Authors: Esmeralda Santiago
“I don’t know how to count so high.” In spite of Ana’s efforts to teach her to read, write, and figure, Conciencia was as illiterate as on the day she was born. Again she thought a moment before answering. “The fire says many things I don’t understand. Most of the time I only know what it was saying after things happen.”
“What’s the use of a vision of the future if we can’t do anything about it?”
“Maybe we’re supposed to prepare, not change what will happen.”
“Is there something you’re not telling me?”
“I saw a big fire,
señora
, on San Bernabé.”
“When, Conciencia? When will it burn?”
“No le sé decir, señora.”
She hated that infuriating phrase. “Next week, next month?”
“I don’t know, but—”
“What else?”
“I saw him again,
señora
. El Caminante. Burning in the fields.”
Ana’s visions didn’t come from internal voices, nor did they appear as swirls of smoke. They were plans in her journals, lists on ledgers, practical goals to be compared with previous targets, weighed, and measured. She was in her study one morning when she looked down at her fingers, stained to the knuckles from the entries she’d been inking onto her pages. When did my life become an endless line of
figures and numbers? She turned to the stacks on her desk, the ledgers on her shelf, the catalogs for machinery and parts, brochures for chandlery and agricultural implements. What happened to the girl bent over don Hernán’s journals, imagining the romantic land he wrote about and sketched? She remembered believing that Puerto Rico meant freedom, but it now seemed like the long-ago dream of a naive girl.
She had to get away from her desk. Being outdoors always calmed and soothed the anxiety that niggled at her conscience.
Paula, who was snipping herbs near the kitchen, looked up when she heard Ana talking to herself.
“¿Señora?”
“
Nada
, Paula.”
She plunged into the flower-lined path to the newly finished open-air chapel, the whitewashed niche featuring her antique crucifix. It was a quiet spot, well shaded by mango and avocado trees. With the small knife Beba had given her two decades earlier on Abuelo’s farm, Ana now clipped newly sprouting wayward branches from the hibiscus hedge. Within minutes her bad mood had vanished.
Severo’s dogs announced his arrival from the valley.
“There’s a letter for you,” he said as soon as he saw her.
Soon after the 1858
zafra
ended, Ana had written to don Eugenio requesting that he send Miguel for a visit to Los Gemelos. There was no response. She wrote again, and the letter went unanswered. After the third letter, nearly a year later, she’d finally received one from Leonor. “Miguel will not be coming to Hacienda los Gemelos. This is his home. If you would like to see him, we cordially invite you to visit him here.”
“The old harpy!”
“Not good news?”
“She refuses to send Miguel. I should shock them all by appearing at their door.”
“It can be arranged,” he said with a bemused smile.
She didn’t laugh but returned to the house, mentally drafting a response to doña Leonor. In Ana’s mind, the capital might be as far away as Sevilla, or the Convento de las Buenas Madres in Huelva, and a return to any of those places conjured memories of a life that might have happened to someone else. After discarding several
attempts, she didn’t answer Leonor’s letter. Instead she wrote to Miguel, and over the next few months, did so more often, hoping that he’d ask to visit the hacienda. He never did.
Even though the boy showed no interest, Ana told herself that her work at Hacienda los Gemelos was for Miguel. He was far away, under the control of people who hated her, but he’d eventually inherit his grandfather’s assets, including the hacienda and Ingenio Diana. She imagined that, as Severo’s wife, she’d inherit his fortune, too, if he died before her. With no legitimate heir, Severo’s wealth would also go to Miguel through her. Her animosity toward the Argosos didn’t extend to the child. He was still young, under the influence of his grandparents, but someday Miguel would come home to claim his legacy, the world she’d created for him.
During the short-handed
zafra
following the cholera epidemic, Severo had become a different man in Ana’s eyes. She’d seen him at his worst, as a cruel, unfeeling, violent man, and it was hard for her to envision him in any other way. She still talked to him, shared meals, even allowed him to make love to her, although when he noticed her reluctance, weeks passed and he didn’t press her. He spent more nights away than usual. She didn’t reproach him, didn’t argue, didn’t challenge him because nothing she could say or do would change him or their situation. There was no one else to turn to, as she’d realized years ago. She had to learn how to be with him every day without allowing her increasing antipathy show.
