The House of the Spirits (6 page)

“How dare you put your hands on me!” I roared.

The poor man jumped back in fright. A few drops of rain fell sadly on the flowers of the dead.

“Forgive me, señor,” I think he must have said. “It's six o'clock and I have to lock up.”

He tried to explain to me that the rules forbade anyone but employees from staying in the place after sundown, but I didn't let him finish. I thrust a few bills in his hand and pushed him away so he would leave me in peace. I saw him walk away looking back at me over his shoulder. He must have thought I was a madman, one of those crazed necrophiliacs who sometimes haunt cemeteries.

It was a long night, perhaps the longest in my life. I spent it sitting next to Rosa's tomb, speaking with her, accompanying her on the first part of her journey to the Hereafter, which is when it's hardest to detach yourself from earth and you need the love of those who have remained behind, so you can leave with at least the consolation of having planted something in someone else's heart. I remembered her perfect face and cursed my luck. I blamed Rosa for the years I had spent dreaming of her deep within the mine. I didn't tell her that I hadn't seen any other women all that time except for a handful of shriveled old prostitutes, who serviced the whole camp with more good will than ability. But I did tell her that I had lived among rough, lawless men, that I had eaten chickpeas and drunk green water far from civilization, thinking of her night and day and bearing her image in my soul like a banner that gave me the strength to keep hacking at the mountain even if the lode was lost, even if I was sick to my stomach the whole year round, even if I was frozen to the bone at night and dazed by the sun during the day, all with the single goal of marrying her, but she goes and dies on me, betraying me before I can fulfill my dreams, and leaving me with this incurable despair. I told her she had mocked me, that we had never been completely alone together, that I had only been able to kiss her once. I had had to weave my love out of memories and cravings that were impossible to satisfy, out of letters that took forever to arrive and arrived faded, and that were incapable of reflecting the intensity of my feelings or the pain of her absence, because I have no gift for letter writing and much less for writing about my own emotions. I told her that those years in the mine were an irremediable loss, and that if I had known she wasn't long for this world I would have stolen the money that I needed to marry her and built her a palace studded with treasures from the ocean floor—with pearls and coral and walls of nacre. I would have kidnapped her and locked her up, and only I would have had the key. I would have loved her without interruption almost till infinity, for I was convinced that if she had been with me she would never have drunk the poison that was meant for her father and she would have lived a thousand years. I told her of the caresses I'd saved for her, the presents with which I'd planned to surprise her, the ways I would have loved her and made her happy. In short, I told her all the crazy things I never would have said if she could hear me and that I've never told a woman since.

That night I thought I had lost my ability to fall in love forever, that I would never laugh again or pursue an illusion. But never is a long time. I've learned that much in my long life.

I had a vision of anger spreading through me like a malignant tumor, sullying the best hours of my life and rendering me incapable of tenderness or mercy. But beyond confusion and rage, the strongest feeling I remember having that night was frustrated desire, because I would never be able to satisfy my need to run my hands over Rosa's body, to penetrate her secrets, to release the green fountain of her hair and plunge into its deepest waters. In desperation I summoned up the last image I had of her, outlined against the satin pleats in her virginal coffin, with her bride's blossoms in her hair and a rosary in her hands. I couldn't know that years later I would see her once again for a fleeting second just as she was then, with orange blossoms in her hair and a rosary in her hands.

With the first glints of dawn the caretaker appeared again. He must have felt sorry for the half-frozen madman who had spent the night among the livid ghosts of the graveyard. He held out his flask.

“Hot tea,” he offered.

But I pushed it away and walked out with great furious strides, cursing, among the lines of tombs and cypresses.

