Cuando Cantan los Gallos (1979)

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Rooster

Everything seemed to quietly die in that eerie instant before the-roosters began their twilight crying. It was as if all the tiny creatures of the-darkness were expecting the faraway flying communicado. It was a peculiar phenomenon. A sudden plunging hush like the quivering silence of a just-beaten drum. A strange hush which saturated the darkness and had no reasonable explanation. A hush to prick ears up and wonder about. Perhaps the message that stifled the·forest's humming pulse of tiny voices was important. Important enough for the insects to wait silently and let it pass like a lost bird in the night. The ghostly call began in smoldering Guacimo, a good hour's walk down the PQlished railroad tracks. But it was plainly audible {rom the start. All the more so for its quiet prelude. A stumbling man came home somewhere. He felt · swelling tension under his woven belt and stopped. He pissed fully and freely a warm beery stream on ·the gravel of the street outside the hotel and then went on, swaying with the half-random regularity of a flickering candle flame. The moon was full and brilliant, but restless cane spirits in sore bellies rendered it useless for anything sa ve a weird vision of tall banana plant') and rusty metal walls in a fantasy of monochromatic light. But this was enough for blurred eyes when the pattern of dim forms meant the way back. home. A pearly stream of spittle flashed and died in the dusty road. The man botched a clumsy step and caught himself. A heavy black rubber boot with rubber sole, rubber laces untied, sent a dusty chunk of gravel into a heap of aging rubbish. The missile struck a thin sheet of corrugated metal, rotted brown in the caustic citrus air. It sang a sorry note into the steaming tropical night. .. Nervous; awake, and watchful, a hoarse rooster took his cue and croaked a fragile nighttime moan. Nearby, another lonesome bantam voiced his concern for the broken stillness in a younger, shriller cry. The womanless farmer forgot the awe that hung in the late night air. Remembering his solitude, he cursed the stirring of the restless birds and spat at a shadow. Insects paused, and the call was sung.again, to be slowly spread throughout the moonlit tropical forest. It happened from red dusk to blue dawn, with the cadence of a rusty clock, this haunting relay. Sound moved through the darkened lowlands like a snake through tall grass, parting the soggy air and penetrating the silky night. Another lonely rooster, alert among dozing hens, cried out that he too was still awake and alive in the sleep-killed world. Yet another wary cock let the still night know he was watchful, and the hoarse moans of sleepless birds spread through the tropical forest. Those keeping watch far away waited to stir until a closer neighbor roused them with a broken v~ice. Like ripples sent out by a small pebble splashing in still water, the cries fled the first hoarse crier in slow waves through the trees. Isidro, alone in his small cot, lay on his back and heard the phantom rooster as 'it came crying over the banana plants. When the first hush fell he shivered still. The sooty town where farmers drank and woke roosters was

almost three miles from his house. Even so, he heard the faraway cry of the firSt lonely bird as it stirred and flapped its lice-ridden wings in the heavy darkness. He listened, his brain . softly panting, to hear ,the closer reply. Soon he heard a response to that one, coming from a still closer yard. The haunting relay involved at ieast: half a dozen nervous roosters on its way towards his house, and the next moan Was always closer than the one before it. The cry made !~idro shiver. It always kept a certain distance. It would reach for his hOllse, moaning as it flew, ~nd then turn away or softly pass overhead before it found him. Isidro's own rooster was strangely , silent, and the lonesome message left him as it came. Having kept near the railway path on its journey from Guacimo, the call continued down along the railroad tracks towards Guapiles. There, the sounds of late-rught jukeboxes and cantinas snatched the roosters' invisible message ;from the sky and forgot it amidst harsh marimbas. The cry kept the rhythm of the night. It came in hourly waves, and Isidro would always wait until the cry was safely in the distance before he closed his eyes and ears to the soft night's shadows and sounds. The haunting call which flew past him from Guacimo to Guapiles quivered with chilling mystery each time it I . passed. It meant something strange and awesome that he did .not understand. Something magical and dangerous . Isidro thought of the machetes his father, kept so well polished, and their flashing bite through stalks of corn at the season's end. A rhythmic slashing which rang out through the fields like,harsh maracas. He remembered how, when a strong wind came with heavy black clouds and swayed the palm trees, his . grandmother had stuck one "f the long blades · in the ground. Its edge was to the wind, to cut ,it and maim it. Isidro reached up to touch his face with his left hand. He had never felt that he was missing something important. It was only the peculiar, permanent gesture ' which bothered him. And that was even amusing sometimes. It seemed a strange sign language to the world, a language whose grammar of syntax he never

