The Farming of Bones_ A Novel - Edwidge Danticat [31]
18
Doña Eva’s birthday celebration became Rafi’s unofficial wake. All of Doña Eva’s guests from the Mass came to offer their felicitations for the child they could see and their silent condolences for the lost one. In spite of her earlier insistence that there would be no viewing of her son’s body, Señora Valencia allowed anyone who asked to file past the bed where he lay, looking as proud of him in death as she would have been in life. During those moments when the friends and distant relations peeked through the mosquito gauze, sniffing with sadness and crossing themselves as they caught a glimpse of the pale round face of the boy child, Señora Valencia, sat alone in her room with her daughter in her arms, as if guarding her from bad thoughts and omens. And there I saw a stillness in her eyes similar to the dead boy’s face, something like the shadow of a lost dream entering and leaving through her vacant stare.
In the parlor, Juana wore her rosary around her neck as she and I served cafecitos to the visitors. Many of the neighbors had not seen Rafi in life and were lamenting to one another the loss now marked on Señor Pico’s face.
It was easy to tell how much Señor Pico wanted to be with his son, in the last hours that he could look at his face, hold him in his arms before he had to lay him in his coffin.
With a shiny black feather decorating her cloche hat, Doña Sabine’s gaze stayed on Señor Pico as he looked towards the room where his son lay. Every now and again the señor’s eyes would circle the room he was in, with no interest in what was being said. His eyes grew wider when someone smiled at him or addressed him by name, and occasionally he closed them and covered them with his fingers.
“You’re so brave, both of you.” Doña Eva’s voice rose above the others. Doña Eva bore a great resemblance to both her daughter Beatriz, and her son, Doctor Javier—or rather they did to her—except Doña Eva’s hair was crinkled like sawdust and mostly gray. Doña Eva strove against the natural curl of her hair by parting it in the middle and then coiling her tresses into two knots, one above each of her ears.
Señor Pico accepted Doña Eva’s compliment about their bravery with a gracious but tired smile. Don Carlos, the mill owner, who was quite thin, was sitting on a wicker banquette between his wife and Doña Eva. Don Carlos had an abundance of veins showing under the surface of his sheer white skin. Sebastien had joked that if Don Carlos had as much money as he had veins bulging from his right hand alone, then he would own the whole island.
I tried not to look at his hands as I served Don Carlos his cafecito. Papi strolled to the radio and turned it on. A merengue by La Orquesta Presidente Trujillo came on and silenced the voices in the room. After three long patriotic songs, an announcer introduced fragments from a series of old speeches given on different occasions by the Generalissimo.
Señor Pico motioned for everyone to be quiet. He walked over to the radio and increased the volume, as though seeking comfort for his personal loss from the most powerful voice in the land, a voice that for all its authority was still as shrill as a birdcall.
“You are independent, and yours is the responsibility for carrying out justice,” the Generalissimo shrieked. A buzzing hum intruded at many points, and some words, sometimes even whole phrases, were lost to the distance the transmission had to travel to Papi’s radio.
“Tradition shows as a fatal fact,” the Generalissimo continued,