Recollections of Things to Come (Texas Pan American Series) by Garro Elena

Author:Garro, Elena [Garro, Elena]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780292753372
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Published: 2010-07-05T00:00:00+00:00

TWO

It was afternoon. The newspaper vendors’ shouts announced that religious worship had been suspended. Their cries crossed my streets, entered stores, penetrated houses, and put the town in motion. People came out on the street, formed in knots, and went to the church courtyard.

“Let’s see if they’ve taken the saints away!”

Under the violet light of afternoon the crowd was growing.

“Let’s see who’s taking the mother away from whom!”

Enveloped in low-voiced anger, their bare feet tanned like leather by the stones, their heads uncovered, the poor people grouped beneath the branches of the almond trees.

“Virgin of Guadalupe, help us get these bastards!”

From time to time a shout was heard, and then there was silence. While they waited, the men smoked cheap cigarettes and the women minded their children. What were we waiting for? I don’t know, I only know that my memory is always an interminable wait. The ladies and gentlemen of Ixtepec arrived and mingled with the Indians, as if for the first time the same evil was afflicting them both.

“What’s going on?” was the question that was on everyone’s lips. At 7 P.M. the first soldiers appeared; they carried rifles with fixed bayonets. Impassively they took positions to cut off the possible exit of the invaders from the courtyard. A ripple of whispers began to spread; the swell of rancor reached the soldiers, who remained motionless. The warm shadows of the night descended from the tops of the almond trees and covered the courtyard.

Don Roque, the sacristan, pushed his way through the crowd. He was covered with dust and his hair was disheveled. “Go home, all of you!”

The crowd turned a deaf ear to his plea. The courtyard was filled with bonfires, lighted tapers, and prayers. At dawn, people from neighboring towns arrived to enlarge the crowd; a great cloud of dust rose to blend with the questions, the smoke from the blazing fires, the cries of “Get up, mule!”, and the smell of food cooked in the open. Groups of drunken men were sleeping in the dust; women wrapped in shawls rested quietly.

The years have passed, and that immense night on which we kept watch at the church appears in my memory with the clarity of a firefly. And like a firefly it eludes my grasp.

The orange streak that announces morning appeared; the light rose through the sky and we were still in the courtyard; we were tired and thirsty but we did not want to let the church fall into the hands of the soldiers. What would we do without it, without its feast days, without its statues that listened patiently to our laments? And would they condemn us to agonize among the stones and to work the dry land? To die like stray dogs, without a whimper, after living a miserable life?

“It’s better to die fighting!” a man shouted, throwing his hat into the air.

The others answered his shout with prolonged moans, and all the voices in Ixtepec joined in the chorus, “Sons of bitches!”

Around the church, vendors of cool drinks and of tacos reeking with coriander were present in large numbers.

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