Conquistadora (19 page)

During the
zafra
, fifteen
macheteros
were hired to cut the cane, and a few other
campesinos
were added for the less skilled jobs like carrying, stacking, and carting the stalks. Ramón and Inocente had to agree that they needed to buy more slaves.

Severo Fuentes secured ten more, and by the time Ramón and Inocente tallied the expenses, they were showing another deficit. Had Ana not asked for specifics, they wouldn’t have shared the information, unwilling to let her know just how dire the situation was. She only learned that they’d borrowed money from don Eugenio when a letter arrived confirming a bank note from San Juan to a notary in Guares, who was in turn to deliver funds to Luis Morales. It appeared that the brothers had purchased more land with a loan from the neighbor.

“You didn’t tell me about this purchase,” Ana said, trying to keep the bitterness from her voice.

Ramón shrugged. “We couldn’t let it go.”

“Borrowing from your father or spending our own money are one thing. Getting into debt to a stranger is dangerous.”

“He’s not a stranger. He was our uncle’s good friend. Inocente and I know what we’re doing. Stop worrying.”

“We agreed that the three of us would work together. Now you’re keeping things from me—”

“This is men’s business, Ana. We don’t see the other women around here involved in men’s affairs.”

“What women?”

“The wives. If you made the effort to meet them, you’d learn that we’re not quite as isolated as you think. There are charming people around here.”

“I didn’t come here for amusement.”

“Having some fun might do you good. Doña Faustina is a lovely woman. She could be a good friend. You should have returned her visit and—”

“I can’t be chatting with the neighbors while the
trapiche
is falling
down and our product can’t get to market for want of cattle to haul the carts, and—”

“I’d like to have a conversation that doesn’t include complaints about what we don’t have,” Ramón shouted. “Take a moment to notice what we
have
accomplished.”

“I don’t believe you’re speaking to me this way.”

Ramón’s anger vanished. “Things are different in the middle of nowhere,” he said, as if he’d just discovered something about himself. He was going to say more but changed his mind. Without another word, he ran down the stairs.

Ana was confused and hurt. It was unlike Ramón to be rude or to raise his voice in anger, but it was obvious that he was disappointed in her. Yes, she’d disregarded her wifely roles of hostess and social consort to focus on the needs of the hacienda. In the process, she might have wounded Ramón’s (and Inocente’s) male pride by being a more capable manager than they were. They’d used her confinement and
cuarentena
to exclude her from the everyday operations of the hacienda. Now that she had a child, they wanted her to turn her attention to female pursuits, as if being a mother reduced her ambition and drive. No, Ramón, she said to herself, what we’re building here is not for our amusement; it is for him, and for future generations.

The end of the sugarcane harvest was the beginning of
el tiempo muerto
, the dead time, roughly June to December. With no cane to cut, load, transport, process, and ship, free
campesinos
had to find other work to keep themselves busy and to provide for their families. Those with friends or relatives on coffee or tobacco plantations migrated there for the season, but long distances, poor roads, and cost made travel impractical for most. The peasants waited until the harvest came around again, buying on credit whatever they couldn’t grow, trade, or barter, so by the time the
zafra
came with its promise of work, they were already deep in debt.

To feed themselves and their families,
jíbaros
tended meager plots and coaxed plantains and yuca, malangas and
ñames
from the soil. They fished oceans and rivers. They kept hens until they laid no more eggs, then sacrificed them into
asopaos de gallina
or fricassees. They raised goats for milk and herded them to brambled hillsides, where the animals’ omnivorous appetites soon reduced the slopes to stubble in preparation for tilling. When they outlived their usefulness, or when the dead time seemed to stretch longer than in other years, the goats, too, became fricassee or stews that fed a neighborhood.

For slaves, however, there was no dead time. They were too expensive an investment to be idle during the months when no cane was cut. Their days during
el tiempo muerto
began as they always did, at dawn, with the mournful clang of the watchtower bell. Their barracks were locked overnight and were opened by the foremen at the first strike. The slaves hopped from their pallets or hammocks and lined up, men on one side, women on the other, and after a quick
cup of water and a chunk of boiled
batata
, they were given their tools and led to their labors until the bell clanged the return home.

During the dead time, slaves cleared land, prepared soil, planted cane shoots for the crop that took between a year and eighteen months to mature. The long-horned bulls that pulled carts loaded with four-foot stalks during the harvest now hauled trees felled in the forests and dragged to the workshop to be cut into lumber or to the
ingenio
for the fires under the
calderas
. Slaves cleaned and improved the buildings where the cane was processed, repaired machinery, maintained the tracks from the canebrakes to the
batey
, raised the berms between fields, built and cleared ditches. They staked new fences and mended deteriorated ones, dug trenches for drainage, built canals for irrigation.

Between harvests, the
ingenio
was scrubbed and repaired. This was where the cane was crushed, its juice boiled, purified, and filtered, where the resulting crystals were pressed and formed into bricks or where pure molasses was poured into barrels. Slaves cleaned and repaired the
calderas
and
pailas
, enormous graduated copper vessels where the syrup was boiled and refined. Slaves pointed the brickwork around and under the kettles, where the fires were built and stoked.

On Hacienda los Gemelos, Ana’s gardens and orchards yielded fresh fruits and vegetables, and these had to be planted, weeded, pruned, and harvested, mostly by old women and children. Horses, mules, pigs, goats, milk cows, bulls, chickens, ducks, guinea fowls, and doves had to be tended, usually by young girls. The stables, sties, mangers, and coops had to be built, repaired, and cleaned, their animals fed, and those used in the fields trained and exercised.

