She
went by the name of Belisa Crepusculario, not because she had been baptized
with that name or
given it by her mother, but because she herself had searched until she found
the poetry of "beauty"
and "twilight" and cloaked herself in it. She made her living selling
words. She journeyed
through the country from the high cold mountains to the burning coasts,
stopping at fairs
and in markets where she set up four poles covered by a canvas awning under
which she took
refuge from the sun and rain to minister to her customers. She did not have to
peddle her merchandise
because from having wandered far and near, everyone knew who she was. Some people
waited for her from one year to the next, and when she appeared in the village
with her bundle
beneath her arm, they would form a line in front of her stall. Her prices were
fair. For five centavos
she delivered verses from memory, for seven she improved the quality of dreams,
for nine
she wrote love letters, for twelve she invented insults for irreconcilable
enemies. She also sold
stories, not fantasies but long, true stories she recited at one telling, never
skipping a word.
This
is how she carried news from one town to another. People paid her to add a line
or two: our son
was born, so-and-so died, our children got married, the crops burned in the
field. Wherever she
went a small crowd gathered around to listen as she began to speak, and that
was how they learned
about each others' doings, about distant relatives, about what was going on in
the civil
war.
To anyone who paid her fifty centavos in trade, she gave the gift of a secret
word to drive away
melancholy. It was not the same word for everyone, naturally, because that
would have been
collective dece it. Each person received his or her own word, with the
assurance that no one else
would use it that way in this universe or the Beyond.
Belisa
Crepusculario had been born into a family so poor they did not even have names
to give their
children. She came into the world and grew up in an inhospitable land where
some years the rains
became avalanches of water that bore everything away before them and others
when not a drop
fell from the sky and the sun swelled to fill the horizon and the world became
a desert.
Until she
was twelve, Belisa had no occupation or virtue other than having withstood
hunger and the exhaustion
of centuries. During one interminable drought, it fell to her to bury four
younger brothers
and sisters, when she realized that her turn was next, she decided to set out
across the plains
in the direction of the sea, in hopes that she might trick death along the way.
The land was eroded,
split with deep cracks, strewn with rocks, fossils of trees and thorny bushes,
and skeletons
of animals bleached by the sun. From time to time she ran into families who,
like her, were
heading south, following the mirage of water. Some had begun the march carrying
their belongings
on their back or in small carts, but they could barely move their own bones,
and after a
while they had to abandon their possessions.
They dragged themselves along
painfully, their skin
turned to lizard hide and their eyes burned by the reverberating glare. Belisa
greeted them with
a wave as she passed, but she did not stop, because she had no strength to
waste in acts of compassion.
Many people fell by the wayside, but she was so stubborn that she survived to
cross through
that hell and at long last reach the first trickles of water, fine, almost
invisible threads that
fed spindly vegetation and farther down widened into small streams and marshes.
Belisa
Crepusculario saved her life and in the process accidentally discovered writing.
In a
village
near the coast, the wind blew a page of newspaper at her feet. She picked up
the brittle yellow
paper and stood a long while looking at it, unable to determine its purpose,
until curiosity overcame
her shyness. She walked over to a man who was washing his horse in the muddy
pool where
she had quenched her thirst.
"What
is this?" she asked.
"The
sports page of the newspaper," the man replied, concealing his surprise at
her ignorance.
The
answer astounded the girl, but she did not want to seem rude, so she merely
inquired about
the
significance of the fly tracks scattered across the page.
"Those
are words, child. Here it says that Fulgencio Barba knocked out El Negro Tiznao
in the third
round."
That
was the day Belisa Crepusculario found out that words make their way in the
world without a
master, and that anyone with a little cleverness can appropriate them and do
business with them.
She made a quick assessment of her situation and concluded that aside from
becoming a prostitute
or working as a servant in the kitchens of the rich there were few occupations
she was qualified
for. It seemed to her that selling words would be an honorable alternative.
From that moment
on, she worked at that profession, and was never tempted by any other. At the beginning,
she offered her merchandise unaware that words could be written outside of newspapers.
When she learned otherwise, she calculated the infinite possibilities of her
trade and with
her savings paid a priest twenty pesos to teach her to read and write, with her
three remaining
coins she bought a dictionary. She poured over it from A to Z and then threw it
into the
sea, because it was not her intention to defraud her customers with packaged words.
One
August morning several years later, Belisa Crepusculario was sitting in her
tent in the
middle
of a plaza, surrounded by the uproar of market day, selling legal arguments to
an old man who
had been trying for sixteen years to get his pension. Suddenly she heard
yelling and thudding
hoofbeats. She looked up from her writing and saw, first, a cloud of dust, and
then a band
of horsemen come galloping into the plaza. They were the Colonel's men, sent
under orders of
El Mulato, a giant known throughout the land for the speed of his knife and his
loyalty to his chief.
