Violeta, p.7
Violeta, page 7
“You don’t have to pay for your father’s sins, José Antonio,” said Miss Taylor. “If I were you, I’d march straight into the Union Club, order a double whiskey, and look those nosy gossips straight in the face.” But she didn’t understand the rules of our social class.
José Antonio had to wait; only time could erase scandal.
In the meantime, over those rainy months, my brother had formulated a plan. If it worked out, he could settle in Sacramento, the capital of the province, only two hours away by train.
He began to search for Marko Kusanovic, the foreman of my father’s sawmill in the south. My father had offered the mill as collateral for one of his loans, and when he couldn’t pay it back the bank had confiscated the mill, firing all the workers and stopping the production of logs while they looked for a buyer; the machinery had sat collecting rust for over a year. Marko had disappeared after the bank closed the sawmill, but from what José Antonio had been able to find out, the majority of the Croatian community had been scattered across the country’s southernmost province. Many of the central European immigrants knew each other, married amongst themselves, and welcomed new arrivals with open arms. José Antonio supposed that Marko might have family or friends there.
The radio operator in Nahuel put José Antonio in contact with the Austria-Hungarian Club, where the members of the Croatian community were registered, and nine days later José Antonio was able to speak with Kusanovic. They barely knew each other, but that first conversation, frequently interrupted by the squeals and static of a poor connection, laid the foundation for what would be a long friendship.
“Come to Sacramento, Marko, the future is here,” my brother told the Croatian man. And he agreed.
6
After my family had spent a few years on the farm, as Lucinda and Abel were preparing for another teaching tour of the small towns and homesteads of the region, they declared that it was time for me to put my knowledge to the service of others. They taught me to ride a horse, overcoming my terror of those large beasts with steaming nostrils, and they recruited me as an assistant in their itinerant school. “We’ll be back at the end of summer,” they announced to my mother.
Torito wanted to join the expedition in order to protect me, so that no Indians tried to capture me, as he said. They explained that if it was the natives he was worried about, everyone around those parts had indigenous blood in them, with the exception of the foreign immigrants. All the pure-blooded Indians had been pushed out through the efficient system of buying their land at ridiculously low prices or getting them drunk and making them sign documents they couldn’t read. If that failed, violence would be employed. Since independence, the government had set out to conquer, integrate, force the “barbarians” to submit, and convert them into civilized people, Catholic if possible, through military occupation and repression. The murder of Indians had been going on since the sixteenth century, first by the Spanish colonizers and then by anyone else, with impunity. The native peoples had good reason to hate foreigners in general, and the government in particular, but the Rivases assured Torito that they didn’t go around kidnapping little girls.
“Anyway, you have to stay here to help Bruno and look after the women. Violeta will be safe with us.”
I spent the summer of my thirteenth year giving classes in the one-horse towns and abandoned outposts of the Rivases’ school route. The first days were hard because my rear end hurt and I missed my mother, Miss Taylor, and my aunts, but as soon as I got used to horseback riding I found a taste for adventure. With the Rivases, complaining was futile; they offered me no consolation or sympathy, and that’s how they stamped out the final traces of my childhood tantrums and invented illnesses.
The mobile school moved unhurriedly, at the pace of the mule who carried the educational material, blankets for sleeping, and our scant personal items. Our schedule almost always permitted us to arrive at an inhabited place before nightfall, but we sometimes slept in the open air. I invoked Father Juan Quiroga to keep us safe from vermin and beasts of prey, even though the Rivases assured me that the snakes were not poisonous and the only dangerous feline was the puma, who wouldn’t come near if there was a campfire.
Abel had bad lungs; he coughed constantly and sometimes had difficulty breathing, like a dying man. But teaching was second nature to him; on nights when we camped under the stars he taught me the names of the constellations, and by day he pointed out local flora and fauna. Lucinda knew endless tales from folklore and mythology, which I never tired of hearing. “Tell me again about the two snakes that created the world,” I would say.
A good part of our journey was made on narrow footpaths and there were stretches where the previous winter had erased all traces of a trail, but Mr. and Mrs. Rivas never got lost, charging into forests without hesitation and safely fording rivers. Only once did my horse slip on the rocks and throw me into the water, but Abel was right there, ready to pull me to shore. He gave me my first swimming lesson later that very day.
The students were spread out across a vast territory, which over time I came to know as well as the Rivases, just as I learned to identify every student by name. I saw them grow year after year, as they moved directly into adulthood without passing through awkward adolescence; daily demands left them no time for idle imagination. They were mired in a poverty more dignified than that in the city, but it was a profound destitution nonetheless. The girls became mothers before their bodies had even finished maturing, and the boys worked the land like their fathers and grandfathers, unless they were drafted into military service, which would allow them to escape for a couple of years.
I quickly lost the innocence that my family had so carefully guarded throughout my childhood. Mr. and Mrs. Rivas did not attempt to shield me from the realities of alcoholism, abused women and children, knife fights, rape, and incest. Life here was very different from the bucolic ideal of a rural existence we’d imagined when we first arrived. I realized also that in Nahuel, that town of hospitable neighbors, you only had to scratch the surface to uncover the ugliest of vices, though my mentors insisted that cruelty wasn’t inherent to the human condition, merely something born of ignorance and poverty. “It’s much easier to be generous with a full belly than an empty one,” they said. I’ve never believed that, though, because I’ve seen that both kindness and cruelty exist everywhere.
