‘On the very day she became a woman, the
wije
vanished from her dreams. Macuta Dos would talk to him in dark corners when she was alone, though she could not see him and did not expect him to trouble to reply, but the world is full of miseries, after all, compared to which her wishes were insignificant. She had but one wish in life: she wanted a child.
‘She began working on the plantation, feeding the animals, cleaning and drawing water from the well. Since she was a strong, muscular Negress, they set her to cutting cane with the menfolk and gave her so many backbreaking chores that often she worked twenty-two hours a day.
‘On one of the countless days that Macuta Dos prayed and hoped the
wije
might hear her prayers, in one of the countless murky corridors on the plantation she encountered a small black man she recognised as the
wije
Bonifacio. He smelled of charred forests and he wore the same loincloth and had the same frizzy hair and gleaming teeth as when he appeared in her dreams. The
wije
told her he had been sent to her by Yusi the Warrior since God did not intend to answer her prayers. Bonifacio told Macuta Dos not to worry, because he would give her a child. He gestured for her to come close and whispered, ‘Tombo,’ then he kissed her gently on the lips. The moment she touched the
wije
’s thin lips, which tasted of ripe mango, Macuta Dos knew that she would bear a son to a man named Tombo, but she had no idea who this man might be.
‘One week later, a new consignment of slaves arrived at the plantation. Among them was Tombo, a pureblood Kortico four feet tall with velvety black skin and an impulsive character. The attraction between them was almost instantaneous and nine months later Macuta Dos gave birth to Oscar. Just as the
wije
had predicted, there was no love between them. Tombo was cruel and quick-tempered and the few times they had sex, he would cover her head with a sack or push her underwater so that she could not breathe. But Macuta Dos expected these things because the
wije
Bonifacio had forewarned her. Just as she knew that Tombo’s days were numbered.
‘“Oscar, say goodbye to your papá,” Macuta Dos said to her son on the last night they spent together as a family. Tombo picked the boy up and kissed him on the cheek. The child wailed, he could sense something; but his parents simply looked at him in silence. The following morning at dawn, Tombo escaped into the hills. He was brought back that same afternoon dead, the skin flayed from his body, his face unrecognisable. They dragged him from the dense scrubland and strung him up in the middle of the plantation to serve as a lesson to others. Then they buried him in a secret place halfway up the mountain to obliterate any trace of him. Never again would anyone mention the name of the Kortico Tombo.
‘Time passed. Macuta Dos went on with her backbreaking chores and Oscar went on growing. Every night, Macuta Dos would shrug off her tiredness and tell her son stories from her native Africa, about how the Korticos were a tribe of fearsome warriors who knew the secret ways of plants. She told him that in Africa, even boys hunted with spears, though during their training many ended up in the maws of lions. Macuta Dos raised Oscar until the day she was locked away in a dark room with Tampico, a man who had the misfortune to have two metal bars by way of arms and a pillar of chiselled black marble by way of a torso. His legs were thick trunks of ebony, the very sight of him instilled terror.
‘On the Santisteban plantation, Tampico was the man who turned the wheel for the sugar mill and the coffee mill. This task, which usually required three or more slaves, he did alone. He could carry fifty buckets of water a day, in addition to cutting cane. He was a clumsy, gruff, slow-witted Negro like a sleepy giant and he stammered when he talked. But he was very useful, according to Don Manuel who, from the moment he first bought the slave, recognised that Tampico had been born into this world to toil and sweat until he died. And so this muscular Negro lived his life exhausted and in pain because of his work on the Santisteban plantation.
‘Manuel Santisteban had bought him in Havana; he had bought only Tampico, not his wife or his children. When he arrived in Pata de Puerco, Tampico found that everything was barren and desolate. No one knew him, no one spoke to him, people looked at him fearfully and in the slave quarters kept as far away from him as possible. And so, gradually, he began to grieve for the life he had left behind before he had been captured and shipped to Cuba.
