Flight of the Swan (16 page)

“And how is my hefty Russian milkmaid?” Molinari asked, smirking. “You promised you’d cooperate with me in San Juan, remember? You wanted to get rid of Diamantino too.”

I said I had no idea what he meant and tried to shake him loose, but he had me in a vise grip. He propelled me toward the mill, a huge building built of corrugated zinc sheets, and we walked past dozens of roller presses, vats, and vacuum pans and several huge Catherine wheels. I couldn’t have cared less if they were made in Scotland or Finland. I was terrified. The roar was deafening and there was febrile activity everywhere. After a few minutes, a thin film of sugarcane chaff was sticking to my arms and face. None of the laborers had shoes on, and they wore their pants tied at the ankle with
bejucos
, dried strips of plantain leaf, in order to keep the centipedes from crawling up their legs and into their crotches. They all looked away as we walked by, pretending they didn’t see us.

Molinari pushed me toward a shed at the back, where the discarded roller presses, their grooves eaten by rust, were stored. He made me go in, shutting the door behind him. I was as tall and strong as he was, but the smell of camphor and mothballs overwhelmed me as he pushed me against the wall. All of a sudden I was back in Minsk, locked up in a closet in my father’s house. I closed my eyes.

T
HAT NIGHT I SAT
next to Madame under the mosquito net while I tenderly massaged her feet. I was still shaken, but I put my anger about what had happened with Molinari aside and managed to control myself. After I came out of the shed that afternoon I had dragged myself to a deserted stretch of beach, removed my clothes, and soaked in the salt water for nearly an hour, hoping to cure my wounds.

Madame lay back on her bed and looked reproachfully at me.

“Where were you this afternoon, Masha? I looked all over for you.”

“I took a walk down the beach, Madame. But I’m here with you now, so you mustn’t worry.” She was suspicious, but I could easily fool her. I knew her weaknesses.

It took me a long time to quiet her down. She complained that she still had a migraine, and I rubbed her temples with eucalyptus oil as delicately as I could. “Where is Diamantino? Have you seen him?” she asked.

“He went into town with Novikov, Madame, he had errands to do,” I answered quietly, not rising to the bait. I knew she wanted to talk about him but refused to comply.

I should have been thinking of myself, of the terrible thing that had happened to me that day, but I could only think of her. I wanted to bring her out of her depression and didn’t know how. “The roly-poly ladies of Arecibo never wear red because they say it’s the whores’ favorite color,” I spoke out like a parrot as I got up to hang her clothes in the wardrobe and began to look for her nightgown. “They say it makes bulls aggressive when they go for a walk out of town!”

But Madame didn’t laugh at my halfhearted joke. She sat up on the bed, incensed. “This time I’m not going to throw my lot in with the oppressors as I did in Russia, out of loyalty to the czar!” she cried, with no small measure of melodrama. She was going to help that zealot, Diamantino Márquez, bring justice to the world.

“We can’t get rid of the past that easily,” I cautioned her. “In the eyes of the world you’ll always be the czar’s ballerina.” Madame didn’t answer. It was as if a sheet of ice had formed between us.

The next morning Madame, Diamantino, and I rode into town in Don Pedro’s Pierce-Arrow for the first rehearsal at Teatro Oliver. Novikov and the girls looked haggard, as if they hadn’t slept all night. They complained that the beds at the hotel were iron cots, and that they were full of bugs; the rooms were separated from each other only by low wooden walls, so there was no privacy. At least the beach was very near to the hotel, and the girls went swimming in the morning. When they saw Madame they greeted her icily, and I wondered at how fast news got around about what was going on at the house. I was sure they would have returned gladly to San Juan if they could have done so.

We rehearsed at the colonial theater, which was surprisingly large and elegant for such a small town. Spaniards have no sense of proportion; when they build something they do it to last forever, even at the bitter end of the world. Madame immediately felt the influence of her grand surroundings, and as she lifted her arms in an arch over her head and let Novikov circle her waist, she became transformed. There was an old stand-up piano at the back of the stage and Smallens sat down before it. “Order and you shall be obeyed!” he said to Madame with a little bow. “Monteverdi’s
Orpheus
,” she said with a thrill, “because today Eurydice has risen from the dead.” She danced as I had never seen her dance before. The arpeggios rose and fell under her feet like silver ladders from the bowels of the earth.

