El Valle Encantado
by Allen HopeI
Pablo Mieja awoke before daylight to the sound of steady chewing. It came from outside, and seemed to pour in through the open window as if carried on soft moonlight. Thinking it some strange dream, he sat up in bed. But when the chewing continued like the delicate rustle of leaves in the jungle canopy, Pablo Mieja tapped his sleeping wife on the shoulder.“Leona,” he whispered, “Leona.” His wife grunted and turned away. In an attempt to guard against the intrusion she curled into a ball and burrowed her head deeper into the folds of pillow.
Again, and this time in a voice noticeably louder than the persistent chewing, Pablo Mieja inquired, “Leona, do you hear anything?”
“Yes, of course,” answered Leona, “I hear you disturbing my dreams.”
Her eyes opened onto the glowing room, and beyond the window she glimpsed the broad, flat silhouette of banana leaves swaying gently against the night sky.
“Is it so dark in here that you cannot see I am trying to sleep?” she said.
“There is something eating outside,” said Pablo Mieja, “surely you must hear it.”
“Yes,” Leona said, “and if you don’t stop talking and go back to bed you will find yourself out there with it.”
Pablo Mieja knew from experience not to deny his wife her rest, so he lay back against the straw mattress and tried to imagine what the source of the noise might be. He discounted nearly a dozen possibilities and was about to settle on an infestation of giant cockroaches as the cause when his mind—turning like a water wheel powered by the music of rhythmic chewing—gradually abandoned him.
II
Two hundred years earlier José Mieja, Pablo Mieja’s great-grandfather founded the village of Tierra del Fuego in a jungle clearing that appeared first as a mirage to the small group of natives fleeing the constant upheaval of revolution. They had been traveling for seventy-three days without repose. When the clearing opened they were convinced that the hand of God had suddenly taken pity on them and plucked the ground clean of vegetation to ease their struggling passage. José Mieja decided to take advantage of this good fortune. He ordered his followers to set up camp, informing them that they would remain in this place until their strength returned. "Only then," said José Mieja, "will we continue our journey to its conclusion." Since they had no destination in mind, no one knew how long this might take. So they settled in, tired and bitter at being forced from their homeland.
Although they did not know it, they slept for four days. Ernestina Hernandez was the first to awake. She had a terrible pain in her lower back and her legs felt as if they had been wrapped in guaze. When she looked to determine the reason for her discomfort, she discovered that a tomatillo the size of a large pumpkin had sprouted beneath her and lifted her torso into an almost sitting position. Her legs were entwined in a forest of bright-green vines and the roots of gargantuan cornstalks that rose like towering funnel clouds into the cerium-blue sky.
Looking further she saw banana trees with yellow fruit the length of walking sticks that hung nearly to the ground, tomatoes that looked like red boulders, and green beans that she initially thought were giant, lethargic chameleons. The entire valley had been displaced with fruits, vegetables and herbs the size of which seemed impossible to imagine. She quickly unraveled herself and alerted her fellow travelers.
“How can this be?” “What kind of prank is being played on us?” “Who is responsible for this trickery?” The questions came at José Mieja like the shouts of two lovers at the moment of completion. The enormous size of the fruits and vegetables had plunged the group into a near panic. But José Mieja remained calm, quiet. He reached out and sampled the magnificent growth, stroking it gently with his callused hands. His eyes took in the splendor of this unimaginable abundance. Satisfied that his people were in no danger, José Mieja declared, “I tell you with all certainty that we need travel no further this day or any day.”
“What do you mean?” responded Señor Moscato, Jose Mieja’s most trusted confidant. “Who will guarantee the safety of our children? Who will protect our wives from the evil that lurks within this gardenous valley? We are not equipped to defend ourselves.”
“I assure you,” answered José Mieja, “the land itself will protect us. This is sacred ground. Like the widows of our young countrymen murdered by villainous shadows, it has lain barren waiting for a reason to flourish. We are that reason.” With his explanation concluded, José Mieja returned to his pallet to resume his extended slumber. His decision was final.
The valley was indeed sacred. And it responded only to people free of the greed that drove others to commit atrocities against their fellow countrymen. For the next two hundred years, until the moment Pablo Mieja awakened to the sound of inalterable chewing, the villagers of Tierra del Fuego existed in peace.
III
When Pablo Mieja awoke at dawn the musical chewing existed in his mind like a vague memory. He remembered waking up and talking to Leona, and her warning him to go back to sleep. Other than that he wasn’t sure what had happened. As he lay in bed and tried to sort it out the only thing he could think of was the contagion of dreams that had swept through Tierra del Fuego twenty summers ago. That event had spawned great distress among the villagers.
