3 page essay based on short stories

J U A N R U L F O

L u v i n a o

L U V I N A

hear it moming and night, hour after hour without stopping, scraping the walls, tearing off strips of earth, digging with its sharp shovel under the doors, until you feel it boiling inside of you as if it was going to remove the hinges of your very bones. You'll see."

The man speaking was quier for a bit, while he looked outside. The noise of the river reached them, passing its swollen waters

through the fig-tree branches, the noise of the air gently rustling the leaves of the almond trees, and the shouts of the children playing in the small space illumined by the light that came from the store.

The flying ants entered and collided with the oil lamp, falling to the ground with scorched wings. And outside night kept on advancing.

"Hey, Camilo, two more beers!" the man said again. Then he added, "There's another thing, mister. You'll never see a blue sky in Luvina. The whole horizon there is always a dingy colour, always clouded over by a dark stain that never goes. away. All the hills are bare and treeless, without one green thing to rest your eyes on; everything is wrapped in an ashy smog. You'll see what it's like-those hills silent as if they were dead and Luvina crowning the highest hill with its white houses like a crown of the dead-"

The children's shouts came closer until they penetrated the store. That made the man get up, go ro rhe door and yell at them, "Go away! Don't bother us! Keep on playing, but without so much racket."

Then, coming back to the table, he sat down and said, "Well, as I was saying, it doesn't rain much there. In the middle of the year they get a few storms that whip the earth and tear it away, just leaving nothing but the rocks floating above the stony crust. It's good to see then how the clouds crawl heavily about, how they march from one hill to anorher jumping as if they were inflated bladders, crashing and thundering just as if they were breaking on the edge of the barrancas. But after ten or twelve days they go away and don't come back until the next year, and sometimes they don't come back for several years-No, it doesn't rain much. Hardly at all, so that the earth, besides being all dried up and shrivelled like old leatheq gets filled with cracks and hard clods of earth like sharp stones, that prick your feet as you walk along, as if the earth itself had grown thoms there. That's what it's like."

He downed his beer until only bubbles of foam remained in the bottle, then he went on: "'l7herever you look in Luvina, it's a very sad

of the mountains in the south Luvina is the highest and the rockiest. It,s infested with that grey stone they make rime from, but in Luvina they don't make lime from it or get any good out of it. They call it crude stone there, and the hill that climbs up towards Luvina they call the crude stone Hill. The sun and the air have taken it on themselves to make ir crumble away, so that the eanh around there is always white and bril- liant, as if it were always sparkling with the moming dew, though this is just pure talk, because in Luvina the days are cold as the nights and the dew thickens in the sky before it can fall to the earth.

And the ground is steep and slashed on all sides by deep barrancas, so deep you can'r make out the bottom. They say in Luvina that one's dreams come up from those barrancas; but the only thing I've seen come up out of them was the wind, whistling as if down Lelow they had squeezed it into reed pipes. A wind that doesn't even let the dulcamaras grow: those sad little plants that can live with just a bit of earth, clutch- ing with all their hands at the mountain cliffsides. only once in a while, where there's a little shade, hidden among the rocks, the chicalote blos- soms with its white poppies. But the chicalote soon withers. Then you hear it scratching the air with its spiny branches, making a noise like a knife on a whetstone.

"You'll be seeing that wind that blows over Luvina. It's dark. They say because it's fulI of volcano sand; anyway, it's a black air. you'[ see it. It takes hold of things in Luvina as if it was going to bite them. And there are lots of days when it takes the roofs off the houses as if they were hats, leaving the bare walls uncovered. Then it scratches like it had nails: you

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place. You're going there, so you'll find out. I would say it's the place

where sadness nests. 'Where

smiles are unknown as if people's faces hac

been frozen. And, if you like, you can see that sadness just any time. The

breeze that blows there moves it around but never takes it away. It seems

like it was bom there. And you can almost taste and feel it, because it's

always over you, against you, and because it's heavy like a large plaster

weighing on the living flesh of the heart.

"The people from there say that when the moon is full they clearly

see the figure of the wind sweeping about Luvina's streets, bearing

behind it a black blanket; but what I always mandged to see when there

was a moon in Luvina was the image of despair-always.

"But drink up your beer. I see you haven't even tasted it. Go ahead

and drink. Or maybe you don't like it warm like that. But that's the

only kind we have here. I know it tastes bad, something like donkey's

piss. Here you get used to it. I swear that there you won't even get this. \U7hen you go to Luvina you'll miss it. There all you can drink is a liquor

they make from a plant called hojas6, and after the frrst swallows your

head'll be whirling around like crazy, feeling like you had banged it

against something. So better drink your beer. I know what l'm talking

about." You could still hear the struggle of the river from outside. The noise

of the air. The children playing. It seemed to be still early in the

evening. The man had gone once more to the door and then retumed, saying:

"It's easy to see things, brought back by memory from here where there's

nothing like it. But when it's about Luvina I don't have ahy rouble

going right on talking to you about what I know I lived there. I left my

life there-I went to that place full of illusions and retumed old and

wom out. And now you're going there-All right. I seem to remember

the beginning. I'll put myself in your place and think-Look, when I

got to Luvina the first time-But will you let me have a drink of your

beer first? I see you aren't paying any attention to it. And it helps me a

lot. It relieves me, makes me feel like my head had been rubbed with

camphor oil-\Uell, I was telling you that when I reached Luvina the

first time, the mule driver who took us didn't even want to let his ani-

mals rest. As soon as he let us off, he tumed half around. 'I'm going

back,'he said.

