The Petrification of Marianela Camacho by Sandro Francisco Piedrahita
On a desert town next to the sea was born Marianela Camacho, whose mother Isabela swore she had become pregnant after swallowing an emerald. The chismosos and chismosas of Anchicocha laughed and said she had become impregnated just like every other woman, probably by one of the itinerant salesmen who came from the capital every summer. But a doctor had examined her and confirmed Isabela was a virgin after birth, that Marianela was not the product of normal sexual intercourse. And so Marianela grew up without a father, used to hearing all the wondrous theories as to how her mother had become a mother and remained a virgin. Some speculated that after Marianela’s birth, Isabela had taken a magical bath to restore her virginity, as had happened in the past to certain Amerindian spirits. But Marianela never doubted the words of her mother Isabela: a magician named Lolo arriving from the ocean had promised her if she swallowed an emerald she would live two-hundred years. Nine months after the magician disappeared, Isabela had become a mother. When Isabela died in her fiftieth year, it became clear to Marianela that the magician had been a liar.
Marianela’s betrothed, Captain Armando Arboleda, was fighting in a war against the country to the south of Marianela’s nation. The two countries had been at odds for years and had fought seventeen wars in less than five decades. The latest war had started after a soccer match between the two nations which took place very close to the border. Marianela’s compatriots had protested loudly when the referee had declared that the opposing team was entitled to a penalty kick. There had been no foul within the eighteen-yard penalty area, complained the team from Marianela’s country, and soon a melee ensued. Men punched men, beer bottles were thrown, and guns were drawn. A massacre followed as the ardent fans from both countries began to shoot into the crowds at the opposite side of the stadium. The following day, a state of war was declared by the dictator of Marianela’s country, Gustavo Rojas Pinilla, and the same was done by the dictator of the country to the south, Gustavo Rojas Almendariz. All the young men from each country were conscripted to fight in the latest war, but not the sons of the leading families. Armando Arboleda promised Marianela that he would marry her as soon as he returned from battle and she swore her faithfulness to him.
At the request of her beloved, Marianela agreed to wear a chastity belt from that day forward and gave Armando the only key. Although many of the rich men in town desired her for her beauty and her silhouette, none was allowed to approach her. She hissed when she heard their piropos as she was walking through the village of Anchicocha and patiently waited for her beloved. The chastity belt was a metal contraption that tightly fit around Marianela’s waist. It covered her private parts with a plate made of bone with a narrow vertical slot to enable her to urinate. The slot was fitted with metal teeth to prevent exploration even by a fingertip. The device was extremely uncomfortable and made hygiene nearly impossible when she had her period. Still, Marianela thought it was a good idea. Even if one of the men in town tried to rape her—not an impossibility given that she was a poor indigenous woman and the men who had not been conscripted were all wealthy white men—she knew the metal girdle was impossible to remove.
Soon a number of suitors started visiting Marianela in the house of Doña Juana, a cruel woman with whom Marianela had lived ever since the death of her mother. Marianela used all her meager wages from a job she had at a botanica to pay Doña Juana for room and board, but the old woman was never satisfied and demanded that Marianela perform multiple tasks in the home: cleaning, sweeping, dusting, washing dishes and cooking whenever she came back early from her job. At some point, Doña Juana suggested that Marianela prostitute herself, but of course Marianela wouldn’t listen. She was waiting for her betrothed. So Doña Juana allowed all the men who wanted to visit Marianela into the home to see the young virgin, but she charged them a price for letting them into the house. She charged double the amount when Marianela was alone and all of Doña Juana’s other boarders were absent. She advised the men that if they had their way with her, if the girl succumbed to their desires, Doña Juana would henceforth triple the amount charged for visiting Marianela. Of course, Doña Juana had no idea about Marianela’s chastity belt and neither did her suitors.
