Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?
– Jesus of Nazaret - (Mathew 6:26)
Slowly, hesitating, as if by doing so he were committing a crime, Claudino picked up the five dirty, crumpled pesos that the girl had left on the counter a moment before. With a slight shudder in the hand holding the money, he stared pensively at the floor. His son was observing him, puzzled, unable to guess what was going through his father's mind.
After playing baseball and bellugas with his pals on the vacant lot adjacent to Cheché’s house, Domingo went to his father's grocery store to lend a hand. When he walked in, there was a girl of about his age, eight years old, who was buying something. Claudino had just finished telling the girl, “Tell your father to please come here; I want to talk to him.” Then she left the grocery store and went down Cristina's alley, at the end of which, near the river, was the hut where she lived. After about half an hour, the girl returned to the grocery store and told Claudino, “Daddy says he can't come.” And again, she made her way towards Cristina's alley.
Claudino, pacing back and forth behind the counter, addressing his son as if Domingo, at eight years of age, had had the ability to understand the situation, said, “You see, that's the problem; you trust people, and then they refuse to pay back their debts. This way, the grocery store will go bankrupt. Domingo, go to don Ramón's, and tell him to please come by; I need to speak with him.”
Domingo headed to Cristina's alley and followed the rocky and muddy path leading to the river. He knew where don Ramón lived—in one of the last houses on the trail, one that almost touched the water. He had been there before. He used to go down to the river’s edge to catch little fishes with a piece of mosquito netting, which served as a fishing net; then he would put them in what was once an olive jar; after a week, the fishes died, despite the fact that he changed the water in the jar every day; and then he would return to the river to catch more. It's something the other youngsters in the neighborhood did. Domingo did not do it behind his mother's back, who allowed him to go, firmly warning him not to put a toe in the water because the river was dangerous, especially for people like him who did not know how to swim; she would also remind him that that’s how Lita, when she was barely five years old, drowned; she vanished from the neighborhood, and after three days of searching everywhere, they found her body downstream, entangled in some branches that the torrent had pushed towards the bank. He thought that the ravine had expanded a lot since his previous visit. It seemed dirtier, more dilapidated, and more crowded. On each side, there was an unending row of dwellings. Calling them houses would have been pushing semantics to certain limits; in reality, they were a shapeless jumble of huts, boxes, and makeshift shelters, one next to the other or one on top of the other, made of pieces of yagua, cardboard, wood, or tin; they had a cana roof and a dirt floor. Some of them had doors and windows made of henequen sacks. Garbage gathered everywhere along the path. A crowd of children of all ages, barefoot and shirtless, played, unconcerned about the stagnant pools of water, which were most certainly infested with all kinds of microorganisms. It was difficult to know how they could survive in that environment. The river’s water was contaminated. Just looking at the ravine revealed nothing about where they acquired clean water for drinking, cooking, and bathing, or whether the river was the only location where they could relieve themselves.
When he arrived at don Ramón's place, Domingo was taken aback. There was really no reason for it; he had been to Cristina's alley many times and was familiar with the destitution in which its residents lived. His family was not wealthy, and they had been much poorer in the past, but every time he walked by the ravine on his way to the river to catch little fishes with his net made of mosquito netting, he felt as if he had never seen that level of deprivation before. Don Ramón's house was a barrack with yagua walls, a cana roof, a dirt floor, and two rooms. The complete family of five most likely slept in one of the rooms, while the other was the dining room, the living room, and the kitchen at the same time.
Don Ramón was standing by the back window, looking into the distance, with his back to Domingo. His wife was sitting at the dining table, which was the only piece of furniture there. Playing on the dirt floor were two small children. The girl, who was about Domingo’s age, was standing in a corner, looking at him with resentment, as if Domingo were to blame for her family’s plight or as if he represented the unjust and brutal system that kept them in abject poverty. After greeting don Ramón, Domingo informed him that his father wanted to meet him. “Tell your father that I can't go,” replied don Ramón in an angry tone.
