We don’t see them anymore, not in the city. But I suspect that with their baskets they still foot the roads in the country to sell charcoal. Mostly elderly women with no other source of income, they go about the houses, and the wives, who have become their regular customers, would get from them their supply of charcoal for ironing, if not for cooking. I grew up in a town without electricity, when the women pressed the clothes using flatirons filled with hot coals. I think that the nose evokes the past more quickly than do the eyes or ears, because, as I think back to that time, I can smell the burnt banana leaves, on which the help laid the flatiron in between pressings.
The poor old women, mostly widows, because they could no longer do laundry or work as domestic helpers, depend on selling candles or charcoal for their keep. I see the candle vendors in the churches, but of those who sell charcoal, if they arouse enough curiosity, I only hear stories.
The wife has one such story. Her father worked as a judge in a provincial city. The man loved the simple folk, and, every morning, as he paced outside the house having a smoke, he would engage the ambulant vendors in conversation as they passed by. The wife particularly recalls a charcoal vendor, a destitute old woman, among them.
She regularly came to the house, and, because the judge always had to have a fresh change of attire, they would buy charcoal from her without fail. But the woman had to stay a little longer after the transaction, because the judge would inquire about her family, and they would make small talk whenever they ran out of stories about the war and old times.
The judge died of a heart attack. The dignitaries and prominent people attended the wake of this respected man. One night, the wife saw a bedraggled old woman approach and pray before the coffin, and after that put an amount in the box intended for funeral donations. Which impressed the wife, knowing that the charcoal vendor probably had hardly enough for her next meal.
How could I miss the resemblance that this incident has to that narrated in the Gospel of Mark about the poor widow? After warning the people about the scribes, “who like to go around in long robes and accept greetings in the marketplaces, seats of honor in synagogues and places of honor at banquets,” but, using lengthy prayers as a pretext, “devour the houses of widows,” Jesus sat and “observed how the crowd put money into the treasury.” He saw many rich people put in large sums. And then a poor widow came and gave two small coins. Upon seeing her, Jesus told his disciples, “Amen, I say to you, this poor widow put in more than all the other contributors to the treasury. For they have all contributed from their surplus wealth, but she, from her poverty, has contributed all she had, her whole livelihood.”
Before the charcoal vendor left, the wife had occasion to talk to her. She thanked the woman for coming, and asked her how she, who lived in the outskirts, knew of her father’s death. The woman replied that, while passing by that night on an errand, she saw a big crowd in the house. Upon inquiry, she learned that the judge had died. This took her by surprise because that morning, when she made her usual rounds selling charcoal, she saw the judge outside the house having a smoke, but did not bother to talk to him because he appeared to be deep in thought.
At that very moment, the wife told me, her father lay dead in the hospital after the doctors’ efforts to save him had failed.