ارتكاتا - رواية الكاتب السوداني هشام آدم مترجمة

الفصل الثاني 

Artikata - A novel written by Hisham Adam

Translated by Dr. Abdallah Altaiyeb

Chapter Two

Cuenca ... The Dream of Freedom

- City of Evil Spirits and Roe Deer -

With arrogance, Amado stood up, casting away the dirt that stuck on his pants while speaking in a very bossy way, “the half hour is now over ... everybody… get ready”.   The half hour was not exactly over, but time was a subjective matter to him, so we all got back to our spots once again, and continued riding into the cruel calmness of the night, while its coldness was slowly sneaking its way into our underwear, shamelessly.  I was awake all night, deprived of sleep by Amado’s ugly voice singing a folklore song that I could not enjoy much, and the shaking of the vehicle, which failed to stop until we reached Cuenca the dawn of the next day.

The first thing I saw were women carrying tin cans of water over their heads while watching us from far away. In a festive way, Amado started sounding the horn, announcing our arrival.  Everybody was awakened by the sound and all started looking around as if searching for someone. I could see a polite yearning in my mother’s eyes, as she was looking around, and that somehow gave me the feeling of belonging to the place.

As soon as they heard the sound, people started coming out of their houses, and in a way that had a touch of showing off, Amado continued to circle around the place with his vehicle before he stopped in a spacious sandy plaza.

The same festive scenes in Katyusha were repeated once more in Cuenca. I started to feel an unprecedented yearning for Artikata, and I wished everything around me were a passing dream.  The details of the reception, the repeated words and kisses, the curious looks, and the stupid remarks were all very tiring and boring.  Juanita started crying when my mother ignorantly left her with the company of ugly looking girls, while I was left with boys who wore nothing but dirty shorts and undershirts.  Later, I found out that the eldest of the boys was my uncle, Santiago Emilio, whom I saw for the first time, but felt nothing different towards him than I felt towards the rest of the boys.

The most sacred duty of all was to greet elderly people, especially Orville Bodin whom I feared facing the most, bearing my father's sin in the letters of my name. But contrary to my expectations, he was very nice and gentle.  He was a small-time writer, only known in Artikata.  I heard that he authored a novel, which I had not read at the time, called Beyond the River.  In addition to the fact that he was the priest of the famous Saint Julio church, I was surprised to find out that he married a second woman, named Owamariz Rogelio, much younger and more beautiful than Soledad Fidel!  It was my first encounter with my ethnic roots, and I later discovered that Orville, the polygamist, had antagonized a wide population of Norcks who never accepted polygamy. This was why Soledad packed her bag and left Cuenca with her little daughter, Damita Orville, to Toledo, next to her other daughters who were living with their husbands.

Toledo was a haven for those fleeing the hell of civil war, which erupted in 1936 and lasted for three years, during which the Norcks suffered the most devastating hunger strikes.  They ate oranges for lunch and saved their peels for dinner.  But eventually, Toledo became very famous, and besides, it was the home for the sons and daughters of Orville Bodin, for none was able to stand his moodiness and hot temper.

Some members of the Orville family, who were advocates of the strong family concept, directed their criticism to Soledad Fidel and accused her of dividing the family when she left.  They attributed her act to sheer irresponsible feminine jealousy.  Orville, the priest, had with Soledad alone seven sons and daughters.  My father was the oldest, then Tierra who married her nephew Vardon Russell and went to live in Toledo early on in her marriage years,  then Coretta, the rebel who married a short man from outside the family, and also lived with him in Toledo before the war. Aunt Coretta was the only one who believed in and practiced Totemism, and for that, she was considered as the renegade of the solid Orville family. 

Dulcinea came next. She stayed in Cuenca with her father, not out of love, but a commitment to her husband, who worked there in Marine transportation. Salvador was next, the Organ player and the passionate lover of music and lavish life.  Santos, the most popular amongst the sons of Orville, was quick with a joke, and very cheerful to the extent that one could not believe he was an Orville.  Rumor had it that he died as a result of drinking ill-brewed wine in 1989.  He was the first to die among the sons of Orville Bodin, and his death was the most devastating news that Orvilles had ever received.  Lastly, Damita, the aunt I never liked, and with whom I developed a feeling that later turned into a history of long animosity. From Owamariz Rogelio, Orville had five children; Doctor Zinon, Emerald, Esperanza, Hermenia, and Aldonsa who died of breast cancer in 1999.

