LOCOS RELATIOS

AUNT ANTONA

Aunty Antona was known as La Cubana. She had been a whore in her native land: Cuba.
In one occasion she gave me a kick on the arse, which help me to open up my curiosity about her. We, children of those times and places, were use to those ways of teaching manners; and we knew that, when someone wanted to put something into our heads, they would kick us in the arse. So I didn't kept bad fillings about my aunty for that kick. On the contrary, thanks to that tip, it born on my mind an interest for the life of such extravagant relation; what comes to prove that the kick did the work.
She always wore trousers, swear and smoke like a Carter and drunk like a tailor. And, at that time, only men would swear, worn trousers, smoked and drink. So, it took me that kick on the backside to find out that she was a woman and not a man. Antona is a feminine name, and Anton is a masculine one, as it happens that everything is feminine or masculine in the Spanish language, even objects. So, one day I call the woman by the masculine name, and she felt very much offended and remind me with her foot that she was a woman. But, when I learned to bark, she was friendly to me, and she treat me, now and then, to a sweet, like she did with her dog. We became good friends, in the end. Despite that I never understood her behaviour. Why she wore trousers, smoked and drunk like a man? Was she mad or what? Well, all my relations, of which I had plenty, were a race apart from the rest: a tribe o maniacs, all locos, so she, even without carrying our blood, had to be a bit infected from her husband, my uncle. That could be the reason for her extravagancies.
Aunty Antona had, what may be say, a tar of the brush, for which reason she was heavy on the back side and with generous Bristol’s. As she was all the time wearing trousers, showing the assets of those exotic lands, something that men of those villages were no used to contemplate, they were running behind her like grey hounds after the hares. She enjoyed more that than to fuck; and the dirty talking was spread around, as manure on the fields, saying that she was keen to make favours. In one occasion I heard the woman having a round with another woman. The other said to my aunty:
"You are no more than a whore. You slept with all the men in the village."
"And you could have don the same," my aunty told her, thinking, perhaps, that the woman was talking out of envy.
What proves that, moral matters have their angle, too. When Pepe, from the house of Casimiro, was going to marry my aunty, his mother told him the same thing that the woman slept with all the men in the village.
"In this village there are not many men, mother" her son responded.
It transpires that my family must have been ashamed of the woman, because they never told me that she was my aunty, or anything about her life, till I found out by myself. She did call me nephew some times, but I thought that she was pulling my leg. I was very young, though, and that could be the reason why I was not told. I found out that she was my aunty when she was going to marry Pepe, the son of Casimiro, for all the stories that were circulating in the village about such an ill and foolish marriage. I found out that, forty years back, a young man, call Antonio, the younger brother of my grand father, on my mother's side, immigrated to Cuba. Short after, he met this beautiful girl and they marry, both very young. My uncle was twenty and she was sixteen. She show me the photos of their wedding, for which I noticed that my uncle looked handsome, thou a bit shorter than the girl, because she was a big woman. In the photos she looked beautiful, really pretty.
"Boy" she said to me, as she pointed with the finger to my uncle in the photo, "he was a small man, but I never met one the same. I tell you the truth, boy: all the pricks I tried, put in a string, like sausages, would go from here to Cuba; but I never found a man like your uncle. He was like a rabbit with the power of a donkey.
She still talked as if she was in love with my uncle, after so many years. The reason for that love to last may be because the matrimony was a short live one. At that time in Cuba the American Mafia was in charge, and they kept tending accidents to the Hispanic, in order not to pay wages. My uncle was working in the building of a power station, when a high power cable fell on a paddle and cooked a dozen of Spanish, my poor uncle among them. There was not insurance, of course, otherwise the cable wouldn't fell, so the young spouse, of my uncle, was left a widower without money.
"Nephew" she said to me, "I went through a hard life for a while, then I said: If it is hard, let us charge for it".
She laughed, that horse like laughter of hers. But I didn't grasp what she was laughing about because at that age I could not understand her double-talking. I knew nothing about prostitution. What she meant was that she decide to take some money from the Americans; and, with her strong body, good looks and intelligence, she made a pile. On the autumn of her life, but still strong and rich, she decide to pay a visit to the land of that man who she fell in love with, when she was a teenage. She felt in love with the village, too, and decided to stay for good. She ordered a house to be built, a large one, with an orchard and plenty fruit trees, and it turned to be the best of the village. Then she bought a dog, because of men she had enough. But things didn't stop there. She thought of a peaceful life on her retirement; but, as she saw that she still could pull in the men, she opened a tavern in her nice hose, and she made more many there than the priest in his church. That business, nevertheless, brought with it several problems. People were envious of her success and her good living, specially the women. They were right in feeling so, somehow, because their men couldn't wait the moment to go to her tavern and they were neglecting the fields, their hacienda and their wives. My aunty enjoyed that hustle for a while, having rounds and all sorts of arguments with the women; but she was not getting any younger, and her stamina started to let her down. Then she thought that she didn't need all that hustle; and, to calm down the sharp tongues, decided to close the tavern, to find a man, get marry and live a normal life the rest of her days. But she found out that, one thing is a leg over, and another is to find a man to live with. Because she was not young anymore, and even when she was well off, men in those villages were scare of women with trousers. I mention, already, how superstitious people were in those days and in those villages: women that whistle, hens that sing as the cockerel, and so on, were no well come anywhere. How could, then, any man put up with a woman who worn trousers? But there was a saying, too, that always will be a shovel of manure for a flowerpot. And there was Pepe, one of the three sons of Senor Casimiro. Uncle Casimiro was the husband of aunty Matilde, sister of my grand father on my father's side.

THE CASIMIROS


Casimiro, was a nickname, meaning: I almost see, or look. That came from the spot they all have in one eye because, for that peculiar eye, when they looked on the other side, it was when they were keeping an eye on you. They called it a cloud that came from a curse that a neighbour put on that family many years back. If it was a cloud, it was not for their high, because they all were short very strong, though. The older one was a dwarf, really, and he married a woman who was the biggest in the village, the fattest and the ugliest of the village’s lot. He could easily be hide between her legs. She was as thick as she was fat and tall, too. After the first night, a woman neighbour was pulling her leg, about the honeymoon.
"How you manage? Could you handle that man?" the woman asked her with a laugh.
"It was all well, while we mess about. But then he fell to sleep, and didn’t he snore...! And didn't he have bad breath! I had to put on the lamp, because he wouldn't wake up. And there he was, no snaring was it. He was with his arse on the pillow, and there I was eating his farts."
Pepe was the middle one. He was called Long Breeches, because his legs were very short and his trousers were dragging behind him all the time. But the word was spread that he was well arm for his job; and may be that was what caught the eye of my aunty, to see if that was the man who could match my uncle.
Those brothers didn't miss a date where there was music and dancing, but they never dance; their bodies were no made for that. Their enjoyment was to spoil everything, having fights, chasing other youths with stakes. They were terror, and the other youths would prefer to avoid them. But at home they had to go straight. The old Casimiro, their father, was a man of few words, but he could manage a stake as the next man. He only said things once, and what he said was soon done, or else. Here is an anecdote I have to tell, to comprehend the respect those fellows had for their father:
The youngest of the three sons was the tallest, very strong, and reasonably good looking, if he was compared with the other two brothers. Even the cloud in the eye was less visible than it was in the other brother’s eye. Well, the story is that Senor Casimiro had a horse, whose beast limped from all four legs, or so people used to say. Certainly the animal seemed to do so, because the music of its galloping, was different to that from any other horse. One evening, at dusk, old Casimiro heard the unmistakable trotting of his horse, and commented with his wife:
"There comes the boy with the horse, early for once; then I am going to town for cigarettes."
On saying so, he fixed a couple of rusty spurs to his old shoes and, with a pickaxe, pulled out a big stone from the wall, where he hide the money. Then got his heavy baton of oak wood, made more heavy with a piece of metal on the bottom end, and walked to the corral, where he presumed that the boy with the horse would be waiting for him. But his son, who could not guess that his father was without cigarettes, let the horse lose on the orchard to have something to eat, and he walked home carrying the saddle on his back. At the front door, he bent to tide up a shoe. Old Casimiro, who was short sighted, for his cloud in the eye, jumped on the back of his son, thinking that he was the horse. His son jumped sky high, no knowing what had fell on his back. The father almost fell to the ground, but, instinctively, as a good rider would do, he tightened in his legs and stacked the spurs in his son's belly; at the same time he hit him on the head with the button, swearing at him.
"Aha! You wanted to play, bustard. Run for the city my son!!!"
He again hit his son on the head with the button, and stacked once more the spurs on his belly. The son did run down the road like a grey hound, with the father on his back. On the road there were children playing and, when they sow one man currying another, they roll on the ground with laughter. It was then when old Casimiro realized that, what he had between the legs, was his son and not a horse. But, if the children were no there playing, the son would carry his father to town, because he was doing what his father told him to do.


THE WEDDING


My aunty Antona and Pepe did marry, at last, but not before given a lot to talk about, to the villagers. The opinions were divided: half the villagers said poor Pepe, and the other half said poor Antona. Anyway, the day of the wedding, my aunty invited the whole village and even people of farther a field. She through such a party that there have not being seen one alike since the times of Rome. I was invited, too, the first time that a spare prick went to a wedding. The fiesta started early, with a barbecue in the garden and a band playing in the afternoon. There was ice with the drinks, a thing people never experience before, except in winter in their shoes. Champagne, which they never tasted before, and which they drunk like water, because they thought it was fizz water. And by ten o'clock, when night closed in, everybody was laying about the orchard, like a battlefield full of dead bodies; because the peasants were not use to such drink, as champagne and so rich food. One could hear people throwing out all over the place like sick dogs. It was about midnight, when Pepe and his bride retired to their nuptial quarters. By then, boys from the village were, the little devils, climbing to all the trees around the windows, to see or heard what Pepe was going to do with that woman. Pepe had taken a stake to bed, one of those stakes used to hold hay on the carts, made of hard would, round and pointed, like the ones use to kill vampire. My aunty, with respect to sex, she knew every trick of the book, and hence, all the fancy that men could have, but she could not see the meaning of that stake. She caressed it, turning it in and over, feeling the shape and the patina that the hay polished on the wood by the years of use.
"Pepe, my little man, what is this for? God forbidding, take it away, that it frights me" and she laughed, a dirty laugh as remembering God knows what.
"I will tell you what it is for, you will see", Pepe said shaking his head and smiling, a crafty false smile.
After a long section of laughing and grumble, they fell to sleep like angels. In the mourning there was the usual disturbance in the village: cocks singing, pigs grumbled, dogs barking, donkeys neighing and people shouting; but Pepe didn't care less about the whole world and went on sleeping. For him, those times of getting up a dawn and going to the woods, the meadows or the fields, to work like a donkey, those times were over for him; that was why he had married that woman for. But my aunty awaked with all that activity, and looked from the window she saw no bodies lying about in the orchard. They were in the fields, and seemed half alive, carrying badly their hang over, but working already. Then she called Pepe.
"Pepe, my little man, look at the time."
As he was disturbed, Pepe dreamt that it was his father calling him to go to work. Pepe new, from a log experience, the ways his father employed to awake his sons. When they didn't awaked at the first shout, he would pick up, from his foot, one of those heavy shoes, with wooden soles and reinforced wit steel tacks, and hit with it any sleeping soul in the head with all his might. For that reason, Pepe jumped from his bed holding his head with both hands, shaking with panic, thinking that the call was from his old man. My aunty laughed at her new husband's behaviour, on seeing him frighten as a child. But Pepe didn't think of that as amusing.
"What you waked me like that for?" he asked in bad temper.
"My little Pepe, look the time. What people would think?"
She laughed on saying so, because she didn't care less what the whole world could say. Pepe smile, a short smile that went well with his legs, and asked to his wife:
"Can I ware your trousers?"
My aunty looked at him for a moment. Through her head crossed the memory of men she met in all those years as a prostitute. Men who didn't know if they were coming or going: some brutes, some educated; and men who like to ware women's clothes and make a fool of themselves. But she didn't expect something like that from a peasant, who never had left the village, to have the fancy of putting on her trousers. She a laughed and said:
"Yes, do that, if it makes you happy."
Pepe put on her trousers and, as his legs were short, and his bottom small, compare with his wife, he disappeared inside the trousers as if he walked into a tent, At that sight my aunty started to laugh, and she laughed so much that she pi all over the sheets. Pepe looked up from inside the trousers, at his brand new wife, and he didn't seemed amused at all of so much laughing. With calm, but with authoritative voice, as if he was imitating his father, said to his wife:
"Fucking stop laughing and get your arse out o that bloody bed; go down to the kitchen and prepare some breakfast, that I am starved."
And Pepe left my aunty mouth open, lost for words. In the mean time he enumerated to her his menu: six fried eggs, two pounds of bacon, and one of those round five pounded Spanish loafs of bread; a litre of coffee with a couple of pounds of sugar stirred with it. While he enumerated that simple menu, my aunty did recover from her stupefaction, and she, who was used to manipulate men of all sorts, could no believe what she just heard from that brut. She reacted with that inferiority complex that can infuriate a whore when they are treat like dirt, and said to her new husband.
"If you want breakfast, go and do your fucking bloody breakfast, for you and your fucking m..."
She was going to said mother, but she never finished the phrase, because Pepe lowed the stake, he had taken to bed, on her head, with all the might of his strong arm. My aunty had just time to save her life covering her head with her arms; but the arm that stopped the blow, shattered as a dried cane. She left out a scream as a vampire with a stake going through his chest. Pepe watched impassive while she was writhing like a snake, there on her on pi.
"You remember this,” said Pepe to her, after a while, "you say that I could ware the trousers, and from now on I will ware the trousers".
My aunty learned, in that way, what that stake was for. The doctor came to put her arm in one piece again, an on passing the bill, Pepe was paying him double the amount, and the doctor, not use to be tipped, said to him:
"What is this, a tip?"
"No, it is not a tip. I am pay you for when I break her the other arm."
"Wouldn't be necessary, love,” she said from her bed.
And it was not. Pepe wore the trousers and she the skirts; she stopped to show her arse to the men, to smoke cigars and to argue with the women neighbour. Pepe had breakfast as he fancy every mourning; and lunches and dinners, and wine; and he live like a lord. But, when Pepe was a child, and during his youth, in his house the wolves were all the time by the door, and when hanger finds the way into the stomach, it is like malaria, is all the time latent. Later, good living can not overtake the times of misery: one can eat a horse every day, but there always will be left, in the stomach, or the mind, that sensation that one is still not full. Pepe suffered from that disease and he ate like a dozen of pigs, and drunk like there was not another day to come, till he was round like a ball. As it happen with a holiday, that the best of it is to see the other dogs working, to eat is not good if the others eat as well; but, as in the village most of the people didn't, Pepe would go around the village, belching like a pig and telling others about his treats, to make people envious.


A REMEDY FOR COOLS


One day, my grand father and I, pass by the house. Pepe was there and said to my grand:
"So, don't you stop for an smoke, uncle?”
"No, I don't feel like smoking today."
"How it comes?" Pepe asked, because he knew that my grand father would not miss an occasion to have a smoke.
"I have a cold, and I can't have ride of it", said my grand.
"Oh, come in, come in. I will show you how to get rid of colds."
We pass to the kitchen. My aunty was no there. I climbed to the fireplace, which it was a large granite stone of about a foot and a half high, to avoided the dog to leek, my bare legs. The dog was very old by then, fat as a ball, without teeth, but still interested in legs, the silly bugger. Pepe, my new uncle, got hold of an earth ware pot, where he empties a bottle of red wine. Then stirred into it what could be a pound of sugar, I didn't understand much about mixers at that age. He put the contents to warm up by the fire. In the mean time he beat a dozen of eggs in a bowl and add half bottle of another liquid that I been told it was sherry. When the wine was hot, he pored it into the bowl with the other stuff. He must have done that before, because the bowl turned full to the rims, but without overflowing a drop. It did smell nice, I must admit, and my mouth watered. I leaked my lips and thought: Perhaps, after he and grand have all that, they would aloud me to leek the bowl. Pepe hold up the bowl to his mouth, with his two hands and, lifting his head, he had a deep breath, exhaled again and said to my grand:
"Salud, Manecho" and he empty the bowl in one go.
The liquid made a noise as it dropped in his stomach, like it was dropping to the floor. I was on the tip of my tows trying to look into his mouth to see where that drink was going, or where that noise was coming from. He lower the bowl, recover his breath, and a belch rushed out of his mouth with the power of a shotgun; it hit me on the face, and, as it caught me out of valance on the tip of my tows, I fell with my arse on the stone. That so amused Pepe that he laughed and cougher a the same time, and half of the cocktail came out on the ages of his mouth and got lost down his shirt.
"Uncle Manecho" he said " have this every night, before going to bed, and I assure you that in a week’s time your cold would be gone."
"Bastard" I thought." He lost most of it coughing and didn't gave me even the bowl to leek."
As he was so fat and red face, he thought that he was strong and healthy, and then he would say, in the presence of his wife:
"Antona is getting old. She may died soon and then I will marry a young girl."
"Yes, by this one" she would answer with a laugh as she pointed one finger to the inside of her legs.


THE SPECIAL DIET

It was not before long that Pepe felt something wrong with his breath. He went to see the doctor, and when the doctor lay eyes on him, and saw such a fat pig, didn't need to exam him to know from which leg hi was limping. The doctor didn't want to alarm him, and told him that it was not a mater to be concern about. But then the doctor call my aunty and told her the problem:
"What are you doing feeding that man like that. He already has the heart covered with fat. I am going to put him on a strict diet. Salads with only a touch of olive oil, little salt and lemon instead of vinegar, pouched white fish and fruit. But no wine, stews, pork, eggs, because otherwise he will burst."
Why the doctor had to tell that to my aunty? That was the best news she had heard since she had left Cuba. She returned home and, the first thing she did, was to cook a Spanish stew, which are similar to the Irish stew, with added fat, chorizos and loads of pork. That was Pepe's favourite dish and he ate half a pot that day and half the next day. Then she started with paellas, with plenty oil, tortillas with dozens of eggs; coffee with cream and warm wine with sugar and butter. A month latter Pepe exploded like a chestnut on the fire. The day of the wake, she put on the trousers and smoked a cigar that she kept in a bottle since the day they marry. And when they were taking Pepe away, she waved her hand to the coughing and said:
"Good bye, Pepe. Go to stick your fucking mother there in hell."
In that way she finishing the phrase she didn’t finished that first day of their marriage, when Pepe hit her with the stake. She was free again, at last. But, by then, she was old and the dog was gone; men were not after her any more, and it was not before long that she felt lonely. Then she would give sweets to the children, and would fill the house with young people to have company with whom to talk. She would tell, again and again, her avengers, till the young people, too, got tire of her stories and stopped to go there.


DINNER AND BREAKFAST


Alone and old, she too, found her entertainment on food, as if Pepe was cursing her from the grave. She would eat at any time, at all hours, as if her stomach had lost the notion of time; and she would eat more sweets than her dog ever did. One evening, just after sunset, I pass by her house and saw her sat at the front door on a low stool, resting a tray on her lap. On the tray there was enough to feed a small family: half loaf of bread, a pilled of pork, cabbage, carrots, beans and potatoes. On the floor was a bottle of wine.
"Aunty Antona, having dinner already?" I said.
“Yes because I am not well and want to go to be early.”
“What is wrong w with you, then?"
"I don't know, but my appetite seems to be gone."
At my age, and because I was thick like the rest, I could not analyse contradictions, and went away raking my brains thinking: If she lost the appetite, how the devil can she eat? I came back with a load of hay, like a donkey, when it just started to turn dark; and there was at the front door my aunty, sat on the same stool eating. But she had change the menu. She had, by her side, a pot of coffee and plenty toasts, a thing that only she would have in the village, because the other people thought of toast as a way of spoiling bread. On the plate she had bacon, black pudding, and lots of eggs.
“Aunty, didn't you said that you lost your appetite?”
“Yes, bat, as I went to bed so early, this morning I got up very hungry."
I almost went mad. There were no watches at the time, only my uncle Farruco, a brother of my grand mother, on my father's side, had one that his son sent to him from Cuba...
Talking of this watch, and before I go away, this little story deserves to be told.
UNCLE FARRUCO'S WATCH

I used to love my uncle Farroco, really. He raised several children, the poor chap, working like a slave, then they all immigrated to Cuba and he never saw them again. His wife died young and he lived alone for donkey’s years. Nevertheless he seemed to be always happy. His hobby was to analyse anything unusual. How that plant of corn is growing taller than the others and that patch of wheat is shorter than the rest? He was like a child, really, even when at the time that I talked about I could not understand that; but because of his behaviour he was accessible to the youngsters as if he was one of us. All that tranquillity of his mind finished when one of his sons sent him a watch from Cuba. The watch had Roman numerals that he could not understand; then, when we children wanted to see that marvel, we asked him for the time, just to see the watch, because time was of no importance to us. Uncle Farruco would pull a chain, and up from his deep pocket would come that shinning little fried pan. He would push a button and a lead popped up. He looked at the needles and asked us:
"How much it is two sticks crossed and one in front of those."
He called sticks, the Roman numerals. We would start to computerize that equation with our fingers and, after some contradictions; we would tell uncle Farruco that it was eleven.
"Uhoo, uhoo! And you learn that at school, didn't you?"
"Yeas, uncle Farruco, we did."
"And I never went to school. So, the small needle is on that ...and. The ... large one is ...in the ... How much you say it is a couple of sticks crossed and two walking at the front?"
"It is twelve, uncle Farrago,” we said at last.
"And you learned all that at school, and I never went to school. Then it is twelve o'clock. But, it doesn't seem right to me. My shadow is too long to be twelve already" he would say looking at the sun.
"It is not twelve, uncle Farruco; when the small hand is over two crossed stick and one at the right, and the larger one is over two crossed stick and two at the front, It is eleven." we correct him.
"I thought so, I thought so,” he murmured.
Really it was not eleven any more. For the time all this happened it would be half past eleven.
One day, all the children in the village -and we were a good crowd- hatched a plan to drive mad uncle Farruco. We hide among the corn along the footpath in twos, a fifty yards apart, and waited for uncle Farruco. He was coming home for lunch, and the first two boys came from their hide and asked for the time to uncle Farruco. The same story of the sticks started, the boys arguing about the translation of the sticks to numbers and, an hour later, and fifty yards away, another couple of boys crossed him. The same story went on. It was almost dusk when, at last, uncle Farruco cracked. He held the watch by the chain and crushed it to a stone. Then he shouted: "This happened because I never went to school." And he never was happy again:
Going back to my aunty:
As there were no watches to know the time, nor sunshine to calculated it by the shade -and I was walking with the faggot of hay pressing my brain, I could not think straight. Then I made those equations: If my Aunty was having dinner when I pass by, and she is having breakfast now, it took me all night to cut a miserable fagot of grass. How is that possible? I was scare to arrive home, because we children of those villages, like the companies which do no finish their contract in time are fine, so were we, hit which a stick on the head. Mother said:
"Well, boy, for once you soon came back."
For what I realized that my Aunty went to be, closed an eye, open it again and, thinking that tomorrow had come, got up out of bed and had breakfast, without her stomach be aware that it had a pile of food a minute earlier.


THE SWEET LAXATIVE


At that stage a family from Cuba, who claimed to be related to my Aunty, came to Spain and settled in town. There were three young pretty girls and all call my Aunty Godmother. There was not chance that they were born before the years my Aunty came to live in the village, but it well may be she christening the girls by post. They stay with my Aunty some times, and always would brink present for her, especially sweets. She, like a child, loved those sweets; and it was her greed for sweets what sent her to the grave. It was discovered, too late, that she would eat out of boredom, but she had lost the sense of taste and she only could enjoy food with the eyes and not with her tongue. She complained, after those feasts of hers, about constipation, and the girls, among the presents, used to brink her all sorts of laxatives. In one occasion the girl's mother brought a litre bottle of a laxative, cod liver oil I think they said it was. But the bottle, or jag had been a container of honey, and had imprinted the word honey on the glass. When my Aunty was left on her own, she read honey on the bottle, and honey it was for her. She cut a big loaf of bread on strips, like chips, and started with the bottle, and she had the lot in one go.
Short after such feast some body notified the Cuban family of my aunt’s dead and all come to the wake in a rush. The last to arrive was the girl's mother. When she was told what caused my aunt’s dead, and realizing it was her fault, she went to the loo to cry. As she went in she came out as a shot.
"She is not dead. She is there seat on the loo" she shouted, very excited.
"She is dead, but she better stay there till she finishes" the woman was told.
They could not bury her for two days, and during that time they kept her, seat down in the loo, and some one had to pull the chain every ten minutes. Rest in peas, dear Aunty.



THE MILLERS


I remember mother telling the news to one of my aunties, the Millers, that La Cubana had die, and the Miller said, as if the word slept from her mouth:
"Good riddles." But then she made the sign of the cross and added:
"God forbidden." Those aunties, the Millers, were spinsters, very religious and, hence, for that reason they never went along well with their sister-in-law, la Cubana. One of the Millers died short before the death of La Cubana. In one occasion, just by chance I commented, with that aunty that I wanted to go to America, as soon as I would come off age, and she asked me.
"And what are you going there for? To be kill, like your poor young uncle; or to find a whoa, as he did?"
Those women were sisters of my grand mother, on my mother's side, as I already mention it. I call them the Millers because they had the mill, which was their living. I never learned their Christian names, that of those aunties, the Millers, or if I did, I cannot remember. So I call them aunties at the front and Millers on the back. I always have been scare to call people by their nickname, because some people didn't like. The Millers were, from all the aunties, the more pleasant aunties of all the lot I had; the ones who better could tell stories of the devil and ghosts. I think that, those two aunties, never ate anything else but bread, to make justice to their trade. Our oven was a large one, built of granite stone, as all the ovens in the village were, and the Millers always baked their bread together with us; so we put half the wood to heat the oven and they put the other half. Been only two women, they baked as much bread as a large family, and some times I asked them:
"Aunties, what you want so much bread for?"
"For eating it, son. And if a beggar comes to the door, you can't tell him go with God, empty hand."
I used to enjoy those days of bread baking, for the stories that there were told in such occasions, and for the bread, occurs. Nowadays we take for granted a piece of bread but, in those times, to have bread or not to have bread, was the difference between been rich or been poor. Those jobs of bread baking usually were performed in the evenings, after returning from the fields; and the whole operation was like a ritual. To follow, the well-established norms of the ritual, was the difference between good bread, and a mediocre one. There was not yeast or any synthetic substitute, in those times. The ferment was a handful of dough left from the day of baking to the next. The bread was made of corn flours mixed with barley or rye, except for some celebration, when it was made of wheat flour. The dough, of those flours, was made with hot water, kneaded in a special large wooden box, standing on four legs, and it had a lead, in order to keep the dough close and warm for the fermentation to work. Some women knew, better than others, when the dough was at its best, and that was very important for a good bread. Some people could guess, by the taste of the bread, from which mill was the flour. In my case I could differentiate, easily, the taste of our bread from the one of any other neighbour. The bread lasted from eight days to a fortnight. That was the reason to make very large loafs of about ten pounds. Those large loafs, would stay in the oven over night to be well cook trough. But, before the larger loafs were sent to the oven, a very thin ones, almost like tortillas, would be baked, and those were cooked in about twenty minutes. We children would wait for those loafs with longing hanger. We had that bread with home made yoghurt, and that was a feast. The older people would prefer another sort of flat leaf, to which there was added a mixture of fried bacon, tomato and onion.
There was a believe that a child would not grow anymore if walking under the handle of the shovel use to put the loafs in the oven. It seemed that all children liked that challenge and, passing under the handle we joked:
"I don't want to grow any longer."
That game would drive mad my two aunties, the Millers, because they believe in all those things.
"Devil of children!" They grumbled.
"Don't worry" would said my grand mother, "if they don't grow, they worth the same money and they need less food."
I wander if that believing was true, because we didn't grow very tall, all of us, really. But, on the other hand, the reason not to grow taller could have been the lack of bread. There was the custom of laying cabbage leaves on the shovel and the dough on top, so the bread would not get stack to the stone in the oven. To differentiate which loafs were which, ours had a bun made on top, and the Millers a trench. This Aunty, in one occasion, was absentminded as playing with the dough. My father was smoking, holding the handle of the shovel, looking with a smile to my Aunty. She shaped the dough with the palms of her hands, flatten it, pushing it up again; and then, with the edge of her hand, would cut a deep trench; undo the whole thing and started again. Suddenly I imagined that the loaf had the shape of a fat woman's arse, and aunty Miller was doing the bottom's trench as if working with clay. It was a real work of art. I don't know why I thought of that shape as an arse, but my father must have been thinking the same, because he said to her:
"Leave it, Aunty, because I never sow one so beautiful."
My Aunty awaked from her dream, she turned read, and said to father: "Your can't think of anything else, can you?"


THE DEVIL'S HORSE


I remember one very especial evening of those, for a few stories told in such an occasion. About half a dozen of young men from the village came in, just before sending the dough to the oven. It was a clear nigh on the middle of spring, so it must have been about eleven O'CLOCK, or over. The youngsters were soaked to the bon, as if they had dropped in the river.
“We saw the chimney smoking and realized you were baking, so we came in to dry our clothes," they said with shyness.
"My sons, what happened to you? It is not raining. Did you fell in the river?" One of the Millers asked to the men. The youngsters didn't want to comment. They went near the oven, and I remember to see their clothes steaming. The women made coffee for them. My aunties went on making crosses with their fingers, and talking to themselves.
"Those boys fell in the river. It is no raining. They must fell in the river."
Once the flat loafs came out of the oven, and the young chaps started to eat, they lost their shyness and told their avenge, of which, I in particular, was very impressed. One of the chaps had a girl friend in another village call the River, because it was by the river. All the other fellows accompanied him; because, in those days and villages, the boys had to go to see a girl friend in packs like wolves, because, the same as it would happen in our village, the chap would not come alive from seeing the girl, if he was not well protected by his friends. It was good business for the taverns, because while one was courting, a dozen were drinking. Those boys told that, on returning home, found out that the river was full, and over flowed the wooden bridge. They thought it was very strange, because have not been raining. May be the mill's dam broke loose, they thought. The wooden bridge was in a shallow place, and it was a sort of short cut. The youngsters were going to walk to the stone bridge, which was a good distance away. But, as there was a horse gracing in the meadow, one of the chaps had an idea. Two of them would cross the river on the horse's back, one would return with the horse to cross another one. In that way all could go through. They go hold of the horse and two mounted. As it was a large horse, there was room for one more. Another one mounted. There still was room for another one; and so on, till all the six of them were on the horse's back. The horse was in the middle of the river when it broke in two parts, dropping the whole load in the water; and the horse got together again and run neighing all over the meadow. When the young chaps finished to tell their story my aunties, the Millers, started to do the sign of crosses with their fingers and said:
"It was not a horse, it was the devil, it was the devil."
With time I thought that, the real thing was that the horse could not carry the lot through the river and it dropped flat with the weight but at that time, as my aunties did, I believed that the youngsters, really, had an encounter with the devil. To correlated the story of the young chaps, my aunties told another story of their own, about the devil; something that happened to them. One had to believe any tale told by the Millers, because of the way they would tell it. Where one left, the other started, so synchronized they were, that one would think that they had rehearsed the tale for the occasion.
The mill was a large old house in a lonely part of the valley, among tall trees. Some times I used to wander how my aunties were not afraid of living in that desolated place, on their own. Apparently they were not afraid, even of the devil. For, the devil, as they told in that occasion, would come to their house, almost every night, trying to frighten them; but they didn't took any notice of him. I learned, that night, for what my aunties told, that the devil can disguise himself as he pleases, but only can do that in the dark; if he is surprised by the light, he can't turned back to his original body, and stays in that way till dark comes again. The devil, my aunties went on telling, would come to the mill, disguised as some body who lived there long years gone, and he would cry with lamentable pains the suffering of wandering souls, making all sorts of noises and scattering flour all over the place. My aunties would not take notice of his mischievous behaviour. Only from time to time they would tell the devil:
"Go away. We know who you are."
That indifference of the women would drive the devil completely mad, and more he try to frighten them, inventing more things, and disguising himself with the most frightful bodies. The Millers, my poor aunties, tire of the devil's doings, decide to put end to those excursions, and to have piece at last. So they went to town to by a torch with batteries, which, at the time, only few electrical shops would store them, and they were very expensive. But they had to spend that money, because for the time they alighted the kerosene lamp, the devil had ample time to change to his original body and run for his life. But what didn't the devil knew was about the torch. That nigh, as soon as my aunties put off the lamp, there was the devil, crying as a child in distress. My aunties beamed the torch on his face, and the little bustard frozen in time like a mummy. The stupidity bugger (my aunties used those words in anger,) was disguised as a babe, completely naked, showing, shameless, all those devilish objects that men possessed. For, even the devil, some times can neglect those details, and that time he change as a babe, but he forgot to change his manhood as well. A shamefully spectacle, said my aunties, to see a babe with such enormous assets. The babe had scattered, all over the floor, a sack of wheat and was playing with it. The women told him:
"You pick up the grain, one by one, an put it in the sack, and we are not going to switch off the light till you pick up the last grain."
My aunties put on the kerosene lamp, alighted a fire and made coffee. The babe was crying, trying to put the corn into the sack, as have bee told, but my aunties realized then, that the babe had his hands full of holes, and every time he pick up a grain, the grain would drop through the holes of his hands. Even so, my aunties didn't fell sorry for the poor devil, and warn him:
"Don't waste your time crying, because till you pick up all the grain, we don't let you go."
It took the devil hours and more hours to collected only a few grains. My aunties decided no to go back to bead. The fire was dying and one of my aunties went out for more wood. As she opened the door, a gash of wind came rushing in and blew the lamp off. The devil took the opportunity to change to his original shape and run out, insulting my aunties with the most obscene words. But he never came back, my aunties finished saying.


MY NIGHTS WITH THE MILLER


Poor Aunty! She went bananas, if she was not so already, when the other sister died. My parents send me to stay with her at night, because they felt sorry for her, to be alone in that lonely place. To say the truth, the place was not the most pleasant one to be there alone. It was a damp place, a big and shapeless old house, built in the times when there were not ropes or levels to build a straight wall. There was starch built up all over the place during donkey’s years, and the cobwebs, with the starch, were thicker than blankets. The place smelled of rotten wood and sour flour.
Provably I saved that Aunty, on going to sleep with her, from been devoured by the rats. I remember well the first night I went to sleep with her. I was sent without dinner, as a punishment for one my deeds. I had being sent to a shop, which was about ten miles away, to buy ten cents of bloody paprika. There was plenty paprika in the local tavern, but because in the next village was cheaper, I had to go there. In those times ten cents of paprika would be about one once. What a save in ten cents! But older people had the idea that children's legs had to be kept busy. The older had a way of command the children, in those days. They would say: Here you are, a ten cents piece, go to the next village for paprika. Don’t loose the money, but if you do, never come home in you life, or you will be hang on a beam of the burn like a dead pig. Come on, run, one foot here wand another there. I kept the money so tight in my hand that, when I arrived in the shop the owner had to take the coin from my hand with a spanner. That day, on my return, I run, watching the stones in the road, but suddenly one of those stones, coming from nowhere, got in front of my feet, and there I went, with the little paprika parcel flying along the road. I lost about half of the paprika that means I was going to be hanged for it. So, in the outskirts of the village there was a derelict house, and I got hold of one of those read tiles and, over a big stone I grind it with another small stone till it could not be distinguish from paprika. But, no sooner I mixed it with the paprika, doubts started to creep in my heart, that the trick was not going to work. When I arrived home, I was told off, because the time spent in grinding the tile was not part of the time it takes to go to the village and back; and the potatoes and cabbage had being waiting for the paprika. Mother dropped the paprika in boiling oil where there were a couple of garlic cloves already fried. But, despite the smell of the garlic, I soon felt the foul smell of the paprika. When we try the potatoes, the teeth grind like eating glass.
"My God", mother shouted. "This paprika is like sand."
I denied that it was any of my doing, but I didn't get away with it, because parents in those times were worse than the Gestapo, and knew how to make you sing. So, with a headache and a sour arse, I was sent to sleep with Aunty Miller without dinner. Aunty Miller gave me a piece of bread hard as a rock, and we went to bet and I took the piece of bread with me. I had very good teeth but, even so, it took me long time to demolish the stone. In the mean time I kept complaining about how unfair I had been treat. Then, tire of listen to me, Aunty Miller said:
"Look, son, eat and don't talk. Think that there are many children in this world who go to bed without dinner, and you have a nice piece of bread. So thank God for it."
"Thank God for this bread, Aunty? My jaws are ached already. What you are talking about?”
Then Aunty told me a fable of a wolf and a lamb that, apparently, had some similarity with my situation. The story supposes to be amusing, but my sense of humour was not for stories that night, and I said to my Aunty.
"You know Aunty, stories like those, which they don’t make laugh nobody, mother knows plenty of them."
"And you know some of those stories?"
"I know them all. I have to. She tell the same ones all the time."
"Could you, then, tell me one those stories. Is so long that nobody tells me a story in bed. Since I was a girl, really, when mother knew lots of stories, too, and she would tell us in bed to make us sleep."
I never heard something alike, and I was amazing, surprised and speechless, to heard an older person to ask a child to tell a bedtime sorry. To say the truth, it was the firs time I was asked to tell a bedtime story, or any story. In that moment I appreciated the easy with which mother used to tell her stories. She would start the story anywhere, some times in the end and tell it backwards; other times in the middle and going in both ways, and the story made sense the same. And there I was being asked to tell a story and I didn't know how to start it. I went backs and fourths, but I manage to tell my Aunty one of mother's favourite stories, which was about a magpie a fox and a dog. When I finished, Aunty Miller laughed, a clean laughter like that of a child, and she said to me.
"It is not a story to laugh, son. I laugh the way you told it. Because you know what? You really know how to tell stories. God bless you. It was long time that I didn't enjoy myself so much."
Then Aunty Miller started to analyse the story from the point of view of the fox, then from the point of view of the dog, and finally as the magpie saw it, and for the first time the story made sense to me.
"You see, son, the magpie was not aware that the fox could not cut the tree with the tail, and if the dog didn't tell the magpie so, she would loose all the sons, with the hope to save some. But the magpie would not save any, because blackmailers never stop till they get the lot. You remember what happened to the magpie. Now blow the lamp and let us see if I have a good nigh sleep, because last nigh I could not close an eye in all night"
"Why you didn't close an eye, Aunty? You ere no well?"
"Because a child have being playing all night with a spinning top there on the floor."
"What child you talk about, Aunty? If you have no children. You being dreaming or what?""
That I have not children I know that very well; you are not telling me any news."
"Then whose child was that?”
"It was the devil."
"The devil, you said?"
"Yes, the devil. Who you think could be, then? He is all the time around making a fool of himself, because I no notice take of him. But last night I felt like to get up and hit him between the horns with the broom. Because I could not sleep, and felt annoyed."
"Then, if you could no sleep, you must bet stupid no to get up and hit him with the broom, eh Aunty" I said.
"Well! Look, son, after I thought: while he is here making a fool of himself, he is not somewhere else doing worst deeds."
Like in my uncle's Pascual, in Aunty Miller's, there was only one bed. So we slept together in the same bed. Aunty always had the feet cool as snow. She asked me that first night that we slept together:
"Are you feet cool, son?"
"Why?"
"Because my feet are always cool."
"Mine, as soon as I get in bed are warm", I said.
"You don't know how lucky you are, my son. I don't remember to have my feet warm", she said and, at the same time as she said that, she touched my legs with her feet, and I screamed as if some one had chopped off my leg, so cool her feet were.
The house, been in a lonely place by the river, and for the flour and the grain, was a haven for rats and mice. As soon as I put the kerosene lamp out, a tremendous noise started on the loft. Then Aunty Miller said that it was the devil, the one who was making that noise.
"Do not take any notice of him, son. Nothing annoys him more than that." "Why it annoys him not to take notice, Aunty? I asked her.
"Because his business is to frighten people, and if people do not take notice of him, his business is no good."
Aunty Miller was no afraid of anything, because she would say that the one who had a clean conscience had nothing to fear about. In one occasion, some young chaps had a bet that they were going to frighten the woman out of her knickers. One of the young chaps climbed to the roof and the others looked through the window. Aunty Miller was making an omelette and the oil was boiling in the fry pan. The chap on the roof shouted, with lamenting voice, down the enormous flu:
"I am falling down!"
"If you fall down, watch the fry pan, or you will learn to make a fool of yourself climbing to the roofs" said Aunty Miller, looking up the flu; but she didn't got frighten at all.
The story of the devil that the Miller's had told in our house, some time back, came to me, but even so, that noise seemed to me more the work of rats than that of the devil. I could no sleep, and didn’t feel like to blow the lamp, because, to say the true, I was more scare of the rats than of the devil. When I went to sleep, and may be because of the hard and acid bread was heavy in my stomach; I had nightmares, about dogs magpies and foxes. There were dogs and foxes and magpies everywhere and I could not get away from them. They were menacing me; and the animals grew bigger and bigger till I go so frighten that I wake up. And, even after I awaked, the foxes and dogs were around me. Eventually, as my head clear up, all the animals walked away of my head, except a fox that was under the bedding and would not go away. To prove myself that I was awake I stretched my hand to the table by the bed and found the matches, alighted the lamp, and then lifted the blankets. There was a rat in bed, as big as a fox, looking at me with sharp eyes and red nose. I really thought it was the devil, as Aunty Miller said. I screamed and frighten the rat that disappears as fast as lightning. Aunty Miller jumped in bet and shouted at me:
"What is all this shouting for?" She didn’t look frighten.
"Was a rat in bet, Aunty? Big as a fox."
"A rat in bed! There are no rats in this house, son. I tell you. It is the devil that, since my sister die, is back again, disguised as he pleases, to frighten me. But you don't take notice of him. Blow the lamp and go to sleep."
The rat came to bed, undoubtedly, to eat the bread crumbs, because as the bread was so dry, and I talked with Aunty as I ate it, lots of crumbs fell over the bedding. I didn't blow the lamp, because I was scare of the rat and not of the devil; and I try to convince Aunty that the rat was no devil, but she closed her eyes and didn't took much notice of what I said. After a while, she said, with a strange voice:
"Don't take notice of him."
I looked at her, and her eyes were ajar, and I could not figured if she was talking on her sleep or she was awaked. I blew the lamp and soon fell to sleep again. I was at sleep and kept feeling that someone was tapping on my shoulder. As I awaked I heard Aunty talking, with a very low voice, inside my ear.
"Son, are you sleeping?"
"What is it, Aunty?" I asked already awaked, because my sleep was not deep that night.
"Put the lamp on, that is in your side. That badly made creature today bite my foot" she said referring to the devil.
I put the lamp on, Aunty lifted the blankets and again a rat, big as a cat, jumped on the floor making a noise like a trotting horse. I didn't look where the rat went, because Aunty Miller’s feet caught my eye. She was bleeding from one tow and, as I looked closer, I noticed that her tow nails were all chewed up to the bon by the rats, and she had wounds in all the tows.
"Aunty", I shouted. "Look your feet. They are chewed by the rats."
Aunty Miller inspected her feet, and she had a puzzled look on her face, as the one who sees their won feet for the first time.
"You think they are rats the ones that did that, son?" she asked me.
"They are rats all right, Aunty. Look their teeth marks."
"Then we should have to lay a trap to catch them, eh, son?" she said.
Next day I went around the village and borrowed every trap that there was. Traps to catch mice, to catch rats, to catch rabbits and foxes and wolves and people. I fill UP the floor with so many traps that there was not a place where to lay a foot without one loosing a leg. In some of the traps I put cheese as bait, in others bacon, in others bread. And the rats, used to a diet of flour and grain only, on seeing such a variety on the menu, they thought that Christmas had come. They fell for it in a giant genocide, and the screams, as they fell in the traps was over heard in miles around. The ones that didn't fall in the traps were left so scare, on hearing the screams of the others, they disappear from the village for good. Since then, there were not more devils in aunty Miller's house and we slept in peace. One day, after some time, I saw Aunty Miller cutting her tow nails. She looked at me and said:
"Now that you scared the rats, I have to do the job myself."

