Of Love and Shadows (5 page)

“Look, Hipólito. Don't keep watching Evangelina,” Digna whispered to her husband.

“Maybe she won't have her attack today,” he said.

“It always comes. There's nothing we can do.”

The family finished eating breakfast and went their various ways, each carrying a chair. From Monday to Friday the children walked to school, a half hour's rapid walk. When it was cold, the mother gave each child a stone heated in the fire to put in a pocket to keep their hands warm. She also gave them a piece of bread and two sugar lumps. Earlier, when milk was still being served at school, they used the sugar to sweeten it, but for several years now they had sucked the lumps like caramels during recess. That half-hour walk had turned out to be a blessing, because by the time they got home, their sister's crisis was over and the pilgrims had left. But today was Saturday, therefore they would be present, and that night Jacinto would wet his bed in the anguish of his nightmares. Evangelina had not gone to school since the first signs of her disturbance appeared. Her mother remembered the precise moment their misfortune began. It was the day of the convention of frogs, although she was sure that that episode was not related to her daughter's sickness.

They had been discovered very early one morning, two fat and majestic frogs observing the landscape near the railroad crossing. Soon many more arrived, coming from every direction, little pond frogs, larger well frogs, white ones from irrigation ditches, gray ones from the river. Someone sounded the alarm and everyone came to see them. Meanwhile the amphibians had formed compact rows and begun an orderly march. Along the road others joined in, and soon there was a green multitude advancing toward the highway. The word spread, and the curious came on foot, on horseback, and in buses, commenting on this never-before-seen marvel. The enormous living mosaic occupied the asphalt of the principal road to Los Riscos, halting any vehicles traveling at that hour. One imprudent truck attempted to drive forward, but skidded on squashed corpses and overturned amid the enthusiasm of the children, who avidly appropriated the merchandise scattered in the underbrush. The police flew over the area in a helicopter, ascertaining that two hundred and seventy meters of road were covered with frogs so closely packed that they resembled a glistening carpet of moss. The news was broadcast by radio, and in a short time newspapermen arrived from the capital, accompanied by a Chinese expert from the United Nations who reported that he had witnessed a similar phenomenon during his childhood in Peking. This stranger descended from a dark automobile with official license plates, bowed to the right and to the left, and the crowd applauded, very naturally confusing him with the director of the Choral Society. After observing that gelatinous mass for a few moments, the Oriental concluded that there was no cause for alarm, this was merely a convention of frogs. That was what the press called it, and as it occurred during a time of poverty and shortages, they joked about it, saying that instead of manna, God was raining down frogs from the sky so that the chosen people could cook them with garlic and coriander.

When Evangelina had her attack, the participants in the convention had dispersed and the television crews were removing their equipment from the trees. It was twelve o'clock noon; the air sparkled, washed by the rain. Evangelina was alone inside the house, and on the patio Digna and her grandson Jacinto were slopping the pigs with the kitchen garbage. After going to take a look at the spectacle, they had realized that there was nothing to be seen but a revolting mass of slimy creatures, and had returned to their chores. A sharp cry and the sound of breaking crockery alerted them that something was happening inside the house. They found Evangelina on her back on the floor, weight on her heels and neck, arched backward like a bow, frothing at the mouth and surrounded by broken cups and plates.

The terrified mother resorted to the first remedy that came to her mind: she emptied a bucket of cold water over the girl, but far from calming her, the alarming signs grew worse. The froth turned into a rosy slobber when the girl bit her tongue; her eyes rolled backward in her head, lost in infinity; she shook in shuddering convulsions, and the room was impregnated with anguish and the smell of excrement. The tension was so high that the thick adobe walls seemed to vibrate as if a secret trembling were coursing through their entrails. Digna Ranquileo hugged Jacinto close, covering his eyes to spare him that dreadful sight.

The attack lasted several minutes and left Evangelina drained, the mother and the brother terrorized, and the house turned upside down. When Hipólito and the other children returned from watching the convention of frogs, it was all over; the girl was resting in her chair and the mother was picking up the broken pottery.

“She was stung by a black widow spider” was the father's diagnosis when they told him about it.