*  *  *

The night that Dr. Cuevas and his assistant cut open Rosa's corpse in the kitchen to establish the cause of her death, Clara lay in bed with her eyes wide open, trembling in the dark. She was terrified that Rosa had died because she had said she would. She believed that just as the power of her mind could move the saltcellar on the table, she could also produce deaths, earthquakes, and other, even worse catastrophes. In vain her mother had explained that she could not bring about events, only see them somewhat in advance. She felt lonely and guilty, and it occurred to her that if only she could be with Rosa she would feel much happier. She got up in her nightshirt and walked barefoot to the bedroom she had shared with her older sister, but she was not in the bed where she had seen her for the last time. She went out to look for her. The house was dark and quiet. Her mother, drugged by Dr. Cuevas, was asleep, and her brothers and sisters and the servants were already in their rooms. She went through the sitting rooms, slipping along the walls, frightened and cold. The heavy furniture, the thick drapes, the paintings on the wall, the wallpaper with its flowers against a background of dark cloth, the low lamps flickering on the ceiling, and the potted ferns on their porcelain columns all looked menacing to her. She noticed a crack of light coming from under the drawing-room door, and she was on the verge of going in, but she was afraid she would run into her father and that he would send her back to bed. So she went toward the kitchen, thinking to comfort herself against Nana's breasts. She crossed the main courtyard, passed between the camellias and the miniature orange trees, went through the sitting rooms of the second wing of the house and the dark open corridors, where the faint gas lights were left burning every night in case there was an earthquake and to scare the bats away, and arrived in the third courtyard, where the service rooms and kitchen were. There the house lost its aristocratic bearing and the kennels, chicken coops, and servants' quarters began. Farther on was the stable where the old horses Nívea still rode were kept, even though Severo del Valle had been one of the first to buy an automobile. The kitchen door and shutters were closed, and so was the pantry. Instinct told Clara that something out of the ordinary was going on inside. She tried to see in but her nose didn't reach the window ledge. She had to fetch a wooden box and pull it to the window. She stood on tiptoe and looked through a crack between the wooden shutter and the window frame, which was warped with damp and age. Then she saw inside.

Dr. Cuevas, that kind, sweet, wonderful old man with the thick beard and ample paunch, who had helped her into this world and attended her through all the usual childhood illnesses and all her asthma attacks, had been transformed into a dark, fat vampire just like the ones in her Uncle Marcos's books. He was bent over the table where Nana prepared her meals. Next to him was a young man she had never seen before, pale as the moon, his shirt stained with blood and his eyes drunk with love. She saw her sister's snow-white legs and naked feet. Clara began to shake. At that moment Dr. Cuevas moved aside and she was able to see the dreadful spectacle of Rosa lying on her back on the marble slab, a deep gash forming a canal down the front of her body, with her intestines beside her on the salad platter. Rosa's head was twisted toward the window through which Clara was squinting, and her long green hair hung like a fern from the table onto the tiled floor, which was stained with blood. Her eyes were closed, but the little girl, because of the shadows, her own distance, and her imagination, thought she saw a supplicating and humiliated expression on her sister's face.

Stock-still on her wooden box, Clara could not keep from watching until the very end. She peered through the crack for a long time, until the two men had finished emptying Rosa out, injecting her veins with liquid, and bathing her inside and out with aromatic vinegar and essence of lavender. She stood there until they had filled her with mortician's paste and sewn her up with a curved upholsterer's needle. She stayed until Dr. Cuevas rinsed his hands in the sink and dried his tears, while the other one cleaned up the blood and the viscera. She stayed until the doctor left, putting on his black jacket with a gesture of infinite sadness. She stayed until the young man she had never seen before kissed Rosa on the lips, the neck, the breasts, and between the legs; until he wiped her with a sponge, dressed her in her embroidered nightgown, and, panting, rearranged her hair. She stayed until Nana and Dr. Cuevas came and dressed Rosa in her white gown and put on her hair the crown of orange blossoms that they'd kept wrapped in tissue paper for her wedding day. She stayed until the assistant took her in his arms with the same tenderness with which he would have picked her up and carried her across the threshold of his house if she had been his bride. She could not move until the first lights of dawn appeared. Only then did she slide back into her bed, feeling within her the silence of the entire world. Silence filled her utterly. She did not speak again until nine years later, when she opened her mouth to announce that she was planning to be married.

