Conquistadora (7 page)

After their walks around the city or following their rides outside its gates, Ramón, Inocente, and Ana returned to the nearly empty house to bathe and rest. A local woman delivered meals, served, and cleaned, then left them alone as candles sputtered into translucent puddles. When church bells rang eleven, Ana went into the bedroom and changed into her nightgown. At quarter past the hour Ramón walked in. Or Inocente.

She hadn’t thought she was really marrying Ramón
and
Inocente after their first teasing conversation when they met. The subject didn’t come up again, but within a few days of her wedding, Ana realized that she was wife to both men. At first, in the dark, one twin felt much like the other, spoke like the other, made love with the same impatience as the other. Neither man liked to be touched more than necessary, as if her wandering fingers were an invasion. They were courteous, called her sweet names, but neither man seemed to be entirely present when he made love, as if he were thinking of someone else the whole time. Within a week, she could tell who was Ramón, who Inocente. Ramón talked during the entire sex act as if he needed to hear his own voice in order to get aroused. Inocente was silent, stretched her arms over her head, pressed them against the pillows so that she couldn’t move them, opened her thighs with his knees, and rocked back and forth above her. They resisted her attempts to change the man-on-top, woman-on-bottom position. Both assumed that she would not, should not, enjoy lovemaking. They both grunted as they peaked, then dropped to the side and were insensible until the next morning. She often lay in bed after they’d fallen asleep, missing Elena.

When she first realized that the twins were sharing her, Ana was furious. Who did they think they were? Who did they think she was? Other than in their selfishness in bed, however, Ramón and Inocente behaved like men in love. They were attentive, made sure that she was comfortable and safe, complimented her lavishly, brought her flowers and presents, and were in every other way devoted. She’d worked hard to win them, and wanted to believe that they loved her. Why wouldn’t they both fall in love with her at the same time, and why wouldn’t they find a way for both of them to have her?

She had to be patient. She’d persuaded them that conventional lives were for other people and they embraced her ideas to the fullest.
But no one must ever know. Not Elena, who expected to marry Inocente. Not doña Leonor, who always addressed her sons as if they were one person. Not don Eugenio, who was so impressed by Ana’s forebears that he encouraged Ramón to marry her. And certainly not Padre Cipriano, who heard her breathless, abridged confessions every Saturday at three in the sweltering confessional of the gold-domed Catedral de Cádiz.

Ramón, Inocente, and Ana sailed first to the Canary Islands, where their Marítima Argoso Marín schooner,
Antares
, had to pick up cargo and more passengers. Ana watched impatiently from the deck as stevedores loaded barrels and canvas-wrapped bundles. On the fourth day, three horses were led up the ramp and, with much effort, persuaded into the hold. That afternoon, soldiers in full regalia embarked, and their commander had each man call out his name and rank to ascertain that everyone was accounted for. Once he was satisfied, the captain ordered that the
Antares
push off the dock, raise the sails, and begin its journey across the Atlantic. Ana had a moment of terror when land disappeared from sight, even though she’d imagined this voyage for years. The ship was a speck in the immeasurable sea beneath an infinite sky, with no beacons to indicate how far they’d come or how much farther they had to go. She felt between time and space, floating between lives.

The
Antares
was one of the older schooners owned by Marítima Argoso Marín. The decks and timbers were mottled with mysterious stains, and the boards were nicked, scratched, and haphazardly patched. In spite of the relatively calm seas, Ramón and Inocente were seasick the first two days, and Ana ran from one cabin to the other soothing and comforting as she controlled her own nausea. The cramped passenger cabins emitted the smells of moisture, human effluvia, and animal musk. As they sailed toward the equator, the cabins became insufferably hot. Ana spent as much time as she could on deck, gulping the fresh air, reading, and trying to forget that she was confined on a creaking vessel in the middle of a vast ocean. One day she looked up from her book and noticed something that she hadn’t thought about before. The horizon was at eye level. To change her perspective, she stood along the rail looking toward
Spain, and later peeked through the narrow porthole of their cabin belowdecks toward their destination in Puerto Rico, expecting the horizon to be lower or higher depending on where she was standing. But no matter what position she took, her past and future coalesced at eye level, immutable, unavoidable, but at the same time ever changing as her past folded into her future and the
Antares
sailed toward her destiny.