When the rehearsal was over, we went back to Dos Ríos to rest. “Do you think it’s wise to go on wearing your tunic when you dance the
Bacchanale
on opening night?” I asked, trying to be as diplomatic as possible. “People may think you’re wearing it for political reasons.” But Madame didn’t heed my warning, and the costume for the
Bacchanale
—the red chiffon tunic I loved because it made her look like a Communist Venus—was kept as it was. She only asked me to repair the hem. That night I knelt in front of the icon of the Virgin of Vladimir and prayed that the days might go by fast and that Dandré, the lesser of two evils, would come back to us as soon as possible. Madame knelt by my side and, I am sure, prayed that he would never return.

O
N SUNDAY, DOÑa BASILISA’S
daughter came home from school to spend summer vacation on the island. Ronda Batistini arrived from the States early; her ship dropped her off at Arecibo’s wharf at eight in the morning. Don Pedro was crazy about his daughter and went to pick her up in the Pierce-Arrow himself.

“This is my daughter,” Doña Basilisa said to Madame proudly as she took the girl to meet the dancer. They were all sitting in rocking chairs out on the verandah, drinking cold
guarapo
—silvery sugarcane juice—spiked with a little rum in tall glasses. Ronda was refreshingly spontaneous; she pumped my hand vigorously and then gripped Madame’s, defying Puerto Rican custom, which dictated that women never shook hands. “I saw posters of your performance at the Metropolitan Opera House, but I couldn’t get tickets. And now you’ll be dancing in my hometown,” the girl said, clearly elated to meet the famous ballerina.

Adelina, Doña Basilisa’s maid, told me the story of Ronda that morning, as we were preparing lunch. The girl was the apple of her parents’ eyes, she said as she gave me a bowl of
gandules
to clean, picking out the dry ones. The tender smell of the fresh peas reminded me of spring in the Russian countryside, and I breathed it in so that it would cure my lungs. Since her brother, Adalberto—the one no one ever talked about in the house because of Don Pedro’s religious beliefs—had vanished, Ronda would be Dos Ríos’s sole heir. This made her feel she had a great responsibility resting on her shoulders.

Her brother’s disappearance made a deep impression on Ronda, who grew up to be sober-minded and thoughtful. Perhaps because she tried desperately not to dwell on her brother’s absence, she had developed an intense passion for healing. She loved animals and was always bringing sick dogs and cats to the house, which turned into a regular animal hospital because she would bathe, feed, and minister to them. She became famous all around Dos Ríos for her gift and people would travel for miles to bring her their sick pets. Many brought them when they were terminally ill and knew they were going to die. “I want my dog to die with you,” they’d say to her. “After being my companion for fifteen years, it’s the least I can do for him.” And Ronda became used to looking death in the face.

When Ronda turned sixteen Don Pedro insisted she go to high school in the States. He wanted to get her away from the turmoil at the farm, from the yapping dogs and lowing cows she was always taking care of. At first Doña Basilisa was adamant and refused to be separated from her daughter, but when she learned that Diana Yager, the governor’s daughter, was attending Lady Lane School in Massachusetts, she condescended to send Ronda to the same school, where she would learn proper manners.

At Lady Lane, Ronda discovered how different she was from the rest of the girls. The housemother boxed her ears because she sliced meat and ate with the knife in her right hand and the fork in her left, “as stevedores do,” instead of putting the fork down and picking it up again with the right in a routine polite young ladies were supposed to observe; because she reached across the table for the bread, or threw salt over her shoulder for good luck whenever it spilled over. Her roommates laughed at her because she doused her bedsheets with bay rum every night to keep away bad dreams and drank tea made from sour-sop leaves her mother sent her in little brown paper parcels, to use whenever she had menstrual cramps. But Ronda patiently stood their teasing because soon she would be returning to her pets.

When she came to Arecibo for vacation in the summer she scandalized everyone with her American tomboy independence. She wore bell-bottomed khaki slacks in public, smoked unfiltered Chesterfields, and took her pets riding with her in her father’s Pierce-Arrow. She went to the beach alone at night with her boyfriends to roast marshmallows on an open fire, and never went to Mass on Sundays. Tongues wagged, but she was headstrong and went on doing what she pleased. She was very pretty, with light brown curls that framed her oval-shaped face and made her look like an ivory miniature. Don Pedro and Doña Basilisa were crazy about her. They forgave her rebellious behavior and kept her on a pedestal.

