Everything changed one unforgettable afternoon when the madrina was drinking mistela with her disciples Machuca and Cuatrocientos while they gossiped about a famous debt between two neighbors that had erupted in gunfire. The girl was nearby, sitting on the floor, entertaining herself with pencil and paper, without anyone paying her any attention. Until one of the women realized that if they said “bullet,” the girl would write “bullet” with large, clear, round letters; if they said “bank,” she wrote “bank”; if they said “greedy,” or “Ana” or “mandarin,” she wrote that too.
“What!?” exclaimed Todos los Santos, taking the paper in her hands. “This is incredible! Yesterday you didn’t know how to write and today you do…”
“Because yesterday I didn’t want to and today I do.”
Had Todos los Santos kept any of those invented, tight scribbles on little rolls of paper? I insinuate that perhaps the girl’s initial disinterest in conventional writing had to do with an unnecessary duplication.
“Maybe she didn’t need to learn, because in her own way she already knew…,” I say, then wonder whether I should have. I was the one who needed to learn: not to get on the wrong side of Todos los Santos.
“Don’t think I didn’t consider that,” she responds. “Instead of forcing her, I should have learned her way of writing so we could have sent messages to each other, or better yet, to Christ, because no one else would have understood us.”
Encouraged by the miracle of the sudden dominion over letters and taking care not to destroy her student’s initiative and temperament, the madrina took upon herself the painstaking task of polishing the most offensive edges of the girl’s rebelliousness. She trained the child in the healthy customs of brushing your teeth with ashes; saying good morning, good night, and thank you very much; listening patiently to the troubles of others and keeping her own quiet; taking sips of anise tea in a glass, pretending it was aguardiente, the strong licorice-flavored liquor; chewing cardamom seeds to freshen her breath; letting down her hair every day and brushing it in the sun to infuse it with warmth and brilliance.
The child, for her part, approached the lessons with the tenaciousness of a mule that surmounted any obstacle, with a few unyielding exceptions, such as using silverware, which her manual clumsiness converted into deadly weapons, or the habit of speaking loudly and stridently at any hour and on every occasion, including when she prayed.
“Sacred Heart of Jesus, I confide in you!” the girl shouted at the painting, overcome with fervor.
“Don’t shout at him so, you’ll make him lose his hair. My holy God, how this creature howls!” complained the madrina, who knew from personal experience the advantages of a discreet and velvety tone, although the habitual consumption of tobacco had turned hers gravelly.
She begged the girl to lower her voice, then she ordered and exhausted herself with chastisements, but it was beyond the girl’s control, and despite all of her attempts, she continued bellowing and raising a ruckus like the vegetable sellers in the market.
“Let her have a taste of her own medicine,” decided Todos los Santos. And she took the girl to a loud and imposing waterfall formed by the Río Colorado near Acandai. There she made the child recite at full volume the poem “La Luna” by Diego Fallon, until her voice could be heard over the roar of the water, with the hope of filing down her vocal cords a bit. The goal was to tire her of shouting, but she tired first of Diego Fallon, so her teacher familiarized her with Neruda’s despairing song, Bécquer’s dark swallows, Valencia’s languid camels, and assorted pages of a popular collection of romances that was much in vogue at social gatherings in La Catunga.
Day after day the girl made her voice rise over the sound of the cascade, which was polishing it in tune with the musical scale and modulating its diverse gradations of volume. Once, Todos los Santos opened the book to a certain poem by Rubén Darío and indicated for the girl to begin her exercises by reading it at the top of her voice. It was about a princess who steals a star from the sky.
“Isn’t this princess Santa Catalina, our protectress?” asked the girl excitedly.
“Don’t get off track. This is a book of poems, not prayers. Don’t confuse the earth with the sky, just keep on reciting.”
“I can’t, madrina, it’s too beautiful.”
“Nonsense. Give it to me,” said the veteran, and she began reading about the king’s great anger at the theft.
“You must be punished,” brayed the sovereign. “Go back to the sky and what you have stolen you must now return.”
“The princess grows sad over her sweet flower of light,” Rubén Darío went on, “but then, smiling, good Jesus appears.”
“From my fields I offered her that rose,” clarified Jesus. “They are flowers for the girls who think of me in their dreams.”
“I think this good Jesus is the same one who lives in our bedroom,” said the girl. “He gave me a rose too the other day.”
“Hush, you’re mixing things up and making me lose the rhythm. Religion in excess makes good nuns and miserable putas,” warned Todos los Santos.
“The princess is beautiful, because now she has the brooch in which verse, pearl, feather, and flower shine, along with the star,” rhymed Rubén Darío. The girl was suddenly overwhelmed by a sighing that was foreign to her temperament and she moved away to cry. It was then that Todos los Santos discovered in her disciple an inclination for poetry and a fascination with sad stars that alarmed her and seemed to her a dangerous symptom in a promising apprentice of the most merciless profession known to man.
“It’s not a game, child,” she said. “Prostitutes, like boxers, cannot allow themselves a weakness or they’ll get knocked out. Life is one thing and poetry is another; don’t confuse shit with face cream.”
When it became necessary to hasten the training of the girl’s voice, the two women went to stand at the edge of the brand-new Libertadores highway, where ravaging progress entered Tora, and to subject themselves to the ultimate test of infernal noise that rose up to the heavens from the river of vehicles.
“Sailors kiss and then leave!” shouted the girl to the roar of the passing trucks that in their stampede almost tore off her clothing and left reduced to wind the already volatile sailors’ love.
After such a din, when the girl returned home she appreciated being back amid the imperceptible sounds of silence, never before noticed: the faint song of the hummingbird, the whistle of light as it passes through the lock of a door, the buzzing of neighbors on the other side of the wall, the brushing of bare feet against the patio tiles. She had managed to break the tyranny of noise and in recompense was given the calming gift of intimacy, which allows one to pray in secret, to hum boleros, recite sonnets, and whisper phrases in someone’s ear with the purr of a stuffed toy tiger.
“That’s better,” said Todos los Santos. “Now you have the tone and you are ready to acquire the timbre. Your voice should sound like the great bell of the Ecce Homo. Listen to it. Look at it. The bell tower was built on top of the first derrick in Tora’s oil field. Listen to it now as it calls to Ángelus, and tomorrow also when it rings the morning prayers. Listen to it always because that is how your voice should sound, deep and tranquil, just like the great bell in your pueblo.”
“But, madrina,” objected the girl, “this isn’t my pueblo.”
“But it will be, as soon as your voice sounds like its great bell.”