Afro-Cuban Tales

The Green Mud of the Almendares

122 The Green Mud of the Almendares The Green Mud of the Almendares The mayor issued a proclamation saying that there was not a more beautiful mulatto woman in the whole world than Soyán Dekín. Billillo, a carriage driver, loved Soyán Dekín, but he had never told her so because he was afraid she’d reject him. No doubt she was pretty, conceited, and cantankerous, but he knew that he was no small potato. There was a party in the Cabildo1 to honor Soyán Dekín. The mayor attended it. Soyán Dekín came to the party like a queen, putting on airs, and wowed everybody with her beauty. She spent the night dancing with the mayor and with nobody else. Watching her dance, Billillo’s heart filled with poison. He couldn’t stand to see her acting with such affectation and so disdainfully, but his eyes ran after her radiance and after the swaying of her hips. He always saw her dancing or chatting with the white man. She was even lovey-dovey with him. What a mulatto woman! She should have been born to put on perfume and sit on a throne. She was high class. With her flirtatious silk cloak and her cotton gown, Soyán Dekín was very desirable in her apotheosis; she was ready to be the mistress of a rich white man. Later, among the Negroes, she would boast of being a white lily. Billillo sharpened his hatred. To prevent a tragedy, he left the party, but demons carried him through the dark streets of the city. The trumpet, there at The Almendares River crosses the city of Havana. 1. Members of a particular cabildo generally come from the same region in Africa. 123 The Green Mud of the Almendares the Cabildo, kept the night awake. And Billillo, may God have already forgiven him, went to see the witch doctor of the Ceiba, who lived inside death, and who spent his days concocting evil deeds. Soyán Dekín used to sleep late into the morning like a great lady. Neither the early street noises nor the arguments in the common patio of her dwelling could disturb her sleep. Not until well after eleven did she even think about getting up, and just because of who she was, so pretty and desirable, she would do nothing around the house. It was her mother, an exquisite ironer, who did the chores around the house and who earned a living. Because she was conceited and beautiful, Soyán was always seated in front of the mirror or at the front window. Soyán Dekín came back in the wee hours of the morning from the party at the Cabildo, but she didn’t go to bed. When the street overflowed with the cries of the fruit and vegetable vendors and the Chinese fish vendor came knocking at the window, Soyán Dekín said to her mother: “Give me the dirty laundry; I’ll go wash it at the river.” “You, so beautiful, and after the party, why are you going to wash in the river?” But Soyán Dekín, as if someone invisible were whispering in her ear, repeated solemnly: “Yes, dearest Mummy, give me the laundry. Today I have to wash in the river.” The old woman never contradicted her daughter in the slightest, so she made a bundle with all the clothes in the house and gave it to her daughter, who left carrying the bundle on her head. People say that the sun has never since seen a creature with a more beautiful figure, or a more gracefully swaggering woman. That morning, when Soyán Dekín was going to the 124 The Green Mud of the Almendares Almendares River, she carried in her walk the halo of the morning and in her gown the sway of the breeze. There hasn’t been in the whole world a prettier mulatto woman than Soyán Dekín: a Cuban woman, from Havana, delectable, who washed herself with sweet basil to ward off tribulation and pain. There, where the river became a creek and the water became a child playing on the shore, Soyán Dekín untied the bundle and, kneeling on a rock, started washing the clothes. Everything was emerald green, and Soyán Dekín began to feel isolated, like a prisoner in a magic circle, alone in the middle of...