Eva Luna (13 page)

Three years passed in this manner, more than enough to replace Rolf Carlé's macabre nightmares with lovely dreams. It is possible that the girls would have triumphed over his scruples and he would have remained by their side for the rest of his days, humbly fulfilling the dual role of lover and surrogate father, had fate not led him down a different path. And the person charged with showing him the way was a
señor
Aravena, a newspaperman by profession and filmmaker by vocation.

Aravena wrote for the country's most important newspaper. He was Rupert and Burgel's best client and he spent almost every weekend at their inn, where a room was always kept for him. His pen was so highly respected that not even the dictatorship had been able to still it completely, and during his years in the profession he had acquired an aureole of honesty that allowed him to publish what his colleagues would never have dared. Even the General and the Man of the Gardenia treated him with respect, abiding by a mutually beneficial formula that allowed him, within specific limita
tions, unmolested freedom, while the government projected an image of liberalism by exhibiting his moderately daring articles. A man with an obvious taste for the good life, he smoked enormous cigars, ate like a lion, and was a prodigious drinker, the only man able to defeat Uncle Rupert in the Sunday beer fests. He alone was allowed the luxury of pinching Rolf's cousins' magnificent buttocks, because he did it with grace, in no spirit of offense, merely of rendering due tribute. Come here, my adorable Valkyries, let this humble newspaperman feel your heavenly ass; and even Burgel would laugh as her daughters turned a backside and he ceremoniously lifted the embroidered felt skirts and fell into rhapsodies at the sight of those orbs encased in girlish underdrawers.

Señor
Aravena owned a movie camera and a noisy portable typewriter, its keys discolored with use, and he sat before it all day Saturday and half of Sunday on the terrace of the inn, pecking out his columns with two fingers and eating sausages and drinking beer. Ah, it does me good to breathe this pure mountain air, he would say from behind a cloud of black smoke. Sometimes he arrived with a girl—never the same one—whom he introduced as his niece, and Burgel always went along with the pretense. We don't run one of those shady hotels. Do you think I'd put up with such a thing? I allow Aravena to bring a friend because he's such a well-known gentleman. Haven't you seen his name in the newspaper? Aravena's enthusiasm for the lady in question would last only one night; after that he would have had his fill of her and would pack her off with the first truckload of vegetables bound for the capital. In contrast, he would spend days talking with Rolf Carlé as they strolled around the village. He maintained a running commentary on international
news, initiated Rolf into national politics, supervised his readings, taught him the basics of the camera and some rudiments of typing. You can't stay in La Colonia forever, he said. It's fine for a neurotic like myself to come here to fortify my body and get the poisons out of my system, but no normal young man should live in this stage set. Rolf Carlé was familiar with the works of Shakespeare, Molière, and Calderón de la Barca, but he had never been in a theater and could not see its relationship with the village; he was disinclined, however, to argue with the maestro for whom he felt such unbounded admiration.

“I'm very pleased with you, Rolf,” his Uncle Rupert told him the day he turned twenty. “In a couple of years' time, you can take complete charge of the clocks—it's a profitable business.”

“The truth is, Uncle, that I don't want to be a clock-maker. I think that cinematography would be a better profession for me.”

“Cinematography? And what good is that?”

“To make films. I'm interested in documentaries. I want to know what's going on in the world, Uncle.”

“The less you know, the better, but if that's what you like, then do it.”

Burgel was almost ill when she learned that Rolf was going off to live alone in the capital, that den of peril, drugs, politics, and sickness, where all the women are bitches—pardon my French—like those women who come sailing into La Colonia with their stern wagging and their bow breasting the waves. Desperate, the cousins tried to dissuade Rolf by refusing him their favors, but in view of the fact that the punishment was as painful for them as it was for him, they changed their tactics and made love to him with such ardor that Rolf
lost weight at an alarming rate. Those most affected, nonetheless, were the dogs, who when they sniffed the preparations in the air lost all appetite and slunk around with their tail between their legs, ears drooping, and an unbearable gaze of supplication in their eyes.

Rolf Carlé withstood all emotional appeals, and two months later set off for the university, after promising his Uncle Rupert that he would spend the weekends with them, his Aunt Burgel that he would eat the biscuits, hams, and marmalades she packed in his suitcases, and the cousins that he would remain absolutely chaste in order to return with renewed energies for their frolics beneath the eiderdown.