Those were just names I read on our family tree, and up until my historic visit to Cuenca, I knew none of them other than Uncle Salvador who was living with us in Artikata until the death of Uncle Santos Orville.

The most difficult task was to get to know the family members, and bond with them.  The boys who had been surrounding me gave me looks I could not rationally explain, as if I was an alien with human features.  The voice of my grandfather Orville Bodin, who was advancing towards me with a slight limp caused by chronic gout, scared the boys away from around me.  He stared at the details of my face which he saw for the first time, and with a mechanical fatherly passion, kissed me once and exclaimed, “So this is Casper then!”

Then Owamariz Rogelio came.  She looked kind; her eyes did not have those cunning looks of Soledad's. It was puzzling that she welcomed me, and I could not decide whether she really loved me or she was just pretending to please Orville.  Was she really pleased to see me or wanted to show Orville that she could love his sons from his first wife?  However, I discovered that her lips were not moist like Soledad's, but they had the same smell!

When I finally entered the grand family house, it felt as if I was passing through a time gate to an ancient world.  The feeling was intensified with the sight of dust that inhabited the place. I was anxiously searching for my mother among the crowds when someone surprised me with an advice, close to being an order, go and play with the kids outside.  The kids were busy collecting money to go to the moving theatre which opened every Easter’s morning.  I stood near them, looking around, but showing no interest to participate.  Santiago Emilio came to me, and with a serious voice said, “do you have money?.  I suddenly remembered the banknote that my grandmother Soledad secretly hid in my pocket and I felt ashamed to admit, let alone deny.  But admitting having a miserable banknote was less shameful than denying, which would mean that the rich boy of Artikata was broke, and that would be a stab in my alleged aristocratic pride.  I decided to give him the banknote.  To my astonishment, I immediately discovered that what I was holding in my pocket, carelessly, was a valuable banknote to the extent that everybody else put back their money into their pockets.  That piece of paper was more than enough to get us all to the theatre and buy us beverages too.  I felt proud of Soledad and realized how much she really loved me.

The kids of Cuenca were very good with their hands. They crafted small makeshift cars using empty oil cans, with souls of old shoes dug out of the dumpster, as tires, and long thin sticks with rounded metal bars at their ends, as steering wheels.   I liked those cars very much, and as my face radiated the feeling, one of the boys was kind enough to give me one of them.  That was the start for me to have a real friendship with some of the boys.

At noontime, while the adults were asleep, the boys gathered in a nearby court, holding the sticks of their cars, to go swimming in River Cuervo.  The sight of the river with its clear water was very tempting, that the boys took advantage of the moment, since the adults banned children from swimming.  I was not a good swimmer, so I only played in the shallow area of the river where there were large rounded stones that looked like eggs of a mystic bird.  I was and still am unjustifiably afraid of swimming and the concealed water world.  I felt like I was a shapeless piece of sponge, not knowing the techniques of floating and seeing under water. 

Some boys told me stories – adults invented to scare children away from swimming in the river – about alligators which devoured thousands of men and women of the village and capsized the boats of those who wanted to cross the river to the other side to get medicinal herbs. Despite the fact that I was still in shallow water, I felt that some of those alligators were particularly going to swallow me, leaving all the other boys unharmed.  I felt, in a way, that those damned alligators smelled my fear, and so I began beating the water with my feet to scare them away.  Later, Santiago told me that alligators were scarce species of dinosaurs that took refuge in water bodies at some point in time, fleeing the enormous fire, caused by an erroneous meteor that hit a forest and caused the death of a lot of creatures. He told me how they adopted to living in their new environment.  Although he laughed at how he was able to scare me, I was deeply convinced with that fable.

In the evening, when darkness prevailed, we used to spend our time in the wide sandy court in front of the house of Manuel Emilio, my grandfather from my mother’s side, who settled in Artikata.  Living in this house were my aunts Emayrees and Eldora in addition to my grandmother Mariabella Tancredo.  I could not recall having intimate moments or memories of any of them, and so was the case for all of my relatives from my mother’s side.  Uncle Santiago Emilio used to explain to us the rules of the game “Ojos Del Tigre” or “Eye of the Tiger”.  We would stand with our backs facing north so we would not see him, then he would take an old bone of a dead animal and throw it randomly, and then we would start searching around the place for the bone depending only on the moonlight.

