Pig's Foot: A Novel Part 2

Oscar laughed. He didn't draw his machete as he used to do; nothing seemed to bother him now, nothing could make him lose his temper. He had become helpful and obliging to his neighbours; he even ran errands for the Santacruz family. He helped Evaristo make kites which they gave away to the children every week. Jose had persuaded the other men that Oscar had not killed the mare, that he himself had seen some local thug running away, someone he did not recognise in the darkness. The men believed him.

That same day, the two friends apologised to each other and they did not go back to working in the eastern cane fields. They spent their mornings working their little plot of land and making wooden toys for the children. In the afternoons the two couples would go strolling through the village hand in hand, happy and content. Oscar would kiss Malena, hug her, ma.s.sage her feet, her shoulders; this he did every time his wife had walked ten paces. Jose and Betina simply laughed at him. It was as though he had suddenly gone mad, but with a harmless, contagious madness, one that was utterly hilarious.

One day during their afternoon stroll, the Kortico broke with his usual routine. Leaving his wife sitting with her sister on the gra.s.s, he took Jose aside and said, 'I never thanked you, Jose.'

'Thanked me for what?'

'For Malena. You were right. She is the only good thing that has ever happened to me.'

'Thank you, too,' said Jose.

'Me?'

'Yes. Thank you for rescuing me when I was wandering the streets.'

Oscar smiled, showing the brilliant white teeth he had recently discovered in his mouth.

'You know something?' said Jose. 'If you carry on like this, you're in danger of becoming a good man.'

The two men hugged. Oscar wrapped his arms around the Mandinga's waist, and his friend bent down to complete the embrace.

11 April 1898.

Time, as it always does, continued to pa.s.s and so arrived the year of 1898 which began with an incident that was to change for ever the history of Cuba. I'm talking about the battles.h.i.+p USS Maine sailing into Havana harbour.

After thirty years of war against Spain, people had become immune to threats of annihilation. By now, both Marti and Maceo were dead and the population of Cuba was barely one and a half million. They say the centre of the island and all points east had been completely destroyed, that it looked like a vast rubble heap. February came and the yellow press began to speculate. Some said the wars.h.i.+p had come to help us, others that it had come to overthrow us. On 15 February, the world exploded and shards of the battles.h.i.+p were scattered everywhere. Some two hundred Americans died: the United States blamed Spain; Spain blamed the United States. Eventually the USA, deciding to enter the war, began to arm the fleet and . . . What the h.e.l.l am I doing talking about the USS Maine? Sorry, sometimes when I'm on a roll I get muddled and end up talking s.h.i.+t. It tends to happen when I'm hungry, because food, for me, is sacred. I swear, I'm capable of killing someone for food; I'm serious. It's like that time back in primary school when I wrung the neck of that f.u.c.king cat for eating my lunch. But anyway, back to the story . . .

In April, while the whole thing about the USS Maine was still kicking off, Oscar and Malena were preparing for the momentous changes in their future. Malena was only seven months pregnant, but her belly was huge; she looked as though she might give birth at any minute. This in fact proved to be true, though no one knew it then. So, on that April morning, Jose and Betina set off walking to El Cobre with little Gertrudis, without the faintest idea of what the coming hours would bring.

The sun had risen early, lighting up the hills, the red earth of the Callejon de la Rosa, and the shacks of the little village. The day was set fair and the child of Oscar and Malena seemed ready to be born since, from early that morning, it began to kick and prod, desperate to get out of its mother's belly. Oscar immediately went to fetch Ester the midwife who arrived within five minutes, nervous and agitated, her eyes sharp and s.h.i.+ning. She kneeled between Malena's legs, slipped a hand inside her and whispered: 'The baby's coming. Fetch some water.'

Ester shooed away the c.o.c.kroaches crawling over the bed, the wooden floor and in the dark corners while Oscar dashed out with a bucket to the village well twenty yards from his shack, and he could still hear his wife's howls of pain as he ran. Within ten minutes he came back to find the midwife not where he left her, but standing at the head of the bed. Ester was still shaking nervously.

'What's happening?' asked Oscar, setting down the pail of water.

'Nothing, I was just wiping sweat from her forehead. Bring the pail over here.' Ester washed her hands. She seemed awkward, as though this were her first childbirth. 'Push hard,' she said. Malena began to push, screaming so loudly the walls of the shack trembled. She was poorly nourished and her body shuddered with every push as though she were losing slivers of life. The baby's enormous, bald head popped out, eyes tight shut, and clearly in distress.

