long Time in Other Land

Marina announced that he would sing a Japanese song in honor of such illustrious guests. The Japanese treated him courteously, but they did not like the Western school uniform and the fact that the bow was not so perfect. But Marina Leung Ba could not bow according to the rules. She saw the ugly ambassador, she saw the rude general, she saw the serious merchants, she saw the Japanese aides-de-camp, and finally she saw that young man who was different from the others. He was not Japanese. But he spoke Japanese with great fluency. He looked perfectly framed in their midst. Marina verified that the western tales about a certain Mr. Cupid and his golden arrows were completely true.

Marina saw coming towards her and from that young man, one, two, three, ten, fifty, or would be three hundred golden arrows that Cupid threw at her. There were so many that she fainted amidst the general commotion.

II

Many years before; in another continent…

.....In the middle of the 19th century, a wave of Chinese emigrants arrived in San Francisco in the United States to work on the construction of the railroad.

Others arrived in Panama, Mexico and a few hundred landed in Peru. Small groups of Chinese arrived from Panama to the coasts of Colombia and Venezuela, living a life of total isolation. In 1856 a small group of 30 Chinese families arrived in La Guaira, the men with their long pigtails, the women in their traditional pajamas.

They did not know where they were or understand the language. They could not adapt. The villagers, besides mercilessly mocking them, did not try to understand them either. With a lot of work they settled in Caracas, amidst stone-throwing rejections from the boys and the disgust of the women. However, they laboriously began to work: they ironed perfectly, washed with care and cooked very well. They also fell prey to dengue fever, tuberculosis, rabid dogs and measles.

Gong Yu Ting was 15 years old. With stoicism and in absolute silence she was taken by the nuns of La Milagrosa, to work in the kitchen of the house of General José Antonio Trompiz Guedez, an old man rancid with urine and aguardientes. This general, old, fat, spitter of chimó, lived among all the unimaginable conspiracies, arrests and skirts messes.

The old man, from his rocking chair, watched Gong's silent maneuvering with an analytical eye; he talked to her, tried to grab her as she passed by. The young woman would lower her head and run to hide in her work in the hot kitchen. One rainy night in spite of her defense, she met the dirty rudeness of the general, who showed in her his worst quality. The young girl cried and thought of committing suicide, her dream was to be reserved for a prince of adventures and she ended up being repeatedly raped by that fat and smelly old man of an unknown race. She repeatedly received the seed of a man who could have been her grandfather.

...One night soldiers arrived and took the general prisoner, amidst blows, curses and kicks. The young woman rested and for a few days she could sleep in peace, although with horrifying nightmares where she saw the bearded and saliva-smelling face of the satyr. Her belly slowly bulged and she was immediately thrown out into the street like a piece of garbage, by the general's wife. Unable to return home, she went again to the convent. The nuns scowled at her and welcomed her. She spent her pregnancy praying to this new god and busily cleaning the convent floor. She gave birth in the convent, attended by the nuns. Gong died of puerperal fever 3 days later and a new revolution triumphed among so many in this faraway land.