Always with the scent of cane liquor clinging to his breath, Paco Cachaça often boasted of being the last one to see Deyanira alive in the early morning hours on a Sunday. She was barefoot, dancing her way down the street alone near the end of town, crossing the road bridge where the countryside begins and the dust of our beloved town of Villa Balvina ends. He would swagger through the streets and say:
“Yessiree, I was the last one to see her dance!”
No one believed Paco Cachaça. First of all, it had been a long time since he was sober at dawn, and second, come moon or come sun, Paco Cachaça was a liar. How could it possibly be true?
After all, Deyanira’s dancing shoes were her pride and joy. During the week, she wore old espadrilles and washed them at the end of each day, working the coconut soap she used into a lather. But when Saturday night came around, Deyanira appeared at the dance hall wearing dizzyingly high red heels. She would begin to dance at the stroke of the first chord and wouldn’t rest until the final one faded. Her dancing shoes didn’t last longer than four Saturdays; they would wear out from Deyanira’s magical sway. Even at her age, she was the best dancer in town. She missed only one dance in her entire life, and that was because her first and only son, Primicio, had decided to be born on a Saturday night—something for which she never forgave him. They say that’s why Primicio left town as soon as he could. The very next Saturday, Deyanira was back on the dance floor.
The first week of each month, Casildo, the town’s postman, would adjust his toupee and bring Deyanira the parcel that arrived from the capital with her new shoes. Sometimes they were sandals, other times they were close-toed shoes, sometimes they had bows, other times buckles, but they were always red and always absurdly high. When he delivered the shoes, Casildo would make Deyanira promise to give him the first dance. She would laugh and promise that she would. And afterwards she would forget her promise, as Deyanira didn’t care who she danced with. She said she danced with the music, although, of course, she never stopped smiling at her partner.
Some would say, as so many things are said, that Deyanira ordered the shoes from a big department store in the capital. Others would say that they had never seen her transfer money at the post office to pay for them, and they liked to imagine that they were a gift from an old flame who, after all these years, hadn’t forgotten Deyanira. The whole town talked and talked, but Deyanira kept quiet, donned her new shoes, and danced.
Someone had the bright idea that bringing high-heeled red shoes to town would be good business. He had shoes smuggled in from Brazil and built a shelf in his home to sell them, even though sometimes inventory ran low and orders for other sizes had to be placed. It was a good business for a while, but it didn’t make it, because these shoes were never as red, or as high, as Deyanira’s, and they also didn’t last longer than one Saturday.
Her February shoes, as Deyanira had disappeared after the third Saturday’s dance—the morning of the twenty-third, to be precise—were sandals made of soft red leather, with big bows on the front.
That Saturday, like all the Saturdays before it, Deyanira put one foot into the dance hall, and all the women fixed their eyes on the floor, not missing a single provocative clack of those red heels. Aware that she was being watched, Deyanira crossed the dance floor slowly, as she did every time she showed off a pair of shoes. Once she started dancing, it was impossible to follow those feet. Beneath the sandals’ bows appeared a row of perfectly painted red toenails. Deyanira had her niece paint them for her because the years and her prosperity had gone to her waist, and she had a hard time bending over for that long. The women remembered the sandals, they hadn’t missed a single detail, and they wondered how it could be that she left town dancing and barefoot. Any woman would have killed for a pair of sandals like those. The things that Paco Cachaça came up with!
Yet the following Saturday came and went with no sign of Deyanira. So the ladies of Villa Balvina decided to enter her house to see what had happened. To their surprise, they found her work shoes, clean and smelling of coconut soap, and at the end of her bed, waiting, the red sandals with their high heels and taut bows.
“They… they still have a dance left,” a voice whispered. And the entire room sighed.
The townspeople gathered at the square to air their opinions. Some wanted to wait for Deyanira to return, because if she returned and caught someone with her shoes, there would be blood. However, everyone thought that even though the body hadn’t been found, Deyanira had to be dead, because if she weren’t, she wouldn’t have missed the Saturday dance.
There were also those who said that if she were dead, they would have to wait until the body appeared to bury it with the sandals. Some men said that she should be buried in her work shoes.
“No way!” a woman yelled.
A murmur ran through the crowd, as there were already some women who had set their sights on those sandals, which still had a Saturday night left to dance.
“Then bury her barefoot, because if Deyanira was barefoot when she left, she must have known what she was doing, and the wishes of the dead must be respected.”
“Right, right,” some said in unison.
“The dead have no wishes,” someone interjected.
“You know what I meant, don’t get smart with me.”
And then a battle ensued. In the midst of hair pulling and face slapping, several pairs of shoes went flying. But the mayor held onto Deyanira’s shoes and took shelter between the legs of the bronze horse that stood mid-gallop in the square. When Deyanira’s body appeared the next morning, the sandals were still intact, their bows just as taut and their heels just as high as Deyanira had left them.
