A deaf farmer marries an obese girl because of a bet; what she draws from her husband’s ear leaves everyone stunned.
The morning Clara Valdés became a wife, the snow fell on the Sierra de Chihuahua with a sad patience, as if the heavens themselves knew that it was not a day of celebration, but of resignation.
Clara, twenty-three, looked at herself in the cracked mirror of the adobe house and smoothed her mother’s wedding dress with trembling hands. The yellowish lace smelled of camphor, of years kept hidden, of broken promises. She wasn’t shivering from the cold. She was shivering from shame.
His father, Don Julián Valdés, knocked on the door with his knuckles.
—The time has come, my daughter.
Clara closed her eyes for a second.
“I’m ready,” she lied.
The truth was uglier and simpler. Her father owed fifty pesos to the local bank. Fifty. Exactly the same amount she was supposed to marry off to a man she hadn’t chosen. At home, they called it a “deal.” The bank manager called it a “solution.” Her brother Tomás, who smelled of pulque before dawn, called it “luck.”
Clara called him by name.
Sale.
The man she was about to marry was named Elías Barragán. He was thirty-eight years old, lived alone on a secluded ranch among pine trees and ravines, and in the town of San Jerónimo everyone said the same thing about him: that he owned good land and that he didn’t speak to anyone. Some called him aloof. Others, crazy. Most simply called him “the deaf one.”
Clara had seen him only twice. The first time was months earlier, when he’d entered the grocery store to buy salt, nails, and coffee. Tall, broad-shouldered, silent as a shadow. The second time was a week before the wedding, when her father had brought him home. Elias was standing in the living room, snow melting on his boots, and didn’t say a word. He took a notebook from his pocket, wrote something with a short pencil, and handed it to Don Julián.
“Okay. Saturday.”
Nothing else.
No flirting. No questions asked. Not even the slightest sign of hope.
The ceremony lasted less than ten minutes. Father Ignacio pronounced the words as if fulfilling an uncomfortable obligation. Clara repeated the vows in a voice that didn’t sound like her own. Elias simply nodded when necessary. When the moment came for the kiss, he barely touched her cheek with his lips and immediately pulled away.
He didn’t look happy.
Nor did it seem cruel.
This, strange as it may seem, left Clara even more perplexed.
The ride to the ranch took nearly two hours. He drove the wagon in silence. She, beside him, held her hands clasped in her lap, gazing out at the white landscape that stretched as far as the eye could see. When they arrived, they found a sturdy wooden house, a corral, a barn, a well, and beyond, a forest and mountains. No neighbors. No lights nearby. Only wind, snow, and an immense silence.
Elias helped her out of the car and led her inside. The house was austere but clean. A table, two chairs, a burning fireplace, a small kitchen, and a back room. He took out his notebook again and wrote:
“The bedroom is yours. I’ll sleep here.”
Clara looked at him in surprise.
-It is not needed.
He wrote again.
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