COLOMBINA, THE ONE SAVED FROM THE WATERS
Part Two: The Dog of Excesses
The First Year
Time passed between games, laughter, madness, my tears when she bit me, and her yelps when I stepped on her and, like a child, hit her while playing. But this never undermined our harmony, complicity, and friendship. We were like the popular saying goes: thick as thieves.
But in life, not everything is joy and happiness, and even less so for an innocent child who didn't yet know the process of life in dogs. Colombina, like everyone, no matter how much she loved me, could not ignore natural processes. She went into heat, and that's when the suffering began, as the saying goes. Because the dogs of the village began to harass her, and I, desperate, shooed them away. But it was a useless fight, because this blessed animal gave herself over to worldly pleasures without me knowing what was happening.
Here I tell you that the premise that "ignorance kills" almost happened with the event I'm about to relate. One morning I was in the hallway of the house when I looked towards the path and, in my innocence, I saw a skinny dog, bigger than Colombina, dragging her away (you can guess why). And the dog wasn't from the village. I despaired because they were taking Colombina. Juan Cancio had left his Incolma machete on a wooden table, and I ran after them with the intention of rescuing her. I was almost reaching them and brandishing the machete when I heard mamita Ana Rita, who was coming behind with a pot of water, yelling at me: "My child, don't go beating the dogs!" Then she threw a potful of water on them, and the dragging stopped. And later, when I was older, the usual explanations came.
The Excesses
The first was her excess in having children and, therefore, in having companions. And also a quantity of dogs as husbands, because she was not very modest. That was one of her excesses. As for the dogs, I was innocent: I loved them very much, until the dragging. Until that day I saw a skinny, bigger dog dragging her by the path and realized that my dog was not just my playmate, but a dog of excesses.
And the main excess is missing: eating. She had no measure. As a puppy, she ate so much that her little belly would swell up and she could barely walk. And when she was grown, she would roam all the houses in the village to eat what the neighbors kept for her in their bowls. But she was also excessive in running and exercising. That's why she wasn't obese: he who sins and prays, makes up for it. The excess of eating was paid for by the excess of running.
And finally, the excess of love for everyone. Because every person she saw passing by the village path, or who arrived at the grandparents' house, was a party of running, barking, and displays of affection for her. She didn't distinguish between acquaintances and strangers: for Colombina, whoever arrived was a friend. It was the excess of love, the one that crowned all the others.
The Hunter and the Grandfather's Gaze
Another of Colombina's excesses was her hunting ability. This little dog had no rivals: she hunted whatever moved. Many times the neighbors would come to grandfather Juan Cancio to request Colombina's services. They would say: "Don Juan, can you lend us Colombina tonight, the animal is eating the chickens." And as we know beforehand, a refusal from Juan Cancio was like asking for pears from an elm tree. The neighbor would call Colombina (he didn't even tie her up, because she was very giving and loved everyone) and go out with her. The next day the neighbor would appear with a little box and with Colombina, and say: "Juan Cancio, how do you like that the little dog killed the possum, and here I bring you these two fat chickens so you can make lunch."
Another very beautiful anecdote of hers was that, sometimes, the grandfather was sitting on the porch drinking coffee and, when Colombina arrived all muddy and started circling him as if trying to tell him something, Juan Cancio understood her as if she were speaking. We would take off with her not far from the house, in a swamp, and there she had a rabbit that she had hunted whole and without blood anywhere. This action was repeated countless times, and thus Colombina became a provider of meat, which was so scarce at the time. What I haven't been able to explain to this day, now that I'm old, is why she didn't eat them.
It was also the excess of malice and intelligence. Several times hunters with shotguns and a pack of purebred hunting dogs would come to the village of Utopía. Colombina would prick up her little ears at the barking of these dogs. When, suddenly, she would take off through the cornfield of the meadow at great speed and a while later arrive where Juan Cancio was with the same ceremony, the grandfather would follow her and bingo! another rabbit. What was happening was that the fine dogs would flush out the prey, and she, maliciously, would cut them off, capture it, and I think she hid them in the swamp so they wouldn't follow her trail.
But on one occasion the hunters realized Colombina's trick and, instead of getting angry, their admiration for her was so great that they offered a lot of money to grandfather Juan Cancio. But he told them that this little animal had no price. And I remember the look he gave me.
