Conquistadora (11 page)

Ana forced herself to inhale deeply and to let her unsettled nerves subside. Most of the slaves were old and bent over at the waist, as if the loads they’d carried over the years still pressed upon their backs. Several were missing ears, fingers, hands, or arms below their elbows. Some were hobbled, their ankles and feet turned into unnatural shapes. The adults were dressed in rags; the small children were completely naked, their bellies puffed over stick-thin legs.

As they approached the living quarters, Ana was further dismayed that the grand house was in no better condition than the work buildings or the people. The
casona
was two stories high, with an exposed porch around the second floor accessible by two sets of rough-hewn stairs, one in front and another in back, near the ground-floor kitchen shack.

“Most of the lower story,” Severo explained, “is for storage. There’s also a room for the house servants.”

Ana blinked in the midday sun. She was stunned at the rustic house, built from unfinished boards nailed to exposed timbers. The interior dividing walls didn’t reach to the ceiling or to the wide plank floor. The ceiling was lined with narrow slats below the corrugated metal roof. A bright green lizard the size of one of her shoes clung upside down to one of the boards, defying gravity. The doors and windows were tall shutters that opened to the porch and were kept closed by sliding a thick pole through iron hooks. Furnishings in the rooms were sparse: a small rectangular table with benches in the dining room, another two benches in the living room, and a table and stool in the study. The walls were recently painted, and the smell of resin hung in the air. Every room was a pale, sad-looking green.

Ramón, Inocente, and Severo watched Ana’s face as they walked through the house.

“Well, it certainly needs a woman’s touch.” She put on a brave
smile and turned to drop her hat and gloves on one of the benches. In her fantasies of life in the big, wide-open New World it hadn’t occurred to her that she wouldn’t live in a masonry house with tiled floors and the dark, heavy Spanish furniture of her comfortable childhood. When she turned around, the men’s anxious eyes were on her. Severo Fuentes, especially, watched her, with nervous expectancy. “Don’t look so worried,” she said, meeting first Ramón’s then Inocente’s eyes and trying to convince herself more than anyone. “It’s going to be fine.”

The brothers sighed in relief.

Severo nodded as if she’d answered a question correctly on an exam, and again closed-lipped, briefly, surreptitiously, smiled. She sensed that he knew exactly what she was feeling and had noticed her efforts to dissimulate. Annoyed at herself for her foolishness, it irked her even more that Severo could see what Ramón and Inocente didn’t. There was a sharp intelligence beneath his dutiful, obsequious veneer. Just as on the beach, he appeared to be both present and one step ahead of everyone else.

He opened the door to the first bedroom and bowed them in. Facing the window was a mahogany four-poster bed with banana-flower motifs on the finials. The footboard and headboard were deeply carved with broad leaves curving toward each other and bunches of bananas dangling from each trunk.

“You’re fortunate to have a skilled carpenter working on the premises,” Severo said. “José can make anything. As you can see, he also carves well.”

“Surprisingly good,” Inocente said. “Don’t you think so, Ana?”

“Oh, yes,” she responded, not trusting her voice to say more. The bed was elaborately made but looked incongruous in the small room with its single window and wide plank floor. The thin mattress was covered with the linens she had sent ahead. In the corner by the window a shelf held her porcelain washbasin and pitcher, her painstakingly embroidered towels folded neatly over a dry branch nailed to the wall. They looked absurd here. Under the shelf was a chipped chamber pot.

The two trunks that held her and Ramón’s clothes, shoes, and intimates were pressed against the wall, next to the linen chest. She’d begun assembling the bride’s chest when she was old enough to
know she’d be married someday. In the six weeks before her wedding, Elena, Jesusa, and her friends and relatives added to its contents. The chest was filled with lace-edged napkins and tablecloths, embroidered towels, sheets. An ancient crucifix in her family for generations was wrapped inside a fine silk cloth, to be used for the household altar. Ana swallowed hard again.