In some settlements we managed to round up a dozen students of various ages, but more often we’d stop at isolated homesteads, where there were only three or four barefoot children to teach. In those situations we’d try to help the adults become literate as well, since quite often they hadn’t received any education, but the efforts were generally fruitless; if they had lived up to that point without ever learning the alphabet, it’s because they didn’t need to know it. Torito gave us the same argument when we tried to convince him of the benefits of reading and writing.
The native peoples, poor and discriminated against by the rest of the population, lived scattered across small landholdings, in huts with only a few farm animals, crops of potatoes, corn, and other vegetables. It seemed to me a miserable existence, until Lucinda and Abel helped me see that it was simply a different way of life; they had their own language, religion, their own economy, they had no need for the material items we placed so much value on. They were the original peoples of this land; all outsiders, with few exceptions, were usurpers, thieves, men without honor. In Nahuel and other towns they were more or less integrated into the broader population—they lived in wooden houses, spoke Spanish, and took whatever work they could get—but the majority of them lived in small rural communities. They always welcomed us, despite their ingrained distrust of outsiders, because they considered teaching to be a noble profession. Mr. and Mrs. Rivas, however, didn’t go to teach, but to learn.
The chief, an old man with a compact, square frame and a face like stone, received us in the community dwelling, a rustic windowless structure made of sticks with straw walls and roof. He wore adornments and ceremonial necklaces, and he was flanked by strong young men with menacing expressions and a band of kids and dogs circling his feet. Lucinda and I stayed outside with the rest of the women until they allowed us to enter, while Abel paid our respects with offerings of tobacco and alcohol.
After a few hours drinking in silence, because they did not share a common language, the chief gave a signal to invite the women in. Then Lucinda, who knew a little of the indigenous language, served as interpreter, aided by one of the young men who had learned Spanish during military service. They talked about horses, harvests, the soldiers stationed nearby, the government that in the past had taken the sons of chiefs as hostages and now wanted the native children to forget their language, their customs, their ancestors, and their pride.
The official visit went on for many hours; there was no hurry since time was measured in rains, harvests, and misfortunes. I fended off boredom without complaint, dizzy from the smoke of the fire smoldering in that unventilated space and intimidated by the men’s open examination of me. Finally, when I was about to fall down from fatigue, the visit was over.
LUCINDA TOOK ME TO the hut of the healer, Yaima, where she learned about plants, bark, and medicinal herbs. The woman shared her knowledge with the caveat that the plants would do little good without the corresponding magic. To illustrate this, she recited enchantments and beat rhythmically on a leather drum painted with pictures of the seasons, the cardinal points, the sky, the earth, and the underworld. “But the drum belongs to the people,” she clarified, by which she meant her people alone; outsiders were forbidden from touching it because they were not people. Lucinda wrote down the indigenous names for all the plants and sketched images to help identify them. She would share her notes with Aunt Pía, who was expanding her repertoire of herbal remedies but who used the healing energy of her hands in place of a magic drum. During the lessons, I fell asleep on the packed earth floor, curled up beside two or three flea-ridden dogs.
Yaima looked to be no more than fifty, but claimed to remember the Spanish being sent home with their tails between their legs and the republic being born. “There was nothing good before, and after it only got worse,” she concluded. If this was true, she would’ve been 110 years old, Lucinda calculated, but there was nothing to be gained from contradicting her. Lucinda said that each person was free to narrate their life the way they saw fit. Yaima wore the traditional dress of her people, which had at one time been entirely handmade on looms. Over her long, wide dress of flowered cloth, she wore a black shawl held closed with a large pin, a handkerchief over her hair, and silver adornments on her forehead.
When I turned fourteen, the chief asked Abel Rivas for my hand in marriage, for himself or one of his sons. He offered Abel his best horse as payment for the bride. Abel, translated with difficulty by Lucinda, delicately declined the offer with the argument that I had a very bad temperament and also that I was already one of his wives. The chief offered to exchange me for another woman. From then on I stopped accompanying them on that part of the tour, in order to avoid a premature marriage.
My work in the nomadic school proved what Miss Taylor had always maintained: Teaching is learning. In my free time I had to prepare my classes under the direction of Lucinda and Abel, deciphering the mysteries of mathematics and memorizing history and national geography. I’d had six years of education with Miss Taylor and could recite the names of every king and queen of the British Empire in chronological order, but I knew very little of my own country.
During one of José Antonio’s regular visits, they discussed the possibility of sending me to boarding school three hours away by train: the Royal British College, which had been founded by a pair of English missionaries. The pompous name was too grand for the puny establishment, composed of a single house with room for twelve students and a pair of missionaries as the only teachers, but it had the reputation of being the best school in the province. I practically threw one of my old tantrums. I announced that if they sent me away to school, I’d escape and they’d never see me again.