— TWO —

THE THREE MARÍAS

S
eated in their dining room among the battered, antiquated pieces that had been fine Victorian furniture long ago, Esteban Trueba and his sister Férula were eating the same greasy soup they had every day of the week, and the same tasteless fish they had for dinner every Friday. They were attended by the same servant who had taken care of them their whole lives, in the tradition of the paid slaves of the era. Stooped and half-blind, but still energetic, the old woman came and went between the kitchen and the dining room, bearing the enormous platters with the utmost solemnity. Doña Ester Trueba did not join her children at the table. She spent her mornings immobile in her chair, looking out the window at the bustle of the street, and observing the gradual decline of the neighborhood that in her youth had been so elegant. After breakfast she was put back into her bed, propped up in the half-seated position that was the only one her arthritis allowed, with no other company than her pious reading matter—books of miracles and lives of the saints. There she stayed until the following morning, when the same routine would be repeated. Her only outings were her weekly trips to Sunday mass at the Church of Saint Sebastián, which was two blocks from her house, whence she was conveyed in a wheelchair by Férula and the maid.

Esteban finished picking the whitish fish from the tangle of bones and laid his knife and fork across his plate. He sat as stiffly as he walked, straight as a pole, his head thrown slightly back and to one side, with a sidelong glance that held a mixture of pride, distrust, and myopia. His gesture would have been unpleasant if his eyes had not been so astonishingly sweet and bright. His tense posture would have suited a short stubby man who wanted to appear taller, but he himself was almost six feet tall and slender. All the lines of his body were vertical and swept upward, from his sharp aquiline nose and pointed eyebrows to his high forehead, which was crowned with a lion's mane of hair that he combed straight back. He was big-boned, with thick, spatulate fingers. He walked with a long stride, and moved with energy; he appeared to be very strong, although there was no lack of grace to his movements. He had a very agreeable face, despite his severe, somber demeanor and his frequently sour expression. His most salient trait was his moodiness and a tendency to grow violent and lose his head, a characteristic he had had since childhood, when he used to throw himself on the floor foaming at the mouth, so furious that he could scarcely breathe, and kicking like one possessed by the devil. He had to be plunged into freezing water to regain control. Later on he learned to manage these fits, but he was left with a short temper, which needed very little provocation to blossom into terrible attacks.

“I'm not returning to the mine,” he said.

It was the first sentence he had exchanged at the table with his sister. He had made his mind up the night before, when he realized that it was senseless to continue leading a hermit's life while seeking for a quick fortune. He still had two years left on the concession to the mine, enough time to finish exploring the marvelous lode he had discovered, but he felt that even if the foreman robbed him a little or did not know how to work it as well as he himself might, that was no reason for him to bury himself alive in the desert. He had no wish to become rich by such a sacrifice. He had his whole life ahead of him to make money if he could, time enough to be bored and to await death, without Rosa.

“You'll have to work at something, Esteban,” Férula replied. “It's true we spend almost nothing, but Mama's medicines are expensive.”

