Conquistadora (38 page)

The Fernández Leales were a family of means when they first arrived in Puerto Rico, but their fortune was swiftly lost by the dissolute habits of its patriarch, murdered over a gaming table. Upon his father’s death, Simón abandoned his medical studies in Madrid and turned his home into a school to support himself and his ailing mother.

He was pleased to have Miguel as his student because it gave him an opportunity to see Elena every day, at least until the boy was allowed to walk to and from school by himself. Being near her was one of the few pleasures in his lonely and unhappy life. Besides his pupils and his mother, his society consisted of other young men of high minds who congregated in the back room of don Benito’s drugstore for hours of political discussions. Night after night they argued and wrote broadsheets calling for the emancipation of slaves and greater autonomy for Puerto Rico that they read to one another because it was illegal to post them for public viewing. The struggles for independence by Haiti from France, Santo Domingo from Spain, and, in 1844, Santo Domingo from Haiti to create the Dominican Republic had made Puerto Rican liberals determined to free Puerto Rico’s slaves without the bloodshed and civil war that had devastated Hispaniola and forced thousands of people to flee with their assets.

When he first appeared at the druggist’s, Simón worried that the discussions were seditious, the rumblings of island-born men who, like him, had nothing but their intellect to make them feel superior to the
españoles
who ruled over them. He soon learned there were people at the highest levels of society who shared the same views, even if the official position was more conservative.

His poverty, somewhat relieved during the school year by the modest dues he charged, made it impossible for Simón to frequent the salons modeled on the ones he’d haunted in Madrid. Elena’s refinement, her serenity, her fair complexion and melodious voice were what he’d sought in the woman he would have married had his father not squandered his inheritance.

The first time he saw her, she was walking across the plaza with doña Leonor. On that day, she wore a yellow dress and a straw bonnet that shaded her face. A green ribbon banded the crown, with a length that dangled behind her, playing in the breeze. When he passed the two ladies, he saw her face, the serious eyes, and the V-shaped lips that seemed to smile at him, although he knew that was impossible. They hadn’t formally met and wouldn’t be introduced for another year, by don Eugenio, when the whole family was in mourning. He saw her subsequently at church, at holy day festivities, or in the audience when the military orchestra performed in the plaza.

Elena was his muse, the first person he thought about upon waking, the last face he envisioned before sleep. Knowing that he’d see her again gave him something to look forward to every day.

Some nights the discussions in don Benito’s drugstore didn’t offer anything new, or he didn’t have the few coins it took to pay for the homemade
aguardiente
the druggist dispensed. Simón walked the city then, from the slippery alleys around the docks where sailors and prostitutes drank and dickered, to the fragrant park around the governor’s mansion, to the iron gates of Fort San Cristóbal, to the seawall beaten by relentless waves. Regardless of where his peregrinations took him, they always ended in front of Colonel Eugenio Argoso Marín’s house with its tiled threshold and massive double doors. Upstairs and to the right of that door were Elena’s window and the tremulous light of her candle bleeding through the seams of drawn curtains.

Many nights, while he waited in the shadows for her to blow out her candle, he heard don Eugenio and doña Leonor returning from some amusement whose delights were evoked by the rustle of her dress or by the clicking of his heels on the cobblestones. Simón backed into a doorway and watched them enter their home, Eugenio’s hand on her elbow as the fringe of her shawl hushed the night. They’d been married so long that they moved as one, and Simón envied their closeness, the familiar way she turned as he helped her up the steps.

The streets of San Juan seemed more dismal on the way home, his loneliness greater. He entered the silent house and tiptoed past his mother’s door, which she left ajar so that she could hear him come
in. Sleep always overcame her. Her snores and dreamed conversations punctuated his light step as he walked down the hall to his own room, where he composed love poems to Elena.

Every night, after Miguel said his prayers, Elena read to him from the book of heroes and monsters. “It’s poetry,” she said, “written a long time ago.”

“I like it better than the poems don Simón reads to us.” Miguel made a face.

“What kind of poems?”

