by Jan Baross

The Square of Don Pedro the Cruel and the Just sends shimmers of unbearable summer heat off the cobblestones.
Gabito and I wait inside the dark taverna of Señora Nauseobondo. Since José's disappearance a year ago, there is little to do but sip the icy emerald mint tea. I take a long ice-cube-cold swallow. The sides of my head freeze into a silent scream.
Gabito sits in the open window of the taverna with his heart frozen. He is balanced between sun and shade, the solitude of a silhouette. We are not a pretty couple.
Across the square Pilar carries a full bag from the Sweets and Curables Store now owned by Fecunda with her green snail money. Everything Pilar eats is for consolation or curing some kind of pain, and it has put meat on her bones.
"Gabito," I say only to him, "here comes Pilar. There is an unusual lightness to her step. Shall I ask her again if she has heard from José?"
Gabito does not lift his cracked skull. His dark eyes are bright with tears. He watches Pilar walking toward the taverna and sighs.
"Tortugina," says Gabito, "you have tracked Pilar like a vigilante. Her steps are as measured today as they were yesterday, as they have been every day since José left. Our son is gone forever and rightly so. Let me suffer in peace."
"How many times can I apologize, Gabito?" I say silently to him.
Rosa, Mimosa, and Auntie Patina weave through the crowd, rolling their hips to my table.
"Mail brigade, mail brigade," says Auntie Patina.
They are fresh from the market, their handbaskets full of red tomatoes, small bitter melons, and flush summer squash. They hold their sad smiles out as an offering to me. Since José disappeared, the women of the wet chichis and the Deep Diving Co-operative have been my handkerchiefs, my waiting companions.
They also hope I will give them green snails, as I do to Fecunda.
"Tortugina," says Mimosa. "No mail? No word?"
The women put their baskets next to the table and sit in the heavy wooden chairs. The only solace of waiting is the routine of waiting with friends. Month after month after month, hoping the honey-colored mailman, Augustine, will bring me a letter from José.
The ice-pain in my head is draining. "Perhaps today," I say.
Rosa loosens her scarf. "What would make a boy so cruel to his mother, and to little Pilar?"
"Pilar keeps her wedding night a secret," I say. "I do not know what happened."
Gabito glowers at my lie.
From the heat of the square, Pilar breezes in, wearing her new blue sandals. Every week she selects the same chair, facing the window, and passes around her chewy, medicinal ginger candy. Since José disappeared, her black eyes have always been rimmed in red, but not today. She sits next to Rosa with a new kind of confidence.
So many things about Pilar have changed since José left. Her skin has filled out from the bone with fat to spare. A few more months of ginger candy, and she will be our little puffer fish. She has lost her girlish death-pallor. Her new dress, blue and orange instead of the usual grays, and those delicate sandals make her almost beautiful.
"Is that rouge on your cheeks?" I ask.
She pushes her long brown hair back from her neck.
"Yes. Señora Nauseobondo is helping me to become the kind of woman that a man would not leave," she says. Inside the new dress she wiggles her shoulders with pleasure, and I notice, for the first time, she has cleavage.
Gabito hisses at me. "Tell her the truth." He gives me such a look that I am forced to speak.
"Pilar, I want you to know, the wedding night was not your fault."
Pilar stops chewing the ginger candy. Under the rouge, she turns back to her old pale.
"How do you know? Were you there?" she says.
Perhaps she is thinking of how José called my name in bed. I stroke my sweating tea glass.
"It is always the man's fault," I say. "We women are the innocents."
The women laugh and nod, but Gabito rolls his tired eyes.
"Coffee for the mail brigade," says Señora Nauseobondo.
She slides a wood tray onto our table with six tall glasses of her strong-brewed coffee over shaved ice topped white with cream. Her plate of sugar cookies nearly slides off the tray.
"And one glass for our loyal mailman, Augustine," she says. "When he gets here."
Senora Nauseobondo pulls a creaky chair from another table and sits with us. She drops a bright green pair of silk underwear on the table in front of Pilar.
"Here, Pilar, a little something for when José returns."
Rosa, Mimosa, and Auntie Patina clap. Gabito's face reddens, and he looks away. Pilar modestly crumples the shiny little pants into her pocket. She looks up at Señora Nauseobondo as though she were in love with her.
"Thank you, Señora," says Pilar.
I put aside my tea. The iced coffee slides more sweetly down my throat. I try to ignore the church bells clanging all twelve loud notes of noon. A mint-green headache slides all the way down my neck.
Through the window we watch Augustine trot his lathered Andalusian across the cobblestone square. For a few precious moments I allow myself to believe that a letter from José is arriving. My boy was always good at forgiveness. He must know I am not the enemy of love.
"Mail delivery," shouts Augustine.
Hundreds of miles of dry dust are etched into his voice. Villagers turn away from their food stands, abandon their municipal concerns, and make a slow parade toward the taverna. Like me, they hope for letters of their own. Everyone will share news from relatives along the coast. Even Gabito leans out the window, watching Augustine tether his mount in front of the taverna.
"Only an hour late," says Rosa.
The postman's long bowed legs swing off his Spanish saddle. With his wide sombrero, Augustine beats his shirt and pants until a cloud of dust rises around him. He walks toward the door shaking out his long pirate hair. The villagers follow him and his precious saddlebags to our table
"May I sit down among you?" he says.