'Come on, pus.h.!.+' screamed Ester. 'He's coming!'

The broad-shouldered baby did not seem to want to come out. Oscar did not have the courage to say anything. He simply stood, as though hypnotised, staring at his child's head between his wife's legs; he clutched Malena's hand and did his best to ignore her blood-curdling howls. Ester pulled the baby by the head and Malena writhed in agony until, in a final effort, they managed to get the baby out.

'It's a boy!' the midwife said with a smile. 'It's a boy, Malena. A healthy baby boy, and big too. The worst is over now.'

Ester was about to cut the umbilical cord. 'Not yet, Ester. Leave him attached to me a little longer.' Malena held out her thin arms and Ester handed her the child. Still Oscar said nothing, staring down not at his son, but at the dark body of his wife which looked frighteningly delicate framed against the white sheets streaked red with blood.

As Malena held him up to her face, the baby began to wail. Slowly, he opened his dark eyes and looked at his mother who smiled up at him weakly. For what seemed an eternity they stared at each other as mother and child met for the first time. Then Malena glanced at her husband. 'You have to be strong, Oscar. Never forget that I loved you from the first day I met you. When he grows up, tell Benicio to be even-tempered. Tell him that, and let him be a comfort to you too. Tell him avenging past wrongs brings only present suffering. Tell him that.'

Before Oscar had time to take in these words, Malena's voice flickered out as though someone had snuffed a candle; her hands slipped to let her son's body rest on hers. She was dead.

'Malena! No, Malena, no! Please G.o.d, no!' Ester shook her, but it was useless. Oscar fell to his knees, still staring straight ahead; he shed no tears. In his place, another man would have roared, tried to revive his wife, thrown water in her face, run for help, slapped her if he had to. But Oscar did not move. He simply stared at the same fixed point: at his wife's eyes, suddenly lifeless.

'I swear I don't know how this happened, Oscar. In all my years as a midwife, I've never seen anything like it.'

'Cut the cord.'

'Oscar, think about what you're going to . . .'

'I don't want to think. Cut the cord right now and leave, I'll take care of everything.'

Ester did as she was asked. Quickly, as though he had suddenly emerged from his trance, Oscar got to his feet and walked Ester to the door.

'Maybe she was undernourished,' said Ester. Oscar was not listening. He paid her for her services, and then coldly told her to leave, saying that he would take care of everything. When Ester was only a speck on the horizon, he went back inside his shack, removed the pig's-foot amulet he had inherited from his mother, and hung it around his son's neck. He propped up his wife's body so that he could continue to gaze into her dead eyes, then lay down next to her, with the baby between them, suckling at Malena's breast.

Some hours later Jose and Betina arrived back from El Cobre. The blood that had coursed from Oscar's veins now formed a vast pool that spread across the floor of royal palm. The bodies of Oscar and Malena were cold, their skin purplish-yellow; a swarm of blowflies and c.o.c.kroaches were already feeding on the putrefaction.

One by one the people of Pata de Puerco, heads bowed, dressed in their Sunday best, walked in a slow procession past the house where Jose and Betina kept vigil in the silence only death can create. Afterwards, the bodies were carried in a cortege to the ruins of the old sugar plantation where Oscar had been born and where, on Jose's instructions, they were to be laid to rest.

Oscar Kortico and Malena de Flores died on 11 April 1898, the day on which their son my grandpa Benicio was born and the very day the United States Congress, in the wake of the explosion of the USS Maine, drafted a joint resolution stipulating that, from that moment, Cuba was to be a free and independent nation.

Melecio is Different.

And that is all there is to say about Oscar and his wife Malena. So much love and so much pain and all for nothing. These days, no one dies of pa.s.sion as they did then; in 1995 people get married just for the extra rations of beer and cake, just to throw a party. And I've always said that life does not believe in love, life does not believe in anyone, and that when you least expect it, you find yourself six feet under. Basically, love is something that hurts like f.u.c.k and soon becomes a memory, and memories, as we all know, are fleeting and almost always fade. I've only ever been in love once, with a beautiful mixed-race girl called Elena. In fact, she turned out to be a complete b.i.t.c.h. But that's a different story, one that later, if I've a mind to, I'll tell you.

