The House of Impossible Loves (16 page)

Olvido proposed this to Esteban during one of their clandestine meetings. Now that the snow had come, he said, the river would be covered in a cap of ice as brittle as burnt sugar and the wind would buffet their love until it froze. “I’ll take a blanket and hold you even tighter,” Olvido assured him, pressing her lips to his. Lost in her kiss, Esteban began to think it might be a good idea to meet in the oak grove, far from Manuela Laguna. He would rather be taken by the sweet pins and needles of snow than by that woman’s bloody gloves.

At midnight the following Thursday, Olvido climbed down the trellis into the yard. She ran past the wilting squash and avoided the roses—for their perfumed tongues told Manuela everything that happened nearby—crossed the honeysuckle clearing, and jumped through the breach in the stone wall. Esteban was waiting for her in the pine forest.

“Can’t we just stay here, Olvido?”

“Let’s go to the oak grove, please.”

Hand in hand, they walked to the hill a dapple-gray horse had climbed one stormy morning carrying the Andalusian and Clara Laguna. From up there, the oak trees seemed to have been swallowed by the valley. The night air was heavy and humid, and the moonlight plunged into the river, scattering like silver droppings.

Esteban leaned into the trunk of an oak tree carved with an old heart. He held Olvido, caressing her neck with his lips. Inexplicably, he suddenly had the urge to sing a
saeta
and Olvido wanted to twist his hair, which suddenly gave off an odor of olive oil, around her fingers.

“Tomorrow I’ll hunt partridge and give them to you so you can stew them in sauce,” he said.

“I’ll make the dish more delicious than anything you’ve ever tasted.”

A cold breeze brushed their foreheads, their lips, their cheeks. The grass crunched as if someone were walking on it.

“Is someone watching us?” Esteban asked.

“Who?”

“Your mother?”

Olvido peered into the dark between tree trunks.

“Something’s moving over there,” she said, pointing to a shadow. “It looks like a woman.”

“Let’s go back to the pine forest.” The boy trembled as he thought he saw bloody gloves reflected on the river.

“No, wait.” Olvido was struck by a cramp like the one she’d felt the previous day in Clara Laguna’s bedroom. Her eyes turned yellow and her tongue bore the taste of a secret grave. “I’ll go up to the attic tomorrow and find the chest engraved with your name.”

“What attic? What chest?” Esteban stared at her in fear.

She gave no reply but walked to the river, shedding her clothes: first her coat, then her sweater, her blouse, until she was wearing only her bra.

“Olvido! Come back! You’ll catch cold!”

Esteban looked at his beloved’s naked back, saw the white skin, the scars left by the thrashing of a cane. When he caught up to Olvido at the river’s edge, she seemed disoriented. He handed her her clothes, and the blue slowly returned to her eyes. She shivered as she dressed.

“Does she still hit you?” Esteban asked.

“Sometimes. But now when she does, I think of you and it hurts much less.”

That was the first time Esteban considered killing Manuela Laguna. He would smash her skull with a rock until his hands ached.

T
HE ATTIC WAS FILLED
with junk organized according to the whims of nostalgia. A mountain of white porcelain bedpans teetered in one corner. They were used by the prostitutes who lived at Scarlet Manor all those years ago, but only Manuela Laguna knew why these pans, joyfully corroded by urine, had survived the death of the brothel. To the right was always the smell of gunpowder. Propped against the ruins of a French-style chest of drawers, the hunting rifle continued to weep its victories. It had been there since the Andalusian gave Clara Laguna the estate, but no one knew to whom it belonged, how old it was, or how many it had killed. Across from the chest of drawers were shelves with pots the Laguna witch used to brew her potions to cure evil eye. On the back of one shelf were mummified letters the landowner had written Clara, some of which she used years later to try and lure him back. Also surviving the dust on the shelves were the rigid sack containing the bones of a cat, the thread for repairing hymens, and a few jars of magic ingredients.

In another corner of the attic stood a metallic object. It was only up close, under a cascade of cobwebs, that the ecclesiastical lines of a candelabrum could be discerned, one that had graced the parlor in Scarlet Manor when it was bursting with whores and opulence. Perhaps Manuela thought its holy provenance would not sully the honor of her home. She used to peel the rivers of wax as she waited, with neither courage nor panties, for her next client to arrive. Manuela had also kept her daughter’s crib. It sat among several pieces of furniture draped in mothball-smelling sheets. On the urine-stained wool mattress sat a child’s sewing basket, now a refuge for moths. On rainy days, water dripped a lullaby onto the crib.