Cuenca, the mountainous city inhabited by evil spirits as Mariabella Tancredo said, was not very scary, notwithstanding the strange sounds heard at night, coming from Las Torcas[1].  While all the stories of Cuenca women agreed that the sounds were of the locked evil spirits in Las Torcas, few people attributed the sounds to the passing wind on the Torcas that looked like inverted trapezoids.  Mariabella said that the souls of the mortals of the civil war, buried in Las Torcas, moved angrily at night, especially those who had their heads separated from their bodies, across the Torcas that together formed what looked like rings of a gigantic chain.  She also said that, once, a priest had besieged them and locked them in the Torcas , which were the main source of the sound, after they refused to live in a large sculpture made especially for them.  This fable was widely believed, especially among the children of Cuenca, who were not allowed to go out at night for whatever reason.

I still could remember the looks on uncle Santos’ face, which radiated lovable warmth, as if he was someone you knew for long time.  I did not witness his naughty days which my father used to make fun of, but people said that, he once was sitting with a friend drinking French wine, and while his friend was trying to pour the wine in small bottles, some of it spelled on the floor. Santos shouted in his face, be careful.  The friend replied back indifferently, Easy Santos, it is only wine, it is not like it is Oil!  But Santos was quick with a convincing counterargument as usual, “the natural place of oil is underground, but wine lodges in the heads!

That day when my mother went with Aunt Coretta Orville to a family funeral, she left me and Morris Lionel for his caring.   While he was busy playing folkloric music on the large piano he had in his room, Morris convinced me to go out and follow our mothers, not for anything but to disobey orders and live an adventure of some sort.  Morris Lionel, who came with his mother, Aunt Coretta, from Toledo, had already visited Cuenca before and that assured me of his knowledge of the area.  On our way to the cemetery, we passed by the wild area of Cuenca, which was considered the most famous deer protectorate in the whole region.  After a half hour of walking, we reached the cemetery.  The grave stones, topped with cross signs, gave me the feeling that the dead were teasing us with their extended wooden tongues from deep under.  The cemetery was desolated and gave me the creeps.  I felt my hair rising like thorns of a hedgehog sharpened for a fight.  There was a strange smell tainting the place, and I imagined it to be the smell of the dead or the smell of death itself. On the other side of the cemetery, tens of men and women, in black, were standing listening to the priest reciting prayers for the dead.  The priest had serious looks and a white beard that sent a chill down my spine.  In front of the crowed, there was a wooden coffin with its cover open, and a man was sleeping peacefully inside, but we could not see him clearly.  He was not bothered with the voice of the priest nor was he annoyed with the sun, which was casting its rays directly upon him.  There were a lot of funeral details worth seeing and so Morris Lionel and I stood behind a pine tree watching attentively until we were spotted by a woman who apparently was not paying attention to the priest.

Our mothers took us back with threats of harsh punishment.  The idea of beating in itself was not scary to me because I was used to it, thanks to my father, but I feared loosing the respect and the status of a new visitor, so I was thinking on our way back of an idea to get me out of this problem. I could not think of any wise idea until I saw my mother and aunt Coretta scolding and insulting uncle Santos because he let us out of his sight while they were gone.  In a firm way, he led us to his room and sat on the bed and ordered us to sit on the floor in front of him.  He was like a judge listening to the accused before pronouncing a harsh sentence.  He asked angrily didn’t I warn you of going out?”  His looks to me in particular carried, in addition to anger, some disappointment.  To my surprise, a genie from nowhere spoke with my voice:

Morris set me up.  He insisted to go out while I was holding him back.  He got out when I was not aware. So I went out looking for him and I asked him to come back but he did not listen to me.  And while I was walking behind him, I saw a deer giving birth, in the wild area. The scene was very interesting and it was my first, and because the deer took long time, I forgot what we were doing and that’s exactly what happened, and God is the witness to that.

