“When Tirsa comes,” she said to herself, “I am going to tell her that tomorrow we’ll get our hair cut. This long hair is of no use to us; on the contrary, it’s sapping away our babies’ calcium and iron.”
She opened her jewelry case. In it she saw her ring and the diamond earrings, a sapphire brooch, several gold hoops, chains, and several twigs of black coral that the children had gotten out of the sea to give to her. In the bottom she found what she was looking for: the gray pearl necklace that Ramón had sent her from Japan. She put it on, caressing it for a long time: she seemed to want the tips of her fingers to memorize even the tiniest irregularities in each pearl.
She folded everything back in, arranging things inside the trunk, except for the sheets and the tablecloths. She needed them to cover herself at night, to use as towels after her bath, to make clothes for the children and diapers for the babies to come. She took off the crude tunic she was wearing, made out of real sailcloth, and wrapped herself in the saintly bedsheet like a sari. She closed the trunk tight and dragged it out to the veranda, making rest stops. When she managed to bring it to the edge, she gave it a big push. The trunk fell about five feet, sinking somewhat into the sand. She went down and spent the rest of the morning digging a hole around it.
Ramoncito came to help her.
“What are you doing, Mom?”
“I am burying the trunk.”
“What for?”
“To protect what is inside.”
“And what is inside?”
“The clothes and the money I am going to need the day we are rescued.”
“Are we going to be rescued?”
“Perhaps.”
“I don’t want to leave. Do you?”
“I do.”
“Why? Is it better somewhere else?”
“Much better. Perhaps.”
“And why do you need clothes the day we are rescued?”
“I don’t want to be pitied.”
“And you also saved clothes for me?”
“No, not for you. Your old clothes are too small for you.”
“Then I am going to be pitied?”
“No. I am going to buy you a new suit as soon as we land. And a pair of shoes.”
“I don’t like to wear shoes.”
“When you are there, you’ll like them.”
“I don’t like it over there. I don’t want to go.”
The rest of the women were still on the cliff side. Every day they clambered down the steep rock, competing with the waves in order to take away the ocean’s bounty of oysters, squid, and crayfish. Tirsa, the most skilled at this task, could not do it anymore and limited herself to offering instructions from higher up. Alicia heard their voices.
“They are coming,” she told Ramón. “Let’s hurry and finish burying this. They’re coming back early. They must have made a good catch.”
They were coming at a gallop, bolting like colts, but carrying no food. They stopped in a circle around Alicia, without saying anything. She saw them panting, extremely pale, a wild look in their eyes.
“What’s the matter, for God’s sake? Someone fell down?”
“No, ma’am.”
“What happened? Why won’t you tell me?”
“Because you will scold us if we tell you, ma’am.”
“The children! Something happened to the children?”
“No, nothing to do with the children. It’s because up on the cliff we saw — We saw Lucifer.”
“Are we going to start that again?” barked Alicia, making no effort to conceal her fury.
Tirsa, who had lagged behind, came then.
“It’s true, Alicia. This time I saw him myself.”
“Did you see the devil? You, too?” There was more sarcasm than surprise in Alicia’s voice.
“Yes,” Tirsa said. “Me, too. I don’t know if it was the devil, but it was some horrible being.”
Then, all started talking at once: he was tall, big, his red hair standing out, hairy all over, hairy only on his back. His eyes spewed fire, no, they were human but he had a snout instead of a mouth. His face was that of a man. He walked on all fours. He didn’t walk on four, only on three. In any case, he was on two legs, but he did not walk like other people. His skin was dark, dried up, he had scales like an iguana. He smelled putrid, and before he appeared on top of the cliff they had perceived his stink, like a rotten corpse. He was naked, and his private parts were the devil’s, or at least very big, and anyway, he was truly male, no doubt about that.
“The devil surely he’s not,” Alicia decreed. “So he is a man or a beast. Or he’s nothing, like so many other ghosts around here.”
“He’s a beast,” some women said.
“He’s a man,” said the others.
“Could he be a shipwrecked sailor who got here?” Alicia asked.
“Well, if he was shipwrecked,” Tirsa answered, “he must have lived at the bottom of the sea for years.”
They decided that a few women, armed with sticks and headed by Tirsa, would go around the isle. They would go to places they had not been since they had set essential perimeters of action for themselves.
“We’d better not go today. It’s already late and darkness will soon close in on us,” Benita pleaded.
“Yes,” agreed Tirsa, “we’d better do it tomorrow when it’s light.”
“Better never,” Alicia said. “Let’s not look for him, but wait and see if he appears. There is no hurry, since he has caused no harm so far.”
The women had a restless though quiet night. At dawn Alicia summoned all to the beach. When they arrived, they saw in Tirsa’s hands two kitchen knives, which she was sharpening on a stone.
“Are we going to hunt that demon we saw?” they asked.
“No. We aren’t hunting any demons. We are going to cut our hair,” Alicia announced, “because it’s interfering with our tasks. Besides, we cannot take care of it anymore, and, unkempt like this, our manes look frightful. We have all discussed this several times, it was decided long ago, and we’re finally doing it. Who will be the first volunteer?”
Rosalía was first, then Benita and Francisca. Alicia and Tirsa would grab the long tresses and shear them just below the ears, throwing the cuttings on a single pile that started to look like a sleeping hairy animal. Then Alicia and Tirsa cut each other’s manes. Someone brought the broken mirror; they looked at their short haircuts, and they all laughed.
“Let me see how you look,” Francisca said to Benita. “I bet you will not get any beaux with your hair like that.”
“And whom did you have in mind for me? The cliff monster?”
“I’ll wait for this child to grow up and marry me,” Rosalía said, lifting Ramoncito up in her arms and smacking kisses on his face. “And by then, my hair will be long again.”
“We are already shorn,” Alicia said. “All but you, Alta.”