“About ladies and birds and flowers.”

“Don Simón likes the romantic poets,” she said, coloring.

Miguel stared at her. When she looked at him, he averted his gaze. “Is something bothering you?”

“No,” he said, but after a moment, he worked up his courage. “Yes.”

“What is it,
mi amor
?”

“If Abuelo gave don Simón some money, would he marry you?”

“Miguel, what kind of question is that?”

“The boys in school say that don Simón is in love with you, but that he can’t marry you because he’s poor. But if Abuelo gave him some money …”

She didn’t know what to say. No beautiful woman was ever completely ignorant of her beauty or of a man’s affection. If she denied that Simón loved her, she’d be lying. She wasn’t above flirting with him, but she wasn’t in love with him.

It touched her that Miguel knew that a young woman ought to be married. On the other hand, she had to put a stop to gossip.

“Miguel,
querido
,” she said. “These matters are inappropriate for boys to discuss in the street or the school yard. It’s disrespectful to don Simón, to me, and to you, too. They’re private, adult concerns. Don’t trouble yourself with them. Promise me you will not discuss this with anyone else.”

“I promise,” he said.

She pushed his hair back, tucked the sheets around his shoulders. “You can talk to me about anything, Miguel, you know that.”

“Sí.”

“But sometimes I will not be able to explain everything you ask.” She smiled as if guarding a secret. “As you grow up you’ll begin to see things differently.”

He nodded. As usual before she left the room, Elena kissed his forehead and snuffed out the candle on his bed table. He was left in the dark, wishing he were already a man and could answer his own questions.

Siña Ciriaca unbuttoned Elena’s black dress. Beneath it, her undergarments were dyed black as well. Siña Ciriaca helped her step out of her three petticoats, then unfastened and helped her remove the corset until Elena wore only her chemise, stockings, and indoor slippers. She stepped behind the screen to change into her nightclothes. Her white nightgown and robe were cooler than her daywear, but even these were trimmed with black ribbons along the neckline and wrists.

Siña Ciriaca made sure that there was enough water in the pitcher and a glass by the bedside, and that there were extra candles for the sconces because she knew that Elena often stayed up into the early hours.
“Buenas noches, señorita,”
she said, closing the door.

Elena unfastened her hair, which was twisted and confined all day in tortoiseshell pins capped with a small ebony comb. She bent over and brushed her chestnut waves back to front, then side to side, then front to back, and finished with a braid over her left shoulder. The water in the basin was cool, and she inhaled the sharp scent of the lemon slices floating on the surface. She washed her face, her neck, behind her ears and patted them dry with a linen towel. From her top drawer, she withdrew the velvet pouch. Ana’s pearl necklace and earrings slid onto her palm, light but substantial, warm, glimmering from within. She put them on reverentially, each movement a prayer. She smiled into the mirror, admiring her smooth neck adorned with pearls, the twinkling diamonds on her earlobes. She’d been in mourning for five years, but every night of those 1,825 days she put on Ana’s pearls and diamonds and gazed into her own beautiful reflection.

A month earlier, she’d observed her twenty-third birthday with no husband, without her own household or a nursery buzzing with children. Over the years, don Eugenio had brought eligible young
men for her to meet. They made overtures and looked for her to show some sign of interest, but she responded with polite formality. Several tried to convince her to love them, but others, like don Simón, withdrew into distant worship. A beautiful young woman who did nothing to make a man fall in love with her was saintly, and Elena, La Madona, was admired for her restraint and self-possession. She knew she was a romantic figure. The death of her fiancé created an aura of tragedy around her that she did nothing to discourage.

Had Inocente lived, she would have married him, even though she felt toward him like a sister. She’d added to the trousseau folded inside the cedar bridal chest that doña Leonor gave her for her fifteenth birthday. The white linen napkins were edged with fine crochet, fashioned with pineapple motifs. Each pillowcase and hand towel was embroidered with an
A
for her and Inocente’s last names, Argoso and Alegría. She had two fine cotton nightgowns, the collars and cuffs trimmed with lace. She’d filled the chest with bedclothes, linen, hopes, and prayers. After Inocente’s death, she locked it.

