he would say in surprise, “What, aren’t you asleep yet? Boys need lots of sleep if they’re to grow up healthy.” Then he would take his neatly folded pyjamas from the foot of the bed, draping first the trousers and then the jacket over his left arm, and shuffle out of the room again. It was ten minutes or so before he reappeared, now in his pyjamas, with the jacket buttoned right up to his Adam’s apple. “What, are you still not asleep, my boy?” He smoothed out the clothes he had just taken off and hung them over the chair by his bed. Next, he ran his fingertips over his veined temples and pressed his eyelids with his forefingers. Then he climbed into bed and lay flat on his back in the very middle. Not long after I heard his heavy breathing, punctuated by horrid rasping sounds. As a child I firmly believed that all good Christians slept straight as a die in the middle of the bed and that all of them snored.

Six weeks later I was on a ship taking me home. I felt rather seasick during the twelve-hour journey, though this had never happened on my previous crossings. Dizzy and slightly nauseous, I sat on the stiff canvas seat of a deck chair. Then I heard the sound of wings. A large, grubby-white bird fluttered along and perched on the deck rail. Its belly and feet were covered in oil. It had a long beak with a pocket attached and looked as old as the world. Only its eyes glittered as it gazed at me with curiosity. As I in turn studied the bird closely, it suddenly dawned on me what I had learned from the thin prisoner in the Castillo: he had shown me without words how to look at birds and plants differently, to see details that most people miss. And despite the unpleasant taste of vomit in my mouth I was overcome by a faint sense of elation and gratitude. I drew up my knees and arched my back against the canvas, then stuck my thumb in my mouth and sucked it like a little child until I fell asleep.