That was my first lie and I could still remember all of its details. Although it was naive and badly crafted, uncle Santos liked it and considered it creative for a child my age.  And Morris Lionel, the victim of this creativity had to endure all the punishment alone.  For me, it was a well crafted lie that I felt proud of.  And maybe it was the seed for my talent for writing.  But that thought did not occur to me at the time, for the main reason was to escape punishment, nothing more.

One of the few characters that influenced my talent for writing since childhood was a nigger called Accemen De Rogelio.  Everybody treated him badly and scornfully.  In the beginning, I too treated him scornfully, until one day I secretly heard him say no one can ride on my back unless I stoop, and when he suddenly turned towards me, I ran away thinking that he had a third eye in the back of his head!  His words remained drumming in my ears ever since.  The sadness in his eyes seemed somehow eternal, and that made me very curious that I interrupted my mother, while she was talking with some women, and asked her about him.  She told me he was the descendent of slaves brought from Guinea by a slave trader during a cotton harvest season.  No one knew his exact story but everyone was using him for various reasons without paying him.

Women needed him the most.  They used him to bring water from the river in farming seasons, for feeding animals, carrying baggage and wooden poles, and making stoves.  Some men decided it was best to castrate him because women were increasingly using him inside their houses.  A lot of black slaves were castrated or got their genitals amputated.  Some women said that General Franco ordered his men to use the slaves as human shields in the war.  A lot of slaves died in that war but De Rogelio the nigger, who lost one of his arms, fled with his wife Yefet and their son.  It was said that De Rogelio was the Spanish name for Dennis, the father of Accemen, the impotent black.

Uncle Santos told me coldly how General Franco got rid of the wounded slaves who were not fit for work after the war. Beyond doubt, uncle Santos was prejudice like the rest of the Norcks who were proud of their ethnic background.  Among what Santos told me was that the wounded blacks were left with no treatment, stripped off of their clothes, their hands cuffed behind their    backs, blindfolded, tied to large wooden poles somewhere in valley Guadalajara, and left for the eagles that lived high in the mountains.  Some were thrown from high balconies face down to cemented floors.  And those who survived the fall, were thrown once more and then they were buried in an isolated area or left for the hungry animals.

Accemen was not much of a talkative person, and appropriately enough, people forgot the sound of his voice, and no one could even remember seeing him laughing either.  He was an interesting and mysterious person that most times I was looking for him despite my fear of him.  In my mind, I had a picture of him killing those snooping on him. But weirdly enough, I liked him after what he had said although he startled me when he spotted me snooping, and I pretended that it was not intentional.  With a broken Spanish accent he said Those who could only see what the lights reveal, and hear what the sounds speak, are merely blind and deaf.  I wondered if he meant me with his words or it was his way of hastily bestowing his wisdom upon me.  Although he looked very ugly, he was wise and polite, but he never laughed.  I said to myself, wise people don’t laugh.

I had my chance to have a close look at this nigger on the day he saved me from drowning when my feet slipped on a cliff, which I underestimated how deep it was.  His face was full of grooves, his thick lips were very red, and on his cheeks there were some small hairs that could not be seen but from a close distance.  I was scared of him, although he saved my life, but he did not leave until he made sure I was alright.  He said with his broken Spanish accent do not be afraid of what you do not know, you should be afraid of what you know.  His looks, despite their terrifying depth, carried gentleness that I would never forget.  Since that incident, we became inseparable.

I used to visit him secretly. He lived in a secluded area.  He told me about his family and friends who died, crucified on wooden poles in Guadalajara, falling from city balconies, chocking under the hoofs of horses of soldiers, or by the hands of merchants.  I could hear a painful roar in his chest as he was breathing with difficulty and I saw a drop of tear committing suicide on his cheek.  He told me about his country where he came from.  He only saw it through the stories of his ancestors.  I thought there was some strange discrepancy in his stories, but my sympathy for niggers at that time convinced me not to ask about those discrepancies and simply ignore them.

Accemen De Rogelio had in his wooden miserable cabin a box full of books; some were in Spanish while others were in different languages that I could not recognize.  The cover of one of the books caught my attention; I read the title which was in Spanish “The Deluge.  I smiled while asking him “do you know Spanish?.   He answered without looking at me “no one is born knowledgeable.. I have spent half of my life here.  I felt embarrassed and tried to get out of the situation with another question where do you get these books from? and he said with a smile on his face this time I did not buy them for sure!