The horizon was smudged, like a bruise, but as the
Antares
approached land, a veiled green pyramid emerged from the haze. Ana grabbed Ramón’s arm and bounced on her toes, unable to contain her excitement.

“Is that it?”

Ramón wove her left hand through his elbow, and brought her gloved fingers to his lips. “We’ll soon be inside the harbor.”

“You can make out San Felipe del Morro.” Inocente pointed to a mustard-colored headland over the frothing surf.

“It’s huge!”

“Impregnable,” Inocente added. “Spanish military engineering at its best.”

Other passengers pushed closer to the rail, craned their necks, adjusted their hats and bonnets to shade their eyes from the blinding sun. Crewmen hopped around the deck in a dance of sail lowering, rope loosening, latch securing, and the tying down of canvas-wrapped bundles. As the vessel glided through the protected passage into the broad harbor, Ana’s breath quickened. This is it, she thought, Puerto Rico. A sense of déjà vu made her dizzy.

“Now I know what my ancestors must have felt,” she said, “seeing land after weeks at sea.…”

“Let’s hope we have the luck of those who became rich and not the luck of those eaten by the Caribs,” muttered Inocente.

Ramón and Ana laughed. Some passengers standing nearby glanced at them nervously and gave them a bit more room. The brothers exchanged an amused look over Ana’s head. She put her other arm through Inocente’s so that they were linked to each other through her. She sighed happily as the walled city came into view.

“At last,” she said softly. “We’re here at last.”

She closed her eyes and mentally etched the date into memory: Wednesday, October 16, 1844.

It was early morning, and the harbor was thick with two- and three-masted schooners, barges, sloops, and fishing boats vying for lanes, most of them flying the red-and-gold Spanish flag. San Juan rose from the waterfront behind the thick walls that protected it from invasions and enemy attacks from the Atlantic Ocean. Wide swatches of green peppered the hill, gardens, or pastures—Ana couldn’t tell—but closely packed buildings intersected by roads and alleys defined most of the land. Several towers topped by crucifixes were scattered across the citadel, their bells echoing over the water. To Ana, San Juan looked like Cádiz, the city they’d left three thousand miles behind in Spain.

She freed her arms from Ramón and Inocente and turned to where verdant hills stretched east to west, the vegetation nearly unbroken by man-made structures. Low white clouds formed over the green, blackening the land below. She turned again to the light and sunny city. As the schooner approached the dock, passengers oohed and aahed at the painted houses, the balconies adorned with flowers and foliage on the upper stories. On the flat roofs, women’s skirts and fringed shawls fluttered in the breeze in a panoply of color and movement. Some of them waved, and passengers returned their greetings. Other women dressed in black stood as immobile as the sentry boxes over the rock walls of the fort. They were too far from shore for Ana to distinguish features, but so many women in mourning over the gay city palled her humor. She threaded her arms again through Ramón’s, then Inocente’s, arm and pulled them closer, focusing their attention on the movement on the wharf, away from the widows.

“There he is!” Ramón pointed at don Eugenio standing by an open carriage near the dock, amid the bustle and hubbub around the waterfront. Next to him stood a younger man, somewhat taller, powerfully built, his face shaded by a wide-brimmed straw hat. Eugenio waved when he spotted them, nodded at the younger man, and walked toward the wharf.