The only hacienda Aunty Miller had was an old donkey and a few chickens. The donkey was used, for donkey's years, to deliver the flour to the villagers, but the animal was retired by then, because the woman didn't care about the mill any more. The villagers would go to the mill and do the milling themselves and give some grain to Aunty for the use of the mill. From that, and some eggs that she would sell, and may be some savings, she kept going. I do remember one day that she wonted to go to the market to sell a dozen of eggs, but she had only eleven eggs, and nobody would buy a dozen of eleven. Aunty Miller, like other old women in the village, would not wait for a hen to drop an egg. To know if there was one, they used to stick a finger into the hens arse to find out. One could see, on the women's behaviour, if there was an egg or not. If the hen had an egg, the woman would put the hen in the floor with care and given it a gentle tap of love on the back. But if there was not an egg, they would swore and kick the hen like a football, sending the bloody bird flying over the fences. But hens are cleverer than they look and, after a few kicks, at less they have an egg to show, they would fly to the tallest tree, or the top of the roof to avoid the kick.
That market day, Aunty Miller was waiting for the hen to lay the egg needed to make a dozen. But the hen was singing all over the place, walking slowly, and crossing one leg before the other, with the elegance of a model
"I know what she wants", said Aunty Miller. "She wants to drop it where I can not find it, I know that whore."
Aunty Miller let on my hands to take care after the crafty hen while she went upstairs to change clothes. From upstairs she shouted to me through the window, to see if the hen had given birth to the egg. As the hen was laughing of me and of Aunty, the woman said:
"Run home, son, and asked your mother if she can lend me one egg, because otherwise, when I reach the market is not going to be any body there to buy eggs."
I run home and asked mother for an egg. There were not eggs at all, but mother told me to go to the chicken run and to look there. In one corner I found an egg with more than a pound of shit on top of it, but I soon clean it with straw and run back with the egg, taking notice of the advise the elder used to give to children: to look to the feet when running, because the roads were full of stones, where one could trip. Aunty Miller had closed the door to keep the hen inside, as I was not there to keep an eye on the bird. But, after so much run, and being careful not to trip on the stones, on seeing the door closed, I could not have better idea but to knock a the door with the egg. It was the first time that my Aunty lost her temper and kicked me in the arse. One day she gave me an egg and said to me:
"Here you are, take this egg to your mother."
"But Aunty, don't you remember? I broke the egg and mother even doesn’t know about it. You keep the egg."
"You take the egg, because if your mother doesn't know, we and God know it."
Some times Aunty Miller would start a conversation with her dead sister, changing voices as if her sister was inside of her. One night she served two cups of stew. I thought one was for me, strange thing to do, because she was getting meaner by the minute. But she put the two cups over the table and said to her sister:
"Blow sister, because it is very hot."
She finished her cup, and then again she said to the sister:
"You don't want the stew, then? Oh, well! For who doesn't want I have plenty" and she have the other cup.
Despite her madness, I enjoyed those nights with Aunty Miller, even when I almost finished mad myself, with all her ideas and behaviour. Among the many manias she developed, it got into her head the idea that only priests could read. I, like most of the children in those villages, would go to school when it was raining, or in winter time, when there was not other more urgent things to do in the fields. But I could read fluently, and I was very proud of myself for that. I would take a book to Aunty Miller and read from it, to show her that I could read as good, if not better than a priest. But she would call me liar and a heretic, and there was not way I could make her see that I could read. That stupidity of Aunty Miller was driving me crazy. But, before going crazy, I changed tactics, and I drove her madder than she was, telling her stories that supposed I learned at the school. She never stopped to make the sign of the cross, and would said:
"That woman teacher is the devil, she have to be. Look what she puts into the head of this poor child."
One day, one of those very few occasions that I went to school without rain, for which reason I didn't carry with me the old umbrella, a thing that I hate to use. But on coming from school it rain cats and dogs, and I was soaked to the bone. Aunty Miller's was between the school and our house, so I stop there and she made a bomb fire for me to get dry. While I was there steaming by the fire, she say to me:
"What you learned at the school today, with that devil of woman, to worth getting wet like this and to get ill, as I know you will."
"Today the teacher said something very fanny. I was going to tell you anyway if you didn't ask."
"What! What that mad witch put in your useless head, then?"
The school was the only one for boys and girls, for young and old. The grades were according to the seats. In one side were the girls and in the other, separated by a gap, used by the teacher to come around with the stick to hit us on the head, were the boys. At the front were the clever dicks, and the oldest, ready to go to the army, and at the far back, the ones still in the cradle. After the famous religious teachers had gone, we had, for a while, a woman with whom we learned more in her short stay than with all the other teaches that pass through that school; because our school was like a cross roads where all the teachers in the world pass by. That good one didn't last either, and was the only one for whom children felt sorry to see her go. I think that don Xusticio, the priest, had something to do with her departure, because she didn't teach us religion. This was why my Aunty Miller called the woman devil and witch.
"The teacher was not talking to us. She was talking to the clever ones at the front seats, but I stretched my ears to listen. She said that we ware not made from mad, as the priest said."
"What we are made of, then."
"The teacher said that we came from monkeys."
I had not finish saying monkeys, when my Aunty was kneeling on the floor doing the sign of the cross and having a prayer; and she said:
"Forgive him, oh God, for he is only a child. From monkeys, he said!"
"Yes, Aunty, from monkeys. Monkeys came down from the trees, they started to walk and became men and women."
I was already dry from the rain, and Aunty Miller pick up a bottle of holly water from the shelf and she left me again soaked as if I had falling into the rive. We got into an argument about numbers, that could lasted millions of years and we still could be in the same cross roads. Aunty Miller talked to herself for ages, and again got on her knees to pray.
"This boy is going to finish loco, if he keeps going to that devil of school. Witches and devils out" she said sprinkling more holly water all over the walls. "Tomorrow I am going to see your father and tell him not to send you one day more to that school. That woman is a heretic, she deserves to be burn."
She went to see my parents, to tell them not to send me with that teacher ever again. After that I blamed my Aunty, when I had to work instead to go to school. Because we children of those villages, in those times were the only children in the world who love school, for it was school or work as donkeys in the fields. Aunty Miller said to my mother:
"Look here, my niece. That teacher is the devil disguised as a woman, so children would not see that she is the devil. Because if she was not the devil, she would not be there putting things in the head of poor children.”
That conversation, argument or heresy we had, Aunty Miller and myself, opened a sort of door to lots of crazy but wonderful stories that she told me, with the intention to make me see how wrong that teacher was. She tall me that all the trouble of this world started when God went to sleep. Then I asked her, why God had to sleep.
"Only God knows why, and you should not asked those questions, because that is a heresy. He went to sleep because He fancied so, and He deserved a rest like the rest of us, after all the wonderful things He created. But I must admit, that better would have being for Him and for us, that He never had a rest."
On the many nights that followed, before we slept, our conversation rotated in turn to the same subject. Aunty Miller did most of the talk, and I listened without much of a chance to say anything, because any thing I said was a heresy and she asked me to shut up. I think, or better said I thought later in my life, that the heretic was my Aunty, for she, undoubtedly, would be burn on the stake if she presented those theories of hers on the middle ages. According to her theory, the devil came to be while Got was having a rest. The devil sat in God's chair, like any cacique trying to make of Paradise another banana republic, but God got hold of him by the tail and chunk him down to hell, as He said:
"There you go, and the lot like you", and Paradise was almost left empty of angels. This is why there are so many devils around, disguised in more ways than one: witches, fairies, ogres, and the like", Aunty Miller said.
"But, Aunty! What are you talking about? Fairies are good, no devils."
"There is not a good one. Those are stories to confound the children so the poor souls don't see the truth. Fairies are another way the devils have to disguise themselves, that is all. And ogres, what they do? Going around at night lifting the roofs of lonely houses to see where there are children to eat. And ghosts are no better. And witches, what they do? I tell you now what they do. They go at night to the mills, pi on the flour, and then the people eats that bread and do crazy things."
"Then why Got don't stop all that, Aunty?"
"Their day will come, you wait an see. Let them enjoy till the judgment comes; you will see then what they have to said. You have nothing to worry about if you are a good soul, if you are strong and don't fell into temptation."
Aunty Miller, like Aunty Maria, had around the house, garlic, dry cod tails, bones and skins of snakes and lizards, amen of other herbs. But she didn't make broth with all that, like Aunty Maria. I suppose all that stuff was there to help her strength and be safe from all the pest of devils, witches and the like. Thinking of Aunty Maria, who people would call her a witch, I said to Aunty Miller.
"Aunty, you talk like that about witches, and you are one of then, or what you want all that shit for?"
"You, little bustard", she sworn for the first time, and throw to my legs the billows to blow the fire. "That is what you think of me, my son?"
I got a bit angry with her, because the tin of the billow cut a bit on my leg, and I shouted back:
"I am not your son!
"And I don't need a son like you" she said.
Then we made peace with each other, and I asked her:
"Yes, Aunty. Why you and your sister don't have children."
"People would be better without children,” she said.
"But if there are not children the world finishes."
"It doesn't finish. There are plenty animals and they would be very happy without us. And no me, no my sister are going to have any children. Who wants children like you?"
"No, I see that. You are old and your sister is dead, what children like me are you going to have now?" I said a bit offended.
Aunty Miller explained to me, after that tirade, how she and her sister, when they were very young, were servants in several houses, and they had to look after children. They saw how woman had to suffer to give birth; they saw some children died and they saw men drank and treating their wives like shit; for that reason my aunties sworn, that they were no going to marry and not to bother with children, and drunk husbands, and they did so.


THE WAKE


Aunty Miller would not miss a wake. A wake was her day out, as for any other person would be the market or the tavern. Wakes were not my cap of teat, but, as aunty Miller could not see very well, she would ask me to go with her to show where her feet were going. She liked to lead the rosary and, on finishing the rosary, she would do like famous singers, who sing another song, and another, as the people applaud. She, too, would offer a prayer for such and such dead person that, at one time or another lived in the house, till the last roots of the whole family were mention. Then she would start with anonymous people, and the ceremony would last the whole bloody evening. In one occasion she made me laugh, because, without realizing, she said a sort of jingle.


Let us have a prayer
for the travellers and their souls
and sailors on lonely roads,
for God have mercy on they,
and touch bottom of the sea
before coming home.

She meant to come home safely, but she sent the lot to the bottom. That wake was the most sinister and, at the same time, the more comic one that I ever had seen. The box made from chip wood by an amateur carpenter, using second hand nails that were coming out from every piece of wood and every corner. I suppose it was all they could afford, because they seemed very poor peasants. But the thing that most impressed me was that of the defunct. It was the body of a child, almost of my age with the eyes widely open looking at me all the time. And the more I look at the body the more it look like me. At some times I thought that I was the dead body. Later on I found out that, in some places, they hold to the believe that dead children had to be left with the eyes open to find the way to heaven. All the animals were inside the house, separated by a manger. The people in that village seemed to be even more backwards than they were in ours and they still would followed the tradition of crying as loud as their vocal cords would permit it. So, every time Aunty Miller offer a prayer for the soul of some one who lived in that house a million years ago, the people started to cry at chorus, so loudly that they could be heard in hell. The animals would get alarmed and started a chorus of their own: dogs barking, cats meowing, cows mooing and pigs grumbling. That was like Noah's Ark in distress. I finished having a nervous brake down that day. When we return home, so shake I was that I was afraid even of my Aunty. It was a wired night that one. There was a thin fog and a full moon, and the light from the moon, filtering through that haze, would not produce shadows. The trees, ourselves, the hedges and the deep roads, were all the same; nothing seemed to have a shape. It was like a dead night, because of the lack of shades. In that dead light I looked, from the corner of my eye, to aunt’s Miller eyes, and her eyes were all white, like the eyes of a blind person, but they glitter to the reflex of the moon light like the eyes of a cat. My Aunty very seldom would use a cloth on her head, like the rest of the old women. She had long and very thin white hair and, with a breeze, which at sometimes was felt in that otherwise tranquil night, her hair would stand on its end like a mad cat. With that breeze, the trees made a noise like people praying. Now and again an owl would hoot, lost among the trees. Owls are birds of ill omen in that region, because people said that they announce the dead. So I was thinking that they were already announcing mine. In the thickets of the bushes, the rodents were busy with their business, but to me, those noises were dead people, wandering souls spying on us, the defenceless travellers. That night I, too, thought that would sink before reaching home. I was going short of breath and my heart was going to stop in any minute. Then we had to pass by an old quarry in the woods, where there was a tall black wooden cross. In that place, according to legend, the devil, disguised as some dead relation, would appear to the lonely traveller. There I thought that I would meat my maker, by sure, so scare I was. My Aunty, as we pass the cross, bowed and made the sign of the cross. I tried to do the same, but I could not fiend the strength to lift my arm. Then Aunty Miller said to me:
"Countless stories I heard about this place, son. All stories about the devil. And you know what? They are stupid lies invented by drunken men. And I could tell you why all those stories are lies."
"Why are all lies, Aunty", I asked with the little breath left in my soul. "Because the devil is not around the place where there are crosses. You should know that. The devils are the men, who are even worst than the devil himself. They drink fire water till they go mad, and come home swearing, not leaving a saint to rest, saying that they had seeing the devil there by the cross. And what they see? They see themselves in the cross, like in a mirror. They see the devil inside of them, because that is what they are those men, when they get crazy with fire water."
I gave a thought to what Aunty said, and it started to make sense to me. If men were afraid, it was not shame that a child was afraid. And I had less to fear, because I didn't drink fire water or swear. My Aunty, as guessing my thoughts, said to me:
"There you are, then. If you conscience is clean you don't have anything to fear."
I looked to Aunty Miller's eyes, and notice, almost in surprise, that they had lost that glittering, and they looked normal, with a black patch in the middle, as eyes should be in the dark. The owls didn't hoot any more; the rodents seemed to go quiet, and the hair of Aunty Miller stopped to flight about. I recovered my breath, and everything seemed normal again.
"An have you heard why that cross come to be there, son?" she asked as we went on walking.
"No, Aunty. Nobody told me", I said.
"That was put there in memory of a heretic, who didn't deserved it at all, God forbid me."
"What he have done, then, Aunty?" I asked her.
"Let me tell you from the beginning: You see, in that very spot, where the cross is, there was a chestnut tree. That was a glorious tree. You should have seen that tree. It was the tales tree of its king and the most beautifully shaped that any body could see. And the chestnuts? They were big as chicken eggs, shinning black, and always healthy. For some reason, they never had the worm and they could last all winter, if kept in a dry place. I ate lots of chestnuts from that tree, my sister and I. Rest in peace! She had a special hand to cook chestnuts. People think that to cook chestnuts is to drop them in the pot and leave the fire to do the rest; but it isn't so. You have to soak them over night after peel them. A pinch of salt and a pinch of sugar, and a couple of leaves of meant. Well, that is another story. The tree had the shape of an umbrella and you could be under it all day in a raining day, and not a drop of rain would fall on you. I can tell you that, because many times I found refuge from the rain under the tree, when I was a part time shepherd. One day, the man, owner of the quarry, and a man who he employed that day, was under the tree, because it was raining heavily. As the rain never stopped, and the man, greedy as he was, had to pay his employee the same, for doing nothing, he started to swear, as that sort of men do when things don't go in their way. The employee, better Christian that his boss, got fed up of hearing so much nonsense, and say to his boss:
"I hope that, for once, you are heard in heaven."
"I hope so, too", said the mad, "and that they send down a thunderbolt and finish with this rain, this bloody tree and both of us."
He had not finish to say so, when a thunderbolt struck the tree and opened
It in half. The man was left burned out like he had bee in hell."
"And the other man, Aunty, he died too?"
"No a scratch. He had an iron bar in his hand, and the thunderbolt melt it as butter, but it even didn't burn his hand."
We arrived home and Aunty Miller laughed loudly, a thing she would not do very often.
"What is so fanny, Aunty?" I asked.
"I laughed of you, because you are crazy."
"Why I am crazy?"
"For being afraid of your Aunty."


THE LONG JOURNEY


One evening Aunty Miller dressed up as ready for a party. In the largest pot she go, did warm up water and empty it in one of the wooden troughs used to keep grain. Between us managed to curry the trough to the donkey's stable, and there she had a bath. Even she asked me to scratch her back. I was a bit embarrassed to do so, that of seeing a woman naked; but soon I realized that she could be anything but a woman. She was a sack of bones. Then we went upstairs, and she put on a new dress, and new shoes, something I never saw her to ware before. For the first time she combed her hair, looking into a piece of mirror that I hold on for her. Once the hair well combed, she put on a new head cloth. It was the first time I saw her to do so. I watched all that preparation with mouth open without asking any questions. When she finished with herself, she looked another woman. She smiled on the mirror, looked at me and asked my opinion, as if she was pretty.
"I never saw that dress, Aunty", was all I could say.
"No. I never wear it before."
"And those shoes look new."
"I ordered those shoes long time ago, but I never used them before."
"And I never saw you wearing a cloth on you head."
"No very often, you are right. I had all these things well kept for this journey."
"Are you going somewhere, then?"
"Yes. I am going in a long journey."
"At this time of the night?"
"For this journey any time is good."
She opened a chest of draws, which was in a corner of the room and she brought a sock from there. Kept in that sock she had a rosary, big and strong enough to keep a dog chained to the haystack. There she had two copper coins and a silver peso. The peso was how people would call a five pesetas note, but I never had seen silver one, because. They were out of circulation from long time back, and by then a five pesetas silver coin would worth several times more than a five pesetas note. The copper coins were green with fungous, for been there for so long, and the peso, too, had almost a blue colour. Aunty Miller sat in bed with those things that she took from the sock, and said to me:
"Seat here in bed by me, son, that I have to talk to you. And, please you pay attention to what I have to say."
I sit by her, and waited impatient to see what the devil was about all that comedy of hers.
"Look, son, I am going to die tonight..."
"To die! Well Aunty, you have the same desire to die as I to go to church", I said, using a Spanish proverb.
"Listing, son, and don't talk nonsense. Here I have this peso. Tomorrow you give this to the cobbler. Tell him that those are your aunt’s debts. He will know what is all about, even when there are many years that I owed him that peso."
"Oh, aunty! And you have to wait till you die to pay the cobbler, eh, Aunty? Couldn't you pay that long time ago?"
"No, because I swear that I was not going to pay him. He made this shoes for me, and I could not ware them, so badly made they were. But, for a peso it doesn't worth to go to hell. So, tomorrow you give it to him, and tell him to his good health from your Aunty, because the money is going to be wasted in burning water, anyway. Now see what I have to show you."
Aunty Miller lifted the bedding and lay down in bed with her belly up, and then she show me how to put the rosary on her hands. She crossed her hands over the stomach, and said:
"Looked, son, one turn on each thumb, and stretching down on my belly; and make sure the face of our God Jesus Christ is looking up to the ceiling. Here are the two coins. If my eyes are open, you close them, and put the two coins on top of them, so they stay close. Then, when tomorrow’s comes, you tell the people that your Aunty is dead."
"Oh, yes! And the funeral, Aunty, who is going to pay for it?" I asked, worry as if she was going to leave me with those dept, like she did with the cobbler.
"Son, you don’t worry about that. Everything has been arrange,” she said.
I got into bed, and Aunty Miller pulled up the bedding, and stood dressed as she was. I blow the lamp and went to sleep without saying good night, because if she was going to die, what was the point. When I awaked, it was daytime. For a while I stay there, looking at the window and trying to accommodate in my mind what seemed a very strange dream. Then it came to me what Aunty Miller had said when we went to be. I turned on her direction, and there she was, in the same position as when we went to bed, mouth open and the eyes ajar. A horrible sight she was, and she looked dead all right. I got the creeps and open my mouth to scream, but the scream didn't come out. I had the feeling of some one very sick that wonted to throw out and cannot do so. But suddenly the scream came out as a vomit, and it echoed all around the hose. Aunty Miller jumped in the middle of the room, taking with her all the bedding, and the rosary flying broken all over the floor.
"What is all this shouting for", she gelled at me, looking really frighten.
"Aunty! You are no dead", I shouted at her.
Aunty Miller looked at her dress, then at her shoes, and then touch her head clothe, putting a puzzled face, as the one who can not understand why is in new clothes so early in the mourning. Then she seemed to remember, and said, shaking her shoulders:
"Oh, well! Another day will be."
Saying that, she asked me to give her the peso and the two coins. At that moment I fell sorry that she didn't died, because I had not intention to give the silver peso to the cobble, because, before sleeping I already had thought of some investment for it. I told the story at home, and mother laughed a lot, but all of a suddenly, she got serious, made the sign of the cross, and said: "Oh, my God! That woman is mad. The boy is not going to sleep there anymore."


AUNTY CARMELA THE WEAVER


Aunty Carmela, sister of the Millers, died one evening, exactly five minutes past nine, killed by her goat. But that I will tell later. Firs let us know the woman. In villages as mine, older women, or children, at certain hours of the day, usually at dusk, after returning from the fields, would take the pigs for a walk, as if they were dogs. In one occasion I saw my Aunty Carmela, call the Weaver, walking in the square with a twig in her hand, as the idle one that have nothing to do. Because she had not any pigs in that occasion, so I asked her:
"Aunty Carmela, where is the pig?"
"There is no pig, my son, you well know that. I am looking after that poor hen, the one over there, because she have been very poorly."
The hen, was one of which I borrowed the nickname for the famous teachers that taught us the catechism. Was one of those half plugged ones, like a boring parrot, more legs and neck than body, and I only would forgive the bird for been so ugly to the fact that it was convalescent creature. But, even when I was a child, I thought that a cock had to be pretty desperate to take notice of that creature.
"Well, Aunty, you are funny. Have you nothing better to do, but to look after a hen?"
"It is because she have been so poorly, my son, and almost can't stand on its legs. Ant there comes this devil of your uncle's cock, and doesn't respect the poor thing. And the less thing the poor hen wants is a cock, as poor as it is."
While my Aunty was wasting her saliva given this explanation to me, there came the cock down the road, making such a noise that I jumped aside thinking was a horse. The hen put its arse in the direction of the cock and lay down, winds open, and its bear neck stretched a mile. The cock jump, and didn't took any notice of my aunt’s shouting. She did run brandishing the twig, swearing at the cock:
"Toh, toh! You, bustard, don't you see she is ill? Toh, toh!"
But, for the more she ran and shouted, the sin had been committed. The cock was running up the road, inflating its chest and doing those turns like pigeons in the square, and the noise it made, was just like a laugh. The hen shook the very few feathers left on its miserable body and walked away singing. I laughed loudly, no sure if the laughter was for the hen or for that of my aunt. We children, of those villages, were used to see animals copulating at any time of the day, so we not notice took of those events. But, in that occasion, seeing my Aunty so upset, I said to her:
"So the hen have been poorly, eh, Aunty? What that hen want was a good fuck."
Before I finish the word, my Aunty Aunt Carmela crossed my ears with the wicker and left them boiling red for a couple of days.
"Have that, to learn manners", she shouted at me.
I sworn to have that back from that cock, but the beast took care that it never would happen.
That Aunty was a weaver, as I said, but I call her Aunty Tortillas, because I never saw her to cook anything but tortillas, or the odd stew in rear occasion. She was good at making tortillas I have to admit. The ones I most enjoyed were the ones made with maze flour. She would make the mix with half water and half milk, several hours before hand, and in the last moment would add the egg. She fried fat bacon very crispy and then added it to the mix. She was skilful in tossing the tortillas, and she tossed them many times till they were very crispy. I enjoyed seeing her tossing the tortillas, waiting to see the day when she would drop them on the floor, but I saw that to happen only once. It happened, precisely, the day she was making the tortilla for uncle Penedo, in one occasion that he planted the cabbages for her. Uncle Penedo was very hungry, as usually, and was anxious to stick his teeth to the tortilla, but Aunty Carmela kept tossing and tossing the tortilla. Uncle Penedo was having cockeyes following the tortilla up and down.
"Stop Carmela, stop turning that bloody tortilla. It is ready, Carmela" uncle Penedo kept saying.
"One more turn wouldn't hurt it" Aunty Carmela kept saying.
"You are not going to stop till you drop it in the ashes" said my uncle. And the sooner he said it, the sooner the tortilla went on the ashes.
"Oh God forbidden, Penedo, you are a witch!" Aunty Carmela shouted.
"God forbidden? Got struck you dead, you woman. I told you that you were not going to stop till this happened."
Uncle Penedo said angrily, because he was desperate waiting for his dinner. "I will start another one quickly, do not get upset", said Aunty Carmela, making the sign of the cross many times.
Uncle Penedo could not wait for another section of tossing and turning and said to Aunty Carmela:
"That wouldn't be necessary. Pick that one from the ashes and put it together in a plate; because you know that the farmer who doesn't eats a cart full of shit at year can not be call a farmer."
She was an amusing woman, that Aunty Carmela, so I thought. I heard some people saying that she was the best weaver of all Galicia; certainly if she was not the best, she was the last of the weavers of all the villages around. They said, too, that, in her younger days, she was one of the best "tascadoras." The verb tascar, means the action of breaking the flax. In Spain, and most of the Spanish speaking countries, "tasca" is another word for a ‘tavern.’ A tasca have the meaning of a lesser quality tavern. It is almost sure that taverns started as tascas. During my childhood, after the civil war, there was no money to buy clothes, and in some occasions, there were not clothes to buy even if there was money. Then the linen came back to do for all those necessities. Everything was done in a very primitive way, and I learned the process from the seeds to the loom, and it was a very long process. Because, contrary to any other harvest, that once is collected the job is finished, with flax the job started when it was collected. But it was a beautiful process, poetical, I may say, and one that makes me believe that must have been the seed of a large folklore. Linseed is of a very slippery nature, and for that reason not every body was good to sow those seeds. There were some men with good hand for the job, and they were call from one farm to another to do the favour of sowing the flax. It must be one of the quickest sees to sprout, three to five days. The plant almost resembles wheat or barley but, contrary to wheat, it is solid. When the plant was dry, it was taken to the barns to reap off the seeds. The flax-comb was a piece of hard wood about a foot wide and two feet high, stack on a bench. The flax was knocked against the teeth of the comb and pull out, reaping the seeds with that action. Then the flax was taken to the river, and lay there for a week or longer, pressed with logs and stones, like that cousin of mine did with the clothes. When the flax was soft, it was spread all over the meadow to dry. After baking the bread, as those large stone ovens would keep warm for a couple of days, the flax was stuffed there to dry even more, till it was brittle. And only then the flax was broken. The job of brake the flax was the "tasca", the action "tascar", and the brake "tascador". It was a piece of hard board, half foot wide by three high, sharp in one side, which, like the comb, was stack in a bench. The woman, for it was a job done by the woman, sat legs open across the bench and, holding the flax in both hand would break it against the flax-breaker, in a saw action. The brittle part of the flax was separate from the inside, which was the wool. For reasons that I never understood, perhaps because the young never learned the trade, the job, apart from been done by women, was the job of older women. More often than not, they were spinsters or widows. Again, I never found out why those women all had big tits, and all were sex maniacs, and all were fond of agua ardiente, the firewater. It seemed that their strength was born from drinking firewater, drinking like tailors and swearing like carters. Their conversation and their jokes were all about fucking. I gave a lot of thinking to that sort of job, and I came to the conclusion that it was the job what made the woman, and not the woman the job. For the way the women moved their bodies, to perform the job, was like love making. The women sat across the bench, with their legs open, as riding a horse and, as they broke the flax they move their shoulders in a dancing manner, and their tits would knock the flax-brake continually. The awn from the flax produces an itching like fibreglass does. The women soon would start to scratch their legs and their tits; and there the jokes would start in earnest.
"It itches, eh Maria?" any woman would say.
"Fucking bustard, this time went just inside my pussy."
"Don't you worry.” Later will come along Anton and can take it out for you."
"Yes, I heard he go a good tool for that" another woman added.
"A good what! He is all talking."
"Ask him to do it with the tongue, then."
With the jokes the firewater started to flow. The women's chicks turned to red, and their eyes small. More jokes and more horse talking; more scratching, and more firewater. In the end any body could see that they were not flax-breakers any more; they were masturbating themselves in a bacchanal that Rome never saw anything alike. At sunset the men would drop there, as dogs falling from the heaven above: widowers and bachelors, without forgetting the village idiot. For all those men had something in common with the village idiot. The bachelors were bachelors because never had the courage to approach a woman when they ware young. The widows, were widows because there was no divorce, and wives realized that the only way to be liberated from their men, and to have rest from them was to die. I said this, because the things those men invented, in order to approach those women, were not of this world. The women were so seasonal, when the day was over, and so drunk, that they were there for the picking, almost like rotten fruit; and those men were beating about the bush, till in the end it was all they did. To pretend that they were passing by, only by chance, and that they were not chasing the fishmonger like the cats, they would carry with them the most unusual tools: ploughs on their shoulders, axes and rakes; cages for the chickens, traps to catch foxes, and so fourth. There were some of the men more down to earth, and those would brink a cow with them.
"Where are you going with the cow at this time, Anton?"
"I am taking it to the bull because is in season."
This was because he expected the woman to say: "So am I, come here and fuck me." Instead the woman would say:
"Why you don't do it yourself." And the laugh started on him. And that was another pretext for another glass of burning water. Then, may be there was some dancing. And then, those men would chase the children with stones as they would with dogs, because they were watching. And provably that was the end of a "tasca.” But those tascas were older than taverns, a way of getting together for all that sort of people, till some clever one decide to make a business out of it and take the monopoly from the monks, and the tavern was born.


THE SPINNING


Once the flax was broken, it had to be spinning. Another job done by women, usually old woman, because in Spain and in those days, it seems that the women did all the work. That of spinning was like a job on the side, for it was done at the same time as other jobs. During the daytime, older woman would take the cows or sheep to grace, and at the same time they did the spinning. It was a familiar sight, in those days, to see the old woman standing in the fields, dressed in black, with the distaff stack in there waste and the spindle dancing in the tip of there fingers; cows or sheep around the place, and the woman singing a broken song as she wet the fingers with her tongue and spat the awl. At night time, while the stew was boiling, or animals feeding, or while telling stories to the children, the women would go on with the never ending spinning. I remember that, stories told by those women, while they did the spinning, seemed to have more veracity, a special flavour. Some old men would do that job some times, but then they would be call effeminate, or queers. But some witch doctors, like my Aunty Maria, would not hesitate to recommend those jobs to a man to cure his nerves. Certainly for woman, special old women, the job must have been a way of relaxing, and to feel useful. Some very poor women would spin for money, or for food; because, as the job was of a slow process, the money was no much; but better than nothing for some one that, otherwise, may have nothing else to do. Once the spinning was done, the bobbins had to be turned into skeins in a winding frame, ready to be boiled with ash, to make them very white. When dry, back to the winding frame to turn them into bobbins once more, ready to go to the loom. I use to observe the process of the flax with some amazement, for I had a feeling that it was the only job done backwards. But, as I already said, I learned, since very young, and by necessity, all the process, from the seed to the loom. Another reason for me to learn the process was because all my aunties were very much involved in that sort of business.
All very well till the work fell in the hands of my Aunty Carmela: there I got lost. Never I could grasp how those loom worked. That was the most devilish instrument that the human mind could come up with. I don't think there was a piece of metal on it, not nail or screw. It was all made of wood; pieces of wood everywhere, of all sorts and shapes. But Aunty Carmela would load the machine in no time. I looked at her, and slowly I would get hypnotize, going into a dream like, seeing Aunty Carmela turning into a giant spider, strings going up and down, to the right and to the left, in holes and out of holes where I was trapped like a fly. Because she was a widower and always she dressed in black I call her the Black Widower, not knowing, at the time, that there was a spider with that name.
It was amusing, to see the old woman managing the devilish instrument. She would seat on a stool, that it would be difficult to describe it: not to high not to short, no to wide not to narrow; not round and not square. It had three legs, and I never found out if one was longer, or the other two were shorter. She would accommodate her arse in the stool, in such an uncomfortably manner, half the bottom resting on the stool, and the other half free for her balancing act. In that position, not sitting nor standing, the music would start. The limping stool seemed to be in command. When she pushed one pedal with the right foot, the stool stay in one leg, when she pushed another pedal with the left foot, the stool balance in two legs. As my Aunty shot the bobbin from the left to the right, the stool automatically turned on the short leg, so my Aunty would be able to reach the other side to catching the bobbin and sent it to the right, fast as a rocket. The bobbin was not yet on the right, when the bloody stool was already with the short leg in that side.
My Aunty Carmela, must fart about a million times at day, especially when she was weaving. For every movement of the stool, and for every turn she did, to catch or shot the bobbin, she would fart. And it is extraordinary that, among all the inconceivably sounds the loom produce, no one was the same sound as a fart. The whole thing was like a band of amateurs in an ill organizing concert, for not one bloody sound could agree with the nest. The music could sound like this:

Trass, trass, blass, blass,
poon, poon, catapoon catapoon.
Tricky quickly, tricky quickly.
Perre poof, perre poof, paf, poof.
Tras, tras, pon, catapoon.


After a while, Aunty Carmela would rest in the stool the half of her bottom that, till then had been out, and the music would change, as if it was play backwards. But Aunty Carmela knew what she was doing. From every piece of cloth that she, or anybody could put hands on, Aunty Carmela would make strips that she would mixed with the line, combining the colours, in squares, pentagons or stars, and beautiful beddings would came out of that loom.


THE CHASTITY BELT


Poor Aunty Carmela! She was a good weaver, never hurt anybody, and would aloud children to look how she worked. Nevertheless she was the most cursed woman of the entire village. Many times I wished her dead myself. The reason was that, as I already mention, the beards from the flax, as I said, would itch like stinging nets. Never mind how refine the linen was -that not always it was the case- the microscopic beards would be there by the plenty; and those tiny awns were the worst. In one occasion they made a pare of underpants for me, of that material, and it was, without exaggerating, the same as to have ones balls in boiling water. All my parts were so sore, that I learned to walk without moving my legs. I already had some pubic hair, of which I was very proud, because not other boy of my aged in the village had any sign of manhood, but me. Well, the bloody underpants left me bold again, and it took long time for the grass to be green once more. In the time of the crusaders, the stories said that, kings and knights, would fix chastity belts to their wives, so they would not make war at home while the husbands made war somewhere else. They would be safer if they make them ware a knickers made of the same linen as my underpants. Those knickers would leave their pussies so sore that they wouldn't aloud man to touch them with a pole.
In those days, a couple of days before the patron feast was due, the housewives would make a spring-cleaning. The mattress were taking out to airing; boiling water was through all over the beds to kill the bags; and the wooden walls painted with lime to kill the wood worms. Then they would put new bedding in the beds. And guess what sort of sheets they were? Lining sheets and it always had to be the young the ones to use them for the first time. It was like to slip in a bed of nails, like the ones used by Fakir. Sleep, I said? In the mourning, when boys and girls got together to go to church, we could not have another conversation, but about the bloody sheets, and was then when we found out that neither of us had closed an eye. And every body cursed my Aunty, the seamstress, and all their relations. The adults, having their skin cured like leather, may not realize of what the young ones went through. Or may be they didn't give a dun, because children, in those days, were cheap merchandise.
Aunty Carmela would fell to sleep at nine o'clock sharp, not one minute later, not one minute earlier. In winter, almost every evening she would come to our house; and when she was not in our house, she could be found on her sister's.
"I don't have to be alone, and at the same time I save firewood” she used to say.
But about five minutes before nine, her head started to drop forward. We had an alarm clock, that mother bought as a bargain in the market, and the bloody thing was more of a thermometer than a clock, for one could know the temperature of the day by the minutes it went fast or slow, according to a cold or hot day. Father would put the clock in time, five minutes to nine, as soon as he saw Aunty Carmela dropping her head forward. She had short legs, and all the stools in our house were a bit too high for her. So, as she started to bend forward, she would pressed her belly and lift up the bottom, and a fart, with the sound of a chicken coming out of the egg, would escape from her arse. The fart was enough for her to awake, and to resist the sleep for another second or two. Then belly down and bottoms up again, and another chick out of the egg.
"Aunty" I would tell her, "the chickens are born."
"Well then, if the hatching is over, better I go home."
She would alight her kerosene lamp and depart. It was proved, when one of her sister, the Millers, died that Aunty Carmela had not the strength to fight back sleeping, at that crucial hour of the night. Aunty Miller was in her agony, unconscious, but in pain the same, because I could feel it in her laments. Aunty Carmela sat the other Miller on the bench; and several women neighbours were around the bed, all dressed in black and praying, awaiting the outcome. The other Aunty Miller was lamenting, and Aunty Carmela, as nine o'clock was approaching, was having a fight with her sleep. She was like a hen looking for food: leaning forward, the bottom up, and a squeezing fart would shoot out. She awaked, looked at her sister, sat by her, and then a the one in bed, as to see if she was dead or alive, and again dropping forward, and another fart. The other women didn't know in which way to turn, if to cry or to laugh. Then, Aunty Carmela, overcome by the sleep, fell flat nose down in the wooden floor. She made such a noise on the boards that her dying sister jumped in bed.
"My God, Carmela!" Shouted the other women, thinking that she had killed herself.
º"Why the devil don't she makes up her mind!" she say, refereeing to her agonizing sister.
She picked up the lamp and left, leaving her sister in the hands of the neighbours. Next day, when she returned and found that her sister was dead, she stay there, in the middle of the room, looking mouth open as if she could not believe that her sister had pass away. Other neighbours came at that moment, had a prayer and, with an olive branch deep in holly water, blessed the deceased woman. The other Miller, on seeing that Aunty Carmela could not come out of her stupefaction, said to her:
"Carmela, aren't you going to bless our sister?"
She got hold of the olive branch and, sprinkling some holly water to her deceased sister's face, she said:
" Well, while in Rome do what the Romans do."


DEATH BY CONTEST


Aunty Carmela had a goat, that it was the devil disguised as a goat. The devilish goat would smash all the gates and doors and go to any orchard to eat vegetables and trees. My Aunty was tire of paying the carpenter for mending the damage that the animal kept doing and, in one occasion that she had no money, asked me if I could do the job. At that age I was not much of a handyman but, one evening, armed with hammer, an axe and large nails, I went to do the job. Things got complicate for me, in the end, and I didn’t finish the work. So Aunty took the goat to the kitchen, and we, the three of us, have dinner together: I have a cap of milk with bread, Aunty Carmela a cap of stew, and the goat a faggot of grass.
While we were having dinner, Aunty Carmela never stopped arguing with the goat:
"But you, naughty girl, have you and idea how much the carpenter charges me to mend that shed?"
"Baahh" said the goat, without taking any notice.
"It is not baahh. I cannot effort to pay a carpenter every time you fancy to go out. Don't you do that ever again? You understand me?"
"Baahh", the goat would repeat, as a consent child who would not take any notice of what he is told.
"Is not baahh. Nest time I will hit you with a stick in the head, just between the horns, you bet if I don’t."
"Baaahh."
"I will take you to the market, you will see."
With those arguments, nine o'clock approached and Aunty Carmela started nodding her head forward. The goat thought that the nodding was part of the round, a challenging to a fight, and the animal stepped back, as fare as the kitchen aloud it, and shouting "attack" in the languages of goats, the animal charged forwards, like don Quixote against the win mills, and hit Aunty Carmela in the head, just when she was nodding forward, and she was dead before she knew what had hit her. Rest in peace, Aunty Carmela, because I never again go so frighten as that night when I saw you legs up as the beetles, when they pretending to be dead.


AUNTY RAPOSA


My Aunty Raposa was married to a brother of my grand father, on my father’s side, and she was well known by the nickname of Raposa, that in translation it means a vixen. She got that name from her favourite story about a fox. I do no remember any other name for her. She was a widower, and I don't remember my uncle Raposo. He had died before I could remember. Aunty Raposa never got tire of telling the same story, which she assured us was a true story, one that happened to her defunct husband. One could listened her to tell the story a hundred times, and one never would get bored listing to her telling. Because the story, the way she would tell it, always seemed different; for she would start the story in different ways, adding something here and taking something there; and she had the special grace for that sort of story.
She had two grand sons, more or less my age, whose boys she adored and, in order to make those boys happy, she would do anything. That was the reason why she would put up with us, for her house was like a club for children. The boys were little devils, and would play every imaginable trick on their grand mother. She would take, easily, what ever jokes they play on her and, instead of getting angry with them, she waited till she had the opportunity to play some tricks of her own on the boys; and once she had revenge, she would laugh a whole day. Once, in a cool nigh, she said to the boys:
"Tonight better you come to my bed to keep me warm, because I never fell so cool as today."
She had spent some years, of her youth, in Paraguay, where she got the habit of chewing tobacco. That night, in bed, she was chewing her tobacco and, looking to something up in the ceiling, she said to the boys:
"What remind you that stain in the ceiling, my boys?"
"Which stain, grand mother?" the boys asked, because the whole ceiling was full of stains.
"That one there, my boys. What is a matter with your eyes? Open your eyes and look well."
The boys open their eyes as big as plates, and then their grand spat the tobacco up and a shower of the staff felt on the children's eyes.
"Grand mother, tell us when you are going to spit, and we cover our head with the blankets" the boys complained.
"Cover your heads now, my boys" she said a minute after, "I am going to spit."
The boys went under the blankets, and then the woman fart a most pestilent fart. The boys came up half suffocated to catch a breath and, as they open their mouths, they swallow a shower of disgusting, chewed tobacco that was falling from the ceiling.
I forgot to say that the boys were twins, born from a single mother. The mothers marry another man, who gave his name to the boys. She was a pretty woman, very sexy looking, with big tits, that it was the emblem of my family. As it seems not so easy, for a woman with children, to find a man to marry, she got hold of what was on offer, as beggars can't be choosers. And, occurs, men who don't have the guts to get something more appropriate, get hands in any left overs. But nature has its ways with those requirements and, some times it makes, of a couple of necessities, a fortunate event. That was the case with that woman, my cousin, or whatever she was of mine, and that man. As I said, she was a sexy pretty woman; the man was a shy fellow but, otherwise, a nice strong fellow. He was, most provably, a virgin, even when he was about forty when he marry. So he was in a haste to do for time lost, something that my relation was keen to share; and for those similarities, they were a very happy couple. The one who was not so happy was my Aunty Raposa. The house was small, and the quarters upstairs were all one big room, with no divisions. So the couple would go to bed at the same hour of the chickens, to do what they have to do, before the others went to bed. But they could well had save the bother, because the wooden boards, due to the bomb fires that my Aunty use to make in winter days, had separations big enough for a babe to drop through. The old wooden beds were much in need of a can of oil in the joints as well. So, when the couple started their section that was like a pop band playing in a concerto. More than once I left the house in alarm, thinking the whole floor was coming down crushing on my head. In those occasions, Aunty Raposa would look up to the floor, and shouted very worry:
"Yes, make more. You know there hasn't been rain for a month, the harvest is no going to be good; there is not bread for those two, and you make more."
And talking of fire, I remember that my Aunty, all the time burned green branches of pinewood, as if there was not other wood in the forest. That sort of fuel makes more smoke than fire, and one only have to stay there an hour to come out like a piece of smoked ham. I remember my Aunty telling the story of the Fox, and the wind pushing the smoke down the enormous flu in a spinning whirlwind, like the whole of heaven crushing to earth. In those occasions one could no see each other, and only shining eyes could be observed among that phenomenal scene. If Aunty Raposa was in a good mood, she would tell us the story of the Fox; if she wanted to have ride of us, she would pick up the big rosary, and she would invented some new saint, and said to us:
"Today we have to pray for this saint, saint so and so, who made more miracles than the rest together, and deserves our prayers on his day."
Among that thick curtain of smoke, we disappeared without trace, that it was what my Aunty meant to happen. If she was in a good mood, that most the time she was, then she would tell us her famous story. We new well in advance when she was going to seat down and tell the story. Before that, she always would play a nasty joke in any of us. One day she pulled her skirts up showing her pants, and she swear, and said to me:
"Nephew, where the devil I being sitting on? Look what I have there?" "Where, Aunty?" I asked.
"There in my pants. They are sticky."
I put my nose just there by her arse hole and, a that very instant, she exploded a pestilent fart in my mouth and, with the force of it, I fell with my bottom in the floor, before I learned what I was hit with. That day she laughed till she shit herself. My Aunty was famous for her farts. Even nowadays people would say that her record never has been broke. I think may be it was the tobacco she chewed. Even the priest, don Xusticio, who never told a joke in his life, would tell, almost smiling, the day he was going to the church and took a short cut, because he was a bit late to do mass. In front of him was my Aunty, and the footpath was steaming with her farts. Every time she did fire one, she said:
"Relief, relief." And when she looked back and saw the priest, she asked: "You being there for very long, padre?"
"From the firsts relives" he said.
"Pardon me, padre,” she said, "but for a hand full of air you can't risk to loose a basket of tripe."
The story Aunty Raposa use to tell, I heard it from other people, with some variations; for nobody could tell it like my Aunty. As I said, to give the story more merit, she would tell us that it was something that happened to her defunct husband.


