The Eerie Silence of Towns—Possibilities of Nesting

The orchestra announces a half-hour break and the town’s Plaza Mayor is freed of retirees and families, and young people attack to the rhythm of “Latin” music played by an impromptu DJ, who take it at their age. They are excited and have already injected the first dose of cocktails in their bodies, with which they will end the night. On one of the four sides of the small square, the “Celebration Committee” has improvised a bar as in previous years, with a wooden board on top of two drinks refrigerators. Although the population of this place is less than 20 people, the festival can gather up to 200 people, including those who come to spend the August week in the homes of their elders and tourists who come from other nearby towns to escape the summer heat. The orchestra that will play next week under their balconies.

There was a group of men standing in the middle of the bar, about a dozen of them, aged between forty and sixty, and obviously drunk. They were fathers, uncles, brothers, grandchildren, grandparents or friends of some of the people in the square. Now, as the orchestra rested, they took the opportunity to go to the bathroom, keep an eye on the sleeping creatures, freshen up a little, or touch up their lipstick. The town has four streets and a square, so everyone knows each other. If there are new people arriving, this is even more so because they are new here.

But this year, apart from some close friends and boyfriends who came from Beijing to accompany this or that child, there were no strangers at the festival. So everyone could realize how people from Juan The Grala familyexpressed a vulgar compliment to a young girl dancing to the DJ’s beats. There was laughter among his companions. Then another round – more laughter – and later he almost got into a fight because a boy stopped him. “He’s going to eat his snot, damn it”, and such bravado. But everyone thought, as always, when a person is so indifferent, he no longer fights out of simple laziness to avoid spoiling the next drink, laughter with friends, and who knows if there are a few lines, “like then”. Everyone probably noticed how he looked at his wife Andrea and how fear left marks on her face..

After a while, he would tell me: “I knew the look in his eyes, the way it changed when he had a drink, and I already knew that if he wasn’t getting in trouble with anyone on the street or in the bar, it was because he was saving me the trouble for the evening.”.

It was five years later when I first went to the main festival in the same town. In fact, just as Andrea had feared that summer, the host had reserved it for her. They are not new or different hosts, nor are they stronger or weaker than usual.the same violent blows from the drunken bastard, but that time he was unlucky and fell down from one of the punches, and Andrea lost consciousness. Maybe it wasn’t the first time he knocked her out and threw her to the ground, but that time, it turned out that one of the couple’s nieces – three brothers, their wives and children were sleeping in the house – was old enough, otherwise who knows, he might have been frightened to let out a scream that woke up the whole house.

Andrea lay unconscious on the ground, and the creatures were awake, no one could hide anymore the beatings, the fights, the bruises, the wounds, everything they had kept silent about for years. Quiet the family, quiet the cronies in the town, quiet the cronies’ families. In other words, every god in the town from which the woman was banished for denouncing Juan The Grala familydivorce him and explain the reason to the children.

Every summer I remember Andrea, who, five years after the assault and subsequent separation, asked us to accompany her to the main festival in town. She told us she was afraid to go alone, but she wanted to go, and she didn’t want anyone to stop her from going anywhere. She didn’t want the kids to feel like she was being punished for saying “enough.”We did it, much to the chagrin of everyone present. We danced, drank, and then danced some more. No one dared to speak to us. A dozen men leaned on their elbows in the makeshift bar built from wooden boards, and we didn’t look at them once. Every summer I think of Andrea and the eerie silence of the town.