The Farm Read online

  We, the Ángels of Jericó, are descended from the fifth of Abraham’s brood, Ismael, who settled in El Retiro at the beginning of the nineteenth century. We don’t know exactly what he did there but he must have prospered somewhat, for he left his eldest son, Esteban, a salt mine in his will. Ismael’s second son, Isaías, was the one who emigrated to the Southwest, in 1861, when Jericó was not yet called that, but rather the Aldea de Piedras, in some documents, and in others, Felicina, and all this starts there because with it La Oculta also begins.

  La Oculta was a jungle; then it was a coffee farm and a cattle ranch; now it’s a country house with a little bit of land around it. The borders were marked out by trees and streams, by ditches and pits, the exact locations of which nobody knows anymore. I, Antonio, maybe the last of the line to bear the surname Ángel, want to reconstruct for my sisters, Pilar and Eva, and for my nephews and nieces, since I have no children, the history of this farm to which we’re so attached it’s as if it were part of our flesh. Yes, because we are stuck to La Oculta tooth and claw, as if it were the last resort for castaways adrift in the world.

  So, that’s the first opening I have for my little book, but sometimes it seems too long to me, and so I’ve written another beginning, a more concise variation on the former, because I don’t really know how to start to tell the story from the beginning, which for me begins with the history of the town, which gets mixed up with the history of my family at least since Abraham came to live in the New World:

  The first man left Toledo and crossed the sea to arrive in a less tough, less arid land, a land where his name, Abraham Santángel, was not a stigma, and there, some years after he arrived in Antioquia, from the womb of his wife, Betsabé, came forth Ismael, the fifth of his children. Ismael with Sara begat Isaías, who with his wife Raquel begat Elías, who with his wife Isabel had a son called José Antonio, from whom with his wife Mercedes was born Josué, who married Miriam, who gave birth to Jacobo, my father, who with my mother, Ana, had my two sisters, Pilar and Eva, and also had me. This is the whole genealogy of our surname, Ángel, which before being shortened was Santángel, and which with me, Antonio, will surely be extinguished. Those to whom God gives no children the devil gives nephews, they say. Yes, because my nephews are Gils and Bernals, and Ángel is only their second surname. It shouldn’t matter, yet it matters to me, and it’s almost the only thing I don’t like about them. There will be other Ángels, but from other branches of the family, other tribes, so it’s not as if with me our name will disappear from the earth. It’s sad that I talk so much about my ancestors, that I searched so hard for my origins, knowing that I will be nobody’s ancestor or origin. Yes, at least on this flank of the family there will be no one else to bear our surname, first of all because I don’t have any children, and second of all because, since I like men and not women, it’s harder for me to have them, and in the third place because Jon doesn’t trust adoption and I don’t think I do either. The names of my ancestors I discovered in the birth, death, and baptismal registers in Jericó, our town in Antioquia, and in other legal documents. I was able to certify that Isaías, our first Jericó ancestor, born in El Retiro and son of Ismael Ángel and Sara Cano, grandson of Abraham Santángel and Betsabé Correa, Christians for not so long, signed and registered the papers for this farm, our farm, La Oculta, on December 2, 1886.

  PILAR

  Toño is interested in old things, family origins, ancestors, and surnames. I don’t give a fig about all that. I, Pilar Ángel de Gil, by memory, barely go back as far as our own grandparents, Grandpa Josué and Grandma Miriam. Josué Ángel and Miriam Mesa, and that’s that. Well, I can remember our great-grandmother, Merceditas Mejía, or Ditas, who we called Mama Ditas, or Mamaditas (without any of us ever realizing that could mean something else, something rude). I only remember Mamaditas because we went to visit her sometimes in the big house in Jericó and because I have a good memory, unlike Toño, who doesn’t remember anything, so he makes it all up. When I don’t know something or don’t remember, what do I do? Well, I keep quiet; Toño on the other hand does not keep quiet but makes up a story to complete what he’d forgotten or what he doesn’t know. One of the two: he either invents something, or he believes everything he reads or everything he’s told, like a child, and writes it down. He hears and believes, believes and writes, writes and thinks, and then he invents what he doesn’t know and with time ends up believing it: that’s what he’s like. For him, the truth ends up being the lies he believes. He is as credulous and ingenuous as the town idiots or lunatics, and no town has as many idiots or lunatics as Jericó, because at first they were all cousins and married each other, and from there came all possible and impossible defects. All we’re missing is the pig’s tail, but we’ve got everything else: asthma, epilepsy, schizophrenia, myopia, arthritis, hemophilia, you name it.