Both the Colonel and El Mulato had spent their lives fighting in the civil war,
and their names
were ineradicably linked to devastation and calamity. The rebels swept into
town like a stampeding
herd, wrapped in noise, bathed in sweat, and leaving a hurricane of fear in
their trail.
Chickens
took wing, dogs ran for their lives, women and children scurried out of sight,
until the only
living soul left in the market was Belisa Crepusculario. She had never seen El
Mulato and was
surprised to see him walking toward her.
"I'm
looking for you," he shouted, pointing his coiled whip at her, even before
the words were out,
two men rushed her -- knocking over her canopy and shattering her inkwell --
bound her hand
and foot, and threw her like a sea bag across the rump of El Mulato's mount.
Then they thundered
off toward the hills.
Hours
later, just as Belisa Crepusculario was near death, her heart ground to sand by
the
pounding
of the horse, they stopped, and four strong hands set her down. She tried to
stand on her
feet and hold her head high, but her strength failed her and she slumped to the
ground, sinking
into a confused dream. She awakened several hours later to the murmur of night
in the camp,
but before she had time to sort out the sounds, she opened her eyes and found
herself staring
into the impatient glare of El Mulato, kneeling beside her.
"Well,
woman, at last you've come to," he said.
To speed her to her senses, he
tipped his canteen and
offered her a sip of liquor laced with gunpowder.She
demanded to know the reason for such rough treatment, and El Mulato explained
that the Colonel
needed her services. He allowed her to splash water on her face, and then led
her to the far
end of the camp where the most feared man in all the land was lazing in a
hammock strung between
two trees. She could not see his face, because he lay in the deceptive shadow
of the leaves
and the indelible shadow of all his years as a bandit, but she imagined from
the way his gigantic
aide addressed him with such humility that he must have a very menacing
expression.
She
was surprised by the Colonel's voice, as soft and well-modulated as a
professor's.
"Are
you the woman who sells words?" he asked.
"At
your service," she stammered, peering into the dark and trying to see him
better.
The
Colonel stood up, and turned straight toward her. She saw dark skin and the
eyes of a
ferocious
puma, and she knew immediately that she was standing before the loneliest man
in the world.
"I
want to be President," he announced.
The
Colonel was weary of riding across that godforsaken land, waging useless wars
and
suffering
defeats that no subterfuge could transform into victories. For years he had
been
sleeping
in the open air, bitten by mosquitoes, eating iguanas and snake soup, but those
minor
inconveniences
were not why he wanted to change his destiny. What truly troubled him was the terror
he saw in people's eyes. He longed to ride into a town beneath a triumphal arch
with bright flags
and flowers everywhere, he wanted to be cheered, and be given newly laid eggs
and freshly baked
bread. Men fled at the sight of him, children trembled, and women miscarried
from fright, he
had had enough, and so he had decided to become President. El Mulato had
suggested that they
ride to the capital, gallop up to the Palace, and take over the government, the
way they had taken
so many other things without anyone's permission. The Colonel, however, did not
want to be
just another tyrant, there had been enough of those before him and, besides, if
he did that, he would
never win people's hearts. It was his aspiration to win the popular vote in the
December elections.
"To
do that, I have to talk like a candidate. Can you sell me the words for a
speech?" the Colonel asked
Belisa Crepusculario.
She
had accepted many assignments, but none like this. She did not dare refuse,
fearing that El Mulato
would shoot her between the eyes, or worse still, that the Colonel would burst
into tears.
There
was more to it than that, however, she felt the urge to help him because she
felt a
throbbing
warmth beneath her skin, a powerful desire to touch that man, to fondle him, to
clasp him
in her arms.
All
night and a good part of the following day, Belisa Crepusculario searched her
repertory for words
adequate for a presidential speech, closely watched by El Mulato, who could not
take his eyes
from her firm wanderer's legs and virginal breasts. She discarded harsh, cold
words, words that
were too flowery, words worn from abuse, words that offered improbable
promises, untruthful
and confusing words, until all she had left were words sure to touch the minds
of men and
women's intuition. Calling upon the knowledge she had purchased from the priest
for twenty pesos,
she wrote the speech on a sheet of paper and then signaled El Mulato to untie
the rope that bound
her ankles to a tree. He led her once more to the Colonel, and again she felt
the throbbing anxiety
that had seized her when she first saw him. She handed him the paper and waited
while he
looked at it, holding it gingerly between thumbs and fingertips.
"What
the shit does this say," he asked finally.
"Don't
you know how to read?"
"War's
what I know," he replied.
She
read the speech aloud. She read it three times, so her client could engrave it
on his memory.
When
she finished, she saw the emotion in the faces of the soldiers who had gathered
round to listen,
and saw that the Colonel's eyes glittered with enthusiasm, convinced that with
those words the
presidential chair would be his.
"If
after they've heard it three times, the boys are still standing there with
their mouths hanging open,
it must mean the thing's damn good, Colonel" was El Mulato's approval.
