‘That’s no way to treat a woman. What are you thinking, giving me a bunch of thorns?’ said Jacinta, licking blood from fingers that were swollen from the bouquet of sicklebush wrapped in banana leaves Benicio had offered her. Crestfallen, Benicio went home and told José what had happened.
‘Don’t worry,
hijo
,’ he said. ‘These things happen. The next step is the most important. If you can make her laugh, you’re halfway there.’
Grandfather went to see Jacinta again the following day.
‘Two skeletons were out for a walk and one of them lit up a cigar. The other skeleton looked at his friend and said: you do know that smoking can kill you?’
When he finished telling his joke, he waited for Jacinta’s reaction. She stared at him, as though she could not believe her ears.
‘It’s a joke. Don’t you think it’s funny?’
‘Funny? It’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard in my life.’
‘I’m not much good at telling jokes. The only thing I’m good at is climbing trees. Do you want me to climb one for you?’
‘Climb a tree? What for?’
Time flew by, March rolled around and with it a heatwave so intense it felt like summer. Then something strange happened. One morning while working in the vegetable garden, Benicio suddenly felt short of breath. It was not the breathlessness he often got when tilling the ground, nor was it because of the midday sun which sometimes makes you want to peel off your own skin. It was a weird feeling, as though his lungs were blocked. He saw José working out in the back yard and, for the first time in his life, he experienced something he recognised as hatred. An overpowering hatred for this man who had raised him, for his family, for the whole world. Benicio loved José very much, much more perhaps than even he could imagine, but in that moment he wanted to strangle him. ‘It’s this damned sun,’ he said, staring up at the sky.
The following day the same thing happened, but this time with Betina when she came to wake him for breakfast. ‘Shit, Mamá Betina! Leave us alone, can’t you see we’re still asleep.’ Gertrudis immediately jumped out of bed and Benicio sat staring at her, not knowing how to explain what had happened. Betina roared into the room like a hurricane and gave him a slap across the face that left him reeling. ‘Speak to me like that again, and I’ll rip your head off!’ Grandfather and Gertrudis did not move. Betina turned on her heel without a word and went back to the kitchen.
‘How could you talk to Mamá Betina like that?’ said Geru, getting to her feet. Grandfather bowed his head while Geru lectured him about how you had to respect your parents, and not just parents but people in general, going on to say that he had to learn to control his temper. Benicio said that he didn’t know what had come over him, but that it would never happen again. But still these flashes of fury kept coming, this murderous desire to throttle everyone, the foul-mouthed impudence to Betina’s orders. His family no longer recognised him; even Benicio himself could hardly believe the filth that came out of his mouth.
One day, Benicio went with Geru to bathe in the river and seeing his reflection in the water, noticed for the first time that he had changed and now had a thick bull-neck and powerful veiny arms. He also realised he was more than six feet tall.
‘Geru, have you noticed anything weird about me?’ he asked his sister. Gertrudis told him that he had grown into a giant; she had been meaning to mention it for some time but that she had not wanted to embarrass him. On their way home, they met a boy from the village bringing a bunch of flowers for Geru. Ignoring the look on Benicio’s face that glowered, ‘How dare you?’, the boy offered the flowers to Geru who never even managed to accept them since, as she reached out her hand, the boy keeled over. The blow had been swift and powerful and the lad dropped to the ground unconscious. Benicio hurled himself at the boy and continued to beat him until Geru screamed something that brought him to himself.
‘Benicio, you’re going to kill him!’
Only then did he stop, but by now the boy’s face was a bloody mess. At his sister’s insistence, he picked the boy up like a dead cat and carried him home. When asked what had happened, he lied. ‘A coconut fell on his head,’ he said.
That night the parents of the injured boy went to speak to José and Betina.
