The House of the Spirits (5 page)

In the kitchen, Dr. Cuevas and his assistant prepared their dread utensils and foul-smelling jars, donned rubber aprons, rolled up their sleeves, and proceeded to poke around in Rosa's most intimate parts until they had proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that the girl had swallowed an extraordinary quantity of rat poison.

“This was meant for Severo,” the doctor concluded, washing his hands in the sink.

The assistant, overcome by the young girl's beauty, could not resign himself to leaving her sewn up like a jacket and suggested that they fix her up a bit. Both men plunged into the work of preserving her with unguents and filling her with mortician's paste. They worked until four o'clock in the morning, when Dr. Cuevas announced that he was too tired and too sad to continue. He went out of the room and Rosa was left in the hands of the assistant, who wiped the bloodstains from her skin with a sponge, put her embroidered nightgown back over her chest to cover up the seam that ran from her throat all the way to her sex, and arranged her hair. Then he cleaned up the mess that he and the doctor had made.

Dr. Cuevas walked into the living room and found Severo and Nana half drunk with tears and sherry.

“She's ready,” he said. “We've fixed her up a little so her mother can go in and have a look at her.”

He told Severo that his doubts had been well founded and that in his daughter's stomach he had found the same lethal substance as in the gift of brandy. It was then that Severo recalled Clara's prediction and lost whatever remained of his composure, for he was incapable of thinking that his daughter had died instead of him. He crumpled to the floor, moaning that he was the guilty one because of his ambition and bluster, that no one had told him to get involved in politics, that he had been much better off as an ordinary lawyer and family man, and that from then on he was renouncing his accursed candidacy, resigning from the Liberal Party and from all his public deeds and works, and that he hoped none of his descendants would ever get mixed up in politics, which was a trade for butchers and bandits—till finally Dr. Cuevas took pity on him and did him the favor of getting him drunk. The sherry was stronger than his suffering and guilt. Nana and the doctor carried him up to his bedroom, removed his clothes, and put him in his bed. Then they went into the kitchen, where the assistant was just putting the final touches on Rosa.

Nívea and Severo del Valle woke up late the following morning. Their relatives had hung the house in mourning. The curtains were drawn and bore black crepe ribbons, and the walls were piled with wreaths of flowers whose sickly sweet odor filled the halls. A funeral chapel had been set up in the dining room. There on the big table, covered with a black cloth with gold fringes, lay Rosa's white coffin with its silver rivets. Twelve yellow candles in bronze candelabras cast a dusky light over the girl. They had dressed her in the white gown and crown of wax orange blossoms that were being saved for her wedding day.

At twelve o'clock the parade of friends, relatives, and acquaintances began to file in to express their sympathy to the family. Even their most confirmed enemies appeared at the house, and Severo del Valle interrogated each pair of eyes in the hope of discovering the identity of the assassin; but in each, even those of the president of the Conservative Party, he saw the same innocence and grief.

During the wake, the men wandered through the sitting rooms and hallways of the house, speaking softly of business. They kept a respectful silence whenever any member of the family approached. When the time came to enter the dining room and pay their last respects to Rosa, everyone trembled, for if anything her beauty had grown more remarkable in death. The ladies moved into the living room, where they arranged the chairs in a circle. There they could weep at leisure, unburdening themselves of their own troubles as they wept for someone else's death. The weeping was copious, but it was dignified and muted. Some of the women murmured prayers under their breath. The maids moved back and forth through the sitting rooms and halls, distributing tea and cognac, homemade sweets, handkerchiefs for the women, and cold compresses soaked in ammonia for those ladies who felt faint from the lack of air, the scent of candles, and the weight of their emotion. All the del Valle sisters except Clara, who was still only a child, were dressed in black from head to toe and flanked their mother like a row of crows. Nívea, who had shed all her tears, sat rigid on her chair without a sigh, without a word, and without ammonia, to which she was allergic. As they arrived at the house, visitors stopped in to pay her their condolences. Some kissed her on both cheeks and others held her tight for a few seconds, but she seemed not to recognize even those she numbered among her closest friends. She had seen others of her children die in early childhood or at birth, but none had caused the sense of loss that she felt now.

