They went to the house where they knew Toiñ’s wife would be, and they called her to the door and told her what they’d kept in their hearts, or maybe they didn’t, and they started to beat her with sticks. Her two daughters tried to intervene, tried to save their mother, but they were violently pushed aside. The quarrel wasn’t with them, they needn’t be afraid. They took stock and saw there was nothing they could do, not when faced with so many furious people, furious people full of wicked intent. Later I realised the furious people had been quite calculating. Those two daughters were defenceless, for they hadn’t any male siblings. And there were not many of them, only two. There were no male children in the family, no strong men to defend them. That’s partly why the ministrant’s family members were so bold, and also because of the words they’d kept in their hearts, the words that had given them the strength to act in the first place.
The woman could not fend them off, nor could her two daughters, and the ministrant’s family saw there was nothing to stop them from doing exactly as they pleased. And they started to beat the woman out of her house. The woman didn’t know what was happening and so she ran out of the house, down the hill that separated the upper part of town from the lower part and into the cluster of streets that led to the beach. She received blows all over her body and she cried out, pleading for them not to kill her, but whatever it was her pursuers carried in their hearts, it was strong, stronger than her pleas and appeals. Don’t kill me, what have I done to deserve this, what have I ever done to hurt you? But they weren’t interested. They went on beating her with all their might and all over her body, wherever they happened to strike. She carried on running, she was knocked to the ground by the blows, and she wasn’t young, but she got up, and took further blows; she had long been bleeding, and she lost her balance again, but her enemies went on beating her on the ground; she got back on her feet and carried on running, although her strength was dwindling, and she ran right through the centre of the village and reached the vidjil where her husband was, Toiñ. She thought because he was a man and her husband he’d be able to defend her. And besides, there were always other men at the vidjil, men who went there to relax, and they would intervene, they would show the good sense expected of the sort of man who went to the vidjil, and they would call an end to the beating. So she got to the vidjil and she saw her husband and, with that voice of his, that made him speak so slowly and softly, he tried to say something, to find out what was going on and bring the whole brutal act to an end; our island had never seen anything like it. But the men with sticks attacked Toiñ and in no time at all they’d broken one of his arms and were ready to go much further. The other men in the vidjil read the danger but they didn’t say anything and they didn’t intervene, rather they expelled the woman from their building. They did not come to her defence. That’s right: she’d taken refuge in the vidjil, sought the protection of her husband and his colleagues, but the men expelled her and left her to face the evil of her pursuers alone, totally alone. First she’d been denied the help of her daughters, then her husband had been unable to defend her and now she’d been thrown out by the men of the vidjil. This latest blow made her realise she’d reached a decisive moment in her life and had to make an important decision, one that nobody could make for her. And if she didn’t make it right away, a hail of sticks would come down on her and mean there were no more decisions to make. She was half-naked when she came out of the vidjil that had turned her away, and she directed her tears and her tottering steps towards the upper part of the big village, towards the Misión. What she decided to do, nobody could do for her, and she knew she had little time left to do it. She was bleeding profusely and she could hardly see, but one thing kept her going, made her keep her grip on life. With what little energy she had, she covered the distance from the vidjil to the Misión. She fell several times, each fall an opportunity that was made the most of by her pursuers, the senior ministrant’s family, who paused to select where best to strike her, where would cause her the most harm. She bled profusely. From all parts. With tremendous effort, she reached the church and went inside. When she came out and they did what I’ve already talked about, with the sticks and her nakedness, I became overwhelmed with the terrible feeling that what I was witnessing was something quite extraordinary. I was not old enough to see such a thing, nor will anyone ever be old enough. They beat her with sticks until she died; that’s right, they beat her to death, out in the open, after chasing her through the streets of the big village, after she’d gone to the vidjil and been turned away, after she’d been into church and confessed and taken Communion. She died out in the open, after her two daughters were unable to save her, after her husband, Toiñ, whose arm had been broken, was unable to save her, after the men in the