THE WANDERING FOX


At one time there was a fox, larger than a fox should be, marauding around the village, cousin havoc in every chicken run. Farmers, in order to get ride of the ravaging creature, would fix traps all over the footpaths, and scattered poisoned meat all over the fields. But the only thing they achieved with that was limping children and to get a village empty of dogs and cats. The fox seemed immortal, and would get away with its life despite all harassments, poison, traps and shots. For that reason people used to comment:
"That fox have to be the devil."
My Aunty Raposa had a son, who I could not remember, because he had gone to Cuba, may be before I was born. One night, according to my Aunty, that son of hers was coming home, from seeing his girl friend. There was a full moon, and the nigh was bright as daytime, for it was the month o January, when the proverb says that the ants can be seen by the footpath. The young chap saw the fox, which was sat in the edge of one of his parent’s fields, by the footpath. The fox didn't run away, on seeing the young man approaching, and seemed not to be concerned of him. The young man though that, it was really dearly for a fox to behave in that manner and, on coming by it, and because he heard people talking that the fox had to be the devil, he joke with the fox:
"Hallo, fox. Is it true that you are the devil?"
"No, I am not the devil. I am your neighbour that..."
Fuck in hell! The fox never had the chance to explain further, for the young man was running, already, like a grey hound by the footpath. The fox was pleading behind:
"Please wait, I have to tell you..."
The young man run even faster on hearing the fox talking and running behind him. According to my Aunty, he staid in bed three days and three nights without talking and without taking food or water. He just lay there starring at the ceiling, with big frighten eyes. When he, at last talked, and told his parents the encounter he got with the fox, his father, who was a man not easy to intimidated, decided to investigate. The man had heard that, wandering souls, couldn’t talk only for a short time at midnight. So he went to the field at the same hour as his son had seen the fox. And there the fox was, sat in the same place. The man said to the fox:
"Fox, devil, or wandering soul, do tell me what you want from us, for you are in our property."
"I am not devil and no fox. But yes, I am the wandering soul of your neighbour...who there is two years that...you remember now?"
According to my Aunty Raposa, wandering souls can not said their names or the word dead. So her husband put the words on the fox’s mouth.
"Are you my neighbour Farruco?"
"That is me", said the fox.
"Farruco Rey de Espadas" the man asked again, to be sure.
"Yes, neighbour yes. That is me, if you prefer to call me so", said the fox.

Rey de Espadas was a nickname, which means King of Spades, and senor Farruco, even after dead, fell a bit offended to be call so. It was for him an offensive name, one that, in his case, had the meaning of a miserable stinker. I heard men complaining, long after he was dead, that he never ever paid a drink to any human soul; so I don't think he ever go a prayer from any of those men, or from anybody else, after his dead. Because, in those villages, people would forgive any dept, after dead do part, but not that one of no paying a drink in a lifetime. The stinker of senor Farruco, got his nickname from a book of rizler to roll cigarettes, whose book as call the King of Spades. That King of Spade’s book was the cheapest paper one could buy. The firs paper of the book, any body that remember those times can tell you that it was a red paper without gum. Farruco would keep that paper for any one who dear to ask him for a rizler. Among the many stories I heard about the man, there was the one about the manner he had for smoking. He never would smoke if there was a strong win, and never in too open spaces. He would alight a cigarette as many times as there were men around to provide him with a light, for he never spent a match of his own in all his life. He would alight a cigarette and, if any smoke escape from his mouth, he would run after it, jumping and biting the air. That was the reason no to smoke if there was a win, because the smoke would go away before he could eat it. After a couple of sackings, he would put off the cigarette and hid it in the seam of his hat. After a while he would ask another man for a light and, in that way, a cigarette to him would last a week. When his sons came in a holiday from Cuba, and sow his father trying to smoke a dog end, that didn't worth a match, he slammed the father in the mouth and sent the dog end flying. The father run after it, and as he pick it up, said to his son in a bad mood:
"I never went to America like you, son of a bitch."
I mention a tavern in the city, where they made that famous tripe stew. Senor Farruco's sons, and a few more sons of the village, were the lucky few who returned to eat the broth. That was a great event, and the villagers, as there were no buses at the time, they hire a lorry to go to the city to meet the Americanos, as they were call those who returned from America. All had a feast in that tavern, remembering the sad days when they said good-bye; but then they were saying hallo, and were happy, and paid for the lunch and the wine; and, because it was free, every body eat till the stuff was coming out of their ears. After the celebration, the Americanos went to the red district, to finish the celebration, and the peasants returned home in the lorry. But, as they were not use to travel in such luxurious transports, senor Farruco's wife felt sick. She said to her husband:
"You shouldn’t push that last plate to me, Farruco. I ate too much and I am going to through out."
She almost didn’t finish the word when Farruco put his hand in her mouth and shouted to her:
"Don't waste that! Wait till we go home an the chickens can have it." And he kept his hand in her mouth till they reach home.
The fermenting broth came to her mouth several times but, as it could not find the way out, went down again. In another occasion the villagers were in the tavern by the market. That day all have sold well their goods and were celebrating with a meal. Senor Farruco said to his wife:
"I see that we are the only ones no having a meal. Shall we order something?"
"What you think?" asked the wife timidly.
"Well, one day is one day," said senor Farruco, that it was as saying, let us have a party. And he shouted to the attendant:
"Girl! A cap of soup over here with two spoons."

Senor Raposo, my aunt’s husband, could not give credit to his ears when he heard the fox saying that he was Farruco, and he asked him:
"But you, Farruco, what you have done in this life for now having to be wandering in the body of a fox? Couldn't you choose something more logical, like a donkey or...?”
"You can not choose. You have to take what you are told, and they choose for you the most unlike shapes, so you are not recognized when you return to this world and so you suffer longer. I met some wandering souls that they have been wandering for many hundreds of years."
"Oh, my God, how those souls must suffer!" exclaimed my aunt’s husband. "Suffer! Look at me. I only been around a couple of years, and look my feet and my arse, it is like a calendar, full of holes from the shots I have been receiving."
"Tell me, then, what can I do to take you out of your misery?" my aunt’s husband asked him.
"You go home and brink a pickaxe and move those boundary stones from my field to yours."
"To move those marks! Why?" senor Raposo asked, because he thought of it as a very odd request.
"Because I move them to your side once, in order to rob you of a piece of land", the soul of Farruco confessed.
"How much did you move them?" asked my aunt’s husband.
"Four foot. Just four foot, because those were annotated there where I went."
"Four foot, eh? You lousy fucking bastard! Four foot, all along the border and I never realized what was wrong when I sow the wheat, thinking I lost touch with my hand. You little bastard."
"I had pay for it very dear already, my friend. Go home, please, and brink a pickaxe to move the marking stones to the original place, so I can rest in peace."
"To move back those stones? Never, never ever in your dead life I will do that. You are going to suffer, till the coming of the last judgment; you will see, you miserable bastard."

My aunt’s husband started to walk fast home very angry, not so much for the value of the land he had been cheated off, but for the fact that farmers are very proud of their skills; and that uncle of mine was one who had the best hand to sow; and when he had grain left over, from the mixer he use in that field, he thought he lost touch, because he was getting old. So he walked fast home, without taking notice of the soul of senor Farruco's, pleading to change the stones. Uncle Raposo talked to himself all the time in a bad mood as he walked:
"Son of a bitch. And I didn't realized what was wrong."

Farruco, fox or wandering soul, run behind him imploring to be relive from his wandering life, or wandering dead.
"Please my neighbour, change the marks and save me from this misery, because I suffered enough already."
But my uncle, so angry was, that he no notice took of senor Farruco's begging. He arrived home and went straight upstairs, because his wife, my Aunty, was already in bed, but she was not sleeping jet. On seeing her husband so angry, she thought that he was annoyed because their son had told a tale out of school, so the wife asked him:
"You haven't seen the fox, then?"
"I saw the fox, yes. Bastard!"
"Then it is not a wandering soul, as the boy told?"
"Oh the boy was right. The fox is nothing else but our neighbour Farruco. That miserable..."
My uncle could not find a nasty enough word to name senor Farruco and, instead, he stamped the floor with the foot and awaked his son and his daughter. "Farruco, you said? The King of Spades?"
"Yes, that one. Son of a bitch!"
"And what he want, to be like that frighten people at night."
"What he wants? The son of a bitch changed the stone marks in our field when he was alive, and now he can not rest till the marks are change back."
"Oh, my God! Well, you have to do it, then, so the poor soul can rest in peace."
"I am going to change shit. He is going to wander in that way till the end of the world, if he expects me to change the marks."
The next day, and the day after, and every day from there on, my Aunty kept at her husband, asking the man to change the marks, and the man decide to do so. But first he went to see the priest, don Xusticio, to tell him the case, and have his opinion, just in case there was more to it than a fox. And occurs, there was, for the priest said to my uncle:
"Good idea have been this of yours, Raposo, to come to see me, otherwise, instead of saved Farruco's soul, you were going to lose yours."
"How that come, padre?" asked my uncle.
"First let us have confession, and communion, and once you are clean, I would tell you how to go about this thing", the priest said, and, after confession, he explained to my uncle: "You do this tonight, while you are clean. When Farruco tells you to put the marks to the right you put them to the left. And if there is a moon, be careful of his shadow. Never aloud the shadow of the fox to touch your feet."
"Why is that, padre?" Asked my uncle.
"The most provably is that tonight is not going to come the soul of Farruco, but the devil disguised as a fox is going to come, instead of Farruco. You look for signs, to see if the fox is Farruco or is the devil."
The priest then handed over a scapular to my uncle, and charged him five pesetas for it; and in the door, again said to my uncle:
"Remember the shadow: watch your feet."
My uncle Raposo was very careful not to swear in all day, to go clean to liberated Farruco's soul from an eternal wandering misery. With the scapular hanging on his neck and the pickaxe over his shoulder, at about midnight, he walked to the field. The mice had eaten a good chunk of the moon by then, but it still was bright, passing about a quarter of its night journey on the sky, and so, the shadow of my uncle was rather long. The fox, Farruco, or devil, were no there; but my uncle, well warn by the priest as he was, thought that the devil would be taking his time to think some sort of trick. In the mean time my uncle dug out the stones to advance the job. He was pulling the last one up when, as falling from heaven, there dropped the fox by him. With the moonlight my uncle inspected the fox, without the fox knowing it, to look for some unusual signs. Well, as my unties the Millers said, even the devil makes mistakes, and in that case there was not exception. The devil had disguised himself as a fox all right, but he forgot to cover himself with the wounds, on his arse, legs and feet, as the real Farruco's soul had from the farmers shots.
"I got you!" My uncle said to himself.
From there on, an argument started in earnest, because, as the priest said to my uncle, the devil wanted the stones to be change in one way and my uncle in the other way. My uncle trying to get away from the shadow of the devil, and the devil trying to get between him and the moon. So stubborn the devil was that, with the argument, the devil forgot that he shouldn't talk after midnight, and my uncle forgot to make that remark to him. The argument lasted till the cock of my uncle Ramallal crowed.

I never met the cock of my uncle Ramallal, for the bird sung the last song when I was borne. My uncles Ramallal's cock was second in fame only to my uncle's Andres cock. But sexy wise uncle's Ramallal cock was unique. They said that all the hens in the village were not enough for such a cock, then the crafty cock would lay down in the fields, pretending was dead, and when the crows came down to eaten it they would get fuck as hens. Thanks to that cock, the girls in the village learned early that their backs were not only to carry hay, because the cock was jumping to their backs in every occasion it saw them bending down. Even nowadays, when a young man is all the time after the girls, he would be called the cock of Ramallal. Uncle Ramallal was the older brother of my grand mother, on my father's side. Ramallal means big branch. He was the strongest man in the area and, on Palms Day, when the villagers would go to church with a branch of laurel and olive, my uncle Ramallal would carry a whole tree. From there he go his nickname.
Well, when the cock of uncle Ramallal crowed, the earth opened and the fox or devil disappeared in a cloud of smoke. My uncle Raposo told that to the priest, who said to him:
"You have been lucky, Raposo. If his shadow did touch your feet, you would go down with him."
Then the priest said to my uncle that he should order a mass for the resting soul of Farruco. My uncle pay the priest to have the mass, and all the people went that day to church; no for the love of senor Farruco, but to thank God that, at last, they go ride of the fox, and their chickens, like Farruco's soul, could rest in peace, at last. At this point my Aunty Raposa would laugh, and comment:
"If he ever rested in peace, the lousy pig."
My Aunty Raposa call senor Farruco a lousy pig, because her husband had to ask someone to lend him the money to pay for the mass, and he dye before he could pay the money back, and Aunty had to pay the dept in instalments, all for the soul of senor Farruco.


AUNTY PILARA AND FAMILY


Aunty Pilara, wife of uncle Mingos, the gelder, was known by the nickname of Mexona. It was one of the more offensive nicknames, for it means, in gallego language, the person that is having a pi too often. That couple was the poorest of the whole family, what comes to prove that the business of chopping balls is not a profitable one. They had a daughter, who marry the Andalusia chap. Provably my grand mother, had an affair, like the rest, because Aunty Pilara had not similarity to the others, even in the skin of her teeth.
Aunty Pilara's father-in-law, had been a tailor, and Aunty Pilara worked with the man, and she learned the trade of seamstress with him. But that had to be long before my days, because I never saw my Aunty putting a stitch or a patch to any garment. Her father-in-law was fond of firewater, as it was the case with most of those ambulant traders and market goers; and tailors could not be less. In the end, like the rest, he too, finished an alcoholic. Aunty Pilara said that, more days than not, the man had the shakes, and he could not manage middle. Then he would say to her:
"Stitch for me those buttons, girl, while I am going for a pi."
In those days, the toilets, of those farmhouses, were in the most unlike places, in the deep roads, or among the corn in the fields. But the tailor was not going to any of those places. The pi was a pretext to walk to the tavern and push a couple of glasses of firewater dawn the hatch. After that, his hand was steady as a rock, but not for long. When he started to shake again, he would go for another pi. And so many times at day he went for a pi, that Aunty Pilara called him the pisser and, in the end, he got the nickname of Pisser, that in Gallego language is "mexon." But the curious thing was that, no Aunty Pilara's husband, nor any of the other brothers of her husband, were call by that nickname; only aunty Pilara inherit it. The reason may be because those men had a trade, and they were called by the name of their trade. One was a cobble and the other was a tinker. Uncle Mingos was the gelder. Only the younger of the brothers didn't had a trade; he was the one who did the farming at home. So, Aunty Pilara put that nickname on her father-in-law and, as the saying goes, you harvest what you saw.
Tailors, in the Spanish folklore, are the most famous characters, and stories about them are hundreds to a penny. The folklore said that they were crafty, distrusted, liars and drunkards by nature. But, in the end, those stories tell us, that, all their mischief would turn against them, like happened with stories with a happy ending, where the villain gets a bloody nose. And Aunty Pilara use to tell lots of those anecdotes, which she assured us, did happen to her father-in-law.
In one occasion, Aunty Pilara's father in law, was working in a house, whose farmers were suppose to be rich, but they were the meanest of all farmers in the world, and that would have been mean enough. The man, with the sense of humour of those crafty tailors, would compose jingles, as he went along with his stitching, and sang them to the house holders, to see if they catch the message, but they never did. Aunty Pilara laughed as she mentioned those jingles, and she said that her father in law was very good in improvising those little things. In that occasion, the stone to sharpen the farming tools, needed some oil in the shaft, and for lack of it, the shaft squeaked, alarmingly. It seems that such squeak was the case of irritation for the animals of the place, and as soon as the stone started to work, the chickens and the cock followed; and then the pigs follow the chickens; then the donkey, and then the cows, and that would become an ill cast concert. Then, uncle Pilara's father-in-law would start whistle as the stone, and he went on mimicking the voices of the animals, and finished the jingle with the word starvation. In that house they had an old woman, who had been part of the household for donkeys years, and she never learned to differentiate the animals from the people, so she cooked for the lot in the same big pot. She would drop into the pot everything at the same time; then, the cabbage and the potatoes were mashed when the beans were hard enough to load a cannon. The tailor said to the woman again and again:
"But, woman, how much it cost to put the beans to soak from one day to another?
"They have plenty time to soak in the belly. And the longer they stay there, the less you feel hungry", was her answer.
But the tailor was getting long in the tooth, and the tooth, most of them, had gone, so he had to swallow the beans as if they were tablets. Then his stomach was heavy as that of an anaconda after eating an explorer, and he again complained to the woman about the need to soak the beans.
"Woman, put those beans one day or two to soak, that it costs nothing to do so."
"Then it is true what I heard about tailors, that they are very delicate people. What about a piece of shit from my arse, then? Would that be tender enough for you?”
Aunty Pilara's poor father-in-law, would go behind the hay stack, and there, some times from one end and some times from the other, would discharge the beans, as hard and fresh as when they came from the fields. The rain had them washed clean, and the beans were there shinning white as if they never had been in the pot, or in the stomach. One day, at last, the stew was more decent than usually, and the tailor praised the woman.
"Well, woman, at last you put the beans to soak."
"The rain did. I found them behind the hay stack", she said.

They were not from my village, those relations of my Aunty Pilara, but they belonged to the same parish. It seems that all of them were afraid of the dark, and never would go out on their own at night. Even in their trade they would not venture too fare, just in case an eclipse of some sort surprised them. I heard the story of when uncle Mingos was courting Aunty Pilara. The three brothers would come together to see my Aunty, and it took some time, for people of the village, to know which one was the boy friend of my aunty. That could be one of the reasons why the young men of the village didn't kill any of them, because they didn’t know which one to kill. Even when they were all together, as soon as it started to be dark, they would go home. But, in one occasion, the men of the village, hide among the bushes in the woods and started to howl as wolfs, to frighten the chaps. Every one run to the nearest tree and climbed to it as fast as squirrels. They stay there all night and, now and again, they call each other:
"Hey, does your tree shakes?"
"It does. And yours?"
"Mine is falling down."
Nest day, the youngsters went to see if they had come down from the trees, and they were no there, but the trees were dripping with shit from the top to the roots. For been part of that family, Aunty Pilara's jokes, always were about tinkers, cobbles, gelders and shit.
Those brothers were the last of the ambulant traders that I remember to come around the village. They were amusing people, as they were, more often than not, all those tinkers, cobblers, gelders, tailors and the like, that used to come around the villages in those days.
The cobbler was called Benigno, and he would work only on raining days. But it was not Benigno the one who followed the rain; it was the rain that always followed Benigno. He curried his tools on a basket, and the basket hanging on a stick over his shoulder. All those ambulant traders had a motto of their trade, and Benigno would shout: "Peterpo!" The word means nothing; it was his trademark. And when the women heard the man yelling his motto, they shouted to each other:
"There comes Benigno. Pick up the wash from the line, because it is going to rain."
The man ha a moustache like the whiskers of a cat, and for that he got his nickname. Children would ran to meet the man to sing him a jingle of their invention:


Benigno, Benigno,
Whiskers of a cat
Open your sack
And mended my shoe.
No leather no glue:
A piece of skin
From the bottom of you.

He smiled, as the children sang to him the jingle, and blandishing a large pointed awl, he menaced the children:
"One of this days I am going to stick this in your arses, you will see if I don't."
In one occasion, I saw my Aunty Carmela, the weaver, making a deal with Benigno. After much bargaining, Benigno agree in mending a shoe for my Aunty, for the amount of ten cents and a cap of stew. Benigno, in order not to waste time, mended the shoe and ate the stew at the same time. Then, when he finished both, Aunty Carmela inspected the shoe and said to Benigno:
"What sort of job is this, Benigno? One stitch here and another there to finished in no time. Well, it may worth the stew, but not the ten cents."
Benigno took the knife and cut of the stitches. Then he gave the shoe to my Aunty, and said:
"Here you are, Carmela. And if you wanted the stew back as well, wait till I
shit it."
The youngest of the brothers was the tinker. He was known by several nicknames. Women would call him the Godson, because he called every woman Godmothers. He was known as well by the name of the Governor. On arriving to a place he would shout up: "The Governor!" But children call him Wheel-limper, because he carry his business on a sort of wheel, and because he had a wooden leg. He had been in South America, in his young days, and there he left the leg. He never would miss an occasion to tell the story of the leg. He used to work in the railways and had a bet, with some of his mates, to cross the line in front of a speeding train.
"I crossed, but the leg didn't,” he would say with a crafty laugh. "I didn't feel sorry for it, because it was all the time behind the other, and then it afford me lots of shoes."
He saved a lot of money in shoes, thanks to the accident, because he would buy a pare and used both for the same foot. When he worn the right shoe in the left foot, it gave the sensation that he walked in one-way and the leg in the other.

"The Governor! Hello, Godmother. Have you any pot, or anything with a hole that I can patch for you? I
If the women had something to mend, they would have to put up with his nonsense; if not, they would say to the man to fuck off. He would laugh and go to nest door and start again with the same story.
"The Governor! Hello, Godmother. Have you anything...?"
"Go to mend bottoms to your fucking mother" would be the answer before he finished the fraises.
Some women would not aloud the man to finish the question, and would insult the man with the most offensive words; but that was his game.
The older brother, uncle Mingos, my aunt’s Pilara husband, was the Gelder. He would play a whistle, as to announce his presence. I said play and no blowing, because those whistles that gelders and some tinkers used, were of canes, like the ones natives play in the Andes. My uncle Mingos could have being a musician, so well he played that whistle. Well, what I was going to say, was that pigs knew the whistle and, at less they were locked into the pig-stay, they would ran to the hills as soon as they heard the whistle. Again, children would go to uncle Mingos and said:
"Senor Gelder, play the whistle for us."
In Spanish have double meaning, to ask any body to play the whistle, which could be as saying, touch my dick. So the gelder was no sure in which way the children were going, but just in case, he shouted:
"One of this days I am going to think you are pigs, and you will see, then, what I will do to you."
Uncle Mingos was the same as his father. Any body that had pigs to be castrating had to make sure to have plenty fire water at home. Uncle Mingos used the stuff as alcohol to disinfect the pig’s balls, his hands and his throat. The worst thing that could happen to any pig was to fall in uncle's Mingos hands. I think that the knife he used was the same aunty Pilara had to peal the potatoes. To stitch the damage, he used a cobbler's awl with any sort of string. But I must give some credit to his skills. He sat comfortable, in any stool, and he would hold the pig, upside down, between his knees, and from there, no matter how much a pig grumble and struggled, would not escape till its balls were gone. With the bottle of firewater by him, he would send one gulp down the hatch, and another on the pig's balls. Only on feeling the firewater on its balls, was enough for the pig to swear in Latin. O perhaps the firewater would do as a sort of anaesthetic. If by any chance, and it happened very often, and old man, with nothing to do, came along, then the poor pig would have the longest agony of any martyr in these valley of tears. The to men would started to tell a story of another pig that, a not too skill gelder castrated in one occasion. Then the pig fathered piglets, and the piglets were borne without wears or legs. And the story would go on and on while the pig was there with its balls bleeding. Housewives, who were the ones that were around the house and paid the man, very often had a nervous break down, on hearing the pigs screaming for hours on end, and would shout to the man.
"How can you be so brute? Why don’t you get on with the job and finish the suffering of those animals once and for all."
"You must think that to castrate is to blow and make bottles," uncle Mingos said; and then, as a joke he added: "To castrate you need to have a couple of ball."
So the pigs must have cursed uncle Mingos. For to die is a thing inevitable for every body, but uncle Mingos went through it two times. The money he made from chopping testicles, was just about enough to keep the wolfs out of the door. But a time came when uncle Mingos was not call any more to torture the pigs, because the bets would do the job. Then the wolfs went inside the house. Aunty Pilara's trade was another that was gone. They had only a pieces of land, that it was not enough to make a living; and it is well know that with necessity even dogs loose their temper. So in that house, where had been very little harmony, sense uncle Mingos became an alcoholic, they had music at all hours.
I forgot to say that my Aunty Pilara was stronger than her husband, and she always was the one wearing the trousers. Some times uncle Mingos tried to be the boss, but Aunty Pilara would hit him in the head with anything that came to her hand, just to tell him who worn the trousers in that house. It happened that, one day, one of those lousy days, Aunty Pilara was cooking dinner for uncle Mingos, whose dinner consisted of a fried egg and a crumble of bread.
"Pilara" he complained "one egg is nothing for a man. Fry two eggs, bloody shit, because I feel very hungry today."
"Two eggs! They never are going to drop from your arse. Two eggs!"
"Two eggs, yeas. I wanted to eggs."
"One, and thank God for it."
"Thank shit. I want two."
"One."
"Two."
"One."
The usual argument started in earnest. Uncle Mingos, in order to be as tall as his wife, got on the tip of his tows like a ballerina, and shouted on her face:
"I am going to eat two!"
"You are going to eat bloody shit!" Aunty Pilara shouted back and, at the same time, she hit him with the fry pan in the head and, as he was in the tip of his twos, lost the equilibrium and fell flat on the floor, turning white as the white of an egg. Aunty Pilara got frighten, when she saw the estrange face of her husband, looking to the ceiling without moving his eyes.
"Mingos, little Mingos! Do not do that, Mingos. Do not pretend you are dead, because you fright me. Get up. I will fry two eggs for you."
Uncle Mingos stay there, legs up as beetle do when they pretended to be dead. He didn't breath, and didn’t move; he stood there with his eyes open looking at the ceiling as a praying mantis. Aunty Pilara shake the man as hard as if she was making a cocktail with him; shouted inside his ear and bite his nose, but uncle Mingos didn't move a finger. Then Aunty Pilara panic and started to shout wolf, like the shepherd did. Her crying could be heard in hell, and all the people… and their dogs, ran from houses and fields, alarmed by such scandalous shouting. They carry uncle Mingos to bed, which was jus there by the kitchen, and there, all the experts in dead people, put uncle Mingos to the test, to make sure that he was dead. They put a mirror in front of his mouth, and there was a heating argument, some saying that the mirror was steamed, and others that it was due to the dampness of the place. Someone had the good idea of putting an ear over uncle Mingos mouth to find out if he stopped breathing. I said good idea, because, with the noise there was, with everybody talking at once, uncle Mingos would have to shout hard himself to be heard. Some other woman, who perhaps had a feud with uncle Mingos, when they were younger, took the opportunity for revenge, and the prickle uncle’s Mingos skin with a needle till he looked like a sift. Then there was the last and final test: to pore cold water on his balls, because that was what wives would do to their husbands when they fainted after so much firewater. It seams that it is so effective that even the dead jumped on their feet when the freezing water touched their balls. But it didn't work with uncle Mingos, so he was declared dead as a doodle, and nobody asked the course of his departure.
All the neighbours were very helpful in disposing of uncle Mingo's body, as if they were pigs willing to get ride of the gelder. My uncle Esqueire and uncle Penedo, went to tell the priest and to tall the bell at the same time. Those two, especially uncle Penedo, offered themselves to do that, because in the village, where the church was, there were several taverns, and the dead of a gelder could not pass without a good celebration. And celebration they had! As it is the case, when a person of that calibre as my uncle dies, the jokes abound, as the firewater flows. And being a gelded the dead man, one could well imagine what the jokes were about in that occasion. After much drink, when the men got a bit romantic and stupid, the conversation turned to the unknown, such things as mysteries of the imagination, wandering souls and things that go bang in the night. My uncle Isqueiro, who was a heretic, could not stand that sort of talking and he exclaimed in a bout of rage:
"Balls, to all that fucking nonsense that you talk about. You are like children, all of you."
"Well, Manecho, well, you talk like that, but if you came across one of those wandering souls... “
"I shit in all those believes, wandering souls and the whole rotting dead” did swear the brut of my uncle Isqueiro, without letting the other man finish his sentence"
To most of the Spaniards, it can be very offensive, that of showing disrespect for the dead, and some of the men in the tavern fell so, when uncle Isqueiro talked in that manner. There started an argument, and some one had a bet with uncle Iqueiro, which consisted in a litre of fire water, if he had the balls to go, in that very moment, to the cemetery and repeat there what he said in the tavern. Uncle Isqueiro, to proved that the gelder never pass the knife near his balls, walked to the cemetery, with the resolve of wining the bet. But, before I go on with this story, it will be better if I introduce that uncle of mine, to understand what sort of a man he was to make a bet of that nature.


UNCLE MANECHO ISQUEIRO


I call him Manecho Isqueiro, in order not to be mistake him with my grand father who, as I already mention, was call Manecho. Isqueiro means, in Gallego language, stairs of stone. And I found that nicknamed for that uncle, because his house had and stair of stone, from outside to the first floor. That was the only house that had the kitchen upstairs and, to me, that house was built upside down. But, to do things upside down, or back to front, was normal with all my relations. He was a brother of my grandfather on my father side. He was a bachelor. Who devil of woman would marry a man like that? As it can be gather, uncle Isqueiro was a heretic of the first order, a very bad example for the rest of the good Christians of the parish. I remember him almost completely deft; but people would say that he pretended to be deft. He used to say that he never had been so happy as since he lost his hearing, because he didn't have to listing to the stupid talking of people any more. I had an occasions to proved that his hearing was no at all good. I was looking, mouth open, to a small aeroplane, which pass by very low, making a lot of noise. Other children were all very excited, too, pointing at the plane, shouting and jumping, because it may be they never had seen aero planes flying about before. My uncle Isqueiro came along and said to the children:
º"What you shout about? You never saw an eagle before?" for what I realized that he could not heard the artefact.
That uncle, like most of the people of his age, never had gone to school, because I was a toddler when, for the first time, a school started in the village. But, without been able to write a letter or number, his mathematics was upstanding. When he took his oxen, or any other animal to the market, he would asked the price in cents, instead of duros, as it was the usual way of calling the price of the goods. A duro is slang for five pesetas note. The cattle dealers, on hearing all those hundreds of thousands of cents, would look at each other, then looked to my uncle and, with a shy smile, asked:
"How many duros is that?"
My uncle, after call them ignorant, diminutive minds, louse dealers and every unspeakable word, would start to put commas back in his fingers and came up with the figure in duros in no time: five cents one perra chica, two perras chicas one perra gorda: that translating is, two little bitches, one fat bitch. Two fat bitches and one little bitch are a real; four reales a peseta, and five pesetas a duro. More simple impossible. The cattle dealers, on seeing the price to come down in such a proportion would think that they got a bargain and would buy uncle's hacienda even if they pay double the price. My uncle never realized that he could become rich, would he gone in that business of cattle dealing.
That heretic uncle of mine, never went to church, and he never paid any tithing to the priest. Very bad example for the rest, because if the example turned into a plague, the priest's business would go to the dogs. The priest, don Xusticio, would send menaces to him by his sanctimonious messengers.
"Manecho, why don't you come to church with us?"
"I don't go because I don't know a prayer."
"The priest said that, when you died is not going to bury you in the cemetery."
"They can bury me in the orchard an make the cabbages grow."
"You never are going to haven, when you die."
"Neither while I am alive."
"God is not going to show you the way, you will see."
"If He doesn't show me the way I go across the fields."
Another day the woman, by order of the priest, would start another section with my uncle.
"The priest said that he is not going to give to you the birth certificate, when you need one."
"And what I need a birth certificate for?"
"You need it for any other document."
"And what I need another document for?"
"One day the authorities would need it, and may ask you for it."
"Oh, well, if they need it, they can make me one, then."
He had an answered for everything. So the priest decided to do something radical: to fright the hell out of him. Don Xusticio was well aware that men like my uncle were no easy to intimidate, because my uncle was not afraid of ghosts and devils. There was a story about an encounter that my uncle had with the devil. My uncle was coming home later at night, walking in one of those deep roads among the woods. There was a full moon and the night was bright, but here and there, the road would turn black by the shadows of the trees. My uncle was rolling a cigarette and, just in the moment he was licking the rizler, the devil, in the shape of a very large rum, jumped from the woods to the road, just in front of my uncle’s feet. Far from been scared by that apparition, my uncle said:
"I know you."
The devil, which provably had been squeezing his brains thinking how to disguise himself to fright my uncle out of his pants, was so disappointed to be recognized, that broke his horns agents a tree.
To that sort of man, the priest don Xusticio, wanted to teach him a Lesson, thinking that he was cleverer than the devil. He knew, by his team of spies, the habits of every single person in the parish. He knew that my uncle Isqueiro, every night, even when he didn't had a watch, at eleven sharp, with good weather, with rain or snow, he would go to the bottom of his orchard to have a shit and, at the same time, to smoke a cigarette. Just at the bottom of my uncle's orchard, run one of the more deep roads of the village. Because it was deep and dark, it was know by the name of the Blind Road. In that road, many years back, a man died in mysterious circumstances, and the word was around that the soul of the dead man was wandering at night here. For that reason the villagers tried not to tread that road at night. When I was a boy, I even avoid the road at daytime, if I could. That was a perfect set to cure my uncle by shock, and make of him a believer, like the rest.


THE SAINT COMPANY


There is a legend in Galicia, which nowadays is practically dead, but very much alive when I was boy. In some parts is call Estadea, which has not meaning; in other parts Santa Compania, Saint Company. It was interpreted in more ways than one, too. It would appear in the form of many noised lights that, in a closer inspection, happened to be skeletons, drugging chains, going about the country side, preferring deep roads, visiting the cemeteries, and dragging with them every soul they came across with. They said that those are the wanderings souls of the dead who never have been bury in holly ground, and they are looking for a resting place; and the chains they drug on with them, are the symbols of their imprisonment, from which they never ever would break freed. The only way to be safe from such an encounter would be to carry warm bread, or to make a circle in the ground and get inside it. But, who is going to carry warm bread all the time at night? On the other hand it seems that they make their apparition rudder suddenly, those party goes. Their password, as they come across the living, is: smells life. The believe was that those skeletons had a very fine nose, and it was not easy to hide from them. All that terrifying experience was waiting for my uncle, one night, while he was happily having a shit on his orchard. The women, all friends of don Xusticio, were hidden on the road, covered with white sheets, on which they had painted skeletons with soot from the chimney. On their feet they had chains from their dogs or from the donkeys and, as lights, they had torches made with straw and impregnated with resin. At eleven p.m., as usually, in a very dark night, my uncle went to the bottom of the orchard, no suspecting what was waiting there to catch him with his trousers down. When he alight a match, which served the women as the signal, they put fire to the torches and started to walk, dragging their noisy chains. As they pass where my uncle was, they all murmured at once:
"Smells life!"
"And shit as well" said my uncle, and went on with his business.
The women dropped their torches, pick up the chains from their feet and went home. That sort of man was uncle Isqueiro. But that bet almost cost him his life that night. The gravedigger, who was not expecting that extra job, had made plans for other thing next day; because that of digging graves was something on the side. In the parish never was such a plague as to make a good liven from the dead. So, when the gravedigger came home, and the wife gave him the news of the dead of uncle Mingos he said:
"Fucking gelder! I had another plans for tomorrow mourning, and this gelder comes in a bad moment to touch my balls."
As there was a full moon, the gravedigger decided to kill to birds with one stone. He had something to eat, and then he, armed with shovel and pickaxe, went to the cemetery to open a hole for the gelder. He was a man who knew well his job, so he was not afraid, or superstitious, of the dead, or wandering souls, for he made sure that the dead he bury would stay deep in their places. But that night, as he was already deep to his neck in the grave, there arrived my uncle Manecho Isqueiro insulting the dead. The grave digger got scare, not of the dead, but because he thought that it was some mad man, or a sort of joke that, the youngsters, on finding that he was there digging a hole for the gelder, wanted to play a nasty joke on him. Because, in those days, for lack of other entertainments, youngsters were all the time after no good, to enjoy themselves to the expenses of somebody else. The gravedigger stay put on the grave, waiting to see what the joke was about, or what that mad man was there for. Then he recognized the voice of my uncle Isqueiro, as he repeated the words he said in the tavern:
"Dead people, ghosts, wandering souls and all that shit, came out here now and I will sh..."
He didn't finish the shit. The grave digger didn't know anything about the bet, occurs, and he felt very angry that, a man of the age of my uncle, would go there at night, like a young hooligan, to frighten the grave digger. The man came out of his grave, blandishing the shovel, and shouting to my uncle:
"I am going to make you shit in your fucking mother, you bastard...you will see... “
Uncle Isqueiro was getting deaf, but the grave digger shouted loud enough for him to hear, and on seeing the body coming out of the grave, he thought that really all the dead were coming for him, and he ran for his life so fast that he didn't touch the ground. The gravedigger was behind, with the determination of making of him another defunct, shouting insults, and hitting the walls with the shovel. Uncle Isqueiro reached the tavern, out of breath, as the saying goes, with his lungs in the mouth. He curry with him a pestiferous smell, for he shit himself, and it seems that frighten shit smell horrendous. Everybody asked him what happened to him, but uncle Isqueiro didn't have breath to answer, and he just fell on a bench trying to recover his lungs. Seconds later arrived the gravedigger blandishing the shovel, and he had to be stopped, for he wanted to open uncle’s Isqueiro's head with the shovel, so angry he was.
"I will teach you to make jokes with the dead, you bastard, son of a bitch. At your age making a hooligan of yourself."
The gravedigger left the mark of the shovel on the bench, as he tried to kill uncle Isqueiro. But he calm down himself when he found out that all had been a bet. He laughed with the others, and all had a litre of firewater on my uncle's account.
Back to the story of uncle Mingos:
While all those devilish things were taking place in the tavern, in the house of Mingos the wake was in progress; and, as the gelder was so famous, there were people all over the place. Because the house was small, the mourners fill in the corral as well, and even down the road. Among the relations, there was the famous brother, the tinker, with his wooden leg and the wrong shoe on the other foot. He was getting a bit old as well. And his days out, like my Aunty the Miller, were to go to wakes and funerals, where he would find a big audience to tell his jokes and anecdotes of his trade. There were plenty of that in the wake of uncle Mingos, all about balls and castration, and the like. There was a chunk of the night gone, when came to spoiled the fan don Xusticio, the priest, to give the man the last rites. For don Xusticio use to bolt the door once the horse ran out, and he always was late with the last rites. People used to say that he had a deal with the devil. He improvised his altar over the kitchen table and said something in Latin. Then he went into the room and blessed uncle Mingos with a shower of holly water. The water had to be a miraculous one, for uncle Mingous, on feeling the water on his face, awaked and sat on the bed, shouting very angrily:
"I will eat two!"
My God! To say that and the people running in stampede was all the same. In the scramble, for their lives, the priest was left flat on the floor, and the tinker lost his wooden leg. As he ran, jumping in one leg, as mug pies do, he saw the pries on the floor and said to him:
"God saves both, padre."
While this was happening, uncle Mingos was sat in bed, thinking that he was dreaming. But he was neither dreaming nor dead. He jus had hibernated for a while and he awaked with the holly water, thinking, perhaps, that spring had come. Why the bloody hell he didn't stay dead, because he put the household in unnecessary expenses, money that they didn't have, and better would have been for him and the rest, to be bury alive.
"As if we were not plenty, grand mother had a babe," said Aunty Pilara afterwards.
The box was made, and they would have to be paid for it. The grave was open and had to be pay for it, too. And the priest would not do things for God sake, and he charged for every little service to the community, never mind how poor they were. The only one to be the first in writing off his expenses was the gravedigger.
"I live it open” he said, referring to the grave "that the patron fiestas are just around the corner, and there would be somebody to fell into it"
The gravedigger joked, because, people from other parish would say that they would not like to be from our parish, for the reason that every dead occur before the patron fiesta.
"If it was no so, how I could have a fiesta" used to joke the gravedigger.
That particular year, the day before the fiesta, the grave digger was in the tavern, celebrating the outcome, as most of the men would do, in those occasion, and he said:
"This year I been fuck, that nobody died, and my fiesta would have to go without wine." And, going home, drunk as the rest, he fell down from a footpath to a deep road and kill himself. As the grave for my uncle Mingos still was open, the gravedigger took advantage of it. After that, the people commented that he had being the only gravedigger, in the memory of the parish, who left his job done. But, the box had being made by my uncle the Woodpecker, and he could be very mean person, when he wanted to, and he would not forgive a dept even to the dead. He said to my Aunty that he want his pound of flesh, that it was not his fault if Mingos revived. I heard the argument between Aunty Pilara and uncle Woodpecker and, after much shouting, Aunty Pilara got angry and said to the man:
"Brink the bloody box, that I was going to by one to keep the beans, and that one will do." And turning to uncle Mingos she added. "And next time I will make sure that you are dead."
Aunty Pilara kept the beans in the box, and it came very handy, as she would joke, but not for long, for it was less than a year that uncle Mingos decided to make use of it. But before he died again, he had to suffer many jokes, some of bad taste. People would point at the man with the finger and commented:
"That is the man who came back from dead."
"Hey, Mingos, how they treat you there. No very well, it seems, for you deciding to come back."
"Mingos, they don't need gelders there, eh?"
Uncle Mingos would laugh and said: "Small yes, but tuff, and dead had no balls to take me."
Tuff, yes but, since then, he never had been the same man again. He started to loose his memory, to the point that he didn't know when he was coming or going. He kept quiet about his memory loss, till one day it was discover that he was in real trouble with himself. On market days he would tide up one of the legs of his trousers with a white string, to make sure that he would not get lost among so many people. But in one occasion, another man had his trousers leg tied up with a similar string, and uncle Mingos, instead to come home, went to the other man's house. Since that incident Aunty Pilara would keep an eye on him. But, just when it seemed that his situation was improving, he got lost again. They were coming from the market, Aunty Pilara and uncle Mingos, and near home, uncle Mingos said to his wife:
"You go on, woman, that I am going to take my trouser down behind that oak."
Aunty Pilara knew what sort of trousers down her husband meant, because she had that experience from the tailor, her husband’s father. What uncle Mingos meant was that he wanted to stop in the tavern for a drink. She pretended otherwise and went on walking.
“Don’t take too long. Te stew only needs to be warm up said my Ant Pilara."
Before leaving for the market, Aunty Pilara made a pot of stew and, on arriving home she put the pot to the fire, to warm the stew while waiting for Mingos. She waited and waited, and Mingos never came back. She went to the tavern for him, but Mingos was no there.
"He never stopped here,” the attendant said.
A young man, from another village, who happened to be in the tavern, said that he saw Mingos walking through the fields near his village.
"Son of a bitch!" sworn Aunty Pilara. "He is not at all well, and his local was not good enough for him."
Aunty Pilara went home fuming, and swear to kill him once more on his returning. But Mingos didn't return. Aunty Pilara went to next village to look for him. She was talking to her self all the way:
“Shit son of a bitch.” To go to the taverns he has not bad leg.”
And she got the news that he had not been in any of the taverns there, either. Aunty Pilara returned, as fast as she could, and raised the alarm. Her husband was lost once more. Immediately a party of men from the village went on his search. That party returned at night without uncle Mingos; and another bigger party of men went on his search at dawn. It took three days with the three nights to find the man. When they found him, they almost didn't recognize him, because, as it had been raining, his hat had discoloured and left the man like a camouflage soldier.
“Where are you going, Mingos?” The man who found him asked.
“Where am I going? I am going home to eat the stew. What you think?”
“This is not the way home, Mingos.”
“Bollocks! Now you are going to tell me that I don't know the way home.”
There was no way to convince him that he had been three days and three nights missing. For him jus passed a few minutes. The men had to make him turn by force, and he grumbled all the way.
“Shit! For a joke it is enough, shit! Now let me go home, that Pilara would be waiting with the stew; and I am going to be late because of you.” And when they arrived home, he said to the man: “Didn't I tell you that I knew the way. Or what you think I am?”
He never believed that he been all that time missing. After eating a cup of stew, he went to be, and from there he was taking out, feet first. But not before he gave some more trouble, and leaving Aunty Pilara with more debts. He felt very poorly, and my Aunty Maria made a bomb fire with eucalyptus and laurel, where she burned garlic, tails of lizard, tails of cod, all mixed with plenty herbs. Years later still were there the pestilent smell; but, in the end, and for the first time, they had to call the doctor. It seems that uncle Mingos had a bout of mild pneumonia. Perhaps it was my uncle Mingos, the first to be prescribed suppositories by that new doctor. The doctor was one of those modern ones and he said that the wonder medicine had turned the whole medical establishment upside down. I suppose he meant that what first went down the hatch, then went up the arse hole. He was who recommended beer with condom to the priest, and the same who took some good money from my cousin Carolina, for treating the sheep tick in her pussy. Aunty Pilara, poor devil, had not money for food and had to ask a neighbour for a load to by the suppositories. The pharmacist, as it was his custom, complained about the new ideas of the doctor, because the doctor was taking his clientele away. For, before the doctor came along with his ideas, it was the pharmacist who had the monopoly of everything. And, when the doctor started with his modern ideas, nobody wanted the pharmacist bloodsuckers and he had to stored expensive medicines that not every body could afford. He gave the suppositories to Aunty Pilara, grumble about the new ideas of the doctor, but this time he didn't recommend bloodsuckers. Good luck to the bloodsuckers, because if they suck uncle’s Mingos blood, they would died from an over dose of alcohol. Aunty Pilara, as the suppositories were so expensive, and came in a nice box, she could not resist the curiosity and, on the way home she open the box an look, in amazement, to the contents. On reaching home she said to her husband:
"Have you seen what an enormous tablets that crazy doctor gave to you." Uncle Mingos looked at the bullets, and said.
"Fucking hell! And I have to swallow those?"
"Well, what else?"
"Even a cockerel can't swallow that! What you talk about? Look inside. May bet there are tinny ones inside."
"I try already, Mingos. There is no way you can open them."
"What the pharmacist said? Didn't he told you how they had to be taking?"
"The pharmacist! That bustard. The only thing he cares is the money, then what he cares?"
"Why you didn't ask him?"
"Because I thought you knew, as you know everything."
"Well, go back there and ask him."
"I am not going there. Not to hear that man morning and grumble as if he was doing a favour, after all that money he charge for the medicine. I bet he made a peseta or two in those tablets; and, instead to be happy, he kept mourning and mourning."
"Well, you go back there and ask him, and if he mourns, give the tablets back and tell him to stick them in his arse. Because I am not going to swallow those bloody tablets." You know very well that my throat never was good for that."
"Oh yes, I know that dun good. Your bloody throat was made for firewater. That one you can swallow well."
They argued like that for hours no ending. Aunty Pilara, as it was the case in those days and with those peasants, was scare of going back and asked to the pharmacist how to take the tablets, because the pharmacist, like the people of his kind, always would treat those peasants as shit.
"Look, Mingos. I bring a pale of water, and with that you will push the lot down."
"No in your life. You have those, if you like, but I am not going to take them without knowing how. What you want is to see me dead."
"And I wouldn't loos a fortune. Going three days and three nights on a walk through the woods. What you think you are, a wolf or a fox?"
"You shut up with that fucking story, you and the rest. You are not going to
Marked me believe that story, because I am no mad. You fucking lot! But you want to drive me mad, that is what you wanted."
Aunty Pilara, making heart from tripe, as the saying goes, went back to see the pharmacist.
"Senor" she asked timidly "those big tablets you sold me, are they to be taking as they are, or have to be chopped with an axe, because I don't see how they can be taking as big as they are."
"What! The doctor didn't tell you how they have to be taking?"
"No, señor, no. The doctor is another one as good as you. What he wants is the money."
The pharmacist felt a bit insult, thinking how easy it was for him to get so from those peasants, and he decided to be straight with Aunty Pilara, and no loosing more saliva with ignorant people. Aunty Pilara went back, cursing the pharmacist, her husband, the doctor and the whole bloody world.
"What that fucking man said?" uncle Mingos asked, on seeing his wife in such bad temper.
"I could tell you what he said before I went there, knowing how that mad dog is."
"What he said?"
"He said to put those in your arse."
After asking for the money, and all that trouble, uncle Mingos didn't want the tablets, and Aunty Pilara, in a bout of rage, chunked the bloody things through the kitchen window, and the chickens had the lot. During the wake, Aunty Pilara complained that, if the pharmacist didn't play jokes, Mingos would be alive. But, just in case it was another trick of uncle Mingos, she made sure, before going into more expenses, that the man was dead. She could not avoid, though, that the experts in dead people had their go at uncle Mingos. They burned his tows with candles and hit him on the knees with a beetle, to see if there was any reaction. But in the end had to come the doctor to give the dead certificate, because the priest said that he would no bury the man without that. Aunty Pilara was crying on the top of the road, as Mingos was taking away; but at the same time she complained, loudly to him, that he left all the tools in the house without a handle. At that moment, my Aunty Maria, the one I call Aunty of the cats, because her house was full of cats, walked up the road, passing the cortège.
"Where are you going, Maria," Aunty Pilara asked, seeing that she was not going with the others to the funeral.
"I am sorry, Pilara, dear; but I have to go to the market by force."
"Waite a minute. I change clothes and come with you,” said Aunty Pilara.
And in that manner was how my Aunty Pilara and uncle Mingos departed, one for heaven and the other for the market. Aunty Maria was telling Aunty Pilara, how sorry she was for her failure with her medicine, and she blame all on her memory, for she had forgotten to put in the bomb fire the tow of a bachelor's frog, or something. Aunty Pilara told Aunty Maria not to wary, because uncle Mingos was better there than here, considering how his memory was letting him down.
"Poor bustard", sigh Aunty Pilara. "He never been much of a man, but since his memory was gone, he was useless, God forbid me."
"Rest in peace", said Aunty Maria."
"Amen."


