Alberto D. Hetman
04-27-2009, 12:25 PM
"In the house of his mother, after having slaughtered a chicken for dinner, Jesus did not know yet that years later Pontius Pilate would do the same he had done: he would wash his hands in a clay vessel."
In 1994, there was a lynching in a small town in Andalusia, if so hardly a handful of houses could be called, a hundred at most, godforsaken. It is said that the local authorities themselves allowed it but who knows, in turn, victims of their own superstition and ignorance, an almost religious fear for what they did not understand. The woman, an old lady of about seventy years, was hanged in an improvised way, leaving her rigid body, hanging stiff from a branch of a sterile walnut tree, for a few days.
Only when the body started to get rotten, mainly after being incessantly pecked for whole days and nights by a multitude of crows, and then by invisible creatures that devoured the body leaving practically a skeleton moving to and fro at the mercy of the winds, the oldest regretting their actions (as it always happens) began to ask God, the Blessed Virgin and the saints. It was as if the curse of that old madwoman, as some called her, still reverberated in the ears, and it was useless to cover them with the hands, because it could still be heard loudly inside the head: "I curse you, I curse the land that sees me die, I curse your seed, I curse your pregnant women, I curse your children that will never see the light of the day". And these curses would not have been but merely words of an old hanged woman, if that baby had not died at birth, some four months later, almost by the end of the year. Some said it was born alive but died after a few hours; others, who know more, repeat again and again and only to those who listen that the baby was stillborn. God has his reasons, some believe; God does not exist, others think.
Immediately in the following year, three other children were stillborn. Two twins that even their own mother said that they were already dead by the eight month of pregnancy. And the first-born of a family that died right after his first cry at birth. The head had turned blue, the skull seemed to have grown excessively, increasing to nearly twice its size at birth, and its eyes turned red as if they were the only testimony of a massive stroke, which some doctors who have examined the case long after and thoroughly, say that it must have been the work of the devil. With this fourth death, along with the other three from the end of the last year, people just repeated aloud what was on everyone's lips.
Two unheard-of events helped spread these foolish ideas since before the lynching of the old woman it had been a respectable small town throughout the south of Andalusia. It was as if God had suddenly turned the back on those few. It was said that even the sun seemed to have abated a little but it is known to be impossible. The cheeses produced there were even sold in the capital, which overnight they also stopped to be sold as if the whole of Spain suspected of an imminent misfortune.
The first event, at first sight insignificant, and I would not mention it but witnesses abounded, was the rocking chair of the old woman that no one had thought to steal yet from the veranda of her house. The rocking chair, I would say hand-built by the Mennonites who live in the north, moved back and forth freely as if someone was sitting on it balancing the body a little forward. On very hot nights, when the wind is so weak that one already believes to live in hell; in stormy nights, when it might have been easy to explain that this rocking chair was moving by itself; or in so sepulchral nights like that in which one of the oldest died rammed by a wild boar; the chair kept rocking with that creaking sound of the wood that was said was heard even a block from the house of the old woman. If the lights of the house turned on and off intermittently, we should believe those that on having spoken, it is seen that they lie.
The second event, more irrational, as incomprehensible as so many other supernatural events that seem invented "a posteriori", occurred suddenly after the death of the first baby. That night just the sun gone in the horizon, and being the only light that dim glow that follows the twilight, a crying baby could be heard coming from the witch’s house. There was no newborn with the exception of a small boy of almost four years. It was a crying that could be perceived in the afternoon like a distant sound, and at night as if it someone cried next to you. It was a hungry baby’s crying. Each death added a crying. After the fourth death, the crying seemed to pour out of the same old house. Some heard the babies crying persistently without be calmed throughout the day, or within their own homes where the crying seemed to drive them mad. Shortly after several days of successive failures, even the most skeptical men desisted to find a real origin to the event and attributed it foolishly to the curse of a hanged crone.
There were three other incidents that defy sanity, the three of them were fatal. It was only the latest attempt to prove that the curse of the old woman was mere words, and that nowadays words do not kill. Finally, when the baby of the most incredulous man (who mocked at everything like a nihilist) died at birth, many left the village within a week, leaving behind their homes, their lands, their other mortal possessions on earth. No one ever returned either to sell or buy those houses.
The last three were victims of their own foolishness. The first of them appeared beheaded one morning at the crack of dawn. The fate of the second one was a mystery, since he was simply swallowed by the ground under his feet. Perhaps he had died in an accident but we will never know. The third one shot himself in the head. In his suicide letter he said that he no longer bear the crying of babies, or the old madwoman’s chair rocking in the afternoon. Some say that he hanged himself by the marks on the neck, but a bullet hole could be seen even after several days when his body was found by a stranger of Andalusia.
[...]
I pondered on what the fellow told us, but I could not believe him a word. A lynching? A town with a handful of houses in which four children are born all of a sudden? No one ever returned to sell his home? No one could believe it.
Who told us the story lied because while the town we had left behind scant two hours ago seemed abandoned, the old lady who was rocking on that chair was real. She even caressed my wife’s belly of almost 9 months, and asked if it was going to be a boy or a girl.
In that short time between the end of the story and my rational digressions, my wife cried, saying, "my son has died, my son has died." Touching her belly, she knelt down in front of me. Then, perhaps by a rapture of madness, she sank her long nails in her eyes. Tears bathed in blood fell on the cheeks, then it started to gush blood from her open mouth, her ears, but as thin as water. She shouted again and again: "Aaaah! My child is dead". What madness was this? What was happening?
While I took her between my arms and wept with her, it suddenly came to my mind this Andalusian lullaby that mothers sometimes sing to their children,
MI NIÑO SE VA A DORMIR,
SU PAPÁ LO QUIERE MUCHO,
Y LE TIENE QUE TRAER
DE LA FERIA UN CUCURUCHO.
