Nieves García Benito

TRANS. BY CARMELA FERRADANS

Cailcedrat

You are wearing a blue, yellow, and white sweatshirt. Also, a buttoned-down denim shirt, the one  I bought for you last minute at the street market that, I later found out, the Red Cross sets up with  clothes collected for the poor, they say, in countries like Spain. I do not know what happens after  that, but they end up in our street markets. Used clothes yes, but also inexpensive. You didn’t shave, and I don’t like that you go out anywhere looking like this: I always want to see you looking neat and tidy. You know we are poor, but I always kept you kids clean –that’s what my mother taught me, and I have always listened to that. Son, I gave birth to you totally black, so I don’t understand what could have happened to your face. Your nose––is it white or is it mottled?  It is like the color of the palm of our hands—and I don’t like that. I look at it, and I remember your colds, when you sneezed so much. “It doesn’t matter,” your grandma used to say, “the demons are being thrown out of his body.” Seeing you so young, I was afraid you would die of pneumonia; sometimes you suffocated. The Sisters used to say that it was asthma and that it would go away as you grew up. Sometimes I would also suffocate with you. Then your father yelled, we would fight, and I would threaten to go away with the whites; but it was just a game. I  see it clearly now—I never thought of leaving you all. Besides, I am not going to tell you now about that white man from my childhood; I shouldn’t, but now you have stirred my memories. When I see such an absurd color in part of your face, you, yourself, without wanting to, are reminding me of it… I was about twelve years old. It was springtime, and we were planning a grand trip: we were going to Dakar, the capital. We, poor peasants who had never left our tata, would attend the World Festival of Negro Arts. Everyone in the village was nervous. For us kids, it was a party, and we didn’t have to go to school—not that we went much. The neighbors were frantic; the women were preparing their party dresses and huge amounts of food; the men, nervous, were shouting too much. I know it was 1966. The Sisters would tell us, this is important, we all should go. I think they liked the president. People were coming from all the tata and cities. The whole country felt like a party. Senghor inaugurated it, and in addition to talking about politics, he was also going to read his poetry. You know, that president-poet that was always talking about black people, that our culture was different. Now I see it was nonsense.

You don’t have to be smart to discover that our culture was different than theirs. We have always been their workers and they, our masters. Besides, they had given some money to your grandfather so he could go, and all the neighbors too. Now I think that they had political intentions. In that moment, I was happy: getting out of the village, not having to work for a few days seemed like a dream. Only the elders stayed behind. I remember trucks going through the villages with big megaphones encouraging us to go to Dakar, and they were always singing the same phrase: “You Senegalese Soldiers, my black brothers with warm hands under ice and death. Who can praise you if not your brother-in-arms, your brother in blood?” This is what I remember—it has been engraved in my memory forever; I know the poem was long; each day they would come by and they would repeat it. My father, your grandfather, knew it was from the poem “Black Hosts.” He liked it a lot; it would cheer him up, especially on the day when he hit a white man. It was because of the peanuts: they accused him of stealing part of the harvest, and it was a lie, Monsieur Colbert kept it. He called himself monsieur, but he wasn't a mister or anything like that. I don't even think his name was Colbert, the same name as the village square. I am sure he was using a false name. For the trip, my mother fixed my hair in those little braids that you like so much on girls. She was combing my hair for seven, ten, or twelve hours, a nightmare. She would thread ribbons of different colors in my hair. I wouldn’t stand still, and she yelled at me. Then, I felt proud—it was the best hairdo in the village. With all the preparations, we had to take the car in a hurry, and we got angry with the neighbors that were fed up with the waiting. My father was screaming. After three days of traveling, the dust of the road erased my mother’s hard work. My hairdo was no longer the same, but your grandfather, miraculously, had calmed down. I think I went into Dakar crying.

