The Butterfly Box (25 page)

Estella didn’t need to be persuaded, she had already envisaged every possibility over the last six months. It was what she wanted. ‘Just you and me,’ she said, smiling with pleasure.

Estella had grown strong over the last six months, ever since she had been fired by Don Ignacio. She had returned to her parents in Zapallar and told them about the dark bear of a man who had stolen her heart and left a part of him growing inside her womb. Her mother had wept copious tears. Her father had thumped his fist against the wall leaving a large hole in the plaster that still remained months later as they didn’t have the time or money for repairs. He had vowed that if he ever laid eyes on the scoundrel he would personally cut off his penis with a carving knife. ‘If he can’t trust himself to use it properly, he shouldn’t have it at all,’ he bellowed, nursing his swollen hand. Estella had tried to convince them that he would come back to her. She told them he had promised and she believed him. But they gazed at her with wise eyes that had seen almost everything during the rough course of their long lives and shook their heads in despair.

Pablo and Maria Rega were almost too old to have a daughter of twenty-two. They had married young and tried for many years to have a child. But after her fragile womb rejected seven babies they had given up hope of ever having a

family. More tears, more fist-bashing until finally they had resigned themselves, too weary to fight any more. Pablo had thrown himself into his work caring for the cemetery that overlooked the sea, talking to the unknown unfortunates who lay in the earth beneath his feet about his longing and his regret. They can’t help me,’ he told his wife, ‘but they’re good listeners.’ Maria continued to work in the grand house of Don Carlos Olivos and his wife Señora Pilar, cleaning and cooking from dawn till dusk. She had always helped herself to food from his fridge, but when she had finally resigned herself to the fact that she simply wasn’t made for producing children she had eaten to dull the pain and to fill the hours she would have spent thinking about her brood. When she was young they had called her ‘Spaghetti’ because she had been as thin and as fragile as a strand of pasta. But when she started eating she couldn’t stop. Her misery clung to her body in the form of thick rolls of fat until she was so large she could barely climb the big staircase in Don Carlos’s house without wheezing and holding onto the banisters for support. Pablo liked her better that way. He would mount her and lose himself in the rolling plains of her body. There was more of her to love.

Then one morning Maria had just managed to reach the top of the staircase

after a long climb, during which she had had to pause on every other step in order to catch her breath, when she had fainted onto the floor, only to be discovered by Don Carlos’s mistress, Serenidad, furtively leaving his bedroom on tiptoe. Serenidad would have liked to ignore the woman who lay on the wooden floorboards like a heaving ox, but her conscience overcame her revulsion and she called for her lover, fanning Maria with the wad of notes Don Carlos had given her to pay off her debts. So embarrassed was Don Carlos at having been discovered with his mistress that he sent Maria immediately to the private hospital in Valparaiso where she was informed by a kindly doctor that she was in labour. Don Carlos’s chauffeur drove Pablo into Valparaiso to join his wife. They held hands as Maria pushed, but she didn’t feel any pain or any discomfort. Their baby slid out of her body like a newborn seal, with silky brown skin, shiny black hair and the correct number of little fingers and little toes. Maria and Pablo were too in awe of the miracle to cry. They watched their child as if she were the first child ever to have been born into the world. ‘She shall be called Estella,’ said Maria with reverence, ‘because she is a star loaned to us from the heavens.’

Maria lost weight. It didn’t happen gradually, but within the short space of a

month. She was never again the ‘Spaghetti’ of her youth, but Pablo liked her that way. Now he had two people to love.

Pablo had always found it difficult to communicate, even to his wife. So he talked to his subterranean dead - an ever-increasing audience - with a fluency that evaded him when he spoke to the living. He patted his favourite tombstone that marked the grave of Osvaldo Garcia Segundo who died in 1896 from a single shot in the head delivered by the man whose wife had meant to run away with him. The wife had killed herself afterwards, with the same gun. But her husband had refused to have her buried anywhere near her lover and threw her body into the sea. Pablo wondered whether Osvaldo Garcia Segundo could see her from where he was, high up there on the cliff. He hoped so. That story had always touched him. He now unburdened his worries about his daughter and the man who had not only stolen her heart but her future in one short, useless affair, because he felt that Osvaldo would understand.

‘She’ll never marry now, you know,’ he said, tapping his fingers on the gravestone. ‘Not now. Who’ll have her? She’s pretty enough, but her belly will put them all off. Who’d want another man’s child? She believes this young man will come back, but you know that’s not the way life is. I don’t know who’s been feeding her these romantic ideas but they’ll come to no good. Mark my words. No good at all. I don’t know what to do. Maria has flooded the house with her tears and I put my fist through the wall. What’s going to become of us?’ he sighed, remembering his little girl as a child and the pleasure she gave them. ‘You give them everything you have, your possessions, you earnings, your love, your dreams and what do you get in return? Nothing but ingratitude,’ he continued, staring out across the sea. ‘Ingratitude.’

Estella had grown strong. She had temporarily sunk into despair after being dismissed from her job. But then she had pulled herself up by focusing on the two important things in her life - Ramon and her child. While she still believed he would come back for her she had the will-power to put her job behind her and think only of the future. She hadn’t listened to the ranting of her parents. She had waited as Don Ramon had asked her to and all the while she waited she had considered her dreams, like a pharmacist weighing out medicine. Don Ramon would return, of that she had no doubt, but what would become of her? He was still married. She wouldn’t want to go and live in the city; she had no desire for a glamorous life. She had no desire to see the world, either. She

didn’t want to tie him to a life that wouldn’t suit him. She simply wanted to breathe the same air as him, make love to the distant roar of the ocean and bring up their child with love. She had longed for him to come back so that she could tell him she didn’t want any more of him than that.

