Conquistadora (44 page)

“Who cares about adorning a coffin?” she said. “The box will be buried and no one will ever see it.”

“I care,” he said, “even if no one sees it again.”

By that evening, when the workers came from their jobs, Fela and Pabla had put Nena inside the box on sawhorses in the
rancho
and Ana prayed over her.

That night, Ana and Severo awoke to the sounds of screaming, dogs barking, fists pounding on the barracks walls calling for help. Severo ran down with his whip and revolver while Ana stood on the porch in her nightgown, a shawl over her shoulders. She didn’t have time to be scared. The voices called for water,
agua, por favor
, and others insisted that there were three sick men in the building.

Severo ordered that Luis, thirty-eight, Fernando, thirty, and Tomás, twenty-six, be carried to the infirmary
bohío
while Ana and Flora dressed quickly and brought their remedies, followed by a sleepy Conciencia. The men complained of cramps, couldn’t control their bowels, and had high fevers. Ana dripped strong infusions of
sacabuche
into their mouths, which didn’t relieve the diarrhea or slake their thirst. None survived the night.

By midmorning, Dina, twenty-three, and Azucena, a two-year-old orphan, were writhing in their hammocks. While Flora held her head up, Ana forced the bitter
sacabuche
infusion into Dina, then saw it almost immediately discharge from her. Next to her, the little girl bawled until her throat was hoarse. Conciencia took the baby into her childish arms, rocked her, and pressed her close, unable to do anything except keep her clean. The baby’s cries affected every woman within hearing, their breasts tingling with the need to suckle and comfort the dying child. Even Ana couldn’t loosen the lump in her throat and was enraged by her inability to ease the girl’s torment or that of any of her people.

Fela and Pabla, who stoically washed, combed, and shrouded Nena, Luis, Fernando, Tomás, and Dina, couldn’t stop crying through the washing, combing, and shrouding of tiny Azucena.

José hurriedly hammered together five more coffins, but he still found time to whittle a hoe for Fernando’s box, because the man was a
talero
, who dug and formed the rows where the sugar ratoons would be planted. For Luis, who was a cutter, José formed a machete. For Tomás, who was a smith, José fashioned a horseshoe. On Dina’s lid José carved a mortar and pestle because she roasted and ground the coffee beans and maize, and crushed, mashed and formed cocoa
beans into a paste for chocolate. For Azucena’s coffin, José whittled a lily because the child was as sweet as the flower she was named for. All five carvings were rushed and not at all as intricate as José would have liked.

By the end of the third day, there had been six deaths in thirty-two hours. They didn’t know what was causing their symptoms. From one moment to the next, sufferers developed a high fever, stomach cramps, and explosive diarrhea, then died within hours, begging for water, their bodies shriveled and their eyes sunk into their heads. The worst part for Ana was that in spite of their suffering, they all seemed to be aware that they were dying, soiled and in excruciating pain.

“Help me,
señora
,” they cried. “
Agua, señora, por favor
. Don’t let me die,
patrona
,” they begged. But when given water, they had worse cramps, and the liquid leaked from their bodies.

Ana tried other remedies:
guaco, yerbabuena, anamú
, but none had the effect she hoped for and
nuestra gente
kept dying. The cries, stench, and anguish kept her sleepless over the first three days of disease and death. Finally, Severo insisted that she get some rest.

“Let Fela and Pabla take care of them,” he said.

“How can I sleep? If I close my eyes I still see them, in torment.”

She had not seen anyone die of cholera, but she knew enough about the disease to suspect that it was causing the deaths at Hacienda los Gemelos. She’d read that it was caused by miasma, foul-smelling, poisoned air. She ordered that the walls and floors of the barracks and the
bohíos
be thoroughly scrubbed with lavender and
yerbabuena
.

“And burn sage and juniper twigs in every corner.”

She hoped that these measures would cleanse the stuffy air produced by sweaty bodies in crowded spaces, with the added indignity of open buckets for necessities.

These precautions, however, had no effect. By the morning of the fourth day, Lula, twenty, Coral, twenty-four, Benicio, forty-six, and Félix, seventy-one, showed symptoms, and two infants, Sarita and Ruti, died heaving in their mother’s arms.