She’d probably never marry. She’d be the devoted daughter the Argosos didn’t have, the only one left to take care of them in their last years. They’d been generous, had educated her and provided her a comfortable life. What could a man give her that she didn’t have? Well, her own child. But now she had Miguel, and she loved him as if he’d come from her womb. Sometimes an expression or a gesture recalled Ramón and Inocente, but mostly it was Ana she saw in him. She couldn’t have Ana, but she had Miguel safe and secure nearby.

She smiled into her mirror again, and happiness flushed her cheeks and brightened her eyes. Every time she confessed, she admitted to vanity and to the pleasure she derived from her own image.

She dropped a black shawl over her shoulders and walked down the hall to the narrow stairs to the roof. The Argosos were at the novena for a neighbor, and the rhythmic prayers of the mourners rose from the courtyard three doors down the street. A slivered moon hung in a velvet sky dotted with diamonds. She listened to the city murmur and sing, talk, pray, and cry as the surf crashed against the rocky shore. From the roof, San Juan harbor was a darkness as deep and vast as the sky above. Lights on docked ships twinkled orange and yellow, the only way to distinguish the shore from the thick vegetation rising into the mountains that cut across the island like
a spine. What would Ana be doing right now in that humble house surrounded by cane in the middle of nowhere? Almost every night Elena stood on this roof and faced southwest, sending her thoughts toward Hacienda los Gemelos, as if they could reach her lover.

She said her prayers under the sparkling heaven. The humming city was alive, its sounds a lullaby. When she heard familiar footfalls coming down the street, she hurried to her bedroom. The sound stopped below her window. Two years ago, she’d extinguished her candle and peeked through a chink in the shutters. Simón’s slight figure crept down the street, his hands in his pockets, his shoulders hunched as if she’d rejected him. But he didn’t declare himself, and she was certain that he wouldn’t. He loved her like the troubadours of olden days, for whom sighs and poetry and repressed emotion were enough.

She put away Ana’s jewelry, then blew out her candle. A few minutes later she heard Simón walk away. Before she fell asleep, she roamed her lovely body, remembering other fingers, other tongues, reveling in the violent release.

Two years, it seemed to Severo Fuentes, was an appropriate mourning period before a widow could receive the attentions of a suitor. Even though he wasn’t as highborn or as well educated as Ana, he was the only unmarried, rich white man within a day’s ride remotely appropriate for a
señora de buena familia
. Not that there was any competition for her hand. No one came to Hacienda los Gemelos without some legitimate business.

Ramón and Inocente had excused Ana’s reticence by telling the neighbors that she was an aristocratic lady from Sevilla who was used to greater comforts and embarrassed that they now lived so humbly. The visits after the two brothers’ deaths gave the
vecinos
enough information to keep them curious and interested about Ana, but Severo made sure that no one came to the hacienda unannounced. Only Padre Xavier and occasional traveling salesmen dared ride into the Los Gemelos
batey
with no warning, except for the lieutenant and his men, which always meant bad news.

It impressed Severo that Ana didn’t mind her isolation. She welcomed it. She had no interest in local gossip, no curiosity about how her neighbors lived, didn’t require the stimulation of the closest town nor the attentions of women of her own class. She still walked with the entitled air of an aristocrat, but she’d discarded most of the conventions of the well-bred
señorita
. The parasols she’d brought from Spain were swaddled in waxed canvas and stored in the shed where she also kept a chest with silk dresses, lace mantillas, gloves, kid shoes, fine silk fans, and fringed shawls. Forgoing the black curls that once framed her small face, she now pulled her hair back into a severe bun at the nape of her neck held with a plain tortoiseshell
peineta
. By the end of the day, loose strands fluttered along her neck. Severo had heard Leonor complaining to Elena that it was indecent for a woman to be seen without a corset, regardless of how far she lived from civilization. But Severo liked Ana’s softer silhouette, compact and girlish.