The Festival, packed with thousands of people, was an impressive commotion. I had never seen so many people gathered in the same place. I didn’t think that such a multitude could exist. On the stage, the speakers continued to sing, “You Senegalese Soldiers, my black brothers with warm hands under ice and death. Who can praise you if not your brother-in-arms, your brother in blood?” I was the oldest child, and nobody would give me a hand. Like clothes hanging out in the     wind, women's dresses moved from side to side, along with the light pants of the white men. My height, then, allowed me to hear well but see little. Absorbed, mesmerized, I approached the stand. In the front row, I saw him: it was Senghor. There was silence. He talked for a long time about black Africa: he said that a wise man had told him that whites were cannibals because they did not have any respect for life. I remember that, and now I am telling you, son. The best came afterward: dances, magic dances that called out the spirits, women painted in white with fetished objects and chickens—that part scared me—and the most beautiful rituals. Everything was colorful.

Hours passed, and it was dark. Not yet feeling afraid, I saw his safari hat, the one he always wore. He was in front of me. With his overly sweet smile, Monsieur Colbert addressed me. “What is this beautiful little girl doing here?” Son, I am not going to tell you what came after that. I know you left so I didn’t have to work so hard. We were fine then. You look like you went to war. We know nothing about you since the last rains. The house, I know, is small; but your brother, you don’t know it yet, he married again, has extended the sukala. I don’t mind so many people sharing one space, I wouldn’t know how to live any other way. I know that your brothers’ wives have lots of children and a bad temper, but you also have a difficult personality. I sowed the vegetable garden again with your daba. I also chose a toroblé, because I know you like it and because it is the fastest growing ficus tree. If you had waited a little bit, you could have boarded the ship in Dakar. The relatives there told your brother—he had to go to the hospital because his second wife was dying in labor—that there is work now on the Dutch ships. I understand that you can’t bear to plant millet or collect peanuts or care for the oxen anymore… your father has done it his whole life. I know, I know, Son, that I am always sick, that seven of your brothers died because of the distance to the hospital, that an ambulance would have saved your father; but the village is now very beautiful, and our griot has good omens. Allah does not abandon us, and since you left, many children, well, baby girls have been born, and it has rained. You should have stayed, Son…

I don’t understand why you are wearing those ropes around your waist, Son. I imagine that they were used to tie you to the boat. I see that you arrived in a lifeboat: it is very close to you.

Because of its large size, I imagine that the ship was one of those huge Dutch freighters. In the end, you tricked me and managed to board one of them. Once again my memories are stirred up, and I see myself as a child when we used to go to the school of the French nuns. I don’t know if I ever told you. There was one, sor Therèse, very nice and different. Her skin was very white, and she always complained about the sun and the heat. She said very little about catechism and told us a story, always the same, each day a different chapter, so it would last a long time. It was about a sailor that was traveling in a sea, surrounded by coast, according to sor Therèse. I thought it was a little strange: how can the sea be surrounded by the coast? But she told it like that. Maybe it was true. The sailor had many adventures; in one of them, he was sailing through a  straight where there were mermaids singing to the sailors—their singing would drive the sailors crazy—I imagined these mermaids as evil women who drowned the men, and that their ship would crash against the rocks. Only our sailor knew how to resist their song. He tied himself to the mast of his ship with ropes around his waist, like the ones you are wearing, and, despite hearing the mermaids’ song, managed to survive. Son, we have never been people of the sea. When you told me that you were leaving, you did not tell me about the sea; you said you would go from Dakar to Morocco by plane and cross from Spain to France by bus. You didn’t tell me about boats or water. Only our relatives on the coast know about water. We have always been in the fields with this overwhelming drought, even when your brother fell into the well, do you remember? I did not get scared: it was dry. And now, I see you like this, next to the sea, so big…

