La muerte del padre
_Tú padre morirá y tú deberás cerrarle los ojos –había escuchado que una voz le decía en sueños.
Ese mismo sueño se lo había contado a Dorilda, su perra, quien había funcionado como hermana, madre, amiga, compañera, después que Eulogio la había echado de la hacienda “La esmeralda” y Juancho la había abandonado:
_En sueños me dijeron que el viejo moría –expresó Petra mientras recogía lo poco que la tierra le daba. Dorilda hizo un sonido, de esos que hacía siempre, como para que Petra supiera que había escuchado:
_Y que me tocará cerrarle los ojos para que pueda irse en paz –aseguró Petra mirando la cosecha marchita, seca, entre sus manos también marchitas, agrietadas por el trabajo. Dorilda volvió a emitir el sonido gutural, como un pequeño ladrido, como si solo un sonido fuese suficiente para comunicarse entre ellas.
_Esto solo será paja: un monte con una sola hoja –dijo y volvió a escupir. Luego montó su caballo y se fue dejando detrás de él una polvareda gris ceniza. Petra se había quedado con la boca abierta, temblando, consciente del peligro de aquel deseo paterno, de aquellas palabras pronunciadas con ira ante un dios que todo lo escucha. Por eso Petra, cuando la cosecha comenzó a tener plaga, cuando los frutos, sin madurar, comenzaron a pudrirse, Petra lo entendió: la maldición de su padre había llegado al cielo.
Pero no solo fue la tierra la que se quedó seca y sin frutos, también fue Petra quien tuvo que aceptar que su vientre no sería tierra fértil, que no cuajaría vida y que también quedaría vacío de semilla. Por eso Juancho se fue, porque él quería hijos y Petra no podía dárselos, y aunque él fue el motivo de la pelea entre Petra y su padre, no volvió la vista atrás cuando se iba y jamás volvió a buscarla.
Cuentan, que del manojo seco comenzaron a crecer flores violetas y mariposas amarillas. Otros dicen que no, que las hojas reverdecieron y que cuando Petra volvió a su casa, los árboles retoñaban con si la larga sequía, luego de la muerte del padre, hubiese pasado.
HASTA UNA PRÓXIMA OPORTUNIDAD, AMIGOS
La imagen principal es de libre uso y el texto fue traducido con Deepl Translate
Versión en inglés
Before the news reached San Casimiro de las Casas, Petra knew. In dreams she had been warned of the death of Eulogio, her father, with whom she had been at odds years before.
Your father will die and you will have to close his eyes,” she had heard a voice tell her in a dream.
That same dream she had told Dorilda, who had functioned as sister, mother, friend, after Eulogio had thrown her out of the hacienda “La Esmeralda”:
In dreams they told me that the old man was dying, Petra expressed as they gathered what little the land gave them. Dorilda made a sound, one of those sounds she made to affirm, to say that she had heard:
And that it will be my turn to close his eyes so that he can leave in peace, assured Petra looking at the withered, dry harvest, between her withered hands, also withered, cracked by the work. Dorilda emitted the guttural sound again, as if so many words were not necessary to communicate with each other, as if only one sound were enough.
It had been five years since everything had happened, since Petra had been left without a father and Petra had been left without a daughter, or at least that was what Eulogio said when he grabbed a handful of earth from the garden of his daughter's house and spat it out four times:
This will only be straw: a hill with a single leaf, he said and spat again. Then he mounted his horse and rode off leaving behind him an ash-gray dust. Petra had stood with her mouth open, trembling, aware of the danger of that paternal desire, of those words spoken in anger before an all-hearing god. So Petra, when the harvest began to blight, when the fruits, unripe, began to rot, Petra understood: her father's curse had reached heaven.
But it was not only the land that remained dry and without fruit, it was also Petra who had to accept that her womb would not be fertile land, that it would not bring forth life and that it would also remain empty of seed. That is why Juancho left, because he wanted children and Petra could not give them to him, and although he was the reason for the quarrel between Petra and her father, he did not look back when he left and never came back to look for her.
Petra's twitching hand carried a dry bundle of straw as she approached the bed where her father's body lay. Indeed, his eyes were open, as if he had gone with a desire to see someone. Without remorse and without hatred, Petra's hand slid down the old man's pale face and closed his eyes. She also closed hers and, unable to hold them back, tears rolled down the woman's chapped cheeks and fell into the dry bundle she held in her hands.
They say that violet flowers and yellow butterflies began to grow from the dry bunch. Others say no, that the leaves greened up and that when Petra returned home, the trees sprouted as if the long drought, after her father's death, had passed.