The Dark Bride by Laura Restrepo

title would be, by a long shot, the most honorable that he would ever have bestowed upon him in his life.
    â€œTo have been named Knight of the Order of the Holy Diamond by her . . . ,” he says to me, “I think when I die that will be the best memory I leave behind.”

four
    I’ve been told that a miracle prevented the infidels from sawing in half, with a cogged wheel, Santa Catalina virgin and martyr, and that they had to limit themselves to decapitating her and were unable to stem the flow of milk that ran from her wounds instead of blood, nor the curative aroma exhaled by her bones for the benefit of the sick who happened to be nearby. I’ve also been told that the anniversary of this horrifying episode is the date favored by the mujeres of La Catunga for being initiated into their professional life, their baptism by fire, as they themselves call it. I have noticed that prostitution promotes tendencies and fixations similar to those that in other instances I have observed in sicarios from communes in Medellín, truck drivers who have to pass through regions of violencia, the bazuco dealers on Calle del Cartucho in Bogotá, mafiosos, judges, witnesses, bullfighters, guerrillas, antiguerrilla commandos, and so many other Colombians who risk their lives on a routine basis. To begin with, they all wear one or several medals featuring the Virgen del Carmen, whom they familiarly call La Mechudita because of her thinness, her wit, and her characteristic long hair, and whom they venerate as the patron saint of difficult professions.
    Like the others, the mujeres of La Catunga know that those who fully embrace their profession risk their skin; unlike others, the mujeres know that they also risk their souls. Hence the meticulous, manic way in which they perform self-imposed purifying rituals, hence the importance that they bestow upon a saint like Catalina; they, who in some dark way also become martyrs, yield to tragedy and accept the notion of life as a sacrifice.
    Four months remained before the celebration of the fiestas of Santa Cata, just enough time to round out the girl’s education in love. But, as I had heard said so many times in Tora, man proposes and hunger imposes. Todos los Santos’s savings, which were diminishing, wouldn’t last until the date she had set for the girl’s initiation into the profession. So Todos los Santos decided to force her hand and release the artist into the game while she was still a little wet behind the ears, short on training, unpredictable in conduct, and psychologically immature.
    â€œYou don’t make a man fall in love with you through gymnastics in bed or tricks in the bedroom,” was her first strictly professional lesson. “Leave that to those who don’t have other skills. What you should do is spoil him and console him as only his mother ever has.”
    One midnight in La Catunga, with the song of the cicadas particularly intense, a council of advisers was assembled at Todos los Santos’s house. Over mistelas, Pielroja cigarettes, and sweet pastelitos de gloria they argued without reaching agreement on any of the details of the mise-enscène. The greatest polemic centered around the choosing of the girl’s nombre de guerra , which in this case would also have to serve as her Christian name, because she swore she didn’t remember having been baptized.
    â€œAt least tell us what they called you before you came here,” said Tana the Argentine, a veritable rattle of bracelets and necklaces, given to her by her lover, an engineer for the company.
    â€œThey didn’t call me anything,” she lied, or perhaps she was confessing true abandonment.
    What she did tell them was that she would like to be called La Calzones, the underwear girl, in homage to her aunt, for whom she seemed to profess some admiration or affection.
    â€œOver my dead body!” shouted Todos los Santos. “I have never heard