Eva Luna (12 page)

Rupert, Burgel, and their daughters were simple, lively folk with large appetites. Food was central: their lives turned around the labors of the kitchen and the ceremony of the table. They were all plump, and could not get used to seeing Rolf so thin in spite of their constant efforts to nourish him. Aunt Burgel had created an aphrodisiac dish that attracted the tourists and kept her husband inflamed. Look at him, she would say with the contagious laughter of a contented matron; he's steaming like a tractor. The recipe was simple: in a huge pot she browned onion, bacon, and tomato seasoned with salt, peppercorns, garlic, and coriander. To this she added, in layers, chunks of pork and beef, boned chicken, broad beans, corn, cabbage, pimiento, fish, clams, and lobster; then she sprinkled in a little raw sugar and added four steins of beer. Before putting on the lid and simmering the stew over a slow fire, she threw in a handful of herbs grown in her kitchen flowerpots. That was the crucial moment, because no one else knew the combination of spices, and
she meant to carry her secret to the grave. The result was a dark rich stew that was spooned from the pot and served in reverse order to its preparation. The grand finale was the broth, served in cups, and the effect was a formidable heat in the bones and a lustful passion in the soul. Rolf's aunt and uncle slaughtered several hogs a year and turned out the best pork products in the village: smoked hams, pork sausage, salami, and enormous tins of lard. They bought fresh milk by the can in order to have cream and churn butter and make cheese. From dawn to dusk delicious odors drifted from that kitchen. In the patio, copper kettles simmered over open wood fires, filled with conserves of plum, apricot, and strawberry for the guests' breakfasts. From spending so much time around the aromatic pots, Rolf's two cousins smelled of cinnamon, clove, vanilla, and lemon. At night Rolf slipped like a shadow into their room to bury his nose in their clothes and breathe in a sweet fragrance that filled his head with sin.

On the weekends the routine changed. Thursday they aired the rooms, decorated them with fresh flowers, and brought wood for the fireplaces—at night there was a cool breeze and the guests liked to sit before the fire and imagine they were in the Alps. From Friday to Sunday the house was filled with guests, and from early dawn the family worked to make them happy. Burgel never left the kitchen, while the girls, with the embroidered felt vests and skirts, white stockings, starched aprons, and ribbon-braided hair of village girls in German folktales, served the tables and cleaned the rooms.

It took four months for Frau Carlé's letters to arrive. They were all very brief, and almost identical: Dear son, I am fine. Katharina is in the hospital. Take good care of yourself and remember everything I taught you so you will grow
up to be a good man. Your Mama sends kisses. Rolf, in contrast, wrote his mother frequently, filling both sides of page after page, telling her about what he had read, because after describing the village and his uncle's family there was little more to say; he felt that nothing ever happened to him that was worth reporting in a letter, and he preferred to astound his mother with long philosophical ideas based on his reading. He also sent her photographs he took with his uncle's ancient camera, immortalizing the moods of nature, people's expressions, and minor events, the kinds of details that ordinarily pass unnoticed. That correspondence meant a great deal to him, not only because it kept his mother alive for him, but also because he discovered how much he enjoyed observing the world and preserving it in images.

