Chapter Two
The Legend of Old Maria
Mother always had a story to tell. Even Father used to stop and listen. At bedtime, she used to crawl into my mosquito net tent and we'd lie together on my mat while Mother told stories to the singing of the night crickets.
The legend of Old Maria was one of those tales I didn't mind hearing over and over again. I only had to close my eyes tight and shut my ears to the crickets' singing and Father rattling around in the kitchen, and I could hear Mother's voice again, reciting the story, like a poem.
By the time the gods of creation got round to Santa Rosa, they were bored. They had invented so many animals, each more clever than the last. They had created thousands of bugs, each more peculiar than the next. They'd made mountains and waterfalls and trees. The gods had simply had enough.
So for Santa Rosa they made a big, flat, sandy plain that ran to the edge of the sea. Which was not very exciting and not at all useful. But the gods were fed up with creating and that was that.
Nothing would grow in the sandy ground. Except maybe peanuts. But even peanuts needed some manure to grow. And there was no cattle to make manure because there was no pasture to feed the cattle. So nothing flourished on the Santa Rosa plain. It may just as well have been a desert.
Only two people lived in Santa Rosa: an old man named Juan and his daughter, Maria.
Because they could grow nothing on the land, Juan and Maria subsisted on fish from the sea, which is a fine diet if you also ate fruits and greens and fresh vegetables and milk. But fish was all they had to eat and though it filled their bellies, no good every came from too much of one thing and nothing of the other.
Juan, being very old, succumbed quickly to this shortfall. His gums began to bleed, and then his teeth fell out. At first, his bones ached and then slowly they bowed to the weight of his body, leaving him crooked like a seaside Frangipani tree with all its leaves blown off by the wind.
Maria was a girl of extraordinary beauty; there was always a smile in her eyes like dark almonds, her olive skin was perfection, and the black hair that flowed to her waist was a silky stream. She was uncomplaining of their hard life; indeed, where Juan saw an empty wilderness, she saw an unspoilt landscape. For Maria, it was enough that they had each other.
But discontent and fear plagued the old man. To see Maria slowly become disfigured, toothless and bent as he had become would be like dying a thousand deaths.
And so one night in the middle of the Santa Rosa plain, old Juan built a pyre of driftwood and set it alight.
He fell to his knees and began to pray. “Oh my lords,” he said, “Try as I might, I cannot seem to persuade this earth to bear fruit. I beg you, grant that life may come to this wasteland.”
Juan bowed down so low that his forehead touched the sandy ground. “I will give anything, O gods, if you could make this wish come true. Anything at all.”
Of course, those were the days when heaven and earth had not yet separated into two different planes. God and man lived within reach of each other. The gods did not mind the nearness of man because there were not yet so many billions of people in the world all begging heavenly favours as they do now. Juan's lonely plea sparked a mild interest in the gods of creation, who had begun to weary of their idleness.
Looking down upon Juan, their attention was immediately diverted to the beautiful girl who sat sewing as she waited for her father to return from his errand.
Maria's loveliness was such that a man needed only gaze upon her to lose his heart. Indeed her isolation on the Santa Rosa plain had so far spared the world much heartache.
The gods experienced an unfamiliar yearning and weakness that humans know well as love. But they took no pleasure in it. Instead, it filled them with loathing — gods do not relish falling under a human's spell.
The skies above Juan bubbled up with strange yellow clouds that swirled high into a tall plume. Frightened, Juan threw himself face down on the ground and begged forgiveness for his impertinent wishes.
Then it was as if everything stopped, as if Juan was the only moving thing in a frozen landscape. All was quiet, so quiet Juan could barely hear the whisper that brushed his ear.
“Human,” the whisper said in a voice so hushed it was almost nothing at all. “Your wish is granted.”
Joyfully, Juan leapt to his feet, his crooked body suddenly suffused with a new strength and hope. Within seconds, the terrain around him began to transform. The ground beneath his feet shook mightily and the plain folded into itself; the sterile sand, ploughed under by a rich, red loam. Before Juan's eyes, a mountain swung up from the ground, its slopes bright with greenery, water from the sweetest underground streams flowing down to irrigate the newly-fertile land.
Juan hobbled as swiftly as he could back to the hut, his mind awhirl with plans: the mango orchard he would plant, the fields of rice he could grow, a vegetable garden for Maria, and the people … yes, at last people were coming to Santa Rosa to share in its bounty. Suddenly there were many tomorrows in his dreams, grandchildren and great grandchildren, growing up in wonderful abundance. His heart was so swollen with happiness he could barely call out.
“Maria!” he cried, as he came within sight of their thatched roof. “Daughter! Our prayers have been answered!”
But the hut was empty. Maria's sewing lay on a chair, the needle poised mid-stitch into a seam.
Juan limped to the beach. Where once nothing stood, coconut trees swayed, laden with fruit and heavy with strong, fibrous leaves that could be put to a thousand uses. The wind sang through a bamboo thicket at the edge of the sandy beach, and everywhere, there was the scent of tropical jasmine.
But no Maria.
“Maria!” Juan screamed. “Maria!”
A terrible taste rose up from the pit of his stomach. Juan fell on his knees and stared helplessly at the newly fertile soil around him.
Those who give, do not do so without exchange. There had been malice in that whisper of good tidings. There had been evil.
It was not a gift that the gods had granted, but a curse.
Maria was gone. And in her place there stood a volcano. It was the volcano's rising that had granted new life to the barren plain; that had transformed a desert into a paradise.
Gazing up its looming slopes, Juan realised that danger smouldered deep within the volcano and only when she erupted would the gods be done with their little entertainment.
But not just yet.