The dead time, for the slaves, was as arduous as the
zafra
, with the added burden of the bone-rattling thunder, sizzling lightning, and sudden downpours of hurricane season that made outdoor labor hazardous. Rain or shine, dead time or
zafra
, the slaves fulfilled their duties under the watchful foremen and supervisors who were either white men or light-skinned mulattos with short tempers and quick hands. Locked in for the night in windowless
cuarteles
, the slaves led an existence defined by the demands of others, the needs of others, the caprice of others, and by the insistent throaty call of the watchtower bell.

Ana often rode from one end of Los Gemelos to the other to find out what Ramón and Inocente were doing with the land now that they didn’t include her in hacienda business. Over the last few days, she’d noticed workers heading southwest behind the pastures, so she went in that direction. The June morning air was moist following rain showers, and she breathed in the smell of wet earth and mango. The fruit was reaching its peak in this particular corner of the hacienda.

She came upon a team of workers clearing brush and stones in the woods. Severo Fuentes, who was inspecting a new irrigation trench along the fields opposite, rode up as soon as he saw her, and they talked without dismounting.

“This section seems to be coming along.” She looked over the immature but healthy canebrake.

“Yes, it should be ready for the next harvest.”

She turned her gaze toward the workers across the path. “Preparing new fields?” she asked, as if confirming the plan.

“Yes, don Ramón and don Inocente want five more
cuerdas
here, and another ten on the northern boundary.”

“Fifteen more
cuerdas
, with the same number of workers,” she said, unable to keep the disapproval from her tone.

“They’re hoping for a greater yield and more profit.”

“But you don’t agree with this plan.”

There was a pause. “I give my opinion,
señora
, but they’re the
patrones
.”

She rode a few feet to the shade of an avocado tree. Three women were bent over the stubbled ground, pulling roots and weeds in the sections where two men with machetes had cut down saplings.

“Isn’t it harder to find workers now? I read that the Spanish Cortes enacted a law—”

“Yes, the Law of the Abolition and Repression of Slavery,” Severo said. He made a sound halfway between a chuckle and a harrumph. “They keep writing laws in Madrid to keep the liberals happy, but there are many loopholes. The Crown makes too much money on taxes from sugar to allow the industry to collapse.”

“I hope you’re right,” Ana said.

Another of the workers, Jacobo, dug around an enormous rock and realized it was too heavy to carry, so he rolled it to the side of the
field where a stone fence was being erected. A few feet away, four children collected small stones and dropped them into large cans.

“Don’t worry,
señora
. I’m always on the lookout for more workers.”

“Thank you.”

Three older boys carried the cans full of stones and emptied them along the edge of the road. She mentally counted: six adults and seven children needed to clear a rocky, wooded five-
cuerda
parcel.

“If there’s anything else you need …”

“I do enjoy the books and newspapers you bring. I like to be informed.”

“I understand,
señora
. Happy to oblige.” He lifted his hat, and she saw his eyes. They were usually shadowed by his brim during the day, and when he came to the
casona
in the evening, she could hardly see them by candlelight. Now she saw how green his irises were, deep as a forest.

“I appreciate it, Severo.
Buenos días
.”

She rode toward the
batey
, resisting the urge to see if he was watching her go. Her old mare didn’t like to move faster than necessary, but Ana astonished her by spurring her into a gallop. The pounding hooves, the heated air filling her lungs, the sweet, fruity aroma as she rode past the mango tree. This was joy.

“Looks like you had a good ride.”

For a moment, she wasn’t sure whether it was Ramón or Inocente standing outside the barn. The first few months after they arrived at Hacienda los Gemelos, they’d grown muscular and radiated the exuberance of young men who loved the outdoors and their own strong bodies. But in the last year, and especially after Miguel was born, both Ramón and Inocente had become strangely haggard. Inocente’s face, particularly, was deeply lined, his lips had thinned, and he always looked like he didn’t get enough sleep. She knew the brothers were working harder than ever. They were in the fields all day long, and without her to help them, they often worked into the night at the finca, preparing the reports demanded by the municipal government, tax authorities, and customs officials. She seethed with anger when she imagined what her meticulous books and ledgers might look like now that they had taken them from her.

“I did have a lovely ride.” He made no effort to help her dismount. The brothers knew she was capable but had always been gentlemen. That, too, had changed in the last few months.

“I need a moment with you,” he said.

“Let’s sit in the shade, then.” She waited until he remembered to offer his elbow as they walked around the pond, toward a stump under another mango tree. Unlike the ones she’d just passed, this one, according to the workers who’d lived on the hacienda for years, had never given fruit. Almost the minute Ana and Inocente sat under its shade, he stood and paced.

“Hacienda los Gemelos has been an extraordinary adventure,” he said, “and Ramón and I are grateful to you. If you hadn’t urged us, we’d be cooped up in offices in Cádiz. In less than two years you’ve created a home for us and have added to our family.”

He was so formal, so solemn. Ana sat rigid, steeling her nerves. Whatever he was about to say, she thought, couldn’t be good news.

“It’s time that I have my own household, Ana. I’m going to San Juan to marry Elena.”

Once she grasped what he’d said, and what it meant, she breathed easier. “I’m so happy to hear that.” She let his words sink in, then asked, “Will you come back here, or do you plan to live in San Juan?”

“We will settle on the
finca
. It’s small but comfortable enough until we can build. We should be back before the
zafra
.”