Conquistadora (39 page)

Doña Leonor berated Ana for only occasionally wearing a hat outdoors, and for rolling up her sleeves and exposing her arms and hands to the sun.

“I have work to do,” Ana answered. “I don’t think about my appearance as much as I worry about what needs to get done by the end of each day.”

Leonor was offended by Ana’s response, and later told Elena that Ana worked harder than usual when they were there because she didn’t want to spend time with them.

There was some truth to that, Severo thought. Ana shared little with her mother-in-law and Elena. The years on the plantation had hardened her, although no one would mistake her for a
campesina
. She was still imperious when necessary and spoke the refined Castilian of her convent education, but compared with the proper Leonor and the ethereal Elena, she’d lost polish in her years at Los Gemelos. Six years ago, when he heard the voice that told him she’d be his wife, Severo couldn’t have so much as looked at a woman like Ana was then. But he’d risen in status, and she seemed determined to descend from hers. It was only natural that they should be reaching toward each other.

Ana was on her new rocking chair, built by José, lower and with a narrower, shallower seat than one for an average-size woman so that her feet reached the ground, her spine rested comfortably against the slats, and the carved armrests and back were like a protective embrace. The late afternoon was uncharacteristically quiet as she waited for Severo Fuentes.

She had an idea what was on his mind, had felt his gaze as she moved through her days. She admired his restraint, appreciated his devotion, and wasn’t averse to his attentions, but the most she admitted to herself about him was that she respected and trusted him. On the other hand, he did have a sixth sense about what she
needed, whether for the plantation or her person. She also liked that he was clean, fastidious even, in his habits. He wasn’t well educated but made up for it through prodigious reading. Admiration of those qualities, however commendable, still didn’t add up to love.

She was twenty-five and had known physical passion from the time she was sixteen. She’d lost her self-consciousness about sex with Elena, and knew how good it felt but also how quickly the feelings dissipated. She dreaded male sexual attention like Ramón’s and Inocente’s, the violence of it, the deathlike languor afterward. In spite of that, she had wondered, more than once, what it would be like to be held by Severo Fuentes, whose powerful, compact body was so different from those of her long-limbed husbands.

Beyond longing, beyond the fantasies of coupling with Severo, beyond the flattering attention of a man in love with her, there was the question of who he was and who she was. In Spain, Severo wouldn’t be admitted into the servant’s quarters of the house in Plaza de Pilatos, let alone into her bed. For him to propose marriage to her would be an act of impressive confidence and courage, but it would put her in an awkward position. Severo was a Spaniard, and regardless of his former or current social standing, he lived by the male strict code of the
español
—pride and honor above all. If she refused him, Severo might be offended by her rejection of his proposal and the humiliation would drive him from Los Gemelos.

Some weeks earlier Ana had written to Eugenio. She’d become aware of Severo Fuentes’s attachment to her, she wrote, and was convinced that it was sincere. While no one could ever take the place of Ramón in her heart, she was disposed to accept Severo’s proposal if and when he spoke his intentions, but only if don Eugenio had no objections. She didn’t expect such a swift response with his blessing, but he had predicted this might happen. He might also be glad to dispense with her five-hundred-peso allowance as his son’s widow.

The evening Angelus bell tolled as Severo came up the stairs, slowly, as if not to appear too eager. He’d trimmed his hair, shaved, bathed in water that still gave off a slight, spicy scent of bay rum and cinnamon. He was dressed in dark brown pants and jacket, a double-breasted vest of paisley cloth, a crisp white shirt, and a carefully knotted cravat. It was an outfit she’d never seen him wear, clothes that must have been fashioned in Europe because no one in
the
campo
could tailor a man’s suit that fit so wonderfully. He noticed her appraisal and his cheeks flamed. The color spread to his forehead and to the tips of his ears, newly exposed by the haircut. To give him time to recover, she looked into the
batey
. It was empty except for industrious hens and chicks pecking at the brownish red ground. He’d ordered the workers to the other side of the
batey
so that, should she refuse him, there would be no witnesses to his humiliation. This impressed her. He didn’t forget even the smallest details.

