House on the Lagoon (34 page)

He left for Europe the following week, and for a month I had no idea of his whereabouts. I knew he had flown to Madrid and had stayed at the Puerta del Sol, a small commercial hotel in the center of town, but after that I lost track. I was mad with worry and didn’t know whom to get in touch with. Spanish authorities were notorious for their incompetence, so I telephoned the American consulate in Madrid. They pointed out that there were dozens of missing American citizens in Europe; a month wasn’t enough to request an official search. My husband might simply have decided to take a long vacation by himself. There was nothing I could do; I simply had to wait.

I still had some income from Mother’s inheritance in Ponce, but I had to be careful with expenses. The economy in Ponce had taken a downward turn and the lease on Mother’s properties, the two houses downtown and a warehouse on the waterfront, had expired. I was having a hard time renting them again. The Union Carbide plant, as well as Corco’s oil refinery, had closed down because of the upsurge in oil prices; electricity was as expensive as liquid gold in those years. I had no access to Quintín’s paycheck, which was waiting for him at the office, so I barely had enough money to survive.

It had been weeks since I had been to the house on the lagoon. With Rebecca’s death, Patria and Libertad had stopped calling; they hardly missed us and I certainly didn’t miss them. Not having to visit the house was a relief. Now I could stay home as much as I wanted to; I didn’t have to pretend I enjoyed being a socialite. The only thing that worried me was Quintín. I suspected he had fled the island because he couldn’t face Mendizabal & Company. I also worried that once he realized the seriousness of the situation, he might take some drastic action.

Eventually I received a telegram from Switzerland that put an end to my worries. Quintín was feeling much better and he would be home soon. A letter arrived a few days later, giving me a detailed account of what had happened in the past month. It was quite tender, and after all these years I still have it.

August 20, 1960

Bern, Switzerland

Dear Isabel,

Please forgive me for all the worry I must have caused you after my sudden departure for Spain, and even worse, for my disappearance after I left Madrid. I realize how inconsiderate this was on my part. You must have been distraught with worry, but at the time I felt so miserable there was nothing else I could do. My family’s ungratefulness hurt me deeply, and I became terribly depressed. I had slaved for them for years, and they weren’t willing to acknowledge what I had done.

When I arrived in Madrid I realized I had brought very little money, only enough to pay for a week’s stay at the Puerto del Sol. I rented a car, put my bag in it, and drove west for eight hours until I reached Valdeverdeja on the road to Cáceres. The village was almost deserted. Most of the houses had been abandoned; the town had suffered a severe decline in population. The young people no longer want to raise pigs and pasture cattle on the dry, rocky plains of Extremadura. The ham industry has long since died out and the municipality is very poor. The young people all travel north to Madrid or south to Seville and never come back.

I hadn’t brought the address of my two great-aunts, Angelita and Conchita, but I only had to ask one of the local peasants and he pointed out the Mendizabals’ house. It was an abandoned ramshackle building, very different from the gay whitewashed house with pots of geraniums on the windowsills and a roof of red terra-cotta tiles that Buenaventura had described to me when I was a child. I knocked on the ancient, weather-beaten door and an old woman answered. She had been my aunt’s servant ages ago and now lived in one of the front rooms where the roof didn’t leak. She told me my aunts had passed away long ago, and since there were no descendants, the municipality had expropriated the house.

I felt my heart tighten as I listened to her. For some absurd reason I had believed I could stay there, find shelter under the same roof where Father had been born. I thanked the old woman and walked despondently to the square, dropped my bag on the pavement, and sat down on the ground, leaning against a tree. I was at the end of my tether; I had no idea where else to go. Then a bell began to toll in the tower of an austere Romanesque church close by. It was made of the same gray granite Buenaventura had imported when he rebuilt the house on the lagoon. He had used it to build the archways of our house, the stone turrets of our roof, even the granite stairway with its bizarre banister of iron spears. He had even had the family pantheon at San Juan Cemetery made of that stone. I got up from the pavement, walked to the church, and slid my hand tenderly over the façade. All of a sudden I felt comforted, almost as if I could draw strength from its steel-gray surface.

