Conquistadora (30 page)

“Where could he be going at this time of night?”

“I can’t imagine.”

“We have to bring him back with us,” she said. “He’s not well.”

“Yes, I know.”

“Right away,” she insisted. “He needs a doctor.”

“I’ll speak with him in the morning,” Eugenio said into her ear. “Rest now, dear. We had a long journey.”

Ramón wandered the paths and lanes in the dark. Following no particular route, he kept moving, even when it rained, even when mosquitoes attacked him in swarms, even when night birds and bats crashed into him in their blind flight and huge toads hopped against his shins. He needed to keep moving away, always away from Ana,
away from the locked barracks, away from the
bohíos
, away from the barns, the boiling house, the warehouses. He moved up one path, down a lane, across a plowed field, along irrigation ditches.

Some nights were so bright that his shadow was a solid black figure that mimicked his movements, and he found comfort in its company. Other nights were so dark that he walked right into trees and fences. He walked into a pond once and was knee deep before he noticed, terrified that he was being sucked into the mud, where he’d drown. He clambered out, sat on the bank until his heart regained its normal pace, then kept walking. In the morning his hair and beard were caked with fine clay, his clothes filthy, and the leather of his boots stiff, pinching his feet with every step.

Neither he nor Inocente had feared the night, even in Spain, where bandits roamed the countryside, city streets, and alleys robbing and murdering. They were excellent swordsmen, especially Inocente, who was agile and tricky. While each defended the other in encounters with outlaws, neither suffered more than minor scratches and torn clothes. The same couldn’t be said for their assailants, who mistook their foppish dress and light step to mean they couldn’t defend themselves.

Inocente always took care of himself, but he looked out for Ramón, too. He was fearless and should have made a career, like their father, in the cavalry. The military would’ve suited him, but he wouldn’t leave Ramón in order to pursue a soldier’s life. Ramón imagined that Inocente put up a vicious fight when he was ambushed. Beyond that certainty, he refused to let his mind go into the specifics of what his brother’s last moments might have been. When Severo tried to tell him how Inocente died, Ramón stopped him. He’d fought alongside his brother and had seen the fury Inocente unleashed against opponents, often out of all proportion to the offense.

Ramón didn’t carry a weapon anymore. Still, the slaves were afraid of him. They didn’t fear him like they feared Severo, who could whip or set the dogs upon them if he chose. No, the slaves’ fear of Ramón was superstitious, because he was alive and his twin was dead. He’d heard one say to another that he was a ghost. He felt as insubstantial as a ghost, as transparent, as useless. He’d never known such loneliness. He felt phantasmal, forever wandering alone while others lived, ate, and loved.

Sometimes when he walked, he was sure that he slept as he moved.
He’d arrive someplace and wouldn’t know where he was, and had no memory of how he got there. He’d spent enough time outdoors with his father and brother to know that, if lost, he should be guided by the stars, but the constellations were arranged in different configurations in this part of the world, and he soon stopped looking up for guidance and simply waited for daylight. The bell tower or the windmill always showed him where the house was.

Some nights he’d be out walking and hear a horseman and know that Severo Fuentes was looking for him. Ramón was easy to spot in his white clothes, so he just waited until one of the dogs came up sniffing. He reached up his hand, and Severo pulled him up on his horse and he rode behind him, often falling asleep with his head between Severo’s shoulder blades, his arms around his waist, and next thing he’d wake up in Nena’s
bohío
. Other times he’d find himself at her door with no memory of how he got there. Nena the laundress led him inside and washed him and helped him climb into his hammock.

He liked Nena la Lavandera. She was shy and quiet, brown as cacao, and smelled like river water. She was warm and soft where Ana was cold and angular. She hardly ever spoke, unlike Ana, who constantly nagged and berated him.

He’d shared La Lavandera with Inocente, like they’d shared many women before Ana, like they shared Marta, the cook, whom Severo sold to don Luis as soon as Ana found out. But Marta was brought to him sometimes, at the
finca
, and because she was the first black woman he’d been with, Ramón liked her best. Marta, like La Lavandera, had pillowy breasts and high, firm buttocks. She smelled like smoke and cooking spices.