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Rolf Carlé's cousins were being wooed by a pair of suitors who were direct descendants of La Colonia's founders, the owners of a unique industry, elegant candles sold throughout the country and beyond. The factory still exists, and its fame is so widespread that on the occasion of the Pope's visit, the government ordered a candle seven meters tall and two meters in diameter, to be kept burning in the Cathedral; not only was it molded to perfection, decorated with scenes of the Passion, and perfumed with the scent of pine, but beneath a burning sun it was transported by truck from the mountain to the capital without loss of its obelisk shape, scent of Christmas, or antique ivory tone. The young men's conversation tended to center on candle molds, colors, and perfumes. At times they were rather boring, but both were handsome, quite prosperous, and permeated inside and out with the aroma of beeswax and scents. They were the best
catch in La Colonia, and all the girls looked for excuses to go and buy candles wearing their filmiest dresses. Rupert, however, had sowed the seed of doubt in his daughters' minds that those youths, bred through generations of interrelated families, had watered-down blood and might produce defective offspring. In candid opposition to theories of purity of race, he believed that crossbreeding gave the best progeny, and to prove it he liked to breed his registered dogs with mongrels. He obtained regrettable-looking mutts with unpredictable coats and configuration that no one wanted to buy, but also were much more intelligent than their pedigreed kindred, as was apparent when they learned to walk a tightrope and waltz on their hind legs. Better to look for sweethearts outside, Rupert used to say, defying his beloved Burgel, who wanted to hear nothing of such a possibility. The idea of seeing her girls married to dark men with the rhythm of the rumba in their hips seemed disgraceful to her. Don't be dense, Burgel.
You're
the one who's dense—do you want mulatto grandchildren? The people of this country may not be blond, wife, but not all of them are black, either. To avoid further argument, both would sigh, with the name of Rolf Carlé on their lips, lamenting they did not have two nephews like him, one for each daughter, because despite the blood relationship and the precedent of Katharina's mental retardation, they would swear that Rolf was not the bearer of deficient genes. In their minds he was the perfect son-in-law: hardworking, educated, cultivated, good-mannered—what more could they ask? For the moment, his youth was the only stumbling block, but everyone is cured of that.

The girls were slow to sympathize with their parents' aspirations; they were true innocents, but once awakened to the idea, they left far behind the norms of modesty and dis
cretion they had been raised by. They saw the fire in Rolf Carlé's eyes; they watched him steal into their room like a wraith to paw furtively through their clothes, and they interpreted those actions as signs of love. They talked the matter over, contemplating the possibility of a platonic relationship between the youth and the two sisters, but when they saw Rolf naked to the waist, his coppery hair tousled by the wind, sweating over the farm machinery or the carpentry tools, they began to change their minds, coming to the blissful conclusion that God had something obvious in mind when He created two sexes. The girls were cheerful by nature, and accustomed to sharing a bedroom, bathroom, clothes, and almost everything else, so they saw nothing wicked in sharing a lover. Besides, it was easy to see the excellent physical condition of the youth, who had, they were sure, sufficient strength and good will to carry out the heavy chores their father demanded of him and still have energy left over for a good romp with them. The matter was not that simple, however. The villagers were not sufficiently sophisticated to understand a triangular relationship, and even their father, though he might boast of modernity, would never tolerate such an arrangement. Not to speak of their mother: she would be quite capable of picking up a kitchen knife and sinking it into her nephew's most vulnerable parts.

