Journey to Las Golondrinas by John D. Nesbitt

I arrived in Los Llanos de San Juan Bautista in a time of strong, dry winds, not warm, in the time before Easter. I was wearing an overcoat with a hood, which I pulled up over my head and tied fast. I had come from the city of Chihuahua to Ciudad Cuauhtémoc, in the highlands. There would not be a diligence, or stagecoach, for two days, so I was obliged to ride a horse, on a saddle with little padding on a wooden frame, with a large wooden pommel. The horse had a rough gait when he went at a fast walk, and it shook me with great discomfort, so I had to hold him back, and it took me six hours to arrive in the village of Las Golondrinas, where was located the house of my father.

I was received by Carlota, the woman who took care of his house from the time that I was born and before. She gave me a plate of beans and red chile with white cheese and corn tortillas. She said that everything had been quiet since the death and burial of my father and that I could speak with the lawyer the next day regarding the portion that would fall to me.

I knew that my father had not cared for me since the days of my youth, when I had never wanted to work in the fields and had been allowed by my mother and then by her inheritance to live a modest life in the city, where I did not have to drink beer like a peasant. Yet I felt it worth my while to come now and see what would by my patrimony, and when I finished my plate, I accepted from Carlota a glass of beer, which was better than nothing.

When she came near me, I was seized by a strong passion, as in years past, but when I put my hand on her waist, she took it way, and she said that much time had passed, and she was old now. Well could I see that her chest was sagging and her abdomen slumped, and her shadowy face was wrinkled.

I accepted and drank two glasses of beer and sat before the small fire in the iron stove. Carlota lit a candle for me and said that I could stay in the same room as always, that it was late and she had to retire. I smoked another cigarette and went to my room, tired and stiff from the long ride on the horse.

As I lay by myself in my bed, staring at the ceiling as I had done many times before, I recalled an incident that sometimes came to my memory. One evening, some twenty years earlier, I was sitting at the far end of the living room in a shadowy retired spot, on a sofa, when Carlota came from the kitchen and poured water from a clay jug. She paused before returning to the kitchen; I heard a flat retort and realized what it was. At the time, to me, it was an instance of a person being normal like everyone else, with natural necessities and functions. I never mentioned it to her, of course, and it never lessened my desire to avail myself of the intimacy of her body. Now, as I lay in the dark, I realized that from then on, she would remain distant and untouchable to me.

*

Breakfast was served to me by Cecilia, the daughter of Carlota, who was a year or so older than I and had always hated me. Indeed she was bitter, I think in part from having lost her right hand at a young age when she had wrapped the reins around her wrist and had fallen from a horse, which spooked and ran away at a gallop. She managed well with one hand, nevertheless, and put down a plate of beans and fried eggs, plus a small stack of corn tortillas in a towel.

“I know that you come here for your own interests only,” she said. “Your aunts and your uncles, those who are still living, came for the wake and the burial, and they said they knew you were busy, far away in the city. They came and went, and this place is more quiet than ever, with the laughter of children playing long gone, if it ever was here.”

“How is your mother this morning?” I asked.

“As well as she can be, for I think it gives her pain to see you, and we have had much sadness since the death of Don Ramiro.”

I noticed that she contrived not to refer to him as my father, and I thought she might have contrived also to keep her mother in the kitchen, even if it gave her great displeasure to tend to me herself.

*

The worthy Edmundo Ordóñez, attorney, received me in his office with a short smile and a soft handshake.

“So well did your father think of you,” he said, “in spite of your ingratitude which did not escape his notice and that he did not scruple to mention, that he determined to settle upon you a yearly allowance equal in amount to that which was left to you by your mother, which amount I am familiar with, as you know, from the cheques that you have received from this office these seventeen years. He smiled, and the lamplight glinted on his glasses. “Perhaps you have a question to ask of me?”

“I am not one of many questions,” I said, “but I am curious as to what will happen to my father’s house and fields.”

