Sofi and Pieto were in the rear of the store, working at the ovens, and so didn’t know of the accident until a neighbor rushed in to tell them. They ran out to the collapsed bridge where a large crowd had gathered, and several men had to restrain old Pieto by force to keep him from jumping in. A work crew had been summoned and was quick to arrive but it took them several dives to free the wagon of the mule carcass and then several dives more to lash lines to the wagon so that a winch could pull it over on its side and the bodies retrieved. Pieto was half crazy with grief and keening like a dog. Sofi stood on the bank the whole while with her arms crossed and a hand to her mouth, staring down at the dirty water with no thought that she would later remember. The first bodies recovered were of Jorge and Prudencia, sodden and muddy and lank in that unreal way that only the dead can be. Finally a diver came bursting to the surface, gasping for air, and handed up to workers on the bank the two small and ill- formed effigies of mud that had been her children. She nearly screamed. Nearly vomited. Nearly fainted. Nearly turned her face up to heaven to bellow maledictions. Nearly threw herself into the water to inhale a great fatal draught of it. Nearly did all of those things but finally only put her face in her hands and wept.
Late that night, as she lay sleepless, she heard Pieto pacing in the other room and then after a while heard him go out the front door. In the morning his body was in the canal, floating facedown. That afternoon she moved back to La Rosa Mariposa.
This time there was no lying in bed for two weeks and staring at the ceiling. She simply put an apron on over her black dress and set to work. Her mother and brother did not know what to say to her, how to conduct themselves around her. It was hard enough to express an adequate condolence to someone who had all at once lost her husband and two children, but what could you say to someone for whom such a catastrophe was only one more in a series of disastrous losses?
Sofi could hardly bear their solicitude. Their strenuous efforts at casual conversation in her company only made her as self-conscious and tense as they were. She stood it for two weeks before telling them to stop treating her as if she were made of glass. She was heartbroken, yes, and so what that she was? She would sooner or later get over it. She always sooner or later got over it. What else was there to do except sooner or later get over it, what else? What that old fool Pieto did? Yes,
Maybe he did know that, Maria Palomina said softly, but could not endure the wait. Sofi stared at her mother. Then went back to work.
For weeks her eyes were red and dark circled, and her lean frame contracted to the skeletal for her lack of interest in eating. But the weeks did pass, and she did, as she knew she would, get over it. Did regain an interest in her meals and the table talk of her mother and brother and the news of the neighborhood and sometimes even that of the larger world.
It was during that period of getting over it that she began to wonder if perhaps she were cursed. She had always prided herself on her rational mind and had disdained superstitions of all stripes, but the sum of her misfortunes by the age of twenty-four defied rational understanding. But even when, solely for the purpose of self- argument, she allowed for the possibility she was cursed, she could not think why she should be, neither by God nor witch nor someone of the Evil Eye. Had she transgressed against any such agent of fortune, she felt sure she would have known it, and hence would know whose forgiveness to ask, what penance to perform, what atonement she must make. She refused to believe she could be cursed and not know why or by whom, and so was left with no explanation for her misfortunes except random bad luck. Bad luck could befall anybody anytime anywhere for no particular reason, just as good luck could. Everybody knew that too. Her bad luck, she told herself, was only bad luck, no matter its tenacity, no matter its accumulated heft. The idea was devoid of self-pity, an emotion she had abhorred since childhood and would recoil from whenever she sensed its encroachment. She told herself that her bad luck would change, as luck always did, bad or good, and there was nothing to do about it except hope for the change to come sooner rather than later.
She was five years into her third widowhood when Diego Guzman proposed to her in October of 1882. He was a shoemaker without any family, his shop just two streets from La Rosa Mariposa. A handsome, courtly, well- spoken man of thirty-eight whose hair and mustaches had early gone white. Better than anyone else, he understood Sofi’s sad history, himself having lost two wives, one to the cholera and one to the unbelievable failure of her twenty-year-old heart as they were dancing at a fiesta. Both marriages had produced a child, a son each one, but the first died of some mysterious illness a few days after his first birthday, and the second somehow got tangled in the bedclothes and smothered at the age of five months. Diego had been wifeless for more than eight years when he began courting Sofia Reina.
Until they met each other they had both been sure they would not marry again, unwilling to risk having to bury yet another spouse, or worse, another child. But now Diego mocked himself for having been so fearful. It was easy to say never again when I was forlorn and had no one to love, he said. But now I am in love with you, my dearest Sofi, and now I know that love is stronger than fear. Let us be brave, Sofi! Let us be brave and marry.
She found it hard to share his bravado. She consulted with her mother, who said, I understand your worry, Sofita, but you mustn’t let it rule the rest of your life. I agree with Diego. Love is worth the risk. Besides, be reasonable. It is not very likely, is it, that the two of you together would have more of the same bad luck each of you has had so much of in the past?
Sofi wasn’t so sure about that, either. She thought very hard about it. But the more she thought, the more her focus sidled away from the risks involved and toward visions of herself and Diego in bed. Oh, how she missed
They were married in February in the little church of their neighborhood, the ceremony attended by their few friends who afterward joined in a party at La Rosa Mariposa that carried on until late in the evening. And when the last of the guests had left, the bride and groom went upstairs to Sofi’s room, which Maria Palomina had adorned with vases of fresh flowers and whose sheets she had sprinkled with perfume. The room was softly lighted with aromatic candles of all colors, and on a small table was an iced bucket of champagne and a platter of treats—spiced crackers, stuffed olives, shelled nuts—so the newlyweds wouldn’t lack for sustenance in the night.
Diego poured two glasses of the sparkling wine and said, To us, my darling, and all the life ahead.
They drank to their happy future. Then she made him sit in the armchair beside the refreshments and told him to stay put and just watch.
He sat back and sipped champagne and popped stuffed olives into his mouth, watching with bright eyes as she slowly began to undress. When she was down to her filmy underthings, she turned her back to him and slowly peeled off her undershirt—and smiled to hear his sudden gasp. She tossed the garment over her shoulder without a backward glance and then in a slow, teasing writhe began pushing down her underpants. She giggled as he began grunting and snorting like some aroused beast, thumping the floor with his feet. Oooh, she said in a small voice, I think I hear a big bad bull behind me. Is the big bad bull going to get me?
She turned and saw him slumped in the armchair with his hands at his throat and his face gone dark, eyes huge and bloodshot, mouth open and working with a soft gagging, legs atwitch. She was speechless with cold horror as she thought that this could not be happening and that of course this was happening. Of course. Then his gagging ceased and his feet went still and his hands slid away from his throat. He lay in an awkward slump, his wide eyes suggesting great surprise that all the sudden losses of his loved ones in the past had not in the least prepared him for his own abrupt end.
An hour later the summoned doctor held up for them to see—Sofi and Maria Palomina and Bruno Tomas—the stuffed olive he had dislodged from Diego’s windpipe.
I had been crying and crying, Sofi told John Roger, but when he held up that olive, well, you might not believe this, dear uncle, but I nearly laughed. I just barely caught myself. For a moment I was aghast. I was ashamed of myself for such a disrespectful impulse. And then in the next moment I was petrified. Because I realized the urge was insane and I knew that if I started to laugh I would never be able to stop, I would go forever crazy. It took all my will to keep from laughing.
You are too hard on yourself, John Roger said. The loss of a loved one can cause great emotional confusion. I think the impulse to laugh at such times is not so unusual as one might think.
And