vidjil were unable to save her. I am still amazed by the fact that her pursuers waited for her outside the door of the church to finish her off. I am still amazed that the priest didn’t come out to defend her, to speak to those men, women and children who were so possessed with wicked fury. But what the people of our village, of our island, don’t seem to understand is that we all participated in her death, that there will never be another event at which every islander participates as much as we did that day, with that brutal slaying, for it took place out in the open, on the streets, at the vidjil, in the church. That woman gave up her soul out in the open, as if she’d died in a tragic accident, as if the only reason she didn’t die in bed, at home or in the hospital was because her death was a tragic accident. Oh! Now I see what the ministrant’s family perhaps wanted: they wanted her death to echo the death of their father, the senior ministrant, and come like a tragic accident out in the open. Never can an entire village have been so implicated in a single incident as with this. Because everyone took part, even those who thought they didn’t. Seeing is a form of taking part, and nobody can claim they didn’t see it. And maybe they didn’t intervene because deep down, when it really came to it, they thought those people had their reasons for doing what they did. And this is what they did — I’ll describe it for what I hope will be the very last time:
They went with sticks to knock on the woman’s door. She was there with her daughters. The ministrant’s relatives accused her, said the words they’d kept in their hearts, then started to beat her. They did so full of rage, full of fury, and they perhaps intended to finish the matter right there, for they didn’t want the whole world to see what they were up to, something that had never been done on the island before. But the woman didn’t want to die, so she ran out of the house, a house in which she’d had no sons, nor daughters who’d married, but rather two daughters who’d had children with men who lived elsewhere. She went out to seek protection from Toiñ, who was relaxing at the vidjil. By the time she got to the vidjil, she was bleeding profusely, and she left trails of blood in the streets where she ran, chased like a dog that had jumped from the tree at the first stone thrown by a child. She cried, she begged to be pardoned, she pleaded for mercy from everyone in the village, from her pursuers, the ministrant’s entire family. After fending off so many blows, her fingers must have been broken. But she could still run. If she managed to reach the vidjil it was only because the blows hadn’t yet ruined her feet. She panted, sweated, bled profusely. And she entered a place that women rarely entered. She saw that she was going to die and she thought her husband, Toiñ, would be able to defend her. What’s more, the vidjil was a place where important things on the island were judged. It was a place where there were always lots of men during the day and those men would ask what the whole thing was about, for chasing and killing a woman, in fact chasing and killing anyone at all, had never happened on the island before. And she would make the most of the men asking questions and establishing facts in order to rest, to wipe the blood from her face, rub the bumps on her head and hope the men in the vidjil would manage to convince that family that the matter should be discussed and resolved in a different fashion. She ran bleeding into the vidjil. But the men there didn’t know what she expected them to do, and when they saw the blows that cracked the bones of her companion, Toiñ, they realised the situation was more serious than they’d first thought. And they expelled the woman from their vidjil, and they told Toiñ that he must trust in Dios, for they themselves could do nothing. Although they didn’t say as much in words, rather with their actions. Who knows what they really thought. She bled a lot but, with great effort, she accepted the double blow of discovering Toiñ’s weakness and the vidjil’s cowardice. I think that, of the whole business of running through the streets trying to escape death, being turned away from the vidjil must have been some kind of nadir. If things had worked out differently, it could have led to a powerful sense of relief. Salvation from death’s shadow. But instead it led to her surrender. Can it not be said that by going into the church she was handing over responsibility for her life to whoever was in there? Yes, I know she was given Communion after she confessed, but I can’t ignore the fact that the priest was a man with great authority on the island. Someone with a voice. Then came what I could not bear to watch. She went on bleeding and she died, all the strength having run out of her. Her soul ripped out of her body as it was beaten with sticks by members of the senior ministrant’s family. The ground was covered in blood, and I know it wasn’t the people who beat her who carried her dead body back to the house to prepare her for burial. That’s how this was different from killing a dog when it becomes a burden: the dead dog’s killers don’t leave the body on the ground for someone else to deal with.