Conquistadora (55 page)

In late October 1862 she was riding from the
casona
to the
ingenio
when she crested a knoll between two newly planted fields. The midafternoon sun created long shadows, and water sparkled on puddles and on the irrigation canal. A team of workers was clearing
the trench between the fields, some knee-deep in the water, others along its shores. Severo was on the far end, his back to her, inspecting the work from his saddle. From the ground, the foreman listened intently to whatever Severo was saying, and the workers had stopped as they waited for instructions. Every eye was on Severo Fuentes, his gestures economical but unambiguous.

During almost two years of near estrangement, he’d continued to treat her as politely as always, considered her ideas and suggestions, performed his duties assiduously. He’d never wavered in his commitment. Hacienda los Gemelos could not have prospered without Severo Fuentes. He was not a perfect man, but he’d always placed her interests first and never asked for anything in return. She’d assumed that the financial rewards were enough, but she now remembered that he’d always hoped for more than money.

Someone must have told him she was on the knoll, for just then he turned and, with a word to the foreman, rode toward her. As he approached, she saw a powerful, wealthy gentleman on a fine horse, the indisputable master over the land and all within it. He’s mine, she said aloud before formulating the thought. It flustered her. This was the man everyone else saw, the one he’d strived to become. The next moment she knew that Severo Fuentes must be rewarded. He was hers, and she’d get him back. No
campesina
could ever give him the one thing he most craved, and she could provide.

That evening, Severo came to El Destino, as Ana had requested. She heard him walk past the dining room, where the exquisite crystal, china, and silver she never used was artfully arranged over an embroidered cloth on the dining room table. A sterling candelabrum was alight with six candles. From the porch, she heard him go into his room and emerge half an hour later, showered and shaved. She’d always appreciated that he didn’t present himself sweaty and dirty from the fields, but this evening she was impatient to see him, and for him to see her. When he came to the
balcón
, she was gratified by the expression on his face, the darkening of the green eyes, the alert movements.

“Ana.”

He touched her face, stroked her hair freed from its tight bun at
the nape of her neck and falling like black ripples down her back. The pale green frock that had been stored and now years out of fashion, fit her, at thirty-six, as if she were still a girl, even around the narrow waistband. He held her for a long time without moving while the intoxicating scent of roses and geraniums wafted around them. “Ana.”

The way he said her name made her feel as if she’d come home after a long journey.

“Mi amor,”
she said. He kissed her and as she responded to his lips, she knew that, for the first time in her life, she’d meant it.

News about the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation in the United States sent a ripple of hope through the barracks and fields, and there was a flurry of reports of unrest in haciendas closer to the capital. Severo increased the patrols, and the dogs that accompanied him on his rounds were more suspicious and nervous than ever.

One afternoon he found Ana in the old
casona
. When things were quiet, she often sat on the porch, absorbed in newspapers.

“Two men from San Bernabé were captured hiding in the hold of a cargo ship in Guares,” he told her. “I’m gathering the workers to remind them that Spain and the United States are different countries and that whatever happens in one doesn’t mean it will happen here.”

“Are we in danger?”

“Be alert. When you ride alone, carry a firearm.”

She blanched. “I haven’t touched one in nearly twenty years.”

“I’ll set up some targets behind the barn. It will be good for them to see you.”

“I can’t imagine any of them would—”

“This is a precaution.”

“What’s happened to the runaways?”

“Luis had the overseer deal with them. They won’t run away again.”

She didn’t ask for details and he didn’t offer any. She poured him fresh water from the pitcher.

“Abolition in the North has given momentum to the liberals here,” she said, pushing the newspapers aside. “Betances is calling for open rebellion.”

“Unlike in the United States, the troublemakers here don’t have enough support within the government and can’t organize the slaves. They’re isolated on the haciendas.”

“They don’t need to be organized to make trouble,” she said.

“That’s true. Anything can happen.” He finished his drink and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “That’s why we have to remind them that we don’t tolerate disorder here.”

In the barracks, in the fields, in the
bohíos
and shacks in La Palanca, in the elegant homes of the newest streets in Guares, and in the offices of notaries and bankers, in don Tibó’s cantina, in the
colmados
and
cafetines
, on the steps to the new church, around the shaded plaza, on the anchored ships docked in Guares and on the ones circling the island, in the most recondite corners of Puerto Rico, slaves,
jornaleros, hacendados
, merchants, soldiers, farmers, sailors, and captains were paying attention to the war in
el norte
. Everyone knew that with emancipation in the United States, centuries of government-sanctioned exploitation of Africans and their descendants had ended everywhere in the Americas—everywhere that is, except for Puerto Rico, Cuba, and Brazil. No one was more aware of this than the men and women toiling under the sun of endless cane fields in those three countries.

A man is a man, even when forced to work like a beast, made to live like a beast, expected to become one. Jacobo de Argoso, born Idowe, Yoruba, was captured as a child; thrown into the dark, filthy hold of a ship; starved, chained, whipped, sold, pushed, prodded, and cursed into the canebrakes; locked inside airless barracks; chased by dogs when he ran into the woods; whipped again; sold again; sent into other fields; locked inside again. He stole a machete to use against Severo Fuentes, who’d keep him from running, but Jacobo was caught, received twenty-five lashes, and when the wounds were not quite healed, was dragged back into the waving cane. Jacobo stopped running and bent into the cane while he had a wife and children who needed him. He worked like a beast, because a man did what he must to survive and provide for his wife, his children. But when the plague killed his wife, his children, he began to think again about escape.