“Most of the fields he has sold, and the few remaining are rented out, to provide for the costs of keeping the house, which he leaves for the care of la señora Carlota and her daughter, who cared for him always from his days of good health through the times of sickness and decline.”

“Well do they deserve it,” I said. “I would not begrudge them a peseta.”

“Nor they to you.”

I had noticed from the beginning of our interview that he spoke to me in the formal usted, a change from earlier times.

“I do not think I have any more questions,” I said.

*

I did not see Carlota again before I left, and I felt once again that Cecilia kept her apart. I gave my thanks and best regards, and I took my valise to the stable, where I watched as the ostler made the horse ready. He did not brush off the chaff or comb the mane and tail but rather threw on the blanket and saddle, cinched it tight, and forced the iron bit into the horse’s mouth.

I set out on my return trip, sore and stiff in the hard saddle with the large wooden pommel. The wind was strong once again, and I had the hood pulled up over my head. Other people I saw on the road had their faces covered with handkerchiefs, and those who wore hats had their heads tilted into the wind. If there had been someone there that I knew, I would not have known who it was.

After some three hours of travel, I was tired and aching and hungry, and I arrived in the village of Los Pedregales with a desire to rest. I stopped at an inn and went inside, where the light was poor and the air was dank, but there was no wind except the draft that came in around the windows and door. My eyes were tired from the wind and dust, but they had rest at least.

The innkeeper rose up from a table where he had been playing dominoes with a man with a mustache from the days of Porfirio Díaz. The man with the mustache was shelling peanuts and eating them, and he drank from a glass of what looked like mezcal. The host said he did not have wine. He offered me tequila and beer. I thought that the beer would be less rough than the tequila, so I ordered a tankard to go with the plate of beans and pieces of fried pork. The tortillas were scorched and not very warm, but I was glad to have them.

The owner took his seat at the table with his friend, and I began to eat. The owner asked me where I was going, and I said that I was returning from a visit to Las Golondrinas. Thinking that I might hear something of interest from them, I did not state my relation but said that I understood there had been a death in that village, of one Ramiro Villagrán.

“Oh, yes,” said the man with the large mustache. “May he rest in peace. A man of affairs and a large-headed one.”

I understood his older expressions to mean a man of business and a stubborn one. “I heard that was his name,” I said. “But I did not understand how he disposed of his property.”

“Most of it went to his daughter,” said the man.

The words took me by surprise. “Indeed?” I said.

“Yes. A girl with one hand missing. The daughter of his long-time housekeeper. She was a jealous, avaricious girl who never married, and for good reason, I suppose, and is now something of a solterona herself, along with her mother, much older, who also never married.”

“Such things,” I said. “May they be happy. But did the man never marry?”

“Oh, yes, he did. But he did not know his own blood within that matrimony.”

I knew the expression to mean to have a child of one’s own. I said, “I thought I heard someone speak of a son.”

The innkeeper waved his hand. “Oh, there was a son, for sure, but no one ever thought it was his but rather the son of a man from Parral, where the wife had lived before Don Ramiro brought her here.”

“I did not hear about that,” I said.

“No one has to say it out loud, but everyone has known it for many years.”

I felt my face grow long. “And the girl—is she happy with her good fortune?”

“Hah,” said the innkeeper. “No one in that house could be happy.”

“Not even the servant woman?”

“Not even she. For years she did what she could to spite the man who would not recognize his own daughter.”

“Spite him?”

“Ah, yes. She swyved with one man and another and contrived ways for the master to know about it.” The innkeeper tipped his head. “Perhaps in that, she was happy after all. Yes, that could be. And now that he is dead, she does not need to accede to anyone.”

A short while later, when I set out again in the wind with the hood drawn around me, I thought of what I had heard. I recalled the old saying that the fool husband was always the last to know, and I saw that it was not always the case. For my own part, if there was anything I knew that these others did not, it was not of much comfort to me as I made my long way back to the city.