Sick peasants would come to our house, stricken with rheumatism, kidney trouble, old age. The skin stretched over their bones looked tanned by misery. Pain seemed frozen into the wretchedness on their faces. They sat on a bench in the main square, beneath the shade of a tree, and waited for my father to administer medicine. Patiently alert, they watched dusk fall over the streets with wide eyes. They’d sit there for hours, with never a word to anyone that they had come to see him. They might even notice when he arrived and was about to leave without speaking to him … And at times, when I was with my father, we heard a hesitant voice calling out behind us, “Señor Nicias?… Señor Nicias?”
And my father would come to a halt. Knowing well what this was about, he walked towards the man who’d called to him, who was propped up by his wife and in too much pain to move.
“What’s the matter with you?” my father asked.
“The sickness, sir, it won’t leave me alone.”
And during a dialogue of few words and many silences, I observed my father and the man watching each other, as if reading each other’s thoughts on their faces.
Until all of a sudden the man burst into tears, saying that his kidneys were killing him and, pouting like a child, that he was very hungry.
On days my father didn’t show up some of the peasants waited until night, taking short walks around the square or going to the market to buy fruit. The darkness slowly engulfed them, turning them and the trees black. Their children played haunted house with the village children, running between the flower beds, emitting feeble cries, stumbling frequently from weakness.
They ran barefoot, in torn and patched trousers, stepping on the grass, clowning around and bumping into passersby.
Often a dog that had come to town with one of the families was lying nearby, and his paws would tremble as he tried to stand up and stretch, as though his legs were too frail to support him.
When she heard that the peasants were waiting for my father, my mother would go tell them the approximate time he was expected back from his trip. But it made no difference whether she told them three in the afternoon or nine at night, it did not seem to diminish their resolve to wait for him, although one could detect weariness and sorrow in their eyes.
Next to the market, in a dusty lot, a family of circus people had set up a tent for the fair in October. Among the advertised attractions was the man without arms, “fallen to earth one moonless night from a spaceship,” according to the handwritten paper sign hanging over his head. The man without arms, the circus barker cried, could light a cigarette, fry an egg, untie a knot, and play cards with his feet. These were the feats he performed during the show, sitting in the center of the ring, dressed in black like a priest, his cheeks painted like a clown’s. He would go through his act in silence, exasperating the audience with his slowness, spending too long opening a package or uncorking a bottle of wine, investing too many minutes in the eating of an egg with a knife and fork. But just as the audience began to display traces of boredom, murmuring among themselves or shifting in their seats, the man without arms would lift himself abruptly from the floor, thrusting himself upwards like a rag doll and disappear offstage in a dance.
Once the performance had drawn to a close amid whistles and applause, two sibling trapeze artists would appear, a man and woman in bathing suits, announced by a loudspeaker. Almost immediately afterwards they were joined by a dwarf, whose nose was painted red like a tomato. The dwarf seemed to have normal proportions when seated, but the moment he stood up you noticed his lower limbs were extremely short.
Maize the dwarf, dressed in blue, wearing clown shoes, and always ceremonious, would imitate his companions, falling repeatedly from his trapeze, half a meter high. His charm stole the show and few paid attention to the real trapezists.
The female trapeze artist, whose legs were brown and chunky, reappeared, this time in a sequined suit, and walked the wire. She teetered clumsily to keep her balance while the man without arms, who was her uncle, watched from below.
The teenage boys would follow her legs rather than the act, and when she bent over, in her generous brassiere and her tight panties, there was something almost obscene in her manner.
My brother had fallen in love with her, and wanted to run away with her once the circus left town. In the meantime, he attended every show.
But my father was aware of his intentions, and asked me to keep an eye on him.
I’d follow him down the streets and through the rooms of our house, listening as he spoke to himself, watching him leaning against the fig tree as he stared at his own shadow for hours.
He seemed not to see or hear me. And if he did, it was with the blindness and deafness of someone who is near us but whose thoughts are far away.
After the show I would find him with the trapeze artist in the darkness of a portico on the edge of town, clinging to her as if their bodies were one. I could hear, while I waited, the coyotes howling in the hills.
After a while of being glued to each other, they would part ways and take different streets.
And he would have left the village with her had he not seen her entering the cacique’s house one Saturday night after they’d said goodbye, staying inside with him and not coming out the entire time we waited outside.
The cacique had killed Quedito’s father. He’d taken him by surprise as he climbed the stairs leading up to the school to fetch his son. The cacique had shot him in the back from down below, halting him midway between two steps, the bullets thrusting his body upwards for a moment before he tumbled down, in a matter of seconds, the stairs that had taken him ten minutes to climb.
We were in class at the time and heard the shots. One. Two. Three. While our teacher talked on about the Sierra Madre …
Quedito, seated next to me, barely stirred when he heard the gunshots, unaware they were connected to his life.
Then we heard the voices of the younger pupils, whose classroom windows overlooked the stairs
“The cacique has killed Don Manuel,” someone shouted.
And we saw several people tearing through the yard.
Our teacher forbade us to leave the classroom. She ordered us to remain quietly seated. None of us could resist looking over at Quedito, who sat next to me as if frozen, with his mouth open.
“Come,” the teacher said to him. “Let’s go see what’s happening.”
He didn’t move.
So she took him by the arm and insisted. “Stand up. I’ll take you home.”
And she helped him up from his chair, his legs numb, unable to take a step.
“Can’t you walk?” she asked.
Quedito didn’t answer, as if she were addressing someone else or he couldn’t understand her words.
So I said to him, “Quedito, the teacher says she’ll take you home.”
He looked at me and shrugged, and stood staring at our teacher, his face like a shattered windowpane, about to break into sobs.
“Let’s go,” she said. “Shall we go see what happened?”
At first Quedito wouldn’t budge … He then began to walk on tiptoes towards the door and as soon as he got close to it broke into a run.
The teacher ran after him, losing a shoe on the way. And we ran after her, to see Quedito rushing down the stairs four at a time, always on the verge of tumbling down, his eyes desperately searching for his father, who’d already been picked up and taken home.
One student said:
— They got him in the chest.
Another:
— In the stomach.