Eva Luna (8 page)

*  *  *

The
patrona
ordered Elvira to bathe me with disinfectant soap and burn all my clothing. She did not shave my head, as they did to servant girls in those days to get rid of lice, because her brother kept her from it. The man with the strawberry nose spoke gently; he smiled often, and was always pleasant to me even when he was drunk. He took pity on my misery at the sight of the scissors and rescued the long hair my mother had kept so well brushed. It is strange that I cannot remember his name. . . . In that house I wore a dress the
doña
had sewed on her sewing machine, and went barefoot. After the month's trial had passed, she explained I had to work harder because now I was earning wages. I never saw them; my
madrina
collected the money every two weeks. At first I anxiously awaited her visits and, the minute she appeared, clung to her skirt and begged her to take me with her, but slowly I got used to the new house. I looked to Elvira for help and made friends with the cats and the parrot. When the
patrona
washed out my mouth with baking soda to cure my habit of muttering to myself, I stopped talking aloud with my mother, but continued doing it in secret. There was a lot to be done; in spite of the broom and the scrub brush, the house looked like a cursed caravel run aground on a reef; there was no end to cleaning that shapeless florescence that
crept along all the walls. The food was not varied or abundant, but Elvira hid the master's leftovers and gave them to me for breakfast because she had heard on the radio that it was good to begin the day with something on your stomach: So it will go to your brain, little bird, she used to say, and you will grow up to be smart. No detail escaped the spinster: today I want you to scrub the patios with Lysol; remember to iron the napkins, and be careful not to scorch them; clean the windows with newspaper and vinegar, and when you get through I will show you how to polish the master's shoes. I never hurried to obey, because I soon discovered that if I was careful I could dawdle and get through the day without doing much of anything. The
doña
of the locket began issuing instructions the minute she arose; she was up at the crack of dawn, dressed in her strict mourning, locket in place and hair intricately combed, but she would get confused about what orders she had given and it was easy to fool her. The
patrón
showed very little interest in domestic affairs; he lived for his horse races, studying bloodlines, calculating the law of probabilities, and drinking to console himself when he lost his bets. There were times his nose turned the color of an eggplant, and then he would call me to help him get into bed and to hide the empty bottles. The maid wanted nothing to do with anyone, least of all me. Only Elvira paid any attention to me, making me eat, teaching me how to do domestic chores, relieving me of the heaviest tasks. We spent hours talking and telling each other stories. It was about that time that some of her eccentricities began to surface, like her irrational hatred of blond foreigners, and her horror of cockroaches, which she battled with every weapon in reach, from quicklime to broom. On the other hand, she said nothing when she discovered that I was feeding the mice and guard
ing their babies so the cats could not eat them. She feared a pauper's death, that her bones would be tossed into a common grave, and to avoid posthumous humiliation she had bought a coffin on credit, which she kept in her room and used as a catchall for odds and ends. It was a box of ordinary wood, smelling of carpenter's glue, lined in white satin, and trimmed with blue ribbons she had taken from a small pillow. From time to time I was given the privilege of lying inside and closing the lid, while Elvira feigned inconsolable grief and between sobs recited my nonexistent virtues: “Oh, Most Heavenly Father, why have You taken my little bird from me? Such a good girl, so clean, so tidy—I love her more than if she was my own granddaughter. Oh, Lord, work one of Your miracles and return her to me.” The game would last until we both burst out laughing, or till the maid lost control and began to howl.

All the days were exactly the same except Thursday, whose approach I calculated on the kitchen calendar. All week I looked forward to the moment we would walk through the garden gate and set off to market. Elvira would help me put on my rubber-soled shoes and my clean dress, and comb my hair into a ponytail; then she would give me a centavo to buy a brilliantly colored round lollipop, almost impervious to the human tooth, that I could lick for hours without noticeably reducing its size. That treat lasted for six or seven nights of intense bliss and many giddy licks between difficult chores. The
patrona
always took the lead, clutching her handbag: keep your eyes peeled, pay attention, stay right beside me, the place is alive with pickpockets. She marched through the market briskly, looking, squeezing, bargaining: these prices are a scandal; jail is the only place for moneygrubbers like these. I walked behind the maid with a bag in
each hand and my lollipop in my pocket. I used to watch people, trying to guess their lives and secrets, their virtues and adventures. I always returned home with shining eyes and a joyful heart. I would run to the kitchen, and while I helped Elvira put things away I besieged her with stories of enchanted carrots and peppers that turned into princes and princesses when they fell into the pot and jumped out of it with sprigs of parsley tangled in their crowns and broth streaming from their royal garments.