THE ANDALUZ


Pilara and uncle Mingos, had a girl, the only child. She married a man by the name of El Andaluz, because he was from Andalusia. In one occasion this Andaluz drop in the local tavern looking for accommodation. But there were not any of that, and nobody ever hear the word before. So, as nobody would dear to lodge an alien, uncle Mingos, who happened to be there, after the Andaluz pain him a couple of rounds, happily he took the man to his house. In the house there was not much room, and the word went around that the Andaluz shared the bed with the girl, who fell in love with the alien. And the rest is history. The poor girl thought of the man as a very amusing, for the way of talking he got. But it would have been better for her to be run over by an oxen cart, because she got more beatings from the Andaluz than hairs she got on her head. The Andaluz believe, something that seems more extend in his region, that to beat a woman was part of loving her. The poor girl, too, believed that it was the case, and she suffered the beatings with the resignation of a saint. There is a Spanish saying, referring to someone being starved, that went hungrier than a schoolteacher. May be because, in the pass, very few people would go to school, and the business of being a teacher was not a good one. That was what people of the village would say about the girl, when she marry the Andaluz; because he would spend all the money he could make in wine. The girl complained to him once, after they went to lived together in a little house that some one let them:
"You remember what you said to me before we marry?"
"What I said before we marry", he asked.
"That you were going to keep me as an angel?"
"And I kept my promise: as an angel you are, naked and without food."
The Andaluz came to the region with the mission of restoring a saint. There was very famous chapel just over the border of our parish, called saint Peter’s chapel. This is why saint Peter had the good fortune, not to belong to our parish, because otherwise he would not be given a coat of paint even if he were going rotten. The chapel was open only once a year, saint Peter's day, when a very famous "romeria" (call it pilgrimage) was celebrated. That day the sacristan, may be with some help, would go there with a sharp sickle, to cut off all the stinging nets and hawthorns that grew over the year around the chapel. While doing so, he would drop a litre of kerosene on the enormous lock in order to loose the rust; then, helped by a torque made with a cart's stake passed throughout the hole of the key, a couple of men would manage, just, to turned the key and open the door. Saint Peter was taken, in procession, (a heavy affair, for that saint Peter need about ten men to carry him along.) I remember the saint coming out with a hand over his forehead, as a general saluting his troops, but I thought, the first time I saw him coming out of that lugubrious solitude, that it was to protect his eyes from the sun. That ceremony was, to my thinking, a macabre sort of thing. Saint Peter, a giant on his golden pedestal, was taking for a ride up the footpath to the summit of the hill where there was a cross, as if he was a dog taking for a pi; and then he was back in that lonely prison for one year more, as if he was a dangerous criminal.
Well, in on occasion, that saint Peter play a joke on our priest, don Xusticio. Something had happened to the priest, from the other parish, and don Xusticio went to do the ceremony. All the people, call them "romeros" were waiting for saint Peter to come out of his incarceration, some sat all over the hill, others around don Xusticio, by the door of the chapel. The romeros got a surprise when they saw that saint Peter had, over his crowning head, an owl's nest with two offspring, all covered in hair, white as snow. For a while the congregation took it as a miracle, because they thought that saint Peter had grown hair. The ones in realizing that the miracle were owls, were the children, because they knew more of nests and birds than the devil, and they laugh till they pi themselves with such an unusual spectacle. Because the birds, on seeing human beings for the first time, must thought that we were really ugly, and they, with eyes bigger than plates, looked at the multitude frighten, turning around their heads to see everybody, till they broke their necks and kill themselves. The sanctimonious women, who always were around don Xusticio like bodyguards, thought that the birds were the devil and they knelt to pray and to do the sign of the cross. Saint Peter was full of birds shit, from head to two, and the shit of owls is worst than caustic soda; so saint Peter was left as a leper. To clear the mess they call the Andaluz, and he took his time, but saint Peter was left as a new saint. So that saint, the owls or the devil, had something to do with my cousin’s disgrace: her marriage with the Andaluz.
As the Andaluz, before marrying, was living in sin, the news reached don Xusticio, through his sanctimonious spies. And, as the Andaluz would say: "We do that only to save sheets." But don Xusticio didn't agree with that and had a word with the Andaluz to tell him that, in his parish, he was not going to aloud sin to thrive.
"Padre, I have no money to marry," the Andaluz said to the priest. "Not even to pay you."
In the church, just in the middle of the altar, there was a crucifix of a large since, perhaps larger than live; but the figure of the Son of God was so faded away, for the dampness in the church, that it was difficult to know who He was. The Andaluz and the priest, after much bargaining, came to a deal: the priest would marry the Andaluz for nothing, and the Andaluz would restore the crucifix. And that was the only touch to the church that don Xusticio left behind. The Andaluz sanded down all the fungus from the crucifix and gave it a hand of wood preserving. Later on, he gave another hand of paint. The nails seemed the real thing, with a rusty colour, and drops of blood poring from the wounds, with a three dimensional effect, that the Andaluz achieved with some shades of black under the droplets. He painted black hair, and to matched the hair, black eyebrows, but the sideboards were whitish, as to show the age of the Son of God. He painted big black eyes, predominating the white part, for which the figure of the Son, gave the sensation of being in real pain. The churchgoers were so impressed by the figure, that they neglected all the other saints in the church and only would pray to the figure of the Son. The Andaluz was ever so proud of his achievement, and he started to go to church only to observe the reaction of the people. Just a day after the Andaluz finished his masterpiece, it was the patron saint of the parish, and don Xusticio never would miss an occasion to spoiled a party, if he could. And to do so, he would call a virgin prostitute, if she were not covered from nose to tow. That day, taking the opportunity that the congregation was so impressed by the crucifix, he got hold of a big candle and started to frighten every body out of their pants, telling them that all were their fault that the Son of God had suffered in the cross. He shacked the candle in a menacing manner, and the wax was spilling all over the place, and the flame of the candle, like a torch, was licking the cross. The Andaluz, being fiesta time, as it was, he started the celebration the day before, as many other men did, and he had a few glasses of wine in the belly. On seeing the wax from the candle flowing, and the flames liking the feet of the crucifix, he almost panic, and shouted to the priest:
"Padre! Be careful, the bloody paint is no dry yet."
The priest froze like a gun dog stalking a partridge.


AUNTY MARIA AND FAMILY


Aunty Maria had a son and a daughter. The girl was from a different father, one of those things, which can happen to any woman. Children, in those villages, and in those, were breast feed till the age of going to the army. That girl, cousin of mine, was about four years older than I. And I heard that she was a big girl, when still was after her mother, like a chicken after the hen, asking to be fed. People used to tell her mother:
"Maria, stop to feeding that girl like that”
"Well, saves me to cook" she would answered.
In those times, for the rural people, to have a day off there had to be a good reason for it; to have a holiday would be a sacrilege. It wouldn't be difficult for a doctor to diagnosing most of the illness that those people suffered. Usually those complains were anaemia, or exhaustion, in the case of women. Men would have their liver burned out by the firewater. The problem for a doctor, in those days, would be what to prescribe to those people. Expensive medicines they could not effort; a holiday they would not take, because that was to be lazy. The way around those problems was to go to the waters. Medicine, like news, was passing by the word of mouth. "Don't spend money with doctors. They charge you the earth and they don't know what are talking about. Go to the waters, asked Mess so and so, who just came the other day from taking the waters. She was with a foot in the grave and she came strong as an oxen." The spa was like a holiday camp, even better, because there every body could tell their problems, and all the time would be some one to listen. My Aunty Maria had to go to the waters, because the girl left her without blood. Three women from the village went together. There were several ways to travel: donkey, horse, mule and the train. The train was no so fast as travel by beast. The beasts were more convenient, for the ones that could effort it, because they travel from door to destination. To travel by train, first was the bus once a week to town, and there the train, and after the train a long walking. There was not coal, and the train burned wood, for which reason was so slow that to walk was faster. At less there was plenty wood in the way. The train only had to stop somewhere along the line, and the driver and machinist, may be with the help from some passengers, armed with axes, would chopped a tree, just there by the track and have fuel for another few miles. It would take time, but would not be time lost, because the passengers would take the opportunity to get off and shit, as the toilet were always handy there in the middle of the bushes. Going to the waters, even if there was not a crumble left at home, the women had to carry with them plenty to eat. The main reason was that nobody was keen to show that they were poor. All wanted to show that they were well off. It was a lied that everybody knew, and even so they tried to kid each other. That was one of the reasons why women would return from the spa as good as new: plenty food and a good rest, and then they blessed the waters for their recovering. A young man joined my Aunty, and the other couple of neighbours, in the compartment. He was thin, with beard, long nose, and he carried a load of books. He was one of the new wave; as people would call the modern way of dressing, with tighten trousers and pointed shoes. He didn't talk, but read all the time. The woman, as they could not read, and they didn’t smoke either, passed the time eating bread, ham and cheese. They were not hungry, so they said, but had to do something, not to get bored. The train stopped in the woods, and a few men went for a tree; in the mean time, most of the passengers went for a pi, including the two neighbours of my Aunty. She stays to look after their belongings. Because there were such a crowd looking for an appropriated place to do number one and two, the women went further a field, and took long time in coming back. My Aunty started to feel impatient, and she kept moving her arse in the seat, as if she, too, was desperate for a pi. For the first time the young man lifted his eyes from the book and look to my Aunty. My Aunty started to mourn, then to lament, and soon she screamed and got hold of her tits. The young man put the book aside and asked Aunty Maria, in a very correct manner:
"You have problems with your breasts, isn't that so?"
"Oh, senor, you must be a prophet, otherwise how did you guess?"
"I am studding to be a doctor. I would be passing my last exam in a few months. This is why I noticed that you are in pain"
"I am, senor, I am. I have a girl, that soon is going to have a boy friend, and she still is behind me crying that wants my tit. I feel sorry for her, so kept given her the breast, and look, she almost killed me. The doctor had to send me to the waters."
"It is not good to stop all of a suddenly. You should have stop in stages."
"Oh I know that, but what can I do? I could not brink her with me. The problem of
money, you know? We poor people always have to undress one saint to dress another."
On saying so, Aunty screamed, as the man who caught his balls in a draw, and said.
"My God! This is worst than giving birth."
"Do no suffer, senora", said the young man. "If you don't mind, as a doctor that soon I will be, I can suck the tits for you."
"Oh my God! And you would do that for me, doctor?"
"That to me will be the same as prescribing a medicine. To alleviate your pain, yes I will do it."
"And how much could cost me that prescription, doctor?" my Aunty asked, just in case it was something she could not effort.
"Oh, come on, senora! How can I charge you for that?"
"Then do it, because this is worst than having a tooth out."
The future doctor, with exquisite care, started to pull my aunt’s tits out, with a bit of help from her. The women in my family all were of the best pedigree, with respect to milk production, and Aunty Maria was who carry the flag. In that occasion, as she had stop to feed the girl, her tits were like the hunch back of a camel. The future doctor knelt in front of my Aunty, stretched his lips and, withdrawing his teeth, because as a man of medicine, he was aware that a little prickle from one of the teeth the tits would explode in his face as a bomb, so inflated they were. He valance his act, sacking one tit a bit and changing to the other, as a good mechanic would do in tighten up an engine gasket. My Aunty soon felt a relief as if she was in heaven.
I mention that my Aunty, according to what I heard, was a nice woman at one time, when she still would have a wash now and then. By the time she went to the waters, her husband was gone, and the lover, of which the girl was the result, had disappear, hence it was some time that she had not experienced the lips of a professional. So, after the pain was gone, the relief gave away to pleasure, and soon she was mourning again, as if the pain was coming back. At that moment the other two women returned, and stay there speechless, watching the operation, hypnotize as a bird by the a snake.
"Oh, my goodness! I swear by the devil that you are going to be a good doctor", said Aunty Maria, and she asked the young man: "Don't you like something else with that milk."
"Yes, please. Give me a chunk of that bread you have there."
The poor chap was starved to dead. My Aunty fount out years later who the chap was. He was from a poor family, not fare from my village. He had won a scholarship, and he got the degree in the end, after much starvation. I had to tell this anecdote of the student because later on I will be back to him. I already told that Aunty Maria had being rather pretty at one time; but ever since I remember the woman, she was an ugly sort of witch. Once, she spelled a little devil, or a malicious spirit that, according to her and one of my other aunty, one of the Millers, I had entrenched somewhere in my soul. She used seven grains of wheat, seven crumbs o bread and a bowl of holly water, and never again a devil, or similar creature, did bother me. For the lack of doctors, or the money to pay their services, the village's witch would spell those illnesses very effectively. And my Aunty Maria was one of the women who could find remedies for everything. She always had, hanging in the kitchen, tails of lizards, snake skins, buts wins and bones of cod, amen of all sorts of other harvest. Tea of Tilo for the nerves, tea of manzanilla for stomachache, and linen seeds for toothache, and to help women given birth. There was a yellow root, whose name I forgot, which was use as a laxative for constipation, more effective than Epson’s salts. For diarrhoea, the opposite of the roots, were the young corns of a male pine tree. I had those roots once and almost happened to me the same as my Aunty La Cubana. The roots had to be boiled, for the patient to drink the water. The main problem was to have the recipe just right. But, as everything was done by the rule of thumb, things never were right. I could not stop shitting, after I had the roots, and then Aunty Maria stopped the flood with the water of pine corns. Then I could not shit, so she gave me more roots. After a month or so, she go things right and I got well. Those remedies were open secrets of Aunty Maria, but she had the classified ones, that she would not tell anybody. Aunty Maria used to say that medicines like jokes had to be taking in their right moment. As the same joke makes people laugh in one occasion, and may be offensive in others, the same would happened with those natural medicines: they had to be taken at the right time. The moon had a lot to do with it, as it did the weather, like frost and foggy days. That knowledge of Aunty Maria was coming from her mother, one of my grand mothers. That grand mother of mine, I being told, would spell illness of eye and tooth, and she could bless a house or exorcise a devilish soul better than a priest. Where she exercised her powers, all those creatures, of ill intentions, would live the house in a stampede, and never ever they would dear to put a foot back in the place again. Aunty Maria had a moustache almost as big as a Mexican bandit, a nose like an eagle; and her hair was al the time flying about, as if it wanted escape from her head. Her husband was a Portuguese man, but I do not remember the chap. All my aunties seamed to get ride of their husbands early, and I wander why. In the case of Aunty Maria, she had an affair, when she was younger and still pretty. It seemed impossible to me that she change so radically. But may be that she was better looking at one time, because, from that affair, she had a girl, my cousin, and she was a pretty girl. But, in the timer I remember, Aunty Maria was an ugly and dirty woman. I only once saw the women touch water. It was at the time of collecting the corn, and she was feeling very tire, and she could not keep her eyes open. By the door she had a large stone trough, to collect water from the roof for the animals to drink. There was a big chestnut tree near by, and the chestnut lives make water became blue. In that disgusting water Aunty Maria washed her eyes and, as she did so, she commented:
"Good enough. At my age I am no going to catch any mice."
I think she meant that, at her age, not a man was going to look at her, if she was clean or not. But, at that time I took the word as it was and I thought that she could not catch mice because there were no mice in her house, with all the cats that lived there. One could not sit on a bench without a cat coming out rushing from under ones arse. To me cats are a paradox. They detest water and, nevertheless, they are the cleanest of animals. I observed that, at less in those villages, they would prefer dark houses and extravagant people, where they were treat with the less of fuss. And that was the house of my Aunty Maria. She didn't treat her cats with any love, on the contrary, some times, and apparently without reason, she would pick up the broom and started to brush cats out of the door. But in a minute they were inside again. Any person that lost a cat knew where to find it. Aunty Maria never told stories, but she was amusing all the same, for her proverbs and the talking of witchcraft. I use to tell stories to my cousin, naive stories from school, as if he was a boy and I a man, when he was much older than me, and about ten times my since. But he laughed so much that he made the fire burn up faster; and his innocent and babe like laugh was so contagious that he made the cats laugh. More than once I pi my trousers with his contagious laughter. After laughing for half an hour, he would get serious, all of a suddenly and, scratching his head, would look at me with a puzzle face, and said:
"Hey, tell me that joke again. I didn't catch what it means."
When we, my cousin an I, didn't have stories to tell, I would ask aunty Maria to tell us a story of hers, knowing that she always would have the same answer.
"I soon finish", she would said:
I am a very lucky woman,
for I have seven skirts,
a present from seven mad men.
They were all my friends,
and I friendly with all of them.

So the poor woman, for been a friend of so many mad men, she finished mad herself. She had a donkey, which was part of the family for donkey’s years, as the saying goes. The animal had not a hair on its skin, so old the beast was. So, one good day Aunty Maria decide to take the animal to the hills and live it there to finished its days in peace, as people would do in those days with old horses and donkeys. But because of the steep of the hill, the donkey arrived up there tire, and it fell on its knees. Aunty Maria put the animal on its feet, and talked to it, and the donkey answered snorting a puffing. After some hours gone, she returned with the donkey. Her son asked her:
"Mother, weren't you going to live the donkey on the hills?
"I was, my son, I was. But on reaching there, the poor thing got on its knees imploring me not to live it there alone. So I brought it back."
From there on her madness went from bad to worst. Her madness was one that would make any body laugh, and, at the same time it was very sad. She could be seen naked, walking on the fields at any time of the day, and if she met anybody on her way, she would apologies for been naked, saying that she had forgotten to pick up the clothes from the line. The village woman had to keep an eye on their clothes when they hang them to dry on the line or over the hedge rows, for my Aunty was all the time looking for clothes to get dressed, and every body's clothes were her clothes.


COUSIN CONSUELO


I enjoyed going to Aunty Maria's house in the evenings. One of the reasons was my cousin who was rather nice, and we were very good friends, even when she was older than me. Her name was Consuelo, that means consolation, but she too, like most of the villagers, had her nick name, and was know as the Sardinera, meaning the woman who sales sardines. She didn't sale sardines, but she was not a very hard worker, and to pretend that she was busy, she was all the time curing an empty basket on her head, as the women that came around the village with sardines; and from there she got her nickname. She was more successful with men than her mother with cats, as if men, like cats, had a good nose for fish. Because Consolation really enjoyed the business of consoling men. She was a hot devil, indeed. She received her many boy friends in the corridor, by the cow’s mangers, where she consoled the lot. The corridor had two doors, one at the front and another at the back. Very convenient, so her boy friends came at the front and went at the back. The passage was separated from the kitchen by a wooden partition. The partition was very old, and the boards were losing due to the heat from the fire in the kitchen. When my cousin Consuelo was consoling a friend, the board creaked, passing from low notes to crescendo, till that was like the Tempest. One didn't need a very sharp imagination to know the out come, and I enjoy that almost as if I was doing it myself; but looking at my Aunty I felt terribly embarrassed, and I had to laugh. Then Aunty Maria would call up:
"Consuelo, come in. It is time."
It was not time to come in, it was time to come out, I was thinking. Consuelo's brother, who was strong as an ox and never had the smell of a woman in his life, did suffer as if his teeth were pull out; then he would start to poke the fire with a long stick, till the whole kitchen was full of sparkles, and he grumble:
"Mother, this house is becoming a brothel. I am going to town one of this days and I am going to bring home a couple of whores."
"A couple, son! A dozen is better. They are cheaper by the dozen" his mother would tell him.
As the argument with mother and son went on, talking louder and louder, Consuelo would let out a scream, like a bloody cat, and then there was silence all over the place. We looked at each other, as the one who said: "What was that?" And I laughed then, and it was at that moment when my Aunty would chase me with the broom like a cat, for having a dirty mind, I presume. Consuelo, may be tire of farming sort of boy friends, went to the city, and three months late came speaking a funny sort of language. In those days of Franco era, there was not aloud to speak more than Spanish, and any other language, especially in schools, was anathema. But in Galicia, in the countryside, the peasants spoke gallego, the only language they knew. And the so-called posh people, from the city, would look upon the rural people as dirt, because they spoke Gallego. So, my cousin had to improve on her Spanish, and soon came to the village speaking back to front; and the people from the village, not to be less than the ones in town, would comment upon my cousin and her ways of talking.
"Who she think she is? She is a load of shit, like the rest of us.”
But, the youngsters, teenagers without other experiences, would admire any one who tried to break the tighten mould of the villagers. The youngsters already gathered in houses where they could effort a radio and they enjoyed terrifically listening to music and news from other latitudes. So, the young would stick to my cousin like flies to a piece of rotten flesh to ask news about the world. I remember the day we were going to church, the day of a fiesta, and she said to us:
"I have a boy friend in town, and I am teaching him to fuck."
To us, that seemed a useless remark. Who needs to be teaching to fuck? We saw, from the time we were in the cradle, cats and dogs, no to mention chickens and birds; or going up the schedule, sheep, donkeys and horses, bulls and cows, all having a go at it, in the biggest bacchanal the world ever saw. We were young, but we only need a girl, we knew the rest. We only envy such a lucky boy friend, because, precisely for the good time that animals were having around us, the call of puberty was hitting us early with all its mighty force, and we young men, cursed the day we being born human beings. She, to our like, had improve her good looks, because of her whiter resemblance, due to the shade of the city, and her hands looked softer, by the use of not so heavy tools. She seemed to us, all the boys, an angel. Then, that was the word going around that she was in trouble, because she went to see the priest, don Andy, looking for help. I never found out what advise or help my cousin got from don Andy, in the end. May be bugger all nothing, because her troubles and her ignorance land her in criminal hands, as even can happen to more clever people in desperate cases. I remember one day that a lot of talking was going on in the village, saying that she was coming home very ill. Every body went to meet her at the bust stop in the main road, which was about two miles far from the village, as if she was someone of great importance. I could no go, because there were more urgent matters to attend, according to my parents, but I waited for the crown on the outskirts of the village. They had improvised and stretcher with a ladder and a mattress, and four men carry the girl in that way, one hand in each end of the ladder. I walked a few paces by the ladder, and could not go on any more. She was pale, her head moving non stop from one side to the other, the eyes ajar, and she was in a constant lament, as if she was in a horrible pain. Suddenly she open her eyes and shot a look at me that fright me, pronounced my name and asked me for help. I run away to cry, hidden among the bushes. It took me some time to find out what sort of illness she die of, because, at the time, abortion was a word that never would be mention in the presence of young people. I use to like that cousin of mine, we grew up very close, and even when she was older than me, I think that, at one time, I was a bit in love with her. The look, which I got from her asking for help, haunted me in my dreams for long time.


MY COUSIN MALETAS


One day I saw my cousin digging in the orchard. He had dig up about six enormous holes, and I asked him:
"What are you doing, digging the orchard up like that?"
"I am going to bury the donkey, because it died today."
"And what are all those holes for, then?"
"I dug those too small", he said.
That cousin was all body and not head. He was about twenty years old, when I was around thirteen or fourteen. He had the nick name of Briefcase, because he was all the time walking about with his hands hanging by him, as if he didn't know what to do with them; and his hands were so big that, looking from a distance, it seemed that he was curing briefcases. In one occasion I saw the chap having a contest with the donkey of my uncle Penedo. The donkey was with its body across the footpath. My cousin, without manners, pushed the donkey to one side to pass through, and the donkey didn't like that. Because, among the many things that donkeys don't like, the one they more detest, is to be pushed without manners. And if they are pushed in that way, they bounce back like a spring. That was what uncle Penedo's donkey did in that occasion. It came back with the same force that my cousin pushed it and, as it did so hit him in the stomach with the back side and my cousin fell flat on the ground.
My cousin got up and pushed the donkey against the hedges, even with more force and less manners. And again the donkey came back and my cousin went to the floor again. They repeat that game so many times that I got bored and didn’t look any more. But I missed something for no looking, because my cousin tossed the donkey over the fence to the other side of the field, and it was so quickly that I could not see how he did that. After performing that fit of strength, my cousin looked over the fence and, very angry, he shouted to the donkey:
"You may be very clever, but I am stronger."
We had a cat which was older than myself, a big lazy animal that would pass his time sleeping, in what looked the most uncomfortable manner, high up on a piece of a beam of the barn. Nevertheless we faun out, when he die, that even on his sleeping he was doing a god job. Fore once the creature disappear, mice started to crop up from everywhere. Those old stone houses, with more holes than a calendar, are Paradise for mice, if they don’t smell a cat. At first one only can see their whiskers coming out, then their noses; and as they get confident, they open the doors of the larder and open the pots and eat every bodies dinner. That is the time when one realizes the good job that even a sleeping cat can do. So there is the urgency of buying a cat, even if it cost a million. But then one finds out that there is no kittens for sell in the whole world. Because cats hat to be bough when they are kittens. It is no good to go to a hose where they had dozes cats and ask to borrow one. Provably the people would say: “Yes, take the bloody lot.” But in a minute the cat would be back to where he was. Well, at last mother got one from somewhere, but no was sooner let out of the bag, the miserable creature was running to my aunt’s as if he had lived there all his infancy. Mother went for it, I went for it, and every person in the village went to fetch it back, and in the end everybody gave up. In one occasion, the tinker, the one called the Governor, brother of my uncle Mingos, was mending a pot, there in the corral, and the mice were eating his putty. The chap said to mother:
"Why you don’t buy a bloody cat."
Mother told him the problem, and the tinker added:
"Oh, for that there is a good remedy. Go there with a knife, or something sharp, and chopped off the tip of its tail. You will see that the cat never again ill put its feet in that place."
Mother went to fetch the cat, armed with a sharp knife. It so happened that at that very moment her nephew was making wood for the fire. Seeing how easy it was for the brut to open the logs, se said to the man:
You could do the same with those trunks I have in the corral, because the boy doesn’t make a mark on them with the axe.
"Those are not going to make laugh at me. But you have to make for me one of those tortillas of yours!"
"I will cook you a tortilla that you wouldn’t be able to eat all."
"I never get enough of your tortillas. Aunty.
After that deal, mother call the cat, and it came out among another two dozens, or so, of cats. Mother put the little rogue over a log and said to her nephew:
"See if you can chop off the tip of its tail with the axe."
He caressed the cat with one hand while hold the axe in the other, till the cat stretch its tail, happy of being so nicely treated. Then, just when he was going to let the axe down in the animals tail, he stopped and asked in surprise:
"Hey! Why you want to do that to the cat?"
Mother, realizing that he didn’t know what the remedy was for, decided to leave things there, and lied to the chap:
"It is bewitched and that is the way to spell the devil out of it."
"Then better we chop off a good piece, just in case." And he let the enormous axe go down and he separated the whole tail from the cat, saving its arse by a hair. The cat, little as it was, screamed with such desperation that the scream echoed in all the hills around, and all the other cats disappear under the earth. But no less was the scream of my mother, while she was holding her head with both hands. The tail was there over the log, writhing as a lizard’s tail. The brut looked at it and laughed his head off. But mother came home swearing like a devil.
"I will put poison in the tortilla and I will kill that nephew. You will see if I don’t."
We though that the cat would die, but next day was home almost cure and never left the house again. My cousin came to do the job a couple of days later, still laughing."
"How is the cat, Aunty" was the first thing he asked.
"The cat, you ask for the cat, stupid boy", mother said to her nephew looking hard in his eye.
"Oh, well, there is plenty cats about, if that dies. You forget about the cat and do star the tortilla that I am going to make wood. Let us see who finishes sooner."
Mother was going to make a tortilla for the rest of the family, in the large fried pan. In those days, the Spanish high teat would be a tortilla, and mother was going to cook one anyway, but knowing what a big eater her nephew was, she decided to make the tortilla in the large fried pan, the one that was used in very rare occasions, like fiesta days, or when there were people helping with the harvest. So the fry pan was, for some time, having a rest, hanging by the oven's door. Mother took a hand full of rock salt and scrub out with it the rust built up there for the lack of use. Then she burn some lard there to make sure the tortilla would not stick to the fry pan. Then she peeled onions and potatoes, half a sack of each, mother said, us she would said, exaggerating the story, when after she would tell it to the neighbours. She put plenty fat in the fry pan, and fed the fire with plenty wood. While the potatoes were frying slowly, she sliced a couple of chorizos and beat a baker's dozen of eggs in a bowl. Fore that year, the chickens had lay plenty eggs, just for once. She waited for the potatoes and the onions to cool down a bit before mixing the lot with the eggs. Because, to make a nice tortilla, that is the way to proceed: the slow fried potatoes and onions had to cool down and be mixed with the egg, and not the egg with the potatoes and onions. Women of those places knew very well those ways with tortillas, because they were producing that dish everyday. Not to waste time waiting, mother went on making a stew for the pigs, taking advantage of the potato and onion peels, amen of half a basket of potatoes that they were starting to rot. She didn’t waste the eggshells either, and a couple of half rotten cabbages that she had forgot they were in the bodega for some time. Everything went to the big pot, even the string from the chorizos. Then she seasoned the lot wit a bucket of water, a hand full of salt and another of whole meal flour. Then the famous touch of delicacy that mother, like most of house wives had with pigs, a couple of spoons of oil in the stew, that she said pigs go mad on that. Other woman would say something else that they believe or invent, because I never could understand how housewives new so well the tastes of pigs and other animals.
The tortilla done, she put the fry pan just in the mouth of the oven to rest, and left the pigs stew boiling while she went to the fountain for a pail of water. As she came out into the corral, her nephew asked:
"Hey, Aunty, what the devil are you cooking there that smells so nice?" "Something for the pigs" mother joke.
“Smells nice. Makes My mouth water."
"Well, hurry up, I come now with the water and we have a piece of tortilla without waiting for the others."
"You hurry up, Aunty. I am finishing already."


THE FOUNTAIN

In towns and cities, women go to the hair dresser to pay fortunes to have their hair done, in a faction that they look like cats in distress; but they don't pay for the hair only; they go there for the gossip, as men go to the tavern, not only for the drink. They go there to talk and to swear, and to do their own gossip. Women of those villagers, who were not aloud in taverns, and they didn't have money for hairdressers, had to have something else. And that something else, in those villages was the laundry, down in the spring, or the village's fountain. In the laundry the women would take every body to the cleaners, as the proverb goes. And the Spanish equivalent would be to put the clothes to dry. Because in the laundry, and in those days, after the washing, women would put the clothes to dry, all over the meadows and hedge rows. Looking at those clothes, one could know what sort of people the owners could be, what they hide underneath, how rich or poor they were, and so on. The clothes would tell all, specially the under ware. Spain is full of folklore about those laundries. In my area there are still several in use. I was one of the fortunate boys who overheard lots of those stories by the laundry women. My parents had a meadow by the laundry, separated by a high hedgerow of thorns. The meadow was irrigate with all the shit coming from there and the grass grew and inch by the minute. But that was not my concern; mine was to hide behind the hedge and listen to the women talk. In that way I knew all the secrets of the villagers: when a woman was pregnant, how many times women had sex... and small things like that. I learn some swearing there too, and saw some very interesting fights. Some times a woman had her clothes washed and, just when she was waiting for the water to clarify to rinse the lot, another woman would come, with a basket full of shitted clothes and drop the lot in the water. There was when one could hear the most devilish swearing and, some times, a real battle of fists and hair pulling. After the civil war, when I was about nine or ten, everything was rationed. The government would stamp the mills, so people could not use then. The bread was baked in ovens, hose people had the concession from the government, and the flour was corn flour from Argentina. It was mouldy, and the bread even pigs could not eat it. In one occasion the women were commenting, in the laundry, about the bread, and one of then sworn:
"Fucking me. Now they put hairs in the bread as well."
"That is from the baker", said another women.
"The baker hasn't this sort of curdle hair."
"That is from his balls."
That remark was very important to me, because I was one of those early birds whose feathers sprouted rather premature, and I was really worry, when I saw those hairs growing on places that they were no part of my head. Then, after hearing that from the woman, I asked an alder boy about the subject, and I felt a great relief on learning that it was natural, and that I was no growing into monster. That laundry business was all fun for me, but it was very hard work for the women, especially in winter, to wash those clothes by hand, in cold water, with soaps of very poor quality. But the fountain was something else, something more refine, and the talking was about market business, funerals, and abortions and given birth. Weddings, especially if the wedding was of an old couple, a widower or some one stupid, would give a lot to talk about, too. All that would be spiced with a sprinkle with some sex. Food occurs, was a good theme, because the times were so hard up, but the women would talk as if all the year around was a feast. All bloody lies, because some times there was not a crumb to feed a bloody mouse. But every woman was such a good cook, and they could make wonders out of nothing, or so they said.
I was in the fountain in one occasion, and a woman came running out of breath, as if she had run the Marathon, and said.
"Poor Andresa is dead."
"Andresa the wife of Penedo?"
"Who else?"
"Well, rest in peace, for she suffer enough already."
"Poor soul! For so long laying in that bed."
"Without food."
"No money to pay a doctor."
"O medicine."
Another woman came and said:
"She is no dead. I been told that she is with one foot in the grave, but she
is not dead."
The messages went on as women kept coming to the fountain, with one message contradicting the other. Then woman, lifting her pail of water to her head, said as very disappointed:
“Fuck Andresa!” If she keeps messing about, the day she decides to died is no going to be any fun at all."
I went as fare as this, about the talking in the fountain, because the day my cousin was left making fire wood, mother, as the rest, got involved in one of those interesting conversations, and she forgot all about her nephew, the food and us. My cousin Briefcase, hurries up by the smell of food, and finished the job in no time. Then he could not wait. He ventures into the kitchen, as the dog, which knows that the muster is away and started to look for the tortilla. As the fry pan was inside the stone baking oven, he didn't see it, even when the handle was coming out of the ovens mouth. But it may be he didn't see it because he saw the big pot first. He lifted the heavy iron lid, and a cloud of steam came out of the pot and hit the chap in the face.
"Fucking hell, this smells good,” he said.
He looked around, and the only tools he saw, was an old faction and extra large enamel bowl that we used to wash our feet before going to bed; and by the bowl was a large spoon that was use to feel the wooden shoes with umbers to make them warm when we came from the fields. Wit that spoon he pick up the potatoes and the cabbages, and then tipped the pot on the bowl to fill it with the liquid. Put the bowl over the table and then went to the cover to look for bread. There was a large loaf of mace and rye bread. He started with the stew and the bread, pushing one thin with the other, talking to himself mouth full, as no to waste time.
"Fucking me. This is what I call stew. I wish mother could make stews like my Aunty."
He finished that enormous bowl, and he looked to the piece of bread over the table, and he said: "Better I have a little more stew, no to waste that bread."
He repeated the operation and by then there was left in the bottom of the pot, the string from the chorizos and some soil from the potato peels. As he was relaxing, stretching his legs, he glanced the fry pan in the mouth of the oven.
"Oh, my God! I bet that is the tortilla."
He went there and, like before with the stew, lifted the lid. This time there was not steam, but a delicious smell, which burned his nostrils... The effect was a bucket of saliva felling over the tortilla.
"Oh my God, oh my God! What is going to think my Aunty now? She is going to think I don't like her tortillas, after all the trouble she went though. Oh well, with another peace of bread to push it down, I will eat it. He went to the cover and gave the chop to a mother loaf and carried half of it to the table. He ate straight from the fry pan, praising mother and the tortilla many times; but, for the more effort he made, not to shame his Aunty, as he said, he could not eat the whole tortilla, and he left a piece big enough to feed a mouse. Then he went to the haystack and lay there to rest. And he commented:
"A meal like this is a petty to have to shit it."
Mother came from the fountain, at last, and when she saw her nephew resting like a dog by the hay stack, she fell ever so sorry for him, and she talked to herself: "Poor chap, he got tire of waiting for me." But when she saw over the table the fry pan, with only a piece of tortilla left, knowing that we were coming from any moment from the field to have high teat, she screamed and made the sing of the cross, and the pail of water fell from her head. Very angry, she went to the haystack with the intention of putting a foot on her nephew's belly and to recover some of the tortilla.
"You, you, monster" she shouted at him, kicking his belly with the wooden shoe. “Have you seen what piece of tortilla you left for the others?"
My cousin thought that my mother was very angry because he didn't finished the tortilla, so, with a delicacy as a man of the world, he apologized:
"Sorry, Aunty. It is not your fault, because the tortilla was delicious, but so was the stew, and I could no eat more.
"What was all that stuff spill all over the table, that looked like egg shells and drops of oiled stuff, and cabbage and, crumbs?” mother asked to herself, when her nephew mention the stew? She runs to the kitchen and there she found out that no stew for the pigs was left either. Back once more to the haystack, she asked the man, just for the record:
"Tell me, son, please, how you could eat all that?"
"Pushing with plenty bread, Aunty, pushing with plenty bread."
And so mother found out that there was no bread left either.