It started innocently enough the day a gypsy fell from the sky and landed on an overripe mango that had itself, only moments earlier, plummeted to the square killing several chickens and sending two checker-playing old men running into its path. When the villagers gathered to view the bearded and bedraggled gypsy, they were showered with a fine white powder that descended like a cloud. Every living, breathing creature in the area took on the appearance of ghostly apparitions. But before the powder could be wiped clean it absorbed through the skin and infused everyone with the scent of vanilla.
On the morning after the arrival of the contagion of dreams Rebecca Cordova said, “I rode the tremendous spinning wheel and ate candied pink silk from a paper cone.” Her brother Ignacio responded, “So did I.” The other children conferred and quickly agreed that they too shared the same dream. Successive days revealed tales of fantastic exploding lights, marching bands and games of chance. Parents and grandparents soon dreamt in cadence with their children and grandchildren. And because only those who arrived with José Mieja one hundred and eighty years earlier had ever experienced life beyond Tierra del Fuego, the dreams caused great excitement. How could one dream what one had never witnessed, they wondered? The idea was so compelling that the whole village began to retire for the night long before darkness had fully settled over the valley.
Dreaming became addictive, to the point that at any time of day the sound of sleep rose throughout Tierra del Fuego with the gruff cacophony of a sideshow barker intent on luring all who dreamed into his exhibit. But the excitement was short lived. Within weeks, visions of deserted cities, crumbled buildings, and bloated cadavers piled into great mounds of stinking flesh supplanted the carnival atmosphere that had permeated the villagers' subconscious incarnations. Euphoria gave way to a sort of delirium. Headaches and nausea followed. Even the animals were not immune.
Desperate for an explanation the villagers summoned the gypsy, who had been living like a hermit in a carved-out trunk of a caladium, to appear before them. A throng gathered to hear his response, but whenever any of them attempted to question the gypsy, they immediately began to retch. Finally, Pablo Mieja managed an inquiry: “What is the reason for our terrible nightmares?” he asked.
Unaware until then that the contagion of dreams had spread beyond himself, but with complete knowledge of its cause, the gypsy carefully measured his response.
“I apologize for the inconvenience,” he said to the sickly crowd around him, “but you suffer from remembrances of my historical past.”
“What do you mean your historical past?” asked someone in the crowd.
“Beyond here lies a world of supreme wonder and eternal conflict," answered the gypsy. “Marvelous new inventions, like the machine for washing clothes, have made life easier for everyone. Unfortunately, no one is happy with what they have. What a person owns he declares useless and desires only that which belongs to his neighbors. People fight and kill over each other’s possessions only to find that the value of their newly acquired treasure soon becomes worthless in their own minds. So after this brief period of adjustment, fighting breaks out again.”
The crowd was astonished to hear of such behavior. Fearing the same fate they strapped the gypsy onto a donkey that dreamed always of walking and sent him away. A month later the contagion of dreams vanished and life returned to normal.
Pablo Mieja was startled to reality by his wife’s cries from the back yard.
“Pablo! Pablo! Pablo!” she screamed. He pulled on an undershirt and a pair of ragged pants and then rushed outside where he was confronted by the source of Leona’s distress: a band of marauding fish had invaded the valley and eaten everything in sight. Not a fruit tree or a plant or a sprig of herb remained. They had all been stripped to the ground. Incensed that the food had been depleted, the fish stalked the fields ripping clods of dirt from the denuded red furrows. In their wake, slimy trails glistened in the sun like liquid pearl.
Although the only fish Pablo Mieja had ever seen were the occasional tilapia and bream he had caught in the eddy of a nearby river, he recognized immediately that these were no ordinary fish. They were as tall as he was and wore military uniforms and carried carbines filmed with rust. And though they appeared to have arms and legs, the end of each appendage was equipped with a fin rather than a hand or a foot. There was no mistaking their gills, but their lips looked more like those of a human than of a fish. “If this is one of the supreme wonders the gypsy failed to mention,” said Pablo Mieja to Leona, “I hope never to leave this valley.”
Pablo Mieja’s first thought was to welcome the fish and ask if he might provide directions to set them back on course. But after surveying the damage they had done he decided to be more direct. “We are a simple people and live by modest means,” he said. “And since we have nothing to offer and this valley is too remote to be of any use to you, I think you should leave.”
The leader of the fish—a spiny, giant sea bass that wore as a helmet a silver goblet excavated from a sunken Spanish galleon—stepped forward in protest.