FIVE

W
hile these things were happening in Rolf Carlé's life, I was growing up only a short distance away. It was during that time that my
madrina
's misfortune began. I heard about it on the radio, and saw her picture in the scandal sheet Elvira used to buy behind the
patrona
's back. That's how I learned my
madrina
had given birth to a monster. Specialists informed the public that the creature belonged to Tribe III—that is, it was characterized by a fused body with two heads: genus
Xiphoid
, meaning it had a single vertebral column; and class Omphalosian, one umbilicus for two bodies. The great curiosity was that one head was white by race, and the other black.

“The poor thing had two fathers, that's for sure,” said Elvira, with a grimace of disgust. “A horror like that happens only if you sleep with two men on the same day. In all my fifty years, I've never done a thing like that. You won't catch me letting the juices of two men mix in my belly. The fruit of that sin is circus freaks.”

My
madrina
had been earning her living nights as a scrubwoman. She was on a tenth floor scrubbing the stains from a carpet when she felt her first pangs; she continued working, however, because she was not sure how to time the delivery, and because she was furious with herself for having succumbed to temptation, paying with a shameful pregnancy. A little past midnight she felt warm liquid trickling
between her thighs, and knew she should get to a hospital, but it was too late; she did not have the strength to get to the elevator. She yelled at the top of her lungs, but there was no one in all the lonely building to come to her aid. Resigned to staining what she had just cleaned, she lay down on the floor and pushed with desperation until she expelled the fetus. She was so befuddled when she saw the strange two-headed creature she had given birth to that her first reaction was to get rid of it as quickly as possible. As soon as she could struggle to her feet, she carried the baby into the corridor and threw it down the incinerator chute, and then, still gasping for breath, went back to clean the rug all over again. The next day when the janitor went into the basement, he found the tiny body in the trash that had been discarded from the offices; there were few signs of injury, because it had fallen on shredded paper. Waitresses from the cafeteria came running in response to his cries, and in a few minutes the news had reached the street and spread like wildfire. By noon the scandal was news throughout the nation; even foreign newspapermen came to photograph the infant's corpse, because in all the annals of medicine that combining of races was unique. For a week, no one talked of anything else; the event overshadowed even the deaths of two students who had been shot by the
guardia
at the gates of the university for waving red flags and singing the “Internationale.” My
madrina
was called an unnatural mother, a murderess, and a foe of science because she would not give the body to the Anatomical Institute for examination, but insisted on burying it in the cemetery, according to Catholic teaching.

“First she kills it and throws it in the trash like a rotten fish, and then she wants to give it a Christian burial. God will never forgive a crime like that, little bird.”

“But,
abuela
, no one has proved that my
madrina
killed it.”

“And who did, then?”

The police kept the mother in isolation for several weeks, until the coroner finally succeeded in making himself heard. He had insisted from the first, although no one paid any attention, that being thrown down the incinerator chute was not the cause of death; the infant had been stillborn. Finally the authorities freed the poor woman, who was marked for life, in any case; for months she was followed by newspaper headlines, and no one ever believed the official version. The sympathies of an unforgiving public were all for the baby, and they called my
madrina
“The Little Monster Murderess.” All this trauma was the final blow to her nerves. She could not get over the guilt of having given birth to a sideshow freak, and was never the same person after getting out of jail. She was obsessed with the idea that the birth was a divine punishment for some abominable sin that not even she could remember. She was ashamed to show herself in public, and sank into misery and despair. As a last resort, she went to see witch doctors; they wrapped her in a shroud, laid her on the ground inside a circle of lighted candles, and blanketed her beneath a suffocating cloud of smoke, talcum, and camphor, until there issued from the depths of her being a visceral scream that they interpreted as the expulsion of the evil spirits. Then they hung sacred necklaces around her neck to prevent the evil from re-entering her body. When I went with Elvira to visit her, I found her living in the same blue-painted shack. She had fallen away, and had lost the unabashed sauciness that had once put pepper in her walk; she had surrounded herself with pictures of Catholic saints and African gods, her only company the stuffed puma.

