Everyone on the plantation was a servant, except Tía Luisa and her son.
The new doctor’s office was filled with instruments of which I could see he was proud. He began nearly every sentence with, “What we have here is a great advance in medical science, a fluoroscope”—or a special X-ray machine, or an implement to be used in surgery. I stood in front of the fluoroscope, a glass oyster-colored screen where he could peer at my innards. “Nervous indigestion,” he pronounced.
On the train returning to Santa Clara, the plantation’s district, my grandmother sighed and said my mother’s perpetual stomach troubles had begun with nervous indigestion. Ever since I had lived with her, I had heard about Elsie’s gut. I was instantly haunted as always by my grandmother’s stories—and her infrequent advice such as, “If you don’t dry between your toes after bathing, you’ll bring on an attack of appendicitis.” One of her stories from the time she lived on my grandfather’s plantation, Cienegita, was about a tapeworm excreted into a toilet by one of the maids. The tapeworm was wound around and around, filling up all the space. Every time she spoke of it, the worm lengthened.
A dwarf lived and worked in Olmiguero. When I first saw him, I thought he was a misshapen child. Upon closer inspection, I realized he was an elderly man. He was sweet-natured and amiable, and let us all touch the hump on his back as we said “Enano” for good luck.
* * *
One evening, a movie was shown in the Olmiguero community hall. I was sent to see it by my grandmother, accompanied by the same man who had taken me to the chapel to attend school. He was as silent as he had been that day. When we came to the hall, he left me at the entrance, muttering he would return to get me when the movie was over.
The interior was filled up with scissor-legged wooden chairs upon which were sitting what seemed like the entire population of Olmiguero, even the dwarf. There was an air of great expectation among people. Something rare, something out of the ordinary, was about to happen.
Words suddenly appeared on a screen: THE WAY OF ALL FLESH. I looked back at the ray of dusty lunar light that threw the image above our heads to the screen. The star of the movie was Emil Jannings.
The story begins. It is Christmas. A happy family circles a decorated tree. They live in a small happy town. The father is sent to the big city by his company. The first night, he goes into a bar, orders a nonalcoholic drink. A powerful drug is slipped into his glass. He passes out, comes to, finds himself lying across railroad tracks. A corpse lies a few feet away. He’s killed a man! What horror! A shattered creature, he staggers up a bank. Every neon sign turns into MURDERER ! or KILLER ! Years pass. His circumstances are so reduced, he is forced to gather trash in a public park. His beard is long and white.
It is winter again. He makes his way on foot to the little town, finds the house he once lived in, looks through a frosty window at his family, gathered for another Christmas. His children are now grown up, although his wife hasn’t aged at all.
I was struck down by the movie, so overcome with sorrow at the old man’s plight, I sobbed all the way to the house. I couldn’t spare a glance at the man who accompanied me, keeping his distance across the road, and whom I’d found waiting for me outside the hall, hunched over, looking down at the ground.
* * *
One afternoon after the rainy season, I was on my way to Señora García’s house. I was surprised to see cane cutters gathered in groups on the dirt road, agitated, angry, some of them gesturing with clenched hands at the sky.
That day, Señora García was not her usual welcoming self. Her husband was home, a tall thin man in a suit with a thatch of gray hair over a stern face. By then I knew he worked in the plantation’s administration office.
There were no children in the kitchen;
The new doctor’s office was filled with instruments of which I could see he was proud. He began nearly every sentence with, “What we have here is a great advance in medical science, a fluoroscope”—or a special X-ray machine, or an implement to be used in surgery. I stood in front of the fluoroscope, a glass oyster-colored screen where he could peer at my innards. “Nervous indigestion,” he pronounced.
On the train returning to Santa Clara, the plantation’s district, my grandmother sighed and said my mother’s perpetual stomach troubles had begun with nervous indigestion. Ever since I had lived with her, I had heard about Elsie’s gut. I was instantly haunted as always by my grandmother’s stories—and her infrequent advice such as, “If you don’t dry between your toes after bathing, you’ll bring on an attack of appendicitis.” One of her stories from the time she lived on my grandfather’s plantation, Cienegita, was about a tapeworm excreted into a toilet by one of the maids. The tapeworm was wound around and around, filling up all the space. Every time she spoke of it, the worm lengthened.
A dwarf lived and worked in Olmiguero. When I first saw him, I thought he was a misshapen child. Upon closer inspection, I realized he was an elderly man. He was sweet-natured and amiable, and let us all touch the hump on his back as we said “Enano” for good luck.
* * *
One evening, a movie was shown in the Olmiguero community hall. I was sent to see it by my grandmother, accompanied by the same man who had taken me to the chapel to attend school. He was as silent as he had been that day. When we came to the hall, he left me at the entrance, muttering he would return to get me when the movie was over.
The interior was filled up with scissor-legged wooden chairs upon which were sitting what seemed like the entire population of Olmiguero, even the dwarf. There was an air of great expectation among people. Something rare, something out of the ordinary, was about to happen.
Words suddenly appeared on a screen: THE WAY OF ALL FLESH. I looked back at the ray of dusty lunar light that threw the image above our heads to the screen. The star of the movie was Emil Jannings.
The story begins. It is Christmas. A happy family circles a decorated tree. They live in a small happy town. The father is sent to the big city by his company. The first night, he goes into a bar, orders a nonalcoholic drink. A powerful drug is slipped into his glass. He passes out, comes to, finds himself lying across railroad tracks. A corpse lies a few feet away. He’s killed a man! What horror! A shattered creature, he staggers up a bank. Every neon sign turns into MURDERER ! or KILLER ! Years pass. His circumstances are so reduced, he is forced to gather trash in a public park. His beard is long and white.
It is winter again. He makes his way on foot to the little town, finds the house he once lived in, looks through a frosty window at his family, gathered for another Christmas. His children are now grown up, although his wife hasn’t aged at all.
I was struck down by the movie, so overcome with sorrow at the old man’s plight, I sobbed all the way to the house. I couldn’t spare a glance at the man who accompanied me, keeping his distance across the road, and whom I’d found waiting for me outside the hall, hunched over, looking down at the ground.
* * *
One afternoon after the rainy season, I was on my way to Señora García’s house. I was surprised to see cane cutters gathered in groups on the dirt road, agitated, angry, some of them gesturing with clenched hands at the sky.
That day, Señora García was not her usual welcoming self. Her husband was home, a tall thin man in a suit with a thatch of gray hair over a stern face. By then I knew he worked in the plantation’s administration office.
There were no children in the kitchen;
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