Esteban looked at his sister. She was still a beautiful woman, with rich curves and the oval face of a Roman madonna, but already the ugliness of resignation could be glimpsed through her pale, peach-toned skin and her eyes full of shadows. Férula had accepted the role of her mother's nurse. She slept in the room that adjoined her mother's, ready at any moment to run in and administer her potions, hold her bedpan, or straighten her pillows. She was a tormented soul. She took pleasure in humiliation and in menial tasks, and since she believed that she would get to heaven by suffering terrible injustice, she was content to clean her mother's ulcerated legs, washing her and sinking deeply into her stench and wretchedness, even peering into her bedpan. And, much as she hated herself for these torturous and unconfessable pleasures, she hated her mother more for being their instrument. She waited on her without complaint, but she managed subtly to extract from her the price of her invalidism. Without anything being said openly, the fact remained that the daughter had sacrificed her life to care for the mother, and that she had become a spinster for that reason. Férula had turned down two suitors on the pretext of her mother's illness. She never spoke of it, but everyone knew about it. She moved thickly and awkwardly and had the same sour character as her brother, but life and the fact that she was a woman had forced her to overcome it and to clamp down on the bit. She seemed so perfect that word had spread she was a saint. She was cited as an example because of the devotion that she lavished on Doña Ester and because of the way she had raised her only brother when their mother became ill and their father died, leaving them in dire poverty. Férula had adored her brother Esteban when he was a child. She slept with him, bathed him, took him out for strolls, did other people's sewing from dawn to dusk to pay for his schooling, and wept with rage and helplessness the day Esteban took a job in a notary's office because they could not make ends meet with what she earned. She had taken care of him and waited on him as she now did her mother, and she had woven him too into her invisible net of guilt and unrepayable debts of gratitude.

The boy began to move away from her the day he first put on long pants. Esteban could recall the exact moment when he had realized that his sister was an ominous shadow in his life. It was when he had received his first wages. He had decided to save fifty centavos to fulfill a dream he had cherished ever since he was a child: to have a cup of Viennese coffee. Through the windows of the Hotel Francés he had seen the waiters pass with trays held high above their heads on which lay these treasures: tall glass goblets crowned with towers of whipped cream and adorned with beautiful glazed maraschino cherries. The day of his first paycheck, he had crossed back and forth outside the establishment before getting up the courage to go through the door.

Finally, beret in hand, he had stepped timidly across the threshold and entered the luxurious dining room, with its teardrop chandeliers and stylish furniture, convinced that everyone was staring at him, that their thousand eyes found his suit too tight and his shoes old. He sat down on the edge of the chair, his ears burning, and gave his order to the waiter with a mere thread of a voice. He waited impatiently, watching people come and go in the tall mirrors, tasting with anticipation that pleasure he had so often dreamed of. His Viennese coffee arrived, far more impressive than he had imagined—superb, delicious, and accompanied by three honey biscuits. He stared at it in fascination for a long while, until he finally dared to pick up the long-handled spoon and, with a sigh of ecstasy, plunge it into the cream. His mouth was watering. He wanted to make this moment last as long as possible, to stretch it all the way to infinity. He began to stir the spoon, observing the way the dark liquid of the cup slowly moved into the cream. He stirred and stirred and stirred . . . and suddenly the tip of the spoon knocked against the glass, opening a crack through which the coffee leapt, pouring onto his clothes. Horrified, Esteban watched the entire contents of the goblet spill onto his only suit before the amused glances of the occupants of the adjoining tables. Pale with frustration, he stood up and walked out of the Hotel Francés fifty centavos poorer, leaving a trail of Viennese coffee on the springy carpet. When he reached his house, he was soaked and furious, beside himself. When Férula found out what had happened, she told him acidly, “That's what you get for spending Mama's medicine money on your private little whims. God punished you.” At that moment Esteban saw clearly the ways his sister used to keep him down and how she managed to make him feel guilty. He understood that he would have to escape. As he made moves to get out from under her tutelage, Férula began to dislike him. His freedom to come and go stung her like a reproach, like an injustice. When he fell in love with Rosa and Férula saw how desperate he was, like a little boy begging for her help, needing her, following her around the house pleading with her to intercede on his behalf with the del Valle family, that she speak to Rosa, that she bribe Nana, she again felt important to her brother. For a time they seemed to have been reconciled. But that rapprochement did not last long, and Férula was quick to realize that she had been used. She was happy when she saw her brother leave for the mine. From the time he had begun to work, when he was fifteen, Esteban had supported the household and had promised always to do so, but for Férula that had not been enough. It bothered her to have to stay locked up within these walls that stank of medicine and age, to be kept awake at night by the moans of her sick mother, always attentive to the clock so as to administer each dose at the proper time, bored, tired, and unhappy while her brother had no taste of such obligations. Before him lay a destiny that was bright, free, and full of promise. He could marry, have children, know what love was. The day she sent the telegram telling him of Rosa's death she had felt a strange shiver, almost of joy.