AUNTY GENEROSA AND UNCLE PICAPEDRAS


It is an extraordinary fact, how one thing leads to another. I got into trouble myself the day don Xusticio gave my Aunty the very last rites. And all started with the smell of fish. Fish was my favourite dish, when I was a boy, and I could smell fish a mile away like a cat. That day I was going to another village, to the black smith to pointed a couple of chisels, and a pickaxe. Passing nearby my aunt’s Xenerosa, marry to a man know as the Picapedras, because he was a stonemason, and the nickname means stone picker. He was a brother of my father. His elder son was of my age and we were very good friends. Pepping was the name of that cousin of mine. After Pepping, there were a dozen or so, among little boys and girls. Our houses were not fare from each other. As I approached the house I fell, like a cat, a delicious smell of fried fish coming out of the window. I could not resist the smell and I was dragged inside as if pulled in by my nose. But my Aunty soon noticed from which leg I was limping, and asked me:
"Nephew, do you like fish fried from yesterday?"
"Oh yes, very much" I said.
"Then come tomorrow, because I am frying it today."
My Aunty Xenerosa had her ways to explain things. She was one of the few people in the village who had not a nickname. The reason, I presumed, was because they got her name right, for she had a terrific generous tit. She was strong and a hard worker. Good luck to her, because my uncle Picapedras, wouldn't move a straw around the house, and she had to do all the housework and the pieces of land they go. But she knew how to do two or three jobs at the same time, even to give birth she always would have two babes in one go. When the other women talked of the pains to giving birth, my Aunty would say:
"Oh, fuck off with all that. To me, to give birth is like a good shit when one is constipated."
They were poor, because my uncle was a lazy bustard, really. So the children were, most of the time, bear foot and the clothing had more patches than stitches. One of the boys would not ware anything new, even for a bet. When the big fiesta of the Patron Saint was celebrated, everybody would make an afford to buy some new clothes. But that boy, if my Aunty put something new on him, he would cry. My Aunty would arm herself with scissor and needle, patches and thread, and patched the garment in any faction; then the boy was happy showing his new clothes. In one occasion I asked my cousin Pepino:
"What would you like to do if you win the lottery and you became very rich?" "I would get all the family together, have plenty food, and I would eat and eat, till I exploded like a bomb and kill the bloody lot."
To think in food, would occupy a good chunk of our time, in those days; because it seems that nothing have better memory than the belly. My aunt’s children were almost adults and, like my other cousin Consuelo, they too, were behind their mother begging to be fed. She would pull out one of her enormous tits and feed any of them, wherever she was. One day she was sat in one stone by the road feeding one of the boys, when the tinker, the one know by the nick name of the Governor, pass by and asked my Aunty Xenerosa:
"Godmother, is that boy sacking or blowing."
I was playing, in one occasion, by the pond where raining water was collected for the cows to drink, but the cows, when the pond was almost empty, would walk into it and, instead of drinking, would shit all over the place. Then pigs would come and stir the lot. In that broth I fell and I run home crying. As I could not be recognized, my Aunty thought that I was one of hers and she got hold of me and scrapped the thickest shit from my clothes, then she pull out one of her tits and started to feed me. I fell so embarrassed that I almost fainted. I try to talk and tell her who I was, but she suffocated me with the tit. Then, as she would not take notice of my spitting and struggling, I bite her tit. She tossed me down the road like a ball and shouted:
"Blind me! This boy is a dog."
In her house, when she thought it was time to go to bed, she never would give a warning. Picking up the broom, would chased everyone upstairs like mice. On the beginning I tray to tell her that I was no her son, but soon I realized that it was a wasted of time, and learned to run like the others. Later on, my mother would come along and asked:
"Xenerosa, don't you have one child to many some where?"
"I don't know. Go upstairs and look."
Her husband, the Picapedras, was not one of the best stonemasons really. He never built a cathedral. His job was to build walls around the orchards and patching stables, and there we stop. He would start a hundred jobs and never finish one. When customers complained, he would said:
"Stones without meat are like bread without leaven."
Once, there were some masons talking of meat, and my uncle say:
"The day I eat a piece of meat, you can see it in the wall."
His philosophy was, some how, a defeatist one, and he wouldn't care less, because, as he would said, never mind how hard the poor keep working, they never would get up, as bread without yeast would not rise. So he left the wife in charge of everything and he would do nothing but his job: to chisel the stones. He used to said:
"If someone look for me, they know where to find me: in bed, by the wall or in the tavern."
I would say that if some one-look en bed first, wouldn't waste time looking somewhere else. In one occasion I saw him walking to the orchard in underpants and I followed him to see where he was going in that costume and, to my surprise, he climbed to a cherry tree, broke a big branch and carry it to bed, like ants do, to eat the cherries there. In another occasion, it was raining by the bucket full, and he call from upstairs asking, to his son Pepino, for the umbrella.
"Where is he going raining like that?" I asked Pepino.
"He is not going anywhere."
"What he wanted the umbrella for, then."
"There is a leek over the bed."
One day I was looking how he worked, and he hold to the convenience
That I was there, and ask me to stretch the rope to the end of the wall and hold it for him, while he looked if the wall was straight. I kept the rope tensed from one end and he from the other. Then he put one knee on the floor and, closing one eye, aimed at the wall to see how it was. He stayed there, in that position, for long time, with one eye close and other open. I waited and waited for him to get up and open the other eye; but, when I got tire of holding the string, I left it go and went to him, to see what was all about that delay in open his other eye. I notice, to my surprise, that he was sleeping. He moved his lips, blowing air smoothly, and for moments he smiled. I had been told that it was not good to awaked sleepwalkers, and I try to be gentle. Put my hand on his shoulder, with the intention to shake him slowly; but he fell to the ground in such a way as if he came to pieces, and said:
"Bloody hell. There never is a bloody peseta for tobacco."
For what I gather that he was dreaming that was smoking. He had more imagination than money, the poor chap.

Well, the day of the fry fish, when I saw that there was nothing along the line, I walked away as a dog with the tail between the legs. Outside I met my uncle Picapedras, who was coming in, may be attracted by the smell of fish, too.
"Are you going to the smith, nephew?" he asked.
"I am,” I said without much enthusiasm.
"How convenient. Take those two chisels of mine, and tell the smith I need them for tomorrow."
The smith was another childish man. The person to whom the job was done had to help with the pulling of the bellows. The smith, every minute would go to the door, and look around; come inside and tell another joke. Go to the door again, and comment of whatever he saw, and he never finish a job. If he saw an old greedy farmer coming down the road, he would heat any tool to the read and through it on the road, and he laughed before hand, thinking of what was going to happened to the poor man.




The man (for most of them would bite), as he pick up the tool, thinking that he go a bargain, would let half of his fingers stack to the hot iron. The smith then would sit on a stool and pi himself laughing for one hour or two. And then he would spend another hour telling any story of something worst than that, which he played to some body else. For the time he finished my little job, there was not much day left, and I rushed home, because I had to go pass a place where there was a cross, and in which place, after dark, the devil was all the time around. I fell really scare as I pass by the cross, because under the dense foliage, already was a bit dark. I had the rake and the pickax tided with a piece of string, hanging on my shoulder, and one chisel in each hand. In order to entertain myself and to forget about the devil, I started to knock one chisel to another. Those tools, for which reason I don't know, produce a very crystalline sound when they come from the smith. I enjoy the sound of the chisels and went on playing and improving the sound till they sound like a bell. Well, here comes the joke. The priest, don Xusticio had taken the last rites to my Aunty, so many times that, when he jumped on the hose to go out, the horse would no go anywhere without passing by my aunty first. That evening, when I was coming home with the tools, the villagers were expecting the priest, because my Aunty was in the last leg. In those days, a choir boy would come before the priest, with a lamp, the holly water and ringing a bell. The villagers, on listen my play with the tools, thought was the choir boy, and all knell in the square to pray. When I saw all the people there, kneeling, I thought that it was a new way of doing mass, and looked to the lot with my mouth open. The neighbors fell stupid, thinking I had play a trick on them, making them believe that I was the choir boy. They started with me, and I thought they were going to lynch me. From praying like saints, they changed, instantaneously, to swearing and cursing like devils.
"Fucking boy."
"Son of a bitch."
"Heretic."
"To play with holiness like that."
"No respect whatsoever for the dead."
"He needs to be taught a lesson."
I could not understand what sort of prayers they were inventing, and I could not come out of my stupefaction. Suddenly I noticed that someone had me by the ears. I was trying to look back, when I sow my Aunty, uncles Longueiro's wife, call by the nick name of Vexata, which means a hawk, because she was all the time moving fast putting her nose in other people's business. Swift as a hawk, she tried to hit me in the head with a handle of some thing. I jumped, to avoided the imminent blow, not realizing that I was stack somewhere by the ears, and I thought, really, that my ears were gone. At the same time I heard a horrendous scream. I thought it was me, the one who screamed, but soon I realized that, the scream came from my Aunty, who tried to hit me with the stick. For, when I jumped to avoided the blow, I left the tools drop from my shoulder, and the pickax, as it was so pointed from the smith, went through the woman's foot and she got nailed to the floor. On seeing that, all my body turned goose pimples and I flied for my life. My ears were whistling,for which I realized that they still were with me. Soon I found out that, the whistling was not coming from my ears, but it was my cousin Pepino, who was coming in my direction.
"Ji, ji, ji" he could not stop laughing. "You made a hole in her foot and she is
crying and cursing you. She said that when catches you is going to kill you."
"She soon is going to catch me, with a hole in her foot," I say, without intention of making a joke of it, but my cousin thought of it as a very good one, and he could not stop laughing.


MY UNCLE PENEDO


The day I went for the certificate, on my way home I looked several times to the mayor's signature, thinking that I could have done it better. Then I remember that remark from my uncle Penedo, who call his donkey the Mayor. And in one occasion I asked him:
"Uncle, why you call that donkey the Mayor?"
"Because all mayors are donkeys" he said.
My uncle Penedo was the husband of my Aunty Andresa, and he was a whole brother of my grand father, on my father's side, and half brother of my uncle Longueiro. Most of the things in my family were done by halves. That uncle Penedo, was a man who deserves a chapter of his own. He had fanny ideas, like the one of calling the donkey the Mayor. He was fed up with that donkey, and he took it to the market several times to sell it, but nobody wanted it even as a gift. The proverb says that what you don't know you don't miss. Well, specially donkeys, once they tray and know, there is no gates, chains or stables to keep them, when they smell the fruit in season. My uncle's Penedo donkey was one of those and when it smell a she donkey in season, would chewed the ropes, smashed stables and kicked gates out of their hinges, and run like lightning through the fields, jumping fences like a gray hound, and hitting the chest with its tool, as saying with great devotion: mea culpa, mea culpa. And for that reason nobody would buy it.
Penedo was a nick name, that means, in Gallego language, a big stone. He got that name from the fact that he was seen all the time stack on fields, in a white shirt, doing nothing, and seen from fare away he looked just like a stone. He must be the only one in the village who didn't feel offended by his nick name, and by the name of Penedo was know farther afield. I myself never learned his Christian name. What did bothered him was the fact that he was more know because of his donkey than by himself. People, in hearing the special snoring of his donkey would comment:
"There goes the donkey of Penedo" that it was a way to say that Penedo was a donkey himself.
Been aware of the double meaning, he used to say:
"I am going to buy a mule, when I sell the donkey."
A mule in Spanish, a he mule, is call macho. And what my uncle meant was that, having a mule, the people would say: There goes the macho of Penedo, meaning that Penedo was the macho man. He did that in the end, when a last he go ride of the donkey. He made a deal with the gypsies and changed the donkey plus some money for a mule. But he should know better, because anyone who makes a deal with the gypsies, should know before hand that he is a looser.. The mule was worst than the donkey, and knew every trick of the trade. So soon became famous, as the donkey did before it, and the people would comment.
"There goes Andresa's macho."
There were, in the middle of the village, what could be call the square, a semicircle of large stones –I think I mention that- may be the foundation of the village from some primitive savages. Those stones seemed reserve exclusively for men, for I do not recall to have seen a woman eve sat there; and every man in the village had preference for a different stone and nobody else would seat there. When children did sat in those stones, they have to clear out quickly, if the man of that privilege came along. Sat on those stones I heard once my uncle Penedo and his half brother, my uncle Longueiro, having an argument about their sons who were in South America.
"My son, who is Buenos Aires, if he wants to do so, stops the whole railway network." Said my uncle Longueiro.
"My son is more powerful than that. He can stop all the money out of circulation" Said my uncle Penedo.
That conversation did linger in my mind for long time. What sort of jobs those sons of our village could have to be so powerful. When many years later I arrive in Buenos Aires, and met those men, I found out how right my uncles were. One of the men was a signal man on the net work; the other a porter in the central bank. So, if one didn't manage the signal and the other didn't open the door, the whole country would come to a standstill.
I met in Buenos Aires all the sons of my uncle Penedo, seven of them. For, my uncle Penedo was the laziest bustard of the whole village, but he did work hard his wife, so much so that he made a cripple of her. The son who worked in the bank was the younger one. I took to that man, as a present from his father, a pound of "Unto." Unto is the sue of the pig, which is rolled, salted and smoked in chimney for a year or so. It turns yellow and very rancid, and it is use to give a special taste to stews; but only a tinny piece is use for a big pot of stew, otherwise the food would taste rancid. I thought it was an odd present to take in my suitcase a chunk of that smelly stuff and say to my uncle that I could not mixed that with my clothes. Then my uncle Penedo told me an anecdote, to show me that the present was a sentimental one. I heard the story, among many others, from neighbors and my grand parents, but not from the horse's mouth, and uncle Penedo turned very sentimental as he talked about that son. By then he was getting old, he was lonely, and I noticed, in the way he talked, that he regret many of his deeds.
That son, the one I took the present for, was the younger, as I said, and for that the one who had to do all the work, when his mother was bedridden; because, by then, all the other brothers were gone. He was all the time inventing something to make the work lighter. And, among other things, he was the one who invented first the washing machine. He would take the clothes to the river, and in a whirlpool keep them there pressed between two big stones for a fortnight an leave the water do the work. When the clothes were needed, he would stretch them on the meadow, with more flat stones on top, and there they came clean and pressed. He never had problems with the scarcity of cotton to saw the clothes. The rockets of the fire works were reinforced with string and resin. He would catch all those waste cartridges when there was a fiesta, and with a cobbler's needle he would sawed even the most delicate garment. To cook, the problem was even more simplified. He would go to any field, theirs of any other, and pull carrots, parsnips, or beetroot, anything green, and to the pot would go the lot, as they came from the fields. Sometimes he would through in, potatoes and beans, and he commented that those things wouldn't hurt the stew. Then he would make a bomb fire, may be with wood stolen from the neighbors, and when everything was melted inside the pot, and the gravy nice and thick with the soil of the vegetables, father and son would have a feast. Some times, if there was a birthday, or the saint patron fiesta, as a treat, he would deep for half a minute in the stew a bone he had hang on the chimney for such occasions.
Well, it happened that, in one occasion, my uncle Penedo, who made a few pesetas now an then as a labor, was paid for one of those jobs with a pound of unto. He handed over the stuff to his son, and the boy asked, as he smell the stuff: "What is this shit for, father?"
"This is unto, son. This is very good for the greens, and gives a fantastic taste to the stew. Today you can through everything to the pot."
That day the boy went to an extra trouble to improve his cooking. He put to the fire the big cast iron pot, the one his mother use to, when they were a large family. There he dropped a dozen of parsnips with the leafs and all. A basket of potatoes with the peels and the shoots. A couple of large cabbages straight from the garden, with cuter-peelers and all. And that day, to be a special day, he used dry been and left the bone a Couple of minute longer in the boiling water; then he dropped, on top of all that, the whole pound of unto, with the paper and the string. Alighted the fire with a fagot of dry gorse, that there was in the corral; put logs all around the pot, as cannibals would do to cook an explorer, and he went to play with the other boys to the square. He forgot about the stew, and the pot stopped to boiled automatically when the fire was out. From that lot that went in the pot, came out two or three caps of stew, thick as glue, and so concentrated that, would a match go near it would blow the whole village. But my uncle Penedo ate the lot, and said that he never tasted anything so good in all his life. So my uncle was sending to his son the pound of unto in memory of that famous dish his son invented. I thought, then, that the smelly unto was a token of love, as good as any other thing and accepted to take it to his son.
On arriving in Buenos Aires, I went to see that cousin of mine to the bank, not knowing that there was not the best place to meet him and to hand over such present. The rancid smell, after twenty days in the suitcase, was quite noticeable. There was this man by the door, with a blue suit and rows of shining golden buttons, that made my eyes blink. The times of hunger he went through in the village seemed to be all over, for he had a respectable belly. I was so impress when I met him at the bank, that I thought he was the manager, and asked him if work there Anton, son of Penedo.
"That is me" he answered excited. “Who are you?"
"I am your cousin, Manuel." I said.
"You are Manuel!” Didn't you grow up.” I remember you small as a tadpole." When I gave him the present, making him remember the reason why his father sent him that unto, I noticed his tears were just to come to his eyes, but he fight them back, and didn't let them go. When the knot, that I noticed in his throat, stopped going up and down, he said to me:
"What you think of this suit? If they see me in the village with it, they would think I was a general," and he laugh so loud that all the people in the bank jumped sky high.
I met all those cousins of mine. They were well off all of then. They didn't have any school, not preparation to confront the world at large, but, helping each other, and teaching themselves, they came clean without hurting anybody, and that could be of some merit on its own. Seeing them all marry with nice families, I thought of their mother, my poor Aunty Andresa. I remember to see her a couple of times in bed, and then for the last time in the box. How proud she would be to see those families of her children. She would think, undoubtedly, that her sacrifice to raise them had been recompensed. But poor Aunty died without ever seen any of then; and only God knows how many times she thought of then all those years when she was bedridden, from which bed she never got up till the day was taking to the grave. Her older son, when he decided to go to America, asked for the money to several neighbors; but, been the son of Penedo, where there was not guarantee of any king, the young chap was laughed at, when he asked for a loan. Then, as a last resort, he went to a man call Farina, who was the lender of the village. His loans were a petty ones, of only a few pesetas, that he would lent to desperate people. He had a peculiar way of arrange those deals. As he knew nothing of percentages, if he left one he have to received two, but the time limit was relative: the same could charge for a month as for a year. Nevertheless, in one occasion he rushed one of my grand mothers. My grand mother said to him:
"Wait for a while more, man. I have to keep taking that medicine, because my legs still shake."
"So do my balls and they don't fell off" the brute said to my grand mother. He was a bachelor, and for the standard of our village, a well off man. But he was not a loving one. People would said to him:
"Why you don't find a woman marry and stop to live alone?"
"I don't need to find a woman; where there is bread they will come."
They never did and he died alone. I do not remember the man, for he was dead before I was born. But to that sort of man went my cousin, as a last resort, and he lent him the money without any guarantee. As the villagers had not love lost for him, they seemed happy that he made that mistake, thinking that he never would get the money back, and they commented:
"Now Farina put his food all right."
"He soon will see that money."
"Yes, he can send a gray hound after it."Farina, as the man who knows his business, laughed and let the people talk.
Before long he had the money back with whatever interest they had agree. Then my cousin send the money for one of his brothers; and that brother for the nest one, and so till all of them went to find better pastures in the new country. There was a tavern in town, famous for a broth, a Spanish dish that I already mention. And it was like an obligation, for the ones going into exile, to have that broth before leaving, for the motto was that, anybody who have that stew would come back some day. It didn't work with my cousins. When the last one left, he and his father, were having that meal, among other parents, from other regions, who they too, were seeing their sons off. The conversation, in such occasions, was all the time the same. The farmers would lament the lost of their off springs, who may be they were gone for ever, leaving behind only debts to their parents. My uncle Penedo, who never spent a peseta on his sons, got up and boasted:
"What you complain about, miserable people? I send over there six, this is the last one, and here I stand.
When the last of my cousins left, and my uncle Penedo lost the cook, the washing machine, and the seamstress, he for the first time had to move his arse, if he wanted to eat, because his wife was laying in bed. So he went to do some jobs in the farms.
"Now that all are gone, I only need to look after myself, because the wife, as she doesn't work she doesn't need to eat either" he used to said.
Very few farmers were interested in my uncles work, anyway. He would invent the unbelievable, in order to eat the more he could and do the less possible. Some lonely old woman would call him as a handy man to mend a gate or a cows shed, and he would leave things warts than he found them, I don't think intentionally, but because he was a poor handy man. In the time of the carnival, there was the custom of reading in the square a long humors poem, criticizing the fanny thing that happened to the villagers during the year. My uncle Penedo was call by an old woman to mended a chicken run and, as he could not see timber around, he took it from the gate. So he stripped off one saint to dress another, as the said goes in Spain. On carnival's day it was read about it. He was the last one to be include in the jingle:

Now we come to Penedo,
sorry for been late,
who is a fantastic handy man.
He was call to mend a gate
and he built a chicken run.

He had not art for those jobs, but he could do well other things. Among several anecdotes that there were about his craftiness, I did like the one he engineer once in order to eat two eggs. He was call to a house whose inhabitants were famous for their meanest. It was call the Big Dog House, because they like big dogs, but they never managed to have a big one, because the big ones died of starvation, and only the little ones survived. When they had a labored, as a high tea, they would give him, nothing more nothing less, than an once of bread and a fried egg. While my uncle was having that feast, the landlady went to the spring for a pail of water, and left my uncle in charge of the babe. As soon as the woman left, my uncle painted the child's lips with a crumb of bread deepen on the egg yolk. Then he slapped the babe on the face a couple of times. When the woman arrived, the babe was crying in such a shock that one could see his tows through his mouth.
"What happen to him today? He never cries...he fell or what?" asked the woman.
"Fell! No, he didn't fell. He is starved. Look, his lips. I have to give him all the egg and the bread and it was not enough: he wants more, that is why he is craying."
"But I gave him my breast just a few minute ago" said the woman.
"Breast to a big child like that one! Well, well!" said my uncle.
The woman fell great because that remark of my uncle about the babe was good, and she fried another couple of eggs for him and one for the babe. The babe didn't eat it, because he was scare to dead of my uncle, so my uncle had the three eggs.
The village's women, on seeing him around all day, without going home to see the wife, would ask him:
"Penedo, did you give something to eat to your wife?"
"For what she does, she had food enough", he would respond.
My Aunty pass whole days without food or water. Some times the women neighbors would take some food for her. But, even if the will was good, they could not afford to do so too often, for some times they didn't have sufficient for their own families. And that meager help, was only a way of prolong my aunty's agony. When there are news of explorers who survived days without food and water, they had to take some lesson from my Aunty before they embarked in dangerous living. Only God knows, of which sentiments or remembrances the soul of that woman was nourished to live for so long without food. The priest, so many times went there, to give her the last rites, that, as I alreasy mention, the horse refuse to go anywhere else without passing first to see my Aunty. But every time her soul was clean to go to haven, her health would improve. She must suffer a lot in the last moments, for she asked uncle Penedo to go for the doctor, a thing she never asked for before.
"Penedo, please, go to fetch the doctor, because I am going to died", she asked her husband.
"If you are going to died, you don't need a doctor; you need a grave digger" said my uncle.
"What a crude man you are" said my Aunty.
"To late to find a roast one, isn't it?"
Later, through the wide separation of the floor boards, she heard her husband down stairs, fiddling among the pots, like a mice searching for some crumbs, and she asked him:
"Penedo, you went to see the doctor?"
"Yes, I went to see the doctor."
"What he said?"
"He said that you are going to died soon."
"Oh, my God, am I going to died alone among this four walls?"
"If you like I knock down one, so you died among tree" again said the brut of my uncle.
Perhaps my uncle though that she was kidding, because she had been dying for so long, that he he didn't took any notice of her; because he looked really sad and surprised, when he realized that she was dead. I say this thinking of the behaviour o my uncle day of the funeral. He behaved in a very strange manner indeed. Just before her body was taking away, he said to the people there:
"Please go out all of you. I have to tell my wife something."
The mourners went out and my uncle stay with his wife's body for a long time. When he came out, he seemed relive, and he said to the villagers: "You can take her away now. We already said what we have to said."

My Aunty died, at last, and I lost a friend, for which I cried more than for my Aunty. It happened that, when my Aunty was on her last breath, more dead than alive, and all the women neighbors around her, dressed in black like a flock of crows, suddenly my Aunty got up in bed and shouted:
"Penedo, Penedo! You have to kill the pig. I am going to die and there is nothing to eat."
Those were her last words in this world, for as she said so, she fell back, dead as an stone. They kill the pig, and to me that was the equivalent to two funerals at once. It was tradition in those days, even if the defunct had died from starvation, to have plenty to eat the day of the funeral. The pig had no much to eat. After it was dead and its hair burned, it was all legs and bones, and it resemble a frog more than a pig. But that pig was the best friend I ever had, more lovable than a dog. As I said, I didn't cried for my Aunty, but I cried for the pig. Pigs had to live with their bad name, like some humans do, of been dirty and gluttonous. But given the opportunity, they wouldn't be so dirty, and so piggy. I learned that from my Aunty the weaver. Once she bout a piglet and treat the beast as if it was a babe. She would carry it on her arms like some woman do with their dogs and, as it was winter, she lay the piglet by the fire and covered it with a blanket. I said to her once:
"Aunty, you must think the pig is a babe. Why you don't take it to bed with you, as well."
"And what would be wrong with it, son? Pigs never shit on their beds, like babies do, and children are call not pigs" she said.
Then she gave me a lesson about pigs. Pigs are more clever than they have the credit for, and my Aunty would assured me that they could be more clever than dogs. And if they are well treat, they can be very lovable. All those qualities, and more, could be found in that pig of my uncle Penedo. Somebody gave that piglet to my uncle, in payment for some of his dirty jobs. But my uncle didn't have time for his infirm wife, less to look after a pig. So, since its infancy, like some poor children of the world, the pig had to fenced for himself. In those times there were not food in the dustbins, like may be the case today. As a mater of fact, there were no dust bins either. The pig had to live from charity, and it learned to go around the houses begging food. In many houses there were not spare food even for their dog, and the pig was soon dispatch with a stick on its back. In some other houses it would receive a rotten potatoe or a piece of stale bread; but the animal never had a hot meal. Not till the little devil found out where there was one. When it became an adult, the clever creature would go, at night, to the burns or the hay stacks to have the dog's dinner. Some dogs, I never found out if for charity or blackmail, wouldn't eat their dinner and live it for the pig. The animal must have been about six years old when it was executed. I remember the animal as an adult. People would ask my uncle:
"Penedo, what you want the pig for, if you never kill it."
"It is easy to maintain, looks after the house and is not making noise, barking day and night like dogs do."
The pig, when was not around the village looking for food, would lay down in the corral, and only had to show its teeth and grumble once, and chickens, cats and dogs would run from it as from fire. The animal had not pig stay, for which reason it was all the time clean, had a shining fur like a fox, and it was slim like a model. I tried hard to teaching it to climb trees, so it could eat acorns, but the beast never got farther than putting the hooves on the trunks. The thin it learned well was to go through fences, hedges and walls. Its favourite bite was bread and for a crumble it would go mad. I only had to show it a piece of bread, tossed it on the other side of the fence, and through it the animal would go, boring a hole like a cannon shot; fences or walls, for the beast were the same, but the bread could not be wasted. Then I would go through the hole, that the pig made, and empty the neighbourhood orchards of fruit. The pig and myself would hide among the bushes, and there, lien down comfortable, would have a feast eating the loot. I gave the pig the core of the fruit, and the too ripe or too green one. The pig never complained for that difference, and enjoyed it immensely. The beast would grumble as it was eating, and it seemed to talk itself as praising the banquet. I call it by the name of Rufo that means more or less ruff because, even when with me was so tame, the animal could be as ferocious as a wild boar, if it needed to be. I notice that the animal liked that name a great deal more than to be call a pig. I experiment with the animal, and I found out that, when I call it pig wouldn't take notice of my call; but when I shouted Rufo, wherever it was, would be by me in no time. The animal had the ears of the devil, and I didn't need to call very loudly. The pig didn't wasted time in going around. For that pig all roads were straight, crossing fields, going through fences and orchards. To say the truth, a lot of people were relieved when the poor chap was killed, because of the damage it made in their fences. But I cried and even cursed my poor Aunty for asking to kill the animal.
Uncle Penedo marry again, to a woman call senora Rosquillas, nick name that means the woman who sales biscuits, because that was her trade, to sale biscuits in the fairs and markets. She was getting old, and the woman could no see very well, but she could not effort to buy glasses. The young people, on finding out that she was going to marry, would say to her.
"Snora Rosquillas, do you know the last test the priest puts on people who is going to marry?"
“What is it, my sons, what is it?"
"You have to see a needle in the to of the belfry."
"You show me the belfry and I will see the needle", she said.
The belfry ( campanario in Spanish) can have a double meaning for a shortsighted person, but the Rosquilleira didn't catch it.
They marry like young people, and the whole village had a good laugh, except me. In those days, there was the tradition, as part of the folklore, to sound horns and tambourines, and to sing jingles to the widower that marry again. My uncle Penedo had change, as if the dead of his wife was bothering his mind. I felt very sorry for him, because he didn't know how to wash, have sewed his clothes, and he was living poorer everyday. This is why I thought that he marry the woman, to have somebody to look after him. I think that it would have been a lot better for all those neighbours, instead of horns and tambourines, to help them with something for the wedding. They had practically nothing to eat, and not very much to dress either. The woman, as a treat, made a soup of garlic and bread, condiment with lard with paprika. She said to uncle Penedo:
"My love, if you don't mind, I make a garlic soup, because those remind me the first time I marry."
"Garlic soup in a wedding day. Fuck it!" said my uncle.
"In memory of that good man. Poor thing. He died so young, and what a man he was. Men like those are not found today."
"All right, make that soup, then. And put in it plenty paprika and lard, to see if that works, at less the first night" said uncle Penedo with a laugh.
She made the soup with plenty garlic, plenty lard and lots of papaprika. She put the pot in the middle of the small table, and said to uncle Penedo:
"It was long time ago, but I remember the day as if it was today. He was sitting there where you are now, and I was here where I am. We were very young, and we did what the young would do. I was so ashamed at first! But then we have a good laugh. My uncle Penedo, with the smell of the soup, had more haste for eating that for laughing, and said to the brand new wife:
"Fucking shut up and serve the soup, because I am starved."
"Well, you talk as if you were jealous."
"Jealous my arse. I am hungry."
"Then why we don't do one thing, and we eat the soup naked."
"Naked! You must be mad. Fill that cap, come on."
"Don't be like that. Give me that pleasure...may be the only one."
Uncle Penedo was hungry, and to eat the soup once and forever, he agree to eat the soup naked. She chucked away her lean clothes, and both ate as angels at the table. The soup, with the gravy of hunger, tasted gloriously, and they repeat the caps without much talk, because the time went in blowing and eating and, even naked as they were, the soup made both sweat.
"The same. Just the same", she said as in a dream.
"What, the soup?" asked my uncle.
"The same sensation. I remember that that day, after eating the firs cap of soup, I felt a burning sensation coming up my breasts, and at this moment I felt the same."
"Then take your bloody tits from the plate” my uncle told her.


UNCLE WOODPECKER


My uncle Penedo was a big man, for the standards of my village. To be quite was part of his laziness, so I never sow him arguing with anybody, like most of men of the village used to do. But one day I sow him arguing with his half brother, the stepfather o Valdomiro. As the argument got hotter and hotter, uncle Penedo punched his half brother in the face, and the man fell on the ground flat as a pancake.
"What have he done to you, uncle?" I ask him. Because, when I had the same treatment, from parents or any other adult, I always was told why, so I would not do the same again.
"He have done nothing,” said uncle Penedo.
"Then why you hit him?"
"Because he is a bastard,” said uncle Penedo.”
Bastard is a word that is not used very much in Spanish. I heard the word only once before. The famous teachers were telling us something about a Spanish king, and she mentioned the word posthumous. Some one had the nerve to ask what that means, and for the first time the teachers took time off religion to explain the meaning. A boy from the crowd got up very excited and shouted proudly for been like the king:
"I am a posthumous son like the king, then."
"Here you are" said the teacher. "For how long you father was dead when you were bourn, then?"
"Five years" said the boy.
The teachers thought the boy was playing a joke of bad taste on them and, after hit him on the ear with a thick dictionary, one of the teachers said to him.
"You are a bastard."
If I knew at the time that dictionaries were to find words, I would have a look, because I thought that, if the teacher call the boy that word, such a word could not be good. Then, when for the second time I heard the word from my uncle, I got more or less the meaning of it. The man was a bustard all right, in more ways than one. That bustard looked a lot younger than he was. To me it was difficult to understand the grade of so many mixed up relations; but even more difficult was to understand why some looked older than they were and others looked younger. That uncle die of old age still looking young.
He was a chipper, carpintero in Spanish. And in Spanish woodpeckers are call carpenters, because they, too, worked in the wood. So people call the man Carpenter at the front and Woodpecker at the back. He could be call Cartwright as well, for he was not a Chippendale, really, and most of the work he did, were carts, wooden ploughs and gates. But, to be honest, there were not much delicate objects to be made, in those times, for the man to show any other skills, if he got them. I once saw him on the road, taking some measurements with a batten, and I joke with him:
"Hallo, uncle. I didn't know that you were a road engineer." He laughed,
Because he didn't expect such a technical joke from a boy of my calibre, and said:
"I forgot the measurements of the cart's shaft, so I came for it to the tracks." It was not very clear if the nickname of Woodpecker came to him because he was a chipper, or because he was, very often, seen climbing trees. When he was doing a job in a house, where there were women, he would climb to any tree by the window, even if the tree was a wiping willow, with the pretext to pick up some fruit, but he did that to see what the women were doing in their rooms. If he was caught watching, he would whistling as a birth, pretending that his interest laid on the fruit and not in the women. He had been in the states for a short time. His headquarters were Cuba, really, but from there he passed to the States, till he was caught and sent back to where he belonged. Those men of the world were more admired by the women in those villages than the ones that never left their mother's skirts, and they, usually, could have better choice of a woman to marry. This Woodpecker had married a woman who already had a son. He called the stepson nephew, and the boy call his stepfather uncle. I call the boy cousin, without realizing, at the time, that cousin has a double meaning in Spanish, that it means stupid. So, for once I got things right. In that house, there were lots of women, six I think. The Woodpecker surly married one of them with the intention of, one by one, taken the lot down the garden path. He got things wrong. The women were the ones having a good time, for all together would given the chap a hide almost every day. The father of the boy, before him, been a better chipper than the Woodpecker was, had commit the same mistake, but, when he realized that he put his foot, he play the disappearing trick, leaving the wife holding the babe. One day he said to the woman:
"I am up to the market to buy a see-me-no-more."
The women waited at home, impatient, to see what sort of animal was that see-me-no-more, and they saw no more the man. The wife, as I said, hold the babe for some time, till she had the news that her husband was living happy ever after with another woman in South America. So the woman dropped the babe, and god hold of the Woodpecker. The babe, as he turned into a boy, came very handy to the Woodpecker. He worked in his stepfather's carpentry shop, and his stepfather used him to test the strength of wood, knocking him on the head with wooden battens. When his stepfather had trouble with the woman, it always was the boy the one who pay for the broken plates. The pretext to hit him on the head with any piece of wood, was all the time the same: it was that the glue was not hot enough. The Woodpecker, even if he didn't use the glue in a year, the pot had to be boiling day and night. From time to time, like a chef in his kitchen, he would go to the pot and stir the glue, and then, calling the boy would grumble to him:
"Let us see, boy, is not there spare wood around the shop to keep this glue hot."
"But it is boiling, uncle!"
"Boiling! I is ice cool, you lazed, stupid boy." And the boy would have a piece of wood already falling on his head.
In one occasion, it was mid day, when the farmers were returning home from the field, and a great fanfare was going on in the Woodpeckers nest. The villagers stopped to listen what was going on there. A few bangs were heard, as if some one was playing the drums, and the Woodpecker came out of the house holding his head with both hands. But, on seeing several neighbours there, he said:
"You have to be tough with then, otherwise there is no peace in this house." He went straight to the next villager to anaesthetized his pain with alcohol, and then to rest all nigh his hangover on a hay stack; and he didn't returned to his shop, till late next morning. He used to do that very often. His step son, my cousin Valdomiro, got up early to heat the glue, and he made a bomb fire as if he was going to set the whole world on fire. Because the chap knew, by experience, that, when his step father had to sleep in the dog house, he was jumpy as a flee. The boy started to burn the crosses, which, as they were burnished and very dry, they burned like gunpowder. They were beautiful crosses, which proved that, if there was the case, the Woodpecker could do more delicate things than ploughs and carts. The crosses were not blessed, so it was not a heresy to burn them. Uncle Woodpecker had made those crosses to sell them during a very famous mission that took place in the parish. That mission was the most talk about mission that any mission ever had been celebrated in Spain. The friars, and the priest, don Xustico, chose the place in a wood of big chess nuts, by the river to celebrate the mission. The setting was very appropriate indeed. The friar's stage was set with the back to the river and, as the terrain was sloped up, the people sat among the trees, looking down to the friar's stage like on an amphitheatre. The very first day, one of the friars hypnotized the congregation with a sermon. He talked in a metaphoric sense and parables, and the people got everything wrong. The friar, thinking that everybody there had gone to the university, like himself, talked about crows, meaning the dark powers of the devil, that eat the soul of humans and stack out their eyes, so they can no see the truth. What the friar didn't have in mind was the fact that, the chestnuts, under which shade the mission was taking place, had been, from the beginning of time, the sleeping quarters of all the crows in that whole region. There were great extensions of woods in the region, but, for some reason the crows all wanted to sleep in that patch of old trees. And as it was after sunset, when the friar was preaching the congregation, just at that moment arrived the first flock of crows. Some of the crows, tired of scratching all over the fields and tire of shitting over the scarecrows, would arrive early, in order to get hold of the more comfortable branches to sleep well. Nevertheless, before they could settle matters, there were always a great dispute among them, as which place belong to which crow. The people, especially the old women, as they were hypnotized by the friar, run in a stampede, like animals running from the fire, thinking that all the devils from hell were coming upon them. They pushed each other, trample over each other, and pushed each other till the whole lot stopped in the river. There were broken legs, broken arms and aborted women, some by shock others for been trample over their bellies. The mission friars put the blame on the wrath of God for the sins of that innocent people.
Well it was about that mission that uncle Woodpecker had his most brilliant idea, idea that, had it come out well, would make him a bob or two. When he learned that the mission was going to take place, it crossed his mind that crosses would sell like hot cakes. But, such a commercial venture, to be successful, had to be kept under top secret, for it could be the case that somebody else would jump in the same bandwagon. He locked himself in the shop and started to produce crosses of all sorts: he made white crosses, black crosses; big ones and tinny ones, burnished and without burnish; crosses for all tastes and budgets. But, with that stepson of his, it was obvious that it wouldn't be long before the secret would filter out. One day the priest, don Xusticio, dropped in as a dog that goes to a wedding, and said to the Woodpecker:
"I been told by a little bird that you have the intention of helping with the Santa Mission."
"What help are you talking about?" Asked uncle Woodpecker, looking by the side, scare as the horse that lost one eye.
"Those crosses you are making, if you intend to sell them during the Santa Mission, a percentage would be for the church, would..."
"To the church my arse hole" said the Woodpecker without letting the priest to finish the phrase.
The priest shot out, without saying a word, as if he was kicked on the backside, because he was not used to that sort of irreverently talking. Came the day of the mission, and uncle Woodpecker opened his kiosk full of crosses in a corner of the woods. The merchandise was so pretty that, before the mission started he sold dozens of crosses. But, one of the first things the friar said to the congregation, as he climbed to the stage, was to warn the people that the crosses were no blessed, and for that they were useless. The ones who bought the crosses went back for their money, and there were the odd old woman who hit my uncle with the crosses on the head, for been a heretic. And that was the end of the business. After some time, the priest and the Woodpecker crossed themselves on the road, and the priest, who had no sense o humour, in that occasion, joked with uncle Woodpecker. He tossed a coin and said:
"Carpenter, heads or crosses?"
In Spain, when a coin is tossed, people say: Heads or crosses. So, as the crosses were not good for anything, my cousin would burn then, as the church did in the pass with heretic books, and he heat the glue with them. They burned like hell, because of the burnish. The boy, the next day his stepfather had that incident with the woman, made that glue boiled to the temperature of melting still. Later that mourning came to the shop his stepfather, straight from the haystack; and the boy was surprise that he was not in a bad temper, as usually. The man got to the boys ear and, as if he was going to tell a secret, asked him:
"How is today Aunty Marilu."
Marilu was the boy's mother, wife of uncle Pecker, but the boy was not thinking of his mother, but thinking of the glue, and said:
"Oh, be careful, because today is hotter than ever."
In Spanish the word hot has a double meaning, and is use to say that a female is in season; and that was what the Woodpecker understood. He pick up a batten, that just happened to be there handy, and smashed it on the boys head. The boy lost consciousness, and he seemed to be dead. The mother refreshed his head with plenty cold water, and as the boy was awaking kept repeating:
"It is very hot, it is very hot."
"It is cool, my boy, it is cool", said the mother.
"It is very hot!" shouted the boy. And there another argument started, even before the boy regain consciousness.

This poor Valdomiro seemed to be bourn for suffering. But in one occasion he, to his expenses, liberated us from the worst teachers that ever came to our school.
They taught us nothing but religion and catechism. We finished knowing more of that stuff than the priest, to the point that those teachers made of us saints and martyrs. Saints because we were so brain washed by those women that we could not think of anything else but religion; martyrs because, as a recompense for been saints, the women did tortured us more than the Inquisition could imagine. One of their favorites tricks, apart of the stick, was to keep us kneeling on sand, with arms stretched and a tone of books on each hand. I nicknamed them the Pitas, which means the hens, in memory of my Aunty Carmela's hens, which were the more strange hens in the village. All had bare necks like vouchers, the more ugly creatures one could see in all the villagers around; but, for some reason, all the cocks in the village were neglecting their beautiful hens to run after my aunt’s revolting ones. (Perhaps I should explain here that, in those times, hens and most of other creatures were running free all around the village.) The teachers, too, had long necks like the hens of my Aunty. They were slim, light as fathers and, from my point of view very ugly; but all the men in the village were after them. It seems that, with respect to sex, they were not so saints, as they want us to believe. The one who understood those creatures well was my cousin, the stepson of my uncle Wood Picker. I remember one day that he warn me, on arriving to school.
"Be careful, because today is going to be trouble?"
"Why."
"I noticed it in their faces" he said.
"What you noticed?"
"They are waiting for the menstruation, and when women are going to have the menstruation, are worse than the devil".
"Who told you that?"
"My uncle."
He always called his step father uncle. The boy knew nothing of books, but he had a reasonably good knowledge of other matters, of which the rest of us was ignorant about. He, like happen with donkeys, had those assets of which all the other boys were envious. His stepfather, who would speak of nothing but of his avengers with women, boasted that he could know when they had the menstruation, when they were pregnant of a few days only, and so on. And his stepson, who never learned a letter or a number at school, learned all that from that uncle of mine and he was the one that taught me the mysteries of procreation, otherwise I still would believe today that that big bird brought the babes. The boy had an enormous capacity to suffer without complaining, as it was proved the day he told me about the teachers menstruation. For, just as he told me, and as soon as the teachers sat at their desk, I could, see on their faces, that they were snappish. Valdomiro looked at me, and he made a sign with the head, as saying:
Didn't I tell you?"
The teachers saw him to do that sign to me with his head and, as if they guessed what was about, they both approached the chap and ask him what he meant with that sign.
"Nothing, miss. Nothing..."
He didn't finish the word. One of the teachers hit him on the head with the cane, while the other pulled him from the sit by the hair. He lost the valance and felt. There, on the floor, the two women took turns to cane him. Later in my life, when I learned that the humans are the only animals that have more than one way to fuck, I understood that the teachers were masturbating themselves in that way. May be the word reach the woman that, what gifts God forgot to put into my cousin's head, he has them between his legs, and the teachers were trying to turn the chap upside down. Even today I see, clearly, the satisfaction in the women's face as they enjoyed the orgy with the poor chap: their eyes shinning, and they leaked their lips as if they were tasting honey. My cousin stood the beating without open his mouth, or let out a sigh. The women, after they left the chap like a beef burger, put us a catechism's lesson on the black board, and they went out to the fields to watch, from behind the hedges, the strong men at work. After that incident, all the women in the village, and for the first time, they got together and chased the teachers out of the village with stones like they were chasing mad dogs. The pretext, for the woman to do so, was the beating the teachers gave to my cousin; but I think that what the women did fear was that the teachers could have a bite to their husbands.


