Pig's Foot (16 page)

That night neither of them could sleep. Neither dared to move a muscle. Benicio remembered what José had said and the words drummed inside his head but, weighing the betrayal of his father’s trust against what he felt for Geru, he came to the conclusion that his love for his sister was stronger than what he felt for José.

‘This is unbearable,’ he thought. He loved Geru more than he loved José and Betina who had raised him, given him a home. He spent the next week swimming against the tide of his conflicting feelings, feeling bitter at life when he thought of his incongruous situation. He tried to distance himself from his sister as much as possible, he moved out of the bedroom and began sleeping in Melecio’s room; whenever he saw Geru coming he ran the other way; he even tried seeing Jacinta again, to make up for lost time, but none of these things worked: still the love lingered like a threat within his breast.

José and Betina were asleep the night that Geru came to him with tears in her eyes and confessed: ‘I’ve been feeling different about you, Benicio. I don’t know how to explain it.’ Benicio looked up into her face but he could not think what to say. He did not have the courage to tell her he felt the same, that the feeling slowly eating him up inside was not the ordinary love between brother and sister.

It began to rain. Still Geru stared into Benicio’s eyes then, bowing her head, she left the shack and headed for the flame tree, soaking her thin cotton dress. Benicio watched as her slim figure melted into the rain, as the dress clung to her skin, emphasising the curve of her breasts, the beauty of her exquisite body. Like a sleepwalker, he followed her. He watched as rain lashed her face, washing away her tears of frustration. Stepping beneath the branches of the flame tree, they sought the warmth and shelter of the trunk. Geru and Benicio kneeled down. He took her in his arms, felt her warm breath against his throat.

‘We are no longer brother and sister now,’ said Geru.

‘Why do you say that?’

‘Because I want you to do with me as you will.’

His dreams were soaked by the rain. Geru pulled him to her nervously, opening the doors to his imprisoned desires. They rolled on the ground, heedless of the flame tree’s roots which tore at their skin until they bled. Their screams were howls of freedom, of pain and pleasure. Benicio, who did not know what he was doing, let his intuition guide him, kissing Geru’s body, pressing her to his chest as though she might pierce his ribcage and remain inside him for ever, and he went on hugging her to him until orgasm came, hard and shuddering like a white-hot explosion. They tried to lie still, to recover from the pain, the frustration, the breathlessness of enchantment and pleasure, but it was impossible; their bodies continued to spasm as though they had a will of their own.

‘Who’s there?’ said a gruff voice, booming like a thunderclap against the tree sheltering them. They knew the voice. ‘What’s all that screaming? Whoever you are, come out of there!’ It was pointless to run; they would be recognised. Their hearts began to pound once more and Benicio, seeing the terror in Geru’s eyes, stepped out from the shade of the flame tree and faced the man. ‘It’s me, Papá José,’ he said standing in the moonlit clearing. ‘Benicio. What was all that howling? You sounded like an animal.’ Benicio watched as José’s face grew harder, his brows knotting into an expression of concern. ‘What . . . what are you doing out here naked?’ Silence. ‘I don’t believe it. So you finally managed to conquer Jacinta?’

Geru emerged from beneath the tree, her shoulders bare, her clothes clasped over her breasts. Her face wet, she stared shamefully at the ground. For the first time in his life, José did not know what to say. He stood, paralysed, staring at them as though they were ghosts, as though they were two phantoms returning to the forest from the river. There was not a single star in the sky although the night was cloudless: he could see every detail, every contour of even the smallest thing as though some angel had gifted him with night vision.

José said nothing. He did not howl with rage, nor did he beat them with the walking stick he had whittled from a ceiba branch. He tormented them with his silence, with the look of pained disbelief in eyes that flashed in the moonlight. Then he turned his back on them and, shoulders stooped, he hobbled away, drained of his customary vitality. Around him reigned an utter stillness, an emptiness.

