Pig's Foot (21 page)

‘Can I help you with something?’ asked Epifanio Vilo.

‘Go fetch Juanita the wise-woman and tell her to come here straight away,’ said José. ‘Run.’

‘It sounds to me like someone possessed. José, wouldn’t it be better to send for a
babalao
or a
santero
?’

‘No, Juanita will know what to do.’

When Juanita and Epifanio arrived back at Ester’s house, they found the whole neighbourhood gathered, faces gaunt with fear. José was cradling Ester in his arms in one corner of the room; she was naked, sobbing and shaking with fear. The house was in ruins, the walls stained with excrement. Juanita quickly analysed the situation and with a wave she signalled to José to lay Ester on the bed. A moment later, Melecio arrived carrying the cake he had just made. He set it down on the table, the only piece of furniture that had remained intact, and rushed to help carry the stout body of Ester, who was writhing and wailing as though a piranha were devouring her insides.

‘My God, what’s wrong with Ester? What happened?’ said Silvia Santacruz, standing in the doorway shaking her head. Without a word, Juanita checked Ester’s pupils, took her pulse and began to prepare a herbal remedy.

‘This will make her sleep,’ she said.

José opened Ester’s mouth to make her drink the dark, foul-smelling brew. The midwife’s body convulsed, but a moment later her eyes misted over and she fell back on the bed.

‘She’s sleeping now,’ said Juanita, examining the deep scars crisscrossing Ester’s fat body. ‘Whoever did this thing is a beast,’ she muttered, shaking her head.

‘What made those scars?’ asked José.

Juanita did not look up. Still shaking her head, she pulled a sheet up to cover Ester’s body.

‘They are whip marks. This woman has spent her life lashing herself for failing to keep her promises, or someone else has been torturing her.’

Ester slept for several hours. At about two in the afternoon, she woke up and could remember nothing except that she had heard Benicio say he was going down to the river and she talked about a dream she had had the night before. Having considered the matter for a few moments, she changed her mind: what she thought had been a dream was not a dream at all, she said, she deserved to die.

‘What are these marks?’ asked José.

‘It’s a long story.’

‘We have all the time in the world,’ said José. ‘This is Pata de Puerco, the one place in creation where time stands still.’

The neighbours settled themselves and Ester began to tell the tale of Oscar’s mother and the Santisteban sugar plantation.

‘Yes, Ester, but we already know all that.’

‘Do you want me to tell you what happened?’

‘No,’ said José. ‘We want you to tell us everything.’

‘Everything?’

‘Everything.’

The midwife asked if someone could fetch her some water. She drank it. She settled herself back against a cushion, tilted her head to one side as a dog might. She took a deep breath that seemed to suck all of the air out of the shack. Finally, she said, ‘All right, José. All right. I’ll tell you everything.’

Ester's Confession

‘I was a girl, barely sixteen, when I met Mangaleno – El Mozambique as you call him. My parents had died. Both of them had been killed in the war. I had no one in the whole world, all I had were my hope and my innocence. In the hills of Mayarí where I lived, solitude is something that weighs heavily, time crawls. I could not bear the thought of living the life my parents had, a life of grief and pain. Of course, back then I did not know that pain is inherited, that parents hand it on to their children like a suit of clothes that no longer fits. So I did everything I could to block out the pain I had inherited and kept my head above water. From an early age, I learned to take care of a house. I was preparing for the day when the man of my life would appear. I spent a lot of time practising kissing banana trees. I would make a little hole in the trunk and slip my tongue inside; I didn't care that the sap from the trees used to leave my lips and my tongue red raw, like the skin of a dog with mange. I was careful not to let my hands become calloused so that my caresses would be soft as cotton. I did all this and much more waiting for the day when my man would knock at the door and take me away from that godforsaken place.

‘And then one day a man did knock at the door. Hatred was ingrained in his very pores and his body struck fear in me. He asked for a glass of water. He asked if I lived alone. Alone, I said. He smiled and thanked me and went on his way. The next day, he came back and asked for a glass of water. This time he talked to me about horses. He told me they were useful beasts. Those were his words. I found it curious, him talking about horses that way, but I said nothing. Then he said I had a beautiful body and asked if anyone had ever told me that before. I told him no.

