Applause erupted as if this was all part of the show, but Santiago stood still under the artificial light, his face the very image of terror.
“D
ON’T CRY
.”
The storm had ended. Clouds dissipated, giving way to the outlines of constellations, but the city remained overwhelmed by the smell of rain. Tree beds overflowed, and water streamed down streets like the tears on Santiago’s cheeks.
“Hold me.”
Olvido held Santiago to her. Scarlet Manor germinated in his gut, choking him in a mass of memories. He returned to happy times in the kitchen, to its sweet, smoky smell, to kisses among wistful squash, nipples heaving with jams and doughs, floury games; he returned to days of painting, honeysuckle, and poems as they baked in the sun; he returned to readings of Saint John of the Cross, rose poisonings so they would be left in peace; he returned to bathtime tickles, nights lit up by the fire, and the taste of stories.
“Forgive me.”
They held each other even tighter, and Santiago returned to the smell of drenched hills, the betrayal of sheep, cold clothes, and icy bones.
“I never should have left like that.” Olvido looked him in the eye.
The few cars coming down the street splattered water and mud. Santiago leaned against a doorway and was thankful for the breeze that helped him breathe. The heavy ambience of the café had been suffocating.
“Why did you leave me?”
“After what happened, I thought Padre Rafael could take better care of you. He loved you like a son. I made him promise he’d bring you to live with him at the church, not leave you alone at Scarlet Manor, at the mercy of the lawyer’s son or anyone else.”
“Padre Rafael knew you were alive?”
“That day, early that morning, as you slept like a child, I set the stable on fire and ran to the church. I woke Padre Rafael and told him everything in confession. He thought my plan was crazy, and he was right. He asked me to reconsider. ‘We’ll find another way,’ he insisted, but I was so desperate I would have done anything to free you from what we’d done. ‘The stable’s already on fire,’ I told him. ‘Promise me, Padre. There’s no time. Go and save him!’” Flames ignited Olvido’s gaze. “He was worried about his illness, worried he might die soon and leave you alone. ‘I’ve prepared for that, too,’ I assured him. I gave him your father’s address in Paris, so he could write when death was near. I also gave him a letter I had written to Pierre, begging him to take you in, telling him I forgave him.”
“You forgave him? What was there to forgive? Did my father treat you or my mother badly?”
The crease in Olvido Laguna’s forehead sank into her skin.
“I couldn’t do you any more harm. I had to set you free. My desire to protect you would only wind up ruining your life.”
“My mother killed herself because her cursed blood made my father not love her anymore.”
Olvido surrendered to her pain, her white hair and eyes sunken in by rivers of tears.
“Because Pierre Lesac loved me, Santiago. Me. Your mother found out and it was more than she could bear.”
Santiago set off down Calle del Prado. Olvido followed. He stopped a few steps farther on, put one foot up on an old pink façade, and shoved his hands into his hair.
“Did you love him?”
“No. I’ve always loved your grandfather. Pierre’s youth reminded me of Esteban, but that was all. I never encouraged him. Still, I had to learn to live with the guilt of your mother’s death. My only relief came through devotion to you, to raising you, my determination to let nothing tear us apart, let nothing hurt you.”
“Why have you come back?” Santiago was crying.
“I couldn’t bear to think you might feel guilty about my death. I had condemned you to live with the same pain I suffered on losing your mother.”
“It took you five years to tell me the truth.”
“Once I had time to reflect, I didn’t know how to go back. I spoke to Padre Rafael on the phone, and we corresponded. He assured me you were fine—sad, but you were back at school, you lacked for nothing with your inheritance, even though I wasn’t sure. For years I didn’t know which would hurt you more: learning I was alive when you seemed to be getting over my death or letting the ghost of guilt soar over your head. Then Padre Rafael died. The new priest told me. I asked if the boy who lived with Padre Rafael was in France, and he said you were doing your military service. I lost track of you and thought I’d go mad . . .”
“So, how did you find me?”
“It was one of those things that only happen in a city. Someone at the restaurant I cook at suggested I hire a private detective, and I did. When he told me you were in Madrid, so close, and that you were a storyteller, I thought: Of course.” Olvido looked at Santiago, spellbound. “You are so handsome and so grown-up . . .”
“What made you want to come back into my life?” Santiago lit a cigarette.