The dock was narrower than Ana expected, the boards slippery, set wide apart, and she worried her foot might get caught between them. Crowds made her nervous because she was so short that she
couldn’t see over people’s heads or around the wide feminine silhouette that was the fashion of the day. Ramón and Inocente formed a barrier between her and the multitude. They steered her to avoid women’s skirts, a man carrying a heavy valise, an old man being led by a much younger woman. Five impeccably dressed children walked slowly hand in hand, taking up the width of the dock, while behind them, a toddler screeched at the top of his lungs in spite of his nurse’s efforts to comfort him. After the fresh ocean breeze on the open seas, the waterfront smelled of dead fish and pine tar, of sweat, urine, rotting wood. Ana was faint.

“Almost there,” Ramón said as he led her forward. She finally stepped on solid ground.

“
Bienvenidos
, welcome!” don Eugenio said, kissing Ana on both cheeks. His whiskers were damp. “What a joy to have you near again!”

While he hugged and kissed his sons, she discreetly wiped the moisture from her cheeks with the back of her glove. From the corner of her eye she caught the bemused smile of the man don Eugenio had been talking to. She turned her back on him.

“This way. Your trunks will be delivered to the house.”

Don Eugenio helped her into the open carriage, and Ramón climbed in beside her. Inocente and don Eugenio took the facing seats. The driver, a round-faced man with the blackest skin Ana had ever seen, sat on one of the two horses, clucked his tongue, tugged and loosened the reins as he skillfully guided them through the crowd. As Ana opened her parasol, she noticed that the man who smiled at her was still standing in the same spot. He lifted his hand in a wave, and she wondered that he’d be so brazen, but then realized he was waving at don Eugenio, who acknowledged him with a nod.

“Who is that?” asked Inocente.

“His name is Severo Fuentes. He worked for Rodrigo and has been recommended as manager for the plantation. You’ll meet him later.”

Ana wanted to get a better look, but when she turned around, he’d vanished.

The street was so congested that they made little progress and beggars took advantage.

“Por favor, señora, una limosna,”
implored a boy whose left arm ended in a stump just above the wrist.

“Por amor a Dios,”
begged another, his narrow face peeling in strips as thin and transparent as discarded snakeskin.

On the other side of the carriage a woman pressed along, silently, hands cupped, huge eyes imploring.

Don Eugenio scattered them with his walking stick, but they followed, clamoring, while Ramón, Inocente, and Ana tried to ignore them. It was impossible, however. There were so many, and so persistent.

Ana reached into her reticule, and thinking she was about to hand out alms, the beggars changed their outcries.
“Que Dios la bendiga, señora,”
they blessed her.
“Que la Santísima Virgen se lo pague, señora.”
Their grateful voices brought more pleas and outstretched hands, bringing the carriage to a stop.

“If you give to one, they won’t leave us alone,” Inocente warned.

“I know that,” she said irritably. She was born in a city where dodging beggars was a skill learned from childhood. She pulled a handkerchief from the reticule and blotted her cheeks and forehead. The beggars’ cries of disappointment were followed by curses.

“Go away. There’s nothing for you here.” Inocente’s walking stick struck a boy on the chest, another on the shoulders. A small boy tried to climb onto the carriage.

Don Eugenio pushed him off. “Where are you going?”

A mounted soldier pressed his horse through the crowd and, in between curses and threats, moved the beggars along. They didn’t go far, though, just to the carriage behind, already mobbed.

“Everything all right, Colonel?” the soldier asked, saluting don Eugenio.

“Thank you. We’re fine now.” Don Eugenio saluted back. “Just trying to get home.”

The soldier cleared the road in front of them, and soon they entered the gate and were heading uphill. Don Eugenio brushed the sleeves and lapels of his white suit, even though none of the beggars had touched him. “Disgraceful! Something must be done about these people.”

“Every city has beggars, Papá,” said Ramón, “and orphans and lunatics. San Juan wouldn’t be a proper city without them.”

“You might think it’s funny, but your mother and cousin can’t leave the house without being harassed. It’s outrageous.”