The
pin
Ventura
Garcia Calderon
The beast fell on its face, dying, oozing sweat and blood,
while the rider, in a flash, jumped to the ground at the foot of the monumental
staircase of the Ticabamba hacienda. From the obese cedar balcony the dark head
of the landowner Don Timoteo Mondaraz appeared, questioning the trembling
newcomer.
The tremendous old man's sochanter's voice was mocking:
—What's wrong with you, Borradito? You're getting banged around...
If we don't eat people here. Speak, no more...
El Borradito, called that in the valley because of his
pockmarked face, grabbed the jipijapa hat with a desperate hand and wanted to
explain so many things at once—the sudden misfortune, his twenty-league night
gallop, the order to arrive in a few hours. , even if the beast burst on the
way—, who was silent for a minute. Suddenly, without breathing, he exhaled his
naive refrain:
—Well, I'll tell my friend that the boy Conrado told me to
tell him that last night the Grimanesa girl caught and died.
If Don Timoteo did not take out his revolver, as always when
he was moved, it was, without a doubt, by special command of Providence; but he
squeezed the servant's arm, wanting to extract a thousand details from him.
—Last night?... Is she dead?... Grimanesa?... Perhaps she
noticed something in the dark explanations of the Borradito, then, without
saying a word, praying that they would not wake up her daughter, "the girl
Ana María" , he went down himself to saddle his best "gait
horse."
Moments later he galloped to the ranch of his son-in-law
Conrado Basadre, whom last year he married Grimanesa, the pretty, pale
horsewoman, the best catch in the entire valley. Those weddings were a
celebration like no other, with its Bengal fires, its dancing Indian women in
purple nightgowns, its Indian women who still mourn the death of the Incas,
which occurred in remote centuries; but revived in the dirge of the humiliated
race, like the songs of Zion in the sublime stubbornness of the Bible. Then,
along the best fields of crops, the procession of saints had wandered very
ancient, which displayed the stuffed heads of savages in the crimson hairy
ring. And the very happy marriage of a pretty girl with the nice and arrogant Conrado
Basadre ended like this... Clapper!...
Driving his Nazarene spurs, Don Timoteo thought, terrified, of
that tragic celebration. He wanted to reach Sincavüca, the old Basadre fiefdom,
in four hours.
In the late afternoon another resonant and laborious gallop
was heard over the boulders of the mountain. Out of caution, the old man shot
into the air, shouting:
-Who lives ?
He checked the race of the next rider, and with a voice that
poorly concealed his anguish, he shouted in turn:
-Friend! It's me, don't you know me? The administrator of
Sincavilca. I'm going to look for the priest for the funeral.
The landowner was so disturbed that he did not ask why there
was such a rush to call the priest if Grimanesa was dead and why the chaplain
was not at the farm. He waved goodbye and encouraged his horse, which he
started galloping with its flank full of blood.
From the immense gate that closed the patio of the hacienda,
that silence was distressing. Even the dogs, silent, sniffed out death. In the
colonial house, the large silver-studded doors already displayed cross-shaped
crepes. Don Timoteo crossed the large deserted halls, without removing his
Nazarene spurs, until he reached the dead woman's bedroom, where Conrado
Basadre was sobbing. With a voice clouded by tears, the old man begged his
son-in-law to leave him alone for a moment. And when he had closed the door
with his hands, he roared in pain for hours, insulting the saints, calling
Grimanesa by her name, kissing the inanimate hand, which fell again on the
sheets, among the Cape jasmines and wallflowers. . Serious and frowning for the
first time, Grimanesa reposed like a saint, with her braids hidden in the
Carmelites' cornet and her pretty waist imprisoned in her habit, according to
the religious custom of the valley, to sanctify the pretty dead women. On her
chest they placed a barbaric silver crucifix that had been used by one of her
grandfathers to defeat rebels in an ancient Indian uprising. When Don Timoteo
kissed the holy image, the dead woman's habit was left ajar, and he noticed
something, because his tears suddenly dried up and he walked away from the
corpse as if mad, with strange repulsion. Then he looked everywhere, hid an
object in his poncho and, without saying goodbye to anyone, remounted,
returning to Ticabamba in the dead of night.
