The House of the Spirits (13 page)

Despite the fact that Esteban Trueba was no great lover of innovation, and had, in fact, a deep mistrust of the dislocations of modernity, he decided that his house should be constructed like the new palaces of North America and Europe, with all the comforts but retaining a classical style. He wanted it to be as far removed as possible from the native architecture. He would hear nothing of three courtyards, corridors, rusty fountains, dark rooms, walls of whitewashed adobe, or dusty tiles on the roof; he wanted two or three heroic floors, rows of white columns, and a majestic staircase that would make a half-turn on itself and wind up in a hall of white marble, enormous, well-lit windows, and the overall appearance of order and peace, beauty and civilization, that was typical of foreign peoples and would be in tune with his new life. His house would be the reflection of himself, his family, and the prestige he planned to give the surname that his father had stained. He wanted the splendor to be visible from the street, and so he designed a French garden with topiaries fit for Versailles, deep wells of flowers, a smooth and perfect lawn, jets of water, and several statues of the gods of Olympus and perhaps one or two courageous Indians from the history of the Americas, naked and crowned with feathers, his one concession to patriotism. He could hardly guess that that solemn, cubic, dense, pompous house, which sat like a hat amid its green and geometric surroundings, would end up full of protuberances and incrustations, of twisted staircases that led to empty spaces, of turrets, of small windows that could not be opened, doors hanging in midair, crooked hallways, and portholes that linked the living quarters so that people could communicate during the siesta, all of which were Clara's inspiration. Every time a new guest arrived, she would have another room built in another part of the house, and if the spirits told her that there was a hidden treasure or an unburied body in the foundation, she would have a wall knocked down, until the mansion was transformed into an enchanted labyrinth that was impossible to clean and that defied any number of state and city laws. But when Trueba built the house that everybody called “the big house on the corner,” it bore the stately seal with which he managed to stamp everything around him, as if in memory of his childhood privations. Clara never went to see the house during the time it was being built. She was as uninterested in it as she was in her trousseau, and she left all decisions in the hands of her fiancé and her future sister-in-law.

When her mother died, Férula found herself alone and with no useful purpose to her life, at an age when she could no longer hope to marry. For a time, she made daily visits to the slums as part of a frenzied charitable activity, which gave her chronic bronchitis and brought no peace to her tormented soul. Esteban wanted her to take a trip, buy herself some clothes, and enjoy herself for the first time in her melancholy life, but she already had the habit of austerity and had spent too much time cooped up in her house. She was afraid of everything. Her brother's marriage plunged her into uncertainty, because she feared that this would be yet another reason for Esteban to keep his distance, and he was her only comfort and support. She was afraid of ending her days crocheting in some nursing home for spinsters from good families; thus she was overjoyed to learn that Clara was incompetent when it came to the simplest domestic tasks and that whenever she had to make a decision she became distracted and vague. She's a bit on the stupid side, Férula concluded with delight. It was clear that Clara would be incapable of administering the mansion her brother was constructing and that she would need a lot of help. As subtly as she could, she made it known to Esteban that his future wife was completely helpless and that she, with her proven spirit of self-sacrifice, could help her out and was ready to do so. Esteban could never follow her conversations when they took this sort of turn. As the wedding date approached and she realized she would have to decide her own fate, Férula grew desperate. Convinced that her brother would never give her a clear answer, she waited for an opportunity to speak alone with Clara. She found it one Saturday afternoon at five o'clock when she saw her walking down the street. She invited her to the Hotel Francés for tea. The two women sat surrounded by cream puffs and Bavarian porcelain, while in the back of the tearoom an all-female ensemble played a melancholy string quartet. Férula quietly observed her future sister-in-law, who looked about fifteen and whose voice was still off-key as a result of all her years of silence, not knowing how to broach the subject. After a seemingly endless pause in which they ate a trayful of pastries and drank two cups of jasmine tea apiece, Clara straightened a wisp of hair that had fallen across her eyes, smiled, and gave a gentle tap to Férula's hand.