So that Ana wouldn’t know about La Lavandera, Severo moved her from the
cuarteles
to her own
bohío
. Ramón was sure that Ana knew he went to her, but no longer cared. She hadn’t let him touch her since the day he struck her.

Whenever Ramón remembered that day, he felt ashamed. He’d seen Inocente slap women in brothels. He’d slapped Marta and Nena but, as far as Ramón knew, had never struck Ana. He contained his violent impulses around her out of respect because she was Ramón’s wife, but Ramón had dreaded the day Inocente would forget himself.

Ana had never complained about Inocente’s temper, which made it even worse for Ramón, because if Inocente had hit her at least once, he wouldn’t have seen that look of terror when he dragged her by her braids. She might have defended herself instead of rolling into the infuriating, whimpering ball of fear that taunted him. Had Inocente hit Ana, she might have fought back and stopped him before he lost all sense of self and entered the strange trance that made him slap and push, kick and punch. Had Severo Fuentes not intervened, Ramón feared that he might have killed Ana, his wife, the mother of his child. His child? Or Inocente’s?

Ramón reached the highest point of a knoll with an ancient ceiba tree whose roots loomed over him in the darkness. The
borinqueños
believed that the ceiba connected the underworld to the living and to the spirit world in the sky. He now leaned against one of the curved roots, at least a foot taller than him, to listen. Nights in Puerto Rico were a cacophony of insect, frog, and bird song, wind, the endless sighing of the
cañaveral
. “It’s not fair.” A horned moon appeared from behind a cloud, painting the world silver. Below him, the cane undulated like a tide, soughing, “It’s not fair.” In the distance he could barely distinguish the windmill, the bell tower, and between them, the solid shapes of the barracks, the house where his wife and his parents slept.

He couldn’t bear to picture his mother’s face when she first stepped from the coach in her finery. His mother hadn’t mastered the art of dissimulation. One look at her and he knew that the slaves were right: he was a ghost, somewhat more substantial than his brother’s shadow pursuing him day and night, whispering that it wasn’t fair, it wasn’t fair that only one twin, the weak twin, the sentimental twin, the twin who never stood up for himself, should be walking upon the earth.

In the week they’d been together, Leonor noticed how much Ana and Elena had changed over the last four and a half years. In the tropical sun, Elena’s skin had acquired a gleam that added to her beauty, while Ana’s had become tan and dry on her face, and darker still, and leathery, on her forearms and hands. Ana habitually pushed her sleeves to her elbows, preparing for manual labor. She seldom wore a hat and gloves outdoors, unlike Elena, whose broad brims, long sleeves, and white gloves left very little skin exposed. There was a roughness about Ana’s movements and gestures that contrasted unfavorably with Elena’s measured gentleness and femininity. It was as if Ana was battered by the elements while Elena lived in a hatbox.

Ana wasn’t as graceful as Elena, or as pretty, but this is where the two women differed the most. Elena was a beauty, no doubt about it. Ana’s features had lost their youthful freshness, but she was handsome in the way much older women are after years of childbearing and suffering. She looked now the way she’d look when she was fifty. Their voices had changed, too. Ana’s had gained volume and depth, now that she was accustomed to giving orders. The effect was of a very small woman with a big voice, a woman who must be obeyed. The two girls Leonor remembered from their last days together in San Juan seemed to have nothing in common anymore. They circled each other uncomfortably, as if each saw in the other the opposite side of a mirror that revealed what was not.

The men mounted right after dawn, and Leonor, Ana, and Elena were left to themselves until the midday dinner. Ana was always busy, so Leonor and Elena accompanied her as she performed her
duties. In her circuits with Ana, Leonor understood why the letters from Los Gemelos were always about the yield of plants and animals and the effects of weather. Ana was proud of her kitchen garden, vegetable patch, and orchards. She delighted in the pigsty and corrals, the barns, chicken coops, and dovecote, and in the animals she raised there.

