La Vedette, Gloriella

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MARFIL’S FURIOUS SALSA Santi sent me walking through town. “Pull up your skirt a little,” he said. “Move your hips, sing the way a mermaid would sing. Watch how he’ll need to be near you. The time is right for it.”Tracka-tracka-tracka-tracka-tracka- they started to clap and click the fastest compás that could be played. I walked through the streets alone, followed by the clapping blackguards and Marfil’s furious salsa. Somewhere on the calle Don Opando I could hear footsteps behind me. I kept walking as if I didn’t notice, but then the steps got closer and mine got faster.Tracka-tracka-tracka-tracka-tracka-tracka the steps came closer still. I could almost feel Sagasta breathing behind me. I heard his hassock flap around his legs from the wind coming down calle St. John of the Cross. I could feel his heart keeping time with his steps. A door swung open. “You cannot deny it, Rodriguez, your behavior around your daughter is most unbecoming. And there isn’t anyone in town who hasn’t seen it.”But I couldn’t go back!Tracka-tracka-tracka-tracka-tracka- and sizzling notes were flying from the tiny lightning strings shooting around Marisalena. “Vedette,” he called after me the first time. “Vedette,” he sounded a little more like my father the second time. “Vedette,” he begged as if there was something missing in some safe place somewhere in his mind. A place with a door to it that I pushed open. “You!” Antonia’s voice flew out of this pink and blue and light green laundry hanging in the biting sun. “Moonchild, Princess of the Silver Star, Princessa.”“Vedette,” he said, getting closer. "I feel as if I’ve known you forever and yet we’ve never met.”Tracka-tracka-tracka-tracka-tracka-“Come here my child, come here to father, tell me what demons haunt your dreams. Give yourself over to Jesus who is Lord. Let him love you.”Tracka-tracka-tracka-tracka- and he ran for me. “Saaaantiiiiiiii!” And the clapping stopped-tracka-tracka-as Sagasta jumped and missed because I didn’t have shoes and it made me much much faster. I headed for the cemetery, two olive groves away. “Vedette! Vedette! Vedette!” followed me there, completely mad.“Vedette!”I couldn’t tell anymore if it was my father, or Father Sagasta or Father Olivares or Santi or Paula or Mariano or Raimundo. I just couldn’t tell. It was always the same Vedette! Vedette! Vedette!I ran through the cemetery gate and he was behind me, but not getting closer until I stepped on something sharp that stuck into my foot. It hurt and the blood on the dirt scared me when I heard the gunshot. "Aguuuuuugh," was the sound Sagasta made when he fell on his face. I turned to see that his knee was blown apart. His nose was broken and his teeth, too. I went and tried to sit him up. He wanted to try to run, but he didn’t want to leave. He was with me. He looked up and blood from his nose dropped onto his white hands. He looked at the marismas grass flowing to the rhythm of el rio around him and said, “Ah Vedette, why this when I only sought release?”“You found it,” I told him. (Page 275 in the novel)