“Sh-h-h! The
doña
is coming. Grab the broom, little bird.”

During the siesta, the hour when quiet reigned in the house, I used to abandon my tasks and go to the dining room. A large painting in a gilded frame hung there, a window open onto a marine horizon: waves, rocks, hazy sky, and sea gulls. I would stand there with my hands behind my back, my eyes fixed on that irresistible seascape, lost in never-ending voyages and sirens and dolphins and manta rays that sometimes leapt from my mother's fantasies and other times from Professor Jones's books. Among the countless stories my mother had told me, I always preferred those in which the sea played some part; afterward I would dream of distant islands, vast underwater cities, oceanic highways for fish navigations. We must have a sailor ancestor, my mother said every time I asked for another of those stories, and thus was born the legend of the Dutch grandfather. In the presence of that painting, I recaptured those earlier emotions, either when I stood close enough to hear it speak or when I watched it while I was doing my household chores; each time I could smell a faint odor of sails, lye, and starch.

“What are you doing here!” the
patrona
would scold if
she discovered me. “Don't you have anything to do? We don't keep that painting here for your sake.”

From what she said, I believed that paintings wear away, that the color seeps into the eyes of the person beholding them, until gradually they fade and vanish.

“No, child. Where did you get such a silly notion? They don't wear away. Come here, give me a kiss on my nose and I'll let you look at the sea. Give me another and I'll give you a centavo. But don't tell my sister, she doesn't understand. Does my nose disgust you?” And the
patrón
and I would hide behind the ferns for that clandestine caress.

I had been told to sleep in a hammock in the kitchen, but after everybody was in bed I would steal in the servants' room and slip into the bed shared by the maid and the cook, one sleeping with her head toward the top and the other with her head toward the foot. I would curl up beside Elvira and offer to tell her a story if she would let me stay.

“All right. Tell me the one about the man who lost his head over love.”

“I forgot that one, but I remember one about some animals.”

“There must have been a lot of sap in your mother's womb to give you such a mind for telling stories, little bird.”

*  *  *

I remember very well, it was a rainy day; there was a strange odor of rotted melons and cat piss on the hot breath blowing from the street; the odor filled the house, so strong you could feel it on your fingertips. I was in the dining room on one of my sea voyages. I did not hear the
patrona
's footsteps, and when I felt her claws on my neck, the surprise jerked me
back from a great distance, leaving me petrified in the uncertainty of not knowing where I was.

“You here again? Go do your work! What do you think I pay you for?”

“I finished everything,
doña . . .
”

The
patrona
picked up a large vase from the sideboard and turned it upside down, dashing stinking water and wilted flowers to the floor.

“Clean it up!” she ordered.

The sea disappeared, the fogbound rocks, the red tresses woven through my nostalgia, the dining-room furniture—all I saw were those flowers on the tiles, growing, writhing, taking on a life of their own, and that woman with her tower of curls and locketed throat. A monumental
“No!”
swelled inside me, choking me; I heard it burst forth in a scream that came from my toes, and watched it explode against the
patrona
's powdered face. When she slapped me I felt no pain, because long before she touched me I felt only rage, an urge to leap upon her, drag her to the floor, claw her face, grab her hair, and pull with all my might. But the bun yielded, the curls crumbled, the topknot came loose, and that entire mass of brittle hair lay in my hands like a dying fox. Horrified, I realized that I had snatched the
doña
bald-headed. I bolted from the room, ran through the house and the garden, and rushed into the street without any sense of where I was going. After a few minutes the warm summer rain had soaked me through, and fear and wetness brought me to a halt. The shaggy trophy was still in my hands; I flung it to the edge of the sidewalk, where it was carried off with other debris in the drainage ditch. I stood for several minutes observing the shipwrecked curls swirling sadly away, and once they were out of sight I began to walk aimlessly, convinced
I had come to the end of my road, sure there was no place I could hide after the crime I had just committed. I left familiar streets, passed the site of the Thursday market, continued through the residential zone of houses shuttered for the siesta, and walked on and on like a sleepwalker. The rain had stopped and the late afternoon sun was evaporating moisture from the wet asphalt, swathing the world in a sticky veil. People, traffic, noise—a lot of noise: construction sites with gigantic, roaring yellow machines, ringing steel, screeching brakes, horns, the cries of street vendors. A vague odor of swamp and fried food drifted from the cafés, and I remembered that I usually had something to eat at this hour. I was hungry, but I had no money, and in my flight I had left behind the remnants of my weekly lollipop. I reckoned that I had been walking in circles for several hours. I was awestruck. In those days the city was not the hopeless disaster it is now, but it was already growing—shapelessly, like a malignant tumor, assailed by lunatic architecture in an unholy mixture of styles: Italian marble palaces, Texas ranch houses, Tudor mansions, steel skyscrapers, residences in the form of ships, mausoleums, Japanese teahouses, Swiss chalets, and wedding cakes with plaster icing. I was in shock.