UNCLE LONGUEIRO


Uncle Longueiro, as I already said, was half brother of uncle Penedo, and half brother of my grand father, on my father's side. He was a son of a bitch, even when his mother was a nice woman. He took after his father, so it should be said that he was a son of a dog and not that of a bitch. When grand mother became a widower, and still young, she had an affair with a charlatan who sold shoe strings in the market, and from there came to be uncle Longueiro, and his brother the Woodpecker. Uncle Longueiro, instead of taking after the seller, he took after the goods. For his nickname should have been shoestring and not Longueiro, because he was thin and long as a rope. He hated young people. I was a growing up teenage and he still kept kicking me in the arse. I heard, among all those stories about this extraordinary character, that, when he was call to do the military service, he was discharge, because he was too short. That was a motive for the other young people to make jokes about him, calling him dwarf.
"I still have time to grow taller than you all", was his answer.
He started to grow and became the tallest man in the world. But only the legs and the arms grew, the body was the same. He looked like a baby walking on sticks. I mention the stones in the village square, where the older men would seat, like the Roman Forum, to put the world right: to give order to the young, as when to mend the foot paths, trim the hedgerows; clean the springs and men the communal mill, etcetera, etcetera. All bloody useless jobs that the Stone Age old people thought that the world would come to an end if they were not done promptly. Children, and teenagers, Caligulas and Neros, were all the time doing the most they could, to destroy that ill cast democracy. And all that trouble them and we went through was for the position of those stones. The worst, the more jealous of his stone, was my uncle Longueiro. He would give a pint of his blood happily before allowing a teenage to seat on his stone. Because he was the tallest man, he had the position of the highest stone, and when my uncle saw teenager seating on that stone, he would go mad. The youngsters would challenge the buster of my uncle with the determination as monkeys do in the jungle for a tree. But it was of no use, because he never missed a kick. In those days, and villages, children and youngsters were used to be kick in the arse, like dogs, by any older person. It was of no use to complain to the parents about that medicine, because the answer would be another kick. The only solution to that was to be fast. The arse hole, after a few good kicks, would develop a fantastic reflex, and would see the kick coming even before the offender lift and inch the leg. But those reflexes were for short legs, as most of the people had in the village, so they didn't work with uncle Longueiro, because his foot would reach incredible distances. Uncle Longueiro despised young people, and young people hated uncle Longuiero. The youngsters, including myself, always were raking the little brains we had to play a nasty trick to uncle Longueiro. One hot day in summer, when the corn had to be collected, people stay in the fields till dark. In that occasion, every child and every teenager in the village, and we were a good crown, took the opportunity to have a shit on uncle's Longueiro's stone. The rock was, easily, half a foot thick with shit. It was not long before uncle Longueiro, and most of the other labourers, arrived from the fields and, as usually, they stopped to have a rest on the stones, to smoke and to invent something to do for the youngster. Uncle Longueiro sat on his precious stone, without looking if there was a cat, and, in a few seconds, he got up and commented:
"Fucking hell, this stone is hot today."
Instinctively he touched the stone, as to find out why it was so hot and so soft. His hands came out with a pound of shit each. He left without saying a word, and he never again sat in one of those stones in his life. I felt really sweet about that one we play to uncle Longueriro, for which reason, I decided to play on him another of my own. Uncle Longueiro's house was placed on the top of the hill, for our village was setting among hills, as the old Rome was. In his orchard, uncle Longueiro had a cherry tree, whose cherries, for catching the morning sun, would ripe very early. And for been the first, they were the envy of depredators, like birds and children. But very little chance had ones or the others to have a sample of that forbidden fruit. Uncle Longueiro didn't realize, for long time, that he was poor because of those cherries. And it was I, in the end, who, without realizing, liberated the man from that burden. He would not do anything, as soon as the cherries were ripe, but to scare birds and children out of the place. And he would not have time left to feed the animals, pick up the harvest, or make love to the wife. He passed his time building scarecrows, and all sorts of noise gadgets, to fix them on the tree to scare the birds. And for those human beings, that could no fly, he painted the trunk with tar and fixed hawthorns all around the brunches. After all that, he lay under the tree to sleep, keeping by him an empty can and a stick in his hand. When he heard a bird, without the need to awake, he would hit the can with the stick to make the bird fly. So those cherries, for been the earliest, and for been so forbidden, were the more sweet ones in the whole world, and birds and children would give their life for one of those cherries. But to pinch one was an impossible task, for birds and people alike. In one occasion I had and idea, inspired by what we did with the stone. I had a good shit on a cabbage leaf and, while uncle Longueiro was sleeping under the tree, I placed it over his chest. I must confessed that I almost shit myself when I placed the cabbage over his body, because he must felt the terrene trembling, as I approached him, and he hit the can with the stick, and it almost catch me on the head as I was crawling by him. Once I placed the goods over the man, I hide behind the fence to watch the outcome. It was not before long that he felt the weight and the warmness of the shit on his chest. Still at sleep, he put his hands on the cabbage, and then, he rubbed his eyes as to awake. When he realized what the stuff was, he didn't swear or despaired; he got up, went to the corral and, without bothering to wash, pick up an axe and chopped down the tree. Since then he seemed a happier man, and he looked after more profitable things. Even his wife seemed more agreeable person since then.
Uncle Longueiro, when he was younger, went to Cuba seven times, because the life of uncle Longueiro was mark by the number seven, and he came home without a cent as many times as he went there. Four of those trips he made after he married. The wife would complain to the man:
"But why you go to Cuba if you never brink any money with you?"
"Again I been robed in the Magpie's Woods," he said to the wife.
Magpie's Woods was a forest of pine trees, not fare from the village. Uncle Pascual created another folk tale, and it became a joke, that of been robed on the Magpie’s Woods. Like the one of taking the dog for a walk, is a joke meaning to go to the pub, when men lost the money in some deal, or spend it in anything they don't want their wives to know, they would be robbed in the Magpie’s Woods. In the case of uncle Longueiro, he would spend his money with a mulatta he had in Cuba. He was bewitched by the woman and, when in spring he felt the need for a leg over, he would migrate like the birds, something that even reach people can not do very often. I heard the story from the mouth of other horses that knew my uncle's whereabouts in Cuba. They said that the mulatta was very ugly, but with very good body, though; and uncle Longueiro, to make love to her, would ask her to put a sack over the head. The other men found out about the trick and, at night, some would entertain uncle Longueiro in the cantina, and others, mimicking the drunken voice of uncle Longueiro, would go to the rancho to have a leg over with the mulata. It seems that the woman was very obedient, and didn't care very much if the voice didn't matched, exactly, the voice of uncle's Longueiro. When a man said, in the dark: "Mulata, the sack on your head." She would have the sack handy and, with her head bury inside the bag, she would jump in bed. And then, she would think that Longueiro had come, when he was still gone. In that manner, going and coming as the swallows, from Ceca to Mecca, as the saying goes, in one of those peregrinates, things went wrong for uncle Longueiro; and he had a bad experience, with a custom man, there in Barcelona. As I said, the life of uncle Longueiro was mark by the number seven. In those days, people going to America, would embark in the port of La Corunna, in South West Spain, that was very handy for uncle Longueiro. And from there to Cuba and back, was a dog's run as the crow flays. But in the seventh journey, one of those storms that some times the devil puts in the way of the innocent traveller, like happened to Spanish Armada, uncle Longueiro´s line, too, run into a horrible storm and diverted it to Barcelona. There uncle Longueiro was having an argument with the Catalan custom man, and, as the Catalan spoke in Catalan and uncle Longueiro en Gallego, they could not understand each other, even when they were agreeing in the same thing. An Andalusian custom man, on hearing my uncle talking so loudly, as people do when they don't understand other people's language, came to the help of his companion.
"Live this Gallego to me" he said." I am going to give him such a kick in the balls that they are going to come out of his mouth."
My uncle Longueiro was not aware that the Andalusia’s have that exaggerated way of talking and, on seeing the Andalusia so irritated coming in his way, he thought that, really, he was going to live his balls in Catalonia. And, of curse, he would not get away with it telling his wife that someone hat stolen his bolls in Magi’s Wood. He was caring with him a revolver of seven shots, that he bought in Cuba to kill cats. I must make clear that in Spanish a cat has only seven lives, and not nine, like a British cats; so, a Spanish cat, having a go with an English one, would have less chance than the Armada. But that is another story. Uncle Longueiro drew the gun faster than the best shot that there ever was in the West and he put the seven bullets in the Andalusian's belly, and he killed the chap seven times. We know where people that lose their seven lives go: to the heaven of good cats. But I do not know for which prison uncle Longueiro went. I know that he got seven years, one for each life that was not too bad. Uncle's Longueiro wife, the silly bitch, seeing that the man would take some time in coming home, went on with the house work and had a babe. The word went around that the babe was from the priest. Not the priest from our parish, but from next one that, it seems, was a humaniser; and all the time he was helping woman in distress. When uncle Longueiro found out, he decided to send a letter thanking the priest in strong terms, for his help. But uncle Longueiro could not write, and his cellmate did the writing, and reading for him. Uncle Longueiro told his mate what to put in the letter, a very nasty dictation. When the man put the address in the letter, and only had written the word: "Senor Padre" he was call out, for any other reason. Uncle Pascual thought that he had finished the letter and gave it to the warden to be sent. Uncle Pascual received a prompt answer from the priest, with only one word: "I understand.
When, at last, uncle Longueiro was let out, his brother, Woodpecker, the only one in the family with some money, took the trouble to go to South Spain for his brother. Coming home by train, they were joined, in the compartment, by a couple of second-rate bull fitters, who were going to Madrid. As they found out that their travel mates were a couple of Gallegos, who in those days had a name for been backwards, the bull fighters started to bull shit my uncle Longueiro. They went on asking about his family, and what he did for a living, and all that shit that people in those long journeys always asks. Uncle Longueiro was anxious to talk to outsiders, and he confessed all his avengers with the bullfighters. He told them that there was almost ten years that he didn't see his family. Then he told them that he had two sons, one fourteen years old and one seven years old. At this point was when the toreros started to pull his leg.
"What carrier are you give to the sons", the toreros asked, knowing that my uncle was not a man that could afford to give education to his sons.
"Yes, I would give a carrier to both of then."
"What that would be, then" the toreros asked.
"Well, the older one wants to be and engineer..."
"And the young one?" The toreros asked with a smile in their face.
"The young one? The fucking buster wants to be a bull fighter,” said uncle Longueiro.
The bullfighters picked up their second hand capes and went with their bullshit to another compartment.


UNCLE ANDRES


That uncle of mine, uncle Andres, one of the brothers of my grand mother, when he was a boy, he saw an aeroplane, for the first time, and he decide to build one for himself. He pinched some wood from a farmer's gate and made something like a cross with wheels. As an engine, he dismantled the family wall clock, the only one in the whole village, that have been in the family for donkey’s years, and he used the machinery for the aero plane. As rotators he used a couple of chickens nailed by the legs to each win of the plane. Then he carried the whole lotto the top of the higher hill that there was, and came down, almost flying, but not quite. He came to a stop in the deepest road that there was in the village, and fucked the chickens and a coupe of his ribs. That was a motive for much talk and laughter in years to come, because people never understand that, before getting things right, inventors have many failures. Because of the mockery he had to suffer from the people, especially children, my uncle hated chickens and clocks ever since. For he never admitted his failure, and he always blame the chickens and the clock. One thing he never could get rid of was the nickname he go for that disastrous venture. He was a bachelor, as been said, and not being aware that he was a queer, he would say that he didn't have time for women. Women, he would say, are no better than chickens. And chickens, the only thing they do, is to turn the place upside down, scratching everywhere and, at the end of the day, they never show an egg. That uncle must have being the only Spanish who never left things for tomorrow, for he was all the time one day ahead of himself. Early to be and early to rise, was his motto, and it seemed to work, in his case, for he was a rich and healthy man. But I don’t know if he was wise, because that depends from the angle one looks at life. For it was something of a paradox, the way he conducted his life. He would get up very early, and then he had nothing to do, because today’s work he had done it yesterday; so, to kill time, he started to do tomorrow's work, and then tomorrow had nothing to do again, and started to do next, and so on, all the time one day in front of himself. It well may be that his unconscious was trying to catch up with time lost, for he was a late come, born when his parents were getting long in the tooth, for which I presume he was an accident, like many of us. His parents fell in love with him and neglected the others. Because he never had time for girls, he had plenty of it for work. And his parents, thought of him as a wonder boy, no only because he was a hard worker, but because he was all the time inventing things, like the rediscovery of aerodynamics. He gave to his elder brothers a name as a lazy lot. So, in the end, he was left the farm, the best in the village, and the others got bugger all nothing. Only the Millers got the mill. He didn't like to be call Aero plane and, for that reason, I heard, children enjoyed to call him by that nick name, so they would be chased all over the fields, that was what they wanted. But, in my time, he had calm down, as the years catch up with him.

THE CROW AND THE SHIT


By my uncle Andres house, there was an eucalyptus, the tallest in Spain and, according to legend, it was the very first brought to Spain from Australia. On the height of that eucalyptus a crow had its quarters. It was a large crow, always on its own, never seen in the company of other crows. Other crows seemed not to want its friendship either, and the birth had the whole tree for itself, but the lazy bustard never built a nest. In that sense, the crow was like my uncle, because my uncle never built a nest either and he was no sociable at all. With respect to the crow, some people would say that it was another wandering soul, like that one of uncle Farruco. The oldest people in the village would say that the crow always had been there, from the time they planted the tree. The crow would crow at five o'clock in the mourning, and it seems that the bird even knew when the hour was changed. That crow had, for many years, been my uncle's clock. When it crowed, my uncle Aero plane would fly out of bed and, the very first thing he would do, was to go to the bottom of the orchard and have a shit. To believe his words, he only would have a shit once at day; and he never ever had constipation or diarrhoea. That was due to the discipline, he would say, for even the arse hole have to be educated: those were his own words. But so much discipline can have its consequences as well. Fore in one occasion came, over the region, a hurricane call Hortensia, and in that especial occasion, Hortensia hit the countryside with everything she got. Trees fell by the millions, among them, the famous eucalyptus; and, on doing so, the bloody Hortensia fuck the crow's quarters and my uncle's alarm clock. To my uncle could not happen anything more unpleasant and disastrous than that. Because, due to the discipline he imposed on his arse, during a life time, his arse have to have a shit at five in the mourning, no a minute later not a minute before. But his brain had a discipline of its own, and used to wake up only with the singing of the crow, and it would shut up to any other mechanical noise, putting its power to the service of my uncles good rest. So, the crow and nothing else could disturb the tranquillity of my uncle’s brain. And since the disappearance of the crow, a five in the morning sharp, my uncle would shit in bed; but he would awaked at any time of the day, when, by chance, the crow would come by, to see if the tree was up again.

RAMON ONIO´S COCK


There was a man, well know in the region, whose fame he owed to his cock. For some mysterious reason, the man use to deal in onions and nothing else and, for that reason, he was known by the nickname of Ramon Onion. He was a friend of my uncle Andres, because both were queers; but, in those days and places, queers didn't know what to do with themselves. They would talk like women, behave like woman, but didn't like woman, and that was all. In another words they didn't know if they were coming of going. In one occasion, that man, Ramon Onion, had a very embarrassing argument with my mother in the market, about a basket of onions he bought from her. Our onions were famous, I must say, and people would pay gold for them. There were two reasons, at less, for the onions being so appreciated. The onions were fertilized with chicken manure; but, the most important factor was the soil, for the onions be as they were. There was a spring by the patch of land where we grew those onions, and that water was the colour of shit and smells worst than that. The onions thrived in that soil, with that water and the chicken’s compost. People would pay gold, as I said, for those onions, because they used to eat them to keep relations away. Eating one of those onions with a piece of fresh creamed cheese, made from the milk of old cows, pushed down with a piece of stale maze bread, and at the first fart no only relations would ran for their lives, but would clear a house of every know germs and bags: flees, lice, cockroaches, and the like. People, especially young ones, would eat them as a joke when there was a wake or a wedding, to spoil the whole thing, because their farts were worst than tear gas or stinking bombs. My mother sold one full basket of those golden treasures to Ramon Onion. And he paid the price mother asked for, without bargaining, a very strange behaviour in such a case. Because Ramon Onion, been a stinker and a queer as he was, never would close a deal till, after much bargaining, was told to fuck himself. As he didn't bargain, Mother could not see the catch; but she soon found out. The catch was that, with the onions, he wanted to take the basket as well. Ramon Onion didn't know the trouble I went through because of that basket. I went to a meadow, by the river, to cut the wickers on a bed of willows, belonging to a farmer well know for his retching behaviour. But I didn't know, at the time, that the bed of wickers belonged to him. When I was putting the fagot over my shoulder, I heard shouting and swearing, and I saw this man hitting the air with a stick, thinking, provably, that the empty space was my back. I run for my life so frightened that I forgot that, if I dropped the wickers, I could run faster. He didn't catch me, nevertheless, because, as grandmother used to say, God helps the cowards. As if that trouble with the farmer was not enough, mother gave a couple of infirm chickens to the gypsies to make the basket. And the queer of Ramon Onion wanted to take the basket, after all that. The whole market got involved in the argument. Some say that mother was right and others that Ramon Onion was wrong, and even saying the same thing they could not agree who was right or wrong. A civil war was almost to start; but when sticks and knifes were in the air, along came my Aunty Maria. As she found out what the argument was about, she asked to Ramon Onion:
"Tell me, Ramon: when you sell your trousers you sell your balls with them?"
The market goers thought of that as very amusing, because they believe that Ramon didn't have balls. So every body roll on the floor with laughter, and Ramon Onion run without onions and without basket.
As I said, that Ramon became famous because of his cock, for he appeared in the Spanish No-Do curing his cock in a basket. The No_Do., was the national news seen in the cinema at the time. As Ramon would not deal in anything but onions, when there were not onions he was lost. But, as to go to the market was his day out he could no miss it. Once in the market he was bored, because had nothing to sell or to buy, but then he had an idea: to take the cock to the market. But with that cock Ramon was in love, and his intention was not to sell it, but to use it as a pretext to have something to bargain in the market. The cock went to so many markets that it learned of every market, and on market days, the cock would get by himself into the basket. The news of the cock's behaviour went so fare that, in one occasion, the No_Do went to Ramos's house to prove the truth.
In order not to sell the cock, Ramon would asked for it the earth, and people used to asked Ramon:
"What sort of cock is that one, then?"
"This cock is better than a clock. It crows at five in the morning sharp, and even knows when the hour is change", Ramon would explain to the market goers. That news of the cock been better than a clock reached my uncle’s ears, and he offered Ramon the money he asked for. Ramon could not go back on his word and he departed with the cock.
That was the reason for which my uncle paid the earth for Ramon Onion's cock, because the cock crowed at five in the morning. It would seem childless, but Ramon did cry when he let his cock go. He explained to my uncle how he raised that cock from the egg till it was the largest one in miles around. My uncle consoled him saying that he could come to his house, some times, to see the cock and play with it. Ramon Onion said to my uncle that, not only was handsome and intelligent cock, it was a hard worker, too, and assured my uncle that his hens were not going to be bored any more. He got a surprise when my uncle told him that he had no chickens, and that he wanted the cock only to have a good time with it. Ramon Onion thought that it was a waste to have such a big cock only to be use as a clock. But my uncle thought that he never spent money better than in that deal, for he had clean sheets from there on. And he have no to go to the river at night to washing them, in order to save the shame of his problem been discovered by the village women. The cock, tire of travelling in baskets, and the noise of the markets and to be in the news, got well use to the more relaxing life in the house of my uncle, and, as a gratitude, it never felt a single day, that is more than one can say of some clocks.
The corral of my uncle's house was looking at the village square, instead to be the frontage, because in our family, since the beginning of time, things were made back to front or upside down, like my other uncle's house, the one that had the kitchen upstairs, something never seen in a village at the time. The cock enjoyed that advantage of the corral at the front and, even when my uncle didn't have hens, most of the time the cock was in the square having good time with the many hens of the neighbourhood. On Sundays, though, the cock would not touch a hen, because it was very much interested in looking at the old people playing cards there in the square. The bird was fascinated by the colour of the cards and, climbed to a stone, would spend hours looking over the shoulders of the men, making certain noises as if trying to speak.


THE DEAD OF THE COCK


My uncle Andres executed the cock to cure pneumonia, he caught one early morning, and whose fall was the cock. My uncle had to go to the city to pay the rates, which was done once a year. In those days to go to the city was not to take the bus and go, like it is today. To start with, there were not buses, and the shortest cut was to go to the nearest train station, which was four miles away, and travel by train another six miles or so. It was just after the civil war and the cities were starved. Thieves and pocket pickers were everywhere, and when they saw a peasant they would go for him like flies go for the shit. The country people would avoid to go to the city for that reason, if they could, but if they had to go, they would take advice from other less fortunate, so they wouldn't make the same mistakes. After some bad experiences, the peasants would put traps in their pockets, so when some one stack the fingers in their pockets, wouldn't take anything out and their fingers would be left there. A beggar who ask him a light for smoke robed my uncle Ramallal in the city. As I already mention he was a very strong man, and next time, when he had to go to the city again, a man approached him to ask for an address, and before he open his mouth, uncle Ramallal hit him on the head with his button, and left the man on the pavement legs up, like beetles do when pretend to be dead. As my uncle's Andre's farm was one of the best, for our village standards, he ha to paid good rates and for that he had to take extra precautions, on going to the city with all that money. The day before he went to the cobblers, Benino Cat Whiskers, the one I already mention. He borrowed from him a needle and some thread, plus a piece of leather. After that he sharpened the pickaxe on the stone; and that night he ate an extra plate of stew, because he would not stop to eat in the city. That was the first night he had to count sheep to sleep, because he was a bit nervous, thinking of the money he had to carry. He trusted, entirely, that his cock would awake him at five in the morning, as usual. He wanted to catch the seven o'clock train, because that was the workers train, and after that there was no train till midday. So my uncle calculated that, a couple of hours was ample for him to have the usual shit, milk the cows, fry some bacon and push it down with some bread and a cap of milk; then feed all the animals and run the four miles to catch the train. He knew sort cuts for everything, and never he would follow food paths, or seek for a bridge. He used to say that bridges were of no use because they were all the time built in the wrong places. If anyone, by chance would mention a bridge in front of my uncle, he would have to take a day off to listen to my uncle demolishing bridges. So, if there was a river he would climb to a tree and, from there, balance the tree and jump to the other side like monkeys do. Everything was calculated to the last detail. But what uncle Andres, and his cock, didn't have in mind was that there was a wedding in the neighbourhood, and to that wedding were invited several youngsters of our village. At about three in the mourning the youths were coming home, drunk, singing and swearing. The cock, on hearing such uproar, thought that the entire village was up and that it overslept, so started to crow alarmingly. My uncle woke, and on hearing the youngsters shouting and the cock crowing with such unusual insistence, he too, thought that he had overslept, and jumped out of bed in a hurry. He didn't stop to milk the cows or feed the pigs or to have some breakfast. In a hurry got hold of the, already sharpened pickaxe, and dug out a hole in the seller of about two meters deep, where he hide a pot with the money. Wrapped the money in the piece of leather and sowed it to his vest, and to make sure he would feel someone trying to still the money, he pass a couple of stitches through his skin. So doing, he run to catch the train. Needless to say that he didn't followed the road. He took a straight line through the fields, like the pig of my uncle Penedo and, on reaching the river; he catapulted himself from one tree to another like squirrel. But, all this time he though that something was wrong, and he could not figured what it was. And because his mind was disturbed by that thought, for the first time he misjudged the jump and fell in the river. Good lack the money was safe wrapped in the leather. Even when it was springtime, the night was chilled and he arrived at the train station blue with cold. In the station there was not a soul, and the only sign of life were the owls hooting on the trees. If at less he had a match, he could burn the station down and get some comfort, but didn’t smoke, and for the first time he regret no to be a smoker so he would have match. And while he waited for the train, all the time that thought in the back of his mind was telling him that some thing was not right. Then it clicked in his brain, or better said in his arse, what was wrong, because then he felt the urged to have a shit, and he realized that it was five o'clock, and that the cock had made a mistake.
When the people started to arrive for the train, they found my uncle frozen. He could not continue to the city, and have to be help home. And for the first time my uncle have to keep bed for some time, and for the first time had a doctor put foot in that house. My uncle cached pneumonia, a new disease, people in the village thought, because they never heard of it before. In those days, when a woman had a baby, in some strange cases of malnutrition, the woman would have a diet of chicken soups and the rest of the bird in some sort of stew. So, in the absence of chickens a cock could do, and my uncle gave orders to execute the cock. That was like to kill two birds with one stone: to cure his pneumonia and at the same time taking revenge for the cock mistake. As the say goes: a hair of the dog that bits you, cures you, and my uncle got well.


UNCLE PASCUL


Uncle Pascual was the older brother of my grand mother, uncle Anton, aunt Carmela, aunt Maruxa and the Millers. He was the most extraordinary man in the whole world. He was rich, and had a good education and, nevertheless, he lived the life of a hermit. They said that, when uncle Pascual was a boy, he was very handsome. Then there was a little story that still was going on when I was a boy. All the other children were brunets, but uncle Pascual was of better looking and blond with curdle hair, completely different to the others. His mother had been a servant in the marquis household and, for that reason, people would say that the boy was from the marques. The father, kept saying the wife:
"The people are right, this boy is no mine. Tell me the truth, this boy can’t be mine."
The wife got fed up of his suspicion and, in one of those occasions she said to her husband.
"This is the only one yours, all the others are from the marquis."
The truth is that, as the marquis had two daughters but not a son, they fell in love with the boy and adopted him. I am not sure of those arrangements, as if the marquis gave the chap their name and title or not; but he was sent to university, even when he never finished his studies; because the marquis died before that, and then uncle Pascual left the university. But in the will the marquis let him, up in the Hills, an enormous chunk of land, together with a farming house. One of his sisters, Maruxa, the younger of the sisters, went to live with him. She married a young man, friend of uncle Pascual, and together they worked the land and made a good living of it. The couple soon had a girl, who they call her Caroline. At that time, in that land of uncle Pascual, they had bees, plenty of the bloody things. One day, a swarm of bees came to rest in the horse’s tail; because, the bees all settle where the queen goes. The couple went to help the horse -to cut off the rope- and they got stung by thousands of the bees. Both died bloated as balloons and the horse, too. Since then, may be out of shock for that success, uncle Pascual let himself go stray, and lived as a hermit. But, from my point of view, more than lost, he found the way, and had he lead a beautiful life, even when for the rest of the family he was a black sheep. Not one of the families wonted to have any business with him. The reason why uncle Pascual was the black sheep, I came to the conclusion, was because he was cleverer than the rest, and they could not forgive him for that. They would like to see the man working like a donkey, as the rest did, but uncle Pascual never worked. His farm, more than a farm was a ranch, the best land there was, covering a couple of hills and a valley, where there was plenty water. There were large woodlands of pine trees, and chestnuts all along of footpaths; and plenty wall nuts in the valley.
"That land could feed many families, if it was ploughed and harvested, and in his hands is a waste" the rest of the world commented.
Uncle Pascual didn't care less. He laughed of advice given to him, or of any other deal proposed, in exchange for the use of his land. He could be a rich man without working, and living in luxury; only had to leave to do the job to someone else. What people new about wealth and luxurious living? Uncle Pascual was the one who new. His hacienda was wild. Bulls were born in the open, and there they grew and reproduce. He never castrated a bull, and they were there committing incest with mothers, sisters and daughters. Uncle Pascual's cows were like monkeys, for it was almost inconceivable to see one of those cows without carrying a bullock on the back. Those cattle of uncle Pascual, to some degree, were like the people of my village. For mixing the same blood for centuries, there were no pedigree, and the animals were of lesser quality, small and thing; they looked carnivorous instead of herbivorous, and they were fierce like tigers. All had enormous horns, most of them with only one horn, and if they had two, one was up and the other down. They were born normal, but to be in that situation was uncle Pascual's doing. If he lived in the middle ages, he could win a battle single hand with stones. He could put a two-pounded stone a mile away just in the horn of a bull. Uncle Pascual didn't have a dog; instead he had a she pig. The pig was of a good tooth and would eat anything, from a root to a tree. Had to be in that way, because with uncle Pascual everyone had to look for himself. The pig looked anything but a pig; it was thing, long body and long legs, with grey shining coat as an otter. The nose was like an aunt eater with the power of an excavator. To look for roots would turn a hill upside down in no time. The animal ate more truffles in his life than ever master Escoffier use in his cooking. Fore there was this stuff, of which the animal found his staple diet, which no uncle Pascual neither I knew what it was, and uncle Pascual said to me in one occasion:
"She is stupid, wasting her time looking for those shitty roots, when there is plenty acorns under the oaks.
Nobody new how old the beast was, everybody remember to see it with uncle Pascual from the beginning of time. When it was not looking for food, would lay down by uncle Pascual, alert as a lynx, with its little red eyes rotating, one in the herd and the other in uncle's Pascual, waiting for an order. When any bull was bothering to much a cow, or was trespassing the boundaries of uncle Pascual's empire, he only had to said: “Get it", and in two jumps the pig would be back dragging the bull by one leg; for the animal had the strength of a crane.
Uncle Pascual never used an umbrella. He carry all the time with him a sickle and, if it started to rain, he would cut a faggot of gorse, big enough to load a small cart, and sticking the sickle on it, carried it over his head a hole day as if it was a feather.
One day I try to do a deal with uncle Pascual, because at the time someone make me believe that the man was a fool. He had some goats that looked like the devil, but in one occasion there was one with kids nice as angels, especially one that was white with black feet, as if it had boots. I had a knife, and knowing that uncle Pascual cooked the potatoes without peel them, I tried to tell him how much nicer potatoes were if they were peeled before cooking. Once he agree I offered him the knife for the kid.
"I would think about that," he said to me, which it was a polite way of telling me to fuck off. Some time pass and I made a deal with another teenager, and I exchanged the knife for something else. When uncle Pascual found out, he said to me: "I gave a thought to your preposition, and I give you the kid for the knife."
Uncle Pascual, like a king, never used money, except to pay the rates. For everything else he interchange goods, like in the good old times. To pay the rates, he would take a day off to go to town. That was the time when he would shave and have a haircut. In that occasion he would comedown to our village, to see the barber, the only one in miles around. The man was known by the nickname of Gedillas, a native word that describes the sharp stalk of a broken branch. Those sharp ends were dangerous as knifes for ripping the skins of animals. The barbers got that name because, more often than not, his tools rip instead of cutting. He was not a professional barber. The shop, at one time had being a donkey's stable, and the man thought of making a few pesetas in his spare time, to buy tobacco. He was one of the very few men who didn't drink, but he smoked a lot. If he could no buy tobacco, he would smoke any herbs. Usually he would open shop Friday night and Saturday all day. Saturday was when the older men would shave to go to church on Sunday. Youngsters would not go there, except to hear stories from the older people. Some times, in the beginning of his carrier, the barbers would work Sunday afternoon to cut the hair to the children. But that didn't last, because the children would ran to the hills and nobody could catch them, so afraid they were of the barbers. When he made a few pesetas was on market day. The market was not celebrated in our village, but the village was half way on the path to it, and rich farmers from up the hills, would take the opportunity to shave and have a hair cut as they visit the market.
I had a good laugh in that barbers shop more than once. In one occasion the barber was cutting the hair to a man call Conchado, a nickname use for men who had a patch of white hair. This man had a couple of white patches, and his hair was like wire. The man lost the tip of two fingers once there in the barbers, because he had the habit of speaking with his hands and, in one occasion he was explaining something and knocked the cut through razor with the hand and lost the tip of the fingers. Since then senor Gedellas would not take chances and, when he shave any body, first he would tight up his hand to the arms of the chair, as they do in America to execute people. In that occasion my uncle Longueiro was telling a story that happen to him in Cuba. My uncle Longueiro was so stupid telling a story that people would pi themselves with laughter, not of the tale but of the teller. The barbers heard the story before and were laughing ahead of what was to come. With the laughter he would stop, but the scissors would go on cutting, as if they had a will of their own. In that particular moment the scissor lost the way and started to cut the ears of senor Conchado. He screamed, but the screaming were more like a contagious laughter, and more the barbers laughed and more fast the scissors bite the ears of the man. In the end senor Conchado jump and ran with the chair under his arse.
The barber very seldom would use newspaper to wipe the razor, like civilized barbers did. He would shake the razor and send the soap flying out of the door. In one occasion, he was shaven one those taught market goes, and a neighbour’s dog was by the door. As the barbers shake the razor, the dog would catch the soap and leak it. The man, after looking at the dog for a while, commented:
"That dog must be stupid, to eat soap."
"Oh, no so stupid. He knows that sometimes there goes a good chunk of meat", said senor Gedellas.
My uncle Pascual was the only man, in whole of Spain, who would make and appointment for every business he made, a thing inconceivably in those days. So he would tell, well in advance, to the barber the day he had to shave and have a haircut. Then the barber would sharp his tools and make sure he had plenty tobacco, because that whole day was dedicated to uncle Pascual. Uncle Pascual didn't smoke and didn't drink. He would tell stories of something that happened before the universe was created. His memory was like a tape recorder, and not a date, leap year or sun eclipse would escape to his memory and calculations. The trouble was that nobody would listen to him, because his talking was too complicated for most of that folk. Only the barbers did that favour to him. For listen to him, the barbers could charge uncle Pascual anything he wanted that was no money, but could be a herd of cows or a hill of pinewood.
The barber had a peculiar way of dealing with uncle Pascual's face and head. He would roll and smoke a lot of cigarettes before starting, looking around uncle Pascul's head, as the general studies the weakest point of the position of his enemy. Once he found the way to attack, he started with the hair, in one side, as to find the face. Then he would do the same with the beard in that same side. On finishing that side he would roll more cigarettes and smoke another hour. After making sure that one side was all right, he would start with the other side. And with the talking and rolling of cigarettes, the day would be gone when he finish with my uncle’s face. But in one occasion uncle Pascual said to the barbers:
"Harry up, that I need to take my trousers down."
The barber finished side one and roll a cigarette. Uncle Pascual though he had finish and went home. The barber waited for him, rolling more cigarettes and smoking because he thought that uncle Pascual was having his time to have a shit. As uncle Pascual open the gate of his corral, the pig got him from one leg, fast as lighting, and tossed him over the gate.
"Hey, Rufina, you don't recognize me. It is me, I had a shave and a hair cut, but I am the same man."
He tried to convince the pig, but Rufina, a name that means ruff, and whose name I borrowed to christening uncle's Penedo pig, grumbled at him with bleeding eyes and showing its one foot long teeth. Uncle Pascual passed his hand over the face, as he talked to the pig, and he realized, then, that he was not one thing or the other. He went back quickly, and there was the barber still waiting with the cigarette hanging in his lip.
"What took you so long to have a shit?" Asked the barber.
"There ware plenty women in the woods gathering firewood. I could not find a place to have a shit, because there were women gathering firewood all over the place," uncle Pascual lied.


UNCLE'S PASCUAL NIECE


Uncle's Pascal niece was taking by the nuns, since her uncle lived as a hermit it was not appropriate for a girl to be raise as a wild beast. In adulthood, she went to live with the two spinsters, sister of the suppose father of uncle Pascual. They had not other relations, as fare as I know, and they lived a modest life. I didn't know if they were very rich or not. They had a vintage car with a chauffeur, that was use exclusively to go to church, which was no fare from their house. But to go to the market, that was farther away, they would walk. All that charity, with respect to the girl, had a tail at the back, as the Spanish proverb goes, because the girl's uncle was the richest man in the area, due to that inheritance, and he was a bachelor. For what reason, people would say that, the marchioness and the nuns were looking after the girl with an eye on her uncle. I being told that, the so call marchioness had being raised by the nuns as well, from whom, like the girl, inherited the idea that, to have children was a job for the poor people. So, sooner or later -time in those matters is not important, because Rome and the roman catholic church was not built in a day- the wealth of the marchioness would pass to the girl, as would that of her uncle; and one day all would go to the nuns. When there was the patron saint's fiesta, Easter, Christmas and some other celebrations, the girl was sent to her uncle's with presents, like Little Red Riding hood to her grand mother. There, in her uncle's, when I was a teenager, was where I met the girl. She was, to my judgment, in hers latest twenties, when I met her. She looked beautiful, despite the dull clothes she worn. She had to be of our blood all right, for she carried the family emblem, that was the big tits. In those occasions, when she carry the presents for her uncle, especially during the patrons fiesta, she would stay with him, may be for a couple of days. I knew that uncle Pascual had only one bed, and I asked him in one of those occasions:
"Uncle Pascual, you sleep with your niece?"
"Why?"
"Because you have only one bed."
"I have only one, because for two you don't need three" was his answer.
There is a song in Galicia of a girl who worn seven skirts, and the seven fit her well. That girl, too, worn lots of clothing, as if she was ashamed of showing the curves of her body that, undoubtedly, were dangerous ones. She sang in the church's choir a few years back before I found out that she was my cousin, and she sung very nicely. In one occasion, a sheep tick go stack on her funny, and that insignificant parasite, changed her life and that of several other people. Because of that tick, she was the very first customer the doctor, don Camilo, put hands on, and from whom he made a good profit. I mention a young chap that was in the train, when my aunty Maria and friends went to the waters. The starve one that was going to be a doctor. Well, here I come back to him, as I promise. He got the degree, at last, and he open a surgery in a small town caressing the illusion that, on open the door people would flock in like sheep. But many times he went at night to the fields to pinch a cabbage to make a soup. By necessity hi developed a sense of humour, born from the fact that, in the beginning, he went through such a bad patch as a doctor, which he had to laugh or perish. People would ask him, as if pulling his leg:
"How is business, don Camilo?"
"Bad, very bad. There is a plague of health going on at the present."
He became a good doctor, in the end; but he lack experience, at first, about people, especially about women, because if a man dedicates his time to one thing, it is logical that he have to neglect others. He thought that, on having his degree and a room with a few instruments and books on the shelf, to impress the illiterate, his life was on tracks. But he got the numbers wrong. In those days people had not much money to spare in luxurious things, like microbes and viruses, because always there were other holes with more urgency than that to cover up. The villagers have the pharmacist who, for a few pesetas would cover their bodies from head to tow with bloodsuckers. And the said goes that, if you don't die you got better, and if you die, you cure. So the doctor didn't have a customer for long time. To pour water over wet, he marry a young woman who pass her time painting the tow nails, but who could not fry an egg, despite being of a good appetite. The little town, where the doctor fixed his surgery, was made of people who, really, believed that their shit didn't sting. And they may have being right in thinking so, because as they were no farmers, and at the time there were nothing else to do, I wonder what the hell they have to shit. The whole industry of the teeny town were several bars, the town hall, the chemist and the headquarters of the civil guards; and later the doctor. The bars, to prove my theory, none had toilets. In one occasion (I was a teenager then) I was in a bar there, in company of several other youngsters, because Franco was going to pass by, and we wanted to see the motorcade. Behind the motorcade of the Generalissimo, always were lots of people from Madrid, dropping behind like crumbs from a reach man's table. A couple of those young men "sonoritos" as they were call, stopped in the bar where we were. They had a drink and asked for the toilet. The landlord exploded with laughter as if he just heard the best joke of his life.
"Toilet, you said? Go to the fucking corral. And you can count as being lucky today, that I have there a cartload of bracken and you can wipe your arse with them." The senoritos must have being in a hurry and opted for the corral. The landlord looked at us, and shaking his head complained: "Those fucking Madrilenos must have a very fine arse. Asking here for a toilet!
Well, don Camilo's luck change when, in one occasion, my cousin go a sheep tick stack on her funny. Because of that tick, she was the very first customer the doctor, don Camilo, put hands on. The doctor, don Camilo, got a few good pesetas from the woman, and he would have more, if his wife had not put her foot. Don Camilo, on seeing the woman so healthy knew, straight away, that the problem had to be of sexual nature. He was deadly right. At force of scratching, the delicate flesh got irritated, and the woman, fearing a worst disease, one that anybody can catch, even without the dirty human intervention, got worry to dead. The doctor asked her the inevitable, because doctors do study to be doctors, only to see naked people. More than that: tire of looking into throats, they invented the suppositories to look into the arse holes, as well. Carolina, who had being educated with the nuns and, in top of that, she had to put up with the sanctimonious marchioness, would not take off her clothes in sight of a man, even if her life was at stake. So the doctor, suspecting that the problem was a boil or an irritation of some sort, prescribed her some sort of tablets that, he assured the woman, were the last wonder for pussy irritations. He told her not to scratch the place. The woman went to the chemist, and the pharmacist started his usual complaining about the doctor's new ideas. He knew that the doctor wasn’t a fool, but precisely that was the pharmacist's worry. He realized that the era, when he was a pharmacist and a doctor, wouldn't be long before it was over. He pointed to the jars on the shelves and said to the woman:
"If with that you don't feel better, that I doubt it, you come to see me, that those would take care of whatever infection it can be."
The fucking pharmacist used to cure everything with blood sackers. He paid us ten cents for each one and he sold the bloody suckers at peseta each. And we, to have those miserable ten cents would stay with our feet in the river till our legs melted. Some times we tried to sell him the ones that there were in the streams, that they were plentiful, but those do no suck blood and the clever pharmacist recognize the bloody thing with his eyes close. More than once he stacked the horrible worms in our mouths, for trying to be clever with him.
The woman looked at the hundreds of blood sackers-wreathing there into the jars and she almost fainted at the thought of having all those worms sucking her pussy. She had the tablets and avoided to scratch the pimples, only rubbing one leg against the other. The sheep tick was, by then, as big as a plump. The irritation was worst than ever, and the itching unbearable. For the nest fourth night she lost half of her weight out of worry. She could no share her illness with anybody, for shame, because the presume pimple came to be in the worst of places; and that was driven the woman mad. One night she almost told the marchioness, because the lady asked her what was wrong with her. But to mention the word pussy to that woman was bad enough, to tell her that she had an infection there, would be suicide. During all that time the doctor prescribed her tablets and more tablets, and as she was not any better, the pharmacist never stop recommend her the blood sackers. But it happened that, one day the doctor was not at home, and the worry woman had a glass of water with the doctor's wife, while she was painting the tow nails, legs open in front of the fire, to warm up the dinner for the husband. The doctor's woman was curious why that patient, the only one the doctor had so fare, was going there so often.
"What is your problem, then, to come here every other day?" she asked, as if she didn't trust her husband.
Senorita Carolina was so anguished to tell some body the problem, that she felt better as soon as she told the woman. The doctor's wife couldn't resisted the curiosity and asked Carolina to show her the pimples, for it is not everyday one can see those reserved elements. Almost with pleasure, Caroline lift her many skirts and show the pussy to the doctor's wife, for she had no knickers, because could not stand them rubbing against the flames of her privet parts. There, half hidden among the abundant turf was this thing like a cuckoo's egg. The doctors wife, with long painted nails made room for her eyes, to be sure that what she saw was the truth; because she could not believe that her husband could make such a mistake. But mistake it was, and the wife exclaimed:
"But this is a tick."
She, instinctively, pulled the tick and dropped it over the table, at the time that she felt goose pimples all over her skin. Caroline felt something like a prickle as the tick brought with its teeth a good chunk of flesh, but straight away felt a glorious relief. The tick, blotting with blood was rolling with tiny legs up, trying, without hope, to get in its feet. Caroline left without saying thanks, because with the emotion she forgot. She got many thoughts in the way home. She thought to go straight to the church and alight a candle to saint Anthony; then a very different and disturbing thought crossed her mind. After the suffering, no so much for the damage done by the tick, but for the mental distress, she felt such a relief that she thought that, if making love was like that, she was not going to die without trying, even if that meant to go to hell after. Then, as the damage done by the bag started to cure, it itched like hell but, contrary to the one before, it was a pleasure to scratch it, without fear of making things worst. Caroline, my pretty cousin, for the first time had the pleasure of messing about with her pussy, without feeling guilty, because it was a natural necessity. And, as the Spanish proverb says: so many times the pitcher go to the spring, that one day it breaks. So it happened to my cousin that one day, as she scratched, her fingers hit the rock in the middle and she had a wonderful trip, for the first time, but not for the last. So she thought that, if fingers were so celestial, a man, especially a handsome priest, had to be heaven. Well, the story ends when the doctor went home and the wife told him, very proud of herself, that she was better doctor than himself. And the husband said to her:
"Now let us see if you are such a good cook, without nothing to put into the pot," he said to his clever wife.