“Don't worry,” she said. “You're going to live with us and the two of us will be just like sisters.”

Férula was startled. She wondered if the rumors about Clara's talent for reading minds were true. Her first reaction was pride, and she would have refused the offer just because of the beauty of the gesture, but Clara did not give her time. She leaned across and kissed her on the cheek with such candor that Férula lost control and began to cry. It had been a long time since she had shed even a single tear and she was astonished to see how badly she had needed some sign of tenderness. She could not remember the last time anyone had spontaneously touched her. She wept for a long time, unburdening herself of many past sorrows and her loneliness, still holding on to Clara's hand. Clara helped her blow her nose and between sobs fed her forkfuls of pastry and sips of tea. They wept and talked until eight o'clock at night, and that afternoon in the Hotel Francés they sealed a pact of friendship that would last for many years.

*  *  *

As soon as the period of mourning for Doña Ester was over and the big house on the corner was finished, Esteban Trueba and Clara del Valle were married in a modest ceremony. Esteban gave his wife a set of diamond jewelry, which she thought beautiful. She packed it away in a shoe box and quickly forgot where she had put it. They spent their honeymoon in Italy and two days after they were on the boat. Esteban was as madly in love as an adolescent, despite the fact that the movement of the ship made Clara uncontrollably ill and the tight quarters gave her asthma. Seated by her side in the narrow cabin, pressing cold compresses to her forehead and holding her while she vomited, he felt profoundly happy and desired her with unjust intensity, considering the wretched state to which she was reduced. On the fourth day at sea, she woke up feeling better and they went out on deck to look at the sea. Seeing her with her wind-reddened nose, and laughing at the slightest provocation, Esteban swore that sooner or later she would come to love him as he needed to be loved, even if it meant he had to resort to extreme measures. He realized that Clara did not belong to him and that if she continued living in a world of apparitions, three-legged tables that moved of their own volition, and cards that spelled out the future, she probably never would. Clara's impudent and nonchalant sensuality was also not enough for him. He wanted far more than her body; he wanted control over that undefined and luminous material that lay within her and that escaped him even in those moments when she appeared to be dying of pleasure. His hands felt very heavy, his feet very big, his voice very hard, his beard very scratchy, and his habits of rape and whoring very deeply ingrained, but even if he had to turn himself inside out like a glove, he was prepared to do everything in his power to seduce her.

They returned from their honeymoon three months later. Férula was waiting for them in their new house, which still smelled of paint and fresh cement and was filled with flowers and platters heaped with fruit, just as Esteban had ordered. When they stepped across the threshold for the first time, Esteban lifted his wife in his arms. His sister was surprised not to feel jealousy and observed that Esteban looked rejuvenated.

“Getting married has done you a world of good,” she said.

She showed Clara around the house. Clara ran her eyes over everything and found it all quite lovely, just as she had politely approved of a sunset on the high seas, the Piazza San Marco, and her diamond jewelry. When they came to the door of the room that was to be her own, Esteban asked her to shut her eyes and led her into it by the hand.

“You can open them now,” he said.

Clara looked around. It was a large room with walls papered in blue silk, with English furniture, big windows and balconies that opened onto the garden, and a canopied bed with gauze curtains that looked like a sailboat on a sea of calm blue silken water.

“Very lovely,” Clara said.

Then Esteban pointed to the place where Clara was standing. It was the special surprise he had prepared for her. Clara looked down and gave a frightful cry; she was standing on the black back of Barrabás, who lay there split down the middle, transformed into a rug. His head was still intact and his two glass eyes stared up at her with the helpless look that is the specialty of taxidermists. Her husband managed to catch her before she fell to the floor in a dead faint.

“I told you she wasn't going to like it,” said Férula.

