The House of the Spirits (42 page)

As for Alba, she learned not to mention Pedro Tercero García's name because she understood the effect it caused in the family. She guessed that something terrible had taken place between her grandfather and the man with the missing fingers who kissed her mother on the mouth, but everyone, even Pedro Tercero himself, gave evasive answers to her questions. Sometimes, in the intimacy of their bedroom, Blanca told her anecdotes about him and taught her his songs, warning her not to hum them in the house. But she never told her that he was her father, and she even seemed to have forgotten it herself. She recalled the past as a series of violent acts, abandonments, and sorrows, and she was not certain things had been the way she remembered. The episode of the mummies, the photographs, and the hairless Indian in Louis XV shoes that had prompted her flight from her husband's house had grown hazy with time. She had told and retold the story of the count's death of fever in the desert so often that she had come to believe it. Years later, the day her daughter came to tell her that the body of Jean de Satigny was lying in the icebox at the morgue, she was not relieved, for she had felt like a widow for years. Nor did she attempt to justify her lie. She took her old black tailored suit from the wardrobe, arranged the hairpins in her bun, and went with Alba to bury the Frenchman in the main cemetery, in a municipal grave, which was where the poor ended up, because Senator Trueba refused to make room for him in the salmon-colored mausoleum. Mother and daughter walked alone behind the black coffin they arranged to buy with Jaime's help. They felt a little ridiculous in the oppressive summer heat, with a bouquet of wilting flowers in their hands and not a single tear for the solitary body they were laying to rest.

“I see my father didn't have a single friend,” Alba observed.

Even on that occasion Blanca did not tell her daughter the truth.

*  *  *

After I had settled Rosa and Clara in my mausoleum, I felt better because I knew that sooner or later the three of us would be reunited there, along with our other loved ones, like my mother, Nana, and even Férula, who I hope has forgiven me. I never imagined I was going to live as long as I have and that they'd have to wait so long for me.

Clara's bedroom was kept locked. I didn't want anybody going in there. I wanted everything to stay exactly where it was, so I'd be able to find her spirit whenever I wanted to. I began to suffer from insomnia, the old people's disease. Unable to sleep, I shuffled up and down the halls all night in my slippers that were too big for me, wrapped in the old ecclesiastical bathrobe I had kept for sentimental reasons, and railing against my fate like an old man at the end of his days. But with the first rays of sunlight I regained my desire to live. At breakfast, I appeared in my starched shirt and mourning suit, shaved and calm. I read the newspaper with my granddaughter, verified that my affairs were up to date, handled my correspondence, and went out for the rest of the day. I stopped eating in the house, even on the weekends, because without Clara's catalyzing presence there was no reason why I should put up with my children's bickering.

My only two friends tried to rid me of the grief in my soul. They had lunch with me, played golf with me, challenged me to games of dominoes. We talked about business, politics, and, at times, about the family. One afternoon when they saw I was a little livelier than usual, they invited me to the Christopher Columbus, hoping that a pleasing woman would help me recover my good humor. None of the three of us was of an age for such adventures, but we had a couple of drinks and set off.

Though I had been in the Christopher Columbus years before, I had practically forgotten it. In recent times the hotel had acquired a certain prestige among tourists, and people traveled from the provinces to the capital just to see it and go back and tell their friends about it. When we arrived at the old house, which on the outside looked the same as it had for years, we were received by a doorman who led us in to the main room, where I remembered having been before in the days of the French madam—or, better put, the madam with the French accent. A young girl dressed like a schoolgirl offered us a glass of wine on the house. One of my friends tried to put his arm around her waist, but she warned him that she was only a servant and that he would have to wait for the professionals. Moments later a curtain opened and we saw a vision out of one of the ancient Arabian courts: a huge Negro so black that he looked blue, dressed in baggy carrot-colored silk trousers, a vest, a purple lamé turban, and Turkish slippers, with oiled muscles and a gold ring in his nose. When he smiled, we saw that all his teeth were made of lead. He introduced himself as Mustafá and handed us a photo album so we could choose our merchandise. For the first time in ages I laughed spontaneously; I found the idea of a catalog of prostitutes very amusing. We flipped through the pictures, looking at women who were fat, thin, long-haired, short-haired, dressed as nymphs, amazons, nuns, and courtesans, but I was unable to decide because they all looked like trampled banquet flowers. The last three pages of the album were devoted to boys in Greek tunics, crowned with laurel, playing among false Hellenic ruins, with chubby bottoms and heavy eyelashes—repulsive. I have to admit I had never seen a fag close up except Carmelo, the one who dressed like a Japanese girl at the Red Lantern, so I was taken aback when one of my friends, a family man and a broker on the stock exchange, chose one of those fat-assed boys in the pictures. The boy appeared as if by magic from behind the curtains and led my friend off by the hand, giggling and wiggling his hips like a woman. My other friend chose a fat odalisque, with whom I doubt he was able to achieve any great feats, owing to his advanced age and fragile frame, but they, too, went out together, swallowed up by the curtain.

