Free Of Love and Other Demons by Gabriel García Márquez, Edith Grossman Page A

families of slaves lived together, and beyond that were the stables, a goat pen, the pigsty, the garden and the beehives, where everything needed for the good life was raised and grown.
    Last of all, as far away as possible and abandoned by the hand of God, stood a solitary pavilion that had been used as a prison by the Inquisition for sixty-eight years andstill served the same purpose for Clarissans gone astray. It was in the farthest cell of this forgotten corner where they would lock Sierva María ninety-three days after she had been bitten by the dog and showed no symptoms of rabies.
    At the end of the corridor the gatekeeper who had led her by the hand saw a novice who was going to thekitchens and asked her to take Sierva María to the Abbess.The novice thought it imprudent to subject so languid and well-dressed a girl to the clamor of the kitchens and she left her sitting on one of the stone benches in the garden, planning to return for her later. But on her way back she forgot.
    Two novices walked past Sierva María, became interested in her necklaces and rings and asked her who she was. She did not reply. They asked her whether sheknew Spanish, and it was as if they were talking to a corpse.
    ‘She’s a deaf-mute,’ said the younger novice.
    ‘Or German,’ said the other.
    The younger one began to treat her as if she lacked all her senses. She unrolled the braid that Sierva María had wound at her neck and measured it. ‘Almost four spans,’ she said, convinced the girl could not hear her. She began to undo the braid but was intimidatedby a look. The novice stared back and stuck out her tongue.
    ‘You have the eyes of the devil,’ she said.
    She removed one of the girl’s rings and met no resistance, but when the other novice tried to take her necklaces, Sierva María coiled like a viper and bit her on the hand with perfect, unhesitating aim. The novice ran off to rinse away the blood.
    The singing of Terce began just as SiervaMaría stood to take a drink from the cistern. She was frightened and returned to the bench without drinking, but went back when she realized it was the sound of nuns singing. She pushed away the skim of rotting leaves with a deft movement of the hand and drank her fill from her cupped palm, not bothering to remove the water worms. Then she urinated behind the tree, squatting and holding a stick atthe ready to defend herself against abusive animals and predatory men, just as Dominga de Adviento had taught her to do.
    Ashort while later two black slave women came by, recognized the Santería necklaces and spoke to her in Yoruban. The girl’s eager reply was in the same language. Since no one knew why she was there, the slaves took her to the tumultuous kitchen, where the servants welcomedher with jubilation. Then someone noticed the wound on her ankle and wanted to know what had happened. ‘My mother did it with a knife,’ the girl said. When they asked her what she was called, she gave them her black name: María Mandinga.
    She had recovered her world. She helped slit the throat of a goat that struggled against dying and cut out its eyes and sliced off its testicles, which werethe parts she liked best. She played diabolo with the adults in the kitchen and the children in the courtyard and won every game. She sang in Yoruban, Congolese and Mandingo, and even those who did not understand listened to her, enthralled. For lunch she ate a dish of the goat’s eyes and testicles cooked in lard and seasoned with burning spices.
    By this time the entire convent knew the girlwas there except Josefa Miranda, the Abbess, a lean, hard woman whose narrowness of mind was a family trait. She had been brought up in Burgos, in the shadow of the Holy Office, but her talent for command and the rigor of her prejudices came from within and had always been hers. Two capable nuns served as her vicars, but they were unnecessary because she took charge of everything, with no help fromanyone.
    Her rancor