Severo led them to the next room. It was nearly bare, with a shelf for the washbasin, the towel draped over a hook.

“Unfortunately, José had time to finish only one bed,” Severo said. “Don Inocente will have to sleep in a hammock for now.”

The
hamaca
hung diagonally across the room. Inocente gently pushed at the heavy, homespun cotton. Ana could tell he was eager to jump into the
hamaca
, but dignity wouldn’t allow it in front of the
mayordomo
.

“They’re surprisingly comfortable,” Severo said. “Some people prefer them to beds.”

“I’ve slept on them,” Inocente said. “No need to apologize.”

Severo led them back to the living room.

“José is working on chairs and a dining table. I’m sure the
señora
has ideas for the furnishings,” he continued. “I’ll send him whenever you’re ready. But please be aware that during the
zafra
we need every able body. Even the skilled slaves work in the fields.”

“I understand,” Ana said, without giving away her disappointment: it was obvious that it would be years before they’d have a proper home.

Two women and a man were waiting on the porch. Burrs and small twigs clung to the women’s skirts; the man’s pants and shirt were torn and stained. They’d been working in the fields but had washed their faces and hands, and the women had rewrapped their head coverings.

“If you permit me,
señora
, the house servants …” Severo gestured them to come in. One of the women was a head shorter than Ana but older, with large, alert eyes and a smile that she had trouble keeping in check. There was about her such a cheerful air that Ana felt lighter. Severo introduced her as Flora, her personal maid. The taller, fleshier, younger woman with the buckteeth and suspicious air was Marta, the cook, and the diffident gray-haired man was Teo, the houseman who would attend Ramón and Inocente.

“I’ll leave you to rest now,” Severo said. “Marta will prepare
el almuerzo
. You’ll hear the bell. Here’s the key to the pantry,” he said, with a jangle from his pocket. “And the key to the liquor closet.” He handed them to Ana and looked at Marta, who curtsied heavily and left.

Flora and Teo waited for instructions from Ana.

“Put those things away.” Ana gestured toward their hats and gloves, dropped on benches when they came in. “And unpack the valises when they arrive.” The servants seemed eager to be given orders that excused them from the grueling work outdoors.

“Señores”
—Severo turned to Ramón and Inocente—“I’m at your service when you’d like to review the ledgers.”

“Yes, of course,” said Ramón. “This afternoon.”

“We can ride the fields tomorrow,” Severo said.

“That will be fine,” said Inocente.

Severo bowed and left them standing in the middle of the living room. Ana sat on one of the rickety benches that squealed threateningly when she moved.

“I’m sorry,
querida
, about the accommodations,” Ramón said. “If I’d had any idea—”

“Mamá was right,” Inocente added. “You should’ve stayed in San Juan until we were settled.”

“Please don’t worry about me,” Ana interrupted. “You have enough to think about. Our home will be my project.”

“The
casona
,” Inocente said, “isn’t ordinarily so close to the work buildings. In a proper plantation, this would be the
mayordomo’s
house.”

“Have we displaced Severo, then? Is this his house?”

“Probably,” Ramón said.

“Where does he live, then?”

“Maybe in one of the cottages on the property,” Inocente said. “He did take some trouble to make this one habitable.”

“Green walls,” Ana said. “As if there weren’t enough green out there.” She stepped to the porch facing away from the
batey
. As far as she could see, forested lands rose into the hills. Ramón and Inocente followed her.

“We’ll use this house,” Ramón added, “and as soon as possible, we’ll build a proper one.”

“After the harvest,” Inocente said.

A breeze rippled across the verdure, like a whisper.

“Sí.”
Ana once again hooked her arms into their elbows, bringing them closer. “
Sí
, after the harvest.”