‘“Well it's true, you have a beautiful body.”

‘Then he thanked me and went on his way. So it carried on for a long time. He would always arrive early with a sprig of flowers and he would flatter my body. There came a time, having spent days listening to his compliments, when I began to miss him. Out of caresses tenderness is born, as they say in these parts, and I learned that this is true. I began to miss his company, his manner filled with mystery and silence. One morning I woke up and I felt something in me was lacking. It was then I knew I had fallen in love, that I wanted to do with Mangaleno what I had been practising on the banana trees. But Mangaleno never laid a finger on me. Still he came and asked for water, flattered my breasts, my complexion, even my hair which is the ugliest thing I got from my parents.

‘The waiting seemed to go on for ever. Every night, I dreamed about what my first time would be like. I dreamed of Mangaleno laying me on a bed, gently caressing my body and then tenderly making love to me. I wept with pleasure at the thought of what was to come. But when it finally happened I wept with anger and with pain. One afternoon, Mangaleno knocked on the door. When I opened it, he punched me twice leaving me dazed. He picked me up and slammed me against the wall. No caresses, no tenderness. He made me bleed. He made me weep. Then he tossed me on the ground and left.

‘He appeared at three o'clock the next morning to apologise. He brought me a sprig of flowers. He told me he had had a bad day and had needed to vent his rage on someone. I could not utter a word. My face was swollen where he had beaten me. He asked me if I liked meat. He had a cart with him piled high with sacks filled with metal tools, and several dogs that looked savage. I had forgotten what meat tasted like, it had been so long since I had eaten it. So we walked down to the river, taking the opposite direction from El Cobre, then he took a little path over a hill dotted with royal palms and came to a weir. We hid the cart among some shrubs and waited. The night was black as a wol
f
's maw. There were no stars, no moon, no crickets chirruping, nothing but the dew and the muggy air of dawn.

‘Fifteen minutes later, a traveller arrived. The weir was right next to the road that runs between Baracoa and Santiago. Usually, travellers on their way to Santiago would stop and drink a little water before continuing their journey.

‘“Champion, Lion, you know what you have to do,” Mangaleno whispered to his dogs. There were more than eight of them, all with vicious faces and sharp teeth. He let them off their leash. The dogs crept up silently so as not to frighten the horse and when they were within fifteen feet of the man, they bounded towards him. The man had no time to draw his machete. All he could do was leap into the water and swim as far away as possible from the vicious beasts threatening to eat him alive. Meanwhile, Mangaleno unsheathed his sharply pointed machete.

‘“Stay here and leave me to work,” he said to me and then crept carefully over to the horse. He grabbed the reins, stroked its mane three times and then slit its throat from ear to ear with the machete. The horse kicked and whinny in pain. It tried to run, but Mangaleno had a tight grip on the reins and went on sawing at the animal's jugular until finally the poor beast, resigned to its fate, collapsed on the bank by the reservoir which by now was a thick pool of blood flecked here and there with gobbets of flesh. I stood, staring at what was happening, my hand clapped over my mouth, cringing in disgust as Mangaleno hacked away, squirming as the poor horse whinnied in pain. All this Mangaleno did with an indifference that did not smack of pride but of a feeling of superiority.

‘But worst of all, I had fallen in love with him and he knew it. You all know that when it comes to the whims of love there is nothing to be done and so I learned to endure in the hope that he might one day change and become a good man. I knew that life had not been kind to him and that, like me, he carried with him the pain he had inherited, though more, perhaps much more than me. Every afternoon he would come to eat the food I prepared for him. We sat at the table and ate in silence. He did not like to talk. He had spent so many years in silence. On the rare occasions when he spoke to me it was to ask for water or food, but never again did he tell me I had a beautiful body.