‘Out of the respect I have for your family and the past that we share, I am not going to kill Benicio yet, I will give him an opportunity to leave the village,’ said the father. Mortified, José and Betina swore that they would punish their son and this they did. Benicio was locked in his room for a week. When eventually he was allowed out, he grabbed every boy he met by the throat and forced him to strip in front of everyone to humiliate him; the adults he encountered he shoved brutishly aside like rag dolls, such was his phenomenal strength.
‘You can’t go on treating people like this, Benicio. You have to control your temper,’ said Geru, but Grandfather simply said, ‘I can’t help it.’
Every night he would weep helplessly, cursing every inch of the person he had become. Gertrudis too would cry and dry his tears. In her eyes, Grandfather was still the noble Benicio no one ever saw, like a prisoner condemned to live in some cramped space inside his chest. Gertrudis’s sweet smile reminded him that life was not about assaulting people, throwing stones at cows, or wringing the necks of the neighbours’ chickens in order to start a fight; it was not about finding some excuse to vent his fury, pounding someone’s face to a pulp without caring how much that person might mean to his family, without thinking of the ties of friendship between them since everyone in Pata de Puerco had watched Benicio grow up.
‘That boy is a menace. He is worse than El Mozambique,’ the villagers complained to José and Betina. The Mandingas did everything they could to calm them, promising to buy another chicken, or buy clothes for their child, promising to make sure it would never happen again.
One morning Geru and Benicio went off to buy groceries at Chinaman Li’s store and, on their way back, they ran into Jacinta and her brother Ignacio. Ignacio el Jabao had also grown, but he was still shorter than Benicio. He was beginning to grow a blond beard which made him look much older.
‘
Hola
, Benicio,’ said Jacinta. ‘We’re heading down to the river later, do you want to come?’
‘To the river? Um . . .’
‘No, Benicio, you have too much work to do,’ said Geru coldly. Benicio looked at her angrily. He did not want to argue, so he signalled to Jacinta, to let her know that he would come down to the river. Then Ignacio stepped forward and said, ‘Geru, I know you’ll think this is just me being dumb but I got a present for you a while ago and I was hoping to give it to you this afternoon.’ My grandfather’s ears began to burn and flushed a deep red. As he raised his fist, Gertrudis pushed him aside. ‘You keep your nose out of other people’s business, Benicio,’ she said, then, ‘Thank you Ignacio, that’s very kind of you.’
‘Have you gone mad, Geru? Remember what Papá told us: no Jabaos and no white people.’
‘Jacinta is a Jabao too. Anyway, I’ll do what I want. It’s my life and I won’t have Papá or you making my decisions for me.’
‘Wicked!’ said Ignacio, or whatever kids said back then. ‘So you’ll come and get the present?’
‘Of course. Together to the end of the world.’
Geru slipped her arm through Ignacio’s and together they walked back towards the village. Benicio watched them walk away and said nothing. Jacinta pressed her lips to his ear, whispering that Geru was a bore, that he should forget about her, while she had just made some delicious
pan con tomate
. ‘Maybe you could tell me one of your jokes.’
Still Grandpa Benicio said nothing, he simply stood staring at Geru as she walked arm in arm with Ignacio. Jacinta went on talking, but her voice reverberated in his ears like a faint echo.
When they got to the village, Ignacio gave Geru a huge bunch of beautiful flowers unlike anything anyone had ever given her: roses, hibiscus, orchids; no one knew where Ignacio could have found such things. Grandfather witnessed the presentation.
‘Pretty, aren’t they?’ said Ignacio, smiling, and Geru kissed him on the cheek before they wandered off together up the hill. Jacinta asked Grandpa Benicio what was wrong, but the truth was even he could not explain. He said perhaps they should go to the river some other day and then rushed home and shut himself in his room.
In his letters, Melecio had not described what it was like, the fire he felt when his hands moved over María’s body. He had simply said it was intense and that it burned. He did not say he had trembled, that it was not just his skin, but his insides that burned; nor that his heart had hammered against his ribs and he had found himself weeping with sheer helplessness and rage; he had not said it was a feeling that went far beyond desire. For this was how Benicio had felt as he watched Geru’s pursed lips graze Ignacio’s cheek.
