To lose innocence is to lose the weapon against reality

Early in the morning, her old aunt carried her armchair out onto the balcony toward the sugar cane Field, as she did every time she woke up with the idea of making dolls. She used to swim in the river when she was young. One day, she was in the water when the river swelled with heavy rain and threw up a dragon-tail of water. She suddenly felt the fluffy snow in her marrow. Her head was buried in the dark echo of the stones, and she thought that over the sound of the water she heard the sound of the rolling waves hitting the saltpeter on the sand, and for a moment she thought that her hair had finally reached the sea. It was also at that moment that she felt something terrible bite her calf. People shouted and pulled her to shore, where she writhed in pain on a stretcher and was carried home.

The doctor who examined her was sure there was nothing wrong, most likely just a bite from some pesky river shrimp. However, as the days passed, the wound did not heal. At the end of the month, doctors concluded that the river shrimp had dug itself into the soft flesh of her calf, which was clearly swollen. He said he would have her smeared with mustard puree and forced out with heat. Mustard was applied to her leg, from ankle to thigh, and it froze for a week. By the end of the treatment, it was found that the wound had become so swollen that it was covered with a kind of gravel and slime that it could not be removed without threatening the whole leg. So she chose to live forever with the river shrimp that curled up in its calf cave.

She used to be beautiful, but the river shrimp hidden beneath the long folds of her gauze dress kept her away from all earthly pomp. She shut herself away at home and refused all her suitors. At first, she concentrated on taking care of her sister's daughters, dragging her detestable leg back and forth through the house. It was around this time that the crystal lights of the dining room began to fall, one by one, on the shabby tablecloth of the table, with the same indifferent rhythm with which the whole family was surrounded by some old time, pushing away everyone around them. The children loved their aunt. She combed their hair, bathed them, and cooked for them. They would crowd around her as she told stories, furtively lifting up her starched skirts to smell the mellow sweetness from her quiet legs.

As the children grew older, their aunt began to make dolls for them. In the beginning, she made ordinary dolls, gourd flesh for meat, scattered buttons for eyes. As time went on, she perfected her craft and earned the respect and respect of her family: the birth of each doll was a cause for sacred celebration, so she never thought of selling any of them, not even when the children had outgrown the need for them. As the girls grew, the aunt would increase the size of the dolls to fit each of them. There were nine girls, and every year the aunt made a doll for each of them, until the family had to make a room just for them. By the time the eldest daughter turned eighteen, there were a hundred and twenty-six dolls of all ages in that room. Opening the door, one felt as if one had entered a pigeon coop, or a doll's room in the Czars' palace, or a tobacco warehouse, as if someone had placed a long row of tobacco leaves there, waiting for them to ripen. When my aunt walked into the room, she would have felt none of these things. Instead, she would have shut the door and lovingly picked up the dolls from one to the next, shaking them and singing, That's how you were when you were one, that's how you were when you were two, that's how you were three... In this way she revisited the lives of each of them, in the Spaces large and small that they left in her arms.

On the day the eldest daughter turned ten, her aunt sat down in an armchair, facing the sugar cane field, and never got up again. All day she watched the water level change in the sugarcane field, only occasionally breaking out of her lethargy when the doctor came to see her or when she woke up with the idea of making dolls. At such times she would call on everyone in the house to help her. In the days when she wanted to be a doll, the hired hands could be seen shuttling between the estate and the town like happy Inca messengers, buying wax, clay, lace, needles and coils of thread of various colors. While they were busy, the aunt would call the girl she had dreamed of the night before into her room to take measurements. Then she would make a mask for the child out of wax, cover both sides of it with plaster, and make it a living face between two dead faces; She then makes a small hole in her chin, creating an endless golden thread. The porcelain hands were always shiny, with a hint of ivory, in sharp contrast to the uneven white of the plain porcelain face. Before cooking the body parts, my aunt would send someone to the garden to pick twenty full and bright gourds. She grabbed them with one hand and with the other deftly cut them into full, bright green heads. Next, she would string the gourds into strings and hang them on the balcony wall, allowing sunlight and air to dry their gray cotton brains. A few days later, she would scoop out the contents with a spoon and, with endless patience, squeeze them through the doll's mouth bit by bit.

In creating the doll, the only thing auntie used that didn't come from her hand was the eyeball part. They come in a variety of colors, sent from Europe, and she'll stick them deep in her frail calves for a few days so they learn to recognize the slightest movement of the river shrimp's antennae, which were unusable to her until then. She then washes them with ammonia before storing them, shiny as jewels, in a cotton padded Dutch cookie jar. As the children grew, the dolls' skirts remained the same. She always dressed the youngest in machine-embroidered clothes, and the older ones in embroidery, and on each doll's head wore the same fluffy bow, white as a dove.

