That new moon night, Elena ran toward the door of the house and grabbed her grandmother Carmen’s hand.
Her fingers sank into a soft layer of loose skin. She could feel the old woman’s tendons and bones shifting with an almost rigid quality. She did not let go even though the woman gave a small tug. She carried an oil lamp in her free hand and a bundle of coarse cloth tied to her back.
“Why do you have to go, Grandma?” Elena asked. “Where to?”
The old woman stopped resisting and looked back. Her husband, Fernando, was sitting at the table, next to a pair of tallow candles. Her daughter, Prudencia, Elena’s mother, was also silent. The light flickered and swayed with the wind that slipped through the door. As if it were a vigil, all the houses in the village were lit.
“I am going to check that your father has not left,” Carmen answered Elena.
The girl did not understand. Esteban, her father, had died five years earlier. The only place he could have gone was to heaven, as Prudencia had told her in church on the day of the burial, where she had cried until she was as dry as her grandmother’s wrinkled hand. The girl let go of Carmen’s hand. The old woman took one last look at the silence of the home and left the house.
Elena peeked out the door. Her grandmother was not the only one in the street. She recognized Federica, Rocío’s grandmother, Jacinta, Juanelo’s, even old Felicia who never had children had an oil lamp and the bundle on her back. She saw them all marching until they headed to the main street of the little village with muddy ground because of the rainy season, where the river water became dangerous and they were forbidden to approach the swamp.
The grandmothers gathered at the exit of the village. They all wore work clothes, barefoot, with the lamps held high. Soon they resembled a great oil lamp with a light as bright as the sun. They walked slowly, dragging their legs full of varicose veins and black veins from poor circulation. Elena wanted to go after Carmen, but as she leaned forward to run, her mother Prudencia’s voice stopped her:
“Do not even think about it. Or I will give you a good pair of lashes.”
Elena swallowed hard and retreated inside the house.
“Close the door,” Prudencia ordered.
Elena obeyed. She had already tasted the bite of the leather on her legs when she did something the adults did not approve of and it was not something she wanted to repeat. She looked from her mother to her grandfather and asked the question again:
“Why is Grandma Carmen going with the others?”
“She already told you: to check that her father had not left,” said Grandfather Fernando.
“But . . . Dad is in the cemetery,” said Elena and a knot formed in her throat. “In . . . in heaven,” she corrected.
“They are not always in one place or the other. Sometimes you have to look for them and bring them back,” said Fernando. “Now, come here and wait. Prudencia, my daughter, will you strain a little coffee? The night is going to be long.”
Elena’s mother got up from the chair and headed to the kitchen, separated from the living room only by a curtain of raw brown linen. The girl peeked out the window. The procession of grandmothers was moving away from the village. The only thing distinguishable about them were the lights of their lamps, now small like those of a normal candle.
That night, no one slept in the village. To Elena, who was forbidden coffee, they gave her a little cup. No one turned on the radio, nor was any conversation heard, as if everyone had gone to sleep with the lights on. Elena peeked out the window from time to time. She saw silhouettes in the neighboring houses, curious, like them. There was no one in the street. Only the occasional reflection of the dozens of footsteps of the grandmothers.
Elena got bored. No one in the house gave her more explanations about what Carmen was doing with the other old women. But because of the coffee, she could not sleep. Not even if she rested her head on her mother’s lap, who refused to hum her a lullaby.
“It is not time for songs,” she told her.
Elena settled for Prudencia stroking her hair. Burying her fingers in the dark strands and untangling them patiently. Fernando lit a tobacco with the flame of one of the candles. Prudencia used to scold him, ask him to go smoke outside. This time she did not. She let the bitter and sticky aroma envelop the house until Elena began to cough and covered her mouth with the front of her blouse.
When the sun began to show through the windows, Elena, with tired eyes but sharp ears, heard the footsteps. She raised her head, got up from the chair and ran to the window. Against the light, she saw figures in the street. They all returned hunched under the weight of something that rattled lightly. Their clumsy feet after a whole night of movement splashed the paths and formed a thick layer of mud on their feet up to the ankles. Elena heard the doors of the houses opening one by one.