“I've gone over her from head to foot. It wasn't a bite.”

“Then she must have had a fit.”

But Digna knew the symptoms of epilepsy, and she knew that it did not wreak havoc with the furniture. That very afternoon she made the decision to take Evangelina to
don
Simón, the healer.

“Better take her to a doctor,” Hipólito counseled.

“You know what I think of hospitals and doctors,” his wife replied, sure that if there was a cure for the girl,
don
Simón would know it.

This Saturday it would be five weeks since the first attack, and up till now nothing had helped her. There stood Evangelina helping her mother wash the earthenware dishes while the morning sped by and the dreaded hour approached.

“Get out the mugs for the flour water, daughter,” Digna directed.

Evangelina began to sing as she lined up aluminum and enameled-tin receptacles on the table. Into each she measured a couple of tablespoons of toasted flour and a little honey. Later they would add fresh water to offer to the visitors who arrived at the hour of the trance in hopes of being benefited by some minor miracle.

“After tomorrow I'm not going to give them a thing,” grumbled Digna. “They're going to ruin us.”

“Don't talk like that, woman,” Hipólito replied. “After all, people are coming out of affection. A little flour isn't going to make us any poorer,” and she bowed her head because he was the man and was always right.

Digna was on the verge of tears; she realized her nerves had taken all they could, and she went in search of a few linden flowers to brew herself some calming tea. These last weeks had been a calvary. This strong and long-suffering woman, who without a single complaint had borne such great sorrow and survived poverty, hard work, and the travails of childbirth, felt that in the face of the bewitchment that was consuming her home she had come to the end of her tether. She was sure that she had tried everything that might cure her daughter; she had even taken her to the hospital, breaking her oath never to set foot there again. But it had all been in vain.

*  *  *

As he rang the doorbell, Francisco hoped that it would not be Beatriz Alcántara who answered. He felt diminished in her presence.

“Mother, this is my
compañero
Francisco Leal,” Irene had said when she first introduced him several months earlier.

“Colleague, you say?” her mother replied, unable to tolerate the revolutionary implications of the word
compañero.

Following that meeting, each knew what to expect from the other; they tried, nevertheless, to be amiable, more from habitual good manners than from any desire to please the other. Beatriz quickly found out that Francisco came from a family of impoverished Spanish émigrés who belonged to a caste of salaried intellectuals that lived in middle-class neighborhoods. She suspected that his job as a photographer, his backpack and motorcycle were not indications of bohemianism. The young man seemed to have very definite ideas, and they did not coincide with her own. Her daughter Irene ran around with rather strange people but, since it would be futile, she did not protest; she did, however, oppose Irene's friendship with Francisco in every way she could. She did not like to see their happy camaraderie, the strong bonds of their shared assignments, or, even less, like to imagine the consequences for her daughter's engagement to the Captain. She considered Francisco dangerous, because even she felt attracted by the photographer's dark eyes, slender hands, and serene voice.

For his part, Francisco recognized at first glance Beatriz's class prejudices and ideology. He limited himself to treating her courteously and distantly, lamenting that she was the mother of his best friend.

Once again, seeing the house, he was captivated by the thick wall surrounding the grounds, constructed from round stones from the river and bordered by lilliputian vegetation born of the wet winter. A discreet metal plaque displayed the words
RETIREMENT HOME
and, beneath them, a name befitting Irene's sense of humor:
THE WILL OF GOD MANOR
. He always marveled at the contrast between the well-tended garden, where soon dahlias, wisteria, roses, and gladiolas would be blooming in a tumult of perfume and color, and the infirmity of the first-floor occupants of this mansion that had been converted into a residence for the elderly. On the second floor all was harmony and good taste. Here were the Oriental rugs, the exquisite furniture, the works of art Eusebio Beltrán had acquired prior to his disappearance. The house was similar to others in the area but, of necessity, Beatriz had made modifications, keeping the façade intact wherever possible so that from the street the house would look as lordly as its neighbors. In that regard she was extremely circumspect. She did not want to appear to be making her living off old people but, instead, to be playing the role of benefactress: Poor dears, what would become of them if we didn't look after them?