The Punishment and the Panela
This cannot be omitted, and it is the combination of love, tenderness, and a little cruelty. In one of her many litters, she once raised seven multicolored beauties. Mamita Ana Rita, with her experience as a midwife (because mamita Ana Rita was the midwife for all pregnant women in the entire village of Utopía and surrounding villages), helped Colombina get through this difficult step.
These seven puppies and Colombina had to put up with the rough games of the child, who without bad intention made them endure cold to play with them. Once, before they even opened their eyes, I put them in a sack and went to the vegetable garden. I built a little wall of earth and branches and placed them there, on a cold morning.
But, good Lord, Juan Cancio arrived, saw those little animals trembling, and entered into a holy wrath. He took off his felt hat and gave me two smacks on the butt of the offender. To me, that was a massacre. How could a tenderness like Juan Cancio punish me like that? But it hurt him more than it hurt me. Because afterwards he would call me, start scraping panela with his Incolma machete, make two little piles, and tell Ana Rita to bring us milk. And there the sadness of the punishment ended.
The Prank to End All Pranks
And the other prank was when the puppies opened their eyes and we were running all over the little plot. The image comes back to my mind of 9 accomplices running, jumping, sniffing, yelping, growling. They would yelp in pain when I stepped on them, but they wouldn't abandon me. And one day was what I call the prank to end all pranks.
One morning I took a sack used for packing panela, called my troop, and we set off towards a small stream below the house. Calculatedly, I began to take ropes out of the sack. Then I looked for seven little sticks of caña brava and stuck them in the bed of the little stream, which was very small (it only covered the sole of my feet). The devil got into me and I tied them, each one with the ropes, to the bed of the stream. They were happy with the game at first, but then they started shivering from the cold. But Colombina was anguished. Because I sat on the bank, and Colombina sat next to me. The puppies were getting cold and were yelping too much.
And there, seeing Colombina circling, I understood she was worried. And I took them out of the stream one by one. And the party continued. The nine accomplices running down the hill where Ramón José ran. And that happiness of these 9 subjects was real. Ramón José's, my doctor daughter put in doubt.
Hates and Loves
Ramón José and Colombina had a bittersweet friendship. When Colombina was lying in the kitchen taking advantage of the heat of the wood stove, Ramón José would arrive and evict her to get next to it himself, warm up, and become absorbed in watching the fire in such a fixed way that I, now old, think: what would Ramón José see in the flames with such concentration? And Ramón José did this to the displeasure of mamita Ana Rita, who on several occasions had to resort to Juan Cancio to remove him so she could roast the peeled corn arepas for breakfast. The mamita would finish and offer breakfast to Ramón José; he would sit at the wooden table on the porch, and there he would pay back the inconvenience he caused Colombina with a generous leftover.
Another contradiction they had was that sometimes Ramón José would grab the sack where she slept and start running with it. There Colombina would fly into a rage (or I don't know if she celebrated it). This action of grabbing the sack and starting to shake it to make Colombina furious went too far. On one occasion, Ramón José arrived completely naked, grabbed Colombina's sack, and ran off. When we saw the sister-in-law with a sheet calling him desperately, but he paid no attention, that's when the beautiful scene I narrated in The Curtain to the Sun began: with Ramón José laughing his head off, the sister-in-law with the sheet trying to cover him, and Colombina (as I narrated before) barking behind, next to the sister-in-law, which I interpreted as complicity. In the end, the sister-in-law caught up with him and covered him, and I felt that the sister-in-law had interrupted a magnificent spectacle. And down the same hill where the nine accomplices did their mischief.
The Final Blow
Several years passed, more litters passed. I was always, always at the foot of the troop, playing, playing pranks on them, although the troop wasn't far behind because sometimes with their tiny teeth they left me like a tiger's leftover.
And now comes the final blow, and the most traumatic: when I was still an 8-year-old child, they tore me away from what I loved most in my life: the village of Utopía, the grandparents, the aunts and uncles, and the whole environment of love and tenderness that this represented. And I had to leave Colombina already very sick, because she had cancer and a lump was coming out of her belly, and she could barely walk.
Then, when I was already at my mom's house, they told me they had to sacrifice her, because she was suffering too much. There died something very big and very beautiful, because what that little animal radiated were tons of all the noble feelings that exist on this planet, in addition to her doggy pranks. And that's why I ask myself every day why hatred for fellow humans exists. And whoever reads this chochera should omit that feeling.
Chocheras de Vago Viejo
Between Artisanal Philosophy and his digital carpentry apprentice