Within a month, they were settled into a routine. The work began at dawn, with the call of the morning Angelus bell from amid the cane. Ramón and Inocente spent most of their days on horseback with Severo, returning when the bell tolled noon for the
almuerzo
and a short siesta before riding again until dusk, when the bell signaled the evening Angelus. After supper, the bell clanged once more to indicate that all lights should be extinguished in the
bohíos
and
cuarteles
, and everyone should be indoors. During the harvest, the grinders and boiling house ran twenty-four hours a day, but the bell still tolled at the same times.

Ramón and Inocente’s itinerant life had taught them to adjust to changes quickly. In spite of Leonor’s plans for them to work in offices, the brothers were most comfortable outdoors, among sweating men and beasts. Their boyish features darkened in the sun; their bodies grew muscular. Their voices deepened from speaking louder than allowed in Leonor’s fragrant
sala
, but as necessary in the canebrakes and trails.

They sought, trusted, and followed Severo’s advice on every aspect of the plantation. The
mayordomo
was six months younger than the twins, but he’d lived harder and had accumulated experience that continually impressed the brothers and Ana. He was also eccentric in surprising ways. His dogs, for example, were Tres, Cuatro, and Cinco.

“Why do you give your dogs numbers and not names?” Ana asked.

“I don’t give animals Christian names.”

Once a week, he joined them for supper, and when asked, Severo told stories of his travels within Spain and across the sea before he finally landed in Puerto Rico. He began life as a cobbler’s son and rose by his wits, skills, and ambition to his current position at Los Gemelos. Ramón, Inocente, and Ana understood that his work here was preparing him for someday owning his own plantation.

“ ‘If you are ambitious of climbing up to the difficult, and in a manner inaccessible, summit of the Temple of Fame,’ ” Severo once recited after a bit too much brandy, “ ‘your surest way is to leave on one hand the narrow path of Poetry, and follow the narrower track of Knight-Errantry, which in a trice may raise you to an imperial throne.’ The great Cervantes,
señores y señora
, never visited the New World, but he knew what was required to become a success in these lands.”

“You see yourself as a
caballero andante
.” Ramón smirked.

“If you insist,
señor
. Yes, a knight-errant in search of fame and fortune,
sí, señor
, that’s me.”

“But,” Inocente added, with an ironic smile, “the passage you’ve just quoted is followed by ‘With these words, Don Quixote seemed to have summed up the whole evidence of his madness.’ ”

Severo wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and laughed. “Yes, but don’t forget, that
‘de músico, poeta y loco, todos tenemos un poco,’
 ” he concluded, and they laughed.

That night Ana lay in bed long after Ramón had fallen asleep, thinking about the phrase. We are all a bit of a poet, a bit of a musician, a bit mad, she agreed. But she thought that Severo Fuentes, who could quote Cervantes with uncanny precision, was perhaps the maddest of them all.

Back in Boca de Gato, one of the neglected hamlets north of Madrid, his parents had wanted Severo Fuentes Arosemeno to be a priest. He was the third and youngest boy in his family, and it was unlikely that their meager earnings would be enough for three cobblers in their small shop in their village. His father brought him to the parish padre, who taught Severo to read and write, and taught him Latin, the language of the learned. But while Padre Antonio doted on Severo’s quickness and intelligence, everyone else in the village ridiculed him for having ambitions greater than to sit at the cobbling bench for the rest of his life as his brothers and father were doing, as his grandfather and uncle did, as who knew how many generations before them.

In spite of Padre Antonio’s efforts to make a priest of him, Severo showed no vocation. He wanted a life away from the craggy streets and narrow alleys of Boca de Gato, and longed for a life outdoors, far from the cramped house with attached workshop where day after day his father and brothers carved hard leather into thick-soled boots and shaped pliant kidskin into ladies’ slippers.

One morning shortly after his ninth birthday, as he was getting ready to go to the parish house, Severo heard a voice inside his head. “Leave Boca de Gato,” it said. He’d heard voices before, but they were usually his own, berating him for doing something stupid or urging him to jump into what frightened him. He’d never heard a voice different from his own, or one with such specific instructions. “Madrid. Go to Madrid.”