AUNCLE SALVADOR


Auncle Salvador was my godfather, another bloody creeper. He never called me by my name and never ever I got a miserable present from his dirty hands. He had a daughter, Fina, short for Josephine. She was older than me, and twice my body size. She was blond with red face, and I thought it was from drinking wine, because her father grew wine. All the clothes were small for her, and her flesh was coming out from the seams, so generous God had been with her body. I was a late grower, thing as string, and would not make a shade by that cousin of mine, but I had the will of a beast and I was mad about that girl. She could have any boy to court her, if her father was not in the middle; but the son of a bitch would look upon the girl as if she was a pot of gold. Even knowing that I didn't have the slightest chance, he was keeping an eye on me as if I was the devil. I must confessed, that I was after her, like little dogs do, walking behind the big ones, when a bitch is in season. And it happened that, thanks to a little mouse, I saw her body as when Eve left Paradise. Since then I almost got anaemic having wet dreams

In those days, when the corn, one of the largest staples of the time, was ready, the ears were brought to the barns, to be strip of their jackets. The barns were, more often than not, small wooden sheds with thatch roofs. At that time of the year, when the harvest was collected, days were already short and nights long. In the evenings, to the light of a kerosene, or Carrboro lamps, people would seat around the pile of ears and, passing the time telling stories, would go on with the job of striping the ears of its jackets. It was a job done by children, teenagers and old women. In those sections, of ear stripping, one could find out a lot about what was going on in our village and farther a field, for those old woman would take every body to the cleaners there. For what I could understand, and according to the stories of those old women, we are not sexually liberated nowadays, as we presume. The best times, on which I felt sorry not to be born, were the times of those women. They started to talk about relations, women and men of their age, and every body was a relation: brothers and half brothers, sisters and half sisters of some body else, for what one could see that we were the by product of a bacchanal life. May be for lack of other entertainments, I used to enjoy those sections of ear stripping, precisely for those stories of the older women, and because there always would be some girl who would catch my eye. After those jobs, the people of the house would treat us to a dinner of boiled chestnuts with potatoes. The potatoes, cooked with the chess nuts, had the colour of rusty cooper, but they taste nice, condiment wit meant, and a pinch of sugar and, occur, hunger is the best gravy. While having that feast, would be more jokes and stories, all of the same thing: of how a good time those old women had in their young days. My puberty was hitting me with everything, and those stories were, to me, like dogs fighting inside. I would look at the girls, and my thoughts were, why the bloody hell we have to be civilized and were clothes?

There are a couple of words in our Gallego language that derived from the behaviour of cats. One is "ratear" that mean when young cats reach the age of catching mice. The other is "xaneira" when the cats are in season, because it happens in the month of January. Those words are all the time used with respect to teenagers, when they start to feel the same as cats.
Hidden in those piles of corn ears, always would be mice, and the crafty old woman, as any teenage approach the barn, would comment:
"Ah, here comes another one who wants to catch a mouse."
Well, in one occasion we were helping my godfather, senor Salvador, with the
business of stripping the corn ears. And that evening there was this teeny little mouse, that the poor chap had made the pile of corn his castle, and got disturbed by the monstrous invaders of ear strippers, and the rodent got the fright of its life. Running, like hell, from the shouts and earshots of the corn strippers, the creature run for refuge into my cousin's legs. The girl, as I said, was growing up in body, but not so much in intelligence; she looked too innocent for her age, and she seemed to do things slower than the other people, as if her body was to heavy to curry. But, when she felt the mouse into her legs, she turned into a devil, or a wild beast. She jumped the pile of ears backs and forwards like a goat, and the noisy she made was those like a goat with its throat cut off. She dropped on every body's heads, and, at the same time she did away with her clothes and pi all over the place. We run from her pi as from fire, because it was hot and with the power of a hose from the fire brigade. She reminds me the goats that senor Mesias slaughtered.
That butcher was the most sadistic and disgusting animal killer that the world ever saw. I hated the bastard since the day he kill my goat, a beautiful creature that was my best friend. I was so young that I could not understand that those animals were for killing, when the patron saint's fiesta was due. I saved the animal’s life in one occasion, when it fell from a wall and got hang by the rope. I run with a scythe and cut off the rope. I remember to see its desperate eyes looking at me, as I was approaching it, as telling me to hurry, because there was very little life left on its body. After that the animal would follow me everywhere like a dog. One day came a man to our house on a horseback, and there was not any reason for a man to come there on a horseback. They send me to the spring for a pitcher of water, to get me out of the way; but I put two and two together, and it click in my head that the man was the slaughter man. I run back without reaching the spring, but that time I was a few seconds to late. That mad man was in the orchard sat on a stone, having a smoke, and on a long rope, the animal was dancing, making noises like my cousin did. I thought that it was odd for the goat to behave in that manner, till I saw the animal bleeding. Then it dropped and went on shaking its legs on the ground. I realized, then, that the man had killed my fried. Well, if he killed my goat there was only one thing for me to do: to kill his horse. Oh yes, one eye by eye, and tooth by a tooth. I pick up the scythe, the same I cut the rope with, and stack it in the hoses throat. The animal niphed and got up on its hind legs and came for me with the front legs. I run backwards and fell over. The horse's hooves were making sparks on the ground, just by me. Thanks to the rope, that was an inch too short, I can tell the story, but it was a dun close thing. It became the talk about, in the whole village, and I almost got the nickname of horse killer. But, as the horse survived my attack, I kept my name. Years later, when I was a teenage, I was in the barber's shop, and the man was there, too. The man commented about that success, as by chance, and some body said to the man:
"You don't know how to kill goats, anyway."
"May be not, but they died" the brute said.

As it happened with the goat, my cousin fell exhausted, at last, naked as she came to this world, for she didn't left over her body, even the knickers. This was the first time I saw a woman in nightdress, and if she looked big in clothes, she seemed to me a giant without clothes. My head was not thinking, at that moment, about the body in sexual sense, though. Like a mathematician, I was working out the equation of how that big body could be contained into those small cloths. The old women put something over the girl's body, before I could come out of my stupefaction; and the girl went home shaking and sobbing like Eve when she was kicked out of paradise. After that we had something to joke about for the rest of the evening. One of the oldest women gave an ear to me and said:
"Boy, what you make of that?"
I could not understand the meaning, and I shrug my shoulders and smiled. "Smell it, boy. What is a matter with you?"
I smell the ear, and smiled once more. My head was somewhere else, and I didn't care very much about the ear and what the woman was trying to tell me. "Oh, my God! This boy still can not smell the pi of a girl", said the woman.
I noticed the blood on my face as I got red with embarrassment, and everybody had a good laugh on me.
"He still don't have a nose for it."
"What you expect? He is too young, poor thing."
"He still doesn't know how to catch a mouse."
"January still didn't come for him."
I was wandering why, been other boys in there, they all pick up on me. I think that, the crafty old women, having better nose than me, they guessed that I was the only boy there who had reach puberty, and that was the reason why they were teasing me.
Some corn ears, very few though, are red, and they are call kings. The ear stripper, who found one, would shout out: "King." They used to say that it was good luck to find one of those corn ears. Some times there would be a bet, to see who was lucky to find more of those kings. But that particular evening, the bet changed to see who was lucky to find more pi ears.
"Another one with pi."
"Are you sure that it is pi from the girl?"
"Give it to the boy to smell it. He would tell you."
"Yes, let the chap feel it, even if it is only the piss of a woman."
With those jokes, they forgot that my Aunty was there, and that those jokes about pissing, could be offensive to her. When, suddenly, they realized that my Aunty was there, every body change the subject, and then they put their foot even deeper on the piss; for, to change the subject, was as to confirm that they were joking, indirectly, about my Aunty, and not about the girl. The jokes and the laughing stopped, and nobody could start it again. In Gallego language a pussy is call a rat, and my Aunty joke, as to make clear that she was not embarrassed:
"Come on, women, my rat doesn't get frighten by a little mouse. It takes a more larger object to make it piss all over the place."

That same year that don Andy came to the church, and don Xusticio gone, a cinema was open in a little town, no fare from our village. The first film I saw, and most of the people all around saw, specially the young ones, was a war film. I never will forget that. Valdomiro, that thick head, step son of the Woodpecker, was so impress by the film, that he became absolutely nuts. From there on everything he did was to copy the soldiers. He would camouflaged himself so well as a tree, or as bush that the dogs ran after him to have a pi, and the birds would flight to him to find cover from the rain on his head. He would hide behind a fence and, when someone pass by, he would jump on the road with a wooden gun, and bang you are dead. He was driving the village mad. It happened that, one day, he was pinching apples in the rectory's orchard. There was a large apple tree, whose apples, call Santa Maria, were the earliest. For been the first, they were the tastiest and, as it happened with the cherries of my uncle Longueiro, the apples were the target for birds and boys. My uncle Anton would keep a good eye on those apples, and the boys knew that very well, for the stones my uncle aimed at them. But Valdomiro, dressed as a bush, with branches from any other apple tree, would take the apples from under uncle's Anton nose without uncle seeing the boy.
On the far end of the boundaries of our village, reaching to the back of the large orchard of the rectory, my godfather, senor Pepe, had an extensive vineyard. I already mention that my godfather was known as Pepe of the old Vineyard. His motto came from the vineyard I here mention, said to be the first that had been planted in that area. One day, it was siesta time, Valdomiro was in the top of the tree, where the apples were riper, and he saw my cousin, senor Salvador’s daughter, walking in the vineyard. Then the girl came into the orchard, through the same hole in the wall that he used to trespass. The chap presumed that the girl was after the apples, as he did, and he was ready to have a good laugh, seeing the girl running, when he imitate my uncles voice from the tree. The girl, the one she pissed herself when the mouse run up her legs, had very little head, but nature more than compensated that with her big body. She was fair as the wheat ready to be threshed; her face red as burning embers, for which I thought she must drink lots of wine. I already mention that she was, at less, a years older that me, so she had to be about sixteen when don Andy replaced don Xusticio. She was not, I repeat, the most intelligently creature of all my crazy relations, but she was healthy and rather pretty; and she had tits and bottom for another couple of girls who need it. Her parents, especially her father, wonted to believe that the girl still was a babe. It was obvious that her parents were worry of the girl's age; and for wanting her to look younger than she was, on going to church, or if there was a fiesta, they make her to ware the clothing she worn in the cradle. That would have the contrary effect to the one her parents wanted for her to show; because, as her body could no be contained inside those miniatures of dresses, her flesh was coming out from every stitch of the clothing, making the girl extremely provocative. Her father would not leave the girl alone anywhere, all the time keeping an eye on her. Too make her look even younger she had to ware spectacles, even when she could find a needle in the haystack without glasses. The girl, without being the brightest one in the world, had the instinct of a woman, and soon realized that, those clothes that her parents make her worn, she could put to her advantage. She realized, too, how the eyes of don Andy, in church or whatever they crossed each other, were like a couple of hands taking her clothes off. I don't know how they done it, with smoke signals or eye talking, but they managed to have a date. And the date was that day, under the apple tree, just when that crazy related of mine, Valdomiro, have to be on the tree. When he was ready for a good laugh, he saw the priest, don Andy, coming along the orchard. He almost shouted to the girl to run. But it was to late, because don Andy was coming near the tree when Valdomiro saw him. Valdomiro stay put, quiet as a mouse, even when a couple of black birds shit on his face. Under the tree, there were a sort of cabbages, which grow high as a person, planted in rows and a wide trench between rows. Don Andy met the girl among the cabbages, just under the tree. Valdomiro thought, at first, that the priest was going to kill the girl, for coming to pinch the apples, because, even when she had not even touch an apple, don Andy had the girl by the throat, and the girl was grumble; then he knock her to the ground in the trench, and dropped on top of her. The girl, Valdomiro told me, hold the stalks of cabbages one in each hand and was shaking the cabbages as if she was trying to pull them up. Valdomiro was scared, but even so, he thought of coming down and help the girl, as a good soldier would do. It took Valdomiro, as thick as he was, a minute or two to realize that the fight was a fucking good one. Those were his words when he told me the story. As she moved the cabbages to one side and another, and as she was looking up, she saw the face of Valdomiro, lost among the branches, but she didn’t recognize whom he was. She lost her voice in noticing that some one was seeing her making love to the priest, and she wanted to get up, and as she did, she pushed with her body, the body of don Andy up and down, in a motion that the priest thought she was an expert in making love. As she started to recover her voice she shouted very excited:
"Pa...pa...papa...dre, a bo...bobo boy, a boy, padre!"
"Boy or girl, leave that to God", said the priest.
But, Valdomiro, realizing that he had been spotted, jumped down the tree and run for his life. So, that encounter, that could have been the first, or the second of many, would pass without anyone knowing about it, if it was not for that crazy Valdomiro. He came to me, with such secrecy, that he looked around us, and behind every bush, to make sure nobody was listened. Then, putting his mouth inside my ear, told me the story.
"She was ready for it, the bustard, without knickers"
Valdomiro told me with such excitement that he almost choked to dead coughing. That secret was too much for me to carry, so I went to see my cousin, the one that wanted to explode eating, and I share the news with him. But Valdomiro had informed him already, telling him that he was the only one to know it. So, with all that secrecy of Valdomiro, the news reached the girl's father in a matter of minutes, after the success. This senor Salvador, godfather of mine, had learnt something from his grand father that he never would miss an occasion to mention: if you want to think straight, never seat comfortably. So the time had come for my godfather to make use of that proverb. He kept his calm, and didn't let himself succumb to rage inside. He didn't stamp the floor with his foot or kicked the dog in the arse. Instead he sat on a pile of gorse stalks, and there, with several pricks stack in the flesh of his arse, he started to think. Under his calm, the tempest had to be tremendous, nevertheless, for he rolled a cigarette double thick than usually. There, sacking the cigarette so deep that the smoke would come out on the other side as a fart, he thought and thought; and suddenly he got it. The revenge was going to be one better than the pleasure of the gods. There was coming soon the saint of the girl, and with that pretext he was going to do a barbecue, invite all the famous people and the priest, and there, in front of every body, he would take his revenge. This creeper, godfather of mine, had marry the only daughter of the richest farmer of the village, and he had everything done for him, but then, he would say that he done it all by himself. He presumed to be an expert in wines, because he could make three different wines from the same grape. The one that came clear was the white, the one not so clear was the rose, and the disgusting cloudy one was the red. Such wine wouldn’t travel, and was sold to the taverns in the area. The taverns that had the local wines would announce it with a bush of laurel over the door. In most of the cases the wine was very acid, worst than vinegar; but the locals would drink that wine like there was not tomorrow, saying that it was great, pure grape juice, no chemicals in it. The wine was in large oak barrel, returnable to the wine grower, once empty. The wine to be kept for longer periods had to be bottled. This senor Pepe, godfather of mine, when he bottled the wine, would through a sort of barbecue for the more important people: the priest, the pharmacist, the chief of the civil guards, the mayor, the doctor, and so fourth. He never invited me, the silly bugger. He would kill a goat and would roast it whole there in the garden, and those characters, friends of him, would eat the beast pushing it down with jack potatoes roasted on the embers, boiled cabbage and home baked bread; and wine of all colours, occurs. Don Andy was very please to be invited to the party, because that was a sign, he thought, that the father of the girl was not aware of his doings. That day, my god father, to be more delicate, put on the table, three bottles of wine for each guest: white as a starter to greet the guests as they were come in; rose to drink with melon and smoked ham; and to follow with the red to push down the goat. This was with the idea to have the opinion of each person on each of the wines. Don Andy was not use to drink as much as the other guests, and he still was with the white wine when the goat came to the table, and the others were already with the red. The goat was well prepared and the meat was juice and tender, and everyone was enjoying it without much talking. Don Andy finished, at last, his white bottle and he pour a glass of rose. He send down a good half glass and, as he did so, the wine came out as a shot, spreading it all on the faces of the mayor, the chief of the civil guards and the pharmacist, who were in front of him.
"What is it, padre?" asked my godfather.
"This wine went off,” shouted don Andy.
"How come? It is from the barrel you opened a few days ago,” said my Godfather. Don Andy, realizing that he had fall into a trap, left the table, saying that he felt a bit sick with the goat. The other guests, who would like to have a go with the girl, as the priest did, had to be conforming with the licking of urine in their lips.



THE WEDDING OF MY COUSIN


My cousin married, soon after that incident, to a man about fifteen or eighteen years older than her, and he still was a virgin. He was the first outsider to marry a girl from our village and live to tell the story. Because, even when senor Mingos, been an outsider, marry one of my aunts, they went to live in his father's, till things cold down a bit. Another reason for the men in the villager, not interfering with my uncle, was the fact that he was a geld, and not one of the men would like any business with him, just in case. That marriage of my cousin to an outsider, without any opposition from the men in the village, proves that the village was opening up to the outside world. Don Andy may have the credit for that, because he had a way to talk to the young people in the church. He was opposite of don Xusticio who, in his sermons, always talked about hell, burning and martyrdom; and may be that, without being aware of it, he was encouraging people to violence.
When the chap was courting my cousin, another man from our village had a girl friend in the village of this chap. So, on Wednesdays, the traditional day for men to visit a girl, those two chaps, on their return home, would meet somewhere in the valley, about midnight, when one was coming and the other was going. This future husband of my cousin, if he was living in another country and another time, would make a fortune going to the television and tell stories about birds and animals, imitating their voices and songs. When he met this other chap from our village, down in the valley, while they talk and had and smoke, if an owl or any other bird of the night would come to investigate who the devil was there making fire, the man knew which bird it was, and he had a name for it, for he could distinguish the voices of the same species. Then he may start to tell the other man the story of that bird and all its relations, as if he was talking of real people. For such a hobby that in Spain and in those times was of no use people would say that the chap was stupid. That was one of the reasons why he was no successful with girls, and never had a leg over in his long youth, even when it seems that he had a tremendous tool for the job. Don Andy joined the couple in matrimony, occurs, and then joined the crown; because, once my god father got one on him, there was not point in keeping bad feelings. This time I was invite as well, and there I mingled with all the famous people, like an important man. It was the second time that a spare prick went to a wedding, and I fell great. The first time was the wedding of my aunt La Cubana. Cacholas and Andaluz were there, too. They didn't need to be invited, because they would go anyway. They were the first and the last in every wedding and party and, like camels, they eat and drunk to last them till next one.
My godfather had turned, for the new couple, a pig stay into a g time it was not use as a pig stay, but still smell shit, the bloody thing. It was use, at the time I remember, to keep some farming tools and some seeds and old barrels, firewood and all that shit that people have not the will power to chunk away. It made a nice cottage anyway, once it was rebuild, good enough for a king, so I thought. When the couple was gone and every other guest, my god father kicked out the Andaluz and Cacholas, because it was the only way to get ride of then. They walked up the village making more noisy than a bag full of cats, the Andaluz singing flamenco, and Cacholas Gallego folk songs and doing pals; and all the dogs in the village joined them, barking behind. Cacholas, who never a good an idea came out of his big head, had a good one that night.
"Let us go and see what the couple is doing,” he said to the Andaluz.
"And what are we going to see? Is this a bull fight or what?" asked the Andaluz. "Forget your bloody bull fight. I know how to enter the house, because I help with the repairs. There is a small window to a larder and from there you can listen what goes on in the room. You will see how the girl screams like a cat, because I been told he has a prick like my head."
"God keep the girl's health, then" said the Andaluz.

Cacholas is a nickname that, in our Gallego language, means big head, in the real sense. He way short, and if one saw the man a bit fare away one would think that he was a boy walking with a punk on his head. In our village there were plenty fruit, onions and other variation of vegetables, and there were women dealers who came to the village to buy those goods. Those women were a bit savages and they swore like hell, and when they looked at Cacholas would comment:
“Fucking me! How that mother could give birth to that big head.”
I herd a story about that birth till I was sick. They said that the mother cried and said to her mother, who was helping her:
“Mother I am going to split.”
“You will not, my girl; you will be amazing how much that can stretch.”
I heard that Cacholas sold his head to a hospital for the good of science. And he had all that money spent in wine.
Well, Cacholas had help in the site, when the pigsty was rebuilt for the use of my cousin, but only while clearing away the rubble and breaking walls; but then, when the more delicate jobs came along, there was no use for him, because his head was not big enough for fine jobs. So the house was finished in a different way as he presumed. The little house was on a slope; so, at the back, the floor was almost level with the fields. For that reason the window had a couple of iron bars to keep cows or pigs from walking into the room. That room, when the house was a pig stay, was where the fodder was kept, and from there dropped down to the pigs. Cacholas thought that the arrangements would still be the same but, by then, that room was the main bedroom. Cacholas, putting the finger on his lips, said to the Andaluz:
"Shiss, be quiet, and you go in first, that you are thinner."
The Andaluz was so thing that he could pass through a needle hole like a thread, and he squeezed himself into the room like a worm. Once inside he realized that he was in the nuptial quarters, and he got the fright of his life. For what he realized, the couple had gone to bed a few seconds before they arrive, and my cousin was getting ready for taking her husband's virginity away. He said to her:
"Wouldn't it be better to put the light on, so we see what we are doing?"
"No, I told you that the first time had to be in the dark. I never saw those things of a man, and I don't want to see it" the bloody liar said.
"I can't find the way in the dark" he said.
"I guide you, you will see."
"They talked very low, as if they were afraid some one was listen. The Andaluz was so frighten to find himself in that situation that he was paralysed and could not move. In the mean time the girl was guiding home the blind, and she said in a low voice:
"To the left a bit, no so much; a bit down, to the right. You are almost there; push a bit harder, no so hard yet. Gosh, be careful, it is hard like an iron bar."
She was getting excited, because she felt that the man was getting there, and her voice was louder, and Cacholas, on hearing voices, thought that was the Andaluz talking to him.
"You tell me" Cacholas murmured, then, "they are a bloody iron bars. I already fuck an ear in this bloody bars,” he said in a whisper.
Cacholas was doing what he thought the Andaluz told him, putting his head up and down, to the left and to the right and, just when he manage to stick his head through, so the man did with his bride, and she, on feeling that he reached the right spot, shouted very excited:
"The head is in. Give it a good thrush now."
Cacholas, recognized the voice of my cousin, and thinking that the good thrust was for his head, for going there to listen, instinctively he pulled out his head, with such force that he almost brought the iron bars with him, and one of his ears came rip off from the head, hanging only by a tread. He screamed like a hauling wolf. The Andaluz, then, jumped out of the window without touching the iron bars, like a cat would do in the dark; and both men run through the orchards jumping fences like grey hounds. The bridegroom, who was so excited loosing his virginity, didn't realized that the screaming came from the window, instead thought it came from the bride's virginity. Frighten out of his pants, he pull out and asked:
"Did it hurt so much?"
"Is some one in the window?” she shouted. They put on the candle but, as there was nobody, they went back to the job. Next day my cousin was walking to her parents, legs wide open, and a neighbour, who notice her way of walking, asked her, with a laugh:
"How you feel after last night, then?"
"Fuck" she answered.
She was fuck with pleasure, but poor Cacholas was done with pain. He realized that his ear was dinging about, on reaching home and seeing blood poring out of his head. For the first time he went to see the doctor; but as he had to wait till the mourning, the ear could not be save. After the worst was over, he would make jokes of himself. He said:
"Would I knew this before I would have done it sooner. Now, when I am asked for money I listen with this ear, and when it is convenient I put on the other one."


AUNCLE ANTON


It took me some years to find out that Anton, the sacristan, was my uncle, brother of Carmela, the wiver, brother to the Milers, uncle Pascual and aunty Maruxa. He was marred to the half sister of the priest, don Xusticio. He had a daughter, who was a bit thick in the head, otherwise she was very pretty. Before I found out that we were relations, we were like cat and dog. The reason for that rivalled were the oranges the priest had in his orchard, the only tree of that sort in a million miles around. I was fascinated by that tree and its fruit, and never missed an occasion to pay a visit to the bloody bush. But every time I did, the creeper of my cousin happened to be there. Se could not catch me by legs, but she had more aim with stones than King David. As she was know by the name of the priest’s niece, and not for any other name, when I was out of her shots I sang to her a giggle of my invention. I was good to invent those things, so people used to say.

The priest’s niece
Have tits like melons,
She throws stones
To my bloody head
And hit me in the balls.


We became friends in the end.
The character of uncle Anton must have bee repressed for far to many years, due to his sort of job. For I came to think that the priest was ashamed of his sister been marry to such brut, so the holly man treated both of then as second-rate servants. That could be the reason he seemed a quiet and serious man but, after being liberated from the presence of don Xusticio, he change, and became a bit of a charlatan, like the rest of us. Then he enjoyed telling those anecdotes about his ex boss. I came to like that uncle Anton.
"The years, which do not pardon even the priests, made a rag of him, as they would do of any dog" I heard uncle Anton saying about the priest, in one occasion. "His memory” he added “was like a sift. He would take the last rites to the just born, and would baptized the dying ones; he would give mass on Mondays, thinking it was Sundays, and complained that very few people would go to the church."
Those were all inventions of uncle Anton, of course, but, in one occasion, uncle Anton saw the opportunity of experiencing what to be a priest would be like. One of the marchionesses died, and all the priests, from miles around, went to sing to her, for nothing because priests only would charge for their services to the poor, but not to the rich. Don Xusticio was ill, in that occasion, and uncle Anton took advantage of the situation, and he wore the cloth of don Xusticio and went himself to sing to the woman. Not to show that he was envious of don Xusticio, or to demonstrated that he had vocation of a priest, he would said:
"I only done it for my boss."
"Didn't the others realized that you were not a priest?" some one asked uncle Anton.
Uncle Anton, I realized later in life, was a frustrated man. He not only would like to be a priest himself. He would like to be anything but uncle Anton. Perhaps he would have been an inventor, or a designer of domestic appliances, because he always was trying gadgets to make work lighter. He seemed not to come to terms with the fact that he, as many others like us, had to live with himself, like it or not. When the question was put to him if he had not being recognizing that he was nor a priest, he said:
"Among so many crows, they would not recognize a rook."
But he then said that, a priest from another region, asked him if he was a priest, because he could not understand in which sort of Latin uncle Anton was singing; for uncle Anton, lacking the knowledge of Latin, sang in Gallego that, after all, is a romance language more near the Latin than some others. The so priest, who seemed to be from Castile, came to uncle Anton's ear and asked him:
"Are you a priest?"
"Of course I am a priest,” said uncle Anton. "Why?"
"Because I don't understand you."
"And I don't understand you, either" uncle Anton responded.

That of doing as priest was a true story, because I heard the story from other people. And it seems that, such mischievous behaviour, from part of my uncle, could have being the downfall of don Xusticio, because that story travel around so much that, in the end, people would said that, in our parish, mass was perform by the sacristan instead of the priest. Those alarming news must have reach heaven; and to put remedy to those ill deeds, a new priest was send to replace don Xusticio. Don Xusticio was caught with his pants down, when a new priest arrived, and he complained that he had being retired without notice, like an unskilled worker. And the parishioners would comment about that:
"The devil do so to his servants."
Uncle Anton would tell that, so disappointed the old priest felt, for that surprised retirement, that he thought, seriously, in poisoning the new priest. Uncle Anton would said:
"He meant it, and he knew how to do it."
May be uncle Anton was telling the truth, because don Xusticio, with old age, had became a child again. And children do defend their toys with tenacity. Uncle Anton, would compare the case of the old priest, and the new one, with the old cock of senor Toxo. It may be a good thing, in order to understand this comparison, to say that those farming people always made comparisons with animals to explain the human behaviour. Senor Toxo was a brother of senor Casimiro, whose family, I already mention, all had a cloud in one eye. Toxo was a good friend of uncle Anton, because both would go shooting together. Toxo is a nickname that means, in Gallego language, gorse, a bush abundant in Galicia. He was call by the nick name of Casimiro, like all the others, but, for a twist of luck, in his case, that family mark was change for Toxo. My uncle Anton, as I heard, was a bad shot, and other sporting men didn't want his company; because the only thing he would do was to frighten the game out of their pants, or for the most, leaven the creatures half cripple. So, as birds of the same feather flock together, he would seek the company of senor Toxo, who, for the cloud in his eye, would soot in one way and the shot would go to the other. Only once killed a bird by mistake. When those two were in the woods, the other hunters would disappear faster than the game. The wife of senor Toxo used to tell him:
"But you, man, why you waste your time and your clothes in the hills, if you never shoot anything?"
In one occasion, the man was cutting gorse in the hill, and he saw a hare
sleeping among the bushes. He dropped his raincoat over the animal and catch
it alive. Then he had a genial idea, to show his wife that he could shoot. He tided up the hare to a gorse bush with a rope; then went home for the gun, and said to his wife:
"You go on putting the pot to the fire, that I am coming now with a hare."
"A pot to the fire? You must be joking. You never would shoot a hare in your life" said the wife, already laughing.
"You do what I said. The hare is coming now."
He aimed to the hare, from a distance that he could not miss, shot and he cut off the rope with the shot, and the hare got away, leaven the pot and wife boiling. After that event, people in the village, on seeing a man with a gun hanging in his shoulder, would joke:
"So, you have one tided up to a gorse, already."
From there on, the man was know by the Gorse, Toxo in Gallego, a nick name that he had to live with till the grave. He was fond of chickens, and in his farm was almost nothing else but chickens; chickens of all sorts and colour, small and big. In those days colours were more important than eggs. To see a corral full of chickens and, among them, a large cock with a variation of colours, was as good as having a stone with a coat of arms stack in the wall. To choose a cock was not a job for any housewife. House wives, contrary to the believe, little or nothing they knew about cocks, according to their husbands, of course. To choose a cock was a job for men. I myself learned one thing or two about those matters. Chickens, about a week after being hatched, start to develop certain characteristic. The male's legs are already longer, and the tip of the feathers in the wings start to show, may be a week earlier than the female chickens; and so could be the case with the crest, that shows earlier in the male. For some reason, which I never caught up with it, it was at those stages when the chickens, to be cocks, had to be chosen. I came to the conclusion that, farmers chose that difficult stage of the birds, with the pretext to drink more agua ardiente. Many times I saw several neighbours with a litre of burning water by their side, trying to choose a cock among a dozen lightning fast little chickens, all running around mother in a away that one could not keep track of which was which for more than a second. And the farmers, between glass and glass of burning water, pointing to the chickens, all at once, and arguing about the characteristic of that particular chicken as if the chicken were at standstill. Thinking that the men were clever tan I was, I tried to be as clever as them, and I looked at the chickens, then at the men's eyes, to see in whose direction they were looking. The men's shinning eyes were rotating as fast as the chickens ran; and more than once, looking at the drunken rotating eyes of those men, I fell sick to the grown.

This man, senor Toxo, friend of my uncle, believed that he was an expert in cocks. He was of the opinion that hens lay more eggs the better cock there is in the corral to keep them happy. May be he was right about that. One thing is true: free range hens, as they all were in that farming community of ours, if they don't have a cock, lay the eggs wherever they drop, because as they are not fertilized they have not use for the hen. But when they have a cock, all the hens go to lay the eggs in the nest. I know that well, because mother was one of those housewives who believed that every animal had to give something in returning for their food; and she said that cocks do not lay eggs, and she was right there, so we never had a cock. And it was I, the one who had to go around the orchard and all over the fields picking up the eggs where the hens fancy to drop them. Senor Toxo used to say that, hens without a cock, forget to retire, at dusk, to the chicken run, and fell to sleep wherever dark catches up with them; and it was from those absent-minded hens that the foxes made a living. Senor Toxo would say that, a cock had the same life of a dog, one year for seven of a man. But due to the hard work, the useful life of one of those studs would be half less than that. Thank goodness that we don't have so many wives as a cock has hens. One day, gun to his shoulder, uncle Anton went to his friend's to go together for another massacre to the woods. Senor Toxo said to uncle Anton:
"Have you seen my new cock?"
And, very proudly, he went with my uncle to the orchard, where his entire hacienda was enjoying the new macho. As they were watching the pretty thing, the bugger jumped on the back of the old cock and bugged it. My uncle laughed his head off, and senor Toxo, on seeing that he ha a queer in the family, something for him inconceivable, snatched the gun from my uncle's shoulder and shot without aiming, and chopped off the head of the cock. The animal run without head, and the old cock kept looking at it in amazement, as thinking that it was of not worth to lose one’s head for an arse hole. That was the first time senor Too killed a bird with a gun. My uncle would laugh no stop when he used to tell the story.
"That, exactly, was what don Xusticio would like to do to the new priest," said uncle Anton.
Don Xusticio, after those thoughts, did recover his lost mind once more, and thought that the devil had put ideas into his head. He had a prayer, and then gave up the chicken run as a good Christian. As soon as he did so, he felt relief, and he had his memory back. He seemed another man, a man who enjoyed a rest, after having ride of a heavy burden. The last sermon, he said in the church, talked with an accent that the churchgoers never hear the like from him before. He praised the new priest, and asked the congregation not to fell him the next Sunday, when he was going to introduce the man. The news about the new priest going to address the parishioners on Sunday spread like powder on fire. And before anyone had seen the priest, the word was going on, that he was young and handsome. So, the coming Sunday went to church every cat and dog from all the parish; even the village idiot assisted for the first time, even if only by mistake, because he thought that there was food going on. There was a large stone trough, passing the main door, where the holly water was kept in abundant quantity, for the church goes to deep their fingers there to make the sign of the cross. The village idiot, looking at that, from the end of the queue, waited impatient his turn. When his turn came up, he deep his hand there and, on finding nothing but water, he swear loudly, and the echo travel all along the naves:
"Fucking bastards, they ate all the potatoes."
Later on, children would pull his leg:
"Then you enjoy the mass, Pedro."
Pedro was his own name, for he was the only one in the village who people could not find an appropriate nickname for him.
"No, I didn't like. There were not potatoes."
"But there was wine, wasn't it?
"No wine, no fucking potatoes. Only the priest ha wine."


THE SERMON


The new priest, in company of don Xusticio, arrived in the church as clean as an angel, the only difference was that he was dressed in black. It made a difference, really, after the congregation being used to don Xusticio's habits, which were the same from the beginning of his investment, and never had being washed; for fear that they would not last if. The cape had more holes than a second hand darts board and, instead of being black, they were turning white, as happen with old people. The new priest was really new, I mean very young to be a priest, and he was even more handsome than the parishioners ever imagine. But, for one of those turns of fortune, he had choosing the wrong occasion to star his first job. To start with, it was the first time, since don Xusticio had taken the wheel of that parish, that the priest was cleaner than the congregation. The four villages, of which that parish was in charge, were all farming people and, during the week, they would not shave; may be they didn't washed or change clothes, but to go to church they make sure they looked decent, like good Christians. The only one who didn't care about his appearance was the priest. But the week the new priest was to start, the threshing machine was in the threshing floor, and the farmers didn't have the time to anything else. In those times the wheat was mowed down by hand, and brought to the corrals, where the threshing machine would threshing it. Those machines were very efficient and fast, but they need a lot of people to help with the job. A couple of boys would climb to the bale and drop down the faggots of wheat; another couple of boys tossed the faggots over the machine's table. There, a man in one side, knife in hand, would cut off the binds, and another man in the other side pushing the wheat down the machine. At the back of the machine, there were several women withdrawing the grain, and carrying it in heavy baskets to a barn. That, and the lifting of the faggots to the machine's table, were the heaviest jobs, the reason why the honour was given to the woman, and the boys; and men would joke that hard work make boys grow tuff. Men, with wooden forks, would shift the straw along to the haystack. They make believe that it was a job for experts, especially the man on the haystack. He always would be the same man, the one who made the hay stacks for all the village, till he die and some pupil had to take over. The man would be famous only for that, being very proud that never the rain wet through those hay stacks he made, what proves that always had being a lot of bull shit in the business of farming. My uncle Longueiro inherited one of those scientific secrets, I don't recall from which fool. He looked to me like a living scarecrow in the to of the haystack, given orders to the man bellow. Nobody could leave their post one second, while the machine was in motion, for then everything had to stop. Most of the farmers didn't have a big harvest of wheat, because they grew a bit of everything; and the machine would finish the job in one go. If the harvest was a large one, about every three quarts of an hour, like in a football match, the machine would stop, and every body had a rest, a drink, or go for a pi or a shit. Boys and some women, had water from the spring, and men and some other women, burning water. Contrary to the believe, burning water, in a moderate quantity is refreshing. But, in the end of the day, most of the men finish drunk; because, once the machine finished in one house, it was carry to another corral, pull by oxen, and people moved on with it, and more burning water. That was a community job, people help one another, and there was not wages. After several hours of doing that job, people were as black as tar; because the wheat has a sort of fungus that would turn all the workers into ghosts like. To hide from the sun and dust, large straw hats, like the Mexican ones, were worn, and a cloth to cover the face. In some cases, when the wheat had too much dust and fungus, people could not see each other and were lost in the clouds of dust.
Well, the proverb says that one have to make hay while there is sunshine, and never truer than in the case I here explained, for if there was rain before the thrashing was over, it was a disaster. For that reason the machine would work from dawn to dusk, Sundays and all, in order to finish the job as soon as possible. The new priest had chosen that very moment, when the threshing was going on; and farmers know very well that God help those that help themselves, so the wheat was first and the church nest. Nevertheless, about the time of mass, the villagers thought that it would be a lack of courtesy not to attend mass the first day the priest came to the fore. Really, what the people meant was that their curiosity was stronger than themselves. So they decided to make a rush to the church and pay homage to the new priest, even if it was only as an introduction. Occurs there was no time to change, because to change clothes they would have to wash, and that would take a river; so they rush as they were, carrying with them the tools. Because farmers are closer to their tools than to their wives. Some reason they have for it, because the hands get use to a particular tool as the feet to a pare of old shoes. So, even a simple wooden fork, for one of those labours, can be a treasure, and it cannot be left around for others to make use of it. They arrive in the church, looking like a mixer of Bedouins and Mexicans, with the tools of the French Revolution. When the new priest saw the congregation, he got the fright of his life. He run back to the sacristy, where don Xusticio was sat, pensive, having a glass of wine.
"Oh, brother, please come to see that. It is the revolution of Pancho Villa." "They are doing the threshing, Andres. The wheat has to be taken from the corrals to the chests before the rain.
"But isn't it a sin to work on Sundays?"
"To reap and to thresh is not sin, brother. It doesn't disturbers the soil."
An argument developed between the two priests, one saying that it was a sin to do
such a job on Sunday, and the other that it wasn't. The new priest was arguing out of fear, really, and he didn't know what was doing. Don Xusticio, who had recovered his reason, sent a good gulp of wine down the hatch, said to the new comer:
"Look, Andres, if you want to understand those people, first you have to learn how to reap and to thresh."
"And what am I going to said to them. I being working in my sermon for years, waiting for this moment, and now that the time has come, what is the use of it? Those savages would not understand a word of it."
"Look, Andres" again said don Xusticio, "save the rhetoric. Those people have to go back to the machine soon, to finish the threshing. What you tell them they wouldn't care; because for them, everything a priest have to say, is straw's amok. Into one ear it goes, from the other out comes. Today they come to see you out of curiosity"
"But what am I going to tell them...? To...to those...savages."
"Now is nothing, my brother. You should have seen them fifty years ago when I came to this parish. They are angels now, compared with those years. Look, do what I did at the time: send down the hatch a good couple of glasses of this Malaga wine; you will see how it looses your tongue. Then go there and tell them anything that comes out of your mouth."
The new priest took the advise of don Xusticio, and did just that; but, putting more trust in the wine than in God, he almost empty the barrel, to make sure that he could speak with straight tongue. The wine worked and he spoke with the tongue of the people. He said so many stupidities, that the congregation looked at each other and, twisting their lips, would mutter:
"Uhhhh, fucking hell, this is a priest."
"He knows what is talking about."
"Easy to understand."
"He speaks our language."
"At last, we have the right man for the job."
Don Andres, without having the slightest idea of what he had said, got all the parishioners on his pocket. They left the church as happy as coming from a brothel. Don Andres run to don Xusticio, and said:
"I think they accept me all right."
Don Xusticio was pulling his hair by the hand full, making more crosses than fingers he got; and, looking to the ceiling said:
"Forgiven Thy, for it was the wine talking.
"Is something wrong, brother?" asked don Andres.
"Andres, what Pontius did, when he pass sentence."
"He washed his hands. Why?"
"Then, why you told those people that he washed his balls."

Don Xusticio went on making the sign of the cross and asking God's pardon for the new priest; but, pardon or no pardon, don Andres was well come by the people, thanks to the power of the well spoken word. The only thing that didn't fell in good ears was the name of Andres. Don Andres didn't sound good for a young priest. It could be all right if he was an old man but, for a young and good-looking one, the name was wrong. So, the young girls, that were the ones that in most of the occasions would decorate the church with some flowers, decided to christened the man, and they call him Andy; no don Andy, just Andy, as a handsome young man should be call.
Don Xusticio left the parish without throw in a party, and that upset the people, when they should know better, for don Xusticio never would commit such a sacrilege of spending a peseta in a pagan ceremony. But the people commented that, at less, he should say good-bye.
"What was the cost to say good bye?"
"He is a pig,” said the ones that, when he was in charge, were the first in taking to him the best cuts of the pig in the time of the slaughter.
"He has no shame," said the others who took, during years, wine to him. "Ha, ha", laughed the ones who never spent a peseta with him.
The Spanish proverb says that people talk about the market according to the business they do. So, Cacholas, who was mad about wine, commented:
"He only had to pay a couple of litres of wine, to leave this parish as a good man."
That remark of Cacholas became a trademark in our village, ever since. And any person who left the village, to go to America, or to another part of Spain, had to pay two litres of wine, or he would be call a pig. And later every good Christian, before going to meat his make, would make sure to live in his will two litre of wine for the people.