  Frankly, as far as I’m concerned, further back than our grandparents, I don’t care at all about our ancestors, cousins who married other cousins. If I didn’t meet them, if the only thing they are is a pile of faceless names with no memories attached to them, white bones in the Jericó cemetery, what influence are they going to have on my life or the lives of my children? None. Grandpa Josué and Grandma Miriam, however, still matter. My youngest daughter, for example, resembles Grandma Miriam a lot, and not just because she’s very short, four foot eleven, like she was, but in her character. Grandpa Josué was more than a whole foot taller than Miriam; in photos they look almost ridiculous, him a giant and her a tiny little thing. But she was a tiny person with a blend of cheerfulness and a wicked temper. When she had an argument with my grandfather, she would raise her voice and always say the same thing to him, a phrase that has become legendary in our house as a threat or a warning. She would waggle her index finger and say to Grandpa Josué looking right into the center of his dark eyes with her hazel ones: “Bismuth, sulphonamide, and quicksilver-iodine!” All she had to do was say that and Grandpa would calm down and admit she was right. At the most, occasionally, he’d answer with a single sentence: “You forgot the arsenic, Doña Miriam, the arsenic.” They always spoke formally to each other and whenever we asked about the origin of the phrase, our uncles would say it was a poison to kill army ants, and that our grandfather had once said that if she didn’t stop nagging he was going to put a dose of that poison in the soup. Maybe that was it. The fact is that Grandma Miriam just had to say, very quietly, “Bismuth, sulphonamide, and quicksilver-iodine,” and our grandfather would lower his gaze and fall silent. He would stop bossing her around and complaining and would be left dumbfounded, as if stunned. Grandma, behind his back, would make faces, stick her tongue out at him, put her thumb to her nose, and waggle her fingers like a naughty girl at school. Grandpa didn’t know about that. And Florencia, my youngest daughter, is just like Grandma Miriam; those old genes are still noticeable in her. They’re like birthmarks, like tics or obsessions, which we inherit from someone even if we don’t really know where they come from.

  But Grandma’s mother, or Grandpa’s father, who I never met, and don’t even know what they looked like, don’t mean anything to me now. And farther back than them, even less, for they’re long dead and gone and forgotten. Maybe something of them lives on in me, but since I don’t know what it might be, it doesn’t make any difference to me. It might be inherited, but it’s mine now, and that’s the end of it.

  Antonio says, for example, that supposedly we’re Jewish to the core and that’s why one of the first farms of the first ancestor to arrive in Jericó (I don’t know if it was Elías or Isaías or Matías or Zacarías, something ending in ías) was called La Judía, and the house with walls of fine hardwood still exists up there, on the banks of the River Frío, that we have to go see it before it collapses from old age, but I don’t believe him. I am Catholic, of the Holy Roman Apostolic Church, like my mother and my grandmothers, and that’s that, and if we were Jews it doesn’t matter because centuries ago we converted to the true re
ligion, and before God we’re all equal: Jews, Indians, whites, Protestants, atheists, Buddhists, and Muslims. God is merciful and we’ll all go to heaven, even the worst of us, because the pope himself, who knows these things, already said that hell does exist, but it’s empty, and that’s why bad people don’t go there, they just have to spend a few centuries in purgatory, purging their misdeeds and repenting, until they’ve become aware of all the evil they did and suffer in their own flesh the pain they doled out. That’s what I believe, what I’ve always believed, and if others don’t want to believe it, all the worse for them because they’ll have to spend more years in purgatory.

  Toño doesn’t think religious matters are very serious. He used to, he was very pious once upon a time, and I think he even went to Mass in New York when he first moved there, thirty years ago or so. He told Mamá, so she wouldn’t worry, that he went to All Saints Church in Harlem, which was very beautiful, Gothic, he said. Then he moved in with Jon, and I don’t think he’s been a very good influence in this regard, since Jon isn’t even Catholic, but comes from an evangelical family, the ones who sing and shout and cry and wave their hands around. They have services that seem like melodramas. Bit by bit, Toño stopped going to Mass on Sundays and Mamá stopped asking. Although deep down I believe he believes, Toño says he is no longer sure of anything, and that religions come and go, like fashions, that there are more dead religions than living ones, more dead gods than living ones, and that there are new religions and gods yet to be born and to die. That he would go to Mass in a chapel that included all religions, because they change, like styles of ties. How despicable: religion is not a fashion or a riddle, like the horoscope or spiritualism; it’s a serious and important thing, it’s what keeps us steady. And God, no matter how His name gets changed here and there, is always the same. If there was no religion and there was no afterlife, then what would reward the good people and punish the bad? Since prizes and punishments are not distributed fairly in this life, there has to be another, where things are not so twisted. If there was no other life, God would be crazy, and I don’t believe that God is crazy. And even if He is crazy, I’d rather have a crazy God than a God who doesn’t exist.

