Image via WikipediaIt has been hot since quite early this morning, so I'd chuntered through the routines...dogs, chicks, chickens ducks, us....and prepared to read quietly on the balcony until lunch time.The dogs doing their Baskerville imitation soon roused me and heading for the door loaded for bear I found my fury at disturbance turning to resigned acceptance as I beat back the hounds to let the group of ladies into the house.
Quite a band.
Estrella, Luz, Marta, Ermida and Mery, all sporting parasols against the sun and bearing carrier bags with offerings for Mr. Fly.
Knowing that he is ill, people tend to bring him things good for his health...everything from papaya via noni - an extremely bitter fruit - to sangre de christo - a bark to make a tincture held to be a sovereign remedy from everything from worms to cancer.
Settled with coffee and cake the routine enquiries as to health of all present and their families were undertaken and then there was a little silence before Dona Mery leant forward to say
I don't know if you've heard, but The Neighbour has been diagnosed with a tumour on his lung. It's supposed to be cancer.'
Now, while my first and reprehensible reaction might be
Serve him damn well right.
A second's reflection is enough to make me realise that this is not actually what I think. No one deserves illness.
Not even The Neighbour.
He might deserve to be beaten within an inch of his life...but not illness.
So I ask if anyone knows how far the cancer has advanced
No, I just heard through his daughter's husband's mother that it was a tumour and when he disappeared last time it turns out he was in hospital in San Jose.
We drink coffee contemplatively. I think we are all thinking of The Neighbour's long and unpleasant career as wife beater, philanderer, swaggering bully and violent lout.
His insults, his arrogance, his tampering with water system and the telephone lines, his attacks on the defenceless.
We haven't been here long, but long enough to have experience of his methods.
He blocked our car with his cattle lorry on a narrow section of the road and, knowing Mr. Fly to be ill, leered through the window at him, passing his hand across his throat and croaking
You'll die soon...you'll die soon.
Like some witch doctor in a crisp white hat with a curly brim.
This was nothing to compare with his attack on Dona Mery's father...then in his seventies...when catching the old man alone on his coffee plantation and beating him so severely that he had to spend weeks in hospital while The Neighbour boasted of his feat in all the bars in town - until being barred from same because the other customers were so disgusted.
Local culture is such that speaking ill of the well is frowned upon, let alone speaking ill of the unwell, so no more is said until Dona Mery gathers her parasol and prepares for departure, her flock around her.
Pausing in the doorway she says
He should never have cheated the monks..
And in a susurration of
Ah, si!
And
God bless you
The party take their leave, mission accomplished.