When she saw that the prayers and the witchcraft and the herbalists' brews did not bring an end to her adversity, my
madrina
swore before the altar of the Virgin Mary never again to have carnal contact with a man, and to ensure that vow she had a midwife stitch up her vagina. The infection nearly killed her. She never knew whether she was saved by the hospital's antibiotics, the candles lighted to Santa Rita, or the medicinal teas she so faithfully imbibed. From that moment she could not do without rum and the witch doctors'
santería.
Life lost its meaning; often she did not recognize people she knew, and she roamed the city streets mumbling unintelligibly about a devil's spawn, a creature of two bloods born from her belly. She was totally mad, and could not earn a living because, in her disturbed state and with her photograph in the police files, no one would give her work. She disappeared for long stretches at a time, and I would fear she was dead, but when I least expected her, she would reappear haggard and wretched, her eyes bloodshot. She always brought a cord with seven knots in it to measure my skull, a surefire way, someone had told her, to verify whether I was still a virgin. That's your only treasure. As long as you're untouched, you're worth something, she would say; but when you lose it, you're nobody. I did not understand why the part of my body that was so sinful and forbidden could at the same time be so valuable.

She might let months go by without collecting my salary, then, pleading or threatening, suddenly show up to ask to borrow money. You are mistreating my little girl—she's stunted and skinny, and everyone tells me that the
patrón
can't keep his hands off her. That's not what I like to hear, they call that corruption of minors. Whenever she came to the house, I ran and hid in the coffin. Adamant, the spinster
would refuse to raise my wages and would tell my
madrina
that the next time she bothered her she would call the police. They know you, they know all about you. You should be grateful that I've taken the girl off your hands. If it weren't for me, she would be as dead as your two-headed baboon. The situation became intolerable, and finally one day the
patrona
lost her patience and fired me.

Leaving Elvira was very difficult. We had been together for more than three years; she had given me affection and I had filled her head with romantic stories. We had helped each other and shared our laughter. Sleeping in the same bed and playing funeral in the same coffin, we had formed an enduring friendship that protected us from loneliness and the harshness of a servant's life. Elvira swore never to forget me, and visited me when she could, somehow managing to find out where I was. She would show up like a kindly
abuela
, always with a bottle of guayaba syrup, or lollipops she had bought in the market. Our affection needed no words, and we would just sit and look at each other the way we used to before I was taken away. Elvira would ask me for a long story to last till the next visit. And so we saw each other for a time, until a twist of fate caused us to lose track of each other.

*  *  *

That was when I began moving from one house to another. My
madrina
was constantly seeking new employers, each time demanding more money—but no one was disposed to pay decent wages, considering that many girls my age asked for no salary at all, only their keep. I lost count of, and now cannot remember, all the places I worked, except a few that are impossible to forget, like the house of the lady of the
stone-hard
porcelana
, whose art served me well in later years in an unusual adventure.

This lady was a widow who had been born in Yugoslavia. She spoke a halting Spanish, but her cooking skills were inspired. She had discovered a recipe for a Universal Matter, as she modestly called her mixture of wet newspapers, unmilled flour, and dental cement, which she kneaded into a grayish dough that was malleable while moist but rock-hard when it dried. She could imitate any substance except the transparency of glass or the vitreous humor of the eye. She would mix up a batch, wrap it in a wet cloth, and keep it in her refrigerator until she needed it. It could be molded like clay or rolled as thin as silk, cut, given different textures, or folded in any way desired. Once it was dry and hard, she sealed it with varnish and then painted it to resemble wood, metal, cloth, fruit, marble, human skin—any substance she wanted. Her home was a showroom for the possibilities of this miraculous material: a Coromandel screen in the entry; four musketeers dressed in velvet and lace, swords unsheathed, presiding over the living room; an elephant decorated in the Indian manner serving as a telephone table; a Roman frieze at the head of her bed. One of the rooms had been transformed into a pharaoh's tomb: the doors were trimmed with mortuary bas-reliefs; the lamps were black panthers with light bulbs for eyes; the table imitated a burnished sarcophagus with incrustations of false lapis lazuli; and the ashtrays reproduced the serene and eternal form of the Sphinx, with a depression in the back for crushing out cigarettes. I would tiptoe through that museum terrified that I would break something with the feather duster, or that one of the figures would come to life and I would be wounded by a musketeer's sword, the elephant's tusk, or the panther's claws. That
was where my fascination with the culture of ancient Egypt was born, and my horror of bread dough. The Yugoslavian
patrona
sowed in my heart a lasting suspicion of inanimate objects, and ever since I must touch things to know whether they are what they seem, or Universal Matter. In the months I worked there, I became her apprentice, but I had the good fortune not to become addicted to her art.
Porcelana
is a dangerous temptation, because once its secrets are known, nothing stands in the way of the artist's copying everything imaginable, constructing a world of lies, and getting lost in it.