Either he didn’t notice her coldness or didn’t care, but every month more children she took to be his were born to white
campesinas
. By now she’d figured out that Severo didn’t take black women as mistresses. The mulatto children she’d always believed to have been fathered by Severo were possibly—no, probably—Ramón’s and Inocente’s. How soon after their arrival at Hacienda los Gemelos did they begin to deceive her? She thought the eldest, Pepita, now married to Efraín, was the first product of their betrayals. Sixteen years later, Ana still held a grudge against the twins. At the same time, she’d pretended not to know about Severo’s infidelities for nearly a decade.
One morning she awoke on the marital bed alone. She’d avoided
imagining Severo with other women, even when they came to the infirmary, almost apologetically, to bring forth another of his bastards. Now she was angry at herself for allowing him to parade his lovers and his illegitimate children before her, as if to prove something. But what? As she dressed, she knew one thing. She’d had enough.
She rode to the valley when a swirling morning fog still hung below El Destino. Halfway down the hill, the mist turned to a fine drizzle, so by the time she reached the
batey
she was soaked through. The
casona
was now used as an office and supply room. She kept fresh clothes there, and changed into a dry blouse and skirt. By the time she’d done so, the sun had broken through, promising a hot, dry morning.
Severo came up the stairs of the
casona
about an hour later, when he saw her horse tied to the post below. He hung his sombrero on its peg and coiled his whip on the floor. She’d ordered coffee and bread, guava jelly, cheese, and smoked ham, set on the homely, hacienda-made crockery. As they ate, he reported on the work that had been accomplished over the past two days. She could tell that he knew something was on her mind, but he didn’t ask, and his lack of concern made her angry. After a while, she couldn’t keep silent anymore.
“Last night another of your
cueros
delivered a baby.”
“Don’t be vulgar, Ana. It demeans you.”
“Not as much as the spectacle of your mistresses and their cursed offspring.”
“You’ve never complained about them before.” He sipped his coffee, watching her over the cup’s rim.
His admission was infuriating. “First Ramón, then you, betray me.”
“I thought you didn’t care.”
“Why wouldn’t I care, Severo? I’m your wife.”
She’d rarely seen him lose control, but she now saw that below the exterior calm, he was seething. “Ramón was your husband, but it didn’t keep you from sleeping with his brother.”
They both knew that he’d overstepped a boundary that should have never been breached. Ana paled. Severo raised an eyebrow, then smiled.
“Let us not play games, Ana. I knew from the beginning, and yet it made no difference at all to me.”
“Yes, it has. You’ve been punishing me for all these years. I didn’t know why, but I do now.”
“Don’t act the victim. I know you too well—”
“You do not.”
“More than you imagine. You married me just to keep me here, helping you. I was sincere when I proposed to you. I’ve loved you, and have tried to make you love me.” He stood and paced away from her, then came closer, looming over her. “But admit it, Ana. You’ve never seen me as anything but your
mayordomo.
”
“No, no, Severo, that’s simply not true, and—”
He stepped away. “This is the kind of conversation neither of us likes or wants to have. I’ve already said things that I’m sorry for.” He fetched his sombrero from the peg by the wall. “Don’t worry. Nothing will change. Over the last couple of years, we’ve become more business partners than husband and wife in any case.” He retrieved his whip from the floor and adjusted it on his shoulder. “I’m glad we’ve cleared the air. You’ll no longer have to pretend you love me. And I don’t have to pretend it doesn’t matter.”
He kept his word. Nothing changed in their work interactions, but a chasm had opened between them. He lived in El Destino but slept in a separate bedroom. He exaggerated his always respectful manner, reverting to his more formal, premarriage demeanor. She mirrored his behavior until they circled each other, their work the focus of their everyday lives. He had dinner with her several times a week, but their companionable hours on the
balcón
, smoking and sipping rum, ended. After supper he went into his room or rode off she didn’t know where.