Girls began to marry and leave home. On the wedding day, the aunt would give the married girl the last doll. She would kiss her forehead, smile and say, "Here is your Easter present." She would reassure the groom that the doll was just an emotional decoration, and that in the old house they used to let her sit on the grand piano. From the balcony, my aunt would watch as the girls descended the stairs of the house for the last time, one carrying an unadorned suitcase and the other cradling the vibrant doll made in her image, dressed in mossacks, snowflake embroidered skirts and French high-waisted silk panty. The hands and faces, however, were not so bright, and solid as curdled milk. There was another subtle difference: instead of gourd flesh, the wedding doll was filled with honey.

When the doctor brought his son, who had studied medicine in the North, to visit him for his aunt's monthly visit, almost all the girls were married, leaving only the youngest in the family. The young man lifted the starched hem of his skirt and examined the great swelling and the fragrant fat that the tips of its green scales secreted. He took out his stethoscope and listened carefully. Assuming that he wanted to hear the shrimp's breathing to determine if it was alive or dead, her aunt gently took his hand and placed it in a specific place so that he could feel the rhythmic movement of its tentacles. The young man lowered his skirt and stared at his father. You could have cured her at the beginning. That's true, replied the father. I just wanted you to see the river shrimp that has paid your tuition for twenty years.

From then on, the young man came to visit his old aunt every month. His interest in his little girl was so obvious that his aunt could have prepared her last doll early. Every time he came, his collar was starched, his shoes were polished, and his shabby tie with an Oriental knot held in a conspicuous tie clip. After checking on his aunt, he would sit down in the living room, rest his paper-cut silhouette against an oval window frame for a moment, and present a consistent bouquet of purple forget-me-nots to his young daughter. She would serve him gingerbread and take the bouquet with her fingertips as delicately as one who has pinched a hedgehog's belly. She decided to marry him because his drowsy profile amused her, and because she wanted to know what flesh was like under the skin of a dolphin.

On the day of the wedding, the youngest daughter, as she pulled the waist of the doll, thought it was warm. She was surprised, but in the presence of the craftsmanship, she soon forgot. The doll's hands and face are made of delicate imperial porcelain. She recognized her whole baby tooth between her half-closed, smiling, sad lips. In addition, the doll has another special feature: her aunt has set bright diamonds deep in her pupils.

The young doctor took his youngest daughter to live in a concrete-walled house in the country. He forced her to sit on the balcony every day so that passers-by in the street would know that he was married. The younger daughter was trapped in the small, hot space, unable to move. She began to suspect that her husband was not only like a paper-cut body, but also like a soul. She soon confirmed her guess. One day, he removed the doll's eyes with a scalpel and pawned them for a luxurious onion-head pocket watch with a long chain. The doll still sat on the grand piano, but from then on the eyelids were always drooped.

A few months later, the young doctor noticed that the doll was missing and asked the younger daughter where she had taken her. A congregation of pious ladies had told him that they wanted to make an image of the Virgin of Veronica before the next Lenten procession and had offered a large sum of money for the doll's ceramic face and hands. The little girl answered her husband that the ants had found the doll filled with honey, and that they had devoured her in one night. "Because her face and hands are made of imperial China, the ants will think they are made of sugar, and by this time they must be in some hole in the ground gnashing their teeth and eating angrily at her fingers and eyelids." That night the doctors dug all around the house but found nothing.

Many years passed and the doctor became a millionaire. He had seen many of the people in the town who did not care for the expensive fees and wanted to see up close this true member of the vanished sugar-cane aristocracy. The little daughter still sat on the balcony, motionless in her tulle and lace, her eyelids always drooping. Her husband's patients, in necklaces and feathers or on crutches, would sit down beside her, dangling layers of fat and crackling money, and they would notice a peculiar aroma wafting around her, an involuntary reminder of the slow ripening and decay of cherimoya. So everyone can't help rubbing their hands and wanting to try.

One thing muddied the doctor's happiness. He noticed that while he was getting old, his youngest daughter still had the porcelain skin he had had when he visited her in the Sugar Plantation house. One night he crept into her room to get a good look at her while she slept. Then he noticed that her chest was still and placed the stethoscope gently over her heart. He heard the distant sound of water. At that moment the baby raised her eyelids, and from the two wide holes in her eyes came out the angry tentacles of a river shrimp.