The Witch Narratives: Reincarnation (29 page)

“Not really,” she said, looking down at her slightly tanned hands. “I am used to bigots.”

He played with her long hair, wrapping it around his fingers. “I’ll make sure they respect you. So long as you’re with me, no one will mistreat you.”

“I can’t go.”

“You can’t go, or you don’t want to go with me?” he said, tugging at her hair, pulling her head up so she was forced to look at him.

“I would like to go with you, Samuel. I really would,” she said with longing in her voice.

He smiled. “Then it’s all settled.”

“I can’t go to Albuquerque with you.”

“You just said you want to go. Now, you say you can’t. Why?” he said in an exasperated voice.

“If you have any feeling for me, please drop this subject and don’t ask me to go with you. Quit trying to tempt me. Can’t you see what your invitation is doing to me? You’re cutting me into pieces.”

He lifted her chin, frowning at the tears swirling in her eyes. “I’m trying to be patient with you, Salia. Please, help me understand. If this means so much to you, that I’m ripping you apart, then why don’t you just come with me? There’s nothing to hold you here. Or is there? It’s another man, isn’t it?”

“There’s no other man but you, Samuel.” She stroked his shoulders.

“Then why…”

“If I leave here, I shall die,” she said, pounding his chest with her fists. “I shall die when I can no longer see the Ortiz Mountains.”

He grabbed her wrists and held her to him. “Shush now. Stop crying. It’s alright.”

He unclenched her hands from his shirt and pulled her up from the chair. He led her over to the bed and sat down beside her, placing his arm around her shivering body. He kissed her, his lips brushing hers like a feather. “I thought you didn’t believe in all that hocus pocus crap, like the rest of the villagers do. Who told you that you would die? Your mother?”

She nodded her head, yes.

“What did your mother do, foretell your death in chili seeds?” he said, snorting.

Silence. She merely rested her head on his chest.

“Can’t you see, Salia, what this is all about? You said that your mother thought she owned you.”

“She wanted to.”

“She never wanted you to leave here, because she didn’t want you to leave her. A lot of mothers are like that, clinging to their children until they suffocate them.”

“It wasn’t that way. I shall truly die, if I leave here.”

He felt like shaking some sense into her. “You’re giving Madrid too much power over you, Salia. The village can’t kill you, just because you leave. It’s impossible.”

“It is written. I have seen it with my own eyes,” she said fearfully.

“Written where?” he said, frowning.

“In a book.”

“What book?”

“Just a book passed down for generations through my family. So it is written, so it shall be. I cannot leave,” she flatly said.

“So, just because some whacko wrote down some curse in the family Bible, you’re going to let it control your life?” he said, his eyes flashing with anger.

“I have no choice!”

He threw his head back on the pillow sham, covering his eyes with his arm and groaning. “Well, I can’t stay here in Madrid.”

“I never asked you to stay.”

“No, but I asked you to come with me. You have a choice. Everyone has a choice. There’s nothing to hold you here. You’re all alone. I can take care of you.”

“You don’t have to feel guilty, Samuel.”

“I don’t feel guilty. I feel responsible,” he muttered.

“Why? I gave myself to you freely.”

He ran his fingers through his hair, sighing. “I can’t explain it myself, but I just do.”

“Do you feel responsible for every virgin you seduce?” she asked in a frigid voice.

“I don’t go around seducing every virgin I meet,” he snapped.

“Just me?”

“I have many women, Salia. I’m a man.”

“Many women you feel responsible for?”

“I only feel responsible for you.”

“So, all your other women have experience?”

“More than you do.”

Her eyes gleamed with anger, and she shoved his leg from above her knee. “What are you saying? That I’m not as good as these other women?”

“Salia, I don’t want to talk about this.”

She cursed and punched him with her fist.

“Ow! What did you do that for?”

“If I’m not so good, then why do you want me to go with you, Patrón?”

“Salia, I never said…”

“You said yesterday that you were leaving. I knew, when I stayed with you, it would not be for long. So, just go. Go to your other women, and leave me alone. Don’t feel responsible. I can take care of myself.” She turned her back to him and crossed her arms. “I can hardly wait for you to leave, so my life can get back to normal.”

He rubbed his leg where she hit him. “Normal? Living with coyotes in a falling-down house and reading chili seeds to buy food?”

“I hunt sometimes. I am good with a rifle. I am independent,” she said, lifting her chin proudly.

He shoved his hat on his head, jerked his arms into his coat, and picked up his travel case. “Fine! Be Independent! You’re the most stubborn, unreasonable female…”

He stopped at the door, playing with the door knob. He looked up at the ceiling and gave a heartfelt sigh. “I’ll speak to Pierre. He won’t keep you from the theatre, Salia. Not ever again. In fact.” He turned and smiled. “I’ll tell him you’re to have a minor role in the new opera.”

“Minor role?” she said, scoffing.

“Come now. You’ve never been a singer. You’re an ingénue. You can learn a lot from Amelita Galli-Curci. She’s one of the great opera singers.”

“I know how to sing opera. I am better than this Amelita Galli-Curci. I can transform myself into any character. I would amaze you.”