“I see the señor's having a hard time deciding,” Mustafá remarked cordially. “Allow me to offer you the best in the house. I'm going to introduce you to Aphrodite.”

And Aphrodite appeared in the room, with her hair piled three stories high, barely covered by a few layers of tulle and dripping with artificial grapes from her shoulders to her knees. It was Tránsito Soto, who had acquired a definite mythological look, despite the tasteless grapes and circus gauze.

“I'm glad to see you,
patrón,
” she greeted me.

She led me through the curtain into a small interior courtyard, the heart of that labyrinthine structure. The Christopher Columbus was built out of three old houses, strategically connected by a series of back courtyards, corridors, and specially constructed bridges. Tránsito Soto conducted me to a room that was nondescript but clean; its only sign of extravagance was a series of frescoes that were poor copies of the ones at Pompeii, which some mediocre painter had reproduced on the walls, and a large, slightly rusty antique bathtub with running water. I whistled in admiration.

“We've made a few changes in the décor,” she said.

Tránsito took off her grapes and gauze and was once again the woman I remembered, only more appetizing and less vulnerable, but with the same ambitious look in her eyes that had captivated me when I first met her. She told me about the cooperative of prostitutes and homosexuals, which had had fantastic success. Together they had lifted the Christopher Columbus out of the ruin in which the phony French madam had left it, and had worked to transform it into a social event and historic monument whose reputation was passed by word of mouth from sailor to sailor on the farthest seas. The costumes had been the greatest success of all, because they awakened the customers' erotic fantasies, as did the catalog of whores, which they had managed to reproduce and distribute throughout certain provinces, arousing in the men a desire one day to visit the famous brothel.

“It's boring to walk around in these rags and grapes,
patrón
, but the men like it. When they leave, they tell others and that brings us new customers. We're doing very well. It's a good business, and no one here feels exploited. We're all partners. This is the only whorehouse in the country with its own authentic Negro. You might have seen others, but they're all painted. But you can rub Mustafá with sandpaper and he'll still be black. And this place is clean. You can drink the water from the toilet bowl if you want to, because we pour lye where you'd least expect it and we're all supervised by the Board of Health. No venereal diseases here.”

Tránsito removed her last veil, and her magnificent nakedness so overwhelmed me that I immediately felt deathly tired. My heart was weighed with sadness and my penis was as flaccid as a withered, aimless flower between my legs.

“Ah, Tránsito,” I said. “I think I'm too old for this.”

But Tránsito Soto began to undulate the serpent around her navel, hypnotizing me with the gentle curve of her belly while she lulled me with that hoarse bird voice of hers, telling me about the benefits of the cooperative and the advantages of the catalog. Despite everything, I had to laugh, and gradually my own laughter began to affect me like a balm. I tried to trace the serpent's path with my finger, but it slipped away from me, zigzagging. I was astonished that this woman who was no longer in her first or second youth should have such firm skin and muscles that were capable of making that reptile move as if it were alive. I bent down to kiss the tattoo and was pleased to discover that she wasn't wearing perfume. The warm, safe scent of her belly entered my nostrils and completely invaded me, awakening in my blood a fire I had thought long since extinguished. Without ceasing to speak, Tránsito opened her legs, casually separating the soft columns of her thighs as if she were simply adjusting her posture. I began to cover her with my lips, inhaling, pressing, and licking, until I forgot all about my grief and the weight of the years, and my desire returned with the force of other times, and without stopping my kisses and caresses I pulled my clothes off in desperation, happy to discover my masculinity intact and firm while I plunged into the warm, compassionate animal that was offering itself to me, rocked by the little hoarse bird, wrapped in the arms of the goddess, and shaken by the force of those hips until I lost all consciousness of things and exploded with pleasure.