She had worked out his reservations from the conversations she had overheard between Don Ignacio and Señora Mariana as they discussed their ‘irresponsible’ son. Señora Mariana had been forgiving, explaining to her husband that Ramon was a free spirit, a being blessed with an unquenchable creativity. That explained why he couldn’t stay in one place for very long, why he was incapable of being a proper husband and father to his wife and children. Don Ignacio’s ears had throbbed with blood and he had sent his fist crashing onto the table, stating cuttingly that it was about time Ramon grew up and stopped behaving like a spoilt, petulant and selfish child. The world will continue to revolve without him setting it in motion with the burning soles of his feet, woman,’ he had growled, ‘but Helena and those children will be much the worse off without him.’ Estella had vowed not to be like Helena. She would give him his freedom in return for his love.

Estella left Zapallar with Ramon, leaving a note for her parents telling them that her lover had returned as she always knew he would. Ramon had had no desire to meet them and Estella hadn’t insisted; she worried that her father might carry out his threat. So they had returned to the summer house in Cachagua where the memories of their affair echoed off the walls to remind them of the way it was then, when they had made love in the dark hours, claiming the night for themselves, enjoying each other without a thought for the future. Now they had a future they had to wrench themselves out of the present and decide what they were going to do with it.

They walked up the beach. The sun had set leaving the coast cold and blustery. They held hands and reminisced about the summer before.

‘I watched you swim that night you couldn’t sleep,’ said Estella, smiling. ‘I couldn’t sleep either, so I watched you from the shadows.’

‘You did?’

‘Yes, I watched you walk naked up the beach. I wanted you so much, I didn’t know what to do with myself,’ she said huskily.

‘What are we going to do with you now?’ he asked and his voice betrayed his uncertainty.

Estella sighed. Tve spent the last six months preparing speeches for you. I planned what I would say when you came back, but I haven’t told you any of it yet,’ she said, looking down at her bare feet as they sunk into the fine sand.

‘I think I know what you want to say,’ Ramon said, squeezing her hand.

‘I don’t think you do.’

‘All women want the same things,’ he said, as if it were an accusation.

‘So what do all women want?’

‘They want security. They want marriage, children and security,’ he replied bleakly.

‘You’re not wrong. That’s what I always wanted for myself. But then I met you and you’re not like other men. So that’s not what I want.’

‘What do you want?’ he asked in surprise.

Estella stopped walking and stood opposite him, looking at him steadily through the dusk. She put her hands in the pockets of her wool cardigan and shuffled her feet in preparation of giving the speech she had practised. ‘I want your love and your protection,’ she began. ‘I want it for myself and for our child. I want him to know his father and to grow up with his love and guidance. But I don’t want to chain you to a home. Travel the world and write your stories, but promise to come home to us every now and then. I will store up your kisses in my heart but once they run low you must come back to fill it up again. I don’t want to find it empty.’ She smiled at him as if she understood him better than he understood himself.

Ramon didn’t know what to say. He had expected her to beg him to stay with her and not go away, as Helena had when Federica was born. But Estella blinked at him with confidence. He knew she meant it.

Pulling her into his arms, he kissed her temples and her cheekbone, breathing in her rose scent and feeling closer to her than ever before. He searched about the pit of his stomach for that familiar feeling of claustrophobia yet it was nowhere to be found. Estella was prepared to love him enough to give him his freedom. But neither had prepared themselves for the wrath of Pablo Rega.

Pablo and Maria had returned home at dusk to discover Estella’s neatly written note.

He’s come back for me like I promised you he would. Please don’t be angry.

I’ll come back soon.

Pablo would have thumped his fist carelessly against the wall had it not been for his wife who threw herself between him and the hole he had left the previous time, begging him to calm himself and think rationally.

‘It’s a blessing he came for her,’ she insisted, rubbing her hands together in anguish. ‘No one else would have her.’

‘How respectable can he be?’ he argued furiously. ‘He didn’t even bother to ask for her hand in marriage.’

‘Marriage?’ stammered Maria.

‘Of course. He can’t plant his seed in her womb and not marry her.’

‘Perhaps that’s why he didn’t want to meet us. Maybe he has no intention of marrying her.’

‘He’ll marry her. By God he’ll marry her or I’ll damn him to Hell!’

‘Where are you going?’ Maria cried, watching helplessly as her husband stalked out of the house.

‘To find them,’ he replied, climbing into his rusty truck and disappearing down the hill, leaving a thin cloud of dust behind him.

Pablo Rega didn’t know where to start searching, he knew he just had to look or he’d go out of his mind with madness. He drove down the coast towards Cachagua. The sun hung low in the sky like a glowing peach, causing the ripples on the sea to glimmer with a warm pink light. He thought of his daughter and the miracle of her birth. He wasn’t going to let some irresponsible ruffian ruin it all now. Not after they had sweated blood to raise her. As he neared the village of Cachagua he decided to ask at the house of her former employers, Don Ignacio and Señora Campione. He had no idea where to find her and their house was as good a place as any to start.

He drove down the sandy track into the village that sat in the quiet evening light, apparently deserted except for a three-legged mongrel that sniffed the ground hungrily. When he saw a car parked in the driveway of Don Ignacio’s house his heart leapt in his chest - at least someone was home. If Estella needed help of any kind he was certain she would run to Señora Mariana whom she liked very much. He looked at his reflection in the mirror, licked his hand and smoothed it over his thin hair in an effort to make himself look respectable. Then he jumped out of the truck and dusted down his shirt and trousers. He did up the buttons as far as his chest, leaving the remaining few loose to expose the silver medallion of the Virgin Mary that he always hung about his

neck for luck, and to protect him against the odd evil soul who cursed him in the cemetery. Then he inhaled deeply, remembering afterwards to hold his stomach in and his shoulders up, and made his way towards the front door.