THE LAST SUPPER


This business of our church was the synonymous of a banana republic. First there was the dictator of don Xusticio for fifty years squeezing the people, and when he went, everything was left in ruins. Then came don Andy who wanted to do all in one day. He would ask, on his knees, for all sorts of help, then the people felt so sorry that they were squeezed once more. As a consolation they would comment:
"Well, at less, with this we see where the help goes."
One good day, the Andaluz was helping Don Andy to clean all that shit, which the old priest left behind and, scrubbing walls, and patching holes, they came across a mural, that some mad man, in bygone times, provably don Xusticio, had painted on top of it with lime. The mural was in poor conditions, but could be seen that it was the Last Supper. Don Andy asked the Andaluz if it could be restored. The Andaluz, in the best of those exaggerate manners that only the Andalucians know how to use, on the spot waved a fantastic story to the priest, saying:
"Padre, that mural, that treasure you had the good fortune to discover there, can this servant of God, yours and this good church, restore it better than new. But this little job has to be done at night. Yes, sir, at night. That treasure has to be restored with candlelight. I say candlelight, because, in the time it was painted, it was done with candlelight. I see that in the shades, and with the same light have to be restored to give to it the same...the same...That palette, padre, the taste, like something that you feel in your mouth, if you follow me."
As don Andy didn't know, at the time, how exaggerate the Andaluzian race can be, he was left mouth open, believing whole hearted in the Andaluz knowledge of paintings and antiques, and he left the mural in his hands without a prayer. One night, a warm and humid night, appropriated for that sort of work, according to the Andaluz, because the brushes don't dry to soon and the paint flows smoothly, armed with candles and the tools of his trade, the Andaluz walked to the church, to show the world how able he could be in restoring the pass. He could be right in choosing a nigh with such special climate, for any person of the country, without the need of being an expert, could tell that it is in those nights when smells, like crickets, emerged almost talking, saying who they are, from every corner of houses and burns, bodegas...and even cemeteries and churches. Precisely that was how the Andaluz, in that lugubrious solitude of the church, and to the agonizing pale resplendent of the candles heard, with his well-trained nose, the lamentations of a barrel. Dragged by the irresistible power of his nostrils, he went along to the sacristy, where there was a small barrel of Malaga wine, crying as a baby to be liberated. The barrel, due to the warm of summer, had develop a crevice from where its tears were coming out, and whose voices were those the Andaluzian´s nose had heard. Over a shelf there was an old grail, green for the years without any use, one of those relics that don Xusticio left behind. The Andaluz got the vase, put the barrel over the table, and started a love affair with it as if the barrel was a girl of sixteen for, before open it, he kissed and licked the crevice, with such tenderness and passion, at the same time, that he almost had an orgasm with the barrel. For the warm nigh the wine was a room temperature and, because of the crevice, it had breath and had recovered the full body at its best: like a flower in season that has to be pollinated there and now or never. The Andaluz sat on a stool and started to taste the wine, which was like nectar. He had been hard up for a few weeks, and even his jokes in the tavern had not produce the results that in other occasion they did. So his metabolism was in a desperate need of that liquor, like the dry land would be after a long summer draught. After a few glasses he thought that perhaps all that was a dream, and he was going to hit his head against the wall to make sure, but then he changed his mind: if it was a dream, better let it be. He realized, after sending half the barrel down the hutch, that he was not dream, because he started to feel very hungry, a thing that never had happened before in his dreams. Then he went sniffing around the place as a mouse looking for crumbs. And there in a chest, precisely hidden from the mice, was the holly bread. He started with the wafers, as if they were potato crisps, and pushing them with holly wine, he finished the lot: the holly wine and the holly bread, and he felt like in heaven. He was happy but not drunk, more like the one on a trip, surprised of himself, for drinking a barrel of wine and eating a chest of holly bread, and he commented:
"My God, it has to be a miracle. Where all that is gone?"
When he returned to earth, he realized that the work have not been touch. He pulls himself together and went back to the mural. Perhaps inspired by the holly bread and the holly wine, he finished the work in one go. Nevertheless, the sun was over the hills when he came out from the darkness of the church. There was a mist, after the warm night, and the sun had a yellow colour with an aureole around it. In the way home the Andaluz met my uncle Anton with a rake on his shoulder. The Andaluz knew that farmers would go at night to the meadows to deviated the streams from one way to another for irrigate the meadows, and the Andaluz, looking at the sun said to my uncle:
"Nothing better than a full moon to irrigate the meadows, eh, senor Anton."
My uncle could not figured if the Andaluz was joking or was drunk. But could not be drunk, because uncle Anton was aware of the Andaluz financial difficulties. He commented with don Andy that he had seen the Andale coming from the church, and that he seemed in a strange mood. Don Andy realized that the Andaluz had gone to do the restoration in the mural, and he could not wait to see how the work had progress, so he walked to the church to see the results. Don Andy almost had a heart attack when he saw the results. Saint Peter was playing the guitar and Jesus was dancing flamenco with Madeleine barefoot over the table, and all the others were clapping hands.
The Andaluz had gone to bed and felt to sleep like a log. He awaked with a bang, like some one trying to knock the door out of its hinges. He went to the door and there was don Andy, that more than a priest, he looked a devil, so furious he was.
“Padre, what are you doing here at this time of dawn" the Andaluz asked in surprise.
"I will kill you, you bustard, even if I have to burn in hell" was the answered of don Andy, putting his fist on the Andaluz face.
The Andaluz thought that don Andy was angry for the wine and the holly bread, and he said
"Padre, if you feel like that for that miserable wine and bread, do discount it from the job."
But then the Andaluz listened, in amazement, while the priest was telling him what he saw in the church.
"Padre", he said, as if he could not believe his ears, "what happened after, is of not my concern. When I left they were having supper."
And the Andaluz closed the door in don Andy's face and went back to bed. Don Andy ran home, call my uncle Anton and both went to the church with a bucket of lime and a broom to erasing the masterpiece of the Andaluz, before the churchgoers could see it. My uncle Anton was tented to ask the priest to leave the mural as it was, because he thought it was rather nice and made a difference from the other sad and depressing pictures and figures that there were in the church. But don Andy was in a terrible temper, no so much for the spoil of the mural, but for believing in all that rhetoric of the Andaluz.
"He had to be drunk, he had to be drunk, to do this" don Andy kept saying.
"He had no money, I know that. How he could be drunk?" my uncle talked as to himself.
“Only a drunker, or a mad man could do that,” said don Andy.
At that moment, it came to don Andy what the Andaluz said about the wine. He rushed to the sacristy, and uncle Anton heard a shout of horror.
"Anton, come to see this!"
Over the table was the grail upside down; wine all over the table and crumbs like snowflakes covered the floor as fare as the door. Don Andy recognized that sort of crumbs, and went to the chest, and there it was, empty without a wafer to save a soul in a hurry. That was too much. Don Andy went mad and sworn not to bury the Andaluz in holly grown and not to give him the last rites, and not to admit him in the church ever. My uncle would laugh in telling the story, and he said.
"He doesn't need the last rites or be bury in holly grown. He is immune with all that holly wine and holly bread to the end of time."
But, after a while, don Andy saw the funny side of the catastrophe, laughed and did forgive the Andaluz.


THE CONFESSIONS


A church without holly bread is like a black smith without coal. Even worst, because a black smith could use wood, in the last instance, but a priest cannot use any loaf. That, precisely, was what my uncle Isqueiro said, when he learned that the priest run out of holly wafers.
"Give bread to the people, and I go to church."
That was one of the first stumbles, of many more to come, that don Andy came across, for there are things that have to be learned in practice as the job teaches them. At that time, the holly bread, like everything else, was rationed, and don Andy had to find it in the black market; and even so he took some time to get it. In the mean time the work got piled up for don Andy, because people, especially woman, who had nothing to confess when don Xusticio was in charge, now were desperate to tell their sins. For, what pleasure can come out of sinning if you can't share the secret it with anybody?
The parish woman, after waiting more than a month for confession, were desperate, because they could not carry any longer the burden of secrets on their on. When the time came, to share those secrets with the priest, don Andy never had a time alike. He was so busy that some times, like children from school, he had to take some work to do at home. He never dreamed that, in a remote parish, of rural simple people, so much could be going on. So the new priest soon learned that he was in the wrong business, and he decided to be a sinner. The word went around that it was my cousin Consuelo the first devil who tented the priest. And that well could be, because, as I already say, my cousin got into trouble in the city, and she went to see the priest for help. My uncle Anton found out that the priest got an infection and uncle Anton said that it was Consuelo's doing. What proves that God punishes sinners in a mysterious ways. Don Andy had to see a doctor. And guess who the doctor was? Yes, he was don Camilo, the comedian. Don Camilo had a long chat with the priest, as to break the ice, in order to make the priest let the cat out of the bag. The doctor, as a good taylor who knows the cloth, realized, by the way of talking, that for once it was the priest the one who had to confess his sins.
"I went to a congregation of our brotherhood and drunk too much beer, and that could be the course of a bad irritation that I feel on passing water,” say Don Andy to the doctor.
The doctor prescribed several doses of penicillin that, as in the case of suppositories, that he prescribed to my uncle Mingos, was the miracle drug of the time, and one that only priests could afford; because at that present, in Spain, it still was in the black market. The priest was relieved that he got what he expected without having to take his trousers down. But, when the doctor said good-bye in the door, he gave a good advised to him.
"Don Andy" he said to the priest "another time that you have a section of beer like that, use a condom."


THE BISHOPS VISIT


In the times of don Xusticio it was easy and profitable to be a priest, in one of those rural parishes, for more reasons than one. The older people were intimidated, and no only they fear the here after, they fear the after here as well. Politics at part, in those days the roads were dip and dark, and nights were longer. Galicia is known in the rest of Spain, as the witched land, and the most superstitious region. When everything was rationed, as I already mention, some times there was not kerosene for the lamps, and the only thing to do was to go to bed at dusk and make children. All those children had to be christening, and some died early. But all that was all grist to the mill, for they had to be bury, and the priest would charge for the service. Taking advantage of the deep dark roads and of those insulate villages, lost on the hills and valleys, among woods an long nights, devils and wandering souls, and other things that go bang in the dark, proliferated. To be, more or less, safe from those many creeping creatures, one had to be in good terms with the priest and the church. Priest in those villagers not only they were caciques; they were the witch doctors as well. But, when don Andy came to the fore, people, especially the more young, had become cynical; in other words they had become immune to those plagues, and learned how to go around of all that sort of inconveniences, without fear. Hence for, the gifts to the church were getting thinner. Added to that the fact that don Andy was desperately trying to patch the more urgent holes that his predecessor left behind, and the church was a lost. Somewhere, in the high spheres, they must have thought that our church was a cathedral, for the profit there was, and then, as all those accounts suddenly stopped, they presumed someone was cooking the books, and they sent a taxman, in the shape of a bishop, to investigate. The news came that our church had been chosen, among some luckily others, to be visited by a bishop. Don Andy got the shock of his life, because in that house there were not facilities to receive a dignitary as high as a bishop. The best assets left behind by don Xusticio, and which don Andy inherited, among other things, like holes, leeks and falling roofs, were the couple, uncle Anton and wife. Their daughter, the big tits and the one who crook my head with stones was, by then, marry and gone. Uncle Anton's wife, with the miserable budget she always had from don Xusticio, learned how to through a party with only a cabbage. Uncle Anton, as I mention, given the opportunity to studding, would have been an inventor of some sort. He was a good handyman, a man for all seasons. In don Xusticio's days, he has to learn how to be many men in one. He looked after the pigs that don Xusticio rise to sell them. Looked after the horse and making sure there was wood for the fire; worked the large orchard to grow all sorts of greens and potatoes; and then had to help in the church as a sacristan. Don Andy recognized, in a short time, the merits of uncle Anton, more than don Xusticio did in many years, and he left in his hands the job of improvising some facilities for the comfort of the bishop. That was uncle's Anton opportunity, the one he had waited for all his life, to demonstrate his ability. He went to see my godfather, senor Salvador, to borrow an old and large barrel. Salvador gave him the barrel with pleasure when he was told that it was for improvising a shower for the bishop. My godfather was another bloody creeper, as I said, and he would never give a potato to a beggar, but would help with gusto any rich person. Uncle Anton sawed the barrel, about a hand higher than the belly bottom of a normal person. With the smaller piece, he made a sort of steps to climb into the barrel. He fixed the barrel in one of the best rooms, with a hole all through the floor, so the water could run down below to the horse's stable. On the wall he fixed one of those buckets used to water the flowers; and connected to that, from the next room, he fixed a large funnel and a piece of thick pipe. Hanging from the bucket was a chain to turn the water on and off. Really the chain was connected to an old bell that don Xusticio use to announce himfelf when taking the last rites to dying persons. On pulling the chain, the bell rung in the other room, and then a person would drop a bucket of water in the funnel. Uncle Anton made sure to stick a piece of paper in the bucket, explaining how to handle that complicated piece of equipment. One pull was cold water, twice warm water, and three pulls very hot water. The problem of the shower solved, uncle Anton put his brains to improvising a toilet, his masterpiece, with an automatic arse wiper. Armed with a large jigsaw he cut out a hole in a bench, just with the shape of an arse, and smooth it with sand paper, to make sure that a chip of some sort would not get stack in any delicate parts of the body. Then he bore five holes in the wooden floor; a large one for the shit to drop to the stable below, and the smaller ones to stack there the legs of the bench, so would not be there any accidents if the bishop rolled in the bench. Both, shower and toilet were closed together, and enclosed with a sort of curtain, improvised with a mantelpiece that uncle borrowed from the church. All that done he call don Andy to give his opinion. Don Andy approved the ingenuity of uncle Anton, sure that the bishop was going to be please, because he knew by experience that, that those high dignitaries are modest at heart; and it is not the luxuries what they enjoyed, but the effort made to achieved them, like the man who gave very little, but the biggest gift, because it was all he got. But uncle Anton didn't give away his most cherished secret, the automatic arse wiper, no even to don Andy, because it was a surprise to the bishop; and if it was successful, uncle Anton was thinking to patent it and sell it to rich people. The gadget consisted of a large stick, that was used to bushed down the chess nuts from the trees, in which uncle Anton fixed a sponge in one end, a real sea sponge, because there were not artificial ones at the time. He laid the stick against the wall in the stable, just by the hole of the toilet above. By the stick he made sure that the bucket to curry water for the horse, was full with clean water.
Uncle Anton had learned some tricks from the old priest, don Xusticio, his brother-in-law. The old priest was so mean that he could not stand the birds eating his cherries, figs and early apples. He used to hate black birds just for that reason, because they like so much cherries and figs.
"They are devils, those birds, that is why they are black" used to say don Xusticio, without realizing that priests dressed black, too.
To spoil the bird’s feasts, he would put bells on the trees, with strings to his office and his room. On hearing a bird singing he would pull the string to scare the pore creatures out of its pants. Uncle Anton thought that, the idea of the bells to scare the birds, he could put it to a good use, to save his legs; and he fixed bells in the stable, in the chicken run, and in the pig stay, so he could be call from any part of the hose to wherever he was. Now he put one on the top of the bishop's door, with a string through the hole of the toilet, and in the end of the string, down in the stable, an old cup. The idea was that, as the droppings from the bishops fell in the cap it would pull the string, and the bell would ring. In that way it would give ample time to uncle Anton to ran to the stable, wet the sponge in the bucket and wipe, from underneath, the bishops arse. This invention, which today seems a joke, was not laughing matter in those days. We have to think that, in the rural areas, there was not running water, even in rich houses; and to have a seat with a hole to the stable, for having a comfortable shit, was a real luxury. Added to that a servant underneath to wipe the arse with a sponge and clean water, and the whole thing becomes an extravaganza.
While uncle Anton prepared those small details, don Andy looked into other matters of not less importance. There were in the village a few men whose business was fishing, and two of those men fished a couple of sirens, somewhere in those exotic waters of the world. One was blond as the wheat ready to thresh. The sailor catch her in what the Spanish sailors call the Grand Sol, that seams to be in the North Sea. Perhaps the girl was Irish or Swedish. The brunet came from the warmer waters of the Caribbean seas, but she could not speak Spanish. Both talked a fanny language, but they could understand each other. Both women were in such good conditions that, if any one had to choose between one of then, it would be easy to choose both. Don Andy was learning finger talking with them to make himself understood, like other men from the village. And no to be less than the rest of mortals, he too sin in his heart every time he talked to them. One day I heard two old men commenting, as the two women pass by.
"Those women have the flesh in the right place."
Even today I don't know what they meant with that. Could be that they refer to the tits or the bottom. But as both women had plenty of that, may be the old man meant to say the whole lot. The sailors, their husbands, some times would be away for months. Then the two women were all the time together, looking shy and stupid, because they could not understand anybody but themselves. It seems that, one of them, could manage a few words in Spanish but, as in the village everybody spoke Gallego, those few wards with foreign accent were useless there. Men of the village would give a leg and an arm to have a go at them but, for been so desired, they were the most guard treasure in the world, because they would not have a moment free, or a place to hide, without eyes been watching them.
"The sailors, in this occasion, take long time to come home" people commented.
"Fish is getting more scarce everyday."
"And if they left the bait at home..."
Those and others were the comments of men in the tavern. Don Andy didn't comment. It was not appropriate for a priest, occurs. But, with the coming of the bishop, he saw the opportunity of getting his hands in where the girls had the flesh, wherever the place it was. With the few words that the brunet could speak in Spanish, don Andy managed to make a deal with them, to do as waitresses for the bishop. He made sure to talk to them in front of several neighbours, to show that there was nothing to hide; because that is the best way to do things that one don't want people to know. Then he explained to the people there, as casual as if the whole thing was of not importance at all.
"The house is not in conditions to receive a bishop, but I would do the most I can to impress him, with good food and good service; because this visit can be of great importance for our church.” That worked better than don Andy expected. The parishioners, specially the better off, started to carry presents to don Andy, to make sure the bishop would not go hungry during his stay in the parish.
The day the bishop was due, don Andy rehearsed, with uncle Anton, the way the bishop had to be addressed, so uncle Anton would not put his foot, something that he would most sure do by second nature. It took don Andy some doing to convince uncle Anton that, the way he told him was the correct one to treat a bishop. That had to be blamed in the Spanish language, for having masculine and feminine genre for everything; and the way to address a bishop is with feminine words. So, the first thing uncle Anton asked to don Andy was if the bishop was a bloody queer. The bishop, I been told, arrived by car, but then the car left and the bishop walked to the rectory, because the car could not go as far as that, due to the narrow road. I must have being very busy not to be there, like everybody, when the car arrived; but I remember to see the dignitary walking up the footpath, and my uncle Anton currying a large suitcase behind. All the villagers, from the four villages that formed the parish, seemed to be there, walking behind the man. Children, as they fell left out, were spying from behind the hedges. The bishop seemed to me very young to be a bishop, for I thought that bishops had to be old. He was tall and good-looking, and for that reason he seemed, from my point of view, a bit ridiculous in those long habits. It was a sunny day and, with all those clothes and the long walk, he reached the house, as my uncle Anton put it, sweating like a pig. So the first thing he asked for was to change to lighter clothes and to have a bath. Don Andy expected that the bishop would ask just that, but even so he turned red. Because, by then, he was not very sure if all that improvised technology that uncle Anton had prepare, would be acceptable to the bishop. The priest made sure, anyway, that it was not my uncle Anton, the one to explain to the bishop the drill of his invention, because he would go into unnecessary and embarrassing details. To cool the bishop a bit, don Andy send the woman from the north, to help him, and to demonstrate how the shower worked, because don Andy had already explained the woman one thing or two before hand. It must be Latin, the language those women talked, said my uncle Anton, because they and the bishop understood each other perfectly and talked like parrots. But at first, the bishop, on seeing the woman in so light clothing, with flesh screaming to get out, instead of cooling down, he sweat even more. And he almost melted down, when the woman smiled at him, stacking her big blue eyes in the many bottoms of the habit, as the one who thinks that all that were the trousers fly.
On the other side of the room, senora Maria, uncle Anton's wife, and the brunet, were ready with two large buckets of water, one cool and one hot, waiting for the signal of the bell. It took the bishop more time to get undress and to go inside the barrel than the woman expected and, when he did so, they were already thinking in something else, their mind miles away. The bishop pulled the chain once and as nothing happened, he pulled twice, and for the time the woman were down to earth, he had pull three times. The woman took at that as the signal for very hot water, so the brunet empty half of the bucket of boiling water into the funnel and left the man like a chicken to be pluck. The bishop pull down the chain with the intention to stop being boiled alive, and that been the signal for cold water. So senora Maria emptied half of her bucket of freezing water in the funnel. The bishop, trying to stop that madness altogether, pulled the chain several times, and another bucket of boiling water fell on his head. The shower alternated in that manner till the water finished, and the man was left like the tools coming from the black smith, tempered with fire and water. Before he could come out of the barrel, the woman from the Caribbean seas took some perfume to him, something especial that she had kept for an important occasion, and what better than in the body of half cook bishop. The bishop, on seeing the brunet, looked down on himself, but soon realized that the barrel had been cut tall enough for shy people. The perfume and the sight of the brunet left the bishop bewitched. He looked around for an stone to punish his temptation, for, in the presence of the brunet, he commit sin in his mind, and for that lack of stones, he hit his chess with the piece of soap, that it was harder than an stone anyway. The shower had been a success, at last, and the bishop praised the ingenuity of such wonderful invention saying, afterwards, that he never had such a relaxing shower in the whole of his life. From the shower the bishop moved to the dining room where the food was waiting. Aunty Maria, if in the rein of don Xusticio could make a feast of a cabbage, then, with all the presents she had from the parishioners, she had prepared sufficient food to feed the whole parish. While all that was going on, uncle Anton was in the corral open logs for the fire; and one could noticed, in the way he hit the logs, that he was a bit annoyed for been let out, after all the trouble he went through with his inventions. As for the first time there was plenty wine at home, without don Xusticio rationed it, so uncle Anton sent a few glasses down the hatch, in order to alleviate his inferiority complex. Then, recovering his memory, remembered that he had being told by don Andy to put a couple of jars of wine on the table, used with a jar full to the seams with red wine. The bishop and don Andy were at the table and the girls starting to serve the first curse. Uncle Anton pored wine in the glasses and, as the jar was so full, he spilt half of it over the table, but he was pronto to wipe it out with his shirt sleeve. Them, lifting one glass himself, said to the bishop:"
"Salud, your... e...e... esen... esence... Excellency" he said, at last.
He had been practicing that phrase while he cut the firewood, and just in
that moment, because he felt a bit nervous, he almost forgot it. The bishop noticed his embarrassment and, to help him, lifted his glass, and, in a very humble manner said:
"To your health, good man", and he send down a good half glass in one sip. Uncle Anton didn't expect that from the bishop, and he didn't know what to do of himself, then he fill in the bishops glass again.
"No more for the moment, good man, no more, please,” said the bishop with his hand trying to stop the jar.
"Drink, your excellency, that it costs nothing,” said uncle Anton.
Don Andy realized, knowing as he already did the ways of uncle Anton, that worst things were to come, but could not find the way to get rid of him. Luckily just at that moment uncle’s Anton wife came into the dining room, as to save the situation. She gave a hard look to her husband, because she new, better that don Andy, that her husband had to be stop at once, or he would embark in some silly conversation with the bishop; for uncle Anton didn't hold the wine very well and, after a few glasses, he was anybody's man. He knew the eye talking of his wife and, bowing his head like a dog, went back to his firewood.
"Pardon, your excellency, but he can't help in putting his foot,” said the woman to the bishop. "I hope" she added, "that my modest cooking would be of your satisfaction. I never been training, you know."
Don Andy had rehearsed everything, but in the rehearsal was not included those two going to the dining room, because that was reserved for the foreign girls. Don Andy, who fell relief that uncle Anton was gone, again fell worry that now was going to be his wife telling stories to the bishop, because those peasants, once the ice is broke, go on and on till the cows come home. But, fortunately enough, the woman said no more and went back to the kitchen. Don Andy fell relive as if some one help him with his cross, especially on looking to the bishop's face and seeing that he was please with the attention of the couple. The foreign young woman must have been waitresses at one time or another, because they serve at the table too professionally to be the first time. One served vegetable, the other meat, the other wine, the other chicken, and the other bread. One showed her arse as she bends in one way and the other showed her tits as she lean on the other way. The bishop felt like a duck in a pond and didn't know in which way to turn, and he thought that there were a dozen of girls instead of two. He never stopped to praise the taste of the food. But, as he had one eye in the plate and the other on the cat, don Andy was not sure what he was talking about, if about the meat or the flesh. Don Andy himself was feeling like he had a mouse into his under pants, because the woman could not avoid being provocative, even when they didn't mean to. They seemed to have a devil inside those bodies that was tenting irresistible, even the more holly souls. Another devil was in the wine, with which both men pushed down the sumptuous meal.
At last, the meal over, and while they had a cigar with coffee and brandy, the bishop let the cat out of the bag. He went around a bit, as the one who takes a short cut on the longest road, and praising the shower and its ingenuity he jumped to the marbles attention of the young women, that it was where he wanted to arrive, in the first place. The girls were already in the kitchen, where my Aunty had for then two plates of food as they never had seeing like before, and they were happy taken account of the contents, talking in their parrot language, while Aunty made the sing of the cross, thinking the girls were a couple of pigs grumble as they ate.


THE NOVELS

"Brother, what are doing those women here in your house" the bishop asked, with an accent as if he was telling off don Andy for having the devil in the house.
"Well, they are the only ones in the parish who, I guest, have some manners for this occasion" said don Andy.
"I see that they are not from this part."
"No, they are not."
"Where they come from?"
"The blond nobody knows where she comes from. The sailors found her in a boat, almost dead, with some other people dead by her. But she lost her memory and nobody knows anything about her pass. The sailors, no knowing what to do with her, brought her with them, and one of the fishermen married her. A real novel her life is."
"And the brunet? She seems to be from Jamaica."
The brunet came into the dining room, showing a rosary of white teeth and the mouth so wide that she could eat a plate. She asked, in her cat talk, if everything was all right, then went back to her plate in the kitchen. The bishop had his eyes stack in the back of the woman and could not turn to don Andy till the woman disappear. As he came back to earth, he heard don Andy saying:
"That is a real tragedy. Originally it seems she was from Puerto Rico. I have understood that she was sold to a white landlord when she was a little girl. The infidel could have as many wives as he could feed, and he could feed as many as he wanted, because he made them work as slaves on his land. When she was a teenager she escaped, but fell in the hands of some pirates. They violate her and then through her to the sharks. By a stroke of good lack she came in the nets before the sharks got her. A real tragedy."
"Could all that happened, really" the bishop asked incredulous.
"That is what the sailors told."
"Seems incredible; but only God knows why those things have to happen to some people.
"It was over three o'clock in the afternoon when the lunch was over. Don Andy fell like an anaconda after eating an explorer, started to nod his head like my aunty Carmela, regardless of the presence of the bishop.
"Brother, you need a nap, after this feast. Please do not worry about me. May be I would have a stroll in the orchard to listing to the birds. You go and have a nap"
The bishop's birds were the two tragedies that he wanted to be left alone with them, to talk, on their parrot language, to see if he could read what was in their minds. Because he didn't realized that, by then, the women were up the village, showing off for have been serving a bishop.
Uncle Anton was cleaning the stable, to be near the shitting hole, just in case the bishop had to do his duty, because he was dying to try his invention. But, realizing that don Andy had gone to bed, and that his wife, too, was having a nap in the chair, there in the kitchen, he creep into the dining room to have a chat with the bishop. Uncle Anton knew, as a second nature, that it is very difficult to talk to a stranger, or to a superior, with the hands empty, because the hands get in the way and there is nothing one could do with them. So, in order to keep the hand occupy, he curry with him the rake and a shovel, with which he was cleaning the stable.
"Ah, señor Anton. You are not having a siesta, then?" the bishop asked in a humble manner.
"No time for that, your...e...e...Excellency. I have to clean the horse stable because the manure is piling up, and one day or the other has to be don. And there are some spring onions, which I planted a couple of months ago, and I am going to spread the manure there. Do you know that horse manure is the best for spring onions?"
"I didn't know that, senor Anton."
"Oh yes, sir. When they are young nothing better. Later on chicken droppings are good. But no while the onions are young."
"Could we visit those onions, senor Anton?” asked the bishop.
"Yes, sir! I will show you the best spring onions there are in the village." Both men walked to the orchard. The weather still was hot, but there were plenty clouds in the sky. The birds were singing everywhere.
"The birds seem very happy, senor Anton” said the bishop stopping to listen to a black bird singing over the roof.
"They are happy because is going to rain later on, sir...your Excellency,” said uncle Anton.
"You think they know that, senor Anton?" the bishop asked.
"Yes, oh yes they do, they do. Look the swallows. They fly low, and that is rain surely."
"Why the rain makes the birds so happy, senor Anton. You know why?” asked the bishop, presuming that senor Anton had an answered for that.
"It is not the rain, your...Excellency. What they care about the rain? They have not harvest that needs rain, nor meadows to irrigate. What they care?"
"Why they sing, then, tell me, senor Anton?"
"For the worms and snails and dead insects, and all that bloody pest that surfaces with the rain. The birds know that is going to be a feast after the rain. Yeeess, sir, they know that, the little buggers."
With uncle's Anton remark about the feast for the birds, came to the bishop's memory, the sermon of Jesus when He had that remarked about the birds that had everything for free. He commented that with uncle Anton, telling him how generous God had been with the birds.
"No so fast, your excellency, no so fast with the birds. They have plenty now in summer, but you wait when winter comes, and the frozen nights with it. The soil is hard as a rock, and the worms make sure they are bury deep, where the frost don't reach them, then the birds have to remember summer, yes sir, if they ever make it. Here are the onions, sir, the best in the village, I can bet you in that."
With the stroll in the orchard, that the bishop enjoy it immensely, he fell the need of doing number two, may be because of the manure talking of my uncle Anton. Apparently the bishop had not notice the bench that uncle Anton had prepared for him, or if he did, he didn't realized its use, for he asked, modestly, to uncle Anton for the loo. The glorious moment had arrived. Uncle Anton showed the bench to the bishop, and then he ran to the stable. The bishop was sat there, puzzled by the fact that, every time he let a drop going down, the bell over the door rung. He thought that it was something that happened by chance, but as he experimented, he proved to himself that he made the bell rang with his arse, but he could not understand why. On finishing, he twisted around, as to see where the toilet roll was. Uncle Anton realized that something like that was happening, and he wet the sponge in the bucket and cleaned the bishop’s arse from under. The bishop, who was already puzzled about the bell, on feeling the cold water and something smooth rubbing his arse, turned quickly to look down the hole to see what was messing about with his bottom. As he stack his nose into the hole, uncle Anton, thinking that the bishop wanted more of the same, rubbed his nose with the sponge full of shit.

Don Andy got up from his siesta, and apologized profusely to the bishop for leaving him alone.
"I don't know what hit me. Usually I don't have a siester."
"Is the weather, brother, is the weather. We are going to have rain. The birds sing and the swallows are flying low,” the bishop said, borrowing my uncle's knowledge.
"Then better we have a look to the church, before the rain comes" subjected don Andy.
The villagers were waiting, as guessing that they were going to come out at that precisely time. But that sort of people don't like to be to obvious with their ways of doing things and, as pretending that they were very busy performing their duties, some were mending gates, others digging the road up; others cutting the fences, and chopping trees that otherwise never would be fell down; the women were hanging their wash al over the fences and the meadows. The children, that were the ones nobody pay attention to then, were playing their invented games on the roads. The bishop waved to all of then, and commented with don Andy:
"They seem very hard workers, those people of your church, I can see that. God blessed them."
After seeing the conditions of the church and the cemetery, the bishop realized that, to put all that right something more than a prayer was urgently needed, and he promised don Andy to do what he could to send some help.
The bishop happened to be a very easy person. In another clothes he would pass by a man working in a bank or any other office. It transpired that he was a man of the world, but he didn't make any effort to show so. After the visit to the church he invited don Andy for a drink in the tavern, because he said he wanted to meet some of the men as they were, and for that the best place was the tavern. He chatted amiably with several peasants and invited then to a drink as well. But don Andy paid for the drinks, because the bishop was not curing money. It was dark when, merry by the drinks in the tavern, they went home to a big dinner, that uncle's Anton wife had already waiting for them. The two foreign women were there waiting, too, with different clothes, even shorter at bottom, and lower at the top, provocative as the devil disguised as women. Uncle Anton had placed two big jars of wine on the table, but he didn't dear to appear during the whole time, scare as he was, that the bishop excommunicated him for rubbing his nose with shit. After another great meal, which the bishop praised as the second best he got in his life, they again relax with brandy and cigars. Then, talking as equals, as if a suddenly friendship had borne between the two men, the bishop said to don Andy:
"My problem, brother, is to sleep. I can not sleep without reading a good book first."
"What sort of books you prefer, novels or tragedies" don Andy asked.
"All depends on the mood, my brother, all depends on the mood,” the bishop repeated, as in a sort of dream.
Don Andy commented with the bishop that, depending on the mood, he suffered the same problem.
Uncle Anton, who had a busy day, for more reasons than one: the catastrophe of his invention and the wine he send down the hatch, had gone to sleep, without asking if he could do so. His wife was showing her fatigue as well, after so much preparations in the kitchen; and don Andy ask her to go to bed, that she did gladly. The priest and the bishop were left alone with the two novels. I cannot say if they had read at the table, or if they took the novels to bed, because as my uncle was drunk and fare gone to sleep, he missed the opportunity to make use of his spying holes. But the girls were seen going home very late, or very early, by other amateur spies of the village. What ever happened, those are minor incidents, compare with the importance of such visit, and the friendship born out of it between the bishop and don Andy. For the church of don Andy had a tremendous boost, and became very famous, due to such honour of been visited by a bishop. People from fare field would come to mass there instead to go to their own church. One of the persons who started to come to our church was the marchioness, all the time in her chauffeur’s driven vintage car and in company of that far relation of mine, cousin Carolina. The two women became very friendly with the priest, and he was very often invited to the marchioness house for tea.


It was learned later that, precisely, it had being the marchioness the one who encourage the priest and my Cousin to go away and to make a life of their own and to have children. The marchioness passed the will to them, and I think my black sheep, second or third-rate uncle Pascual had done the same. So, for once, the work of the nuns had been for nothing. I wonder what made the marchioness, a so religious woman, to take that step; what sort of revenge she had caressed, for so many years, and why. But, before don Andy disappeared, a lot of things happened to him, all a sign that he had mistake his carrier, and that more than a saint he was a sinner, like the rest of us.


THE VISITORS

What you got is what you worth, use to said my uncle Anton. He said so because, at part from the bishop, nobody seemed to know the address of don Andy. But when there were no more debts to pay, and the house was decorated like a five star hotel, with running water and electricity, parents and friends, those people lost in time, started to drop as from heaven, flocking to don Andy's like holidaymakers. Among those lost relations, one good day dropped there a niece of don Andy, with her boy friend. That gave something to talk to the parishioners, because, according the Spanish folklore, the niece of a priest never have a boy friend. Don Andy had forgotten about that niece. But the villagers, who were good weavers, started to wove stories, saying that the girl was a daughter that don Andy had left behind somewhere. The girl was very young, about seventeen; but, even so, don Andy didn't seemed old enough to have a daughter of that age. This mixed up, with respect to the girl and the priest, was the consequences of the terms that the church uses, calling people brothers and sons, sisters and daughters; and reserving the one of nieces and nephews for the more close relations.
Don Andy's niece had come to his uncle with the boy friend, to be marrying, and at the same time to have a free honeymoon in the countryside. What better, for a person from the city, than a rural setting to spend such memorable occasion, hearing the birds singing during siesta time, while having a leg over. And if the price is good, better and better. The girl could not be a daughter of the priest, but most sure she was a niece; because she was taking after don Andy in more ways don one. She was good looking and sexy mad, and in those matters she could teach her uncle and many like him. She was thin, but she had flesh enough in the places a woman needs it. She was very amusing, too. But the word amusing was no used in those latitudes to describe a joyous person, instead they would use the word open: a person is open, when is no shy. She is very open, was how people would describe her. But very open could have an obvious double meaning, too. She was open all right and, because she had nothing else to do, she was up and down the village talking to any cat and dog that had the time to waist with her. The boy friend was the opposite of her. He was a big man, strong as an ox, but never talked, at part from saying yes and no. The girl soon became a friend of the other couple of foreigners, because as they too had nothing to do, had all the time in the world to talk. And apparently the girl could understand their language. After, the two aliens would tell the husbands, I don't know in which language, all what the girl told to them, and the husbands would tell everything in the tavern. The girl, as she told the others, still was at university, but it seems that she was there to teach the professor, instead to learn from them. Her boy friend was from a rich old fashion family. The mother was a widower, and she raised the boy, as mothers in those circumstances do, in love with them, prolonging, in those unfortunate, a never ending infancy. He was a virgin because his mother make him believed that woman had two pussies, every one dirtier than the other. So the chap never had the desire to look to a woman from the waste down. But then his mother die, and he, for the first time, could have a conversation with that student girl. The girl, as bait, and to prove wrong his mother, stack a finger between her legs and gave it to the chap to try. The young chap thought that those smells were no so bad, and he wanted more. Since then he was stack to her skirts like shit to a blanket. Some times, not as often as the chap asked for it, she would give him another sample in the shape of a hand, but that was all there was along the line. If he wants the fish, as well as the bait, he had to marry first. The girl would joke with the other foreigners, saying that she was afraid of that day to come, because he had something resembling a donkey, and two hands were better than one to handle that man. The day came, and there was a feast almost as good as the one my Aunty La Cubana thrown in, on her wedding day. I was not invite this time. What they knew of my existence? Don Andy invited the two famous novels, to serve the food, because he was happy of their services during the bishop’s visit. Another chapter in the life of don Andy, I presume. Next day, my aunt, on don Andy's orders, carry breakfast upstairs for the new couple, but they didn't want any breakfast. The same happened with lunch and dinner, and again with breakfast next day. At last they came down at lunchtime to stretch their legs and nibble something. She was fresh, as a rose and he like a kitchen cloth. My half-in-law, Aunty Maria, said to them:
"But, my children, how can you be all this time without eating anything?"
"We live on the fruit of love" she said with a dirty love.
Uncle Anton took the opportunity, and worn the couple.
"Please, if you are going to have more of that, do not throw the peels to the corral, because they choke the chickens."
The couple stay around about a month, all the time having plenty of the same fruit, till there were not chickens to eat the peels. The chap, looked so useless in the end that a gypsy would not by him for scrap. Believing what his mother had told him, that woman had two, he had the bread battered in both sides, till he dropped, at last, useless, pale, without blood left, as if he had been sack by all the blood sackers the pharmacist had in his jars. And she, on the contrary, was a bit fatter and more open, as people would say about her joyous character. The time had come to go to the university again, but he could no move, prostrated in bed as struck by a chronic anaemia. She left and he stay another fortnight to recover. My Aunty fed the chap with the fat of the earth, and in that time she put the man to walk again. Uncle Anton helped him with the suitcase to the bus stop that was a good two miles away. As they walked a short cut through the fields, they saw a flock of sheep near by. The rum was in the middle, trying to have a leg over; but, as the sheep were all in a lump, the rum could not distinguish the front from the back, and was at it on both ends. The young man looked at the sheep, and turning to my uncle he joke:
"That one is going to need an uncle Priest, too."
And that was the very first joke he said in all the time he had being with don Andy. The first and the last, because they never came along once more. May be they were no happy enough with the service.

A BLESSING IN DISGUISE


I mention the famous sermon, when don Andy first came to the church that even the village idiot, who never had put feet in the church, went there with the lot. Well, after that visit, he became a churchgoer and he was all the time in the first row. Don Andy would prefer not to see the chap becoming so religious, because, in the back of his mind, something was bothering him, that the stupid was going to do something crazy, one day or another. But, even and idiot had the right to be a good Christian, and there was nothing that don Andy could do about it. After all, the only thing he was doing was to follow the flock as the rest of the sheep. But among all that flock, the big fish was the marchioness, who, as I mention, belonged to another parish, but became a customer of don Andy after the visit of the bishop. She was a mean woman, even when not so mean as her dead sister. But she was generous with don Andy, and she gave lots of help to the church, paying mass for every dead person in all the villagers around. So, the marchioness went to church for the fame don Andy got from the bishop, and the rest went because the marchioness went there, and pay mass for their dead. People already started to talk that the marchioness was in love with the priest, because, suddenly, she became so generous to his church and she invited him for tea.
One day, one unfortunate raining Sunday, all that business of don Andy came down as a cattle of cards. The thing that was in the back of his mind, with respect to the village idiot, and which he could no see it clear, that day he found out. Things went like this:
There was a farmer in the parish, from a village near the church, who was the owner of the only mule in all that area. There were horses and plenty donkeys about, but not mules. That particular Sunday had been raining all morning, one of those stupid drizzle, that would not stop people from doing some jobs, but that, all the same, it penetrates to the bone. The man was coming from the meadow with a cart loaded of grass pulled by the mule. As the people walked to church, the mule slept on the wet road and felt to the grown, and most of the load on top of the animal. The men going to church helped the farmer to put the cart on its wheels, and then tried to help to do the same with the mule. But the mule, stubborn as those animals can be, stay put in the grown, and nothing they did persuaded the animal to get on its feet. Farmers know many tricks to persuade animals to do what they are told to do, but people in the area was not familiar with the behaviour of mules, so they try with the beast the same tricks they would try with oxen or with donkeys, but those didn't work with the mule. In the mean time the men were getting soaked under that persistent drizzle and they, frustrated by the stubbornness of the mule, swear a lot, forgetting that they were in their way to church.
"This fucking rain is a nonsense."
"And this fucking mule is another nonsense."
"Bloody rain."
"Bloody mule."
A man, a stranger, happened to pass by on a horseback and, as he saw the men struggling to put the mule on its feet, he laughed and said:
"You are not going to convince that buster like that. Stick a pole in its funny, you will see how soon gets up."
The owner, angry as he was, took a big stake from the cart and introduces it on the mules funny, and the animal jumped on its feet as fast as lightning. The men started to laugh and they comment.
"Look what she was waiting for."
"Why she didn't say so?"
"Now you know what to do, when next your miss fells on the floor."
The village idiot, who was there trying his strength with the mule, took good notice of all that talking and, when in church don Andy blessed the congregation with holly water, for been in the first row, the idiot received a sprinkle in the eyes, and he sworn:
"This fucking water is a nonsense."
Well, what don Andy fear, just had happen: the idiot had put his foot at last. All the women made the sign of the cross and could not believe their ears. The marchioness fainted, or pretended to do so, on hearing such blasphemy in the church. The other women rushed on her help, all at once trying to lift her from the floor, but they were in the way of each other, and could not get between the benches all at once; and for trying to help all at once, they fell on top of each other, and marchioness stay on the floor. The idiot shouted to then:
"You can't get her up like that. Have to put a stake on her funny."
Even don Andy was near fainting this time, and in that church never so many signs of the cross were made. The marchioness never came back, so ashamed she felt about the whole affair. And because the marchioness didn't return, so other clients did the same, and the business of don Andy went into a diving. But it was not don Andy's fault that in the village had to be an idiot, because every village needs one, otherwise there is no fun. So, if the mountain didn't come to Joseph, Joseph went to the mountain. Don Andy would go to the marquises to do service for her in a small chapel that she had a home, then they would have tea or whatever, the three of them: marchioness don Andy and my cousin. Soon after that, don Andy left the church and the cloth, and he did disappear with my uncle Pascual's niece. That raised a really big storm in all the villagers around. Then, when the rain stopped, they came back and went to live which uncle Pscual. I found out about the whole affair by mouth of my uncle Anton. The whole business was the marquises doing, advising the couple no to waste their lives as she and her sister did. Then, according to my uncle Anton, the money to renew uncle's Pascual house, and to clear all the shit piled there during donkeys years, came from the marquises. So, for once, the nuns and the church go their numbers wrong. Uncle Pascual, perhaps reviving the first days in the farm, with his sister, her husband and the little girl, looked another man. He shaved, got short hair and dressed like a dandy. He stopped walking around with fagots of gorth to hide from the rain and got a proper umbrella. The couple soon had children, and all lived happy ever after. -----------------------------------------------------------------------


The End Of: LOCOS RELATIONS 89.000 Words, 114 pages, single space.