Policarpio Medina was the most insistent of the men who visited Marianela, and the most morally and physically repugnant. While the vast majority of the suitors soon gave up—eventually Marianela rejected more than thirty of them—Policarpio Medina was relentless. He was anything but handsome, bald and one-eyed, slightly humpbacked, with an enormous paunch and the wrinkled face of a seventy-year-old, known in the town of Anchichocha for having raped many peasant women. Marianela became a forbidden obsession to him. Twenty years old and still a virgin, with a lover stuck in war, Policarpio felt Marianela had to consent to his advances. After a while, it was not only lust that motivated him but the stubbornness and resistance of his young prey. He brought her flowers, he brought her ripened fruits, he brought her silk handkerchiefs imported from India, and still she would not budge, would not even allow Policarpio to caress her hands. Policarpio had never accepted such rejection before, not even from married women whom he often raped after warning them he would not hesitate to kill them if they reported anything to their husbands. So one day he decided he would just pay Doña Juana for the key to Marianela’s room and simply take her by force.
One evening, after handing Doña Juana a hundred-peso note, Policarpio quietly entered Marianela’s bedroom. He found the object of his desires sleeping on her bed in a satin nightgown. He woke her up gently but still startled the young woman.
“What are you doing in my room?” she queried.
“I have come to share my love for you, Marianela, to make you mine, Marianela.”
“Please depart. I have no interest in you, you dirty lustful creature.”
Then Policarpio became violent, pulled at Mariana by the hair and ripped open her nightgown. When he discovered she had a chastity belt about her waist, he became furious. All the sexual desire mounting in him for months suddenly manifested itself in a great anger.
“Give me the key, you wench,” he demanded as the woman cowered on the bed. Then he proceeded to slap her.
“The key,” sobbed Marianela, “is in the possession of my beloved. It is impossible to open this metal girdle.”
The next night Policarpio reappeared, but this time with a hammer. Try as he might, he was unable to break open the chastity belt.
“I’ll return, and sooner than you think,” he said. “Don’t think you’ve seen the last of me, Marianela.”
Policarpio Medina decided he would find the magician Lolo and enlist his aid. There were rumors that he had reappeared in the village from time to time and that he lived on a rock formation off the coast with twelve concubines. Many wonders were attributed to him, miraculous healings, the ability to prophesy, his uncanny ability to make sterile women get pregnant.
Surely Lolo would be able to allow Policarpio to bed the reluctant Marianela. So Policarpio hired a ship and began to look for the magician throughout the Pacific Ocean. He spent months at sea, inspecting every rock formation in the middle of the ocean, and was unable to find the elusive magician. Just as he was about to give up, however, he heard a raspy voice behind him on the ship.
“So you’ve been looking for me?” the magician asked. “What do you need?” Lolo the magician looked to be older than a hundred-and-fifty years old.
“I passionately desire a woman, but she has been resistant to my entreaties. She wears a chastity girdle and I have been unable to force myself upon her. I was wondering if there was anything you could do to help me.”
“Well, there’s nothing I can do about the chastity belt itself. My powers are not so great that I can defeat an honest woman’s virtue, for she is protected by higher powers. All I can do, if you wish, is to make her pregnant with your child. But you wouldn’t be able to touch her.”
“What use would that have? It is not her child I want, but the woman’s body.”
“In that case, my conjuring is useless to you. Unless you need anything else, I shall return to the twelve concubines who live on my island with me. You know, the island was once a beautiful woman. I turned her into a rock when she resisted my advances.”
“Wait,” said Policarpio. “Perhaps you can help me still. If you get her pregnant, you’re saying it would be my child, correct?”
“Yes,” said Lolo the magician. “Just as if you had slept with her. And the chastity belt would be unable to protect her. Perhaps after she has your child, she will be more receptive to your entreaties.”
“How does that work? You’ll just cast a spell on her and she’ll get pregnant? Or does she have to drink a potion?”