“I learn more here than at any dumb school,” I swore with such conviction that they believed me. Time proved me right.
My life was divided into two seasons, one of rain and the other of sunshine. Winter was long, dark, and damp, with short days and freezing nights, but I was never bored. In addition to milking the cows, cooking with Facunda, tending the hens, pigs, and goats, and washing and ironing, I also had a full social life. Aunts Pía and Pilar had become the heart and soul of Nahuel and the surrounding area. They organized gatherings where everyone played cards, knitted, embroidered, used the sewing machine, listened to music on the hand-crank Victrola, or prayed novenas for sick animals, stricken people, harvests, and fair weather. The unconfessed intention of the novenas was to steal parishioners away from the evangelical pastors, who were gradually gaining ground in the area.
My aunts doled out generous servings of plum or cherry liquor, which they made themselves to lift the spirits, and they were always willing to listen to the complaints and confessions of the other women, who came by in their free time or when they wanted a break from the tedium of everyday life. Aunt Pía’s healing hands were known for miles around, although she was discreet to avoid a rivalry with Yaima. The two healers were more sought after than any doctors.
The hours of daylight flew by as I helped Uncle Bruno with the animals or in the pastures when it wasn’t raining too hard. In the evenings I would weave on the loom or knit, study, read, help Aunt Pía prepare home remedies, give classes to local kids, or learn Morse code from the radio operator.
...
Miss Taylor and Teresa Rivas came to stay for a few weeks in the dead of winter, and their joyful presence brightened our bad moods. They were the only two people crazy enough to take vacations to the worst climate in the world, they said. They brought with them news from the capital, magazines and books, school material for Mr. and Mrs. Rivas, yards of cloth for sewing, tools for Aunt Pilar, small items that the neighbors requested, and new records for the Victrola. They taught us the latest dances, to choruses of laughter. Even Uncle Bruno participated in the sing-alongs, enchanted by his niece and the Irish woman. Aunt Pilar had transformed during her time in the country, polishing her knowledge of mechanics, swapping her skirts for pants and boots, and she competed with me for Uncle Bruno’s attention; she was in love with him, according to Miss Taylor. They were about the same age and shared a long list of common interests, so it wasn’t such a far-fetched notion.
Miss Taylor and Teresa Rivas had the splendid idea that we should celebrate Torito, who’d never had a birthday party and didn’t even know what year he’d been born. By the time he came to us and my parents got around to registering him he’d already passed puberty, so his birth certificate showed at least twelve or thirteen years less than his true age. They decided that, since his last name was Toro and he had a stubbornly loyal nature, his zodiac sign must be Taurus, and therefore he must’ve been born in April or May, but we would celebrate his birthday whenever we were all together.
Uncle Bruno bought a half rack of lamb at the market so that we didn’t have to kill the only sheep on the farm, which happened to be Torito’s pet, and Facunda made a sponge cake with dulce de leche. Uncle Bruno helped me make a gift for Torito: a little cross that I carved from wood, with his name engraved on one side and mine on the other, tied on a string made from pig leather.
If it had been made of solid gold, Torito couldn’t have cherished it more. He hung it around his neck and never took it off. I’m telling you this, Camilo, because that cross would play an important role many years later.
If they let José Antonio know in advance that they planned to visit, he would try to be there when Miss Taylor and Teresa came, always taking the opportunity to once again ask the Irish woman for her hand, out of habit. He worked with Marko Kusanovic within a relatively short distance as the crow flies, but at first, before he’d set up his office in the city, he had to come off the mountain on treacherous paths to catch the train. Uncle Bruno and I would meet him at the station and bring him up to speed on the family, out of earshot of my mother and aunts. We were increasingly concerned for my mother, who waited out the overwhelmingly damp winters in bed, with blankets pulled up to her chin, warm linseed poultices on her chest, and engrossed in a continuous torrent of prayers.
In the third year at Santa Clara, the family decided that she wouldn’t last another winter; we had to send her to the sanitorium in the mountains. José Antonio now earned enough to afford it. From then on, Lucinda and Aunt Pía accompanied her first by train and then bus to the sanitorium, where she’d spend four months healing her lungs and her spirit. They would go back to get her in spring, and she’d return to us with enough strength to survive a little longer. Because of those prolonged absences, and because she’d been practically incapable of a normal existence for most of my life, the memories I have of my mother are less vivid than those of other people I grew up with, such as my aunts, Torito, Miss Taylor, and the Rivas family. Her eternal illness is the reason for my good health; in order to avoid following in her footsteps, I’ve lived my life proudly ignoring any and all ailments. That’s how I learned that, in general, things clear up on their own.
Spring and summer left no time for rest on the Rivas farm. For the majority of the warmer months I was on tour with Abel and Lucinda’s mobile school, but I also spent time helping out at Santa Clara. We harvested vegetables, beans, and fruit; jarred preserves; made jams, jellies, and cheese from cow, goat, and sheep’s milk; and smoked meat and fish. It was also the season in which the farm animals had their babies, a brief and joyful moment when I could bottle-feed and name them, inevitably becoming attached before they were sold off or slaughtered and I had to forget about them.
