The Potbellied Virgin.

• Author: Cossio, Alicia Yanez
• Position: Excerpt

Relieved of her old worries, rejuvenated, active, without circles under her eyes, one day very early she goes to inspect the Virgin and to confirm her suspicions as to whether the sacristan gives a good account of the candies, which seem to grow every day, instead of shrinking, so that she suspects they are snuffed out at night, and she also wants to check on the cleanliness of things, for she must look after everything. But she is left rigid with amazement when she sees that the walls of the houses are smeared with signs and slogans. It is the first time such a thing has happened in the town, which is an exception, every other town is a disaster, filthy with Long live! and Death to! in every color and style:

--This sort of filth has never been seen here, never but never.

The first sentence she encounters reads, in huge, twisted letters that look as if they had been written with fresh, dripping blood:

--"Down with the oligarchs!"

Dona Carmen reads it and rereads it, she is dumbfounded, for her store of culture notwithstanding and in spite of being president of so many prestigious institutions, she can't hit upon the interpretation of the word "oligarchs." It is the first time she has seen it written and she doesn't recall hearing it before, and being neither a sage nor an ignoramus, she knows that "oli" has a connection with oil, with the holy oils, moreover, which is to say, oil. And she asks herself who the oil merchants of the town are, and she doesn't remember a single one, because all the cooking oils, like Arbolito or Sabater, and the machine oils, like Mobil Oil or Singer, and medicinal oils, like castor or almond, come from elsewhere, and no one deals exclusively in oils. Oil ... oleo ... oil ... Maybe some painter, maybe her nephew, who is a painter and does still lifes in oils. But he's in Paris! He hasn't been back to the town in years, not since he married a Frenchwoman and brought her home to meet the family, and the aunts nearly died when they found her sunbathing naked on the terrace roof, it was such a scandal that they packed their bags the next day, and no one remembers the painter, but only his wife, and anyway the poor thing couldn't hurt a fly, there's no reason for anyone to bother about him and his oils. Could it have to do with Manuela Pando, who has a hog business, and makes fritada Wednesdays and Saturdays and sells lard in the market? Someone once claimed Manuela made fritada out of stray dogs; maybe she's mixing...