She was equally prudent in references to her husband. She preferred to accuse him of having left for parts unknown in the company of some low woman rather than to express doubts of a different nature. She suspected, in fact, that his absence was
not
due to an amorous adventure but that the government had carelessly eliminated him or was by mistake detaining him and he was rotting in some prison, as had been rumored in so many cases in recent years. She was not the only one to harbor those black thoughts. At first, her friends observed her with distrust, and whispered behind her back that Eusebio Beltrán had fallen into the hands of the police, in which event he had undoubtedly been concealing some offense: he might be a Communist mingling with decent people, as others had been known to do. Beatriz did not like to remember the threatening and sneering calls, the anonymous messages slipped beneath the door, or the unforgettable night garbage had been dumped on her bed. No one was in the house that night, because Rosa, too, had gone out. When Beatriz and her daughter returned from the theater, everything was in order, although they were surprised that the dog was not barking. Irene went looking for the dog, calling her in every room as Beatriz followed, turning on the lights. Stupefied, they stopped before the mounds of refuse covering the bed, empty tin cans, decomposing peelings, paper smeared with excrement. They found Cleo locked in an armoire, seemingly dead, and there she lay for fifteen hours until she recovered from the soporific. Beatriz sank into a chair, staring at the litter and muck on her bed, unable to comprehend the meaning of such provocation. She could not imagine who would have carried bags of filth to her house, picked the lock of the door, drugged the dog, and defiled everything. This happened before the days of the retirement home on the ground floor, and except for Rosa and the gardener there were no other servants.

“Don't tell anyone about this, darling. It's an insult, we are disgraced,” Beatriz wept.

“Don't think about it, Mother. Can't you see it's the work of a maniac? Don't let it worry you.”

But Beatriz Alcántara knew that in some way this outrage was connected with her husband, and once again she damned him. She remembered every detail of the evening Eusebio Beltrán had deserted her. In those days he was obsessed with his project of raising sheep for Muslims and with the philanthropic butcher shop that led to his ruin. They had been married for more than twenty years, and Beatriz's patience had run out. She could no longer bear his indifference, his many infidelities, his scandalous manner of squandering money on silver sports planes, racehorses, erotic sculpture, expensive restaurants, gaming tables, and extravagant gifts for other women. As he entered his middle years, her husband had not settled down; on the contrary, his defects became more marked, and his adventurous impulses increased along with the gray hairs at his temple and the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes. He risked his capital in foolish ventures, he disappeared for weeks on exotic voyages—from following a Norwegian ecologist to the ends of the continent to embarking on a solitary ocean-crossing on a raft blown by unpredictable winds. His charm captivated everyone but his wife. In one of their horrendous arguments, she lost all control and assaulted him with a broadside of insults and recriminations. Eusebio Beltrán was a genteel man who despised any form of violence. He held up his hand in sign of a truce and with a smile announced that he was going out for cigarettes. He left the house quietly, and nothing was heard from him again.

“He ran away from his debts,” Beatriz speculated, finding unconvincing the argument that he had become infatuated with another woman.

He left no trace. Nor was his body found. In the years that followed, she adapted to her new state, outdoing herself to feign a normal life before her friends. Silent and solitary, she prowled through hospitals, detention centers, and consulates, inquiring about her husband. She approached friends in the upper echelons of the government and initiated secret investigations through a detective agency, but no one could locate him. Finally, weary of wandering through so many offices, she decided to go to the Vicariate. Since any connection with the Vicar's office was frowned on in her social milieu, she did not dare mention it, even to Irene. That branch of the Archbishopric was considered to be a den of Marxist priests and dangerous laymen dedicated to helping enemies of the regime. It was the only organization that openly defied the government, directed by a Cardinal who placed the invincible power of the Church at the service of the persecuted, never stopping to inquire about their political hue. Until the day when she needed help, Beatriz had haughtily proclaimed that the authorities ought to wipe that institution from the face of the earth and jail the Cardinal and his rebel sycophants. Her visit was in vain, however, because not even in the Vicariate could she find news of her missing husband. He seemed to have been swept away on a wind of oblivion.