“Yes,” he said, “you may be a simple people, as you say. But did you think you could fool us forever? We know of your campaign to provide food to the resistance movement.”
The sight of a talking fish caused a goat to bleat pitifully from across the yard. Upon hearing the goat Leona raised the broom she had been using to sweep the yard and pointed it threateningly at her accuser.
“You filthy fish,” she said, “you are an imbecile!”
“Be quiet, woman. From now on I am in charge around here. My name is Colonel Rojas of the UGB, and you will respect my authority.”
Leona seemed unimpressed. She lowered the broom and glared intensely at the source of her displeasure.
“I will not have the likes of you--, ” she said, stopping abruptly when Pablo Mieja took her gently by the wrist to caution her against speaking.
“Perhaps you require a reason to respect me,” said Colonel Rojas. He gestured to a rubicund mud shark watching from the gypsy’s caladium, and instantly the nervous goat was bitten in half and swallowed.
“Would you like another reason?” bellowed Colonel Rojas.
The villagers were repulsed by the horrid, calculating Colonel. His eyes bulged like enormous red moons, and his blue-white skin was not that of a fish but of a rotting corpse slithering with a million hungry parasites. When he spoke, green fluid drained from his gills and was immediately swarmed over and consumed by his parasitic flesh. It seemed he was eating himself alive.
Colonel Rojas summoned his squad of invaders and divided them into details. He sent some of them in search of contraband and instructed the others to establish guard posts around the village perimeter to diminish the possibility of insurrection. When the detachments had left to carry out their duties, Colonel Rojas again addressed the villagers.
“I should punish you for the torturous times you have put us through,” he said. “Hunting for this place has been like following a whisper through the mountains, only to have it pilfered by the wind, leaving us frustrated and with nothing to show for our efforts.”
“You are mistaken,” stated Pablo Mieja disconsolately, “in accusing us of allegiance with the resistance fighters.”
“That’s what they all say,” answered Colonel Rojas. “Everyone is innocent, no one is to blame.”
“Then you will leave in peace?” asked Leona.
“Absolutely not,” responded Colonel Rojas. “Everything we need is right here. Besides, we have come so far that not even the sweet salt air knows of our whereabouts. The gulls that decorate our skies have lost all contact with us. And the song of waves that begs for our return receives no reply. No, we will not go. And to honor our presence I order this valley restored to its previous bounty.”
“That is impossible,” complained Pablo Mieja.
“We shall see,” said Colonel Rojas. “You have one week. And if you fail, you leave us no alternative but to eat the road, the houses and furniture, animals, fences, and every man, woman and child of this village. We will devour everything in our path until not even a memory of this place exists anywhere in the world.” Faced with this ultimatum the villagers reluctantly agreed to Colonel Rojas’ demand.
IV
The following day Pablo Mieja, along with Hidalgo and Roqué Guadalupe, twins who were different in every conceivable way except looks, met with Colonel Rojas. They asked permission to travel freely into the jungle to retrieve the necessary compost needed to replant the valley. Though they knew that the valley was indeed a magical place, and that it would produce nothing in the presence of evil, they hoped to use their request for compost as a way to delay the inevitable. Colonel Rojas had no desire to negotiate, mainly because he had eaten so much that his overworked digestive system had propelled him into a stupor from which he had yet to recover. So he simply said, “All right, but get back before dark.”
That evening the party of three returned with their string of mules. They carried burlap sacks stuffed with peat moss which they deposited in the village square. Toward the end of the week so many villagers and their animals had begun to accompany Pablo Mieja and the Guadalupe twins into the jungle that only a pack of wild dogs and the ghosts of José Mieja, Pablo Mieja’s great-grandfather, and his friend Señor Moscato were all that remained in the village.
The two old ghosts had returned to Tierra del Fuego soon after their deaths decades ago, but under the misguided assumption that they were still alive. They believed themselves human in every respect. Even to others they appeared as flesh-and-blood replicas of their previous selves. But after ninety-seven years of spiritual reincarnation, during which they found pleasure in almost nothing, José Mieja and Señor Moscato came to the conclusion that in order to end their boredom they must take each other’s life. Of course, they had no lives to take, but that didn’t deter their exuberance. They had tried everything: suffocation, stabbing, drowning, strangulation. They took great pleasure in their attempts to kill one another, and their efforts became so comical that festivals were planned around the monthly event.