‘In the first few weeks, he obeyed every order and was meek as a lamb. But precisely a month after he arrived, he suffered a bout of depression and began to strangle any living thing that crossed his path. The steward and the overseers believed he was possessed, but on the strict orders of Don Manuel no one dared lay a finger on him. “We must find him a mate. Lock him in a dark room with Macuta Dos,” suggested Don Manuel, and this they did.
‘As she was torn away from Oscar, Macuta Dos realised that her dreams of shadows and forests of flame were nothing more than shadows of her own life. Nothing could compare with the pain of losing her beloved son Oscar. This is why she did not flinch when the giant Tampico pinned her to the wooden floor, nor when he straddled her like a rutting bull, biting at her breasts and sucking at her neck like a vampire. She allowed herself to be dragged along by the whim of destiny and nine months later a son was born.
‘“We’ll call him Satanás,” suggested one of the female slaves. Macuta nodded her head in approval. “Satanás is the name of the devil. Damián is nicer,” said another woman in the barracks. Again Macuta nodded in agreement. In the end the dozen or so slave women, fighting to pick an appropriate name for the boy, decided upon Mangaleno. For the fourth time Macuta gave her consent. She did not care because she already sensed her own life ebbing away. Reluctantly, she suckled the child, feeding him her frustrations and her pain at having lost her beloved son Oscar.
‘Mangaleno grew up in the shadow of his brother. He knew no love, except for the love his mother daily professed for Oscar. She would talk about Oscar to herself and sometimes referred to Mangaleno as Oscar so that from his earliest childhood he learned to despise the name. “I’m not Oscar, I’m Mangaleno,” the boy would say furiously, but nothing changed.
‘So it was that Mangaleno grew up longing for a life he never lived, a life that for him could never exist. He had no choice but to rise from the ashes of his miserable existence and add more suffering to the suffering he had already amassed.
‘At the time the Slaughter of the Santistebans took place, Mangaleno had just turned thirteen. The blockhouse was one of the first places torched by the slaves and in all the chaos and all the shouts of joy and freedom, no one realised that Macuta Dos had deliberately remained inside. But Mangaleno knew she was in there and ran to rescue his mother. He dashed through the flames, oblivious to the pain as they burned his skin, and he searched among the rubble until, beneath a burning beam, he found a bundle that had a human form. His mother lay dying, her frail body half-charred, her head a mass of red and black blisters that spread all over her skin. Mangaleno doused the flames and lifted her up, wrapped her in his shirt, cradled her in his arms and clutched her to his chest as though she were a newborn, then he ran straight at the nearest wall which offered no resistance, it crumbled, and Mangaleno kept on running frantically as far as the river, hoping with every step that he might still save not only his mother’s life, but his own.
‘“Don’t leave me, Mamá, don’t leave me alone,” he begged, pressing her to him. “I love you, Oscar,” were the last words Macuta Dos ever spoke as she stared into the eyes of Mangaleno: two dark pools, a vast universe of hatred and bitterness.
‘From that day, Mangaleno had only one goal in life: to track down this man he hated more than anyone on the face of the earth, this man who had stolen his mother’s love, who had ruined his life, this man he had never met but whom he dreamed about every day, thought about every minute, this ghost of a man named Oscar. His was a simple life. Other people had to worry about learning to read or write, about being loved or admired, about acquiring a trade or being loyal to their family. Not he. He had been put on earth with the sole purpose of using every ounce of strength to make Oscar suffer.
‘But to wound, to wound deeply, one must be patient. This was something Mangaleno understood even as a child. And so he waited until he had grown into a man. In the year 1878 Mangaleno was twenty-five years old and his body was a lethal weapon, not simply because he shared his father’s genes, but because he had spent his every waking hour exercising, carrying logs, cutting cane, dreaming of the day when he would be avenged. It was in that same year that Oscar and José, with their respective wives, settled in Pata de Puerco. Mangaleno was already here, waiting for him. He assumed that since he was hatred incarnate, then Oscar must be his antithesis, meaning someone who felt fulfilled, happy, in other words a romantic, and romantics invariably returned to their birthplace. This was why he had spent years here in a remote shack he had built with his own hands, patiently waiting like an alligator for its prey.