Son, you are naked from the waist down: what have they done to you? Who was it? Why? I didn’t tell you about Monsieur Colbert, but I doubt that the same thing happened to you. You have always been strong and smart. You couldn’t get lost in a festival or at any political rally. Senghor died many years ago. What has happened to your clothes? I know that the sweatshirt belonged to your brother, but it suited you. In the end, his gift touched you. I saw you crying secretly… Somebody has covered you up, feeling guilty I suppose, or for seeing you so naked, like the Christ of the nuns, or perhaps it was just to take the picture, I don’t know, Son… Your knees are raw, like an open wound. When you were little you always had wounds, you were restless. Do you remember at the argamaz? You came to me crying, and I hit you for falling down so much. Now I see them totally destroyed; those rocks nearby look sharp—they have peeled the skin on your knees. I don’t like the rocks where you are resting they must be very hard, son, even though you are used to sleeping on the ground, but never on rocks… The other phrase came back, son, from “Black Hosts.” My memory is very weak now, but talking with you, slowly like this, the memories seemed to come back: “No! I shall not let words of scornful praise secretly bury you.” It is very beautiful; I don’t understand how I could have forgotten it…

Your eyes are open and that is how I know you are alive. You look like when you were about to fall asleep, when you spoke softly to me, right into my ear, and I, then, so tired, pretended not to hear you. I pretended to call the griot to scare you, so you would fall asleep—you always asked me for a bedtime story.

In a Malinke region, whose name I don’t know, a father and a mother, upon their death, entrusted their son to the protection of a great cailcedrat.

Each morning, before taking the animals to graze, the little boy would go to the tree and he would sing this song:

-Oh, cailcedrat, where should I take my oxen to drink? To Diahuanlia or Tehuolité? And the tree answered:

-Go to Diahualia. The man-eaters are at Tehuolité.

Each morning he would ask the same question. And each time, the tree would show the little boy where he should take the oxen to graze without risking an encounter with the man-eaters that infested the whole country.

The sorcerers learned of the matter and cut the tree down.

The next morning, when the little boy arrived at the place, as usual, he questioned the pieces scattered around the ground, singing his song as he used to do with the tree. And on that day, the pieces answered that he should take his cattle to drink at Tehuolité, since the man-eaters were at Diahualia.

When he went away, the sorcerers burned the trunk, the branches and the bark of the cailcedrat, reducing it to ashes.

The next day, the little boy asked the ashes where he should take his oxen to graze. The ashes advised him to go to Diahulia, and there he went. The next day, when the little boy returned to the place where the cailcedrat once grew, no matter how much he repeated his song, there was no answer. The sorcerers had thrown the ashes into the Dihaulia river.

Bursting into tears, the boy started his way back home. When he was crossing a parched plateau, he saw a little mburé tree and he stopped next to it.

-Oh!—he exclaimed. If only this mburé could become a big ceiba. . .!

At that very moment, his wish was fulfilled, and he found himself seated under the shade of an enormous tree.

-Oh!—he exclaimed. If only this parched plateau could become a village! Immediately his new wish came true, and a big village emerged from the earth.

-A village –the boy said—could not survive if it didn’t have enough to eat.

Millet sprouted from the fields and, like magic, a large number of domestic animals appeared. The boy became the king, not only of this new village but also of the whole country.

Go to sleep my king. . .

And closing his eyes she kept on singing in his ear.

Nieves García Benito is a Spanish writer, a human rights activist, and an educator. She is the author of Por la vía de Tarifa [By Way of Tarifa, 1999] a collection of twelve short stories dealing with the ongoing migration crisis around the Mediterranean. “Cailcedrat” is the first story in the collection.

Carmela Ferradáns is a Professor of Spanish in the Department of World Languages, Literatures and Cultures and Director of International and Global Studies at Illinois Wesleyan University. She is the editor and translator of the bilingual poetry collection Incessant Beauty: A Bilingual Anthology of Ana Rossetti’s Poetry (2Leaf Press, 2014). She is currently working on an annotated English translation of the collection By Way of Tarifa by Nieves García Benito.