Violeta, p.29
Violeta, page 29
The old man sent final instructions for Facunda’s spirit to help her in her passage to the plane of her ancestors by blowing cigar smoke onto a live chicken and sprinkling it with drops of liquor before he twisted its neck and threw it onto the fire, where it was reduced to ashes. The men who were still sober carried the coffin to the Nahuel cemetery, because Facunda had always said that she wanted to be buried beside the Rivases and not in the native burial ground. Those who could followed the procession on foot, the others rode in the two vans I’d hired for the occasion. It was a short distance, but we’d had a lot to drink. The ceremony concluded at the gravesite, where we said our final farewell to Facunda’s body and wished her spirit safe passage to the Other Side.
In addition to Facunda, to whom I was tied by so many bonds, we also lost Crispín that year. The dog was ancient, deaf, half-blind, and crazy, things that often come with old age. The veterinarian wasn’t convinced animals could have dementia, but I’d seen my brother José Antonio move deeper and deeper into the labyrinth of memory loss and I’m telling you, Camilo, that Crispín’s symptoms were identical. He died in Etelvina’s arms, his belly full of a beef fillet that she had ground up for him, because he had few teeth left. He was given a merciful injection by the same vet who hadn’t believed the dog was senile. I stayed as far away as possible because I couldn’t bear to witness the end of that loyal animal. It would’ve saddened you greatly not to be with him in his final moments, so we told you that he died peacefully lying on my bed, where he’d slept ever since you went off to boarding school.
When you entered the seminary I had to learn to love you from a distance. I can’t tell you how difficult it was, Camilo, until I got used to writing letters. One day you’ll read the ones you wrote to me and relive the effervescence of your youth with Jesus as your companion, and those intense years studying philosophy, history, and theology, throwing open the windows to human knowledge. You got lucky with your professors; they taught you how to learn, to acknowledge what you don’t know, and to ask questions. Some of them were truly erudite. Do you remember the old man who taught you canonical law? In the first class he told you that you were going to learn the law backward and forward … so that you could find the loopholes to free the human being. I think you took the lesson to heart because that’s what you’ve always done.
You also found loopholes for yourself. The bishop recently called to scold you for marrying a lesbian couple, both dressed in white, beaming. He waved their wedding picture, which had been published on Facebook, in front of your face.
“That looks more like a first communion,” you joked. “You have to annul this marriage and issue an apology!” the bishop ordered.
You found a loophole in the vow of obedience. “I’ll decide later whether to communicate your demands to the press, Your Eminence. But I can’t annul the marriage, as that would go against my conscience, because I believe that every human being has the right to love. I’ll face the consequences.”
You told me this by phone, and I wrote it down so I wouldn’t forget, because that was exactly your response when you were little and I caught you doing something bad. You’d tell me “I can’t say I’m sorry because it would go against my conscience, Grandma. Every human being has the right to throw eggs with a slingshot. But you can punish me if you want to.” By age ten, you could already argue like a Jesuit.
You never wanted to tell me why they sent you to Africa, but I suspect you went as a punishment or so they could silence you when you tried to report pedophilia among some of your colleagues. Or maybe you asked to go as a missionary because of your passion for danger, which is to say, for the same reason you convinced your grandpa Julián to take you swimming with sharks when you were eleven years old. I almost died when I found out that they’d lowered you down in a cage with a camera in an ocean infested with those carnivorous beasts, as your grandfather drank beer with the ship’s captain.
At first that Christian mission to the Congo seemed like a romantic adventure, fit for a nineteenth-century novel: young idealists spreading their faith and improving the living conditions of “barbaric” people. I was impressed to hear that you were studying Swahili, since you’d barely learned English and butchered it with your terrible accent. You were excited by the prospect of putting your hands to good use doing something besides reciting mass, but the overly optimistic tone of your letters put me on red alert. You were hiding something from me.
You sent pictures of the broken-down vehicle you fixed up using parts you’d made yourself in a forge, of the kids in the school cafeteria you’d built with your own hands, the well you were digging in the village, the brave Basque nun, the African nun who made you laugh, and the puppy you thought was male but turned out to be female. All the time, you carefully avoided mention of the community you lived in. I didn’t know anything about Africa, its diversity, its history, or its misfortunes. I was incapable of distinguishing one country from another and supposed that there were elephants and lions all over the continent. I decided to do some research and discovered that the Congo is an enormous country rich in natural resources, but it’s also one of the most violent places in the world, more dangerous than any war zone.
I wheedled the truth out of you letter by letter and gathered that you were emulating Albert Benoit, that missionary who had died a few years prior in the shantytown he’d dedicated his life to. I attended the funeral in your place; the capital was paralyzed by the heartbroken crowd that marched behind his coffin to the cemetery. You hoped, just like that French priest, to suffer alongside the most vulnerable and share their fate, whatever that may be. I learned about the local tribal conflicts, war, poverty, armed bands, refugee camps, the brutal mistreatment of women, who were worth less than livestock, and the fact that life could be lost at any moment for no reason other than bad luck. You told me about the boys who’d been child soldiers, recruited at age eight by force and required to commit atrocious acts such as killing their mother, father, or brother, so that the blood on their hands would bind them to the militia and forever isolate them from their family and tribe; of the women who were raped when they went to the well to gather water, and how the men couldn’t go in their place because they’d be killed; the corruption, greed, and abuse of power, the brutal heritage of colonization.