***
For six months no one went from one farm to another nor could
they explain this silence. They hadn't even attended the funeral! Don Timoteo
lived cloistered in the storax-smelling bedroom, without speaking for whole
days, deaf to the pleas of Ana María, as beautiful as her sister Grimanesa, who
lived adoring and fearing her stubborn father. He was never able to find out
the cause of the strange detour or why Conrado Basadre was not coming.
But one clear Sunday in June, Don Timoteo got up in a good
mood and proposed to Ana María that they go together to Sincavüca, after mass.
That resolution was so unexpected that the little girl walked around the house
for the entire morning as if crazy, trying on in the mirror her long Amazon
skirts and the jipijapa hat, which had to be fixed on the oily locks with a
long gold stiletto. The father saw her like this, and said, embarrassed,
looking at the pin:
—You're going to get rid of that eyesore!...
Ana María obeyed with a sigh, determined, as always, not to
guess the mystery of that violent father.
When they arrived at Sincavilca, Conrado was breaking in a new
colt, bare-headed in the full sun, beautiful and arrogant on the black saddle
with silver nails and rivets. He jumped down, and when he saw Ana María so
similar to her sister in her sweet grace, he looked at her for a long time,
enthralled.
No one spoke about the misfortune that occurred or mentioned
Grimanesa; but Conrado cut his splendid and carnal Cape jasmines to give them
to Ana María. They didn't even go to visit the dead woman's grave, and there
was an annoying silence when the old nurse came to hug "the girl"
crying:
—Jesus, Mary and Joseph, as pretty as my little friend! A
chapuli! Since then, every Sunday the visit to Sincavilca was repeated. Conrado
and Ana María spent the day looking into each other's eyes and gently squeezing
each other's hands when the old man turned his face to contemplate a new cut of
the ripe cane. And one festive Monday, after the fiery Sunday on which they
kissed for the first time, Conrado arrived in Ticabamba displaying the showy
elegance of fair days, his violet poncho draped over his sheep's hair, his mane
well combed and shining. his horse, which "braced" with elegant foreshortening
and stuck its foaming nose into his chest, like the palfreys of the liberators.
With the solemnity of the great hours, he asked about the
landowner, and did not call him, with the usual respect, "Don
Timoteo", but he murmured, as in ancient times, when he was Grimanesa's
boyfriend:
—I want to talk to you, my father.
They locked themselves in the colonial room, where the
portrait of their dead daughter was still there. The old man, silent, waited
for Conrado, very embarrassed, to explain to him, in an indecisive and
embarrassing voice, his desire to marry Ana María. He paused so long that Don
Timoteo, with his eyes closed, seemed to be sleeping. Suddenly, agilely, as if
the years had no weight on that iron constitution of a Peruvian landowner, he
went to open an old-style iron box with a complicated key chain, which had to
be requested with a thousand tricks and a "password" written on a
padlock. Then, always silent, he picked up a gold pin there. It was one of
those moles that close the mantle of the Indian women and end in a coca leaf;
but longer, sharper, and stained with black blood. Upon seeing him, Conrad fell
to his knees, whimpering, like a confessed prisoner.
—Grimanesa, my poor Grimanesa!
But the old man warned, with a violent gesture, that it was
not the time to cry. Disguising his growing confusion with a superhuman effort,
he murmured, in a voice so muffled that he could barely be understood:
—Yes, I took it from her chest when she was dead... You had
stuck this pin in her heart... Isn't that true?... Maybe she missed you...
-Yes my father. -Yes my father.
-Nobody knows?
—No, my father.
—Did he go with the administrator?
-Yes my father.
—Why didn't you kill him too?
He ran away like a coward. "Do you swear to kill him if
he returns?"
-Yes my father.
The old man cleared his throat loudly, squeezed Conrad's hand,
and said, already out of breath:
—If this one also deceives you, do the same... Here!...
He solemnly presented the golden pin, as grandfathers gave the
sword to the new knight; and with brutal rejection, clutching his failing
heart, he told his son-in-law to leave immediately, because it was not good for
anyone to see the tremendous and righteous Don Timoteo Mondaraz sobbing.
VENTURA GARCÍA CALDERÓN.
With affection,
Ruben
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