“It’s their custom to keep their boats tied up to the land, fastened to beams sunk into the sea especially for that purpose. They remain all year-round moored to the rocky cliffs, firmly anchored to the seafloor. They never pull them out of the water, like the people around here do, turning them upside down on the riverbanks to give them a chance to dry out once in a while. They’re wet all the time, constantly in seawater. And there’s a good reason for it. Nobody knows when this island, with its thirst for blood, with its grateful allegiance to the first inhabitants who brought to its shores the best engineers of their day to fortify and beautify it — I mean, from time to time the island loses weight, and from time to time it demands its ration of blood. Once a year, as the dry summer is ending, the rough, reddish sand that lines all its beaches demands its tribute. The sand, looking more each day like dry, corrupted blood, calls out for its annual ration of new blood to maintain the weight of the island. The shepherds frantically sacrifice whole herds of adult and kid goats. They pretend it’s a celebration, but really they’re exorcising their fear. They dry the meat and then sell it in salty slices packed in baskets, offering it on the mainland as ‘donkey meat’—it’s got a good reputation for its exquisite taste — but first they let the blood run along narrow channels cut in the rocks and down to the sandy beaches and the sea. Once a year the island is surrounded by a ring of blood that takes months to finally dissolve.
“Till that happens, the island is in danger of losing weight. If there’s some delay in slaughtering the animals, as well there can be because the inhabitants are such a laid-back lot, the island rises completely out of the sea. It would go drifting off through the air if it wasn’t tethered by the boats. Their ropes stop it from floating away completely. But it hangs in the air there, trembling, till the shepherds sacrifice in tribute to their ancestors enough goats and lambs to satisfy its thirst and calm its itch to fly away.”
The seller of scarves had ended his story, which he’d told without a pause, and he took a deep breath.
“I’ve told you where your father was born,” he added. “You’ll have to ask around to find out where he met your mother and how he fell in love with her. Ask Gustavo, if you like. I think you’re old enough now to know the facts. You’re a woman now, Delmira. The folks here are already picking out a husband for you, I bet. Get out in time. Go off with your father. I’ll find him for you.”
“You gave me a number to call. I still have it.”
“Then it’s up to you.”
The words were barely out of his mouth before he began to pull down the tent, gathering in one scarf and shawl after another, till we found ourselves back in the noisy marketplace. He did not speak again, but he kept the smile on his face. I didn’t speak, either.
Get out of here! The idea was delightful. Why not get out of here? I felt stained by the blood he had spoken of in his story. I was sure the hour for my departure had come. I would cross the ocean, seek the other side of my personal truth, nothing like the truth this salesman had tried to sell me. I didn’t want adventures. I’d had enough of them already. I realized that the salesman had told me his story not because it was true but to offer me a connection, to build a bond between the two of us, because nobody in Agustini could tell you a story without plunging into fantasy. Maybe because of the climate or the proximity of the jungle or for reasons well beyond us, we all felt driven to tell ourselves tall tales. Personally, I yearned to see what the world was like where the world was logical, where nature obeyed the laws of physics without fail, where storytelling wasn’t a universal habit but the prerogative of a few specialists with the designated task of studiously examining the nature of man and his world.
39 The Demonstration
I’d lost track of the time while I was listening to the seller of scarves. So I raced the rest of the way to the teacher’s house. They were running off the last of the pamphlets that the teacher had written. Under my arm I was carrying a bunch of notes I’d scribbled down in the night.
“Excuse me, sir. I brought you these, excuse me—”
He ignored me.
“Can I make a stencil to print them off? I wrote all this.”
“We haven’t got time for anything now, Delmira.”
“I can print them off myself, I promise.”
“Go ahead,” he said, mostly to shut me up.
They left me alone while I was still marking out the stencil and making rather a mess of it all. I printed off as many as I could, till I felt the need to go eat. By that time I had run off hundreds of copies of my pamphlet, to which I had appended my signature: Delmira of Agustini. This barely readable text was my first publication, and my only one before this present work. And I had committed the unforgivable error of inadvertently using the name of a great Uruguayan poet. An error which maybe ruined my career as a writer. Or maybe the reason was my foolish arrogance, a vanity that filled every corner of my soul. Or maybe it was my haste, my eagerness to see the world, to gobble down whole continents in a single mouthful, to suck up oceans and all their fish in one fell swoop. Or maybe it was the wild, revolutionary ideas I had absorbed at third hand while meditating on my actionless, endless, impractical novel, ideas that inspired me to write three dangerous paragraphs and thereby damage my literary future and in the process the whole of my life.
As soon as I was outside the door of the teacher’s house, I began distributing my pamphlet to one and all. Some balladeers were singing a song they had improvised:
Old Baldy was a warrior.
They went and shot him dead.
But he is still among us,
Though his body’s full of lead.
Though his body’s full of lead, my friend,
Baldy lives and always will.
They can never kill Old Baldy
For his spirit’s with us still.
His spirit’s with us still, my friend
For Baldy loved the poor.
He’s thinking of us all the time.
Each day he loves us more.
Each day he loves us more, my friend.
So let us raise a cheer!
We cannot lack for justice when
Old Baldy’s always here.
I hung around with them, handing out my propaganda, sometimes listening to them, other times daring to join in. When they took a break, a young man came over to me. He was dressed in a white suit with brown shoes, with a straw hat, his outfit completely at odds with the clothes of the other demonstrators. Next to him came a photographer, and the two of them were visibly hot and tired.
“What’s that you’re handing out?”
“Something about the death of Old Baldy.”
“Let me see.” Then he added in a different tone, “My, but you’re cute.”
I smiled at him and handed him one of my pages. He took a second one from the pile, and the photographer snapped the musicians. Then they suddenly vanished. There were so many people around it was like looking for a needle in a haystack to find my classmates. By the time I found them, not a single one of my sheets was left.