“Santiago, I’m going home, to Scarlet Manor. I need to go back to the cemetery, touch the earth on your grandfather’s grave, hold it in my hands, caress it. I need to breathe the mountain air once more, the pines, the oak grove, watch the beech trees turn gold in autumn. I need to hear the stags mating, inhale the smell of gunpowder. I need to go back to my kitchen, our kitchen, our garden, and smell the yard, watch the hydrangea, morning glories, honeysuckle, and daisies grow. I need to smell it all, feel it all one more time. And I needed you, too. I needed to hold you, look you in the eyes, beg forgiveness and be forgiven, go knowing you’re happy, that you feel no guilt. Love sometimes goes astray when you love too much, but it’s always love and it can get back on track again. I have always loved you.” Olvido held his face in her hands. “You’re my boy, my grandchild, my little one, and I am your grandmother.” She took a deep breath, her cheeks on fire. “I’ll be at Scarlet Manor whenever you want to visit.”
“What choice do I have?” Santiago took a long pull on his cigarette. “After all, we’re cursed.”
Olvido smiled sadly.
“Have you ever hated me, in all these years? Have you ever hated me with all your might?”
“I’ve only ever known how to love you.” The smoke from Santiago’s cigarette dissolved into the night.
“You are the most extraordinary of all the Lagunas, the only male, the only one to be accepted by the townspeople, loved even. Because of you they began to smile at me after church; because of you they invited me to tea; because of you I had the opportunity to show the town my world, my recipes, and sometimes I even felt understood. You are, without a doubt, an exceptional Laguna. You’ve never known hate for another Laguna; you’ve never known revenge. During these long years away from Scarlet Manor, I came to understand that our true curse was this: to hate one another, to never forget. We spent our lives seeking revenge. Your great-grandmother was right: you are the chosen one. The hate and curse of the Lagunas will end with me.”
Santiago ground the cigarette butt under his foot.
“Are you sick?”
“Let’s walk awhile.” Olvido took him by the arm. “I love strolling up and down El Prado at this time of night, particularly on a Sunday. The light is soft, the sidewalks freshly washed, the trees seem huge, there are almost no cars, and you feel different, as if your sorrow will simply disappear as you walk past these grand buildings. It’s when I feel this great city speaks, just like the hills, but this is the only time of day you can hear it.”
“You’re going to die, aren’t you, Abuela? That’s why you want to go back to Scarlet Manor, and it’s why you came to see me.”
“Let’s not talk about death. I’m just beginning to live again.” Olvido pulled him close. “I’m alive again.”
They walked Paseo del Prado from Plaza de Neptuno up to Plaza de Cibeles, from there down to Calle de Atocha and back to Plaza de Neptuno. Olvido told Santiago she had spent these last years in Madrid cooking at various restaurants. She lived in a rooming house on Calle Echegaray but would leave for Scarlet Manor in a few days. Santiago did not tell her about his suicide attempt using Saint Pantolomina of the Flowers’ miraculous finger, and when his grandmother noticed the scar, he lied so as not to hurt her anymore, blaming it on an accident when cleaning his rifle bayonet in the army. He described the first time he saw the sea in Valencia. He assured her that, standing before that creature so like a stroke of calligraphy on the horizon and that shattered in waves on the beach, he thought only of her. He proposed they go see it before she went home, but the only sea Olvido wanted at this point in her life was the one in the picture that hung above her bed and the one she had inhaled since childhood in her mother’s stories.
Santiago told Olvido about Isidro, about the Atlético matches they went to, shouting between mouthfuls of
tortilla española,
about their walks through the botanical gardens, showering the dahlias with stories. All of a sudden, he was surprised to hear himself talking about Úrsula, describing her torrent of chestnut hair and Persian eyes, how she held the quill that breathed life into her love stories; Úrsula reading her grandmother’s poems written on parchment; Úrsula reciting them in Spanish; Úrsula leaning against the window, in the moonlight, listening to him; Úrsula singing lullabies as incomprehensible as they were spellbinding; Úrsula fanning herself with peacock feathers on the divan.
It was nearly three in the morning by the time Santiago walked his grandmother to her room and returned home. He pulled his collection of religious cards out of the secret pocket in his kit bag and held them to his chest. He prayed as tears fell, as a tortured grimace gave way to a smile. He put all the cards away but for one, Saint Pantolomina of the Flowers, which he put in his shirt pocket. He walked over to his bedroom window only to find Úrsula as he had seen her that first time, wearing her turquoise robe, writing.
“Is it too late for visitors?” he asked.
“I didn’t think you’d be so long. I’m working.” She put a cigarette in the long holder and took a deep puff.
“I never told you where I first saw you, before I moved in here.”
“Must have been in a newspaper or literary insert, maybe on the cover of my book. Nothing out of the ordinary.” Úrsula took another puff.
“It was somewhere else, but you know, if you don’t like my story, you can always chop off my head.”
“I hope you’re not risking your life for nothing,” she said, standing to open the door for him.
When they met in her entryway, all they could do was kiss. Úrsula led him to her bedroom, where the walls were covered with photos of deserts, ancient ruins, and salt flats. On top of a dresser was a black and white portrait of a woman caught wearing a pearl necklace. Naked, Úrsula and Santiago lay down. Santiago whispered that he had seen her first in his dreams and looked for her ever since. Úrsula could not tell if this was the truth or simply a ploy to further inflame the desire that consumed them both.
Once they had regained their composure, Úrsula stood to find a cigarette and saw the Saint Pantolomina of the Flowers card that had fallen from her lover’s shirt pocket and lay among his rumpled clothing on the floor.
“Who’s this?” she asked, showing it to Santiago.
“The patron saint of my hometown, with her miraculous finger.”
Santiago held Úrsula’s head on his lap and spoke for the first time of his home, coiled up among frost and hills, his home that smelled of mushrooms in fall as stags cracked heads, of deep, blue snow that sharpened mountain peaks, of springtime bursting into flower and summers beaming with cicada songs. He spoke to her of Scarlet Manor and the only Laguna woman still alive, his grandmother Olvido.
S
CARLET MANOR WAS
immersed in a battle of spirits. The gravel road through the pine forest had been paved and now appeared to be split by a charred scar. The welcome sign had lost the splendor of gold letters that brightened its brothel days and the reign of Manuela Laguna. Through the iron bars, the sight of the wild, parched yard was blinding, a mass of sterile branches and thickets tangled by ruthless winds and yellow heat. The honeysuckle was nothing but a memory; the chestnut tree, in whose shade Padre Imperio had sat, a skeletal frame; the garden, invaded by beetles and flying ants, a vegetable cemetery. Every hydrangea and every exquisite morning glory hummed a desolate hymn. The only things to survive the neglect were the daisies along the drive, pushing up like periscopes through endless spikes of dry leaves, and a sprig of eucalyptus in the middle of the rose garden. The rarified air of what had been and now was gone created a thick, transparent veil of sadness. And in the midst of it all, the stable like a mountain of ash in an act of contrition.
It was inside the house, however, where the biggest battle was being fought. The oak smell had slipped out from Clara Laguna’s room and taken over the second floor, descending toward the entryway, hoping to occupy the first floor as well. But it had been overtaken by the soft stench of chicken blood and mentholated roses, branches crawling from the labyrinth to Manuela Laguna’s room, climbing up the wall, breaking the window and sneaking into the parlor. The spiritual struggle for dominion over the manor house was horrifying: oaks clashed with chickens and roses in the entryway, a battleground where the rattle of cannon shot made the insides of the living hum like a swarm of bees.
“Everyone in their place!” Olvido Laguna ordered, clapping her hands when she arrived. “I’m in charge here now, and I want to die in peace.”
Santiago, who had decided to come for a week to help his resurrected grandmother, felt the war suck the life from his body.
Olvido moved back into her bedroom, where everything was in its place: the silver metal bed, the desk for childhood lessons, the picture of the sea, the easy chair, the bricked-up window. Santiago occupied the room that had been his since he was a boy, the one his father, Pierre Lesac, had used during the time of the great storm.
The first few days were a frenzy of deep cleaning, beating the spirits back with rags, splashes of bleach, and detergent. The oaks retreated to Clara Laguna’s room, the chickens and roses to Manuela’s next to the kitchen. The window was repaired and the roses pruned, forced back to their labyrinth. But the conflict went on for several more nights when the living rested, roses knocking against windows, whirls of garters flying down stairs while brittle bones tried to climb them, attacking with chicken necks.