Afterward we soaked together in the bathtub until my soul returned to my body and I felt practically cured. For a second I toyed with the fantasy that Tránsito was the woman I had always needed and that with her by my side I could return to the days when I was able to lift a sturdy peasant woman in the air, pull her up onto my horse's haunches, and carry her off into the bushes against her will.

“Clara . . .” I murmured without thinking, and I felt a tear roll down my cheek and then another and another until it became a downpour of grief, a torrent of sobs, a suffocation of nostalgia and sorrow that Tránsito Soto had no trouble understanding, for she had long experience with the heartaches of men. She let me weep out all the misery and loneliness of recent years and helped me out of the tub with a mother's care. She dried me off, massaged me until I was as soft as moistened bread, and pulled the covers over me when I closed my eyes in the bed. She kissed me on the forehead and tiptoed out of the room.

“I wonder who Clara is,” I heard her murmur as she left.

— ELEVEN —

THE AWAKENING

A
round the age of eighteen, Alba left childhood behind for good. At the exact moment when she felt like a woman, she locked herself in her old room, which still held the mural she had started so many years before. Next she rummaged through her paint jars until she found a little red and a little white that were still fresh. Then she carefully mixed them together and painted a large pink heart in the last empty space on the wall. She was in love. Afterward she threw her paints and brushes into the trash and sat down to contemplate her drawings, which is to say, the history of her joys and sorrows. She decided that the balance had been happy and with a sigh said goodbye to the first stage of her life.

She finished school that year and decided to study philosophy for pleasure and music to annoy her grandfather, who believed that the arts were a waste of time and who constantly preached the virtues of the liberal or scientific professions. He also warned her against love and marriage, with the same insolence with which he insisted that Jaime should find a decent girl and settle down because he was turning into a hopeless bachelor. He said it was good for men to have a wife, but that women like Alba could only lose by marrying. Her grandfather's sermons went out the window when Alba set eyes on Miguel one unforgettable rainy afternoon in the cafeteria of the university.

Miguel was a pale student, with feverish eyes, faded trousers, and miner's boots, in his final year of law school. He was a leftist leader, and he was afire with the most uncontrollable passion: justice. However, that did not prevent him from being aware that Alba was watching him. He looked up and their eyes met. They stared at each other, dazzled, and from that moment on they sought out every possible occasion to meet on the leafy promenades of the nearby park, where they walked with their arms full of books or dragging Alba's heavy cello in its case. On their initial encounter, she noticed that he wore a tiny insignia on his sleeve: a raised fist. She decided not to tell him that she was Esteban Trueba's granddaughter. For the first time in her life she used the surname that was on all her identification cards: Satigny. She quickly realized it would be best not to tell the rest of her fellow students either. On the other hand, she could boast that she was friends with Pedro Tercero García, who was very popular among the students, and with the Poet, on whose knees she had sat as a little girl and who was now known in every language and whose poetry was on the lips of all the students and scrawled in graffiti on the walls.

Miguel talked about revolution. He said that the violence of the system needed to be answered with the violence of revolution. But Alba was not interested in politics; she wanted only to talk about love. She was sick and tired of her grandfather's speeches, of listening to his arguments with her Uncle Jaime, and of endless electoral campaigns. The only political activity she had ever engaged in was the time she had gone with other students to throw stones for no apparent reason at the United States Embassy, for which she had been suspended from school for a week and which had nearly given her grandfather another heart attack. But at the university politics was unavoidable. Like all the young people who entered that year, she discovered the appeal of nightlong gatherings in cafés, talking about the necessary changes in the world and infecting each other with the passion of ideas. She would return home late at night, her mouth bitter and her clothes reeking of stale tobacco, her head burning with heroism, convinced that when the time came she would give her life for a noble cause. Out of love for Miguel, and not for any ideological conviction, Alba sat in at the university along with the students who had seized a building in support of a strike by workers. There were days of encampments, excited discussion, insults hurled at the police until the students lost their voices. They built barricades with sandbags and paving stones that they pried loose from the main courtyard. They sealed the doors and windows, intending to turn the building into a fortress, but the result was a dungeon that was harder for the students to leave than it was for the police to enter. It was the first time Alba had spent a night away from home. She was rocked to sleep in Miguel's arms between piles of newspapers and empty beer bottles, surrounded by the warm closeness of her comrades, all young, sweaty, red-eyed from smoke and lack of sleep, slightly hungry, and entirely fearless, because it was all more like a game than a war. They spent the first day so busy building barricades, mobilizing their innocent defenses, painting placards, and talking on the phone that they had no time to worry when the police cut off their water and electricity.