Deyanira was wearing her rose-patterned dress, but she was barefoot, and her toenails were painted red with the nail polish her niece had used, although now the polish was a little chipped. So it was dead Deyanira herself who confirmed that what Paco Cachaça was saying was true.
A committee was formed with the mayor, the priest, and the owner of the dance hall, who appointed themselves to decide the future of Deyanira’s sandals. They also invited Paco Cachaça since, after all, he was the last person to see Deyanira dance, and that was no small thing. He had spent the week, in exchange for a swig of cachaça, telling of how Deyanira had departed, dancing and barefoot, so he went to the meeting so drunk that he slumped under the table and fell asleep. But once in a while he would raise his head, half asleep, and mutter:
“Yessiree, I was the last one to see her dance!”
The women of the town chafed at not having their own representative on the committee. After the fight the day before, the men had ordered them to stay quiet. They would find out the next day, when news of the decision would be posted on the church door. And the women of the town remained silent, that they did, but that night while the committee met, none of the men in the town ate well.
The next morning, each of the women went out with an excuse under her arm to pass by the church door and see what was going to become of Deyanira’s sandals. The notice was brief and clear:
“Deyanira will be buried barefoot, as barefoot she left, and the wishes of the dead must be respected, even though the dead have no wishes.”
As for the sandals, the committee had not yet decided what to do with them. The women of Villa Balvina were to be patient. Following Deyanira’s funeral rites, and after a much deserved rest, the priest, the mayor, the owner of the dance hall, and Paco Cachaça would meet again, and they promised to find an honorable fate for Deyanira’s sandals.
Ah, and yes, the burial would take place that afternoon.
The women of Villa Balvina were anything but patient, but it was agreed upon that, in the presence of Deyanira’s body, modesty and discretion were best, even if they were feigned. Each woman felt that she was being watched and hoped to be seen as deserving of Deyanira’s sandals. They began to prepare the body for burial, and a great silence fell over the town. Deyanira was barefoot, and a decision had to be made. So they brushed her hair and dressed her in her poppy-patterned dress, which was a little tight on her. Her niece removed the old nail polish and painted Deyanira’s toenails with the same shade of crimson red she had worn when she had departed dancing.
There wasn’t a woman who didn’t attend Deyanira’s burial, who didn’t pay her respects, who didn’t place a flower, sobbing with emotion, upon that body which was now so still. The earth closed upon Deyanira, upon the flowers that the women of the town had lain over the poppies of her dress, upon her bare feet, and upon the toenails that her niece had painted red.
The women feigned patience once again in the hopes of being the deserving recipients of those sandals, and meekly they fed their husbands well. It was all compliments and courtesy, even among those who had been bitter enemies. No one denied a hand to a neighbor or looked away from the beggars. No woman lost her patience with her husband or yelled at her children.
That sweet and measured behavior did not go unnoticed by the men, who mentioned it to the committee, as did the priest, who had never seen so many women at mass. So the mayor finally announced that they would meet again.
The night when the mayor, the priest, the owner of the dance hall, and Paco Cachaça gathered, the women held their breath, lowered their gazes, and fed their husbands even better.
The next morning, the news appeared on the church door:
“Deyanira’s sandals, may she rest in peace, will be given at the end of the year to the best-behaved woman, a model for our town.”
The women felt their hearts drop. For a few days, they were sweet and attentive and bit their tongues before speaking, but it would be a long wait until the end of the year! You would have to be a saint, truly blessed, a miracle of a woman to wait that long! They stole glances at one another, and because there weren’t many of them and they knew each other well, they realized that for once in their lives, they were all in agreement. So they organized a meeting to mend clothes for the town’s poor, and, behind closed doors, they discussed the situation. And it was the most civilized discussion they had ever had.
The next day, a notice appeared on the church door.
“The women of Villa Balvina renounce our claim to Deyanira’s sandals, may she rest in peace. From now on, we will go to the dances barefoot. If Deyanira, the life and soul of the dance, found it well to leave behind her sandals and dance barefoot, so do we. The wishes of the dead must be respected.”
* * *
Even today, years later, the women of Villa Balvina dance barefoot, with their toenails painted that same shade of red that Deyanira wore when she departed.
Deyanira’s sandals are covered in the dust of obscurity in a closet at the town hall, their taut bows peeking out between mislaid files.
But no one has ever forgotten how Deyanira danced, not even Paco Cachaça, who is now an old man and still tells whoever will buy him a glass of cachaça:
“Yessiree, I was the last one to see her dance!”
And it’s true that Paco Cachaça saw Deyanira leave barefoot on the road bridge, where the countryside begins and the dust of our beloved town of Villa Balvina ends. But the part about her dancing as she faded into the distance… even when he’s drunk, he very well knows, that is a lie.