“No, no, it’s much more complicated than that. I’ll have to transform you into a bird. Then, when she sits under a mango tree, you’ll put some of your seed on the fruit and let it fall next to her. If she picks up the mango and eats it, she’ll become pregnant with your child. If she doesn’t eat it, there’s nothing I can do for you.”
“So you’re saying you’ll turn me into a bird?”
“Whatever you want,” the magician responded. “A swan, a bull or an eagle. Europa was impregnated by a bull and Leda by a swan. Of course that wouldn’t work given the chastity belt worn by the woman you desire.”
“How soon can we do this? I mean impregnating Marianela with a fruit.”
“Marianela?” the magician Lolo queried. “Is she the daughter of Isabela?”
“Yes,” answered Policarpio. “The one you impregnated with an emerald.”
“I shall have to think about it then. Marianela is my own daughter.”
“You’d been doing her a favor. I’m a much better prospect than that Indian to whom she’s betrothed. Her child would be a mestizo rather than a cholo if she bore my son. And you know how much that means in our society. I’m not even sure Armando Arboleda would have the means to support a family. After all, he’s just a lowly peasant.”
“But you’re an old humpbacked man,” Lolo resisted. “I don’t think a young woman would ever be interested in you.”
“I have a great deal of money,” Policarpio answered. “Money makes the Indian man white and the old man young. Wealth makes up for youth.”
“As you wish then,” Lolo the magician answered. “As soon as we get back to your village, we shall perform the deed. You won’t see me, but I’ll be at your side. At the right moment, you shall become a dove. And then we can proceed with our little magic.”
So the two men returned to the village. One bright summer day, Policarpio found that he had been transformed into a bird. Although he could not see the magician, Policarpio knew that Lolo was next to him, for Policarpio could still hear the magician’s voice.
“There she is,” said the magician, “sitting under a tree just as I had imagined her. Now fly onto one of the branches and place your seed on a fruit. Let it fall as close to her as possible so that the mango will entice her.”
Marianela saw the fruit fall next to her as she sat under the mango tree. It was a large pink and orange mango, perfectly ripened, and she could not resist the temptation to eat it. The odor of the fruit was more enticing than anything she had ever smelled before. She delighted in the sweetness of its succulent flesh and sucked it until nothing was left but its large white pit.
“It is done,” said the magician. “In nine months, she shall bear your child.”
Suddenly Policarpio was transformed into a human being again and found himself next to Marianela sitting on the ground.
“It’s you,” she said as she prepared to stand up and leave. “Please leave me alone. You know I want nothing with you.”
“In time, you’ll beg for my attention, Marianela. And then it shall be up to me to decide whether to accept you or reject you.”
Policarpio became a bird again and disappeared.
After she missed her period for the third time, Marianela knew that she was pregnant. It did not surprise her entirely, since it had happened to her mother too. But she wondered how Armando would react. Unlike her mother, she had not swallowed an emerald, nor had she seen the great magician Lolo. And she racked her mind trying to think of how and when she had been impregnated.
As she became more visibly pregnant, rumors began to spread around the town of Anchicocha, just like two decades earlier all sorts of accusations had been made against her mother Isabela.
“Did a snake curl up in Marianela’s uterus?” the rich women of the town would laugh. “Or did she eat the genitalia of a bull instead?”
But some of the Indian women, who had believed her mother’s story about the sexless conception of Marianela, thought the young girl might still be a virgin even though she was with child. Didn’t their ancestors’ myths speak of a woman who had become pregnant after turning into a hen and swallowing a grain of wheat? Wasn’t an ancient princess once impregnated by the sun? Didn’t the curanderas of the highlands claim an indigenous virgin once gave birth to a pale blonde son after swallowing a snowflake? And wasn’t it common knowledge that some women can give birth to twins after eating two different types of flower, a nasturtium and a tulip?
But despite all these possibilities, all the women in town unanimously felt that when Armando returned from the war he would be furious. They did not forget that many of the women who had given virgin birth in antiquity had been severely punished by disbelieving fathers and jealous husbands. It was pretty hard to convince anyone of a virgin conception.