Let's move on. Malena died, Oscar died, the Maine was blown up. The Yanks Yumas we call them joined forces with Calixto Garcia and his troops to kick the Spanish out of Cuba. Calixto blockaded Santiago and the whole surrounding region while the Americans blockaded the western part of the island, especially the port of Havana. A contingent of Americans landed in the east to meet up with Calixto Garcia and together they agreed to take the small villages around Santiago. First they took San Juan, then El Caney, and then one by one they took every town until they came to El Cobre.

Spain ordered its naval fleet to break the cordon and abandon the port of Santiago, but in less than an hour the American fleet destroyed what had once been the powerful marina espanola. Everyone knows what happened next: the Americans shat on their pact with Cuba and wiped their a.r.s.e with the joint resolution, the Cuban national anthem was not heard again instead sovereignty of the island was transferred to the United States and Cuba ceased to be a Spanish colony only to become an American dependency. Then came the Platt Amendment. Anyway, this is what was happening or rather what was happening in the rest of the island since nothing ever happened in Pata de Puerco.

Demand for sugar increased. More schools and hospitals were built for the wealthy minority. n.o.body took any notice of the families of a remote village that kept its existence a secret from the rest of the island. No one arrived to plant sugar cane, to lay claim to the land. No streetlights came. Since the wave of immigration that had brought the Santacruz and the Jabao families, no one left Pata de Puerco and no one arrived and quickly the families began to intermarry: cousins with cousins, uncles with nieces, everything was permitted except brothers marrying sisters which was considered a mortal sin. Over time, it became easy to identify the members of any family by their characteristic features.

When Malena and Oscar died, Betina wept continually for three weeks. She lost her appet.i.te, she lost weight, and neglected her appearance more than ever. Jose too was much affected, but Betina was in such a state that he had to set aside his own grief in order to care for his wife, who was about to give birth. Several times, he tried to persuade her to take a bath, telling her he could not bear for such a beautiful woman to have a forest of hair under her arms, to smell unwashed, to look like a beggar. The Mandingas had always been a proud family. What would the neighbours say, those same people who had always thought of the Mandingas as the guiding force in Pata de Puerco? What sort of example was she setting for Gertrudis, who wors.h.i.+pped her mother? What had become of the radiant woman with whom Jose had fallen in love?

Betina talked to her husband about a conversation she had had with Juanita, a santera and wise-woman who lived alone and spent her time tending mysterious plants in her garden. Juanita thought of herself as a cynical pessimist, but she had a keen eye capable of diagnosing disease and in Pata de Puerco it was she who tended to the health of the community. More than once she had said that Cuba was a cesspool and she was simply waiting for her plants, her bird-of-paradise flowers and her orchids, to grow so she could die in peace. She invariably wore a housecoat that reeked of alcohol and wandered around with a cigar hanging from her lips.

'Juanita told me that all this time the truth has been staring us in the face, but we would not see it,' Betina told her husband. Jose said she should pay no mind to Juanita whose brain was addled by the strange herbs she smoked, but instead accept things as they are. Death sometimes comes unexpectedly, he said, and once again reminded her how his parents had perished of yellow fever, adding that his twin brothers had died of that terrible disease. 'You have to remember you are about to give birth.'

This seemed to calm her for a while, but the following day Betina's head was once again plagued with ghosts and suspicions; Malena had not been herself for a long time, she insisted, her sister had become more withdrawn as though afraid to speak, afraid to look her in the eye. Betina had known something was wrong, but every time she raised the subject her sister said she was imagining things.

'Malena died in childbirth, mi amor,' said Jose. 'You know how delicate she was.' But Betina, with the wilfulness of pregnant women, insisted no one died in childbirth just like that. To calm her, Jose went to fetch Ester so the midwife could tell her exactly what had happened.

'I warned Oscar. I told him that Malena needed to eat more red meat,' said Ester.

'No one could have eaten more red meat than Malena did,' said Jose.

'In that case, I don't know what happened,' said Ester.

Neither the midwife's statement nor her husband's comforting could sway Betina. Jose had no choice but to allow time to do its work. Months pa.s.sed and slowly Betina began to forget, though every week she made the pilgrimage to El Cobre, bringing sprigs of fresh roses to the church in memory of her beloved Malena and Oscar.

