Of Love and Shadows Read Free Page B

the agricultural unionization or any of the new plans of the previous government, so when things returned to the ways of their grandfathers, he was left in peace and his family suffered no misfortune. Daughter and granddaughter of country folk, Digna was prudent and suspicious. She had never believed the words of the advisers, and knew from the beginning that the Agrarian Reform would never succeed. She had always said so, but no one paid any attention to her. Her family was luckier than the Floreses, Evangelina’s real parents, luckier than many others who worked the land and had lost their hopes and their skins in that adventure of promise and confusion.
    Hipólito Ranquileo had the virtues that make a good husband; he was calm, not at all wild or violent, and Digna knew nothing of other women, or other vices. Every year, he brought home some money and also some little gift that was often useless but always welcome, because it’s the thought that counts. He had a gallant nature. He never lost that virtue, like other men who almost as soon as they’re married treat their wife like a dog, said Digna; that’s why she bore him children happily, and even with a certain pleasure. Thinking about his caresses, she blushed. Her husband had never seen her naked; modesty above all, she maintained, but that did not make their intimate moments any less magical. She had fallen in love with his beautiful words, and decided to be his wife before God and the Civil Registry, and that is why she never let him touch her but came virgin to her wedding, just as she wanted her girls to do, that way they would be respected and no one could call them loose; but times were different then, and now it’s not so easy to look after your girls, you turn your head and they’re down by the river, you send them to the village to buy sugar and they’re gone several hours, I try to dress them decently but they hike up their skirts, unbutton their blouses, and paint their faces. Oh, dear Lord, help me to look after them till they’re married, and then I can rest; don’t let the disgrace of the oldest one happen again, forgive her, she was very young and hardly knew what she was doing, it happened so quick, poor girl, he didn’t even take time to lie down like human beings, he did it standing up against the willow tree down back, like dogs; look after the other girls, and don’t let some fresh young fellow come along and go too far with them, because this time Pradelio would kill him and shame would fall on this house; with little Jacinto I’ve had my share of shame and suffering, poor baby, he’s not to blame for his stain.
    Jacinto, the youngest, was really her grandson, the bastard fruit of her oldest daughter and a stranger who arrived one autumn evening and asked to spend the night in their kitchen. The baby had had the good sense to be born when Hipólito was on the road with the circus and Pradelio was fulfilling his military service. So there was no man to take revenge, as would normally be the case. Digna knew what she had to do: she bundled up the newborn child, fed him with mare’s milk, and sent the mother off to the city to work as a servant. When the men came back, the deed was done and they had to accept it. Soon they got used to his presence, and ended up treating him like just another child. He was not the first fatherless child to be brought up in the Ranquileo household; others had been taken in before Jacinto, lost orphans who knocked at their door. With the passage of the years the true parents were forgotten, and all that remained was habit and affection.
    As she did every morning when the dawn was peeping from behind the mountains, Digna filled the gourd with maté for her husband and placed his chair in the corner near the door where the air was freshest. She melted a few lumps of sugar, placing two in each large tin cup as she prepared the mint tea for the older children. She