Toward evening, I came to a plaza bordered with ceibas, solemn trees that had stood guard over that place since the War of Independence; in the center was a bronze equestrian statue of the Father of the Nation, a flag in one hand and reins in the other, humiliated by the irreverence of pigeon shit and the disillusion of history. In one corner of the square, surrounded by curious onlookers, I saw a white-clad
campesino
in a straw sombrero and sandals. I walked closer to watch. He was reciting in a singsong voice, and for a few coins, in response to the individual client, he would change
his theme but continue to improvise verses without pause or hesitation. Under my breath I tried imitating him, and discovered how much easier it is to remember stories when you rhyme—the story dances to its own music. I stood listening until the man picked up his coins and went away. For a while I amused myself by searching for words that sounded the same: what a good way to remember; now I would be able to tell Elvira the same story twice. The minute I thought of Elvira, I could almost smell the odor of fried onion; I felt a cold chill down my back as I realized the truth of my predicament. Again I saw my
patrona
's curls rippling down the drainage ditch like a dead cat, and the prophecies my
madrina
had so often repeated rang in my ears: Bad, bad girl. You'll end up in jail, that's how it begins. You don't mind, and then you act smart—and you end up behind bars. Listen to what I'm telling you, that's how it's going to be. I sat down on the edge of a fountain to look at the goldfish and at the water lilies drooping from the heat.

“What's the matter?” It was a dark-eyed boy wearing khaki pants and a shirt much too large for him.

“I'm going to be arrested.”

“How old are you?”

“Nine, more or less.”

“Then you have no right to be in jail. You're a minor.”

“But I scalped my
patrona.
”

“How?”

“With one jerk.”

He sat down beside me, watching me out of the corner of his eye and digging the dirt from beneath his fingernails with a penknife.

“My name is Huberto Naranjo. What's yours?”

“Eva Luna. Would you be my friend?”

“I don't hang around with women.” But he stayed, and until it got late we were showing each other our scars, sharing secrets, getting to know each other, and beginning a long relationship that would lead us along the paths of friendship and love.

From the moment he could look after himself, Huberto Naranjo had lived in the street, first shining shoes and selling newspapers and then scratching a living through hustling and petty thievery. He had a natural gift for conning the gullible, and I was given immediate proof of his talent there at the plaza fountain. He began a spiel to catch the attention of passersby, and soon had gathered a small crowd of clerks, old men, poets, and a few
guardia
stationed there to be sure that everyone walking past the equestrian statue showed the proper respect. His challenge was to see who could grab a fish from the fountain; it meant plunging your upper body into the water, rooting around among the aquatic plants, and blindly feeling along the slimy bottom. Huberto had cut the tail of one fish, and the poor creature could only swim in a circle like a top or lie motionless beneath a lily pad, where Huberto knew to fish him out with one swoop. As he triumphantly hoisted his catch, the losers paid up—with both shirt-sleeves and dignity considerably dampened. Another way of earning a few coins consisted of betting on finding the pea beneath one shell of the three he moved rapidly across a piece of cloth unfolded on the ground. He could slip off a stroller's watch in less than two seconds, and in the same amount of time make it vanish in thin air. Some years later, dressed like a cross between a cowboy and a Mexican charro, he would sell everything from stolen screwdrivers to shirts bought in factory closeouts. At sixteen he would be the leader of a street gang, feared and respected; he would
own several carts selling roasted peanuts, sausages, and sugarcane juice; he would be the hero of the whores in the red-light district, and the nightmare of the
guardia
, until other concerns took him off to the mountains. But that came much later. When I first met him, he was still a boy, but if I had observed him more carefully I might have seen a sign of the man he would become; even then he had ready fists and fire in his heart. If you want to get ahead, you have to be macho, Huberto Naranjo used to say. It was his crutch, based on male attributes that were no different from those of other boys, but that he put to the test, measuring his penis with a ruler or demonstrating how far he could urinate. I learned that much later, when he himself scoffed at such standards—after someone told him that size is not irrefutable proof of virility. Nevertheless, his ideas about manhood were deeply rooted from childhood, and the things that happened to him later, all the battles and passions, all the encounters and arguments, all the rebellions and defeats, were not enough to change his mind.