She missed his company. She had no other friends, but her stubborn pride told her that it had always been that way, except for the years at the convent with Elena. She was sometimes afraid in El Destino. Teo and Paula, Conciencia, Gloria, Meri, and the others lived in
bohíos
nearby, but when Severo wasn’t home, the house felt enormous and unwelcoming. She was afraid of the male slaves, many of them new to the hacienda after the cholera, most of them with a history of running away. What if they knew she was alone, and … No, she couldn’t think about it, had to banish the frightening
scenarios. She also refused to feel sorry for herself, or to let Severo know that, in spite of herself, the sound of Penumbra’s hooves on the path up the hill made her heart race with anticipation.
She still consulted him on anything to do with the hacienda, and one evening she told him what she’d been thinking.
“Last year the
norteamericanos
raised the sugar tariffs, and now our prices are down to four cents per pound.”
“We’ll take a big loss on this harvest, then.”
“If we sell it. I think we should warehouse our products until prices go up.”
“We don’t know how long the war will last. The prices might go even lower.”
“That’s true, but their plantations are in disarray. Sugar and molasses from the Southern states are not making it to the distilleries and markets in the North. Even if the war ended tomorrow, it would be a while before they could. Whenever the war ends, there will be an even greater demand.”
He grinned. “Ana, I never imagined you as a speculator.”
She was caught between pride and the uncomfortable feeling that she’d descended to another level. “I’m just trying to keep our business healthy.”
Within days, Severo had workers building another warehouse behind the mill at Ingenio Diana. Ana wanted to plant another fifty
cuerdas
, but insufficient
brazos
continued to be a major obstacle.
Campesinos
were moving to the hills, where coffee was a major product, and enslaved workers were almost impossible to find. If Severo found any, they were costly. The last time contraband human cargo arrived in the hidden cove was in 1860, when a captain delivered five strong men, two women, and four children.
“I’m bringing two more men from San Bernabé tomorrow,” he told her at the height of the 1862
zafra
.
“Are we renting them from don Luis?”
“No, they’re mine now.”
Severo was swallowing San Bernabé one
cuerda
at a time, one slave at a time, especially after don Luis had his stroke. Ana had never let go of her rancor toward don Luis, and felt particular satisfaction that he was losing his property to Severo and, by extension, to her.
She rode to the valley every morning, looked in on the infirmary,
then went to Ingenio Diana. Since she’d owned it, the mill had been enlarged. The new iron crushers from the United States now produced twenty times more cane juice than the animal-powered
trapiche
had pressed and probably fifty times what the original windmill had squeezed. The purgery, where the sugar bricks were formed and where the molasses dripped into barrels, had also been expanded, as well as the warehouses. Her mill was so efficient that the time to harvest had been halved even as the number of fields increased. With the profits from Ingenio Diana, she’d bought 243 woodland
cuerdas
, now being turned to cane.
She was toying with a new, possibly even more lucrative idea. Nearby haciendas couldn’t produce as much as Hacienda los Gemelos and Ingenio Diana. Ana could continue to buy fields, but cultivated land was expensive and taxed at a high rate. Why couldn’t she buy the cane from their neighbors? If she could get it at a reasonable price, she wouldn’t have to worry about the chronic scarcity of workers because the stalks would be delivered cut and ready to press. The smaller
hacendados
could focus on growing the product without the expense of building, maintaining, and operating a mill.
When she rode from and to El Destino, or when she galloped on the now familiar paths surrounded by cane, Ana felt pride that she’d rescued Hacienda los Gemelos and Ingenio Diana from decades of neglect. Those moments of joy she’d told Elena about, the sparks of happiness that she didn’t expect but was grateful for, came more often as these, her creations, flourished.
It felt to Ana that after the cholera the world outside the gates of Hacienda los Gemelos shrank, while within its borders her world grew. The flatlands in the valley, once covered by woods, brush, fruit trees, and coconut palms were now a ripple of cane in every direction. Even the forested slopes she’d seen from the
casona
in 1845 were being cleared and planted with the majestic stalks. This world, narrow outside her borders, expansive and beautiful beyond imagining within, was hers in deed if not in fact, and as the hacienda prospered, her feelings toward Severo Fuentes began to change again.