On that fateful Thursday, when the old man did not hear the familiar rumble of rain on his tin roof, he did not contemplate the possibility that the gods had cut the strings of their flawless punctuality on that morning. He would later sit down at the dinner table, after five shots of cane liquor were under his belt, that it was odd to think that the constant rattle on the cheap roof would be any comfort while he slept. Then he would go to bed for the final time. But, now, it was morning and the old man had the experience of one more Thursday left in his life.
The old man closed his eyes, trying to regain the sleep that he had just recently strayed from. Five minutes later, he opened his eyes again and stared at the ceiling, sensing that something was missing. He was not sure what.
Ah yes, love. Companionship. The tender touch of a significant other.
The old man got out of his bed, his gray hair every which way and the familiar scent of guava on his skin. Years ago, he had begun to develop a strange condition in which spores of fungi grew on his skin like the rust on the old tin— which was changed every summer. It was as if the rain of every Thursday had begun to make his flesh rot. He had been forty-two and his wife had already passed away, so there was no woman from whom he should hide his condition. A widower never re-married in this town, as it was considered a bad omen for the undoubtedly young brides. Widows, who were expected to withhold the utmost respect and mourn their husbands in black veils for the rest of their lives, were hanged if they tried to re-marry. At forty-two, the man had recognized his abandonment as a curse and that the spores were the physical form of that malady, as if his soul were decaying.
The afternoon he discovered the fungi, the man called the town’s disliked doctor. Dr. Ortega was an egotistical man until the day of his death by a gunshot wound, dealt by his own son after he forced the boy to attend medical school and give up his love of music. It was the talk of the town for a whole year, but no one mourned the doctor’s tragic end.
Until the day the man came to him with the odd condition of fungi, Dr. Ortega had guaranteed that there wasn’t an illness he could not cure or a wound he could not mend. On the man’s first visit, Dr. Ortega prescribed cocoa butter to the man and told him to rub it all over his body every night before going to bed, especially on Thursdays when it was most moist. He applied the cocoa butter for several nights, but it did not work. Surprised by the man’s second visit, Dr. Ortega examined the spores more closely; nodding and smiling every chance he could, as if he knew anything about the strange green fungi. In reality, Dr. Ortega could not imagine what the spores were besides a bad case of acne or the measles of an exotic place such as Indochina. Unfortunately, the man had never been to Asia or had acne, so Dr. Ortega tried pouring acid on the fungi. All he managed was to burn nasty scars on the man’s already preposterous skin. Realizing that he could not cure the man, the prideful Dr. Ortega made a deal.
“I will return to you the expenses of all your visits,” the doctor said, as he bandaged the burnt man, “as long as you don’t tell anyone I was unable to cure you.”
The man, a financially challenged sugarcane farmer, accepted the proposition, never speaking a word about Dr. Ortega’s failure, except to the strange woman who finally cured him.
They had rumored of her existence in the mountains since the man was a small boy, mostly to scare the children into falling asleep early. She was an old Italian woman, who had a reputation as a wiccan. As the man later discovered, Madame Constance was simply a woman knowledgeable of natural medicine.
On the third Thursday after the fungi appeared, the man decided that he would drive his truck up to the mountains before the spores finally ate away at his skin and began to devour his guts. He drove up the mountain as high as he could before the path became too narrow for the truck. Then he had to bring out his walking stick and climb the rest of the mountain on foot. The man had a walking stick since he was nine, after falling off his pony. It had prevented him from ever playing soccer or tag, as well as dancing at his birthday parties. In his old age, the man was still somewhat lame. When he reached the top of the mountain, the man was taking big gulps of air, his lungs burning from the pressure at the peak.
As if from a premonition, Madame Constance was waiting for him on her small wooden rocking chair. She had a gentle smile on her wrinkled face, her yellow teeth barely visible. Her gaze was kind and knowing.
“How can you breath at this altitude?” the exhausted man asked. He threw his walking stick aside, as it splintered on the stony mountain path.
Madame Constance pulled her head back in a hearty laugh. Then she choked on the green phlegm that had existed in the back of her throat since she’d had pneumonia many years ago. The Madame coughed and spat.
“Like all things in life, young man, one gets used to it.”
“I have a skin condition that not even the great Dr. Ortega could cure,” the man announced.
Madame Constance smirked and spat again.
“Dr. Ortega hasn’t realized that his shit smells as bad as everyone else’s.”
The old woman cured him with guava paste in exchange for a night of young love. The man, at first, was hesitant to sleep with the old woman, but his consciousness overwhelmed him with murmurings of honor and chivalry. The old widow had done a great thing for him and he had an obligation to repay it. Life is priceless, after all.
As soon as he entered her bed, the man was under the woman’s spell and thrust himself into the deepest secrets of lovemaking. Many years after, the old man would smell the fragrance of guava on his skin and remember that Madame Constance had given him the best night of his life.
“Rub the paste on your skin every night before going to sleep and the spores will never return,” Madame Constance had told him from her rocking chair, as he began his trip down the mountain with the new and indestructible walking stick she had made him that morning.
He grabbed the walking stick from his bedside and remembered the final days of the old wiccan. Madame Constance died during the rains of a long ago Thursday. The old man, clad in black, was the only person at her funeral. Even Pere Jacques had found a way not to attend. With the gift of a single rose, lonely like both the old man and the Madame had been on their first and only meeting, he bid her farewell.
The old man walked to the lonely window that faced the sugarcane field. To the man’s amazement, it was as dry as a dust bowl outside. At first, he was alarmed, but he quickly quelled the habitual thoughts about the bad omens that the elders had engraved in their young minds decades ago. How long could the gods have kept up their constant Thursday rain? Perhaps, they had finally run out of a week’s worth of water for one day. Everything had an end.
It had rained every Thursday for ninety years in Tienda Nueva. The rain always began at midnight and ended on the first minute of the next day. It was never late or lazy, either. The rain drenched the fields and gardens, as well as the wells and mills. They had eventually built huge irrigation systems to drain the fields of the overabundant water so as to not flood the sugarcane fields. As the years passed, the people began awaiting the rain to catch it in pots and vases, and drink it for its so-called “medicinal value.”
“The rains began on the Thursday you were born,” the old man’s mother had told him, as she put him to sleep.
The Thursday rain became such a crucial part of the townspeople’s lives that the elders one day decided that they would start ignoring the dates on the calendar and start counting Thursdays. That fateful Thursday morning was the 4,693rd of the old man’s ninety-year-old life. It was also his last.