Conquistadora - Esmeralda Santiago [89]
“She had nothing to do with it!”
“Be a man!” Severo snapped. Artemio gulped his cries. “I’ll see you at the cuartel in Guares,” Severo said, and rode off with his dogs to join the search for the others.
Their hands were bound behind their backs, nooses knotted around their necks. The other ends of the ropes were tied to different horses in such a way that if Damita or Artemio didn’t keep up or if they stumbled or fell, they might hang or choke themselves to death. Swirling clouds veiled a full moon one minute, revealed it the next. The road was bright as day, but when the moon hid, everything disappeared as the world became as dark as the inside of her mouth. Damita couldn’t help but wonder why Artemio and the others had chosen a full-moon night for their escape. But she knew desperation. It forced her to run away on a similar night when she was about the same age. The scars on her back now throbbed as if never healed.
As they reached the curve beyond San Bernabé, she heard the dogs, yells, and running. Damita had to keep moving in a wild dance as the rope around her neck tightened and loosened when the horse skittered.
“¡Por la reina!” soldiers called. “We got them.”
The soldier holding Artemio handed his reins to the one holding Damita and ran into the woods with the others, his saber aloft. The other runaways could be heard screaming and begging Severo to pull the dogs back. “¡Por amor a Dios!”
Damita looked at Artemio. The moon hid behind a cloud so she could not see him, but the next moment he was in full light. He was her youngest son, the most obedient, she thought, until this night. He was the most affectionate, the sweetest. Their gazes locked, and she felt his fear, and hers, and her love, and his, and his remorse. The moon hid and he scuffed nearer.
“Perdóname, Mamá,” he said once more.
As the moon brightened, Artemio screamed and kicked the horse. The noose around Damita’s neck tightened as the horse she was tied to jerked out of the way. She fell and was dragged a few feet until the soldier managed to control the beast. Another soldier grabbed her, loosened her noose, and helped her stand. Before the moon disappeared, Siña Damita saw the other horse galloping into the dark dragging Artemio’s lifeless body.
II
1844–1863
HABLAR DE LA HISTORIA ES
ABANDONAR MOMENTÁNEAMENTE
NUESTRO OBLIGATORIO SILENCIO PARA DECIR
(SIN OLVIDAR LAS FECHAS)
LO QUE ENTONCES NO PUDIERON DECIR
LOS QUE PADECIERON
EL OBLIGATORIO SILENCIO
Talking about history means
we momentarily abandon our obligatory silence
to tell (without forgetting the dates)
the suffering that others
could not express
in their obligatory silence
—Reinaldo Arenas, “El Central”
NEWS FROM SAN JUAN
Leonor was proud that over the thirty-two years of their marriage, she’d made a home wherever Eugenio was posted, but she had resisted the move to Puerto Rico. She swallowed her misgivings, but premonitions continued to agitate her even as she adjusted to her new life.
At first she couldn’t get used to the smallness of San Juan—only eight by seven blocks for businesses and residences, the rest a fortress. But she soon found much charity work to keep her busy, and good society for leisure. Because of the many functionaries and soldiers living and working in Puerto Rico’s capital, active or retired officers of the military and their families were among the elite, along with businessmen and merchants. Much to her surprise, after just a few short months, she came to love the city and its people.
San Juan was a microcosm of Spain, whose regional dialects, prejudices, partisanships, and quarrels traveled across the Atlantic Ocean but were diffused by forced intimacy in the citadel. Catalan bankers, Basque mariners, Galician priests, Andalusian ranchers, and Castilian artists lived and worked alongside French dance masters, Venezuelan coffee planters, Irish grocers, Corsican tobacco growers, and North American accountants.
It was possible to learn how long someone had lived