He grinned at her cockiness. Her shabby arrogance is partly what attracted him. “If you think you’re so good, come to Albuquerque with me and perform there. I have connections at several theatres.”

“I cannot,” she said, no longer sounding conceited but deflated and ashamed.

“So be it then! Stay here and learn from Galli-Curci,” he barked. “Amaze Madrid with your singing. Come on. I’ll instruct my driver to take you home after he drops me at the station.”

She gave him a dirty look. “I don’t want to go to the station with you.”

“Fine. That’s just fine. Can I drop you at your house?” he said with cold, polite formality.

“I don’t want to go anywhere with you. Ever!”

He cursed, running down the stairs.

He swung his travel case at the Christmas tree and it went crashing to the floor.

He grabbed the top of the tree and dragged it out the door, throwing it in the snow.

He slammed the front door, yelling at his driver.

He watched her running from his house, her skirt flying.

He flung his travel case through the window of his car, breaking the glass. He kicked the tire with his boot. He cussed, hopping on one foot. He climbed in the car without waiting for the door to be opened for him.

“What’s taking so long?” he hollered.

The chauffeur said something about a cold engine.

“Drive slowly,” he ordered. With a heavy heart, he swung his head from side to side, searching for Salia, but she had disappeared. There was only a coyote running down the hill.

“Give me your rifle,” he yelled.

He aimed the rifle at the coyote. He took a shot and missed. He was too far.

He rode to the train station with the air from the broken window hitting his face, but the winter air didn’t help cool his temper. He massaged his foot where he’d kicked the tire. His foot felt like it was broken, but it was probably just bruised, like his pride.

At the train station, Salia hid behind the building and watched Samuel enter a private car. He walked with a limp.

Her heart limped. She hugged her waist, watching the train roll down the tracks, away from Madrid.

She slid down the wall, and hung her head between her knees, listening to the whistle of the train.

She stayed at the train station, long after the whistle faded from the mountains.

34

O
n her daily walks to and from the theatre, Salia went out of her way to pass the Big House, but the house remained abandoned, except for the caretaker. She could not look at the car in the drive, without seeing Samuel looking out at her. At the bedroom window, she saw him standing there with one arm against the window sill. She could hear his voice, yelling at his driver.

She always blinked her eyes to shake the image of Samuel with some beautiful, sophisticated blonde-haired lady. She wrapped her coat tighter around her homespun dress and walked with her chin close to her heart. She still could not comprehend why Samuel had wanted her. Slumming, she supposed. It must have amused him to be with someone so different.

She would sometimes imagine the Big House inside, the rich rugs, the luxurious furnishings, the smell of money, to convince herself the time she spent with Samuel had been real, and she did not dream him. She was capable of summoning, the way Mother called forth La Llorona. Felicita taught her well, but Salia could not conjure up a golden prince like Samuel. The fact that he came to Madrid to try her for murder did not count as magic. She was still amazed that he sought her out after her courtroom drama, even pursued her with the passion of a man never refused anything, a man to whom the chase was everything, a man who usually became bored once he caught or trapped a woman he desired. Oh, their one-night stand had been real alright. It was because of Samuel that she was at the theatre, watching with grudging admiration the older singer, Amelita Galli-Curci, rehearse for opening night this evening.

Pierre had expected trouble from Salia, but she was professional, showing up every day on time, standing on the sidelines with a hungry look, watching the actors, measuring their timing, memorizing their entrances, exits, intonations, inflections, reflections, and annunciations. When it came to Amelita, she especially paid attention, rubbing her piedra imán so her shape-shifting rock would remember her every performance.

Salia rehearsed her own single line robotically, to the moaning and groaning of Pierre.

She made herself useful, fetching coffee for the other actors and crew. She ran the occasional errand, all without complaint, demanding nothing for herself. She rarely spoke, simply nodding her head when asked to do something, scurrying about the business of pleasing everyone, and smiling shyly when she poured the coffee.

Pierre told her, “I’m beginning to wonder if the rumors about you have any ring of truth.”

She smiled slyly at him.

“Perhaps, you have been unjustly punished for your mother’s and grandmother’s mischief, two women unknown to me since I’ve only been in Madrid since the theatre opened, but I have heard stories.”

Again, she smiled craftily.

The haughty Amelita Galli-Curci treated Salia as if she was her servant, beneath her contempt. The fact that Salia was beautiful and young did not endear her to the aging opera singer, who was approaching 44, with a long thin nose, manly face and buggy eyes. She needed a great deal of makeup and correct lighting to pass for the young Gilda in the opera
Rigoletto
.

Salia did all that Signorina Amelita asked and always kept her eyes down, like any good servant, so Amelita never saw the fire in her eyes whenever she ordered her about.

During the final dress rehearsal, Amelita was especially nasty to Salia, yelling at her and ordering her to do this and that.

When a spider crossed the stage floor, Amelita screamed at her to kill it. Salia stomped on the spider, noting that Amelita ran from the stage and cowered in one of the seats, her legs up on the chair.

Amelita was in a foul mood, snapping at Pierre because the singer he hired to play her hunchback father, Rigoletto, was younger than she. “It seems these days everyone is younger than me,” she screamed in her Italian accent, throwing her hairbrush and hitting Salia in the back of her head.