They were the grandmothers returning.
She saw Federica and Jacinta. She did not see Felicia. Nor Lola. There were fewer grandmothers than those who had left on the new moon night. She startled when her mother, Prudencia, approached the door of the house with long strides and opened it abruptly. Elena stopped looking out the window and looked at her grandmother Carmen, more aged than ever, with the oil lamp turned off hanging from her waist and the damp bundle, full of something that clattered with a sound similar to polished rocks. She had a long wound on her left hand, like a single yaguareté claw. It was partially covered with swamp mud, the one they were forbidden to approach. The blood mixed with the dirty brown color of the stagnant water and dripped on the threshold.
“Did you find him? Was he among them?” Prudencia asked with a tremor.
“I do not know. Not until we open the sacks,” said Carmen in a tired voice. “Is there coffee?”
“I will make you a brew right now,” said Fernando and went to the kitchen.
Elena tried to help her grandmother with the bag, but no one allowed her to touch it.
“It is not your turn to carry this burden yet, you are too young,” said Carmen. Her eyes were red and teary, with flushed cheeks as if she had a fever. Her face looked elongated, flaccid and disfigured. “Forget this night, Elenita.”
“But what did you do, Grandma?” the girl asked. “Did you go to the swamp? They always tell me it is dangerous.”
“It is. You will know in fifty years, if you are still here,” said Carmen and placed a dirty hand on the girl’s shiny head. “Now you do not have to worry about anything.”
Carmen, after drinking the coffee, went out again. Elena watched her from the window. The grandmothers who had returned, now in broad daylight, left their houses again. They all carried a sack on their backs, more or less bulky. The village filled with a clattering, like strange rattles. This time, they were going to the church.
After breakfast Elena asked permission to go play with Rocío and Juanelo. They were waiting for her near the village well.
“Did your grandmother not let you see what she had in the bag either?” was Juanelo’s first question as soon as he saw Elena.
“No, nothing. And she had a very ugly wound on her arm. Could a yaguareté have attacked her?”
“Mine had a wound like that too,” said Rocío. “And it was covered with that stinky thing from the swamp! Ack!”
“They are all in the church,” Juanelo sketched a smile. The same one he used when he thought of a mischief. “What if we go see what they are doing? There is a hole in the wall that leads to the confessional.”
Elena accepted without hesitation. She was dying to know why the grandmothers had made the pilgrimage, why they returned with wet sacks that could not be touched and why she had to wait fifty years to discover it. She wanted to know it right then. The three of them headed to the church, but they were not the only curious ones. There were several adults and other children. Some sobbed. Others were more cautious and let out silent tears. Elena could see Iluminado, Felicia’s husband, who never had children. She had not returned from the swamp.
The children stayed a moment among the congregated and turned around to enter through the hole that Juanelo knew: some blocks that could be removed to give access to the small tunnel that led them, just as the boy had said, to the confessional. They squeezed behind the grille and peeked with bright eyes. Near the altar they had placed a large table. Many bundles were already open. Elena narrowed her eyes and could distinguish what the grandmothers had brought from the swamp: bones. Small. Large. Barely a phalanx. A femur. A skull with intact teeth. The grandmothers palpated them with their eyes closed, nodded, commented:
“Juan, dead in 72 . . . ”
“This is Dalia’s, who died giving birth, do you remember her . . . ?”
“Yes, yes . . . ah . . . Roberto. The horse crushed him when it got scared by a snake on the road, poor thing . . . ”
“This one walked fast, it is Horacio’s. Will we have to shorten the collection time?”
“No, fifty years is what we established. We cannot break the cycle.”
“What does it matter if they escape from us so quickly!”
“Silence! Classify, note, nail, then bury them where they belong.”
“Here it is: Esteban Núñez.”
Elena, mute with shock, was terrified to hear her father’s name. She remained still between Rocío and Juanelo until her flesh became sticky with sweat. The children looked at her sideways and held their breath.
“Are you sure, Carmen?”
“Yes,” Elena pressed her face against the grille until she felt the wood sink into her face. Her grandmother had her eyes closed and was palpating something on the table. “I had a suspicion when I felt him in the swamp, but now, I am sure. It is him.”