Melecio was born precisely four weeks after Benicio. Jose and Betina watched over him in the weeks and months that followed, eagerly waiting for his first word. Gertrudis's first word had been 'mama'; Benicio, to be contrary, had said 'papa'. Jose and Betina wondered what Melecio's first word would be; it was a matter they took very seriously.

One day, Melecio looked up into his parents' eyes and said, 'Architecture!'

'Architecture? What do you mean, architecture? What does he mean, Betina?'

Betina folded her arms but could not say anything. A little later, they both came to the conclusion that it could mean only one thing: Melecio was the strangest child in the world.

Physically, the two boys were similar in complexion and in size, and both had a thin mop of hair; but in character, they were utterly different. Melecio liked to sleep. He was a quiet child who never woke his parents in the middle of the night; nor was he a guzzler like Benicio because unlike his half-brother, my grandfather was born with the appet.i.te of a lion, suckling Betina's b.r.e.a.s.t.s until they were wizened dugs.

A goat had to be bought because Betina could not provide milk enough for both children. Juanita the santera advised them to take care, warning them that mixing milk could make a newborn ill. Neither boy fell ill; both grew up hale and hearty.

'They're not boys at all,' said Juanita six months after Melecio was born, 'they're a pair of mules,' adding that Jose and Betina had no need to worry about their health. Juanita, in her role as sorceress, had recently consulted her cauldron and for now the future seemed clear and cloudless. Smiling from ear to ear, she told Jose and Betina that Melecio had a brilliant future ahead of him but that they should keep a close watch on Benicio because, she said, he was different. 'Of course he's different, Juanita. We are Mandingas and Benicio is a Kortico,' said Jose. The santera explained that she had good reason to say what she had said and once again advised them to keep a close eye on the son of Oscar and Malena.

Jose and Betina's first strategy was to ask their neighbours to say nothing to my grandpa Benicio about his real parents until he was old enough to understand and not become confused. Until that time, Benicio was treated like another member of the Mandinga family, although his surname was Kortico.

Benicio slept in the bed next to Geru while Melecio had his own room. Grandpa used to say that at night he and his sister curled up in the old bed made of tree branches and told each other their deepest secrets. Geru wanted to be a santera like Juanita, but said that no one was allowed to know. My grandfather had no dreams, no aspirations. He was mischievous, as children are, but he was affectionate with his brother, his sister and his parents and in his first seven years did nothing that marked him out as different from other children in the village as Juanita had foretold. Melecio on the other hand had been born with an insatiable curiosity, eager to learn everything something curious and strange in a child his age. He spent hours poring over Betina's old magazines or peering at the cans of tomatoes that came from the store, trying to read the words without knowing how. There was nothing unusual in a boy wanting to know how to build a cart, to fish and work the land; skills proper to a man. But Melecio also wanted to learn to cook, to sew and clean the house as his mother did, while Benicio and Geru preferred playing games with their little friends. By the tender age of seven, Melecio had learned to slaughter a pig and wring a chicken's neck.

One day Geru and Benicio headed off to the Chinese store on an errand for Betina, who was going to El Cobre to lay flowers at the church for Oscar and Malena. Jose was out working in the field.

When they got to the store, Geru and Benicio joined the queue. They asked for two pounds of rice, two pounds of black beans, three pounds of chickpeas and jars of c.u.min, oregano and salt. Li, the Chinese shopkeeper, poured the beans and pulses into the sacks they had brought and parcelled everything else up with paper. Benicio paid the three reales and brother and sister set off home. On their way to the store they had met a fat woman with huge b.r.e.a.s.t.s wearing a smock smeared with coal dust and a brightly coloured headscarf. The woman looked about fifty, though from the expression in her wounded eyes she could have been much older. She stood staring at Benicio and her face slowly seemed to age. 'You are a sad child, Benicio,' Ester told my grandfather with a thin-lipped smile. Then she quickly hurried away along a narrow winding path that led into the mountains, vanis.h.i.+ng into the undergrowth until she became just one more leaf in a sea of plants.

'Who is that woman?' Benicio asked. Whoever she was, Gertrudis said, she wasn't right in the head; the whole area was full of lunatics. Her answer did little to convince her brother. Grandpa set his sacks on the ground and went back to the store to ask Li. 'I think she lives in Pata de Puerco,' Li said. 'But run on home now. You are too young to be sticking your noses in other people's lives.'