When Benicio and Gertrudis arrived back at the house, José was sitting in his chair, and there he sat until the morning. He did not look at them now. His eyes were cast down. Betina did it for him, her glassy stare stabbing at her children’s eyes. There was no place for Geru and Benicio in this room. Shamefaced, they retreated to their bedroom, Benicio hugging to him a sobbing, half-naked Geru, who buried her face in his chest as in some dark refuge.

The following morning they found José where they had left him, his mouth twisted to one side, his eyes filled with tears and clotted with sleep. Betina was hunkered on the floor next to him, her hair wild as though she had just escaped from an asylum. ‘He’s paralysed all down the right side of his body,’ was the diagnosis of Juanita the
santera
. ‘But don’t worry, he’ll recover quickly.’

Betina and Juanita took José by the shoulders and managed to lift him out of the chair. When Benicio tried to help, José jerked at his arm and mumbled something unintelligible.

‘
Owww
. . . Oww of my hhhouse.’

Grandfather took a step back. He looked at Geru. They both stood, frozen. The silence was agonising and seemed to go on for ever. Grandfather could not bear it. ‘To hell with it, I’ll go then. After all, it’s not as though you are my real parents.’

Tears streamed down Betina’s face. José’s shoulders began to pump like pistons and the good side of his face shrank a little more, then he gave a curt wave of his hand to signal to Benicio to leave. Grandfather took some things from his room and left the house. Geru followed him.

‘You know that what you just said will make them miserable for the rest of their lives,’ she said, remaining a little distant.

‘It will make me miserable too,’ said Grandfather.

Once again there was silence, broken this time by a northerly breeze.

‘I don’t know if this will help, but I will say it anyway. I once knew a boy who saved a young ram that had been bitten by a dog. The poor animal was lying in the road and whimpering with fear. The boy picked it up and brought it home. He fed the ram until it could walk again. A lot of people would have raised it, fattened it up so they could kill and eat it. But this boy took it out into the Accursed Forest and, halfway up the hill, he set it free.’

‘That was me,’ said Benicio.

‘Exactly. That was you. The real Benicio.’

And then they embraced. It was only in these moments of profound remorse that the good in Benicio resurfaced. But by then it was invariably too late.

‘Think about that,’ said Gertrudis again.

Benicio kissed her passionately then set off down the path towards the Callejón de la Rosa heading nowhere. Geru stood for a while longer, watching as he slowly melted into the verdant sea of plants and trees.

Mangaleno

On the Callejón de la Rosa, Benicio encountered Ester the midwife who looked as though she had been waiting for him for some time. She was wearing the same clothes as when Grandfather had first met her outside Chinaman Li’s store. In a faltering voice she begged him to go with her to her house, insisting that he had to come right now. Having nowhere to go, Grandfather agreed and followed the midwife back down Callejón de la Rosa in the opposite direction to El Cobre.

They went into her house. Ester gestured for him to sit down on one of the four makeshift wooden chairs set around the table. The room was dark but this was partly because the day was overcast. There were two east-facing windows in front of which stood a table covered by a sun-scorched red tablecloth and a kerosene lamp. There were two more windows facing directly west. The bleached tablecloth was proof that Ester opened these windows every morning and her room was scourged by the sun from the moment it rose until the moment it set. This idea made Benicio think that, contrary to village gossip, Ester was a cheerful woman after all, or had been at some point in her life.

Ester reappeared with a can of guava juice, handed it to Benicio and then anxiously sat next to him, staring at him intently.

‘You’re the spitting image of him,’ she said, with a look that was more sad than surprised.

‘Of who?’

‘Of your father.’

‘You know my father?’

‘Of course. These hands . . .’ Ester held out her calloused hands in the lamplight. ‘These hands were the first that ever held you.’

‘If you were there when I was born, then you must have seen my parents die.’ At this, Ester felt a lump in her throat, a lump that twisted her words, forcing her to swallow hard. ‘My family would never tell me what happened. Papá José used to talk to me about his friend Oscar, but he never talked to me about Oscar being my father. They told me my mother’s name was Malena and that she died giving birth to me. Were you there when my father killed himsel
f
?’

The midwife hesitated a moment.

‘No, but I know what happened.’

‘What did happen?’

‘He cut his wrists.’