Barrabás's tanned hide was quickly removed from the bedroom and shoved in a corner of the basement, along with the magic books from Uncle Marcos's enchanted trunks and other treasures, where it resisted moths and neglect with a tenacity worthy of a better cause, until it was rescued by subsequent generations.

It soon became evident that Clara was pregnant. Férula's affection for her sister-in-law became a passion, a dedication to waiting on her and caring for her and an unlimited tolerance for her distractions and eccentricities. For Férula, who had spent her life taking care of an old lady who was slowly, irremediably rotting alive, looking after Clara was like being in heaven. She bathed her in jasmine and basil water, rubbed her with cologne, powdered her with a swan's-down puff, and brushed her hair until it was as soft and shiny as an underwater plant, just as Nana had done before.

*  *  *

Long before his newlywed impatience had died down, Esteban Trueba was forced to return to Tres Marías, where he had not set foot for more than a year and where, despite the vigilance of Pedro Segundo García, its owner's absence was sorely felt. The property, which had once seemed to him like paradise and had been his pride and joy, was now a nuisance. As he watched the expressionless cows chewing their cuds, the sluggish labors of the peasants repeating the same motions day after day throughout their lives, the unchanging background of the snowy
cordillera
, and the frail column of smoke rising from the volcano, he felt like a prisoner.

While he was in the countryside, life in the big house on the corner changed, making way for a gentle routine without men. Férula was the first out of bed in the morning, because she was still in the habit of rising early from the days when she watched over her invalid mother, but she let her sister-in-law sleep late. In midmorning she personally served her breakfast in bed, threw open the blue silk curtains to let the sun in, and filled the French porcelain bathtub that was painted with sea nymphs, giving Clara time to shake off her sleep as she greeted one by one the spirits in the room, brought the tray up to her chest, and dipped her toast in the thick hot chocolate. Then Férula drew her out of bed with a mother's gentle caresses, telling her the good news from the morning paper, which was less every day, so that she was forced to fill the gaps with gossip about the neighbors, domestic trivia, and made-up anecdotes that Clara found very lovely and forgot within five minutes; thus Férula could tell the same ones over and over and Clara always enjoyed herself just as if it were the first time she was hearing them.

Férula took her strolling in the sun, because it was good for the baby; shopping, so the child would lack for nothing when it was born and have the finest clothing in the world; for lunch at the golf club, “so everyone would see how beautiful you have become since marrying my brother”; to see her parents, “so they don't think you've forgotten them”; and to the theater, “so you don't spend the whole day shut inside the house.” Clara let herself be shepherded around with a sweetness that was not stupidity but distraction, and she devoted all her powers of concentration to vain attempts to communicate with Esteban by telepathy—her messages did not arrive—and to perfecting her abilities as a clairvoyant.

For the first time she could remember, Férula felt happy. She was closer to Clara than she had ever been to anyone, even her own mother. Someone less original than Clara would have tired of her sister-in-law's excessive pampering and constant worry, or have succumbed to her domineering and meticulous nature. But Clara lived in another world. Férula abhorred the moment when her brother returned from the country and filled the house with his presence, breaking the harmony they had established while he was away. When he was in the house, she had to disappear into the shadows and be more prudent in the way she addressed the servants, as well as in the care she lavished on Clara. Every night, when the married couple retired to their rooms, she was overwhelmed by a peculiar hatred she could not explain, which filled her soul with regret. To take her mind off things, she reverted to her old habit of saying the rosary in the slums and confessing her sins to Father Antonio.

“Hail Mary, Full of Grace.”

“Conceived without sin.”

“I hear you, my child.”

“Father, I don't know how to say this. I think I committed a sin.”

“Of the flesh, my child?”

“My flesh is withered, Father, but not my spirit! The devil is tormenting me.”

“The mercy of the Lord is infinite.”

“You don't know the thoughts that can run through the mind of a single woman, Father, a virgin who has never been with a man, not for any lack of opportunities but because God sent my mother a protracted illness and I had to be her nurse.”