ALL FOR ONE

By: Sylvia Davila MM

Bogotá/Copyright

www.pipolmagazine.com

September 26/2011

Just before he died at ninety-four he told the story to a group of astonished relatives. It happened in a small Latin American town at the beginning of the XX Century where colonialism, long time gone, still lived in their stern habits, closed social life, and dark morals. Seven orphans, five male, two females, lived in their parent’s house and made a life. Marriages took place in chronological order. The oldest of the seven children went first, then the second, the third, until all boys had a ring on the hand’s heart finger.  Not the girls. They had already reached twenty-five and twenty-seven years of age with no perspective of marriage in their horizon.

In a town where females’ aim was set to marriage at sixteen along with a numerous family at twenty-five, the two sisters were becoming a shame and a pain for the family. The brothers in anguish looked for single men in town. There were two. A squalid young boy earning his life from chicken-care, and a grumpy old man devoted to bars. They tried nearby towns. But finding a husband for women “past of age”, proved to be more difficult than watching them at home, alone, sewing pieces of clothes wet by their silent tears. Over twenty-five, nobody noticed them.

Facing the fact that they would have to carry with and provide for two sisters - early dressed in black for a husband that before dying did not show up - the brothers began to nourish a drastic solution. As the obstacle for placing her sisters in another town was age, it had to be changed. A family gathering was called – brothers and in-laws-. In a secret murmuring reunion the oldest disclosed his simple conclusive one-line plan: We are taking some years off, all of us.

Brothers and sister are an accurate reference to calculate anybody’s age. To change the girl’s age succefully it had to be done within the group. They took off seven years. The fraternal pact accomplished, silence votes taken and memory alert required, the brothers launched a new campaign in the surroundings, this time offering two marriageable sisters just rejuvenated, eighteen and twenty years of age. Their effort did not take long. A few days later, they came back to collect the women, a couple of husbands-to-be had been found.

Far from their hometown, holding seven years under their white bridal, the sisters took votes for good or bad and began a numerous family. All brothers went to the marriage and kept right their newly acquired birthday dates. They kept the secret, Spartan rigor, for more than sixty years. Only they knew about it. Brothers, sisters and in-laws that enjoyed a youth won from solidarity and a premature death, according to others. They died one by one. Under their gravestone the seven lost years. The last one, the youngest at ninety-four, just before he died a few days ago, told the story to a group of astonished relatives.

September 26/2011 - SILVIA DAVILA MORALES®