The years were slipping away from Espiricueta, but they were for her, too, and fast. If he did not hurry, she would no longer be of any use to him. He wanted land and wanted a wife to fill it with children. He was growing tired of waiting for them to give him the land and for the woman to start seeing him as a man and not as a shadow she came across once in a while.
So that night, he had been bold enough, for the first time, to ask her to dance, even though he did not know the steps of the schottische that she liked so much.
With effort, she had looked around when she heard his voice to see him standing there, in front of her. But she did not look him in the eyes, or register his slightly imploring tone, or seem to care about the humiliation to which she subjected him when she replied that she did not want to dance, before quickly looking back at the object of her attention.
With that uncaring little roll of her eyes, she had made him feel insignificant. She had managed to remind him that he had nothing: no land, no wife, and no possibility of obtaining either by fair means.
Some of his friends, the more docile ones, all of them laden with children, had already obtained their plots: with so much pressure to give up their good land, the owners had yielded, but not the decent fields; instead they handed over some in Hualahuises, with less water and of lower quality.
Now those friends had their poor land. They had made do with whatever they were given.
But Anselmo Espiricueta would not be content with any old handout. He kept it to himself, but he was reaching the end of his patience waiting for his land, which was gradually, steadily being taken over by orange trees and flowers. It was a war against time that he seemed to be losing. Anselmo knew what the land he trod every day was worth. It was his; he worked it and deserved it. Just as he deserved the woman, for desiring her so much and for so long, for too long.
That day, his patience with the woman reached its end, and as was now his habit, he followed Lupita along the dark tracks to La Amistad.
44
They Happen in the Depths of Sleep
Simonopio woke with a start. It was not dawn yet, but a terrible feeling of falling endlessly had shaken him from the depths of sleep, which was where he most feared going each night. He knew that bad things happened when one—when he—allowed himself to fall so far asleep. Bad things that he could not then see in the instant of the first warning, when his eyes suddenly opened, with no gradual process of waking.
His heart gave a sudden leap, seized with fear. Francisco Junior? No. He breathed deeply, relieved. Francisco had gone to stay at his cousins’ house. He was safe. Simonopio knew it. Perhaps that was why he had relaxed that night, feeling unburdened of his ever-present worry for the boy.
Then what had it been? What had woken him?
He was no longer a child. He was sixteen but remained as afraid of falling into the void as he had been as a youngster huddling near his nana’s warmth. He no longer had anyone to seek refuge with, for he could not allow himself. Little by little, training himself on the nights he spent out in the elements faraway, as he searched for his bees’ treasure, he had acquired the ability to stop himself falling, to avoid passing a certain point while he slept.
And he almost always managed it.
Some years ago, he had decided that his fear of falling into deep sleep was not unfounded, for it came from the certainty that something would happen when he was absent from his conscious mind, with his mind’s eye asleep and disabled, vulnerable, and therefore abandoning the world around him, the world that he cared about, to its fate. He had always sensed, from a very young age, that nothing stops when the lights go out, when the eyes are closed, and one sleeps deeply. Nothing stops: what must happen will happen, without the slightest consideration and without warning. Without waiting for the first light of the morning, without a witness, without a guardian, because the guardian abandoned it all, seized by sleep.
However disciplined, however determined, Simonopio sometimes failed and slept, traveling to the place where everything was forgotten, even his senses. Sometimes—most of the time—nothing happened, and Simonopio would wake up grateful that he did not need to feel guilt or remorse for his carelessness. Most nights nothing happened. But there were other times.
Much like this new day, still wavering between the darkness of night and the first light.
Simonopio hated knowing that he did not know everything. In these circumstances especially, he hated the fact that, after the shock of being brusquely woken from deep sleep, his mind did not connect with the world’s energy as easily as it normally would.
His only certainty: something had happened. But what?
He climbed out of bed in the dark. He wet his face with the cold water from the washbowl. He dressed without needing to see. Then he took an oil lamp. He lit it. He knew that he had to go out and he knew where to go: toward the place where everything started, along Reja’s road. Of that much he was certain.
But he did not know what he would find there.
45
Revenge Is Not a Woman’s Business
Lupita’s funeral was in the past, but the pain was not. And Beatriz wondered whether her family would ever return to normal after the tragedy.
She doubted it.
Her daughters, with their husbands escorting them, made the trip to be present at the funeral of the young woman whom they had loved in life without realizing it. Now, all too late, they were grateful for every favor that Lupita, who had been only a few years older than they were, had always done for them gladly. Lupita had never said no to them, and there was never a day when they woke up and she was not already doing her chores, which she did not hesitate to interrupt to say good morning and ask them, Do you need anything, girls?
Now they wondered and regretted how many times they must have passed her by without returning the greeting, thinking only about their own things, and how many times they must have received her favors without so much as thanking her.
Now they felt devastated, understanding—for the first time, perhaps, and firsthand—the true meaning of death: that there is no going back and that anything that was not said in time would never be said.
Carmen and Consuelo did not arrive in time for the wake, which had necessarily been very brief due to the state of the body, but they were there in time for the memorial service and to witness the burial: the simple pinewood coffin slowly lowered to the bottom of the deep grave, the stomachs of more than one of them clenching when the clumsy novice gravediggers lost control of the ropes that held it up at each end, so that the feet descended more quickly one moment and, to compensate, the head did so the next.
It was a terrible occasion on which even the new Father Pedro struggled to find his voice and composure as he administered the blessings.
No other words were heard, but neither was there silence: the weeping established itself as an accompanying murmur, as if, once the cadence and tone had been set, no one dared break the harmony of their macabre chorus.
That day, there were a few dry eyes around the grave. Francisco did not cry. Beatriz did not cry. Nor did Simonopio. He had not stayed to say his final goodbyes, telling them neither where he would go nor when he would return.
Later, sitting on the armchair in her sewing room, Beatriz Morales heard her daughters’ wails, but she was tired of listening to them now. They felt obliged to remain with her and tend to her in their mourning, and she understood that, at their young age, they would want to vent their pain and horror with this unstoppable verbosity. But Beatriz wanted silence; she wanted dry eyes, so dry they burned. She wanted revenge and wanted, most of all, to be the main witness when it was wreaked.