‘Cut his wrists! That’s a coward’s way out.’

‘Not everyone has the courage to go on living.’

They sat in silence for a moment. Grandfather did not want to keep digging up the past, he wanted to bury it. Now that José and Betina had thrown him out of the house, he felt as though he too were buried. It was perhaps the only thing he shared with his real parents.

‘I had a premonition it would happen,’ Ester went on, ‘I knew it would happen sooner or later. I wanted to tell you that you are not alone.’

‘What do you mean I’m not alone?’

‘I mean you’ve got us.’

‘And who exactly is “us”?’

‘El Mozambique and me.’

Grandfather burst out laughing and got to his feet.

‘Don’t make me laugh, Ester. El Mozambique? The most hated man in these parts? I still haven’t forgotten how he tried to rob my amulet. That man has never cared for anyone in his life.’

‘You’re wrong. Nobody knows him as I know him. Believe me when I say that you and he have a lot more in common than you might think. Starting with the fact that you’re both utterly alone.’

‘I’m not alone. I have Geru.’

‘You have Geru, that’s true. But absence makes the heart grow cold. You’ll see how things change, now you’ve been thrown out of the house. At first, you’ll see each other every other day. Then days will turn into weeks until lack of physical contact chills your bodies and one day, when you least expect it, you’ll find yourself no longer caring and in time forgetting. Give El Mozambique a chance, everyone deserves that. Besides, I know he likes you because you are the only person he has ever allowed into his house. The only one. That’s why I think there’s still a chance.’

‘A chance?’

‘To save you both.’

‘Listen, Ester, I’m not going to waste my time on El Mozambique. You said I was the spitting image of my father, so I assumed what you had to say to me was about him. So, are you going to tell me the story or not?’

‘When he was ten years old,’ Ester began, ‘Oscar was sold to the owner of a large plantation named Giacomo Benvenuto. In 1868 war broke out. Oscar and José joined the
mambí
army under the command of General Antonio Maceo and, a few years later, they met Malena and her sister Betina. They pledged undying love beneath an avocado tree and, as time passed, Geru, Melecio and you were born.’

‘I know all that, Ester.’

‘Do you want me to tell you how . . .’

‘No, I want you to tell me everything.’

‘Everything?’

‘Everything.’

The midwife took a deep breath, so deep that for a moment she seemed to suck all of the oxygen from the room.

‘Very well, Benicio, I shall tell you everything. Macuta Dos, Oscar’s mother, was as short as he was. She had two older brothers. Their parents had long since passed away long ago and had to be buried together because they were both found dead one morning with their arms so entwined around each other no one could prise them apart. When she was a little girl, Macuta Dos was convinced that the edge of the earth was somewhere on the outskirts of Pata de Puerco, that beyond the bounds of the slave quarters there was nothing but shadows and forests of flame. The idea had come to her in a dream she had while afflicted by a strange rash that almost killed her. Her dreams began with this mysterious disease which some people blamed on the urine of a large yellow hutia that appeared one day in the slave quarters and was never seen again. Others claimed it was the result of some magic by the Efik people with their ganga drums or the machinations of the Mayombe tribes, because it was not just Macuta Dos, but a dozen other slaves who fell ill, all of whom were immediately placed in quarantine to be cured of the rash, the itch and the fever brought on by the disease.

‘In her fever dreams, Macuta Dos saw the past and the future, and sometimes she saw secrets and mysteries entangled in the trees of Pata de Puerco. One of those who appeared to her in these dreams was a
wije
– a spirit – named Bonifacio who wore a loincloth and claimed to be her guardian angel. No taller than a gnome, with frizzy hair and gleaming teeth, the
wije
Bonifacio knew everything: he revealed to her the precise day on which her brothers – who since the age of ten had been her only relatives – would die, and everything about the slave revolt which would bring about ruin on the Santisteban sugar plantation. He told her that she had something evil in her belly, that she would never know the love of a man and that her life would be empty and meaningless. All this Macuta Dos learned, just as she learned that she would live to see all those she loved perish and that before she got to heaven she would endure hell.