If it isn’t disrespectful to the clergy, I imagine he was also saying: “What bloody bad luck! Things are really screwed up now. I’m not going to be able to fuck my little shepherdess in our hammock!”
To top it off, the poor priest had to suffer one more aggravation. In front of him the formation of soldiers — the hair under their gleaming helmets must have been smoldering in the heat of that tropical sun — blocked his way, but he was also unable to get through the side door of the sacristy because one of the trucks had now parked right against the wall, so he couldn’t open the sacristy door. There he was stuck with the two old biddies, his altar boys, and his indefatigable nuns, unable to leave and eat breakfast, even though his guts were rumbling. At eleven-forty, according to the town clock on which we all relied — it was set on top of a column of carved wood, at the entrance of the furniture store on the corner of Hildalgo facing the park — the soldiers started to faint. Whose idea had it been to put metal helmets on their heads in this heat? It was absolutely insane. We never found out why in hell’s name they’d come into town, though we suspected they’d heard about the problem with the market roof and that the central government had sent them, with its usual efficiency, to “help the victims,” but that’s only a guess, because nobody made clear what job they were expected to do. What nobody could doubt was that the sun had beaten them. The heat finished them off, knocking them over one after another.
No sooner had they collapsed than the priest, in absolute fury, dashed from the porch, without even looking at them, crossed the park, and marched off to his traditional Sunday breakfast, without one sign of sympathy for the fallen. We and the three nuns followed after him, treading on his heels, and the rest of the townsfolk followed his example, in that nobody was ready to help the victims of the sunstroke.
It was quite a while before the other soldiers, two in each vehicle, the driver and his mate, woke up from their midday nap and came down to the square to find their missing comrades. They went from house to house asking for water without the least sign of friendliness and then doused the fainted soldiers in bucketfuls.
On our return from breakfast the park was streaming with water. In the midst of the steam that the heat was creating, soldiers staggered about unsteadily, supported on the shoulders of the eight still-healthy men who bundled them like parcels into the trucks, which were also wrapped in fog. They took so long about it that by the time the last of the soldiers was aboard, there wasn’t a trace of water left in the park or one soldier capable of standing to attention. The trucks made off, their springs squeaking. A few waterlogged weapons remained on the ground and the priest had them taken into the sacristy. Afterward, he told me to pass the word along that he’d be saying Mass at six o’clock. In the circumstances, Mass turned out to be straight speechifying. We gathered in the church and the priest harangued us with every sort of argument against the army, weapons, wars, preaching peace in a lengthy, moving sermon that took so long he could have said two High Masses in the time. When he saw his flock starting to snooze off, he glanced at the clock and promised to finish off the Mass the next Sunday. It goes without saying that there was no strolling through the park that day, with the men circulating in one direction and the women in the other. The band didn’t play and several of us kids went without supper because we were already fast asleep by the time we got home. Who knows how long the priest went on, violently condemning violence (the nonverbal kind), even misquoting passages of the Bible to make his point?
13 The Electric Storm and the Toads
As dawn broke the following Sunday, a truly memorable electric storm descended on us, one that had distressing consequences. The bandstand in the middle of the park was struck by lightning and burned up, as was the machine for making ice cream that had only just come to town. Lightning struck the giant kopak tree which overshadowed the bandstand, and the store below the bandstand, on the opposite side from the ice-cream store, was also reduced to ashes. Not even its display window survived, or a single item of merchandise. Even the canned goods were destroyed, but the benches outside the ice-cream store were left intact, as if the lightning had left them to the cruel mercies of sun and rain.
The entire town was astonished at this happening. To crown it all, we lost a cow. It arrived at our house, fried to a crisp, brought to us by four Indians who had loaded it on to a long pole in order to carry it. It was truly a sight for sore eyes, as black as coal and as shiny as the night sky. The Indians were insisting on bringing it into the house, but my grandmother said no, and as there was never any doubt about who ruled our household with a rod of iron, it stayed outside on the sidewalk. They’d hardly rested its four legs on the ground when it practically fell to ashes. When the Indians picked up their pole, all that remained was a pile of blackness and a section of the head, still recognizable because one remaining eye kept staring at us. The crumbling of the cow was testified to by a mass of witnesses.
Grandma flew into a fury because “those good-for-nothings had come bringing that heap of filth.” But the Indians did not respond to her scolding. They’d toted the frizzled cow all the way from the farm so that my grandmother wouldn’t be able to accuse them of stealing it and have them thrashed, as usual. They hadn’t been able to wake up the foreman, because the day before, he had celebrated his birthday, filling himself so full of rum that not even the electric storm or the calls of the Indians could rouse him from his drunken sleep.
The out-of-town bus arrived several hours late and we kids ran to see what had happened. The driver was pale and speechless. The passengers looked terrified. They sat on the benches in the waiting room and needed a glass of soda pop before they could answer our questions. “Hey, what happened to you guys? What took you so long? Why do you look like that?”
The oldest female passenger was the first to speak. “I’ve only ever seen one before, except that now with the awful noise of the bus …”
“When did you see it?” I asked, without the least clue what she was talking about.
“I suppose I was your age, little girl. It was a rainy afternoon. I was out riding with my papa, sitting in front of him. We were on our way back from — yes, I remember it well. How would I forget a thing like that? On our way back from my mother’s funeral. Poor thing!” She crossed herself. “God bless her. We had taken her back to her town, and were returning to our own, when all of a sudden we saw it cross the road in front of us, coming on and on and on and on, till its tail disappeared across the other side of the road. Just like that it vanished into the thick bush. The horse didn’t even whinny, Goldy was a fine creature, obeying my father’s least order. All three of us remained motionless, looking at the giant serpent, so quiet it probably didn’t realize we were there watching its endless length crossing and crossing and crossing in front of us. That’s why it didn’t devour us. But when you’re in a noisy bus, how are you going to keep that quiet? There we were, making such a clatter, and then that happened!”
“This one today was unbelievable. I’ve heard folks say they’re pretty immense, but this must have been all of forty feet!”
“You’re kidding! It was at least fifty.”
“No, even bigger than that!”
“It just didn’t want to go. It stayed there, in front of us, rearing its horrible, snaky head.”
“Of course, it had a snake’s head, but what else would it have?”
“It coiled itself around, real bold-like, coiling along the road.”