“Please sit down,” she said sweetly to let him know he had nothing to fear.

“
Señora
, over the last six years I have been your most devoted servant. In Spain our backgrounds and lives would have made it unlikely for us to know each other. But we are in a place where anything is possible. I dare to speak today as a simple man most sincerely and irrevocably in love with you. In your precious fingers I place my heart, my self, my goods, and my future, and humbly request your hand in marriage.”

He’d obviously rehearsed his words, probably thinking that a woman like her must hear pretty speeches and poetic sentiments. There was confidence but also quiet humility in his demeanor. For a moment, she wanted to tell him he had overreached, that she didn’t love him, that the only reason she would marry him was because she needed him at Hacienda los Gemelos and dared not refuse him. Their eyes met, and she flushed head to toe. In that instant she knew that none of it mattered to either of them.

In Spain, a suitor visited on Sunday afternoons and even a widow with children was chaperoned by a female relative or trusted family friend. He’d sit not touching any part of her not necessary to touch in the course of normal conversation. After a visit that was to be neither too short nor too long, he’d go home to do whatever men did when they were soon to be married. The woman would return to her rooms to fantasize about married life and to finish work on her trousseau.

After Ana agreed to marry him, Severo came up the stairs of the
casona
every evening, always impeccably dressed in a newly pressed
and starched white shirt and dark pants. He’d dispensed with the cravat, paisley vest, and jacket, which Ana wouldn’t see again until their wedding day.

They sat on the porch, chaperoned by Flora, who performed her duties with alacrity when Severo was near. Also within sight of the couple was Conciencia, who even as a toddler displayed none of the behavior of normal children. She sat quietly by Ana’s side on the chair José had made for her, with a back lower than on a regular chair to accommodate her hump. If she grew restless, or if Ana asked her to leave them alone because they needed to discuss adult things, Conciencia went into the house, dragging her little chair behind her.

This second engagement had none of the romance or excitement of the first, none of the expectation of love thwarted and reclaimed. Most evenings, Ana and Severo sat on the porch discussing what brought them together and interested them most—Hacienda los Gemelos. But sometimes their conversation took an unintended path, when they exchanged versions of their lives, sanitized. These intimacies were careful forays into the past, and they each heard the other’s silences as much as what was said. Ana didn’t want to humble Severo because of his impoverished childhood by detailing just how privileged hers had been. He didn’t want to elevate her by revealing just how much suffering he’d endured in Boca de Gato, in Madrid, and on his arduous journey across the sea to the door of Marítima Argoso Marín. She didn’t say that she’d been a wife to two men nor did she reveal her relationship with Elena. He didn’t mention Consuelo Soldevida, who washed and pressed his clothes and shaved his face every day. She didn’t disclose that she’d traded her only child—her son—for the privilege of staying on the plantation. He didn’t divulge that don Eugenio paid him three hundred pesos a year to make sure she never left Hacienda los Gemelos.

“Remember when I took you and the twins to a site on my land beyond the north fields?” Severo asked Ana one evening, a few days before their wedding.

“I remember. You were thinking of building there.”

“The air is healthier. The ash from the chimney and from burning the fields won’t bother you as much.”

“I can see that’s a good thing.” She set aside the shawl she was hemming with crochet lace. “But frankly, I’ve accepted the ash and the dust and even the insects as unavoidable.”

“You drew plans for a house,” he persisted. “Ramón kept them at the
finca
, and we discussed them.”

“I haven’t seen those plans in years.”

“Let me show you the place again.”

“It’s so far, Severo, and I’m so busy.”

“It’ll take a morning. You’ll like it once we’re there.”

The next day, Flora unpacked Ana’s old riding habit from the cedar chest in the
rancho
. Ana had forgotten how heavy the skirt was, its many pleats. Over the years she’d learned to do more with less, and her simple cotton skirts and blouses no longer had the fashionable excesses of her youth. The kid riding gloves and boots, the veil over her hat brought memories of her first ride from the sandy cove where she landed after the harrowing sea voyage from the capital. So much has happened in six years, Ana thought, as Flora fastened her boots.

