Tales from the Town of Widows by James Canon

Author:James Canon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins

MAGNOLIA MORALES WAS the first woman to arrive in the plaza on that fatal Sunday in June of 2000. She got there a little before daybreak, wearing a shapeless robe of sacking she’d sewed herself. The gusting morning wind made the mango trees tremble, and the many leaves on the ground caused Magnolia to slip, but she didn’t fall. She spread a blanket on the ground, in front of the improvised platform that had been built the day before by order of the magistrate. The eagerly awaited competition wouldn’t begin until eight that morning, but Magnolia had promised her sisters that she’d be the first one to show up and that she’d keep a place for them in the first row.

Luisa arrived next, about half an hour later, then Cuba Sánchez, then Sandra Villegas and Marcela López, and by the time the first rooster crowed, women had appeared from different corners of Mariquita, as though carried along by the wind. They sat around the platform, dark rings under their eyes from not enough sleep, and alcohol on their breath from drinking too much chicha. The night before they’d celebrated Hochiminh Ospina’s fifteenth birthday with a great fanfare not seen or heard in Mariquita in a long time. It must be said that Hochiminh’s birthday was the last thing on the women’s minds (Hochiminh himself had not been invited to his birthday celebration). It was the event that would take place the morning after the boy’s birthday that they were anxiously awaiting; an unprecedented competition that would make Magnolia, Luisa, Cuba, Sandra, Marcela, Pilar, Virgelina, Orquidea, Patricia, Nubia, Violeta, Amparo, Luz, Elvira, Carmenza, Irma, Mercedes, Gardenia, Dora and many other young girls, widows and old maids of Mariquita immensely happy.

But while the women sat around the platform in the plaza, chatting merrily and making their last conjectures, Che, Hochiminh, Vietnam and Trotsky had begun to experience, separately, the adverse effects of the tremendous anxiety caused by the contest that would decide their fate. For several months the four boys had been the subject of discussions, speculations, assumptions, controversies, fights, bets and even jokes. Their thoughts and feelings about the magistrate’s decree, however, had never been consulted. Their anxiety had been building for an entire year, and they’d grown awfully apprehensive. On this memorable morning, the proximity of the event and the mounting pressure placed on each to win had worked them up to a state of near hysteria where anything was possible.

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