Soon Rolf Carlé began to notice a change in the girls' behavior. They insisted he take the largest slice of the roast, piled mountains of whipped cream on his dessert, whispered behind his back, fluttered when he caught them watching him, touched him as he passed by—always in some casual way, but with such an erotic charge that not even an anchorite would have remained unmoved. Until then he had kept a prudent distance and watched them covertly, in order not
to offend the norms of courtesy—or face the possibility of a rejection that would have been fatal to his self-esteem. Little by little, because he did not want to make any hasty decisions, he began to look at them more boldly. Which should he choose? They were both enchanting, with robust legs, straining breasts, aquamarine eyes, and baby-fine skin. The older sister was more amusing, but he was also attracted by the gentle flirtatiousness of the younger. Poor Rolf argued the matter with himself, undecided, until the girls tired of waiting for his initiative and launched a frontal attack. They cornered him in the strawberry patch, tripped him up, then piled on top of him and tickled him unmercifully, shattering his mania for taking himself seriously and arousing his lust. They burst the buttons of his trousers, pulled off his shoes, ripped open his shirt, and put their mischievous nymphet hands where he never imagined anyone would explore. From that day on, Rolf Carlé abandoned his reading, neglected the pups, forgot the cuckoo clocks, the letters to his mother, even his own name. He wandered around in a trance, his instincts aflame and his mind in a daze. From Monday to Thursday, when there were no guests in the house, the rhythm of the domestic chores slowed and the three young people had a few hours of liberty, which they seized to disappear into the unoccupied guest rooms. They did not want for excuses: airing the eiderdowns, cleaning the windows, spraying for cockroaches, waxing the wood furniture, changing the beds. The girls had inherited their parents' sense of fairness and orderliness, and while one closed herself in a room with Rolf the other stood guard in the corridor to give the alarm if anyone approached. They were scrupulous in taking turns, but fortunately the youth was not aware of that humiliating detail. What did they do when they were alone? Nothing new;
they played the same games cousins have played for six thousand years. Things became interesting when they decided to spend nights three in a bed, calmed by Rupert's and Burgel's snoring in the adjacent room. To keep an eye on the girls, the parents slept with their door open, and that also allowed the girls to keep an eye on them. Rolf Carlé was as inexperienced as his two companions, but from the first encounter he took precautions not to get them pregnant, and poured into the erotic games all the enthusiasm and inventiveness needed to make up for his amatory ignorance. His energies were endlessly fed by the formidable gifts of his cousins—open, warm, smelling of fruit, breathless with laughter, and exceedingly receptive. Furthermore, having to maintain absolute silence—terrified at the creaking bedsprings, huddled beneath the sheets, enveloped in one another's warmth and aromas—was a spur that set their hearts aflame. They were at the perfect age for inexhaustible lovemaking. The girls were flowering with a summery vitality, the blue of their eyes deepening, their skin becoming more luminous, and their smiles happier; as for Rolf, he forgot his Latin and went around bumping into furniture and falling asleep on his feet; he was only half awake as he waited on the tourists, his legs trembling and his eyes unfocused. The boy is working too hard, Burgel. He looks pale, we must give him some vitamins, Rupert would say, never suspecting that behind his back his nephew was devouring great portions of his aunt's famous aphrodisiac stew so that his strength would not desert him in his hour of need. Together the three cousins discovered the basic requirements of levitation, and on occasion defied gravity for brief periods. The youth resigned himself to the idea that his companions had the greater capacity for pleasure and could repeat their feats several times
in the same session, so in order to keep his reputation intact and not cheat the girls, he improvised techniques to ration his energy and pleasure. Years later, he learned that the same methods had been employed in China since the time of Confucius, and concluded that there is nothing new under the sun, as his Uncle Rupert said each time he read the newspaper. Some nights the three lovers were so contented that they forgot to say good night and fell asleep in a tangle of arms and legs, the young man buried in a soft and fragrant mountain of flesh, lulled by his cousins' dreams. They would awake at the first rooster's crow, just in time for them to leap into their own beds, before their elders surprised them in such delicious misbehavior. For a while the sisters were planning to flip a coin for the indefatigable Rolf Carlé, but during the process of those memorable tourneys they discovered they were joined to him by playful and festive emotions totally inappropriate as a basis for a respectable marriage. They, practical young women that they were, decided it would be more convenient to marry the aromatic candlemakers, keeping their cousin in reserve as a lover and, when feasible, as father of their children, thus avoiding the risk of boredom—though not, perhaps, of bringing half-witted children into the world. Such an arrangement never entered Rolf Carlé's mind, nurtured as he had been by romantic literature, chivalric novels, and strict and honorable teachings learned in childhood. While the girls were planning audacious combinations, he was striving to ease his guilt at loving them both by pretending that this was a temporary arrangement, the ultimate aim of which was to know one another better before selecting a partner; in his mind, a long-term contract would be an abominable perversion. He struggled with the insoluble conflict between desire—always spiritedly revived
by those two opulent and generous bodies—and the severity that caused him to view monogamous marriage as the only possible course for a decent man. Don't be foolish, Rolf. Don't you see it doesn't matter to us? I don't love you for myself alone, and neither does my sister. We can go on like this until we marry—even after. Their proposal was a brutal blow to the young man's vanity. For thirty hours he was sunk in indignation, but finally his concupiscence won out. He scraped his dignity off the floor and came back to sleep with the girls. And they, his precious cousins, one on each side, laughing in their glorious nakedness, again enveloped him in a delicious mist of cinnamon, clove, vanilla, and lemon, driving him mad and obliterating the last of his stodgy Christian virtues.