This
patrona
's nerves had been destroyed by the war. She was convinced that invisible enemies were spying on her and planned to harm her, and she built a high wall topped with glass shards all around her property, and kept two loaded pistols in her night table: This city is overrun with thieves and a poor widow must be ready to defend herself—the first intruder who dares enter my house will get a bullet right between the eyes. But the bullets were not to be reserved for robbers alone. The day this country falls into the hands of the Communists, Evita, I will kill you so you won't suffer at their hands, and then blow my own head off, she said. She treated me with kindness, even a certain tenderness. She worried that I did not eat enough; she bought me a good bed; and every afternoon she invited me into the living room to listen to the serials on the radio: “Let the sonorous pages of the airwaves open before you as we bring to life the emotion and romance of a new chapter of . . .” Sitting side by side, munching crackers between the musketeers and the elephant, we listened to three programs in a row—two love stories and one mystery. I was happy with this
patrona
, and had a sense of belonging somewhere. Perhaps the only drawback was that the house was located in an isolated neighbor
hood and it was difficult for Elvira to come and visit. Even so, she tried to come every time she had an afternoon off: I get weary of coming so far, little bird, but I'm more weary when I don't see you. Every day, I ask God to make you strong and to grant me good health to keep loving you, she told me.

I would have stayed there much longer; my
madrina
had no reason to complain—she was paid punctually and generously—but a strange incident ended my employment. One windy night about ten o'clock, we heard a prolonged rumbling, something like a drumroll. The widow forgot her pistols; trembling, she locked the shutters, refusing to look out to try to see the source of the racket. The next morning we found four dead cats in the garden, strangled, beheaded, or gutted, and curses scrawled in blood on the wall. I remembered having heard on the radio about similar incidents, attributed to gangs of boys who made a sport of such cruel antics, and I tried to convince the
señora
that there was no cause for alarm—but in vain. My Yugoslavian
patrona
, crazed with fear, was determined to escape the country before the Bolsheviks did to her what they had done to the cats.

*  *  *

“You're in luck,” my
madrina
announced. “I've got you a job in the house of a Cabinet Minister.”

The
patrón
turned out to be an insipid type, like most public figures in that time when political life was congealed and any hint of originality could lead to a cellar room where a man awaited with a flower in his buttonhole, reeking of French cologne. By name and fortune my new
patrón
was a member of the old aristocracy, which guaranteed a certain impunity for his vulgarity, but he had exceeded the bounds of acceptable behavior and even his family had repudiated
him. He was fired from his post in the Chancery when he was caught urinating behind the green brocade drapes of the Hall of Heraldry, and dismissed from an embassy for the same reason. That unpleasant habit, however unacceptable in diplomatic protocol, was no impediment to heading a Ministry. His greatest virtues were his capacity for fawning over the General and his talent for passing unnoticed—although years later his name became famous when he fled the country in a private plane and, in the tumult and haste of departure, left behind on the tarmac a suitcase filled with gold, which he did not miss in exile anyway. This paragon lived in a colonial mansion in the center of a shadowy park where ferns grew as large as octopuses and wild orchids clung to the trees. At night red dots glowed in the rank foliage, eyes of gnomes and other garden sprites, or bats swooping low from the rooftops. Divorced, without children or friends, the Minister lived alone in that enchanted place. The house he had inherited from his grandparents was much too large for him and his servants; many rooms were empty and under lock and key. My imagination took wing when I saw that corridor of locked doors; behind every one I thought I heard whispers, moans, laughter. At first I put my ear to the doors and peeked through the keyholes, but soon I found I did not have to do that to divine the universes hidden there, each with its own laws, time, and inhabitants, safe from the decay and contamination of the everyday world. I gave each room a name that recalled my mother's tales—Katmandu, Palace of the Bears, Merlin's Cave—and it took only the slightest effort of imagination to pass through the door and enter the extraordinary stories unfolding on the other side of the walls.