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"''$Vait, aren't you going to let your animals take a rest? They are all wom out.'

"'They'd be in worse shape here,'he said. 'I'd better go back.'

"And away he went, rushing down Crude Stone Hill, spurring his animals on as if he was leaving some place haunted by the devil.

"My wife, my three children, and I stayed there, standing in the middle of the plaza, with all out belongings in our arms. In the middle of that place where all you could hear was the wind . . .

'Just a plaza, without a single plant to hold back the wind. There we

were.

"Then I asked my wife, 'What cotrntry are we in, Agripina?' "And she shrugged her shoulders. "''Well, if you don't care, go look for a place where we can eat and

spend the night. We'Il wait for you here,' I told her.

"She took the youngest child by the hand and left. But she didn't come back.

"At nightfall, when the sun was lighting up just the tops of the moun- tains, we went to look for her. We walked along Luvina's narrow streets, until we found her in the church, seated right in the middle of that lonely church, with the child asleep between her legs.

"'SV'hat are you doing here, Agripina?' "'I came to pray,'she told us. "'!Uhy?' I asked her. "She shrugged her shoulders. "Nobody was there to pray to. It was a vacant old shack without any

doors, just some open galleries and a roof full of cracks where the air came through like a sieve.

"'\(/here's the restaurant?'

"'There isntt any restaurant.' "'And the inn?' "'There isn't any inn.'

"'Did you see anybody? Does anybody live here?' I asked her.

"'Yes, there across the s1sss1-$srns 1ry61nsn-l can still see them. Look, there behind the cracks in *rat door I see some eyes shining, watching us-They have been looking over here-Look at them. I see

the shining balls of their eyes-But they don't have anything to give us

to eat. They told me without sticking out their heads that there was

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nothing to eat in this town-Then I came in here ro pray, to ask God to help us.'

"'!Uhy didn't you go back to the plazal We were waiting for you.' "'l came in here to pray. I haven't finished yet.' "'!(/hat country is this, Agripinal' "And she shrugged her shoulders again. "That night we seuled down to sleep in a comer of the church

behind the dismantled altar. Even there the wind reached, but it wasn't quite as strong. r07e listened to it passing over us with long howls, we lis- tened to it come in and out of the hollow caves of the doors whipping the crosses of the stations of the cross with its hands full of air-large rough crosses of mesquite wood hanging from the walls the length of the church, tied together with wires that twanged with each gust of wind like the gnashing of teeth.

"The children cried because they were too scared to sleep. And my wife, trying to hold all of them in her arms. Embracing her handful of children. And me, I didn't know what to do.

"A little before dawn the wind calmed down. Then it retumed. But there was a moment during that moming when everything was still, as if the sky had joined the earth, crushing all noise with its weight-You could hear the breathing of the children, who now were resting. I lis. tened to my wife's heavy breath there at my side.

"'\Uhat is it?'she said to me. "'\7hat's what?' I asked her. "'That, that noise.' "'It's the silence. Go to sleep. Rest a little bit anyway, because it's

going to be day soon.'

"But soon I heard it too. It was like bats flitting through the darkness very close to us. Bats with big wings that grazed against the ground. I got up and the beating of wings was srronger, as if the flock of bats had been frightened and were flying towards the holes of the doors. Then I walked on tiptoes over there, feeling that dull murmur in front of me. I stopped at the door and saw them. I saw all the women of Luvina with their water jugs on their shoulders, their shawls hanging from their heads and their black figures in the black background of the night.

"'What do you want?' I asked them. 'What are you looking for at this time of night?'

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"One of them answered, '!(/e're going for water.' "I saw them standing in front of me, looking at me. Then, as if they

were shadows, they started walking down the street with their black water jugs.

"No, I'll never forget that first night I spent in Luvina. "Don't you think this deserves another drink? Even if it's just to take

away the bad taste of my memories."

"It seems to me you asked me how many years I was in Luvina, didn't you? The truth is, I don't know. I lost the notion of time since the fevers got it all mixed up for me, but it must have been an etemity-Time is very long there. Nobody counts the hours and nobody cares how the years go mounting up. The days begin and end. Then night comes. Just day and night until the day of death, which for them is a hope.

"You must think I'm harping on the same idea. And I am, yes, mister-To be sitting at the threshold of the dooE watching the rising and the setting of the sun, raising and lowering your head, until the springs go slack and then everything gers srill, timeless, as if you had always lived in etemity. That's what the old folks do there.

"Because only real old folks and those who aren't bom yet, as they say, live in Luvina-And weak women, so thin they are just skin and bones. The children bom there have all gone away-They hardly see the light of day and they're already grown up. As they say, they jump

from their mothers'breasts to the hoe and disappear from Luvina. That's the way it is in Luvina.

"There are just old folks left there and lone women, or with a hus- band who is off God knows where-They appear every now and then when the storrns come I was telling you about; you hear a rusrling all through the town when they retum and something like a grumbling

when they go away again-They leave a sack of provisions for the old folk and plant another child in the bellies of their women, and nobody knows anything more of them until the next year, and sometimes never-It's the custom. There they thlnk that's the way the law is, but it's all the same. The children spend their lives working for their parents

as their parents worked for theirs and who knows how many generations

back performed this obligation . . . "Meanwhile, the old people wait for them and for death, seated in