I wondered a lot why my mother was angry when she found out I befriended the slaved nigger.  I wondered even more when she told my grandfather so he could punish me on her behalf.  But I discovered that the social seclusion that Accemen was living was imposed on him because of the color of his skin.  I told her he was kind hearted despite his looks, but my grandfather pinched my ear and told me you will not rest until this black slave sodimizes you, and then you would be back to us with shame that would not be undone.  His words were very painful to me, even more painful than the pinch.  I did not exactly know if my grandfather was serious in what he said or just wanted to scare me.  I later found out that it was questionable for the youngsters to befriend the adults, but I secretly kept in touch with Accemen the black.

The evenings of Cuenca were mostly quite, except for that evening when we heard feminine cries coming from the western side. At first, we thought it was a lady being attacked by an evil spirit, especially as we were just talking about the evil spirits that evening. The thought captivated me and I did not want to go out and find the truth.  What made me change my mind and go out was the determination of everyone to find the source of the sound.  I got out with them because I was more afraid to stay alone.  The sound was still audibly coming from somewhere.  We walked alongside River Cuervo.  I was afraid to see this possessed woman, as I imagined that the evil spirit would leave her and possess me as soon as it would see me. Fear is a special and very personal feeling.  The screams intensified as we got closer. I could hardly move my feet when everyone else was pacing. Suddenly, I was gripped with an overwhelming fear and I started running to catch up with the rest because I did not want to be left behind.

We finally reached the source of the sound; I carefully avoided looking at the possessed woman despite my deep curiosity to see what was going on.  When someone shouted “Franklin has drowned”, my fears suddenly evaporated and turned into pity.  Only then I gathered my courage and raised my eyes to the woman who was standing at the edge of the river.  She was filling her hands with water and pouring it over her head in a frightening hysteria while crying “Franklin my love, don’t die ...please”, but Franklin did not return her calling. She had her sight fixed on some point on River Cuervo which was calm at the time. I guessed it to be the point where she last saw Franklin.  I felt deep anger towards the river and I hated its fluidity that swallowed people with no mercy. The calmness of the river was very antagonizing.  The river had just swallowed the body of a child, hardly nine years old. He could be one of those who were around me when I first arrived to Cuenca.  I was absorbed in creating scenarios to account for what happened without comprehending what the woman was frantically saying to the gathered men.  I had decided that one of the Stone Age alligators was hungry that evening.

The men, who all had stripped off their clothes on one of the giant rocks, came back after searching the whole river inside out for Franklin’s body.  One of them said while panting “the river might have swept him far away”.  The suffering woman could care less for their analyses as long as her boy was missing in this river, stretching cunningly in front of her. Her hands were beating the water with a passionate hysteria.  I was wondering “what if the river was an ugly beast in a beautiful disguise suit, lurking to devour human flesh?!” This incident made me hate flowing water bodies completely and eternally, and I took a negative position against them.  Like the woman, I had my eyes fixed on a still spot on the river, waiting for someone to show up his head, whether it was Franklin, a hippopotamus, or the river itself!

In an ugly but humanly despair, some men repeated the words “the boy has drowned, it is over”. This was very hard for the wailing woman. And when everybody started going back home, few of us stayed behind to convince the woman to just forget the matter.  I was wondering of the whereabouts of the woman’s husband and why everyone suddenly lost their enthusiasm as if the matter was of no concern to them.  What was going to be the fait of this woman? I snapped out of my thoughts when Crosfino Emilio grabbed my arm announcing the end of the tragedy that had just started “let’s go home”.  Unaware, I released myself and said innocently “but it is not over yet”, but he shouted in my face arrogantly, “this is not a sightseeing tour for you to say that”. That was the first time I discovered the stupidity of my uncle and his arrogance.  I said back in anger “but the lady is still crying”, as it seemed to me that she was not going to leave her place as long as her son did not come out of the river.

That was my first experience with death.  The river with its antagonizing calmness seemed like a hit man putting on his rain coat and carelessly washing off his victim’s blood of his hands.  I wished they had blinded the agonizing woman so she could not see the killer of her son running freely in front of her eyes while no one could avenge her loss.

