The Dark Bride by Laura Restrepo Page B

better for me to never find out what this child’s past is, or what mix of blood brought about such vigor and fury.”
    â€œBastards, bloodsuckers!”
    Delia Ramos, consumed with rage, incited battle with Walkyrian shouts, and a woman from the Pacific coast whom they called La Costeña harangued from the top of a wall.
    â€œ Putas hijueputas! Son-of-a-bitch whores!” answered masculine voices from behind the barricades. “Syphilis spreaders!”
    â€œThis is for all of our friends who were raped and abused in this dump!” trumpeted the vodka-soaked voice of Analía, and a bottle crashed against the window of the dispensary, shattering the glass.
    â€œFilthy gonorrhea-infected whores!” responded the barricaded men.
    â€œDeath to corrupt officials!”
    â€œDown with the pimping government!”
    â€œDeath!”
    A flying orange buzzed through the broken window and stamped itself, yellow and juicy, on a cabinet, knocking over all the flasks, and then the roof fell in with a clatter of glass.
    â€œThey’re burning us alive!” howled the besieged men, as a rain of burning paper and rags descended upon them, which Sayonara, angel of fire, young cat on a hot tin roof, was tossing onto their heads and which fell onto the spilled alcohol, spreading the fire. From her street corner Todos los Santos saw the smoke that was beginning to rise wispy and pale and noticed that it was becoming blacker and thicker, like the clouds that precede storms. She also saw the first flames peering out, seeking something to cling to, like long, mobile, hungry tongues, and she watched the heat smash, one by one, the rest of the windows in a frenzy of invisible punches reverberating through the air.
    And she also saw, with the stupor of one contemplating someone else who has been reborn, her adopted daughter standing at the edge of the great fire, watching it, spellbound and ecstatic, captivated by the spectacle of its growing force and without retreating from her attacks or perceiving the heat building up in the iron skylight frames across which she was effortlessly balanced, as if suspended from the sky by invisible threads.
    There was something irrational and challenging in the way that girl ignored the danger, and Todos los Santos suddenly understood that her adopted daughter couldn’t, or, worse still, didn’t want to separate herself from the fascination that wouldn’t take much longer to envelop her in its burning arms.
    â€œDown with the pimping government!” howled the women, feverish before the excitement of the fire.
    â€œDown!”
    â€œOut of Tora with the bloodsuckers!”
    â€œOut!”
    Asphyxiated by the smoke, their eyes reddened and teary, and their arms raised high, like freed puppets, the besieged doctors exited in surrender at the very moment that men in olive green appeared, jogging down the street, holding their weapons.
    â€œTheir reinforcements are coming!” Someone sounded the alarm and the rebels shot off in every direction, leaving the scene empty in a matter of seconds.
    â€œHere come the cops!”
    â€œDeath to corrupt officials!”
    â€œDeath to the police who protect them!”
    â€œDeath to all the sons of bitches who exploit the women of Tora!”
    Todos los Santos, the only woman who remained in the plaza, without vacillation crossed the tense silence of thistles and porcupines that electrified the air to approach the dispensary as far as permitted by the fury of the blaze, which was now escaping through doors and windows, and she didn’t know whether it was because of dizziness from the heat or hallucination from the gases, but as she looked up in the air she saw Sayonara advance serenely, like Christ on top of the waves, along a narrow open path among the flames, a vertiginous ballerina on the verge of disaster. And she swears to me that she saw too how the gusts of smoke delicately stroked her hair and