As they headed home, Grandpa Benicio could not get Ester's face out of his mind and her words echoed inside his head. When they came within ten metres of their house, both children smelled something strange. Surely Betina could have arrived back before them, unless someone had given her a ride in their cart. Pus.h.i.+ng open the door, they found Melecio in the living room, hands stuffed in the pockets of his shorts, smiling a mischievous dazzling smile, as though he had just done something naughty.

'Is Mama home already, Melecio?' said Gertrudis, setting her bags down on the wooden table. 'She must have been inspired today because it smells even more delicious than usual.'

'Mama's not here. But it does smell delicious, doesn't it?'

'What are you talking about?'

Geru and Benicio ran to the kitchen where they found rice and a chicken Melecio had cooked, and a lettuce and tomato salad. There was a vast quant.i.ty of food. Melecio tried to explain that he had taught himself to cook but Geru and Benicio said he must have gone mad, that cooking was woman's work and Jose would beat him to within an inch of his life.

They were right. Five minutes later Jose arrived and, when he found the mountains of food, gave Melecio such a beating his screams could be heard as far as Santiago. 'Who told you to cook for the whole village, huh? You know very well that chicken was to commemorate Malena and Oscar's anniversary. I swear I'll kill you.' Jose went on beating Melecio, shaking him like a rag doll. Benicio tried to intervene, grabbing his father by his belt.

'Get out of here, Oscar,' roared Jose and gave him a clout.

'I'm not Oscar, I'm Benicio and she's Gertrudis.'

'You're right, you are Benicio and she's Geru and you . . . you're Melecio, the little b.a.s.t.a.r.d who just cooked a whole month's worth of food. Out of my sight, the three of you, and Melecio, I don't want you setting foot in the kitchen again, do you hear? Now get out!'

When Betina got home, she scolded Melecio some more. She didn't know how she was going to feed her family the following week since they did not have a peso and the beans and pulses Benicio and Geru had just bought would barely last three days. What Melecio had cooked was bound to be inedible, but they would have to make do, or sell it to a neighbour as pig fodder.

Betina and Jose were the first to taste the food. As the fragrant flavours of Melecio's cooking melted in their mouths, they were overwhelmed by an indescribable feeling. Jose got up from the table, rushed to find Melecio, fell to his knees and said, 'Forgive me, hijo . . . I promise I'll never beat you again. You can cook all the chickens you want.'

Jose wept as Betina rained down blows on him, calling him an ill-bred lout for doing such a thing to his own son and swearing that the next time she caught him beating Melecio she would cut his b.a.l.l.s off. Benicio sat, his spoon hovering before his mouth, unable to believe what he was seeing. Melecio himself did not understand what was happening. He sat in silence trying to work out which of the spices he had used could have produced such an effect.

Too late Grandpa Benicio screamed, 'Noooo!', but Gertrudis had already put a spoonful in her mouth.

'From now on I'm not going to share a bed with you,' his sister immediately announced and ran from Benicio's side to sit next to the little chef. 'I'll only sleep next to my brother Melecio.'

Benicio and Melecio were the only ones who did not eat. They decided that they would never speak about what had happened and that Melecio would never cook again. They made this vow in silence, locking their lips with invisible keys they tossed over their shoulders towards the mountain. The following day when they woke up, Jose, Betina and Geru remembered nothing. Geru woke up next to Melecio and ran to ask Benicio why she had not slept next to him as usual. Benicio suggested that perhaps the food had disagreed with her, but privately vowed that this could not happen again.

The following day was El dia del Nacimiento the Festival of Birth something celebrated every Sunday in the village. Fathers would set out stools and earthenware bowls filled with food beneath the flame tree, garlanded with flowers, a table would be set with a tablecloth and the place turned into a rustic tavern with drums, cans, dogs and people who came along with the sole intent of forgetting their constant gloom and celebrating their miserable lives. Jose and Betina told their neighbours about the bad luck they had been having, how two nights earlier a wild animal crept in and devoured their only chicken, leaving bones and feathers strewn all around.

'We don't have anything to bring. We're sorry,' said Jose, ashamed. Abel Santacruz said it did not matter, that in Pata de Puerco the Mandingas were almost a royal family, and Evaristo the kite-maker immediately sat them next to Silvio and Rachel Aquelarre from where they had a perfect view of the faces of everyone in the village, with the exception of El Mozambique and Ester the midwife who never joined in these feasts.