That day I could not sleep. My mind was replaying the tragic incident continuously. The cries of the woman were floating in the voids of my ears like dust trapped in a maze in outer space, where gravity had no grounds.  I cried, while the others ran to their wine bottles, especially uncle Santos who adored drinking, and eventually died for its cause.  The women did not allow us to sit with the men, so we were forced to either accompany them and hear their boring talks or go play in the yard, which was full of insects, games that quickly mounted to boredom.

My mother and grandmother Mariabella Tancredo were gaily talking when someone, without knocking, widely opened the door and walked in panting, allowing others to enter with an injured man carried on their shoulders.  The young man was Grosvenor Russell, son of aunt Terra Orville, who came to Cuenca to spend his annual vacation.  The panting man said that a poisonous snake bit him.  I decided that it was an ill fated day!

The women were quick with actions. They brought dry pieces of clothe and tied the thigh of Grosvenor, who was sweating heavily. I stayed to watch the procedure of getting the poison out of Grosvenor’s foot. With a sharp razor, a man started making two cuts next to the sting.  Then, the man put a white substance on the wound, and Grosvenor was about to jump, if it was not for the tough men who pinned him down firmly.  It was a matter of minutes, when a yellow blackish substance like burnt sugar came out of the wound boiling and bubbling on his skin.  Grosvenor then went into comma after eating slices of lemon given to him by one of the attending women; they said lemon is effective in combating poison.

Norcks feared the spotted snakes the most, for they were threatening the lives of their kids every time they had to pass through the wilderness to the villages overlooking the Sierra Nevada Mountain range, which was covered with snow year around.  The wilderness was Cuenca’s window to the outside world since it was confined between River Cuervo and the Iberian mountain range.  What astonished me was that I was the only one in panic that day while everybody else was accustomed to the sting incidents.  There was a lady helping in caring for Grosvenor; she was holding one of his arms while she was crutching on her feet in a manner that revealed her underwear in an unrepeated kind of way.  I guessed everybody was busy with Grosvenor, except uncle Santos who slyly took notice of that.

Isabel Niron got married when she was very young and maybe she was beautiful according to Norcks’ standards.  She was one of tens of ladies left behind in Cuenca few months after marriage by their husbands, who had to leave to Artikata or Segovia, or even to Marbella in the south, because of the difficult living circumstances.  Most of the men did not return but after three or four years to find that they became fathers.  Some of them discovered that they were the fathers of illegitimate children.  Adultery had become a spreading phenomenon in Cuenca, only second to drinking locally brewed wine, for winemaking was the specialty of Cuenca’s men while women handled the more important and beneficial jobs.

Norcks did not view adultery, from a religious stand point, as a crime or sin condemned by the church.  They considered it a matter little more than normal. They only had to conceal it, but never had to deny it.  And as you would find someone lying drunk next to the Alter, so was sex to the Norcks; a sin only if discovered. Realizing this social practice made me understand why the men did not care much for what that scum did to the young girl during our journey to Cuenca.  There was a strange and exclusive convention widely spread in Cuenca; every woman was in away available to any man if he was lucky to capture the opportunity in the right time and at the right place.  And any woman who dared to object or call for help would be considered stupid because she would only expose herself.

My recollections of Cuenca were confined in the frame of my discovery of the basic elements of the social fabric of the Norcks who remained there and did not migrate like others, and also, the discovery of my talent for lying, which uncle Santos recognized and blessed.  At that time, I had no interest in literature but I was in the discovery and developing stage. On the personal level, discovery meant an adventure that defied the firm family instructions upheld by the adults.  My love for adventure was not unique, for all the children of Cuenca were famous for their love of adventure and naughtiness.  And I could not forget the effects of the nigger Accemen on shaping my writing talent.

Orville Bodin – the priest and the writer– was trying to break nature rules by making us carbon copies of him, ignoring all the major differences between the two culturally different time periods.  I had no strong religious inclinations, when he was insisting that we go to the church of the Virgin.  And despite the fear the church raised in our young hearts, we the young did not appreciate the loud choir songs.  In those boring still moments, I used to indulge in observing and studying the large wall paintings that stood proudly in the church.  I liked those well painted tableaus of the handsome man with the black beard and long hair, crucified with pride on a golden expensive cross. The painter did not neglect to through in some dramatic details on the kids and women who were crying around him.

