Pig's Foot (5 page)

He patted each man on the back, telling them to say nothing of what had happened but to leave the matter in his hands. Santacruz, Aquelarre and Jabao went back to their homes. At dawn José was outside Oscar’s house and was about to knock when his friend opened the door.

‘Hey, José, I was just heading out,’ said Oscar.

‘Where? To hack the other leg off the mare?’

Oscar ignored this comment. He told his friend that when he arrived home the night before, he had told Malena he intended to give up working in the cane fields and buy a cow. Malena had been inconsolable, had thrown herself on the ground and wept. José knew that Oscar could not bear to see his wife cry. So he told her he would go back to work on the sugar plantation and she calmed down. Then, this morning, just as he was about to meet them at the cart, he had found Malena unconscious on the floor. He had not told José that recently Malena had been fainting often. He threw water on her face, but she did not wake. Then he had gone to fetch Ester, who was inside examining her even now. ‘That’s why I’m late this morning,’ said the Kortico.

José stared at his friend suspiciously.

‘Why the hell did you do it, Oscar? I told you if you wanted your money all you had to do was wait until the end of the month. Or was this for the animal sacrifice to revoke Olofi’s spell?’

Oscar clearly had no idea what his friend was talking about.

‘I’m talking about the mare, you bastard. Don’t play me for a fool, just tell me the truth!’

‘The mare? What’s happened to the mare?’

José realised Oscar really knew nothing about what had happened. He scratched his neck and glanced around, studying the undergrowth. He thought he saw a tree moving swiftly, but no wind was shaking its branches and besides trees do not wear hats.

‘Has someone killed the mare? Tell me, José.’

‘You know what, Oscar . . . I think someone doesn’t like you.’

Oscar asked more questions but José had already turned on his heel and was walking quickly back to his house. At that moment Ester’s voice came from inside the shack.

‘Six weeks, Oscar.’

Both men turned.

‘Congratulations,’ said Ester.

Oscar's Nightmare

The two men rushed inside and found Ester washing her hands and Malena with a smile on her face.

‘What does she mean?' said Oscar.

‘You know the old saying: it's too late to eat green guava when you've already got the shits,' said José, laughing.

Oscar nervously asked Malena how she could be pregnant and demanded that Ester check again, explaining that Malena had taken to fainting a lot recently and that besides her predictions were frequently inaccurate. Ignoring Oscar's concerns, Ester walked to the door. ‘Take good care of her. She'll need it. I recommend she eat lots of meat and vegetables to increase her blood supply because we never know how much she might lose. You'll find me at my house when you're ready to pay.'

‘Wait there! I'll pay you right now.'

Oscar went out into the back yard and grabbed the chicken he had bought a few days earlier to make sacrifice to Olofi. Looking into the midwife's eyes, he said that he hoped she was certain of her divinations because this was a very serious matter, and if this were a joke he would not let it pass. Ester nodded, grabbed the chicken by the legs and left. Oscar stared after her, dazed, as though her coal-streaked smock were some spectre disappearing into the underbrush. Then he stumbled back into his shack, its walls green with moss and mould, still in a deep trance.

‘Cheer up,
hombre
, it's not the end of the world,' said José. ‘Eventually we all die, and that's the end. Everything we are dies with us. Some day, even your name will have vanished from the earth. “Oscar Kortico?” people will say. “Who the hell was he?” When you think about it, children are the only proof that we ever existed. You'll see, you'll come to love being a father.' Oscar ushered his friend out, saying that he and Malena had a lot to talk about. José walked down the path, skipping for joy, greeting everyone he passed along the way. He had completely forgotten about the dead mare, her tongue poking out. Oscar and Malena were going to have a child, that was all that mattered. A child would bring the two families even closer together and would finally root out the bitterness lodged in his friend's heart. This is what children did, they brought happiness into a home, something Oscar had rarely experienced. That day, the Mandingas celebrated Malena's pregnancy in secret while the Kortico cabin remained shut up as though there had been a death in the family.

Unlike Betina, who scarcely believed in her own shadow, Malena was fiercely devout and visited the church of Our Lady of Charity in El Cobre at least once a week in addition to the three prayers she made daily. I know this doesn't mean anything because there are lots of people who claim to be Christians when actually they're complete bastards who would sell their own mothers. But Malena was not like that. Oscar thought that perhaps this was why the gods had bestowed on her the gift of pregnancy because, truth be told, during their marriage they had had sex only once a month and each time he had tied a string around his enormous penis in accordance with the traditions of his forebears.

‘Tell me the truth, Malena, have you slept with another man?' he asked her over and over. But every time Malena would cross herself three times, swearing she had done no such thing, and every night she offered up a prayer for her husband who, though he was a good man, was sometimes possessed by demons.

Oscar, who always saw his wife as sacred, knew that she was sickly by nature; she was often woken by a recurring nightmare: a man raping her, pinning her against the timber floor. Sometimes, in the early hours, when he heard her scream in terror, he would run and fetch a damp cloth and press it to her forehead but when he asked what had frightened her, she always answered: ‘It's just a nightmare.' The same nightmare had tormented her for years. Oscar never believed that these moans and tortured cries were simply the result of nightmares. And so he became jealous. Sometimes he would follow Malena all the way to El Cobre to discover that there was indeed something else, but he never saw evidence of anything unseemly. He would study her in the presence of other men, he even watched how she behaved with his friend José, and finally he was forced to admit that Malena was a saint, a pure woman, utterly devoted to her husband.