She introduced each slave and free man or woman, black or white, as if they were equals. They, in turn, were humble but also with a familiarity that seemed improper, given her role as
la patrona
. Leonor guessed they thought she was a good mistress.

Ana walked them past two long, ramshackle buildings that faced each other, where the unmarried male and female slaves lived. Farther down the path squatted a few palm-thatched cottages for families, surrounded by small plots called
conucos
, where slaves grew their own tubers and plantains. Ana showed them the palm-roofed, open-walled
rancho
where Ramón read prayers every Sunday, and where a priest from the nearest town sometimes said Mass and baptized newborns.

They reached the river’s edge, where the laundress and two young girls washed the slaves’ and overseers’ work clothes. Nearby a boy tended a
fogón
that heated water in a cauldron for boiling the finer clothes and linens of the
casona
.

At the other plantations visited on their trek to Los Gemelos, the women spent most of their days indoors sewing, tatting, crocheting, painting pottery or china, reading religious tracts, or practicing music on pianofortes chipped and battered by their trip across the Atlantic. Not one of the women they met was as active in the everyday operations of her plantation as Ana. There was something inappropriate about it, Leonor thought, but she admitted there was also something admirable about Ana’s confidence and her surprising skills and knowledge.

Ana took little interest in Miguel, however. The boy practically lived with his nana Inés, her husband, José, and their two sons, Indio and Efraín, who were slightly older. The three boys played well together and liked to build elaborate towers with the scraps from the workshop where José made the furniture that was beginning to choke the
casona
’s small rooms.

“José is a gifted craftsman, as you can see. It all looks a bit too
ornate in our simple house, but we plan to build a
casa grande
,” Ana explained as they walked back toward the
casona
. “This house isn’t really appropriate for us, but there’s so much work needed on the outbuildings, and we could use more
brazos
.…”

They sat in the shade of the breadfruit tree, where the maids set up chairs and a table. Ana didn’t just sit, however; by her chair was a basket full of clothes to be mended.

A swing dangled from the branch of another tree, where Elena and Inés took turns pushing a laughing Miguel back and forth.

“You’re certainly more involved in the day-to-day operations than I would’ve guessed,” Leonor said, unable to disguise the edge in her voice.

“I didn’t come this far to sit indoors embroidering,” Ana said tartly. “I’ve always had an active life, different from my mother’s and her friends’. You understand, doña Leonor. You traveled and had many adventures following don Eugenio—”

“But I did none of the fighting. That would’ve been … wrong.”

“I’m lucky that way. There’s no society here. No one to impress or be judged by.”

“Oh, but you can’t escape gossip. Even if you never leave, some of what happens here gets abroad.”

“Is that so? Have you heard something I should know?”

“No. No, I haven’t. But if I mention Los Gemelos, people change the subject.”

“You were overly sensitive, Tía Leonor,” Elena said, “because for so long you’ve wanted to see firsthand.”

“And now that you’ve been here for a week,” Ana asked, “have you seen anything that merits gossip?”

Leonor thought for a moment. There was no use criticizing Ana; she’d be herself no matter what. But Leonor couldn’t let her off easily. “In your letters, you didn’t mention that Ramón was unwell.”

“I didn’t know how to tell you. We were all horrified, of course, by Inocente’s murder. But Ramón naturally took it the hardest.”

“How many times did I ask about him, and you never wrote back that he was sick?”

“He’s not sick, doña Leonor. He’s grieving. We all are, as a matter of fact. As far as we can tell Ramón isn’t ill, he’s … well, he’s tired. He doesn’t sleep well. You might’ve heard him leave our bedroom at
night,” she added, knowing that no movement in the small, creaky house could pass undetected. “He walks around the
batey
until he’s tired enough to sleep. The guards know to keep an eye on him. Severo has come after him a few times, and has brought him to rest in the
finca
, where we keep an office. People grieve in their own way, doña Leonor, and in their own time. He lost the person closest to him in the whole world. That’s not something one gets over easily.”