“You'll have to work at something,” Férula repeated.

“You'll never lack for anything so long as I live,” he said.

“That's easy to say,” Férula replied, drawing a fish bone from between her teeth.

“I think I'm going to go to the country, maybe to Tres Marías.”

“That place is in ruins, Esteban. I've always told you that the best thing you could do with it is sell it, but you're as stubborn as a mule.”

“Land is something one should never sell. It's the only thing that's left when everything else is gone.”

“I don't agree. Land is a romantic idea. What makes a man rich is a good eye for business,” Férula insisted. “But you always said that one day you would go and live in the country.”

“That day has arrived. I hate this city.”

“Why don't you say it's because you hate this house?”

“That too,” he answered brutally.

“I would like to have been born a man, so I could leave too,” she said, full of hatred.

“And I would not have liked to be a woman,” he said.

They finished eating in silence. The brother and sister had drifted apart, and the only thing that remained to unite them was the presence of their mother and the vague memory of the love they had had for each other as children. They had grown up in a ruined home, witness to the moral and economic deterioration of their father and then the slow illness of their mother. Doña Ester had begun to suffer from arthritis at an early age, becoming stiffer and stiffer until she could only move with the greatest difficulty, like a living corpse; finally, no long able to bend her knees, she had settled for good into her wheelchair, her widowhood, and her despair. Esteban remembered his childhood and adolescence, his tight-fitting suits, the rope of Saint Francis he was forced to tie around his waist as a sign of who only knew what vows his mother or his sister had made, his carefully mended shirts, and his loneliness. Férula, five years his senior, washed and starched his only two shirts every other day so that he would always look fresh and properly dressed, and reminded him that on their mother's side they were heir to the noblest and most highborn surname of the viceroyalty of Lima. Trueba had simply been a regrettable accident in the life of Doña Ester, who was destined to marry someone of her own class, but she had fallen hopelessly in love with that good-for-nothing immigrant, a first-generation settler who within a few short years had squandered first her dowry and then her inheritance.

But his blue-blood past was of no use to Esteban if there was not enough money in the house to pay the grocer and he had to go to school on foot because he did not have the fare for the streetcar. He recalled how they had packed him off to school with his chest and back lined with newspaper, because he had no woolen underclothes and his overcoat was in tatters, and how he had suffered at the thought that his schoolmates might be able to hear, as he could, the crunch of the paper as it moved against his skin. In winter, the only source of heat in the whole house was the brazier in his mother's bedroom, where the three of them huddled together to save on candles and coal. His had been a childhood of privations, discomfort, harshness, interminable nighttime rosaries, fear, and guilt. All that remained of those days was his fury and his outsized pride.

Two days later Esteban Trueba left for the country. Férula accompanied him to the train station. She kissed him a cold goodbye on the cheek and waited for him to board the train carrying his two leather suitcases with the bronze locks, the same ones he had bought when he left for the mine and that were supposed to last him the rest of his life, according to the salesman's promise. She told him to be sure to take care of himself and to try to visit them from time to time; she said she would miss him, but they both knew they were destined not to see each other for many years, and underneath it all they were both rather relieved.

“Let me know if Mother takes a turn for the worse!” Esteban shouted through the window as the train pulled out.

“Don't worry!” Férula replied, waving her handkerchief from the platform.

Esteban Trueba leaned back in the red velvet seat and felt deep gratitude to the British, who had had the foresight to build first-class cars in which one could travel like a gentleman, without having to put up with chickens, baskets, string-tied bundles, and the howls of other people's children. He congratulated himself for having decided on the more expensive ticket for the first time in his life, and observed that this was one of the details that marked the difference between a yokel and a gentleman. He decided that from that day on, no matter how tight his circumstances, he would always pay for the small comforts that made him feel rich.