"All
right, woman. How much do I owe you?" the leader asked.
"One
peso, Colonel."
"That's
not much," he said, opening the pouch he wore at his belt, heavy with
proceeds from the last
foray.
"The
peso entitles you to a bonus. I'm going to give you two secret words,"
said Belisa
Crepusculario.
"What
for?"
She
explained that for every fifty centavos a client paid, she gave him the gift of
a word for his exclusive
use. The Colonel shrugged. He had no interest at all in her offer, but he did
not want to be
impolite to someone who had served him so well. She walked slowly to the
leather stool where
he was sitting, and bent down to give him her gift. The man smelled the scent
of a mountain
cat issuing from the woman, a fiery heat radiating from her hips, he heard the
terrible whisper
of her hair, and a breath of sweetmint murmured into his ear the two secret
words that were
his alone.
"They
are yours, Colonel," she said as she stepped back. "You may use them
as much as you
please."
El
Mulato accompanied Belisa to the roadside, his eyes as entreating as a stray
dog's, but when he
reached out to touch her, he was stopped by an avalanche of words he had never
heard before; believing
them to be an irrevocable curse, the flame of his desire was extinguished.
During
the months of September, October, and November the Colonel delivered his speech
so many
times that had it not been crafted from glowing and durable words it would have
turned to ash
as he spoke. He travelled up and down and across the country, riding into
cities with a triumphal
air, stopping in even the most forgotten villages where only the dump heap
betrayed a human
presence, to convince his fellow citizens to vote for him. While he spoke from
a platform erected
in the middle of the plaza, El Mulato and his men handed out sweets and painted
his name
on all the walls in gold frost. No one paid the least attention to those
advertising ploys; they
were dazzled by the clarity of the Colonel's proposals and the poetic lucidity
of his arguments,
infected by his powerful wish to right the wrongs of history, happy for the
first time in
their lives. When the Candidate had finished his speech, his soldiers would
fire their pistols into
the air and set off firecrackers, and when finally they rode off, they left
behind a wake of hope
that lingered for days on the air, like the splendid memory of a comet's tail.
Soon the Colonel
was the favorite. No one had ever witnessed such a phenomenon: a man who
surfaced from
the civil war, covered with scars and speaking like a professor, a man whose
fame spread to every
corner of the land and captured the nation's heart. The press focused their
attention on him.
Newspapermen
came from far away to interview him and repeat his phrases, and the number of his
followers and enemies continued to grow.
"We're
doing great, Colonel," said El Mulato, after twelve successful weeks of
campaigning.
But
the Candidate did not hear. He was repeating his secret words, as he did more
and more
obsessively.
He said them when he was mellow with nostalgia; he murmured them in his sleep; he
carried them with him on horseback; he thought them before delivering his
famous speech;
and
he caught himself savoring them in his leisure time. And every time he thought
of those two words,
he thought of Belisa Crepusculario, and his senses were inflamed with the
memory of her feral
scent, her fiery heat, the whisper of her hair, and her sweetmint breath in his
ear, until he began
to go around like a sleepwalker, and his men realized that he might die before
he ever sat in
the presidential chair.
"What's
got hold of you, Colonel," El Mulato asked so often that finally one day
his chief broke down
and told him the source of his befuddlement: those two words that were buried
like two daggers
in his gut.
"Tell
me what they are and maybe they'll lose their magic," his faithful aide
suggested.
"I
can't tell them, they're for me alone," the Colonel replied.
Saddened
by watching his chief decline like a man with a death sentence on his head, El
Mulato slung
his rifle over his shoulder and set out to find Belisa Crepusculario. He
followed her trail through
all that vast country, until he found her in a village in the far south,
sitting under her tent reciting
her rosary of news. He planted himself, spraddle-legged, before her, weapon in
hand.
"You!
You're coming with me," he ordered.
She
had been waiting. She picked up her inkwell, folded the canvas of her small
stall, arranged her
shawl around her shoulders, and without a word took her place behind El
Mulato's saddle.
They
did not exchange so much as a word in all the trip; El Mulato's desire for her
had turned into
rage, and only his fear of her tongue prevented his cutting her to shreds with
his whip. Nor was
he inclined to tell her that the Colonel was in a fog, and that a spell
whispered into his ear had
done what years of battle had not been able to do. Three days later they
arrived at the encampment,
and immediately, in view of all the troops, El Mulato led his prisoner before
the Candidate.
"I
brought this witch here so you can give her back her words, Colonel," El
Mulato said, pointing the
barrel of his rifle at the woman's head. "And then she can give you back
your manhood."
The
Colonel and Belisa Crepusculario stared at each other, measuring one another
from a
distance.
The men knew then that their leader would never undo the witchcraft of those
accursed words,
because the whole world could see the voracious-puma eyes soften as the woman
walked to
him and took his hand in hers.