From the very first, Miguel became the soul of the occupation, seconded by professor Sebastián Gómez, who, despite his crippled legs, stayed with them to the end. That night they sang to keep their spirits up, and when they grew tired of harangues, discussions, and songs, they settled into little groups to get through the night as best they could. The last to rest was Miguel, who seemed to be the only one who knew what to do. He took charge of distributing water, transferring into receptacles even the water already in the toilet tanks, and he improvised a kitchen that, to everyone's amazement, produced instant coffee, cookies, and some cans of beer. The next day the stench of the waterless toilets was overpowering, but Miguel organized a cleanup and ordered that the toilets not be used: everyone should relieve themselves in the courtyard, in a hole that had been dug alongside the stone statues of the founder of the university. Miguel divided the group into squads and kept them busy all day with such efficiency that his authority went unnoticed. Decisions seemed to arise spontaneously from the groups.

“You'd think we were going to be in here for months!” Alba exclaimed, delighted at the prospect of being under siege.

The armored cars of the police stationed themselves out on the street, surrounding the ancient building. A tense wait began, which would last for several days.

“Students all over the country, unions, and professional schools are going to join us. The government may fall,” Sebastián Gómez commented.

“I doubt it,” replied Miguel. “But the main thing is to establish the protest and not leave the building until they sign the workers' list of demands.”

It began to drizzle and darkness came early in the lightless building. They lit a few improvised lamps made of tin cans filled with gasoline and a smoky wick. Alba thought the telephone had been cut, but when she tried to use it, it still worked. Miguel explained that the police had reason to listen to their calls and he warned them how to conduct their conversations. In any case, Alba called home to let them know she would be staying with her comrades until victory or death, which sounded false the minute she said it. Her grandfather grabbed the phone from Blanca's hand. In a tone of voice she knew all too well, he told her that she had an hour to be home with a reasonable explanation for having stayed out all night. She replied that she could not leave, and that even if she could she would not think of doing so.

“You have no business being there with all those Communists!” Esteban Trueba roared. But he immediately softened his voice and begged her to leave before the police came in, because he was in a position to know that the government was not going to let them stay indefinitely. “If you don't come out voluntarily, they're going to send the mobile unit in and drive you out with clubs,” the senator concluded.

Alba peeked through a chink in the window that was covered with planks of wood and bags of earth and saw the tanks lined up across the street and a double row of men in combat gear, with helmets, clubs, and gas masks. She realized that her grandfather was not exaggerating. Everybody else had seen them too, and some of the students were shaking. Someone said there was a new kind of bomb worse than tear gas, that provoked diarrhea attacks terrible enough to discourage the bravest, because of the stench and the ridicule they caused. To Alba the idea seemed terrifying. She had to make an effort not to cry. She felt stitches in her stomach and supposed they were from fear. Miguel put his arms around her, but that did not console her. They were both exhausted and were beginning to feel the effects of the sleepless night in their bones and in their souls.

“I don't think they'd dare break in here,” Sebastián Gómez said. “The government's already got enough problems to deal with. It's not going to interfere with us.”

“It wouldn't be the first time they've attacked students,” someone said.

“Public opinion wouldn't stand for it,” Gómez replied. “This is a democracy. It's not a dictatorship and it never will be.”

“We always think things like that only happen elsewhere,” said Miguel, “until they happen to us too.”