“Twelve of
nuestra gente
are dead,” Ana said. “Not counting the children, eight were strong and healthy.” She couldn’t say it, but Severo understood—eight fewer for the cane.

Severo sent Efraín to track Dr. Vieira, but the doctor had traveled to Portugal to visit relatives. Other than the apothecary in Guares, there was no medical professional within a day’s ride of Los Gemelos, so Ana, Flora, Fela, Pabla, and even Conciencia took care of the sick or those who showed symptoms.

Ana rushed from the barracks to the
bohíos
to the infirmary, feeling more helpless with each sign of illness, each death. Sixty-two-year-old Oscar, twenty-nine-year-old Poldo, twenty-three-year-old Carmina, and five-year-old Sandro. Sixteen of seventy-eight slaves died in seven days.

She lived meters from them, delivered their babies, baptized them, taught them the Lord’s prayer and how to follow and respond to the decades of her rosary. She stitched their clothes, distributed their rations, salved their wounds and injuries. She was closer to them than to the servants who raised, dressed, and fed her in Spain. She was even closer physically and emotionally to them than to her parents. Now they were dying in agony, and the only thing she could do was to drip bitter liquid into their mouths and tell the survivors that the dead were going to the heaven she promised them in Sunday services. She prayed, but as her people continued to die, the empty prayers formed a ball of rage in her chest, hardening until she felt its pressure. You have abandoned me, she said to God, unafraid that it was humility he expected from his people.

As Conciencia predicted, the lieutenant rode up, escorted by soldiers who looked warily around, eager to get away as soon as their business was over. Severo galloped in from a near field, and still mounted, the men stood under the breadfruit tree to talk in low voices. After the soldiers left, Severo joined Ana on the porch, where she stood waiting, her face pinched by anxiety.

“Cholera, as you suspected,” Severo said. “It’s also in San Bernabé, Guares, and the hamlets around us.”

“What can we do?”

“Quarantine the sick, burn everything they’ve touched, avoid contact.”

“How are we to take care of them?”

Severo seemed not to have considered this. He looked at Ana, then at Conciencia, who lowered her eyes. The gesture, which in the slaves was a sign of respect, irked him coming from the girl.

“I’ll put the older ones in charge of the sick,” he said. “Send your remedies, but don’t go into the barracks, the
bohíos
, or the infirmary while there’s sickness there.”

“But—”

“I mean it,” he warned her.

“They need me,” she said to the air, because Severo was already ordering men to erect sleeping
ranchos
far from the noxious buildings. Within hours, the sick were moved to the men’s barracks and Fela, Pabla, and seventy-year-old Samuel were assigned to tend the dying, whose pitiful wails for water rent the nights.

Anyone with signs of illness was banished to the barracks: thirty-seven-year-old Juancho, forty-five-year-old Hugo, six-year-old Juan, three-year-old Chuíto, thirty-year-old Jorge. Jacobo carried his thirty-two-year-old wife, Tita, in his arms and as soon as he relinquished her, went back to his
bohío
for his little girl, Rosita, and a few hours later his son, Chano. Jacobo was born in Africa and as a young man ran away from his first hacienda, was caught and whipped, then sold to Los Gemelos. A few weeks after Ana arrived there, he stole a machete because he planned to run away again and Severo whipped him. His screams reached Ana in the
casona
the same day she told Ramón and Inocente that yes, she’d punish a slave if she had to. Today, as Jacobo returned to his
bohío
, no matter what he might have done, Ana would be unable to add to the punishment already meted out by God and Severo. Jacobo walked from the barracks with his head bowed to his chest, his sinewy arms hanging alongside his torso, his knees slack, his bare feet barely lifting from the ground, a picture of grief and suffering. The phrases she’d learned for times like these were useless.
Vaya con Dios. Que Dios le bendiga. Que la Virgen le cuide
. She couldn’t say them even to herself, or believe them.

She consulted her books and pamphlets, and following their recommendations, spent most of the day formulating ever stronger infusions and broths. Severo found her in the kitchen with Flora, Paula, and Conciencia on the eighth morning. A trestle table was laden with branches and leaves of herbs, twigs, and the desiccated peels of fruits and vegetables that they were tying into bundles. A cauldron bubbled on the
fogón
. Clear and greenish liquids cooled in several cans and bowls. The shack was stifling in the July heat. Ana
wiped her forehead with her apron and followed Severo outside. He started toward the breadfruit tree, but she led him to the shade on the other side of the house.

