The Dark Bride by Laura Restrepo

Author:Laura Restrepo [Restrepo, Laura]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General Fiction
ISBN: 9780060088958
Publisher: HarperPerennial
Published: 1999-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

twenty-four

A ball of rice. The critical events that occurred next originated with a soggy, cold ball of rice cooked in vegetable oil, one of those balls without salt or God’s mercy that the management of the Troco distributed among the workers at lunchtime, and which they, not wanting to subject themselves to the displeasure of sinking their teeth into, preferred to kick around in the soccer matches they improvised in the building that served as their dining hall.

That morning, sheets of indecisive rain undulated across the sky, evaporating upon contact with the scorched earth, and the men of Campo 26 worked reluctantly amid dense clouds of heat. Delaying his appointment with death, Sacramento had decided to test the stamina of his weakened legs in the open air after having been released from the hospital. His unexpected recovery from an affliction lying somewhere between malaria, amebic cysts, and yearning for eternity was not so much due to the brown mixture, the white mixture, or the poisonous, pink quinine, as to the life-giving power of a dream and the palpable effects of the object that provoked it: the trinket of hair that Payanés had given him. Because as Olguita explained to me, nothing protects you with such loyalty nor transmits such vigor as an amulet made from the hair of the one you love, and the inverse is also true: An array of ills can be unleashed by a single hair from the head of someone who hates you.

“You don’t have to be very sharp to realize the power of hair,” she told me one day. “You only have to see how it continues to grow after death. As if that weren’t enough, it’s the only part of the human body that doesn’t feel pain or decompose.”

“Does it protect you even if the tuft hanging from your neck hasn’t been cut for you but for someone else, and its owner doesn’t even know that you are the one wearing it?” I ask her.

“One would suspect that under those conditions it would protect you less, but it would still protect you. Anyway, it worked for Sacramento, and he isn’t the only one to have been saved by hair.”

“Are you a living being or a suffering spirit?” a disconcerted Payanés asked his friend, who an instant earlier he had given up for nearly dead, as he saw Sacramento appear on skinny Emilia’s platform with the uncertain step of Lazarus, who arose and walked, still shaken by a tremor from beyond.

“I’m still not sure,” answered the resuscitated man.

“Are you well?”

“I am, which is saying a lot.”

“It’s a miracle! Without warning you’ve come back to life . . .”

“I wouldn’t go that far, but at least the will to live has come back.”

“It’s incredible, I’d even swear that you’ve grown,” said Payanés to hide his churning feelings, and he confessed to himself that he had been prepared for his best and only friend’s death but not to see him alive again. “Before, I was a couple of inches taller than you, and now you must be taller than I am.

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