Osorio Cárdenas Daniel, The Cow Massacre

THE COW MASSACRE

Written by Daniel Osorio Cárdenas

Dubhan was sitting still in the central park of Distracción, a small and insignificant town in the low Guajira. It was hot midday in the spring of 2000, and Dubhan was thinking about the plans for his future. He was not prepared for this moment of his life, as he had only planned his activities until December 31 st of the previous year. Dubhan had predicted the end of the world to come on that same date, as he interpreted in one of his recurrent dreams.

Dubhan is the grandson of an extinct indigenous tribe leader. His soft mated black hair contrasts with his monolid eye, which is always hidden in the big cheeks of his rounded face. His straight, voluminous eyebrows expose his real mood. He tends to look high but he’s just shy and tired the whole day, like everyone living in the infernal coastal heat.

His grandfather had taught him years ago the millennial secret for predicting future events by interpreting dreams. He was an old crummy man, with a wrinkled face like a mountain chain. Dubhan couldn’t think of how his grandpa was able to recognize him in the distance, because his eyes had shrinkled at the rhythm of the passing years. He started obligating Dubhan to have a book by his bed so that when he woke up he could instantly write what he had dreamed.

Dubhan was only 13 years old, he was too young to understand the power of the oneirology. When he woke up each morning at 10 am, the last thing he would think about would be to write something in his dream-diary. And when he occasionally remembered to write them down, he was too shy to write about how he dated the prettiest girl in his school, not because this would’ve made his grandpa notice his self-esteem problems in the recess hours, but because those dates with his platonic love were almost wet-dreams. One day his grandpa asked: “Dubhan, did you really dream about killing all the cattle

to sue the State for being a victim of the armed conflict and try to get compensation?”

His grandpa talked with this hoarse voice you have when you press your abdomen breathing out all the air you have in your lungs and try to talk. This made things difficult for Dubhan as he couldn’t notice if he was talking seriously, or if he was angry, or if he was mocking, or even if he was really dying at that same moment.

“I just write things in the morning unconsciously.”

Dubhan fears many things; and one of them, ironically, is fear itself. He hates that feeling of uncertainty, so he just answers as fast as he can to relieve the pressure. If he had just told the truth about being unable to write down his dreams he would have saved all the work of writing in his dream-diary all the news he heard in the local radio to satisfy his grandpa’s expectations. He did this daily, he sat next to the radio and just transcripted what he heard, he sometimes changed some characters with people he knew in real life to make it more believable.

“This is the best idea I’ve heard in decades.”

This time Dubhan couldn’t even distinguish what his grandpa said, so he just ignored him and re-filled his yagé cup and left.

The next day, Dubhan woke up in his house at Distracción. It was 10 a.m., he went to the backyard for some fresh milk and found all the cattle massacred, pilled up in the middle of the courtyard. In the middle of his waking-up-unconsciousness, he found that one middle-aged cow was still standing. He approached the cow fastly and stretched the cows’ udders right in the middle. He filled the old bucket just to the middle and left.

While leaving, Dubhan thought on who could’ve been so stupid to leave the cattle with one cow standing alive.

Dubhan was really clever. He instantly noticed that he was doing exactly the same, so he returned abruptly and killed the last cow standing. This event would be called later “The Cow Massacre”, illogic and unique like everything that happens in Distracción.

Dubhan knew the next step to follow, he had to sue the State. His grandpa gave him some money and he took the last bus before lunch straight to the central park of Distracción. He passed by the bench where he would think in the future about his plans for the future and entered the police station. A little police officer received him:

“Problems involving tribes or any other nonsense can be dismissed at the other side of the park.”

“I need to report a massacre that happened just today,” said Dubhan.

The policeman didn’t even flinch.

“How many casualties?” asked the little officer while heating a cigar. Ignoring that this could cost millions to the government (or at least that’s what Dubhan and his grandpa expected).

“Seventeen cows, five pigs, twenty chickens, and one cow.”

“Unbelievable!” said the dwarf cowboy, with the sarcastic tone disguising that he didn’t care at all.

They proceeded to fill all the papers concerning the massacre. Dubhan was first asked to tell the storyline of the events; he started writing that he woke up at 10 am as normal but was unable to write more as he was still feeling sleepy. So he just wrote that the massacre was executed by the insurgent groups of the borderline with Venezuela and left the details blank.

Unfortunately, his request couldn’t be submitted, not because he left it blank but because they couldn’t find Dubhan Gómez in their database. There were only three Dubhans

registered in the nation; one of them was a photographer, the other was a bus driver, and the last one disappeared 8 years ago in unknown circumstances. They proceeded to take each of Dubhan’s fingers and daubing them with black ink to do the famous fingerprint recognition.

Suddenly the whole police station began to laugh indiscriminately, everyone laughed except for Dubhan. It was as if there was a gas of laughter to which Dubhan was completely immune. In the middle of the tremendous noise of almost forty police officers laughing, Dubhan was able to detect the source of laughter. It was an old screen in a room with a hard smell of sweat and hot as hell. The screen had a picture of Dubhan’s face, but this was not the reason for the chaos that was occurring around him. Everyone was laughing because the name that appeared in Dubhan’s birth registry was AlkaSeltzer Jajariju.

Humiliated, Dubhan continued to look on the database, found out that his father (which he never met) was registered as Tarzan Jajariju, and his grandpa appeared as Jhon F. Kennedy Jajariju. They were all born on the 31 st of December, and their birth registries had a footnote saying “Expresses not having any signature”.

Dubhan returned to his house in the woods. He felt betrayed. He looked for his grandpa, but couldn’t find him. The next day his grandpa was still lost. Dubhan got up of bed at 10 am, went to the backyard and found the pile of ashes in the middle and a long dark cloud in the landscape. He went back to his bedroom and sat next to the radio. That day he copied breaking news from the local radio which was about a scandal in the national birth registry, and copied another one about an old man being interned in the mental asylum of Distracción because he proclaimed himself the author of the fictional story “Cow Massacre.”