Many years later, Grandfather would consider himself a lucky man that he could pinpoint the precise moment when he knew he was in love. It happened on that day, in that unforgettable moment when El Jabao took his sister by the arm and walked her back towards the village. This was the first time Grandfather wept for Geru. And yet he did not know when it was he had come to love her in this way. Many years later, remembering the past, he came to the conclusion that he had been in love with her all his life. He had always been captivated by her delicacy, though José and Betina thought of her as a daisy surrounded by thorns because, according to them, she was sickly like her Aunt Malena.
Grandfather had slept beside her every night while she had suffered her various illnesses; he had even been there the night she became a woman. When she woke up the next morning in a pool of blood, Geru’s first reaction was to check that Grandpa Benicio was not hurt. The blood was coming from between her legs, a sight that she found spellbinding, since her favourite colour had always been red. Neither of them understood what had happened. Benicio looked at Geru’s delicate face in terror, but his sister laughed, revealing those teeth that were the sun itself.
Benicio would always remember the night when Geru hugged him so hard he could not breathe. He might not have been as clever as Melecio, but he knew the meaning behind those hugs, Geru’s sweaty fingers and her pounding heart against his back. He did not need to be told, since he felt exactly the same. From the moment they could express their thoughts, they had shared with each other their innermost secrets, their dreams, their confidences; there had always been a special chemistry between them. He never had the courage to tell her that he loved her more than anything, that to him she was the most important thing in the universe. He answered her with his silence, with deeds rather than words, as do those who truly love, and the passing time simply strengthened the bonds between them.
That afternoon Benicio wept inconsolably, imagining Geru kissing Ignacio’s freckled lips. Betina came into his room with a jug of linden tea, stroked his head and said nothing. She knew all too well what was happening. For some time now she had seen in her children’s eyes the defiance and the arrogance of passion. By the time Geru came back from her walk with Ignacio, Benicio was asleep.
‘Wake up, Benicio.’
‘What is it?’
‘Nothing. I just wanted to say I’m sorry.’
‘Sorry about what?’
‘About what happened this afternoon. The truth is Ignacio and his flowers mean nothing to me. I only did it to make you jealous.’
Benicio choked back his words and, as always, answered only with his silence.
From that day, they became inseparable. Benicio watched Geru blossom into a woman whose beauty and radiance were obvious not only to him, who loved her already. Everyone in Pata de Puerco was bewitched by her beauty, because Geru was radiance itself. She had inherited the honey-brown eyes and purple lips of Betina but she was taller and more slender and her jet-black hair had a natural shine that lit up her face. Everyone believed that the closeness between them was that of brother and sister. Only Betina noticed another bond between them, something more passionate, more dangerous.
Benicio knew that his feelings would have grave consequences, that it would be difficult for others to understand since, at the end of the day, they were brother and sister. Though they were not related by blood. This was in their favour. Even so, José would see their relationship as a curse from the saints, a dark, bitter card that fate had dealt him; one he did not deserve since in spite of his failings he had been a good father, a good friend, and an excellent neighbour.
‘Papá, I need to talk to you,’ Benicio said to José one day when they were working together in the vegetable garden.
‘Of course, son. If it’s about you being in love with Jacinta, don’t worry, she likes you. It’s just a matter of time. Your sister is a different matter. I’ve seen that little bastard Ignacio hanging around her recently. That really is worrying, because the first boy to touch Geru, I’ll cut his balls off.’
Benicio changed the subject. He talked about the weather, about how they had had no news from Melecio, about how much he missed his brother. When they had finished digging, he went into the living room and found his sister coming out of her room. Geru looked different, there was an intensity about her and in her eyes he thought he could see that the same secret was eating away at both of them. José came into the house, took off his boots, kissed his daughter and went into the bedroom where Betina was already sleeping. They stood frozen, love driven like a spike into their hearts.