. Isidro was climbing over a shaded coupling, an iron Isidro was never able to completely accept it. The first ' handshake between two cars, when he heard the strange few hours of wonder at how the sound out of Guacimo quiet noise rushing softly towards him from Guacimo. had stolen his fingers made a deep impression on his young mind. He hactD.'t noticed any boxcars moving. Nor He stopped, perching on the hard steel. It was a fluthad his brother, who was right there when it happened. ' tering, metallic noise. The sound of a mechanical butBesides, how could a locomotive in the heart of Guacimo terfly. But itwas moving fast. He heard the sound of the possibly cut off his fingers so cleanly and with so little phantom machine racing . towards him. Isidro had pain? Why would it? . marvelled at the rush of trains passing him by, but the No, the train had not stolen his two fingers, Isidro told 'noise they made was different. It held no mystery, only himseH. It had been something else. The world was alive awe. The sound which was flying at him held both. It stopped the world. Nothing was moving. ' with forces he could not understand. Lightning which dashed trees to splinters. Rain which swept through the The noise was a metallic clicking, and it flew at him tropical forest, turning small streams into rivers which with enormous speed. He heard it coming, all the way swept under his house ..The rain.~ame from far away. He from Guacimo. It got louder as it came at him, but it was could always hear the storms in the distance before they never very loud. It came softly. Quickly but softly, to ever arrived. bring wonder without fear . • The soft noise had rushed towards him like the sheets Just as the phantom reached him, Isidro slipped. He of rain which roared through the.jungle, And like the rain grabbed at the iron coupling to steady himseH. It was not until the noise flashed past him towards Guapiles and . . which came to cool and bathe the world, the swift mystery could not have been an accident. disappeared that Isidro realized something terrible had . As he lay and listened to the roosters' lonely moaning happened. His left hand was streaming with blood and it at 'night, Isidro waved strangehandsignsin the looked very strange. Only the thumb, index finger, and pinky remained. darkness. He listened to the soft sounds of the night and knew that the world never slept. The hushed, rushing It was only hours later, when the afternoon rain was noise came back to him as he lay still. He stared into'the cooling the jungle, when Isidro's hand had been washed black air and thought of mysterious things he'd never . a.nd bandaged in tight banana leaves amidst more see. Like the flying silence the roosters sang to as it surprise than pain, that someone was able to explain what had happened. The locomotive in Guacimo, they .- flew out from Guacimo, ' gliding swiftly through the tropical night and bringing back his lost fingers, said, had suddenly jumped forward just a couple of The people of the steaming coastal plain saw a world inches. Hardly anyone had noticed the tiny movement, full of mystery , Mountains they would never climb except for a surprised brakeman who almost lost his }oomed in the distance over their rich fields of corn. The balance, but the motion of the massive ~ngine had been corn they harvested was packed and sent away to places transferred the entire length of the trailb-car by car. they'd never see, Carried by steel trains on shining rails Each coupling, loosened when the train rolh:id to a halt, . which plunged d~ep into the wild jungle, taking its load had been snapped tightly sh\!t by the motion of the car in to people in faraway cities they. might never visit. front of it. ISidro, grabbingJor support, had caught the At night, the men drank to forget the heat and damp: slackened coupling just before it snapped shut. The The children lay awake and wondered, bathed in sounds shifting of tremendous masses had cleanly bitten off his of faraway cantinas, passing trains, ana the organic missing fingers. pulse of the dark and lonely forest. . ' . However many times he heard this explanation, little

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learned, but which he somehow felt he knew. He one sign, the most common one, as he lightly touched the smooth bony scars with a caressing thumb. TheY were all that he could feel of the two middle fingers of his left hand. The magical fingers which no one could see. And only he could feel them, sometimes. Most of the time he could not feel' them. But he knew they were there. On moonlit nights they came back. In the watery darkness, as he lay still and listened to the lonesome birds calling, his fingers magically returned. Sometimes they felt sticky in the heat of the nighttime jungle, as if he'd been eating oranges. Sometimes tl)ey felt alive with frantic insects-soft fluttering moths, hungry mosquitos, or angry tropical ants with fiery bites. Sometimes they were soft, light, and airy. Other times they racked his hand with paralyzing electric pain. But he knew they were there. He had lost them to a noise, a quiet and mysterious noise. A noise with wings, like the flying cries of roosters, which was born in the heart of Guacimo and rushed past him down the tracks towards far Guapiles. There had been a train. A wonderfully long train of over a hundred cars. It had slithered like a gorged snake into Guacimo on whining iron wheels. It came with cars which had been packed at loading platforms in small towns buried deep throughout the rich Costa Rican lowland forests . The train was filled with tons of corn, bananas, oranges, cacao beans; and soggy sugarcane. It even had a few passenger cars tacked on the end. They were the load of a locomotive which had suddenly come to a halt on the track far down the line, stopped by a cracked part which would take weeks of waiting to replace. The freight locomotive came to the rescue, and the metallic serpent grew a colorful tail. , . While sweating workers in Guacimo loaded bags of kernels onto empty cars, their bodies coated like frying' fish with sweet corn dust from the processing plant, Isidro and his brother ran the length of the train and played between the rust-stained boxcars. They seemed immensely powerful to the jungle children, who had seen wooden houses blow down in high winds, killing children they knew. The heavy steel cartons were invincible. They moved with sleek grace unnatural for their size over shining rails which stretched far into heat distorted perspectives. The boxcars were the most powerful creatures the boys could think of. , Playing on them was a ritual adventure. The boys climbed over the butniDg steel, which scorched their bare feet and hands. They scurried over the rough metal, searching for dark shaded shadows which were cool enough to hold. The sun had been shining hard through a clear sky all morning, and the flaking black paint was drenched with heat. Isidro felt a strange magic in the solid fire which pressed against his skin. Solid fire which had rumbled in from far away one night. From as far away as Turrialba. Near the volcano that loomed in the distance when morning mists had died away.

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