Here, you’d always been rebellious. You were infuriated by injustice, the class system, poverty; you railed against the hierarchy of the Church, against superstitious religion, against the stupidity and close-mindedness of certain politicians, businesspeople, and so many priests. In the Congo, where there were much more serious problems, you were happy; you were a carpenter and a mechanic, you gave classes to the kids, planted vegetables, and raised pigs. It wasn’t your country, you didn’t expect to change it, just to help wherever you could. “I’m better suited to working with my hands and resolving practical problems, Grandma, I’m no good at preaching. I’m a failure as a missionary,” you wrote me. You returned humbled, Camilo. That was your greatest lesson from the Congo.
You now live in a community that was no more than a trash heap before you got there. I was moved when you took me to see it, so clean and orderly, with modest but decent homes, a school, workshops for different trades, and even a library. I was moved most of all by the shack with a pressed dirt floor where you live with the dog and cat who’ve adopted you. You know what, Camilo? I felt a pang of envy, a desire to be young again and start over, to throw all the superfluous things I have out the window and keep only the essential, to share and to serve. I know that you are completely happy among those people. You’ve accepted that you can’t change the country much less the world, but you can help some individuals. You’ve been guided by the spirit of Albert Benoit. You don’t know how many times I’ve thanked heaven that you were young during the dictatorship and that, despite so much reckless behavior, you were able to escape the claws of repression. The bishop may pull on your ears, and there are people who accuse you of being a Communist because of your work with the poor; but during the dictatorship you’d have been exterminated like a cockroach.
I promise that I’ve long abandoned the plan of setting you up with Mailén Kusanovic. Of course I’m joking when I tell you to hang up your robes and marry her. I have only a breath of life left in me and I don’t want to waste it on impossible dreams; I know that you’ll be a priest until death. Yours, not mine. It was a coincidence that she reappeared on the horizon when you were in Africa, I didn’t go out looking for her.
Mailén had heard about the Nieves Foundation, since it had been in existence for many years and had a good reputation, and she reached out with a proposal. She was no longer a girl, she must’ve been over thirty, but it didn’t take me long to find out that she was single. At that time everything at the foundation passed through my hands; I had only a secretary, because I was trying to spend as little as possible on administration. Mailén was surprised to see me behind my desk because she didn’t associate me with philanthropy, and I was surprised that she had never wavered from the feminist objectives she’d held since she was twelve years old. She needed the support of my foundation for a project that would provide birth control and sex education.
We’d just elected the first female president of the republic, a woman who prioritized women’s issues, and was especially focused on combatting the epidemic of domestic violence, which she called a national disgrace. I had several meetings with her when she assumed the presidency, because my experience was useful to her. The mission of the foundation coincided exactly with her aims. That meant that the Nieves Foundation began to receive government support, acquired greater visibility, and attracted donors that still today, so many years later, help fund it.
“I thought that the new Ministry for Women already had a project like the one you are proposing in the schools,” I said to Mailén.
She helped me see that, as always happens, the funds weren’t enough to reach the isolated rural areas and indigenous communities. She explained that she had several volunteers and the material that the government had provided, but they needed vans for transportation and a budget for gasoline and accommodations while they were on the road. What she was asking for was reasonable; we ran the numbers and came to an agreement in under fifteen minutes.
We went from the office straight to dinner at a restaurant where the food was a blow to the liver, but delicious. Before dessert came I’d suggested she come work with me at the foundation.
“I’ll be ninety in a few years. I don’t plan to retire, but I need help,” I told her.
And that’s how Mailén reentered my life, this time for good.
Since then she’s been like a daughter to me, and has become part of our tiny family. Naturally, in under six months she was managing the Nieves Foundation. Hiring her wasn’t a matchmaking strategy, Camilo. It’s enough to know that she’s your best friend and she treats you like a brother; when I’m gone, she’ll take care of you, since she has a lot more common sense than you do. Her job is to keep you from doing too many stupid things.
I entered the last decade of my life still healthy and accompanied by Harald, so I didn’t feel that I was nearing the land of death. Most of us spend our lives denying the irrefutable fact that we’re going to die, and that doesn’t change even at age ninety. I continued to believe that I had a lot of time ahead of me, until Harald died. We were a romantic elderly couple; we went to bed at night holding hands and woke up with our bodies entwined. Since I’m an early riser, I would wake up before him and spend a beautiful half hour dozing in the darkness and silence of our bedroom, giving thanks for so much shared happiness. That’s my way of praying.