  Alberto, who is better than I am, and also has much more faith than I do, always convinces me and explains everything when I have doubts. He reminds me how good we have it; he makes me see the privilege of living here, at La Oculta, which for him is a little piece of paradise. I’ve lived here with him for almost ten years now, with my husband, my only love, my first and only ever boyfriend, my only man. He also has his way of being silent. I kiss him and bite him and taste him still, but even without knowing what he tastes like I understand why I love him so much. I don’t know what other men taste like, because Alberto is the only one I’ve tried, but they must taste similar, surely, the way all the landscapes in the world resemble each other. But this one’s mine, and the one I like best, just like Alberto is my man, mine and only mine, and I am his alone.

  Once I had a fight with Rosa, the cook, a long time ago. We were fighting and I asked her: “Rosa, if you’re so bored, why don’t you leave? You’re free to go.” And she answered: “Ay, Doña Pilar, why would I leave, when all tombs are the same.” That made me laugh, and afterward I thought that marriage is like that too. Good or bad, you have to stay once and for all with the same one, all the more so if he’s good, like Alberto. But everyone’s different. For example Eva, my little sister, has been married three times and has had so many boyfriends that I’ve lost count. Her last friend was the widower Caicedo, who even though he was too old for her, because he was eighteen years older and looked like he could be her father, at least was decent and generous. But no, she left him too, like all the others. And what for, to get bored again and separate. I don’t know. Sometimes I feel so ridiculous and old-fashioned, so different from Eva. She is almost as old as I am, had three husbands, none of whom were good enough for her, has tried out a dozen good, bad, and average men, young and old, locals and foreigners, Jews and Christians, and still holds out hope of finding a better one. She was hurt for several years, resentful of the farm, and didn’t want to come back, saying she’d never go back. “I’ll never go back to La Oculta,” she said. Never, what silliness, never say never. Later she came back, when we all came back and Mamá resolved to organize Christmases again like before the sorrows, before anybody had died, before Lucas was kidnapped and Papá died of sadness, before Eva was almost murdered. When Los Músicos were finally killed or disappeared we were able to come back, to forget, and everything went back to being tranquil, calm, and sweet. Life’s like that, after the storm comes the calm, as the song says, and the calm lasts longer than the storms, that’s what I say. We all came back and Mamá made tamales again, and custards, pancakes, fritters, like every other year. And the frijoladas, the beans, the paellas, ajiaco, potato and chili stews, aji de gallina, chili chicken, chupe camarones, shrimp stew, salmorejo, Antioquia-style gazpacho, posta cartagenera, blackened topside beef, asados, grilled meats, arequipe, our version of dulce de leche, apple pie, guava paste with fresh white cheese, mazamorra con piedritas de panela, corn porridge with little pebbles of brown sugar loaf. Decembers are always like this: songs, games, and feasts. Arguments, fights, tears, reconciliations, the occasional memorable drinking binge with real musicians, a trio from town or a group from Medellín. Novenas, carols, and gifts. The tree and the nativity scene. Now the region is at peace. Now they almost never kidnap or steal, and only kill out of jealousy and threaten for money. Now we can live here peacefully. Now the deaths are no longer from gunshots or pain, but old age, which is the best death, or the least bad, the most acceptable. Instead of Mamá, now Eva and I will have to take care of Christmases, and invite everyone here, our brother, our children, grandchildren, friends, all together. Let’s hope this calm will last until our deaths. If there is another storm, let my children handle it rather than me, no, it’s not fair, I don’t deserve any more storms.

  Eva was much prettier than me, and a better student, and a better dancer. In fact, she used to say she was going to be a dancer and a psychologist when she grew up. From dancing so much she had a beautiful body, and not to mention her face, a perfect face, and the kind of smile that a beauty queen would envy. She had long black hair, refined features, the whitest teeth I’ve ever seen. And she was always cheerful, always laughing. Maybe because she was so pretty, she always thought nothing was ever enough: she wanted more and more and more. More and better. We went to the same convent school, La Presentación, and she won all the medals. I, however, was not even an average student and we were in the same grade because I’d failed a year. Eva always arrived home with her dark blue uniform covered in merit medals: the red medal for arithmetic, the yellow medal for religion, the blue medal for good behavior, the white medal for Spanish, the green medal for geography, the orange medal for discipline, all the medals. She looked like a general. And me without one single little medal. I remember one day, as we got off the bus, I forced her to give me a medal. A friend helped me to hold her arms behind her back, don’t be so vain, we told her, and I took the prettiest medal off her uniform, the tricolor medal with the flag. I pinned it on my chest, all smug, and when we got home Papá was so happy, and asked me what medal I’d won, and since I didn’t know I told him it was the medal for Love of the School. Eva looked at me with rage from one corner of the study, but she wouldn’t tell on me, she kept quiet, resentful, while Papá gave me a bigger kiss for my one stolen medal than Eva for her seven medals won with effort. Ay, how shameful, how sorry I am. Of course our father was also happy about Eva’s medals, but he was used to her winning all the prizes, and me winning something was more pleasing because it was so unusual.