I was not devoted to the Sunday mass which my grandfather was trying to force us to attend.  Despite that, my grandfather continued to tell stories of one of our ancestors who used to ride a wolf, tamed specially for him by God, in his short trips between the stony villages. Also, Owamariz Rogelio, Orville’s second wife, told me in a friendly gathering about Orvilles who had long been known for their naïve but daring children compared to other Norck children.  They would remain like that until they reached forty, then they would become priests.  While all of that talk was not scientific, she cited several examples to confirm her stories; my father was one such an example of this old family heritage.

My father did not find his way to the Church until the birth of my sister Zorica who was four years my junior.  Grandmother Owamariz and aunt Coretta told me stories and adventures of my father that I only believed after they had sworn to God and the Holy Spirit.  These same stories were told to me later by some other women.  That made the picture of my religious father break and shatter, and made me believe that there was a new era coming, that I should wait for.  Even Mario Lopez, the foundling who lived under the caring of Grandfather Orville Bodin as a bell ringer for the church, was not very attached to the church and its rituals, although everybody thought he was once the most devoted. It was said that he once was playing with the ropes of the bells and so they rang before their time.  People then discovered that he was drunk and Orville flogged him with a whip made of cow skin and ordered his head to be shaved at the razor point. Since that day, his hair never grew back.  And Mario became the bell ringer at day time and a drunkard, sharp tongued at night until he was forty when white hair started showing on his moustache.  He never married until someone caught him masturbating behind a bench inside the church.  Only then Orville Bodin arranged for his marriage to a widow.  That was an order from God, explained Orville to everybody.  People even told about the story of the sheep which sneaked at noon time to the church, which at some point was neglected, and started chewing on the ropes causing the bells to ring at an odd time.  Some remarked that bell ringing was a low menial job, and that was my opinion as well.

My trip to Cuenca , which coincidentally was at the berry harvest time, was not an important event at the family level and so I forgot all about it as soon as I got back to Artikata except for what my memory kept in store for the future.  The trip was one similar to a trip to the world of the dead.  For Cuenca was not like Artikata, full of cars, motorcycles, glass covered buildings, and asphalted roads.  Cuenca with its rural life was charming and frightening at the same time, but could not take the place of Artikata in my heart.  The coyotes and the giant raccoons could not take the place of my pet cats that I adored and raised in my house despite my father’s objections.  And so I longed for our house in Artikata and to my carefully crafted mahogany bed. However, I was glad to be away for a while from my father, who adopted the hot temper and violence nature of Orville Bodin in addition to the large nose, which became the trademark of Orvilles.

That morning, I was awakened by persisting and impolite flies and the sound of falling kitchen wooden cabinets on Juanita’s foot.  It was not an ordinary morning because it was the last day for us in Cuenca.  I was feeling an overwhelming happiness watching my mother packing our bags for the trip back to Toledo.  And after she bandaged Juanita’s foot, my grandmother made her stop crying.  Juanita was afraid of seeing blood, and she cried when she saw the blood well before she felt the pain. I did not care for all of that, as I was saying goodbye to Santiago Emilio and the rest of my friends who did not stop calling me the aristocratic cat.  I forgot to say goodbye to Orville Bodin when I heard the horns of Amado’s car sounding his festive arrival at the plaza.  We left Cuenca that day and I secretly carried some berry in my pocket.  I later remembered them but after they left a large red stain on my clothes, which my mother mistook for a wound.

The first thing I did when we reached Toledo was to visit Soledad Fidel.  I kissed her in gratitude for her true love that showed with the valuable banknote.  She was happy to see me. Soledad hated Orvilles without a clear reason other than her anger towards Orville Bodin, who married another woman in a clear defiance of the church that he belonged to as a priest.  She prayed to God so I would not become a carbon copy of him.  That was why she repeated her famous words “if you want God to be satisfied, do not become an Orville”.  There was one question in my mind but did not dare to ask anyone about it; how did Orville Bodin strike a balance between his love to God and his love to women?