We nod as we do every week.
"Señor Augustine," says Señora Nauseobondo in a voice as sweet as the coffee.
Standing before the charm of her smile, he always bows with his hat sweeping the floor.
He sits in one of the heavy chairs, and we all wait silently while he swallows the glass of iced coffee down to its last swirl.
"Ah," he says. "It is that first bite of cold."
He clears the dust and cream from his throat with a smoker's cough. The villagers crowd close as he empties the mail in front of Señora Nauseobondo. Her fingers sort quickly. Gabito floats nervously above the table and watches over the Señora's shoulder.
"Here's one for you, Mimosa." Señora Nauseobondo slings it over the frosted glasses into Mimosa's hands. She holds up a blue letter. "Sheriff Nina!" Villagers hand it back to Sheriff Nina.
"My daughter!" shrieks the sheriff.
I lean close enough to Augustine to smell his coffee breath.
"Augustine," I say, "is there a letter from José?"
Augustine repeats what he has been saying for a year, but this time he cannot bring himself to look at me.
"I have no letter for you, Señora Tortugina."
Gabito floats back to his perch on the window. Each week it is harder to hold back my tears.
Gabito and I are like badly fermented wine, poorly corked and ready to explode. I give Augustine two coins for his trouble, one for me, one for Pilar. Augustine drops the coins into a leather pouch at his waist.
While Señora Nauseobondo passes out the mail, Augustine sighs and draws a mango from his lunch bag. As he slices it, the juice coats the tips of his fingers. He holds a dripping orange piece toward me. His light gray eyes watch my lips moisten as I chew his orange, pulpy gift. Gabito's silhouette hovers near the windowsill.
Augustine finishes his lunch and cleans his hands on a wet towel.
"Sons come and go, Señora Tortugina," he says. "My oldest son is gone fourteen years. Then last year, a letter comes from India. He is married and I am a grandfather five times. One day you will receive a letter with good news."
There is sweet hope in Augustine's gray eyes. For a moment I see José walking through the taverna door, healthy and full of love for me. But the shadow of hope quickly disappears as the mail has all been given out.
Augustine flips his long hair and pulls it back into a horsetail.
"Who is sending post, my friends? Quickly, I am on a schedule."
Señora Nauseobondo drops a white envelope into his saddlebag with coins for delivery and passes the bag back to the villagers. Pilar slides out of her seat and disappears into the crush of the crowd. I stand up, but I cannot see her.
Señora Nauseobondo hands the heavy saddlebags to Augustine and presses her dress against his dusty canvas chaps.
"Good journey, Señor Augustine."
It is a lover's good-bye. Augustine smiles at her with long yellow teeth, tucks the saddlebag over his shoulder, and pushes through the villagers who slip their letters and their coins into his bag.
Gabito floats above my head.
"Pilar put a pink envelope in the bag, Tortugina." Gabito pokes me. "She is taking care that you do not see her. We have to see what it says!"
Gabito has come to life with new hope. This is the most animated he has been in a year. I follow Augustine and watch him throw his saddlebags across the Andalusian's haunches.
"Wait, Señor Augustine," I say. "I want to ride with you to the edge of town. I must speak to you about a personal matter."
"I am on a schedule, Señora Tortugina," he says.
"I will pay you for your time. I will pay you extra," I say.
Augustine pulls himself onto the Andalusian's back and settles into the Spanish leather. His kind gray eyes look down at me.
"For money, I will let you win my race against time."
He bends forward as though to kiss me and pulls me up behind him. My arms seem to fall naturally around the hard muscles of his waist.
Pilar is left shading her eyes against the sun. Whether she is suspicious or not, she cannot catch up with the horse's hurried trot. As we trot out of the square, Gabito floats up to eye-level.
"Tortugina, you do not need to hold on that tightly."
"Gabito," I say, "the trotting is loosening my teeth."
When we reach the edge of town, I lean forward and whisper, "Augustine."
The deep lines of Augustine's neck twist as he turns.
"All I wish is to see the address on Pilar's letter," I say.
I hold up some coins and jingle them in front of his face.
Under the shadows of his sombrero, Augustine's eyes shift back and forth, and with a shameless shrug he says, "Señora, for good money you may read all my envelopes."
I shuffle through the letters until I find Pilar's. Gabito breathes heavily on my shoulder. The address reads: To José Svendik, the Artisan of El Pulpo.
El Pulpo! I almost fall off the horse. "He went home, Gabito! He went back to Mamá. Thank God, he was safe all this time."
Gabito spins in a joyful haze of epaulettes. "El Pulpo! Tortugina! We are going home!"
The horse dances in place under us. My fists pound against the hard muscles of the mailman's back.
"Augustine! You knew all this time! You let me worry for nothing!"
A year's worth of tears wet the back of his shirt.
"How could you be such a bad friend?"
His face looks a little uncomfortable, but nothing more. "José pays well for silence. Rejoice that he is well, like my son."
I start to tear open Pilar's pink love note, but Augustine snatches it out of my hands.
"That is an offense against the government. I will have to ask you to leave the horse, Señora."
Gabito clamps his legs behind mine. "Tortugina, do not get off. It is our fastest way to El Pulpo."
I slide my arms tightly around Augustine's muscled waist and drop the rest of my coins between his thighs. With my nose close to his dusty ear, I whisper, "Take all my coins. I'm coming with you to El Pulpo, Señor Augustine. That much you owe me."

To be continued

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