Christmas Eve

The wounded evening fell behind the hill, its blue wing hanging limp and its golden beak half open.  The nest of night was empty, except for a sprinkling of stars and the shiny egg of the moon.  Feathers fluttered a mournful evensong.

            Tall, silver guarumo trees watched each other like ghosts in the darkness.  The thick breeze, cold and dank, moved the branches in the clear spaces of the sky.  The damp air left the shapes of things glistening and wet and the smells of the earth rose up to the sky.  Crickets scraped their legs together, polishing the silence. 

            A fistful of light came from the door of the run-down shack. The hunched-over shadows of the inhabitants slithered onto the porch.  The dog settled himself in the doorway.

            Little by little, the moon filled the night with beautiful light.  The houses of the village could be seen from the porch.  Here and there a candle appeared on the street.  In the old bell tower, the moon settled in and chimed merrily and now and then, bright fireworks pierced the stretched tent of the sky, whistling and crackling.

            The mother wrapped her shawl around her and went out, her two children following behind.  Tina was eleven, thin and round-bellied.  Nacho was around five: chubby, whiney, disheveled and runny-nosed.  His shirt hung just shy of his belly-button.  His mother pulled him along, tripping and with his mouth open and wiping his nose.  They walked down to the main road and headed toward town.

            They walked and walked, without a word, making their way down the dusty road that had skin like a snake, with patches of light and shadow.  Bulls walked through the fields, pushing through the solitude with their bellowing.  As they passed by "La Canoga," opposite Mr. Tito's place, the light from the open door fell on them, blinding them, and they heard the laughter of a guitar.  They walked by in single file.  They walked and walked.  It was Christmas Eve, so there would be midnight mass; and word had gone around that Father Peraza was going to give presents to the children after the sermon.  Tina and Nacho had never owned a toy.  They played dolls with tree branches dressed in corn husks; they played store in a hollowed-out log; they used corncobs to play cops and robbers and gourds for ball games.  They walked and walked. Their skinny dog followed them, a sorry-looking creature coughing and dragging her tail.  They could hear the drum and the horn that accompanied the town's festivities.  They turned a corner and there was the town; from the church steeple the clock like an eye with two lashes frowned at them and watched them until they turned toward the plaza.

            There were things for sale; it smelled of smoke and liquor and firecrackers.  The doorway to the atrium was festooned with palm branches and chains of colored paper.  The horn and the drum accompanied the festivities. 

*

            Miss Lola stopped them on the steps.

            "Did you come for the gifts, Ulalia?"

            "Well, yes . . . ."

            "Hurry up, then, if you want to get something for the children.  The priest is almost finished."

            The mother pulled her train along, looking for the priest; she walked down the side aisle and pressed into the crowd of parents and children waiting for presents.  The noise was deafening.  People were laughing and shoving.

            Ulalia pushed her way through.  Finally, she found herself before the black-robed belly of the priest.  She heard trumpets, she heard bells and music boxes.

            "And who are you?  You're not from here, are you?"

            "No, Father, I'm from the valley."

            "Hum . . . Your kids haven't come to catechism classes, have they?

            "No, Sir, we live so far away . . . . "

            "Hum . . . !  None for you, none for you.  Did you hear?  None for you.  Next, who's next?

*

            A light was shining from the top of the hill.  Ulalia walked home.  With her hoarse, tired voice, she said, "Come on, Nacho, hurry up!"

            Tina pulled him along.  Nachito said, "What about the toys, Mama?"  His shirt fell just shy of his belly button.  He was sniffling.  In the distance, the river tumbled through the ravine.  The black arms of the trees waved their fists at the sky.

            "Come on, Nachito, hurry up!"

            "What about the toys, Mama?"

            As they passed by Mr. Tito's place the light from the open door fell on them and they heard the laughter of a guitar.

Honor

Honor

            The wind had shifted to the north during the night.  Juanita was clean; the water was cold; vultures and smells drifted above.  She crossed the open field.  Her skirt hugged her legs.  Her hair was like black spiders on her face.  Juana was happy, rosy-cheeked and squinting into the wind.  The trees ran beside her.  In the meadow the wind gusted around her.  Juanita filled her cup with joy and covered it with a shout; then she ran and ran, twirling in her own laughter.  The dog ran barking beside her, chasing the dry leaves that flew like birds.

            The spring was deep in a ravine, shaded by palms and philodendrons.  Further down, hidden by stands of huiscoyoles and iscanales, blue pools slept, pools like pieces of sky, long and fragrant.  Shadows had fallen on the rock walls and limestone pebbles rolled in the thin, fragile stream.

            Juanita sat down to rest.  She was breathing hard and deep to calm her heaving breasts; her taut blouse barely contained them.  The spring watched her intently, while the dog greedily lapped the water, her four paws planted in the virgin sand.  Downriver, branches bathed in the cool water.  Beside her, the rocky ground was green and damp. 

            Juanita took out a mirror the size of a coin and looked at herself carefully.  She arranged her curls; she wiped her forehead with her apron; and, as she like to do when she was alone, she kissed herself on the lips, glancing around to be sure no one was looking.  Tucking the mirror inside her blouse, she got up from the rock and began gathering the round seeds of the tempisque tree to play cinquito.

            The dog began to bark.  A man on horseback appeared.  The sun was behind him and his horse's gait broke the glass of the spring into a thousand pieces.  When Juanita saw him, she felt her heart in her throat.  There was no time to run away; without knowing why, she waited for him, clenching a leaf in her fist like a knife.  The horseman, young and handsome, cantered up to her, radiant with his advantage.  He ignored the barking and took her at a gallop, like the north wind that was blowing.  There was feeble resistance with trembling nos and frail pushing away; then cries of pain, then . . . the spring stared straight ahead, unblinking.  With her arm over her eyes, Juana lay in the shadows.