‘But Oscar did not come alone. And what is the most effective way to make a man suffer? To hurt that which he most loves. This is what Mangaleno planned to do. He devoted himself to hounding Malena. He found out everything there was to know about her; that she fell ill at least once a month, that she was quiet and reserved, that she often made a pilgrimage to the church at El Cobre. He knew that in the church she prayed for everyone, for her family, for her friends, for strangers and even for a world ravaged by poverty, which proved that Malena had the temperament of a saint; she was a woman who preferred to conceal her pain so as not to hurt others, a woman who had long since learned to suffer in silence.
‘The most important fact was that, after she had prayed for the world and its misfortunes, Malena always concluded with a dozen prayers for her soul and that of her husband Oscar, the love of her life, the one man who had taught her how to love. Mangaleno could not believe it could be so easy. He licked his lips, realising that in Malena he had found the perfect means of destroying the life of his mortal enemy.
‘On one such afternoon, Mangaleno lay in wait on the Callejón de la Rosa. Malena appeared looking happy, radiant. The sun had set by the time Mangaleno confronted her, grabbing her by the throat as though she were a meek dove. She tried to resist, began to scream only to be silenced by two blows to the face that left her dazed. Mangaleno covered her mouth but he did not cover her eyes so that she would be able to see his spider’s soul and his overflowing hatred. He bit her neck until blood began to spurt from her veins, he covered her breasts with bitemarks, blood-sucking bruises that would never fade. Then he thrust into her, again and again until he saw her eyes well with tears of pain and rage. Having satisfied his ancient and twisted desires, he tossed her into the grass. Then he buttoned his breeches and walked away smiling, leaving Malena’s groans behind, groans that seemed to come from a mouth with no tongue, no lips; it was the sweetest revenge he could have had. “The happiest day of my life,” as he would describe the moment years later.
‘Yet still he continued to spy on her, slipping among the trees, and did the same to Oscar as he worked in his vegetable garden; he even followed him when he went to Chinaman Li’s store. He quickly realised that Oscar knew nothing of what had happened, that Malena had buried her secret even as her belly was already beginning to swell with the fruit of lovelessness and hatred.
‘“He who does not see, does not know. He who does not know, does not suffer.” Oscar was not suffering. Mangaleno realised that Oscar was living his life as through nothing had happened and that was something he could not allow. He writhed to think that the man he most loathed was living a life without pain. He spent a long time looking for some way of hurting him more effectively. He tried to discredit him with the other
macheteros
, hacking off the leg of their mare, but nothing worked. Oscar carried on with his life, his idyllic life with Malena, as though nothing had happened, while Mangaleno carried on raging that he could not find a means to bury him.
‘When he heard gossip that Malena was pregnant, he went to check. He hid behind some trees and watched the couple argue. Oscar could not understand how his wife could have become pregnant. He gesticulated wildly, and the more he waved his hands, the more Mangaleno licked his lips. This, he saw, was his sweet revenge, something that would make his half-brother writhe in pain and remorse, a pain that would dog him like a shadow to the end of his days. Mangaleno had only to wait for the child to be born. Nine months later, you were born. What happened next, you already know.’
Grandpa Benicio sat, slack-jawed, confused, pressing the amulet to his chest, not knowing what to do, what to say.
‘But . . . but what does it all mean?’
‘It means that Mangaleno raped your mother,’ the midwife said simply.
‘But . . .’
At that moment the door flew open. Benicio and Ester leapt to their feet.
‘Mangaleno!’ cried Ester, her voice tremulous with fear.
Turning his head, Benicio found himself face to face with El Mozambique.
‘Thank you, Ester. Now go into the kitchen, my son and I need to talk.’
‘Don’t you dare call me that,’ said Benicio.
‘What would you like me to call you? Don’t be stupid, Benicio. Did you really think a four-foot pygmy could have given you that body of yours? Don’t make me laugh.’