'Today's game involves telling tales. Old and young alike are welcome to take part. The person to tell the funniest story will be the winner,' said Evaristo, sitting in the crook of the red flame tree where everyone could see him.

'What kind of stories?' asked Pablo el Jabao.

'Any kind of tale at all,' Evaristo replied, 'anything that will make people laugh.'

'In that case,' said Epifanio Vilo, 'I'll start.' He stood up on his stool and began. 'A tomato was walking with a lettuce along the Callejon de la Rosa. "Hurry up, tomato, there's a cart coming," said the lettuce. But the tomato, being stubborn, refused to listen and the cart rolled right over him. "Tomato!" yelled the lettuce, but it was too late. As the cart trundled off into the distance, the lettuce looked at the red splodge on the road, walked over to his friend and said, "I told you ketchup!"'

There was general hilarity. People slapped their thighs and doubled over with uncontrollable laughter.

'That's nothing,' said Justino the coal merchant, and clambering on to his stool he began: 'A little black boy wanted to know what happens to Negro children when they die. "They go to heaven, where G.o.d gives them a pair of wings and they become little black angels," his father told him. The little boy thought for a minute and then asked his father curiously, "And what happens to white children, Papa?" "Exactly the same," his father replied. "They go to heaven, G.o.d gives them a pair of wings and they become barn owls."'

This time the laughter became hysterical. Betina clapped her hand over her mouth. Jose laughed until he cried. Some people collapsed on the ground and were writhing with glee. 'That's a good one, Justino.' Evaristo raised a hand to calm the bedlam. 'Let's see if anyone can beat it. Who else has got a tale to tell?'

'I do,' said Juan Carlos el Jabao, the eldest of Pablo and Niurka's children. He was a tall lad with hair as red as fire. 'A man went to the doctor complaining that his son had died from a strange fever that made his face turn yellow. The doctor, who was a drunk, looked at him and said, "There's no need to be sad, senor, at least he died with a beautiful colour."'

Juan Carlos's joke did not elicit the same reaction. Jose did not laugh at all. He felt his muscles tense and from that moment on he bore Juan Carlos a grudge. The next person to speak was Ignacio el Jabao, the brother of Juan Carlos, and the rudest, most foul-mouthed boy in the village.

'A little boy was sitting under a tree crying and a drunk stopped and asked him what was wrong. The boy said his papa had fallen out of the avocado tree, landed on his d.i.c.k and now he was in heaven. The drunk looked at the boy, then the avocado tree, then looked up to heaven and said, "f.u.c.k! Your papa must have had a d.i.c.k like a spring."'

Niurka el Jabao leaped from her seat, grabbed Ignacio by the ear and dragged him off, slapping and kicking him. Pablo apologised, explaining that the boy was the sp.a.w.n of the devil. He asked Juan Carlos to look after the rest of the Jabao brood and make sure they behaved themselves then followed his wife home, cursing his son Ignacio. 'Boys will be boys,' said Evaristo. 'Justino the coalman is still in first place. Would anyone else like to beat him?'

Now it was Melecio who spoke up.

'I'd like to tell a story,' he said, getting to his feet. 'What story, Melecio?' said Betina. 'You're a little young to be telling stories.' She gestured at him to sit down again. The kite-maker said it did not matter, that the game was for all ages. 'It's true, Betina,' said Jose. 'Let the boy tell his joke. Maybe he inherited my sense of humour.' Betina rolled her eyes to heaven. 'Let him, senora . . .' everyone chorused, 'let the boy tell his joke.'

Betina had no choice but to agree. Melecio clambered on to his stool, stuffed his hands in the pockets of his shorts and in a thin, falsetto voice began: The squalid reality is the oblivion which enfolds our village The squalid reality is that no one cares about the squalid reality The squalid reality is hunger, it is the everyday suffering of the outcast, the true existence of the negro The squalid reality is Pata de Puerco, the starvation ingrained in the skin of its people, the endless begging The endless waiting, the pain of Pata de Puerco: the squalid reality There was a ghastly silence. No one knew what was happening and though many did not understand Melecio's words it was clear that his story had delved into their souls. No one laughed. On the contrary, many of those present began to sob and went on sobbing long after Melecio's little mouth was closed.

'Where did you learn that? Who taught you that? Tell me!' Betina demanded, shocked.

'No one, Mami. I just thought it up right now. Why is no one laughing?'