Then I remembered that Buenaventura had talked to me once about a monastery near Valdeverdeja where the Conquistadors had been blessed by the monks before they left for the New World. Buenaventura used to visit it periodically—every three or four years—and would spend several days resting there. I got back in the car and drove over the Sierra de

Guadalupe until I found it. It was the Monastery of the Virgin of Guadalupe, the Virgin of the Conquistadors. I told the monks I was Buenaventura Mendizabal’s son, and they welcomed me with open arms; they said I could stay as long as I wanted. They assigned me to one of their cells and invited me to share their meals with them in the refectory. I was there a week, at the end of which my wounds were almost healed. I felt Father nearer than ever before. I kept hearing his voice in my dreams: “Willpower is the only road to power. If Francisco Pizarro, my ancestor, was able to defeat forty thousand Indians with four hundred soldiers, you shouldn’t be afraid of your present situation, my son, because it’s only three against one.”

A few days after my arrival, I talked to the prior; I had made up a story to get him to help me. I had come to the monastery in search of spiritual help, I said. I was distraught after Mother’s death, which had come less than two years after Father’s. When I left the island, I had brought barely enough money to live on for a week. I needed a loan for the rest of my trip, and I would pay it back scrupulously the moment I got back home. The prior believed me. He was used to seeing Buenaventura and Rebecca arrive from Madrid in a Bentley limousine when they came to visit, and they had been magnanimous donors to the monastery. That kind of fortune didn’t just vanish into thin air. The prior lent me a thousand dollars, which was just what I needed, and the next day I drove back to Madrid.

I wired the different wine and food companies that Mendizabal had done business with in Europe over the years, and asked for an interview with their owners. I knew them all by name; I had been corresponding with them for the past four years, since Father had been partially retired, and I had signed all the purchase orders with the title of vice president. I was the administrator of the company, the one who signed the checks, and they recognized my name immediately.

For two weeks I didn’t eat, sleep, or drink. Once the interviews were set up, I traveled day and night. First I traveled throughout Spain: I took a train to Rioja, to the great wineries of the south; from there to Aranjuez, where our asparagus came from; then to Segovia, where we purchased our
sobreasadas
and sausages; then on to Barcelona, where our Codorniu champagne is made. After I finished my business in Spain, I flew to France and visited the Count of St.-Emilion near Bordeaux; then to Italy to see the Marquis of Torcello, who has his Bolla distillery near Venice; and finally to Glasgow, where I met with Charles McCann, who sold us Scotch for more than twenty years. I met confidentially with all of them and explained the family situation. I was Buenaventura Mendizabal’s older son. My mother, Buenaventura’s widow, had died recently, and my sisters and brother had taken over the company. But they didn’t know the first thing about business; in their hands Mendizabal & Company would be ruined in less than a year. I wanted to rescue it and was inviting them to transfer their accounts to me. The new enterprise would be called Gourmet Imports, and in addition to selling their products on the island, as we had always done, we would serve as a link with the United States and would market their products there. With that kind of arrangement, they would maintain the same comfortable incomes they had had—I quoted these easily, as I knew each account by heart—and they wouldn’t have to worry about a thing.

My interviews were surprisingly successful. In less than a month I had flown all over Europe and I had contracts from fifty-five percent of Father’s old partners in my pocket. I could have added more, but I wanted to leave some to Ignacio, I didn’t want to strangle Mendizabal & Company. Buenaventura was right, Isabel, willpower is the only road to power! The world belongs to those hardy souls who, having Fortune against them, win the struggle for survival by dint of their own efforts.

I’ll be back home in a week, darling. I’m anxious to see you, so we can celebrate our good luck. I still have your engagement ring in my pocket and will soon put it back on your finger with a renewed vow of love.