On one occasion Señor Moscato hung José Mieja by the neck from a chestnut tree, painted a target on his bare chest and shot him full of arrows. But over the next eleven days José Mieja oscillated in the wind and was so verbally insulting to anyone who happened by that the villagers cut him down, gagged him with a shawl and tied him to a chair. He was then taken to the square and forced to play checkers in this condition until he agreed never to impugn anyone again.
Meanwhile, Colonel Rojas and his subordinates sought only to rest from their lengthy ordeal. They paid little heed to the excursions to and from the jungle. Besides, as far as Colonel Rojas knew, he had two hostages in the form of José Mieja and Señor Moscato should anyone attempt to escape.
On the morning of the seventh day and at the appointed hour of deadline established a week earlier, Colonel Rojas realized that he was the victim of a ruse and that the villagers of Tierra del Fuego had no intention of replanting the valley. Realizing the deception Colonel Rojas stormed into the square.
“Where is everyone?” he demanded.
“How should I know?” answered Señor Moscato. “Do I look like a prophet?”
Before Colonel Rojas could answer, José Mieja responded, "Colonel Rojas, sir, I am concerned that my dear friend's insubordinate behavior might reflect badly on those of us who call Tierra del Fuego home. As punishment, might I suggest that you kill him? Perhaps you could eat him and throw his bones to the dogs." José Mieja and Señor Moscato often sought outside assistance to administer their suicide pact, like the afternoon they scrambled from the checker table into the path of the overripe mango that fell from the sky.
“You may get your wish,” said Colonel Rojas, “and when I’m done with him, you will be next,” he said, looking at a strangely smiling José Mieja.
V
Pablo Mieja and the Guadalupe twins worked feverishly hacking a trail through the dense undergrowth. They had been walking since the morning of the previous day. While the night was cool, the day had grown unbearably hot and humid. Combined with the constant swinging of machetes, this infusion of heat and humidity sent rivulets of sweat draining from the faces, necks and arms of Pablo Mieja and his laboring companions. When they finally stopped to reorient themselves to their surroundings, Pablo Mieja noticed the line of stragglers shuffling along trying to catch up to the main group.
“Faster,” he encouraged. “We can’t afford to slow down now.” He waited until everyone was accounted for, and then, after allowing a few minutes for them to rest, he set out toward the now descending sun.
While the old people tromped along like sleepwalkers through a hurricane of heartbreak, the children made a game of the escape. Darting between ferns and palmetto plants they would disappear from one side of the trail only to reemerge on the other side. Leona struggled along like all the others. Not until they stopped at dusk did she let her misery be known.
“Filthy fish,” she said to no one in particular. “Damned imbecile fish.”
Pablo Mieja tried to console those who suffered worst, but everyone was too tired to imagine anything beyond the terrible loss of their homeland. With the animals secured for the night and after a meal of tortillas and salted meat, the group collapsed in exhaustion.
Hidalgo and Roqué Guadalupe were first to awaken the next morning. Upon wiping the sleep from their eyes they found themselves drowning in confusion. They failed to understand where they were or how they had gotten there. Soon the remaining villagers awoke and suffered the same fate as the Guadalupe twins: confusion spread among them like the contagion of dreams and stripped them of any memory of the past. To complicate matters, the trail on which they had traveled had grown over sometime during the night and it was now impossible to know from which direction they had come or in which direction they should go.
Bewildered by this unforeseen turn of events and fearful that their indecisiveness would alarm the others, Pablo Mieja and the Guadalupe twins convened under a small grove of avocado trees to discuss the situation discreetly. Unable to compose a remedy, however, they rejoined the group. The rest of the morning the elders sat together offering suggestions and nodding in agreement whenever someone or another indicated a flaw in their reasoning.
Finally, when there seemed no possible solution to their predicament, Rebecca Cordova appeared from beneath a flowering-purple geranium. She danced a circle around those seated on the ground, and while carrying two palm fronds, one in each hand which she waved casually like a parrot stretching its wings, she serenaded them with a chorus of, “Follow the sound of birds.” Since no one else had a better idea, Pablo Mieja and the Guadalupe twins unsheathed their machetes and hacked a course toward the chatter of macaws.
Allen Hope is a graduate of Sonoma State University’s creative writing program, and previously worked as a producer and scriptwriter for Project Censored's radio documentary series, For the Record, which aired on National Public Radio. His stories and poetry have appeared in First Leaves, Zaum, and the Mid-South Review. Forthcoming publications include Snow Monkey. Currently, his wife and two daughters employ him as a stay-at-home parent. Though the pay isn’t so great—pennies and nickels mostly—the health and vacation plan is quite generous. You can email him at ahope007@comcast.net .
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