“As I said, they are starting to escape earlier. We have to nail him. We are going to have to do it with every dead person from now on . . . ”
“No! They are pure, let them be. Let them live their death before chaining them.”
“Pass me the hammer.”
“No,” Elena’s grandmother’s voice sounded distant, as if she barely had breath. “I will do it.”
Elena saw how an old woman passed an old hammer to Carmen. She picked up something from the table and soon the church filled with the echo of hammering on a hard surface. The grandmothers made new bundles, with clean cloths. Once the table was clean, they left the church. The children hurried out the same way they had entered through the secret tunnel. The sun dazzled them. They had not realized it was past noon. They walked along the edge of the church, toward the cemetery. There they found the congregation of neighbors. Some old women had given them their clean bundles. Each family carried a shovel. They searched among the graves. They dug and returned the bones to their corresponding place.
Elena saw Prudencia and Fernando. They were with Carmen, where the girl knew her father was buried. She felt a shiver. Something told her she needed to peek into the pit to see the remains and know what they had nailed into his bones, what parts they had found and why they were in the swamp instead of there. However, another part of her was afraid to look, like the day they threw earth on the shroud.
Juanelo and Rocío said nothing. They simply stayed by her side in the same reverent silence that breathed in the cemetery. Elena told herself she had enough. Elena wondered who in the village was in charge of digging up the bones of the dead to take them to the swamp. She wondered why, if everything that entered there died, or so her mother always told her. Why would the dead go to be buried in another place? The children stayed at the edge of the cemetery fence, with drops of sweat falling copiously down their backs under the sultry sun.
After the strange pilgrimage of the grandmothers, the village returned to normal. Elena soon forgot what she had seen in the church: the table full of uneven bones that only the old women knew how to read to whom they belonged, that they had found the remains of her father out of place. Walking bones that went to the swamp for who knows what. Her grandmother Carmen’s yaguareté claw wound healed, against all odds, under the hard layer of mud. It remained as a reddish-pearly scar along her withered arm.
Until, one dawn, Elena found the naked woman next to the village well. She was soaked, as if she had climbed through the well bucket. She had black and shiny hair and the most beautiful face she had ever seen in her life. Wide hips, as if she had given birth the whole world. Elena dropped the bucket she was going to fetch water with to lean over the woman. She had rosy cheeks and fleshy lips the soft color of fruit pulp. Her skin was smooth and bristled by the morning coolness. She seemed able to wake up at any moment. Elena knelt beside her, fascinated. The muddy ground beneath her did not dare to stain her.
“Do not touch her!” someone shouted. A neighbor.
Elena got scared and retreated from the apparition. She splashed in the mud, picked up the empty bucket, stood up and ran home as fast as her legs could carry her to speak, panting, of the sleeping beauty next to the well.
Soon she learned that the woman was not asleep. She was a foreign, dead, who knows how she had arrived there. Elena joined the village when they gathered around the woman at the well. Everyone whispered. The men looked restless, as if contemplating the dead woman opened their desire. The young women let out nervous laughs that did not reach their eyes, but still, they could not look away from the apparition. Prudencia had her hands on Elena’s shoulders and pressed them hard, to the point that the girl complained. The only ones who said nothing were Carmen and the old women, overcome by some reason.
“We have to begin the preparations,” said Federica, Rocío’s grandmother. “The sooner the better.”
The population did not protest. The strongest man in the village carried the beauty in his arms and took her away as one took a little bird in one hand. They passed damp cloths soaked in lavender essence. They combed her hair with a black wooden comb. They dressed her in a white wedding dress that had never been used. The village took her to the church, but they did not put her on the altar where the dead were waked, but on the table where a few days before the grandmothers had identified the bones they had brought from the swamp. Anyone who wanted to leave her an offering could do so, so soon the woman’s body was surrounded by fruits, flowers, colored feathers, embroideries, trinkets and some real jewels.