‘One morning, I threw up. I felt nauseous and depressed. But in spite of everything, I was happy for though I had no experience of such things, I knew that I was pregnant. That afternoon I waited for Mangaleno, as usual, to give him the news. When he arrived, I told him. That was the first time he whipped me. He grabbed an old whip he always carried and flayed my back red raw. He had me writhing on the floor in pain. I screamed and screamed, but pity was something alien to Mangaleno. He went on whipping until he was unable and I was unconscious. That same night the baby came. It was the most terrible day of my life. I huddled alone in a corner, cradling that bloody bundle, rocking it as though it had eyes, as though it had a mouth, as though it had life. It was the most terrible day of my life but there would be more, many more. More beatings, more miscarriages, more misery and pain.

‘Then he told me I had to come with him to a place called Pata de Puerco where his brother lived, the man he most despised in all the world. He told me he had a score to settle with him. He did not ask me, did not give me time to think, to make up my mind. He tossed my clothes into a cart and dragged me like a dog on a leash until we arrived here. Back then, no one lived in the village. José and Oscar had just started building their shacks. The solitude was such that for a while I felt as though I were living in a jungle full of natives wearing loincloths. Full of wild beasts the like of which I had never seen. A place too beautiful to be believed, but after a while I saw other people come with their carts and their carriages, then more and more until Pata de Puerco was no longer a jungle peopled by natives but the thriving village it is today.

‘Mangaleno's plan was simple. He wanted to fashion a sackcloth of dust and ashes for his brother Oscar, meaning he wanted to cause him suffering that would stay with him for ever. These, then were Mangaleno's talents: he caused unending pain, just as he had done to me. One afternoon I asked what his brother had done to deserve such suffering. He first told me that his brother had taken from him the only love he had ever known, his mother's love; then he split my lip and whipped me again. In that moment I understood that, though slavery might have ended, it had not ended for me. The worst thing was that I could find no way to break free of him. I was still in love, I tried to justify his actions. I told myself he was to be pitied, that he had never had anyone, hoping against hope that one day I might see in his face something of the good in him. But there was no good in him. Yet still I was in love, as though someone had put a curse upon my heart, and I don't know why, but that somehow made it worse.

‘It was he who hacked the leg off the mare you bought with Oscar, José. He also cut the leg off Evaristo's mare that time he followed you to El Cobre. And still he was not satisfied. One afternoon he turned up here smiling and told me he had raped Malena, that he had finally settled his score with his brother Oscar. That day we celebrated, feasting on horsemeat, drinking rice wine. He ended up delirious with joy, and I delirious with jealousy of Malena. How could I not? The jealousy grew in me when I discovered that Malena was carrying in her belly something that belonged, of old, to me. That child should have been mine. After my years of suffering, I deserved it. That's why when Mangaleno asked me to poison her, I did not hesitate; I said yes.

‘The day she went into labour, I sent Oscar to get water from the well. While he was gone, I had Malena drink the potion of cassava poison I had prepared. She looked at me with those big eyes as though she sensed what it was I had just done. Oscar did not notice anything amiss. Everything was normal by the time he got back. But a few minutes later, Malena was dead and Oscar fell on his knees. He threw me out of the house telling me that he would take care of everything. Fifteen minutes later the floor of the shack was a sea of blood and Oscar and Malena lay dead just as his brother Mangaleno had planned.

‘Even then, it was not enough. His hatred was like a sickness that would not stop until it had consumed everything. He had avenged himself, but it was not enough. The Festivals of Birth brought joy and happiness to everyone but to an embittered man that was unbearable. Mangaleno came up with another plan. God knows I fought with every fibre of my being when he asked me to poison Evaristo. A thousand times I refused, but the beatings were too much and I had no choice but to send the kite-maker to heaven. That's why I must die, why I deserve to die. I realised that, having spent so long with him, I too have become an animal; it is as though Mangaleno has passed his evil to me. A person is known by the company he keeps; no proverb was ever truer. My only hope is that, having heard all this, you will have the decency to kill me, so that once and for all I may be rid of these sins that will not let me sleep. I cannot bear to hear Malena's voice again telling me avenging past wrongs brings only present suffering. I cannot bear to hear her voice again. I cannot go on with the lying, the beatings; let Satan take me now so that I may finally be free.'