“Nothing but bad news comes to me under that tree,” she muttered.

“I’m sorry that my news will be no better,” he said grimly.

She looked toward the barracks. Fela scooped water from the drum by the door and went inside with it.

“I’ve ordered that the dead be burned,” Severo said.

“But that’s a sin,” she gasped, because even though she was losing her faith, she still thought like a Catholic.

“José can’t make coffins fast enough.”

She was having a hard time maintaining her composure. “They’re dying faster than we can bury them.”

“Yes,” he said.

She covered her face with her hands; then, as if the gesture were too revealing of the horror she felt, she dropped them quickly and settled her shoulders. “Do what you must. Just do it far from here.”

He ordered that the pyre be started in the meadow farthest from the
casona
. Dense smoke swirled over the burning mound, dispersing the bittersweet tang of burning flesh. Every time Ana looked in that direction, she saw years’ worth of work dissolving into the clouds.

She was in her study early the ninth morning, preparing the pay packets for the
jornaleros
. Severo ran up the steps, tugging at the bandana that he wore over his face as protection against the pestilence and that made him look like a
bandido
.

“Three of the foremen ran off with their families,” he said.

“But who’s going to supervise—”

“Coto agreed to stay, at double salary, until I can find more men.”

“In just a few months we’ll have four hundred
cuerdas
to harvest.”

“I know, but our biggest concern now is to keep the healthy from running away.”

Failure had always been a possibility: poor harvests and financial exigencies, physical labor, the twins’ deaths, storms, a hurricane. Failure had always been a cloud on her horizon, but she’d found a way to meet those trials through hard work and, yes, calculated manipulations. Maybe it was exhaustion, but she couldn’t think her way out of this predicament.

“We’ll be ruined,” she said, as if her greatest fear had become real.

“We’ll make sure that doesn’t happen.”

It had been years since she’d heard that hard, unemotional voice, that gathering of tenacious will fixed on a mission. He had confidence that she couldn’t match, that frightened her. As it did the afternoon he pledged to punish Inocente’s murderers, her scalp now tingled and she was glad that Severo Fuentes was on her side.

Neither Flora nor Conciencia was allowed to care for the sick, but the precaution didn’t spare the Mbuti, who woke up the tenth morning with stomach cramps and diarrhea.

“Agua, señora,”
Flora pleaded when, alerted by Conciencia, Ana went down to their room to the cries, to the smell, and to Flora’s big eyes already dimming.

Severo ordered that she be exiled to the quarantine
barracón
.

“Not Flora. Conciencia and I can take care of her.”

“She can’t be saved, Ana. She’s dying.”

“Let me try.”

“I can make no exceptions.”

“I can’t let her die, Severo, not my Flora.”

Over the course of that day, Ana trickled her concoctions onto Flora’s parched lips, the bitter and the sour, but none saved her. Ana held her long after Flora’s body had gone slack. She felt beyond sorrow or anger, beyond tears, and buried her emotions. But she couldn’t subdue her thoughts. Why, she asked herself, does this death hurt more than the ones of Abuelo Cubillas, my father, Ramón, and Inocente? She wiped Flora’s face with the hem of her apron. Why you? She looked up at Severo, waiting at the threshold. She let go of Flora and said a silent good-bye.

“You can take her away now.”

She went upstairs, where no one could see her cry. She was
la patrona
, and if she broke, the whole structure she’d so carefully built would crumble beneath her. She stayed in her room the rest of the day.

That night, Flora was thrown into the fire, but there was no one to sing her into the next world.

———

On the eleventh day, thirty-three-year-old Inés, who nursed Miguel and Conciencia, was sent into the barracks. Inés, who loved gossip. Inés, who berated her husband for spending too much time decorating coffins.

“Please,
patrón
, please let me bury her,
mi buen señor
. She was the milk mother to
la patrona
’s son, the mother of my sons, his milk brothers.”

“I can make no exceptions.”