But Oscar was highly strung by nature. If he had never dreamed of getting married it was because he was convinced that no woman could ever love him. Being four feet tall and with a dark-black complexion, he felt sure it was impossible, since Negro women dreamed of tall, handsome men, mulattoes preferably, with whom to bear children. Racism was commonplace among Negroes. Oscar was one of the darkest, and probably the shortest slaves, which was why the first time Malena told him that she loved him, he ran away, unable to believe that this cruel woman could dare mock him to his face. It was only thanks to the persistence of José, who invariably dragged Oscar along on his visits, that he finally realised Malena was serious; that she genuinely loved him.

Even so, Oscar had no idea how to make a woman happy. José, who was an expert on the subject, gave him tips on how to treat the fair sex. He suggested Oscar bring her flowers, make her laugh, massage her feet and her back, and recommended lots of sex on the grass and in the mud. Oscar picked romerillo, hibiscus and wild roses to which he added stems of sicklebush and wrapped this bouquet in a banana leaf to give to Malena who immediately pricked her fingers on the spiny sicklebush and began to laugh uncontrollably. Oscar sucked the blood from her fingers for a moment, and Malena went on laughing as he joked and perfomed silly tricks, then Oscar sent her sprawling face-down in the mud.

‘What on earth are you doing, Oscar?' said Malena. By now Oscar had already climbed up on to her back and was kneading her neck and shoulders like a baker. According to José, this was how women were conquered; little different from a sow or a nanny goat, and this, therefore, was how Oscar treated her. After all, where goats and sows were concerned, Oscar was an expert. Have you ever tried to massage a sow? I didn't think so. Well, Oscar had. He had given Malena flowers, had made her laugh, and massaged her shoulders. All that remained now was José's final recommendation. Oscar turned Malena on to her back. Her vision was blurred from the mud and so when Malena saw Oscar holding a black cudgel thick as a mango sapling, she thought for a moment he was about to beat her.

‘Throw down that stick, Oscar . . .' said Malena. ‘What are you doing!' She quickly wiped the mud from her eyes. Only then did she realise what the thick cudgel actually was. She jumped to her feet, ran off and shut herself in her house for a week. Oscar went back to consult his friend, explaining that the last phase of his plan had failed.

‘That's because you've got a prick like a horse,' said José. I don't know if people said ‘prick' back then, but never mind. Anyway, José advised that from now on Oscar should treat Malena with love and tenderness. This he did. Though Malena refused to open her door to him, he would lay his bunch of wildflowers on the doorstep. He did so every day for months, and the outcome was always the same: still Malena remained silent, shut away in her shack. Until one day, after working in the vegetable garden, tired of waiting for her to respond and wounded by the lash of her indifference, he told José that it was all his fault.

‘All my fault? What's all my fault?'

‘You put ideas into my head, you gave me hope.' Oscar went on to explain that he had been perfectly content fighting wars and killing Spaniards, it had been José who had steered them away into this domesticated life, and all it had brought Oscar was pain. He had done everything José had told him to do, he had dared to hope, and it was all for nothing.

‘What am I supposed to do now?' asked the Kortico.

‘What do you do now? You do what everyone else has to do. You accept the golden rule: sometimes life is fucking terrific, sometimes it's terrifically fucked,' said José, clapping him on the back. They talked for a little longer and in the end decided never to mention the subject again. Oscar picked up his sack of vegetables and went home. When he got there, Malena was waiting for him. They both stood frozen for what felt like a century. They were speechless. Like two sleepwalkers sharing the same dream, they moved to the bed and undressed. Oscar tied his penis with a length of twine and Malena's eyes widened, unable to take in what they saw, but she said nothing.

For the first time they discovered each other's bodies; came to know them by heart. Oscar penetrated her and Malena drew him in, her legs hooked around his waist, her mouth half-open. Afterwards, with Malena's face resting on his belly and his hands stroking her still-trembling breasts, Oscar realised that she was the love of his life, that he would marry her and together they would fashion a new life. The rest you know. The couple settled in Pata de Puerco and lived happily for a while in that little hamlet. Which brings us back to where we left our story.

Now I'll tell you something you don't know, starting with the fact that from the moment Malena fell pregnant, Oscar became a dutiful husband, attending to his wife's every whim with an almost religious devotion. Malena had only to lift her finger and already he was by her bedside waiting for her orders: a sweet grapefruit, or maybe she wanted him to boil water on the fire so she could take another bath – the third today. He massaged her feet and her hands, he went with her everywhere, he bathed her, dressed and undressed her, brushed her hair, took her out walking, put her to bed and woke her in the morning. Anyone would have thought his fondest wish was to have a child. He realised he could change the gruff manner many had criticised, and one morning people discovered that Oscar had teeth, that he was capable of smiling. ‘He has teeth as white as coconut flesh,' they said.

Very soon the bellies of both women began to swell. Day after day, Betina's belly came to look more like a watermelon, a vast vaulting bulge jutting out from beneath her clothes. Malena's belly was almost the same size, something no one could explain given that she had become pregnant six weeks later. José taunted his friend Oscar, saying that he had clearly unleashed twenty years of seed, that he was a prize stud. ‘With a prick like that you could impregnate a cow.'

Oscar laughed. He didn't draw his machete as he used to do; nothing seemed to bother him now, nothing could make him lose his temper. He had become helpful and obliging to his neighbours; he even ran errands for the Santacruz family. He helped Evaristo make kites which they gave away to the children every week. José had persuaded the other men that Oscar had not killed the mare, that he himself had seen some local thug running away, someone he did not recognise in the darkness. The men believed him.

That same day, the two friends apologised to each other and they did not go back to working in the eastern cane fields. They spent their mornings working their little plot of land and making wooden toys for the children. In the afternoons the two couples would go strolling through the village hand in hand, happy and content. Oscar would kiss Malena, hug her, massage her feet, her shoulders; this he did every time his wife had walked ten paces. José and Betina simply laughed at him. It was as though he had suddenly gone mad, but with a harmless, contagious madness, one that was utterly hilarious.