The remainder of the afternoon passed without incident and by nightfall everyone was more relaxed despite the prolonged hunger and discomfort. The tanks remained in place. The young people played checkers and games of cards in the hallways, slept on the floor, and made defensive weapons with sticks and stones. Fatigue was visible on every face. The cramps in Alba's stomach were growing stronger, and she thought that if nothing was resolved by the morning she would have no other choice but to use the hole in the courtyard. It was still raining outside, and the routine of the city continued undisturbed. No one seemed to care about another student strike, and people walked past the tanks without stopping to read the placards hanging from the university façade. The neighbors quickly became accustomed to the presence of armed police, and when the rain stopped children ran out to play with a ball under the streetlights in the empty parking lot that separated the building from the police detachments. At moments Alba felt as if she were on a sailboat becalmed at sea, locked in an eternal, silent wait, peering out at the horizon for hours. With the passage of time and the increasing lack of comfort, the high-spirited camaraderie of the first day had turned to irritation and constant bickering. Miguel inspected the building and confiscated all the food supplies in the cafeteria.

“When this is gone, we'll pay the concessionaire for it. He's a worker like anybody else,” he said.

It was cold now. The one who never complained, not even of thirst, was Sebastián Gómez, who seemed as indefatigable as Miguel, even though he was twice his age and looked tubercular. He was the only professor who had stayed with the students when they seized the building. It was said that his crippled legs were the result of a burst of machinegun fire in Bolivia. He was the ideologue who made his students burn with the flame that in most of them extinguished itself as soon as they graduated and joined the world they had once hoped to change. A small, spare man with an aquiline nose and sparse hair, he was lit by an inner fire that gave no respite. It was he who had christened Alba “the countess,” because the first day of classes her grandfather had had the bad idea of sending her to school with his chauffeur and Professor Gómez had seen her arrive. By sheer chance his nickname had hit home; Gómez could not have known that in the improbable event that she should choose to do so, she could unearth the noble title of Jean de Satigny, which was one of the few authentic features of the French count who had given her his name. Alba did not resent his mocking nickname for her; in fact, on more than one occasion she had fantasized about seducing the stalwart professor. But Sebastián Gómez had seen a lot of girls like Alba and recognized the mixture of curiosity and compassion aroused by the sight of the crutches that supported his poor lifeless legs.

The next day went by without the mobile unit moving its tanks or the government giving in to the workers' demands. Alba began to wonder what the hell she was doing there; the pain in her abdomen was becoming unbearable and the need to take a bath with running water was beginning to obsess her. Each time she looked out at the street and saw the police, her mouth filled with saliva. By that point she had realized that her Uncle Nicolás's training was not nearly as effective in a moment of action as it was in the fiction of imagined suffering. Two hours later Alba felt a warm viscous liquid between her legs and saw that her slacks were stained with red. She was swept with panic. For the past few days the fear that this might happen had tormented her almost as much as hunger. The stain on her pants was like a flag, but she made no attempt to hide it. She curled up in a corner, feeling utterly lost. When she was little, her grandmother had taught her that everything associated with human functions is natural, and she could speak of menstruation as of poetry, but later on, at school, she learned that all bodily secretions except tears are indecent. Miguel noticed her shame and anguish. He went to the improvised infirmary to get a package of cotton and found some handkerchiefs, but it was soon clear that they were insufficient. By evening Alba was crying in humiliation and pain, terrified by the pincers in her guts and by this stream of blood that was so unlike her usual flow. She thought something must be bursting inside her. Ana Díaz, a student who, like Miguel, wore the insignia of the raised fist, observed that only rich women suffer from such pains; proletarian women do not complain even when they give birth. But when she saw that Alba's pants were a pool of blood and she was as pale as death, she went to speak to Sebastián Gómez, who said he had no idea how to resolve the problem.

“That's what happens when you let women get involved in men's affairs!” he roared.

“No! It's what happens when you let the bourgeoisie into the affairs of the people!” the young woman answered him indignantly.

Sebastián Gómez went over to the corner where Miguel had settled Alba, gliding up to her with difficulty because of his crutches.

“You have to go home, Countess,” he said. “You're not contributing anything here. On the contrary, you're in the way.”

Alba felt a wave of relief. She was too frightened, and this was an honorable way to leave that would allow her to return home without seeming like a coward. She argued a little with Sebastián Gómez to save face, but she almost immediately accepted the proposal that Miguel should go out with a white flag to parley with the police. Everybody watched him from the observation posts while he crossed the empty parking lot. The police had formed into narrow lines and ordered him through their loudspeaker to stop, lay his flag on the ground, and proceed with his hands behind his neck.