They rode at first light, the air still moist, as night creatures burrowed into their diurnal rest and day-flying birds started their matins. Marigalante, her new
paso fino
mare, a gift from Severo, was thrilled to be venturing beyond the windmill, across the river that curved around the hill. Severo led the way, higher and higher up the path newly shorn of vegetation. His favorite hounds, Tres, Cuatro, and Cinco, bounded ahead, then doubled back to where they could see him when he whistled. As they took the last turn, the path widened, and as they reached the top, a line of men and women holding trowels, hoes, and rakes stood closely together across the path, so Ana couldn’t see beyond them. Her heart jumped to her throat. Had they come upon a group of runaway slaves? But this was no insurrection. Each of them—Teo, Paula, José, Inés—was familiar, and each was smiling. Severo dismounted, helped Ana from Marigalante, and told her to close her eyes.

“It’s a surprise,” he said.

He took her elbow and reminded her to keep her eyes shut as he led her farther up the hill, across what felt like grass underfoot, up a wooden ramp until there was tile beneath her boots. He turned her so that she’d be facing where he wanted her to look when she opened her eyes.

“Now.”

Below was an expanse of many shades of green, from deep olive to the chartreuse inside a lime. A purple sash divided the Caribbean Sea from a cloudless azure sky.

Ana was speechless.

Severo grinned boyishly. “Do you like it?”

She nodded.

“I knew you would,” he said.

She peeked over the edge of the improvised railing of what she guessed would be a
balcón
. This part of the house was perched on high stilts over the crest of the hill. Looking down made her dizzy. In the valley below, surrounded by the cane, were the familiar structures—bell tower, windmill, chimney, barns and warehouses,
cuarteles, bohíos
, the
casona
in the center. Paths led from the house toward the pastures and fields. Curving in and out of the foliage, a sinuous clay-red stripe led to a distant huddle of buildings and a spire.

“Is that Guares?” she asked, with a sudden urge to cry, as if the sight of the town opened a wound healed long ago.

“
Sí
, that’s the steeple of the Iglesia de San Cosme y San Damián. There”—he pointed to the right—“is the dock from where we ship the sugar.”

“I didn’t realize the town was so close.”

“It only seems that way from here,” he assured her. “It’s a solid two hours on horseback, more in a cart. To the left, closer to us, is your
ingenio
, with the new roof on the purgery.”

The rugged steam engine, the refurbished grinders, the
casa de calderas
where the syrup was boiled, the purgery where the sugar was crystallized had made it possible for Hacienda los Gemelos to turn a profit for the first time in its history.

“It’s beautiful,” she said.

He waited a few moments. “Up the hill to the left, those roofs over there?” Ana nodded. “Finca San Bernabé.”

“Can they see my
ingenio
from their house?”

“From every window and door.” He grinned.

She smiled and returned her gaze to the buildings around her
casona
.

“The
batey
looks so far away,” she said wistfully. She felt lost in the open, exposed to unseen dangers in a way she didn’t feel in the valley.

“Around us are eight flat
cuerdas
. Plantain and bananas grow on the slopes, breadfruit and
guanábana
, passion fruit.”

“But my henhouses, my gardens?”

“You’ll have enough to do managing a proper house,” he said. “You’ll have more servants, and will need to oversee the making of furnishings and the sewing of curtains and the other things a house needs.…” He trailed off, unable to conceive what else a woman like Ana was used to in a home.

She turned to the view again, to the surprisingly square
cuerdas
of cane, divided by shimmering canals, to her orchards, to the fenced pastures where miniature cattle and horses bent their heads to grass.

“I like working in the gardens.”

“You’ll have gardens and orchards. And even your hens and pigeons, if you like,” Severo said, but his voice was dry.

“Show me the rest,” she said, heading toward the open-roofed labyrinth.

The house was half finished, the walls no higher than her shoulders, but the rooms were laid out according to the rough plans she remembered drawing up weeks after arriving in Los Gemelos.