English Version

Everything is going from bad to worse around here. Last week my Aunt Jacinta died, and on Saturday, after we’d buried her and weren’t feeling quite so bad, it started to rain. That made my father angry, because the whole barley crop was drying in the sun, and the storm came up so fast we didn’t have a chance to get any of it under cover. All we could do was huddle under the lean-to, watching therain destroy the whole crop.

And just yesterday, when my sister Tacha was twelve years old we found out that the river carried away the cow my father gave her for her birthday. The river started to rise three nights ago before dawn. I was sound asleep, but it made so much noise dragging at its banks that I woke up and jumped out of bed with the covers in my hand, as if I’d dreamed the roof werecaving in. Afterward I went back to bed because I knew it was just the sound of the river, and pretty soon it put me to sleep again.

When I got up the sky was full of black clouds, and the noise of the river was even louder. It sounded close, and it had the rotten smell flood-water has, like the stink of a trash-fire.

By the time I went to take a look, the river was already up over itsbanks" It was rising little by little all along the street and running into the house of that woman they call The Drum. You could hear the splash of the water going into the corral and out the gate. The Drum was hurrying back and forth, throwing her chickens into the street so they could find someplace to hide where the current wouldn’t reach them.

Over on the other side near the bend, the rivermust have carried off the tamarind tree at the edge of my Aunt Jacinta’s corral, because you couldn’t see it any more. It was the only tamarind in the village, so everybody knows this is the biggest flood that’s come down the river in years.

My sister and I went back in the afternoon to look at it again. The water was dirtier and thicker, and it was well up over where the bridge used to be. Westayed there for hours, just watching, without getting tired. Then we walked up along the ravine to hear what the people were saying. Down below, near the river, the water made so much noise you could see their mouths opening and shutting but you couldn’t hear a word. They were looking at the river up along the ravine, too, and trying to figure out how much damage it had done. Up there I found outthat the river carried off La Serpentina, the cow my father gave Tacha for her birthday. La Serpentina had one white ear and one red ear, and beautiful eyes.

I don’t know why she ever decided to try crossing that river when she must have known it wasn’t the same river any more. La Serpentina wasn’t that restless. She must have been walking in her sleep, ‘to let herself get drowned like that forno reason at all. When I’d open the corral gate in the morning she’d have stood there all day with her eyes shut, sighing the way a cow does when she’s asleep.

So that’s what must have happened to her, she must have been asleep. Perhaps it occurred to her to wake up when she felt the water pounding at her ribs. She’d have got frightened then and tried to come back, but the water would haveknocked her down and turned her over and over. I suppose she bellowed for help. She could bellow like God only knows how.

We found a man who saw her when the river dragged her off, and I asked him if she didn’t have a little calf with her. He said he didn’t remember. He just remembered he saw a spotted cow go past him with its hooves in the air, and then it sank and he couldn’t see its hooves orhorns or anything. He was so busy pulling tree-trunks and branches out of the water, for firewood, he didn’t have time to watch whether it came up again.

So now we don’t know if the calf is still alive or if it followed its mother into the river. God help the two of them if it did. The troubles we’ve had in our house can happen all over again, now that my sister Tacha hasn’t got anything left....