The boy returned to the grocery store and told his father of don Ramón's response. Claudino was outraged and raised his voice. “I can't go on like this; if people owe me money, they must repay me; otherwise, where am I going to end up? The grocery store will go bankrupt. Domingo, go back to don Ramón's place and request that he at least show up so that we can talk, make an arrangement, and work out a payment schedule. Tell him he has to come.”
Domingo returned to don Ramón's home. That time, he found him sitting next to the table, his face buried in his hands. When he greeted him, don Ramón slowly turned to face Domingo with a strange expression that frightened the child. The man seemed worried, disheartened, and upset. When Domingo repeated his father's message to him, the man burst into rage and despair. He rose up from his chair and, looking up at the roof of the house, began to gesture with his clenched fists and to shout insults that Domingo did not understand. The rage was not directed against Domingo but rather at the immutable sky, at the silent universe, or possibly at his indifferent god. Then, raising his voice, his face contorted with anger and his voice broken with grief, he told the boy, “Tell your father that I am not going because I cannot pay him. Do you understand? I cannot pay him; I cannot pay him; I cannot pay him.” He repeated the phrase several times, raising his voice higher and higher in a crescendo that left him exhausted. Then he collapsed on the chair, and with his face in his hands, he began to cry while his wife and his three children looked on, distressed. Domingo was in shock as well. The picture of a sobbing man never fails to be disturbing.
As he walked back to the grocery store he was feeling a hole in the pit of his stomach as a result of the newly acquired certainty that something was wrong with the world. A whirlpool of confused ideas swirled in his mind. He was thinking that at night, when the rain poured down, he had a warm shelter in which to sleep, safe, lulled by the sound of the rain falling furiously on the zinc roof of the house, knowing that his parents were in the next room, watching over him and his brothers. What exactly was happening to him at that moment? He was too young to know. Was he perhaps reflecting on the fact that he had no idea what real misery was? What was it like to have nothing to eat? Was he considering that in his home, although there were nine people and they were relatively poor, they had all that was necessary, including food, clothing, shoes, housing, and also school, as his father had often said? His parents took care of the family. Was he feeling compassion for that girl, who was his age, and for don Ramón and his family, who were struggling with misfortune? Was he perhaps meditating on the injustice of the world? Is it possible to rationalize that kind of thing at the age of eight? Or was he attempting to figure out why some people didn’t have any food to eat? How could something like that have happened? If God can feed the animals, why wouldn’t he feed don Ramón and his family? Was he preplexed by the contradiction between what he witnessed that day and what he had been taught in the parish during catechism on Saturday afternoons? That there is a god of love who watches over us, and that if he cares for the birds of the sky, all the more reason to care for us?
After his son told him what had happened, Claudino became gloomy, lowered his head, and felt sad, but not because of the money he was sure he was going to lose, as he certainly knew that don Ramón was not going to pay him back, but rather because he was probably imagining what it would be like to be in that circumstance. Nine people were dependent on him: his wife, his five children, his mother, the sister of his or his wife’s who occasionally came from the countryside to live with them, and himself. What would he do if he couldn't earn enough money to provide for his family?
While Claudino remained standing and taciturn, thinking, don Ramón's daughter entered the shop, put five pesos on the counter, and told him, “Daddy says that’s all he can afford, that he has nothing else.” Then, visibly exasperated, with her features twitching, she added something that did not seem to be part of her father's message but rather something she believed: “That money was the only thing we had to eat tonight.” And then she left in a hurry, perhaps fearing that she had disrespected Claudino.
Slowly, hesitating, as if by doing so he were committing a crime, Claudino picked up the five dirty, crumpled pesos that the girl had left on the counter a moment before. With a slight shudder in the hand holding the money, he stared pensively at the floor. His son was observing him, puzzled, unable to guess what was going through his father's mind. Claudino took a brief look at the shop’s roof and sighed deeply before telling his son, “Domingo, return this money to don Ramón. Tell him not to worry; tell him that he doesn't owe me anything.”
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FOREIGN LANGUAGE WORDS
-----------------------------------------------------------------------Bellugas: Marbles, in the Dominican Republic.
Cana: Branches of the palmetto tree in the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, and Cuba.
Peso: Monetary unit of several Latin American countries.
Yagua: Branches of the royal palm tree in the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, and Cuba.
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