For some reason, the latest war was lasting much longer than the previous ones. Usually the battles between the two warring countries were resolved within a few weeks, a couple of months at most, after the two dictators agreed to redraw the borders to suit the country that had claimed the most casualties from the other side. But this time the war lasted more than a year and before Armando Arboleda returned from the front, Marianela gave birth to a lovely daughter she christened Cavillaca, which meant daughter of the sun in her native language.
Marianela was in the habit of sending a letter to her beloved once a month, but had never mentioned her pregnancy. Now that the child had finally been born, she decided to confess the birth of her child to her indigenous lover.
“Many things have been happening in our little desert town,” she wrote, “and in my own life as well. I promise you, Armando, that I have been faithful to you, night and day have thought only about you, but somehow I have given birth to a daughter. Don’t forget that my mother conceived me after eating an emerald. I am sure my own daughter, Cavillaca, has been engendered in a similar fashion. Please forgive me and promise to be a father to her. She is so pretty. Saint Joseph once accepted the virgin birth of Jesus without objection, doubt or trepidation.”
Armando’s response had been swift and full of fury.
“Do you think I’m so naïve? I never believed your mother’s story and I laugh at the one about your pregnancy. That is why I insisted you wear a chastity belt, to make sure you remained loyal to me. But apparently you found a locksmith to unlock the metal girdle. When I come back, I don’t know if I shall kill you for your perfidy and infidelity, or merely announce in the public square that I have been engaged to a whore. No other man will marry you under such circumstances. I’m not Saint Joseph and you’re not the Virgin Mary. Don’t dream that I shall ever be a father to your bastard child.”
Marianela became despondent and full of fear. Armando’s promise of violence wasn’t an idle threat. In his mind she had made him a cornudo—a cuckold—and he had to avenge his honor. She did not forget what had happened to other girls in similar circumstances. Don Pablo Jimenez had decapitated his own daughter after she became pregnant while unmarried. The young Ernesto Cardenal had felled his wife with a single gunshot to the head after he found her in bed with another. She knew Armando feared becoming the laughingstock of the village and that punishing her would do away with his public shame.
“If I am pregnant,” she responded to Armando, “it is through an act of magic. I assure you I have not known a man in a carnal sense during all this time you’ve been away at war, but I shall convene all of the men remaining in the village to demand that the father of my child accept his role in my pregnancy. Whoever has put a spell on me I shall discover. Since you no longer wish to marry me, I shall demand marriage from the guilty party.”
Father Rodrigo Barahona had been the first to arrive at the meeting convened by Marianela in the house of Doña Juana. He was an old, grizzled Spaniard from Segovia who had arrived in Anchicocha thirty years earlier as a sort of missionary. He knew there was no priest in that nearly abandoned town next to the ocean, nobody to say the Mass, no one to hear Confessions, nobody to make sure all cohabiting couples were properly married.
Marianela already knew his opinion about her mysterious pregnancy, since he had preached it from the pulpit. He had said any claim of a virgin birth was an affront to the Catholic religion, since there had been only one virgin birth in history and it had been the birth of Jesus. Still, he did not discount the possibility that the birth of Marianela’s daughter was the effect of some maleficio, of some evil spell perpetrated by dark ancestral forces. So he was very curious to know if anything was discovered when all the potential fathers were congregated in Doña Juana’s home at the behest of Marianela.
All of the men in town—with the obvious exception of those still on the battlefield—had been invited to the meeting meant to solve the mystery of Marianela’s pregnancy. Most of them were there for mere curiosity, since they knew they had nothing to do with the conception of Cavillaca and that someone else must be the father. At some point, the single men in the group would have happily married Marianela, the most beautiful woman in the entire region, but now that she was burdened with a child they no longer had any interest. But the birth of Cavillaca was the talk of the town and everybody wanted to know one way or another how Marianela had been impregnated. Was it an act of magic or was the woman lying?