Jacobo still remembered his village along a broad and fast-flowing river and knew he’d never see it again, or the long-legged women walking to their plots, or the knobby-kneed boys leading goats to the hills, or the sinewy men prowling the forest to hunt. In his mind, they continued to walk, lead, and prowl because if they didn’t, he’d never existed, had never been but a slave with a machete in a foreign land. He had not forgotten his name, Idowe, had not forgotten the other four boys captured with him, none of whom made it alive across the big water from freedom to slavery. By 1863 he’d lived and worked through thirty-six harvests, his spine curved over the moist earth, the towering stalks rustling and cackling overhead and around him, his right arm rising, falling, slicing, the left arm throwing the stalks behind for someone else to pick up and carry. Thirty-six harvests of dark to dark days and, in between, implacable sun, thirst, hunger, snakes, the long, sharp cane leaves slicing into his skin, and insects, always insects, pricking and biting his punished flesh. The whip, too, engraved more scars upon his legs when a
blanco
accused him of touching him, something he’d never do even if he could. White skin like the belly of a lizard’s was repulsive to Jacobo.

So much had been taken from Jacobo de Argoso, born Idowe, by his thirtieth
zafra
, during the cholera, that for six more years he bent ever closer to the ground, as if he might find some of his life again between the endless rows of the
cañaveral
.

One day, as Jacobo was helping Efraín de Fuentes carry a load of lumber to the workshop, he heard the news.

“The slaves are free in
el norte
,” Efraín said. “Maybe
el libertador
Abrámlincon will come here to free us.”

Efraín was twenty and, like his father, José, his brother, Indio, his stepmother, Lola, and his wife, Pepita, Efraín would rather crawl on hands and knees over ankle-deep shit before giving don Severo cause to unfurl the terrible whip. It surprised Jacobo, then, that Efraín would speak so openly.

“We have a
libertador
right here on this island,” Jacobo said. “Dr. Betances, and he’s not across an ocean.”

“I heard you say a name you’re not supposed to mention,” called Meri, who was walking behind with her sister Gloria, both of them carrying baskets full of mangoes. Meri’s left arm, scarred from the burns, had healed bent at the elbow.

“You’re not supposed to be listening to adult conversations,” Efraín called back.

Jacobo and Efraín stopped under a tree to change the load from their right to their left shoulders.

“When I was brought to these islands,” Jacobo said, “I heard about the first
libertador
, Simón Bolívar, who fought the
españoles
and won independence for his people in countries to the south. He sailed here to invade Puerto Rico to free the slaves.”

“I’ve heard about him,” Efraín said.

“The
españoles
found out about it before he could start a rebellion,” Jacobo said.

“You’re not supposed to say those words, either,” Meri said.

“If we get in trouble,” Efraín warned her, “we know it was you who told.”

“She’s not saying anything,” Gloria said, “but you shouldn’t be talking like that. You never know who’s listening around here.”

Jacobo shifted his load again and fell silent; he didn’t have to tell the story. Everyone had heard it. After news reached them that Bolívar was trying to land on Vieques in 1816, east of Puerto Rico, many took to the sea. Slaves directed flimsy rafts that slammed against angry waves, or were eaten by sharks, or drowned, or were caught by pirates and sold in other lands.

Now, forty-seven years later, another
libertador
, from the north this time, Abraham Lincoln, had freed the slaves in his country, and the men and women locked in the barracks and
bohíos
of every hacienda and farm in Puerto Rico were fantasizing about imminent liberty. Jacobo wouldn’t race into the sea in a makeshift raft to be eaten by sharks, and in any case, he was too old to believe he could brave an ocean. But he would run into the mountains, even if chased with hounds at his heels, and would hide and live in bat-infested caves if he had to. He would fight on this land that had swallowed his name, had soaked his sweat and blood, had consumed his beloved wife, his adored children. He’d fight to the death if he had to, because there was nothing left for him but what he had when he started so many harvests ago. Freedom.

From her perch in El Destino, Ana had learned the landscape below as intimately as the curves and hollows of her own body. Over the seven years since they’d moved up the hill, the canebrakes, meadows, roads, paths, the treetops in the groves and forested slopes had become so familiar that she marked the growth of the plantation, the activity in the
ingenio
, the hamlets sprouting up along the boundaries, the expansion of the town around the harbor, and the passing of the seasons by the changes in the colors and shapes of the countryside.

Severo had moved the workshop, the pottery, the dovecotes, and ordered new barracks and
bohíos
for the old, crippled, and maimed who made up the labor force in Ana’s gardens and orchards at El Destino. The path was widened to make it easier to move up and down the hill to the fields of Hacienda los Gemelos and Ingenio Diana.

Ana now focused the lens of her telescope and saw Efraín and Jacobo climbing toward the workshop, their backs bent under lengths of lumber. They disappeared under the trees and emerged farther up, having transferred their loads to their opposite shoulders. Behind them came Gloria and Meri carrying baskets. Even from here, Ana could tell Meri was chattering. The girl was so talkative that the others called her La Lorita, Little Parrot. She was in constant pain from her scars and held a particular animosity toward Jacobo, whom she blamed for her accident. Now twelve years old, she was a housemaid but was becoming a skillful seamstress, while Gloria was being trained by Paula to be the cook.

Ana pushed her telescope aside and went into her study. There was a letter from Miguel, who was now in Paris with Maestro de
Laura. She had expected that, after his grandparents’ death, Miguel would come to Hacienda los Gemelos. He was then not quite eighteen, still technically a minor, and should have come to his mother, but Mr. Worthy explained: