The House of the Spirits (19 page)

“This is the first warning, you insolent little shit!” he said without raising his voice and staring at him with fire in his eyes. “But the next time I catch you bothering people, I'm going to lock you up. I don't want rebels on my land, you hear, because I'm the one in charge here and I have the right to surround myself with people I like. And I don't like you, and now you know it. I put up with you because of your father, who's served me faithfully for all these years, but you'd better watch out, because things could turn out very bad for you. Now get out of here!”

Pedro Tercero García closely resembled his father. He was dark-skinned, and had the same hard features that looked as if they had been sculpted in stone, the same big sad eyes, and the same dark, stiff hair that stood up like a brush. He had only two loves, his father and the
patrón
's daughter, whom he had loved from the day they slept together naked beneath the dining-room table, back in his early childhood. Nor had Blanca escaped the same fate. Every time she went on vacation to the country and arrived at Tres Marías in the whirl of dust that always preceded the coaches piled high with their chaotic baggage, her heart would pound with impatience and longing, like an African drum. She was always the first to jump down from the carriage and run toward the house, and she always found Pedro Tercero García in the place where they had seen each other for the first time, standing barefoot in the doorway, half hidden by the shadow of the door, timid and sullen in his worn pants, his old man's eyes scanning the horizon as he awaited her arrival. The two ran to each other, hugging, kissing, laughing, and affectionately punching each other and rolling on the ground as they pulled each other's hair and shouted with joy.

“That's enough, young lady! Let go of that raggedy child!” Nana would shriek, trying to pull them apart.

“Let them be, Nana,” Clara would say, for she knew better. “They're only children, and they like each other.”

The children ran off to hide and tell each other everything that they had stored up during the long months of separation. Pedro blushingly handed her some whittled animals he had made for her, and Blanca gave him the gifts she had brought for him: a penknife that opened like a flower, a tiny magnet that magically picked up rusty nails from the ground. The summer she arrived with half the contents of the trunk of magic books that had belonged to Uncle Marcos, she was nearly ten years old. Pedro Tercero still had trouble reading, but his curiosity and desire accomplished what his schoolmistress had been unable to do with all her canings. They spent that summer reading among the rushes by the river, the pine trees in the forest, and the sprouting stalks of the wheatfields, discussing the virtues of Sinbad and Robin Hood, the bad luck of the Black Pirate, the true and edifying stories from the
Treasury of Youth
, the worst meanings of the words that did not appear in the dictionary of the Spanish Royal Academy, the cardiovascular system in illustrated plates where you could see a man with no skin and all his veins and arteries exposed for all to see, but wearing underpants. Within a few weeks, the boy had learned to read voraciously. They entered the wide, deep world of impossible stories, gnomes, fairies, men stranded on islands who eat their comrades after casting their fate at dice, tigers who let themselves be tamed for love, fascinating inventions, geographical and zoological curiosities, Oriental countries with genies in bottles, dragons in caves, and princesses held prisoner in towers. They often went to see old Pedro García, whose senses had been worn away by time. He had gradually grown blind; his eyes slowly filled with a sky-blue film of which he said, “The clouds are taking over my sight.” He was grateful for the visits from Blanca and Pedro, who was his grandson, although he had already forgotten that fact. He listened to the stories they had chosen from the magic books, which they had to shout into his ear, because also he said that the wind was invading his ears and making him deaf. In return he showed them how to protect themselves from the stings of poisonous insects and demonstrated the effectiveness of his antidote by placing a live scorpion on his arm. He taught them how to search for water. You have to hold a dry stick in your two hands and walk tapping the ground, in silence, thinking only of water and the thirst of the stick, until suddenly, sensing the presence of moisture, the stick began to tremble. That's where you have to dig, the old man said, but he explained that this was not the system he used for digging wells around Tres Marías, because he needed no stick. His bones were so thirsty that whenever he walked on top of underground water, no matter how far down, his own skeleton told him where it was. He taught them about the different grasses and herbs that grew in the fields, and made them smell them and taste them, even caress them, until they were able to identify them one by one according to their healing properties: this one to calm the mind, that one to get rid of diabolic influence, this one to make the eyes shine, that one to strengthen the stomach, this to stimulate the flow of blood. In this realm his knowledge was so vast that the doctor from the nuns' hospital used to come and ask his advice. Nevertheless, all his knowledge was powerless to cure the chicken fever of his daughter Pancha, which had dispatched her to the Hereafter. He had made her eat cow dung, and when that did not produce results he gave her horse manure, wrapped her in blankets, and made her sweat up her illness until there was nothing left of her but skin and bones. Then he massaged her with brandy and gunpowder, but it was all useless; Pancha's life ebbed away in an interminable case of diarrhea that destroyed her body and left her with an insatiable thirst. Defeated, Pedro García asked the
patrón
for permission to take her into town on a cart. The two children went with them. The doctor in the nuns' hospital carefully examined Pancha and told the old man there was nothing he could do, that if he had brought her earlier and not induced the sweating, he would have been able to treat her, but now her body could hold no liquid. She was just like a plant when its roots have gone completely dry. Pedro García took offense at that, and continued to deny his failure even when he returned to the hacienda with his daughter's body wrapped in a blanket, accompanied by the two frightened children, and unloaded her in the courtyard of Tres Marías grumbling about the doctor's ignorance. They buried her in a special plot in the tiny graveyard alongside the abandoned church, at the foot of the volcano, because she had been the
patrón
's wife, in a manner of speaking, since she had given him the only son who bore his name, though not his surname, and a grandson, the strange Esteban García, who was destined to play a terrible role in the history of the family.

One day the old man Pedro García told Blanca and Pedro Tercero the story of the hens who joined forces to confront a fox who came into the chicken coop every night to steal eggs and eat the baby chicks. The hens decided they had had enough of the fox's abuse. They waited for him in a group, and when he entered the chicken coop they blocked his path, surrounded him, and pecked him half to death before he knew what had happened.

“And that fox escaped with his tail between his legs, with all the hens chasing after him,” the old man finished.

Blanca laughed at the story and said it was impossible, because hens are born stupid and weak and foxes are born astute and strong, but Pedro Tercero did not laugh. He spent the whole evening absorbed in thought, ruminating on the story of the fox and the hens, and perhaps that was the night the boy began to become a man.

— FIVE —

THE LOVERS

B
lanca's childhood went by without any major surprises. The hot summers at Tres Marías, where she discovered the strength of a love that grew as she did, alternating with the routine of the city, was not unlike that of other girls of her age and class, although Clara's presence added a note of eccentricity to her life. Every morning Nana would appear with the breakfast tray to shake her from her sleep, watch as she put on her uniform, stretch her socks for her, place her hat just so, help her into her gloves, arrange her handkerchief, and make sure she had all her books, all the while mumbling prayers for the souls of the dead and loudly advising Clara not to be deceived by the nuns.

“Those women are all depraved,” she warned her. “They choose the prettiest, smartest girls from the best families to be sent to the convent. They shave the heads of the novitiates, poor girls, and set them up for a lifetime of baking cakes and taking care of other people's old folks.”

The chauffeur took the little girl to school, where the first activity of the day was mass and obligatory communion. Kneeling in her pew, Blanca would inhale the intense smell of the virgin's incense and lilies, suffering the combined torment of nausea, guilt, and boredom. It was the only thing she disliked about the school. She loved the high-vaulted stone corridors, the immaculate cleanliness of the marble floors, the naked white walls, and the iron Christ who stood watch in the vestibule. She was a romantic, sentimental child, with a preference for solitude, few friends, and a propensity to be moved to tears when the roses in the garden bloomed, when she smelled the rags and soap the nuns used as they bent over their tasks, and when she stayed behind to experience the melancholy stillness of the empty classrooms. She was considered timid and morose. Only in the country, her skin tanned by the sun and her belly full of ripe fruit, running through the fields with Pedro Tercero, was she smiling and happy. Her mother said that that was the real Blanca, and that the other one, the one back in the city, was a Blanca in hibernation.

Because of the constant agitation that reigned in the big house on the corner, no one, except Nana, noticed that Blanca was becoming a woman. She entered adolescence overnight. She had inherited the Truebas's Spanish and Arab blood, their regal bearing and haughty grin, and the olive skin and dark eyes of her Mediterranean genes, all colored by her mother's heritage, from which she drew a sweetness no Trueba had ever known. She was a tranquil soul who entertained herself, studied hard, played with her dolls, and showed not the slightest inclination for her mother's spiritualism or her father's fits of rage. The family jokingly said that she was the only normal person for many generations, and it was true she was a miracle of equilibrium and serenity. At around thirteen she began to develop breasts; she lost weight, her waist thinned out, and she shot up like a transplanted tree. Nana pulled her hair back in a bun and took her to buy her first corset, her first pair of silk stockings, her first grown-up dress, and a collection of miniature towels for what she continued to call “demonstration.” Meanwhile, her mother continued making chairs dance through the house, playing Chopin with the lid of the piano shut, and declaiming the beautiful verses of a young poet she had taken under her wing—a poet who was beginning to be talked about everywhere—never noticing the split seams of the schoolgirl's uniform or seeing that the apple face of her daughter was subtly changing into the face of a grown woman, because Clara paid more attention to auras and fluids than she did to pounds and inches. One day she saw her walk into the sewing room in her party dress and was astonished to discover that that tall, dark lady was her little Blanca. She put her arms around her, covered her with kisses, and warned her that she would soon begin to menstruate.

“Sit down and let me tell you what it is,” Clara said.

“Don't worry, Mama, I've already had it once a month for the past year,” her daughter said, laughing.

The relationship between them underwent no major changes with the girl's development, because it was based on the solid principle of mutual acceptance and the ability to laugh together at almost everything.

That year summer arrived early, with a sultry heat that covered the city with its nightmare glare. The family decided to advance their departure for Tres Marías by two weeks. As always, Blanca eagerly awaited the moment of seeing Pedro Tercero again, and as she had every year, the first thing she did on climbing down from the coach was run to look for him with her eyes glued to where she knew he would be standing. She saw his hidden shadow in the doorway and jumped from the vehicle, hurtling toward him with the eagerness of all her months of anticipation, but to her surprise the boy turned on his heel and fled.

All that afternoon Blanca went to each of their special meeting spots, asking for him, shouting his name, even looking for him at the house of old Pedro García, his grandfather. Finally at sundown she went to bed defeated, without eating supper. In her huge brass bed, shocked and hurt, she buried her face in the pillow and cried inconsolably. Nana brought her a glass of milk and honey, understanding in a flash the reason for her grief.

“It's about time!” she said with a twisted smile. “You're too old to be playing with that flea-ridden brat.”

Half an hour later, her mother came in to kiss her good night and found her sobbing the last gasps of a melodramatic sorrow. For a moment Clara ceased to be a distracted angel and came to stand beside a simple mortal who suffered, at fourteen, the first torments of love. She wanted to inquire, but Blanca was very proud or already too much of a woman and would tell her nothing, so Clara just stood beside her bed and caressed her till she calmed down.

That night Blanca slept fitfully and woke at dawn surrounded by the shadows of her large bedroom. She lay in bed staring up at the coffered ceiling until she heard the first rooster crow. Then she got up, opened the curtains, and let the soft morning light and the first sounds of the world enter the room. She walked over to the mirror on the wardrobe and stared at herself for a long time. She took off her nightgown and, for the first time in her life looked at her body in detail, and as she did so she realized that it was because of all these changes that her friend had run away. She smiled a new, delicate smile, the smile of a woman. She put on her old clothes from the preceding summer, which were almost too small, wrapped herself in a shawl, and tiptoed out so as not to wake the rest of the family. Outside, the fields were shaking off their sleep and the first rays of sunlight were cutting the peaks of the
cordillera
like the thrusts of a saber, warming up the earth and evaporating the dew into a fine white foam that blurred the edges of things and turned the landscape into an enchanted dream. Blanca set off in the direction of the river. Everything was still quiet. Her footsteps crushed the fallen leaves and the dry branches, producing a light crunching sound, the only noise in that vast sleeping space. She felt that the shaggy meadows, the golden wheatfields, and the far-off purple mountains disappearing in the clear morning sky were part of some ancient memory, something she had seen before exactly like this, as if she had already lived this moment in some previous life. The delicate rain of the night had soaked the earth and trees, and her clothing felt slightly damp, her shoes cold. She inhaled the perfume of the drenched earth, the rotten leaves, and the humus, which awakened an unknown pleasure in all her senses.

Blanca arrived at the river and found her childhood friend sitting at the spot where they had met so many times. That year Pedro Tercero had not grown as much as she had; he was the same thin, dark child as always, with the same protruding belly and the old man's expression in his black eyes. When he saw her he stood up, and she guessed that she was at least half a head taller than he. They looked at each other disconcertedly, feeling for the first time in their lives that they were practically strangers. For what seemed like an infinite time they stood immobile, adjusting to the changes and the new distances, but then a sparrow trilled and everything reverted to the way it had been the preceding summer. Once again, they were two children running, hugging, laughing, falling to the ground and rolling over and over, crashing against the pebbles, murmuring each other's names, elated to be back together. Finally they calmed down. Her hair was full of dry leaves, which he removed one by one.

“Come here, I want to show you something,” said Pedro Tercero.

He took her by the hand. They walked along savoring that reawakening of the world, dragging their feet through the mud, picking tender green stalks to suck out their sap, looking at each other and smiling, without speaking, until they reached a distant field. The sun was just appearing over the volcano, but the day had not settled in yet and the earth was still yawning. Pedro told her to throw herself flat on the ground and be very quiet. They crawled along, coming close to some clumps of underbrush, made a short detour, and suddenly Blanca saw it. It was a beautiful bay mare in the process of giving birth alone on the hillside. The children did not move, trying to keep even their breath silent; they watched her pant and push until they saw the colt's head appear and then, after a while, the rest of its body. The little animal fell to the ground and the mother began to lick it, leaving it as clean and shiny as waxed wood, coaxing it with her muzzle to stand up. The colt tried to get up on its feet, but its fragile newborn legs folded under it and it fell down, looking helplessly up at its mother who neighed a greeting to the morning sun. Blanca felt her breast shoot with joy, and tears came to her eyes.

“When I grow up, I'm going to marry you and we're going to live here in Tres Marías,” she whispered.

Pedro stared at her with his sad old man's look and shook his head. He was still much more of a child than she, but he already knew his place in the world. He also knew that he would love this girl as long as he lived, that this dawn would live in his memory, and that it would be the last thing he would see before he died.

They spent that summer oscillating between childhood, which still held them in its clasp, and their awakening as man and woman. There were times when they ran like little children, stirring up the chickens and exciting the cows, drinking their fill of fresh milk and winding up with foam mustaches, stealing fresh-baked bread straight from the oven and clambering up trees to build secret houses. At other times they hid in the forest's thickest, most secret recesses, making beds of leaves and pretending they were married, caressing each other until they fell asleep exhausted. They were still innocent enough to remove their clothes without a trace of curiosity and swim naked in the river, as they always had, diving into the cold water and letting the current pull them down against the shiny stones. But there were certain things they could no longer share. They learned to feel shame in each other's presence. They no longer competed to see who could make the biggest puddle when they urinated, and Blanca did not tell him of the dark matter that stained her underwear once a month. Without anyone telling them, they realized that they could not act so freely in front of others. When Blanca dressed up as a young lady and sat on the terrace sipping lemonade with her family each afternoon, Pedro Tercero would watch her from afar, without coming closer. They began to hide when they wanted to play. They stopped walking hand in hand within sight of the adults, and they ignored each other so as not to attract attention. Nana gave a sigh of relief, but Clara started watching them more carefully.

The vacation was over and the Truebas returned to the city laden with jars of candy, preserves, boxes of fruit, cheese, pickled chicken and rabbit, and baskets full of eggs. While everything was being packed away in the cars that would take them to the train, Blanca and Pedro Tercero hid in the granary to say their goodbyes. In those three months they had come to love each other with the ecstatic passion that would torment them for the rest of their lives. With time their love became more persistent and invulnerable, but it already had the depth and certainty that characterized it later on. Atop a pile of grain, breathing in the pungent dust of the granary in the diffuse, golden morning light that filtered through the chinks, they kissed, licked, bit, and sucked each other, sobbed and drank each other's tears, swore eternal love and drew up a secret code that would allow them to communicate during the coming months of separation.

*  *  *

Everyone who witnessed the moment agrees that it was almost eight o'clock at night when Férula appeared without the slightest warning. They all saw her in her starched blouse, with her ring of keys at her waist and her old maid's bun, exactly as they had always seen her in the house. She entered the dining room just as Esteban was beginning to carve the roast, and they recognized her immediately, even though it had been six years since they last saw her and she looked very pale and a great deal older. It was a Saturday and the twins, Jaime and Nicolás, had come home from school for the weekend, so they too were at the table. Their testimony is very important, because they were the only members of the family who lived completely removed from the three-legged table, protected from magic and spiritualism by their rigid English boarding school. First they felt a sudden draft in the dining room and Clara ordered the windows shut because she thought it was the wind. Then they heard the tinkling of the keys and the door burst open and Férula appeared, silent and with a distant expression on her face, at the exact same moment that Nana came in from the kitchen carrying the salad platter. Esteban Trueba stopped with the carving knife and fork suspended in midair, paralyzed with surprise, and the three children cried, “Aunt Férula!” almost in unison. Blanca managed to rise to her feet to greet her, but Clara, who was seated beside her, reached out her hand and held her back. Clara was actually the only one to realize on first glance what was going on, despite the fact that nothing in her sister-in-law's appearance in any way betrayed her state. Férula stopped three feet from the table, looked at everyone with her empty, indifferent eyes, and advanced toward Clara, who stood up but made no effort to go any closer, and only closing her eyes and breathing rapidly as if she were about to have one of her asthma attacks. Férula approached her, put a hand on each shoulder, and kissed her on the forehead. All that could be heard in the dining room was Clara's labored breathing and the metallic clang of the keys at Férula's waist. After kissing her sister-in-law, Férula walked around her and went out the way she had come in, closing the door gently behind her. The family sat frozen in the dining room, as if they were in the middle of a nightmare. Suddenly Nana began to shake so hard that the salad spoons fell off the platter. The sound of the silver as it hit the floor made everybody jump. Clara opened her eyes. She was still having difficulty breathing, and tears were running down her cheeks and neck, staining her blouse.