All the brothers and sisters said goodbye to Rosa with a kiss on her cold forehead except for Clara, who refused to go anywhere near the dining room. They did not insist, because of both her extreme sensitivity and her tendency to sleepwalk whenever her imagination ran away with her. She stayed by herself in the garden curled up beside Barrabás, refusing to eat or have anything to do with the funeral. Only Nana kept an eye on her and tried to comfort her, but Clara pushed her away.

Despite the care Severo took to hush all speculation, Rosa's death became a public scandal. To anyone who listened, Dr. Cuevas offered the most logical explanation of her death, which was due, he said, to galloping pneumonia. But rumor had it that she had mistakenly been poisoned in her father's stead. In those days political assassinations were unknown in the country, and in any case poison was a method only whores and fishwives would resort to, a lowly technique that had not been seen since colonial times; even crimes of passion were nowadays resolved face to face. There was a great uproar over the attempt on his life, and before Severo could do anything to stop it, an announcement appeared in the opposition paper in which veiled accusations were made against the oligarchy and it was asserted that the conservatives were even capable of this act, because they could not forgive Severo del Valle for throwing his lot in with the liberals despite his social class. The police tried to pursue the clue of the brandy decanter, but all they were able to learn was that its source was not the same as that of the roast pig stuffed with partridges and plums and that the voters of the South had nothing to do with the whole matter. The mysterious decanter had been found outside the service door to the del Valle house on the same day and at the same time that the roast pig was delivered. The cook had simply assumed that it was part of the same gift. Neither the zeal of the police nor Severo's own investigation, which was carried out with the help of a private detective he engaged, shed any light on the identity of the assassin, and the shadow of suspended vengeance has continued to hang over succeeding generations. It was the first of many acts of violence that marked the fate of the del Valle family.

*  *  *

I remember perfectly. It had been a very happy day for me, because a new lode had appeared, the thick, magnificent seam that had eluded me throughout that time of sacrifice, absence, and hope, and that might represent the wealth I had been seeking for so long. I was sure that within six months I would have enough money to get married, and that by the time the year was out I would be able to call myself a wealthy man. I was very lucky, because in the mines there were more men who lost the little that they had than those who made a fortune, which is just what I was writing to Rosa that evening as I sat there so euphoric and so impatient that my fingers locked on the old typewriter and all the words came out jammed together. I was in the middle of the letter when I heard the pounding at the door that would cut off my inspiration forever. It was a peasant, with a team of mules, who had brought a telegram from town, sent by my sister Férula, telling me of Rosa's death.

I had to read the scrap of paper three times through before I understood the extent of my grief. The only thought that had never crossed my mind was that Rosa could be mortal. I suffered greatly whenever it occurred to me that, bored with waiting for me, she might marry someone else, or that the cursed vein that would spell my fortune might never turn up, or that the mine might cave in, squashing me like a cockroach. I had thought of all these possibilities and more, but never that of Rosa's death, despite my proverbial pessimism, which always leads me to expect the worst. I felt that without Rosa life no longer had any meaning. All the air went out of me as if I were a punctured balloon; all my enthusiasm vanished. God only knows how long I sat there in my chair, staring out the window at the desert, until my soul gradually returned to my body. My first reaction was one of rage. I turned against the walls, pounding the flimsy wooden planks until my knuckles bled. Then I tore all of Rosa's letters and drawings and the copies of my letters to her into a thousand pieces, stuffed my clothing, my papers, and my canvas pouch filled with gold into my suitcase, and went to find the foreman so I could leave him the logbooks and the keys to the warehouse. The mule driver offered to take me to the train. We had to travel almost the whole night on the animals' backs, with thin Spanish blankets as our only shield against the freezing mist, advancing at a snail's pace through that endless wasteland in which only the instinct of my guide guaranteed our safe arrival, for there were no points of reference. The night was clear and full of stars. I felt the cold pierce my bones, cut off the circulation in my hands, and seep into my soul. I was thinking of Rosa and wishing with an unreasoning violence that her death wasn't true, desperately begging the heavens for it all to turn out to be a terrible mistake, and praying that, revived by the force of my love, she would rise like Lazarus from her deathbed. I wept inwardly, sunk in my grief and in the icy night, cursing at the mule who was so slow, at Férula, the bearer of bad news, at Rosa herself for having died, and at God for having let her, until light appeared over the horizon and I saw the star fade away and the first shades of dawn appear, dyeing the landscape red and orange. With the light, I regained some of my strength. I began to resign myself to my misfortune and to ask no longer that she be resurrected but simply that I would arrive in time to see her one last time before they buried her. We doubled our pace and an hour later the driver took leave of me outside the tiny train station where I caught the narrow-gauge locomotive that linked the civilized world and the desert where I had spent two years.