*

            Tacho, Juana's brother, was nine years old.  He was dark-skinned, with a head like a huizayote squash.  One day he saw that his grandpa was furious.  Juana had said something to him, who knows what, and papa had given her a good beating.

            "Stupid fool!" he had heard him say.  "You've gone and lost your honor, the only thing you brought into this world!  If I'd known you were going to lose your honor at the spring that day, I'd never have let you go, stupid fool!"

            Tacho cried, because he loved Juana as if she were his mother.  Innocently, without telling anyone, he went to the spring and searched everywhere for Juana's honor.  He had no idea what his sister's honor might look like, but judging from his grandpa's anger, it was probably something that would be easy to recognize. Tacho pictured her honor round and smooth, maybe shiny, maybe like a coin, or a cross.  He kept his eyes peeled on the sand, upstream and down, but he saw only stones and weeds, weeds and rocks and he couldn't find her honor.  He looked in the water, in the bushes, in the hollows of trees, he even searched in the sand around the spring, but nothing!

            "From the beating papa gave her, I guess Juana's honor must be something big and important," he thought.

            Finally, under some chaparral, among the leaves dappled with sun and shade, he saw a strange, shiny object.  Tacho felt happiness rising in his body like bubbles that tickled him.

            "I found it!" he yelled.  He picked up the shiny object and looked at it with surprise.

            "Wow!" he said, I didn't know an honor looked like this . . .

            He ran with all the strength of his happiness.  When he got home, his grandpa was sitting on a hollowed-out log, lost in his thoughts.  The furrow between his brows was dark and deep.

            "Papa!" shouted Tacho, panting.  "I went to the spring and I found Juana's honor, now don't beat her anymore, here . . . ."

            And he put a thin dagger with a mother-of-pearl handle in his grandpa's hand.

            The Indian took the dagger, waved Tacho away and sat staring at the sharp blade, with vengeance in his eyes.

            "Yes, you have," he murmured.

            Night fell.

I.This Country of Mine

This Country of Mine

A.  Tales of Clay (Cuentos de barro)

     Luis Salvador Efraím Salazar Arrué spent his early childhood in Sonsonate and Santa Tecla, rural

towns with a strong indigenous presence.  He attended local primary and secondary schools and

loved nothing more than wandering in the hills and farmlands, observing nature, talking with the

farmers and laborers and Indians, daydreaming in the shade of a mango tree, listening to the

warbling of the pucayo and the clarinero and making up stories to entertain his friends

In 1916 he was awarded a scholarship by the Salvadoran government that enabled him to study

English at Rock Hill College in Maryland and art at the Corcoran Institute in Washington, DC.

During a visit to New York he was browsing in Brentano’s Book Store and came across a copy of

Arturo Ambrogi’s  Cuentos del Trópico.  It was first been published in 1915 and although Ambrogi

was Salvadoran, the young Salvador had not read his collection of lyrical sketches and regional

vignettes of rural El Salvador.  Ambrogi’s descriptions of the landscape are painterly and his

characters’ speech is colloquial and colorful.  Although Salvador loved the cosmopolitan excitement

of New York and Washington and his English was improving quickly, he felt nostalgic for the warm

sun and bright colors of El Salvador.  He later described finding Ambrogi’s book as a kind of

epiphany.  He read it again and again and even committed to memory the titles of the selections; it

was poetry to his homesick ears. Ambrogi’s style of costumbrismo was popular throughout Latin

America so it was not the book’s uniqueness that impressed Salvador but rather its familiarity. 

Surrounded by the culture of an international metropolis, reading and savoring Cuentos del trópico

felt like rediscovering his homeland.

          
    El Salvador is a diminutive country, so small that when Gabriela Mistral visited for the first time in 1927, she playfully called it “el pulgarcito,” the smallest finger of the hand of Central America.  During that visit she toured the country in the company of a group of writers, who treated her with the deference and respect they showed all visitors whom they regarded as distinguished figures in the world of letters.  They showed her their volcanoes and rivers and introduced her to their writers and artists.  One of the writers she met in 1927 was Salvador Salazar Arrué, who had started signing his work “Salarrué.” 

            When Salarrué met Gabriela in 1927, he had already made a name for himself in literary circles in El Salvador.  His poems and stories appeared in the country’s newspapers and magazines and his first novel, El Cristo negro/The Black Christ, had been published in 1926.  But it was Gabriela was introduced him to an international audience.  An accomplished poet herself, in 1945 Mistral would become the first and to date the only Latin American woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, but she was already widely known and respected in Latin America as an educator, an ambassador of culture and good will and a defender of children, women and indigenous peoples.  Salarrué showed her some of his stories whose characters were the rural and indigenous inhabitants of El Salvador, of that small parcel of land called Cuscatlán by the Pipil people, for whom it was the land of the jewel.   She loved the stories and subsequently sent a few of them to Costa Rica to Joaquín García Monge, the founder and editor of the weekly literary publication Repertorio Americano.  The Repertorio was read throughout Latin America and because of its open-door editorial policy, it welcomed the work of established as well as new writers.  Two of Salarrué’s stories, accompanied by Gabriela’s praise, were published in the Repertorio in 1931. This endorsement encouraged Salarrué to publish a collection of 34 stories, Cuentos de Barro/Tales of Clay in 1934.  “La Honra” (Honor) and “Noche Buena” (Christmas Eve) are from this collection.