Your loving husband,

Quintín

W
HEN I FINISHED READING
Quintín’s letter, I didn’t know what to think. It was obvious that money was being thrown away at the house on the lagoon, and this seemed to justify Quintín’s decision to strike out on his own. But I still had my doubts as to whether it was the right thing to do. A voice kept whispering in my ear that if Buenaventura had known about Quintín’s leaving Mendizabal & Company, he would have turned over in his grave. Having convinced so many of Buenaventura’s old partners to trust him and join Gourmet Imports was no mean accomplishment, however; I had to admire Quintín for having achieved this feat.

What finally changed my mind about Quintín’s decision was, ironically, his sisters’ selfish behavior. In normal circumstances Patria and Libertad would have had my sympathy from the start. Women usually get the short end of the stick in family inheritances, and I would have rallied to their cause. But Rebecca had always denied them the possibility of being president of the company. In her mind, the position could be held only by one of the two brothers. Patria and Libertad never did anything about that. They never wanted to attend a university; they were to be elegantly “finished” at their finishing school and then’ they would get married. They were vain and superficial; they wanted only to enjoy themselves and figure prominently in San Juan society. That still didn’t make Rebecca’s decision right. But Juan and Calixto were as disinclined toward work as ever. It wasn’t that they were lazy or shiftless; it was just that, as with most Spanish nobility of the time, they were used to leading “beautiful” lives. The American Puritan work ethic was totally foreign to them.

“One should work to live, not live to work,” they insisted genially, drinking their cool dry sherry before lunch at La Mallorquina. Life was full of too many wonderful pleasures like good food, beautiful women, and the siesta at three o’clock to sacrifice it all for a little gold star in Quintín’s notebook of good behavior. When I heard them talk like that, there was no doubt in my mind that Quintín was better qualified than either of them to be head of Mendizabal & Company.

Ignacio’s case was different. I wasn’t at all convinced of his ineptitude. He had done a good job at advertising, was disciplined, and led an orderly life. I knew Quintín liked to manipulate other people, and I didn’t believe what he said about his brother. Ignacio meant well; he didn’t want to take advantage of the situation his sisters had put him in, and I felt sorry for him. I didn’t understand why the brothers couldn’t alternate the presidency from year to year and share equal responsibilities, with equal salaries. Then Quintín wouldn’t have to sever himself from Mendizabal & Company.

I suggested as much to Quintín when he came back from Europe, but he was adamant in his decision to strike out on his own. The problem wasn’t Ignacio, Quintín said. The problem was that he had to support his sisters and their husbands, as well as their six children. I had to admit Quintín was right, and for the next month I tried to forget about Ignacio, and about the rest of the family.

Quintín was busier than ever. He bought a modern building in San Juan with air-conditioning in every room, and an adjacent warehouse with all the latest improvements. There Gourmet Imports opened its offices. At the time it didn’t occur to me to wonder where the money was coming from; it was only later that I began to question it. Quintín had to work harder than ever to establish a name for himself and for his new business. He stayed longer and longer at the office, and we saw each other only at bedtime. Gourmet Imports was immensely successful from the start. Quintín had so many orders from his local customers, as well as from new patrons in the United States, that he could hardly keep up with them.

Something else happened at that time which also helped me forget about Ignacio and his sisters: in October 1960 I became pregnant with Manuel. Quintín and I were both very happy about the news: we had been married five years and were anxious to have a family. But it was a difficult pregnancy. For the first three months I didn’t sleep well, and in the mornings I was dizzy and couldn’t keep anything down. The only thing that helped was walking down to the beach and lying under a palm tree with a book in my lap. When I was six months pregnant, Quintín told me he wanted us to go to the house on the lagoon to visit his sisters. He thought it was important that we patch up family differences. Patria and Libertad had called at the apartment several times when Quintín was at the office, but I had refused to see them. They hadn’t so much as phoned when Quintín disappeared and I had been left completely on my own, so I didn’t see why I should be nice to them now. Quintín went off to see them by himself. A few weeks later he asked me to go with him again, this time to say goodbye to his sisters.