When she graduated from high school that spring, Ronda said she wanted only two things: to be able to go on to veterinary school and to own a
pura sangre
, a
paso fino
horse she wanted as a graduation present. She dreamed it would be all white, its mane and tail the color of
guarapo
spilling all the way to the ground, and its glossy pelt rippling under the sun. She planned to name it Rayo, and would love it for as long as she lived. But Don Pedro, in spite of his preference for his daughter, refused both. There were no women veterinarians on the island—it was a career for men. And owning a spirited horse was dangerous, she might have a serious accident. They had already tragically lost her brother, and they couldn’t risk losing her also. Don Pedro had written Ronda a formal letter at school informing her of all this—Adelina the maid had heard him read it out loud to Doña Basilisa before he mailed it—but as they still hadn’t talked about these matters in person, Adelina was sure Don Pedro would eventually give in. “What Ronda wants, Ronda gets,” Adelina told me, shaking a sheaf of freshly picked lettuce out the kitchen window as she began to make the salad for lunch.

Ronda got along better with her mother than with her father. Don Pedro’s family was Spanish; his father had been born in Majorca, at a little town called Soller, where he built a magnificent stone house with the money he sent back home from Dos Ríos. Don Pedro was very strict with Ronda, and expected her to get married and start a family as soon as she graduated from high school. Doña Basilisa, on the other hand, saw her daughter’s veterinary career as an actual possibility. Don Pedro should consent to let the girl pursue her studies, since later she could lend a hand at the mill. She could help cure farm animals—the cows, the heifers, and above all, the valuable oxen, with their horns bound in strips of mud-spattered cotton sacks, that pulled the sugarcane carts up and down the slushy country roads.

Doña Basilisa wasn’t religious like Don Pedro. Her family was half Spanish, half French—great admirers of encyclopedists like Montaigne, Voltaire, and Montesquieu. They were skeptics and rationalists, and Doña Basilisa was also, if only by family tradition, because she certainly hadn’t read them. But she never dared express her own opinions or contradict her husband in any way. At the dinner table, when Ronda argued with Don Pedro and ran sobbing to her room, Doña Basilisa would follow and simply sit next to her on the bed, stroking her daughter’s hair without saying a word. Doña Basilisa’s comforting presence, her soft arms that always smelled of powder, and her cool hands eventually helped Ronda regain her self-control.

Doña Basilisa couldn’t even begin to imagine what would happen if Don Pedro found out that Ronda and Bienvenido Pérez were attracted to each other. When Ronda came back from school that summer looking so beautiful and full of life, Doña Basilisa became even more apprehensive. She knew Don Pedro was capable of anything; he would be furious with Bienvenido when he found out. He had helped the young man acquire an education partly to get him away from the farm. But Bienvenido, instead of staying in San Juan once he graduated, where he had many more opportunities as an engineer, had, incredibly, come back to Arecibo.

Madame was pleased to meet Ronda. She liked young women who knew what they wanted. When Madame learned Ronda was going to be a veterinarian, she thought it was wonderful. She told her all about the exotic whiskered nightingales she had received as a gift in Cuba, and about Poppy, her American bull terrier, who looked just like her husband. “I often get along better with my pets than with many of my friends,” Madame confessed to Ronda. “Most animals are more trustworthy than people.” Ronda, on her part, hit it off with Madame from the start because of her passionate nature.

At first the girl was a heavy cross to bear. I found her conceited and spoiled—being her father’s pet she was used to getting her way—and I couldn’t understand why Madame found her so charming and went out of her way to be nice to her. But then, Madame always did all she could to gain a hold on her young female admirers. At first she thought she could do the same with Ronda. The girl admired Madame to no end and wanted to know all about her, but she was already in love with Bienvenido when they met. Madame could never control her.

Madame went everywhere with Diamantino now, and they were often seen at the beach swimming or visiting Doña Victoria’s parlor in the evening, where they sat together listening to music. A rift opened between Madame and the girls. They refused to come to the house to see Madame, and spent most of the time on their own in Arecibo. Madame, on the other hand, liked to be with Ronda when she wasn’t with her lover (she was almost never with me anymore). Ronda entertained her and took her mind off the animosity that had sprung up between her and our troupe. To feel rejected and unloved, after being the center of attention for so many years, was a calamity Madame could not accept. Furthermore, when Ronda found out about the rumors that were going around about the dancer—that she was almost forty and had fallen for Diamantino Márquez, who was twenty—“an old hag embracing a pink-cheeked cupid,” as her backbiting students put it—Ronda was incensed. “I don’t care how old she is! If she loves him, all the more power to her.”