FUKÚ VS. ZAFA

There are still many, on and off the Island, who offer Beli’s near-fatal beating as irrefutable proof that the House Cabral was indeed victim of a high-level fukú, the local version of House Atreus. Two Truji-líos in one lifetime — what in carajo else could it be? But other heads question that logic, arguing that Beli’s survival must be evidence to the contrary. Cursed people, after all, tend not to drag themselves out of cane-fields with a frightening roster of injuries and then happen to be picked up by a van of sympathetic musicians in the middle of the night who ferry them home without delay to a ‘mother’ with mad connections in the medical community. If these serendipities signify anything, say these heads, it is that our Beli was blessed.

What about the dead son? The world is full of tragedies enough without niggers having to resort to curses for explanations.

A conclusion La Inca wouldn’t have argued with. To her dying day she believed that Beli had met not a curse but God out in that cane-field.

I met something, Beli would say, guardedly.