This list of beings that he should fear would never have occurred to Simonopio, but if the room was blessed every night, that was enough to reassure him. He was not afraid of them. What continued to terrify him was falling and—asleep—never finding his way to the floor. Falling and falling without end and never waking up. And he did not believe any blessing would protect him from that. But Nana Pola was right: he was a big enough boy now to understand that, though he needed his nana’s protection at night, she was too old to give it to him without certain consequences. He had to be brave.
He was brave and he was inventive, so finding himself denied the protection of his nana’s body, he dragged a chair to the edge of his bed. It was not the complete enclosure that his crib had offered, but the high backrest served the purpose of tricking his sleepy eyes in the darkness. It took him several more weeks to achieve peaceful sleep once more, but he never bothered Nana Reja again. One day he forgot to push the chair against his bed when it was time to sleep, and gradually he forgot the fear that had prevented him from resting properly. And in time he completely forgot that he had once needed to have Nana Reja near him in order to sleep.
Nevertheless, on the day when Beatriz let go of his hand to run off ahead of Martín, the bird of ill omen, Simonopio had stopped there, alone, rooted to the spot in the middle of the path. He was not afraid for his godfather Francisco’s health: he knew that something had happened to upset him and nothing more. Frozen there, Simonopio was afraid that he was falling, falling without end, that he would never find the ground. Because of his recklessness—because he had gone where he should not have gone—he was sure that he had set in motion his story with the coyote, and he did not know what to do to remedy it.
Because sitting on his rock behind the bush, while he waited patiently for his godmother to finish her visit, he had heard a noise that alerted him just in time to turn around and see the man approaching fast with a stick, ready to strike him. He managed to avoid the first blow by reacting nimbly, but he knew he would not be able to dodge it forever: he could read in Espiricueta’s eyes that he would not stop until he had killed him.
Only Beatriz’s scream stopped the man—just. She approached, furious, armed only with a ragdoll. Simonopio recognized it as the doll his godmother had made for the Espiricueta girl, the one with the silent eyes. She reached them with the look and sense of purpose of a bee defending its swarm. Simonopio was glad to have her by his side.
“Whatever is the matter with you? How dare you?”
Halting the blow did not mean that Espiricueta had contained his rage or put down his stick. Beatriz stood between Simonopio and his attacker.
“What I wanna know,” Espiricueta snapped back, “is what this possessed wretch is doing at my house. How many times’s he been here to bring us bad luck?”
“Why would you think he would do that?”
“My wife died on me. Then my children.”
“And that’s why I came: to offer my condolences,” said Beatriz, trying to calm herself and rediscover the pity she had felt for this man who had lost so much.
“What good will they do me? Go give ’em to someone who has a use for ’em. Far as I’m concerned, this one killed my family. I don’t want no condolences or pity. I want the last two kids he left alive to live. I want the ones he took given back, like that fella what came back from the grave.”
“Anselmo. I understand your grief and your desperation, but how can you think that Simonopio is to blame in any way? It was a disease that attacked the entire world!”
“I told you nothin’ but misery’d befall us. My field’s never borne what the others have since he arrived, and then my family dies on me like no one else’s does. Why only me?”
“A great many people died, Anselmo. All over the world.”
“That might be, but no one died on you.”
“Aunts, relatives, friends. And your family, Anselmo.”
“No one.”
They were not going to get anywhere like this, so Beatriz changed the subject and adjusted her tone to a more conciliatory one.
“Well, I brought you some things for your little girl. If she needs anything else, let us know. If you want, we can enroll her at school so—”
“No. All they do there is teach ’em to be servants, and she won’t be nobody’s servant. Know what I need? I need you to take your charity to someone who wants it. There ain’t nothing we want from you. Or do you think a doll’s going to bring my girl’s mama back? Take your boy and tell him to never set foot on my land again, ’cause next time, I’ll kill him.”
The threat made Beatriz hold her breath and lose the color in her face. She let out the air little by little. Simonopio noticed that the hand that still held his wrist was trembling, but her voice was firm.
“And I warn you that if you go anywhere near him, things will go very badly for you. You’d better not so much as look at him. Is that clear? And let me tell you one thing: this land is not and never will be yours.”
Beatriz did not wait for a reply. She seized Simonopio by the forearm and sped off with him without looking back. She gripped him in one hand, feeling him take to the air behind her like the ragdoll that she still held in her other. Her breathing had not returned to normal, and Simonopio thought that not even Espiricueta would dare challenge her when such bravery and such fury was expressed in her face. As the path widened, Beatriz remembered the doll she had devoted so much time to making, thinking of Margarita Espiricueta. Without a second thought, she cast it into the undergrowth so that it would slowly rot, like any of the scarce plants and animals that inhabited that barren land. Then she found a strong stick with which to replace it in her empty hand.
“Don’t worry, Simonopio. Everything’s fine. He would never dare,” she repeated to him every so often to reassure him, albeit without slowing down and without letting go of the stick.
They encountered no danger on the path—just Martín with his news of Francisco Morales’s supposed fit. And there Simonopio remained, frozen to the spot in the middle of the icy wilds, with no godmother or bees, his only company a discarded piece of wood that he knew would be useless should he have to defend himself in the story that, he was certain, had begun that day.
He could not regain his breath, and it was not from the effort of their trek but from fear.
No. His story would not end in a stick fight, nor would it end that day; of that much he was sure. But he still did not know when, which was why he was terrified: he felt as if he were falling endlessly, awake but with no control, unable to find his balance again on the firm ground of certainty. Then he remembered the warmth of his nana protecting him from the void, and he ran to find her.
26
This Land Is Not and Never Will Be
yours. Never. Not. Yours. Not yours.
Anselmo’s chance to thrash the little demon had been brusquely interrupted by the hag. But what could he do? Ignore the boss’s wife? Kill the boy in front of her? He would have liked to, but he was not stupid. Because then what?
So he had contained himself—though he had not stopped wanting to do it—but stood his ground to defend his territory until the woman left with her demon.
Still blinded by rage, it was some time before he remembered that he was still holding his arm aloft and gripping a stick in his hand, but when he saw his daughter come out of the house, looking for her absent benefactor with a sparkle in her eyes that he had never seen before, perhaps from the excitement of putting on the new skirt and blouse the Morales woman had given her, he felt the weight of the cane again and the rough texture of the thin edge that dug into his callused hands.