Marianela decided to interrogate the men one by one.
“Now that you are together,” she said, “you must tell me which of you did this harm to me, and which of you is the father of Cavillaca.”
She started with Manuel de Cespedes, a white landowner known for his penchant for indigenous women.
“Are you the one who cast the spell on me?” Marianela asked.
“I would gladly have gotten you pregnant,” the man laughed, “but not through a magic spell, my dear. I would have done so through the use of my manhood, through my pirouettes in bed. I envy the man who did it.”
Then she addressed Alfonso Armendariz, a twenty-year-old with a local reputation as a poet.
“And you, Alfonso,” Marianela asked. “Are you the father of Cavillaca?”
“That would be an honor, fair lady, but I know nothing of the matter. Perhaps, like Danae, you got pregnant from a shower of gold.”
Everybody laughed except for Marianela.
Throughout the afternoon, Marianela posed the same question to each of the men in the living room of Doña Juana’s house and all of them claimed innocence. The only man she did not ask was Policarpio Medina. She left him for last. The very thought that he could be Cavillaca’s father revolted her, but since she had already asked everybody else, she felt obligated to probe him also.
“And you, Policarpio Medina, please tell me that you are not the father of my daughter. If you are the father, know this too, that I shall demand your incarceration for having impregnated me against my will. It would be the equivalent of a rape, as Father Barahona can attest.”
“Most certainly,” said the old priest.
Policarpio decided to lie. He had gotten her pregnant in order to force her to marry him, but now realized an admission of guilt would land him in jail instead.
“You know full well that you and I have never had carnal relations. And I don’t believe in fairy tale pregnancies. If you had a daughter, it’s because first you turned yourself over to a man. Lucky man indeed!”
“Very well,” said Marianela. “Since none of you is man enough to admit his guilt, and you prefer to calumny me instead, let us have Cavillaca tell us who her father is.”
Then Marianela put Cavillaca on the floor.
“A child will instinctively go to her father,” enunciated Father Barahona.
The little girl moved slowly about the room without stopping at the feet of any of the men. Finally, she crawled to where Policarpio was sitting and placed her small arms around his legs.
As she looked at him, she smiled and the humpbacked man lifted her in his arms.
“Now you must marry her!” cried out the priest. “Either that or you will rot in prison.”
“I never touched her,” Policarpio objected. “It was all the work of the magician Lolo.”
“That cannot be,” exclaimed Marianela. “That my rapist is the humpbacked one-eyed Policarpio Medina. Had I known, I would gladly have aborted the child, with all due respect to you, Father Barahona. Now I realize that she and I must both die together, that Policarpio’s daughter must be killed.”
“That would be an unpardonable crime,” protested Father Barahona.
“Yes,” Marianela replied. “We shall plunge into the ocean together. I shall not raise the child of Policarpio Medina.”
And she ran out of the house with the child in her arms, leaving everyone astonished.
As Marianela made her way to the ocean, Policarpio followed right behind her. He was not a noble or religious man by any means, but he had been raised Catholic and knew if he allowed Marianela to self-immolate because of his fault he would lose all possibility of redemption. The problem faced by Policarpio was his age—he was over seventy and Marianela was fifty years younger and could walk much more speedily than him.
From a distance, he shouted out at her.
“You don’t need to marry me. I shall pay you to support the child and you will never have to see me.”
But Marianela, even though she was within earshot of Policarpio, refused to turn around and speak with him. She had decided to throw herself into the ocean with Cavillaca. Nothing could dissuade her, certainly not the words of the despicable Policarpio.
“I have made my decision,” she cried out. “My beloved intends to kill me any way and I cannot contemplate the idea of raising your child. With the passage of the years, she will probably become a monster just like you. Her fate is sealed.”