The old women, the most fearful of the apparition, gave the instructions: they had to hold a vigil for her, with seven dog tallow candles placed in candelabras around her. No one could take anything from the woman, not even a nail or a drop of blood, if she had any. The church filled with the villagers. No one should dress in black, contrary to a normal funeral.
For Elena, the woman was not dead, but asleep in such a deep way that she seemed not to breathe. Rocío and Juanelo helped her weave a crown of flowers: white orchids, red heliconias, bijao leaves. They approached to place it on her with reverence. Elena made sure the weave fit well to her temples and, with curiosity, smoothed a lock of the dead woman’s dark hair that had escaped the hairstyle. A couple of loose strands tangled in her fingers. Elena discreetly wrapped them around her right wrist and moved away from the altar.
At nightfall, the village retired to their houses, with the exception of the old women. They had a task to do at midnight. Elena had a suspicion of what it could be. After the vigil came the grave in the cemetery. When she lay down in her cot that night, she contemplated the fragile bracelet woven with the hair of the most beautiful woman in the world. She smelled it with curiosity. Lavender water. She wondered if they were going to put iron nails in every bone of her body so she would not flee to the swamp. The image made her angry. They could not stain the incarnate beauty like that. They should leave her the newest and shiniest grave in the cemetery. Wrap her in the silk cloths that her grandmother Carmen kept in the private trunk.
Elena wondered, if she grew up, if she could be as beautiful as the sleeping woman. That when she walked through the village, everyone would stop to admire her, that the men would whisper as she passed and the other girls would blush with envy. Maybe she could ask her mother not to cut her hair anymore, so she would have it long and silky when she was eighteen. She imagined that Juanelo would like her very much. That he would like her more than Rocío.
She was beginning to fall into the drowsiness of sleep when she heard the footsteps of her mother and grandfather inside the house.
“Elena,” Prudencia called. “Elena . . . ”
“Mom?” the girl, by instinct, touched her wrist where she carried the dead woman’s hair. “Mom? What is happening?”
She looked through the window. The village was full of mobile luminaries. Oil lamps. People were awake and wandering.
“Elena.”
The girl got down from the cot and walked to the living room. There was a tallow candle lit, but no trace of her grandmother Carmen, nor Prudencia, nor Fernando. She opened the street door and narrowed her eyes. All the adults were outside their houses. They carried candles, oil lamps, torches. They gathered on the main street.
“Elena,” her mother called again, although she did not see her.
“Mom!” exclaimed Elena and advanced among the people who were beginning to crowd. “Mom!”
She heard the cries, very similar to her own. The small children were at the doors of their houses and cried, disconsolate. The older ones ran toward their parents, grabbed their clothes and tried to stop them, but the adults continued their march, absent, as if they did not recognize anything or anyone.
The girl felt a prick in the wrist where she carried the dead woman’s hair. She looked at her hand. The black strand had embedded itself as if it were a needle and began to crawl under her skin in the shape of a yaguareté claw. She tried to pull out the thread, but the more force she used, the faster it entered her flesh.
“Mom! Dad!” she heard Rocío.
“Grandma, grandma . . . !” Juanelo sobbed somewhere in the crowd.
Elena pushed her way through the people. No one paid attention to her. The procession continued its way until it gathered on the main street. Elena distinguished her mother, her grandfather, and her grandmother Carmen. They looked straight ahead, like everyone, with bright eyes.
“No! Come back!” Elena sobbed.
The girl reached her family and grabbed them as best she could. They dragged her through the mud. She skinned her feet and her skin burned. Elena fell on her bottom on the ground, on the mud that stained her up to her face. The children continued in their futile attempt to stop the adults, whom she saw extinguishing the candles, the lamps and the torches at the exit of the village.
And she managed to see, among the crowd, someone very tall dressed in white who led the procession.
The most beautiful woman in the world looked back for an instant. She did not smile. She did not express anything. She dropped the crown of swamp flowers: white orchids, red heliconias, bijao leaves, which was trampled by all those who followed her, toward the darkness of the swamp.
Elena remained sitting in the middle of the village, with her chest heaving in spasms from crying. The dead woman’s hair had woven a claw path under her childish flesh.
She had understood that she would only see her family again in fifty years.