  Eva went to university and I left before the end of my last year of high school, without even graduating, to marry Alberto. I know that Eva was watching me with all her medals, with all her diplomas, and wondering: will my life be better with all this studying, with s
o much discipline and responsibility, or will Pilar’s life be better, Pilar who was born old and already looks like a grandma? More than half a century has passed since we went to school together, so we should be able to say which life was better. In reality we don’t know, they’re very different lives but I don’t think either is so bad. Maybe the most that differentiates us are two or three things: she doesn’t have a husband and I do; I go to Mass and she doesn’t; she wouldn’t mind deep down if we sold La Oculta and I want to live and die here, on this farm, which (after my children, my sister, my brother, and my husband) is what I love most in this world. The land, the sensation of having a place to die, my own place to be buried, as my brother would prefer, or to have my ashes scattered, as I would, but anyway a place where I can become earth of my earth. I don’t know if people in other parts of the world are like us, here in Antioquia, who live with the obsession of owning a piece of land. Here even the poorest people have or want to have a little farm, even if it’s just fifty square meters, a little patch to plant three rows of vegetables and one of flowers. Not having land is like not having clothes, like not having food. Just as in order to live one needs water, air, and shelter, here we feel we also need to have land, if not to live off, at least to die on.

  Maybe what most differentiates Eva and me is our attitude toward marriage and love. I think it’s better the way it used to be: once and forever; Eva seems to think it’s best to believe, perhaps because her love life began that way, that love’s never forever, but something precarious, uncertain, and almost with an expiration date, like yogurt or jam. There are people who opt for an intermediate route. Near La Oculta, on a ranch called La Ley, the owner of that farm, Iván Restrepo, has two wives. Próspero’s brother works there and he tells us that Don Iván always calls when he’s coming and lets him know: “Aquileo, tomorrow I’m coming with Consuelo.” And then Aquileo knows he has to put out Doña Consuelo’s furniture, paintings, photos, and knick-knacks. Or Don Iván calls and says: “Aquileo, I’m coming with Amparo.” And Aquileo runs to put away Doña Consuelo’s things and put out Doña Amparo’s: everything is different, down to the cutlery, dishes, and pots and pans. He has to be very careful not to make any mistakes, for in the photos there are different children with each wife. He has a storeroom where he keeps the things, whether of one wife or the other, depending on who’s going to be there, a storeroom locked with a padlock that only the foreman has the key to. Not that Amparo doesn’t know of Consuelo’s existence, or that Consuelo doesn’t know of Amparo’s existence, not that they’re idiots, just that neither wants to know anything about the other. Once Aquileo got mixed up and left one photo of Doña Consuelo with Don Iván and their children. And it was Doña Amparo, who’d just arrived, who pretended not to have seen the photo. Don Iván widened his eyes at his foreman, and Aquileo ran to the storeroom to switch that photo with the correct one. We love hearing about our neighbor’s balancing act at La Ley, Don Iván, a very nice guy, and whenever Aquileo comes by we ask him for details. He tells us, for example, that Doña Amparo loves to go to Miami, and Don Iván takes her shopping there, but what Doña Consuelo likes is Europe, and apparently they go to concerts and museums. Aquileo says he gives both of them a very good life, and they’re very different, because one likes classical music and the other rancheras, one likes to read and the other to drink. And they even have different groups of friends. “Don Iván is a wise man,” Próspero always says, “but for wisdom like that you have to be very rich. Don’t you think?” They’re both true, the two lives Iván leads with two different wives, with much skill, in neighboring La Ley. Two very different and complete lives. But I wouldn’t live like that because I only like Alberto, and Eva isn’t like that either, because even though she’s often changed husbands and boyfriends, she’s always just been with one at a time, even though each one is always different. She’s faithful to each of them, but just for a time, until something shocks her or she gets bored: for me it’s a mystery. In reality nobody knows how you should live and everyone lives however they can. Toño lives with a man, Eva searches, Iván Restrepo is a bigamist, Muslims can have four wives. That would be fine as long as the women could have four husbands as well. Me, for my part, I found Alberto, and since I found him I no longer know how to live any other way.