At some point, Policarpio lost sight of the beleaguered Marianela and her daughter. She was bent on killing herself and he felt powerless to prevent it. Then he saw a fox running down the road.
“I wish you could speak to me, fox,” said Policarpio. “Then you’d be able to tell me in which direction Marianela has disappeared.”
To Policarpio’s great surprise, the fox answered him.
“She’s only about a hundred meters away. If you head south and hurry, you’ll be able to find her.”
“Is it you?” Policarpio asked.
“You know it,” responded Lolo the magician. He had turned into a fox to follow his daughter, for he knew she was in mortal danger.
Policarpio hurried and once again caught sight of Marianela.
“I shall give you everything I own,” he said. “Just desist from your suicidal purpose. You’ll be able to live a life of splendor. And you’ll never have to see me again. I shall leave the town of Anchicocha.”
But Marianela didn’t even turn around to look at him. She continued on her desperate trek to the ocean.
Then a skunk appeared to Policarpio.
“Tell her you shall confess everything to her beloved Armando, that you’ll even arrange for him to meet me so I can explain my sortilegio.”
Policarpio did as he was told by Lolo the magician, but still Marianela would not even turn around to look at him. She and her doomed daughter were coming perilously close to the sea. Lolo decided he had to take more drastic measures.
“I shall give you an unmerited blessing,” said Lolo the magician. This time he appeared to Policarpio in the form of a pheasant.
“What blessing?” asked Policarpio.
“I shall transform you into a handsome man. Marianela will no longer be repelled by your presence.”
Suddenly Policarpio was a tall man of thirty years, with shining black hair and penetrating eyes that mirrored the color of the ocean. His hunchback disappeared and his gait was quickened. He was dressed in black breeches and a coat of gold.
“Marianela,” he cried out. “Turn around and take a look at me. Lolo the magician has performed a wonder. I am no longer an old, disfigured man. You shall not be ashamed of walking in my company.”
But Marianela would not turn around to look at him.
“You are a despicable creature,” she cried out as she hurried toward the ocean. “And I will not be burdened by raising the unnatural child of such a man.”
“It is your pride speaking,” responded the young Policarpio. “Can’t you understand you will be committing a great crime? What fault does Cavillaca have that you should drown her? I tell you again that I am now a young man. I shall put an end to your shame. Just turn around and look at me.”
But Marianela would not look back. The Pacific Ocean was before her and she made haste to reach the seashore.
“This is what happens,” she shouted at Policarpio, “when you rape a woman through evil means.”
Marianela stopped short when she arrived at the place where the waves first appeared. She looked at the immensity before her and decided she would simply walk into the sea until it swallowed her whole, as well as her daughter. She realized it would be a great sin, but couldn’t accept the notion of raising Policarpio’s child. The idea that she had had his seed in her wombs for nine months disgusted her.
Lolo the magician was at a loss. What else could he do to save her?
Marianela began to swim, all the while carrying her daughter. She remembered all the stories she had heard about others who had sought their deaths in the ocean. Angel Ganivet the Spanish novelist, Alfonsina Storni the poetess from Argentina, and so many others. She knew that suicide was the main cause of seafarer deaths, knew also that feeding the hunger of the sea was a more gentle way to end one’s life than blowing your brains out with a firearm or slitting your wrists. And although she knew suicide was verboten in the Catholic faith, she also was familiar with the myth of Achiyaku, meaning clear water, who had thrown himself into the ocean and thereafter lived among the fish and all the sea creatures, the tortoises and turtles, the sharks and the octopus, commanding the waves and sometimes enticing wayward sailors to their deaths.
But as Marianela got closer to her death, Lolo decided on a final intervention. He would turn her and her daughter into rocks that would never die. That way she would not be condemned for suicide, nor for the murder of her daughter. To this day, visitors wonder at the small rock formations of Marianela and Cavillaca, off the coast of the country of Salsipuedes, where the two women have been guarding the sea for a hundred years.