Like This Afternoon Forever. Jaime Manrique

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СКАЧАТЬ bottle of beer fast without thinking. I started feeling a little tipsy. Your father said, ‘Come, I’ll walk you back to your school.’ Somehow we ended up in a pasture outside town; I became his woman that night.” Sadness came over her face. “Okay, that’s enough for today. Don’t look so downcast, Lucas. I’ll tell you the rest some other time. We have to hurry and shell these beans or dinner is not going to be ready. You know how your father gets if his dinner isn’t on the table when he gets home from the fields.”

      On another rainy afternoon that winter, when Lucas was helping her with the cooking, Clemencia resumed the story of his parents’ courtship.

      “Gumersindo started showing up at Mass on Sundays, when the other boarding students attended church with the nuns. He always sat by the front door, so I saw him as I entered and left. Eight weeks after meeting at the festival, I realized I was pregnant. I was terrified of what would happen to me when I was discovered: as soon as it was noticeable I was with child, the nuns would expel me from school. I had seen this happen to other students.

      “I decided I would not go back to my parents’ home in disgrace. One afternoon I snuck out of school, went into town, and began asking if anyone knew where Gumersindo lived. In a cantina a man pointed me in the direction of his farm. Gumersindo was overjoyed to see me. When I broke down in tears and revealed my condition, he told me that I didn’t have to go back to my parents’ home, and from that moment on we were man and wife.”

      * * *

      When he got drunk, Gumersindo would shout, “One day I’ll avenge my family! Even if it’s the last thing I do!” Then he would go on a rampage through the house, breaking and smashing things and kicking the domestic animals. Clemencia raised rabbits in the kitchen. She did not eat them and treated them as her pets; she also gave them away as presents to her neighbors for their birthdays or other special occasions. Often, after Gumersindo returned home drunk, many rabbits were found dead the next morning, splattered all over the front yard. The entire family tried to become invisible at such times and quietly huddled together out of his way.

      On the weekends, Gumersindo squandered his money on aguardiente and beer, and visits to the whorehouse in Güicán. After he had spent his last cent, he would stagger home in the early hours and then beat Clemencia. Over the years, the beatings became so brutal, and her bruises so noticeable, that she was ashamed to leave the farm, even to go to Mass on Sundays. Gumersindo knocked out Clemencia’s front teeth, and she lost so much weight, and looked so weak, that Lucas was afraid she was going to die. On the rare occasions when a neighbor stopped by to visit, Lucas’s mother would send one of the children to say that she was busy.

      There was nothing the children could do to stop their father’s brutal assaults. Lucas began to pray in earnest to Jesus and the Virgin to make his father stop.

      One day, Gumersindo found Clemencia and Lucas in the kitchen, peeling potatoes and chatting. Gumersindo pulled Lucas from his chair and threw him against a wall. Then he started screaming at Clemencia, “That boy’s going to be a faggot! He’s practically a woman, all the time in the kitchen, and this will be your fault!” Then he turned to Lucas and bellowed, “I better not catch you here again! The kitchen is for women!”

      The day after a beating, before the children had a chance to criticize their father at breakfast, Clemencia would say, “Before you judge Gumersindo, remember you didn’t have to see your entire family murdered when you were children.” And she’d add, “He’s a good provider—you’ve never lacked for anything.” Lucas suspected that she said those words as a kind of balm for her own bruises.

      * * *

      A few days after Lucas’s eighth birthday, Clemencia left the farm in the morning to do some errands in town. By the end of the day, she hadn’t returned. The children became worried: women traveling alone were frequently raped and murdered. That evening, as they gathered for the dinner which Lucas and his sisters had prepared, Gumersindo said, “Eat, children. I’m sure your mother’s fine. She probably got delayed in town and decided to stay overnight with one of her friends.” But Lucas didn’t know of any friends that his mother would stay overnight with. That night, the three children snuggled together in one bed and prayed for the safety of their mother. Then they cried themselves to sleep.

      The next day Gumersindo went into town to try to find out what had happened to Clemencia. He returned hours later and told the children, “I reported her missing at the police station. They promised to contact me as soon as they hear anything.”

      Nothing more was heard about Clemencia. It was as if she had tumbled down the mouth of an active volcano and was swallowed up in flames. A few weeks later, Gumersindo told the distressed children, “The police think your mother probably went to the Llanos to stay with her family, and that she’ll return when we least expect her.” He shook his head and grimaced. “Her parents will not be happy to see her when she returns home in disgrace. It won’t be long before Clemencia realizes how tough it is out there. Mark my words, she’ll come back home one of these days with her tail between her legs.”

      * * *

      Lucas felt as if the sun had gone from the sky. He hated the endless drizzle and fog that swept through the house during wintertime. When the fog was impenetrable, the family walked through the house with flashlights to avoid bumping into each other or the furniture. The mist left behind by the clouds seemed to penetrate to his bones and, instead of air, Lucas felt he breathed in a cool spray. At times he imagined this made him closely related to the trout the family raised in the pond behind the house.

      During those chilly months, the kitchen, where Clemencia had always kept a fire going, had been the only pleasant room in the house. His mother seemed to acquire a permanent glow from the flames of the firewood, and she had always been warm to the touch, like a toasty wool blanket.

      Lucas grew even more terrified of his father’s fits now that he didn’t have Clemencia to hit when he was angry. Without her protective nature, life on the farm seemed fraught with dangers lurking everywhere. Instead of calling him by his name when he wanted Lucas to do something, Gumersindo would say, “Come here, maricón,” and then bark his orders.

      Every morning the children were awakened at five to feed hay to the two horses, the mule, and the donkey. Next they milked the two cows and fed them—and the sheep—hay; they fed vegetables to the rabbits, leftovers to the goats and pigs, and corn to the hens, ducks, and geese. Inside the house, they gave fresh water to the caged mirlas and other songbirds­—which Gumersindo trapped and then sold in town—and cleaned their cages. When they were done with these chores, the three children dressed for school and had breakfast before they left the house around seven.

      They walked four kilometers to the schoolhouse, on a path that spiraled all the way down to the torrid zone. They were supposed to leave together because the narrow, slippery trails skirted yawning abysses, and they had to be watchful for serpents, whose bites killed domestic animals as well as unwary locals who stepped on them.

      One day Lucas decided to leave before his sisters. Since they did not tell his father, he continued to leave earlier on most days to walk alone down the mountain so he could think about his mother and not have to hide his tears.

      The schoolhouse consisted of two rooms—one for children in kindergarten through the second grade, the other for those in third through fifth grade. Because Lucas was such a diligent student, and read much better than other children his age, he had been placed in the third grade. Thus he spent the school day in the same room with his sisters, who were in the two grades ahead of him. They were the first ones to notice how Lucas had changed from a studious boy to one who spent hours looking out the window. He stopped doing his homework and began to receive poor grades. But his teacher, Señorita Domínguez, СКАЧАТЬ