And I hugged her harder not knowing what to say or what to do.
In 1994, there was a lynching in a small town in Andalusia, if so hardly a handful of houses could be called, a hundred at most, godforsaken. It is said that the local authorities themselves allowed it but who knows, in turn, victims of their own superstition and ignorance, an almost religious fear for what they did not understand. The woman, an old lady of about seventy years, was hanged in an improvised way, leaving her rigid body, hanging stiff from a branch of a sterile walnut tree, for a few days.
Only when the body started to get rotten, mainly after being incessantly pecked for whole days and nights by a multitude of crows, and then by invisible creatures that devoured the body leaving practically a skeleton moving to and fro at the mercy of the winds, the oldest regretting their actions (as it always happens) began to ask God, the Blessed Virgin and the saints. It was as if the curse of that old madwoman, as some called her, still reverberated in the ears, and it was useless to cover them with the hands, because it could still be heard loudly inside the head: "I curse you, I curse the land that sees me die, I curse your seed, I curse your pregnant women, I curse your children that will never see the light of the day". And these curses would not have been but merely words of an old hanged woman, if that baby had not died at birth, some four months later, almost by the end of the year. Some said it was born alive but died after a few hours; others, who know more, repeat again and again and only to those who listen that the baby was stillborn. God has his reasons, some believe; God does not exist, others think.
Immediately in the following year, three other children were stillborn. Two twins that even their own mother said that they were already dead by the eight month of pregnancy. And the first-born of a family that died right after his first cry at birth. The head had turned blue, the skull seemed to have grown excessively, increasing to nearly twice its size at birth, and its eyes turned red as if they were the only testimony of a massive stroke, which some doctors who have examined the case long after and thoroughly, say that it must have been the work of the devil. With this fourth death, along with the other three from the end of the last year, people just repeated aloud what was on everyone's lips.
Two unheard-of events helped spread these foolish ideas since before the lynching of the old woman it had been a respectable small town throughout the south of Andalusia. It was as if God had suddenly turned the back on those few. It was said that even the sun seemed to have abated a little but it is known to be impossible. The cheeses produced there were even sold in the capital, which overnight they also stopped to be sold as if the whole of Spain suspected of an imminent misfortune.
The first event, at first sight insignificant, and I would not mention it but witnesses abounded, was the rocking chair of the old woman that no one had thought to steal yet from the veranda of her house. The rocking chair, I would say hand-built by the Mennonites who live in the north, moved back and forth freely as if someone was sitting on it balancing the body a little forward. On very hot nights, when the wind is so weak that one already believes to live in hell; in stormy nights, when it might have been easy to explain that this rocking chair was moving by itself; or in so sepulchral nights like that in which one of the oldest died rammed by a wild boar; the chair kept rocking with that creaking sound of the wood that was said was heard even a block from the house of the old woman. If the lights of the house turned on and off intermittently, we should believe those that on having spoken, it is seen that they lie.
The second event, more irrational, as incomprehensible as so many other supernatural events that seem invented "a posteriori", occurred suddenly after the death of the first baby. That night just the sun gone in the horizon, and being the only light that dim glow that follows the twilight, a crying baby could be heard coming from the witch’s house. There was no newborn with the exception of a small boy of almost four years. It was a crying that could be perceived in the afternoon like a distant sound, and at night as if it someone cried next to you. It was a hungry baby’s crying. Each death added a crying. After the fourth death, the crying seemed to pour out of the same old house. Some heard the babies crying persistently without be calmed throughout the day, or within their own homes where the crying seemed to drive them mad. Shortly after several days of successive failures, even the most skeptical men desisted to find a real origin to the event and attributed it foolishly to the curse of a hanged crone.
There were three other incidents that defy sanity, the three of them were fatal. It was only the latest attempt to prove that the curse of the old woman was mere words, and that nowadays words do not kill. Finally, when the baby of the most incredulous man (who mocked at everything like a nihilist) died at birth, many left the village within a week, leaving behind their homes, their lands, their other mortal possessions on earth. No one ever returned either to sell or buy those houses.
The last three were victims of their own foolishness. The first of them appeared beheaded one morning at the crack of dawn. The fate of the second one was a mystery, since he was simply swallowed by the ground under his feet. Perhaps he had died in an accident but we will never know. The third one shot himself in the head. In his suicide letter he said that he no longer bear the crying of babies, or the old madwoman’s chair rocking in the afternoon. Some say that he hanged himself by the marks on the neck, but a bullet hole could be seen even after several days when his body was found by a stranger of Andalusia.
[...]
I pondered on what the fellow told us, but I could not believe him a word. A lynching? A town with a handful of houses in which four children are born all of a sudden? No one ever returned to sell his home? No one could believe it.
Who told us the story lied because while the town we had left behind scant two hours ago seemed abandoned, the old lady who was rocking on that chair was real. She even caressed my wife’s belly of almost 9 months, and asked if it was going to be a boy or a girl.
In that short time between the end of the story and my rational digressions, my wife cried, saying, "my son has died, my son has died." Touching her belly, she knelt down in front of me. Then, perhaps by a rapture of madness, she sank her long nails in her eyes. Tears bathed in blood fell on the cheeks, then it started to gush blood from her open mouth, her ears, but as thin as water. She shouted again and again: "Aaaah! My child is dead". What madness was this? What was happening?
While I took her between my arms and wept with her, it suddenly came to my mind this Andalusian lullaby that mothers sometimes sing to their children,
MI NIÑO SE VA A DORMIR,
SU PAPÁ LO QUIERE MUCHO,
Y LE TIENE QUE TRAER
DE LA FERIA UN CUCURUCHO.
And I hugged her harder not knowing what to say or what to do.