My vanity lasted for as long as he was with me, because he found me pretty. Do you remember what I looked like before, Camilo? You came into my life when I was more or less the age that you are now, but I looked a lot better than you do. Too much kindness will wear you down, I’ve warned you. The bad guys have more fun and reach old age in better condition than saints like you. If hell no longer exists and heaven is in question, it doesn’t make sense to put so much effort into being a good person.
I miss Harald a lot. He should be here with me now, holding my hand in my final days. He’d be eighty-seven years old. Compared to the century I’ve been alive, that’s nothing. At eighty-seven I was still a young woman learning to dance the rumba for exercise, since I found the gym too boring, and taking a canoe trip over the turquoise waters of the Futaleufú River in Patagonia, with some of the roughest rapids in the world. Just picture it, Camilo, eight insane people in a yellow rubber raft, wearing life jackets so that our cadavers would float, and helmets, to keep our brains from spilling out if our heads were cracked open against a rock.
I loved that man so much! I can’t forgive him for abandoning me. He was so healthy that I was totally unprepared for his heart to suddenly burst. He had the lack of courtesy to die before me, even though he was thirteen years younger. It happened on my ninety-fifth birthday; he died in the middle of the party, with a glass of champagne in his hand. Harald had a nice life and a nice death. He went out singing, drinking, and in love, but for me it was a heavy blow; my heart broke.
28
At age sixty-four I felt defeated and ready to surrender to old age, but then Torito’s cross guided me onto a different path and gave me purpose, a new life, a chance to be useful, and a marvelous freedom of the soul. I shed a large part of my material burdens and fears, except the fear of something bad happening to you, Camilo. I lived the next thirty-five years with the same energy I’d had in my youth. The mirror reflected the inevitable passage of time, but inside I didn’t feel it at all. Since my aging process was gradual, elderliness snuck up on me. There’s a big difference between being old and being ancient.
My survival instincts keep me alive well beyond what dignity should allow. In the last three years Mother Nature, ever implacable, has stripped me of my energy, my good health, my independence, leaving me the ancient woman that I am today. I didn’t feel old when I turned ninety-seven, because I was actively involved with my projects, I had curiosity about the world, and I still got angry over a battered woman. I didn’t dwell on death because I was excited by life. I had carried on for two years without Harald, the man I’d been happiest with in all my long existence, but I wasn’t alone because I had you, Etelvina, Mailén, and the many other women I worked with at the Nieves Foundation.
And then, as you know, I fell on the stairs. Nothing serious. It was followed by a routine operation to replace my hip and several months of physical therapy until I learned to walk again, but I could no longer do it without the help of a cane, then Etelvina’s firm arm, a walker, and finally, the wheelchair. The worst thing about the wheelchair is that my face is at the height of people’s belly buttons and the first thing I see are their nose hairs. Goodbye to driving, my second-floor office, the theater, and the foundation, which is now run completely by Mailén, although in reality it had been for years. I had to accept that I needed help. The daily humiliations of dependency are less painful if you accept them with humility. Nevertheless, my body’s disability brought me an unexpected gift: It freed up an immense amount of space in my mind. I no longer had responsibilities and could spend my time writing this story for you, little by little, and preparing my soul for its departure.
I decided to come to Santa Clara after the hip operation, because I assumed these would be my final days and it seemed a shame to spend them in the city. Etelvina was born in this place and we’re both happiest here. To think that when we came to this idyllic farm with my mother and aunts we dubbed it Exile, with a capital “E.” It wasn’t our exile, it was our salvation. This is the same prefabricated house that my brother built to replace the Rivas home when it was knocked down and burned in the 1960 earthquake. It’s held up well since then. I’ve simply had to change the thatch on the roof every four years, and I installed heating, because the cold and damp seep in during winter. It’s surrounded by jasmines and hydrangeas, and there’s a purple bougainvillea framing the entrance. I brought my bed and a few pieces of furniture; it’s very cozy and I feel that the walls are imbued with the presence of those who lived here before: my mother and my aunts, the Rivases, Facunda, and Torito.
Here, I’m near the Nahuel cemetery, where my loved ones lie—even Harald, because his children agreed to let his body remain here, in accordance with his wishes. They came to the funeral with their families, as tall and blond as Harald, and they got sick to their stomachs as soon as they got here, which always happens to civilized people. Your mother’s ashes reside there in a ceramic urn and there is a grave for Torito, even though we will never know if the bones they gave us belonged to him or to another man. And there in that same cemetery is where you’ll bury me, in the biodegradable coffin we have waiting in the Birdcage.
I know you’ve been digging through my drawers in search of the savings that Etelvina and I have hidden out of precaution. It’s prudent to keep cash on hand, in case we’re robbed, because if we don’t give them anything they might cut our throats. Remember that it happened once before and we were scared to death by those bumbling idiots who crawled through a window and took off running when I started screaming at the top of my lungs, but next time our luck or my lungs might fail us. I think that was in Sacramento, though; it would be very odd for something like that to happen here.