I traveled more than thirty hours without stopping to eat, not even noticing my thirst, and I managed to reach the del Valle home before the funeral. They say that I arrived covered with dust, without a hat, filthy and bearded, thirsty and furious, shouting for my bride. Little Clara, who at the time was just a skinny child, came out to meet me when I stepped into the courtyard, took me by the hand, and drew me silently toward the dining room. There was Rosa in the folds of the white satin lining of her white coffin, still intact three days after she had died, and a thousand times more beautiful than I remembered her, for in death Rosa had been subtly transformed into the mermaid she had always been in secret.

“Damn her! She slipped through my hands!” they say I shouted, falling to my knees beside her, scandalizing all the relatives, for no one could comprehend my frustration at having spent two years scratching the earth to make my fortune with no other goal than that of one day leading this girl to the altar, and death had stolen her away from me.

Moments later the carriage arrived, an enormous black, shiny coach drawn by six plumed chargers, as was used on those occasions, and driven by two coachmen in livery. It pulled away from the house in the middle of the afternoon beneath a light drizzle, followed by a procession of cars that carried family and friends and all the flowers. It was the custom then for women and children not to attend funerals, which were considered a male province, but at the last minute Clara managed to slip into the cortège to accompany her sister Rosa, and I felt the grip of her small gloved hand. She stayed by my side all along the way, a small, silent shadow who aroused an unknown tenderness in my soul. At that moment I hadn't been told that she hadn't spoken in two days; and three more were to pass before the family became alarmed by her silence.

Severo del Valle and his oldest sons bore Rosa's white coffin with the silver rivets, and they themselves laid it down in the open niche in the family tomb. They were dressed in black, silent and dry-eyed, as befits the norms of sadness in a country accustomed to the dignity of grief. After the gates to the mausoleum had been locked and the family, friends, and gravediggers had retired, I was left alone among the flowers that had escaped Barrabás's hunger and accompanied Rosa to the cemetery. Tall and thin as I was then, before Férula's curse came true and I began to shrink, I must have looked like some dark winter bird with the bottom of my jacket dancing in the wind. The sky was gray and it looked as if it might rain. I suppose it must have been quite cold, but I didn't feel it, because my rage was eating me alive. I couldn't take my eyes off the small marble rectangle where the name of Rosa the Beautiful had been engraved in tall Gothic letters, along with the dates that marked her brief sojourn in this world. I thought about how I had lost two years dreaming of Rosa, working for Rosa, writing to Rosa, wanting Rosa, and how in the end I wouldn't even have the consolation of being buried by her side. I thought about the years I still had left to live and decided that without her it wasn't worth it, for I would never find another woman with her green hair and underwater beauty. If anyone had told me then that I would live to be more than ninety, I would have put a gun to my head and pulled the trigger.

I didn't hear the footsteps of the caretaker as he approached me from behind; I jumped when he touched me on the shoulder.