That roof had leaked for more than a century. A builder once came from a neighboring town to repair it. It was a spring day, and the sun beat down on his back. He climbed onto the roof with his toolbox and began to belt out a
saeta
as he replaced the broken tiles. Clara Laguna, relieving herself on the daisy-strewn cobblestone drive, heard the builder singing his Andalusian folk song. For a moment she thought her mother’s spell had brought her lover back, though his voice must’ve grown rough over time. When she raised her eyes skyward to thank God, she realized her mistake and felt hate drip onto her calves. Clara reached for a stone and threw it at the builder’s head. He fell from the roof.

On orders from their mistress, three prostitutes buried his body under a rosebush, while Bernarda cleaned the blood-spattered porch. His toolbox was walled up in the attic. For weeks they waited for the Civil Guard to come asking after the dead man. Every woman in the house was warned to deny the builder had ever been to Scarlet Manor. Clara had also prepared certain exclusive services to help ensure that the authorities believed her. But no one ever came. Time and the fatigue of flesh caused them all to forget. They only ever remembered the builder on spring days, when the sun baked daisies on the drive and the hammering of little metallic voices could be heard in the second-floor bedrooms.

Late-afternoon sun slipped in through the small round window, illuminating a basket of treasures from the sea: conch shells, strings of algae, the skeletons of little fish. Once the light faded, a rush of fireflies filled the attic, like little golden soldiers celebrating victory in battle. This was the best time of day to visit the attic, the most picturesque of all. But Olvido could not go up there until midnight, when her mother was snoring off the splash of laudanum. Barefoot, carrying a candle, she climbed the rickety stairs. Though it was the first time she had ever been in that part of the house—her mother had always forbidden it—it was as if she knew the way. Guided by the breeze of the oak trees, she knew what she was looking for and where to find it. When she entered the attic, stars crowded against the small window.

Olvido walked over to the mountain of bedpans and set them on the floor, one by one. Every bedpan had the name of one of the prostitutes on the handle: Tomasa, Ludovica, Petri, Sebastiana . . . Olvido’s eyes misted over with a yellowish tinge. As she removed Petri’s bedpan from the pile, the others came tumbling down. A clamor of white porcelain buried her feet, but Olvido stood perfectly still. A small chest appeared with the name Clara engraved in bronze on the lid. Inside were the only possessions of her grandmother’s to survive the terror of respectability. Olvido lifted the lid, a puff from a woman’s grave caressing her face, and pulled out the undergarments Clara Laguna wore the day she gave herself to the Andalusian. They were stained from her first time. Olvido then pulled out an ornamental comb inlaid with silver, her grandmother’s favorite, and a leather-bound book. Her stomach cramped and she knew this last item was her destiny. She stroked the cover. A face appeared in the window, among the stars and misty moonlight. It was one of Clara’s clients: a bald diplomat with round, gold-rimmed glasses. Olvido opened the book to the first page, made of silk, and found a dedication: “For the most exotic pubis in the world. Forever yours, wherever I might be, my concubine, my Clara.” Olvido’s hands were as white as death. She flipped through a few pages, feeling daisies sprout between her thighs. She flipped through a few more. This book, written in a foreign language, contained drawings of a naked man and woman, exquisitely profiled in ocher ink, coming together again and again in different positions. The candle flame flickered. Olvido closed the book with a smile and pressed it to her belly. She replaced the pile of bedpans and returned to her room, her discovery hidden in the pleats of her nightdress.

Olvido dreamed of those drawings over the next few nights. When the day of their secret meeting in the oak grove arrived, she placed the book in Esteban’s hands as she glanced at him.

“Is it a present?” he asked.

“Not really; it’s not mine to give. It belongs to my grandmother Clara.”

“But she’s dead, isn’t she?”

“Sometimes.”

“What do you mean sometimes?” the boy insisted.

“I don’t know. Look at the book.”

“Is it about dead people?”

“No.”

“Is it poetry?”

“No.”

“Is it a novel?”

“Just look!”

Esteban read the title, written in Gothic print.

“
Ka-ma Su-tra.
Is it by Shakespeare?”

“I don’t know. Flip ahead a few pages.”

When Esteban came to the drawings, Olvido kissed him on the lips.

The two of them curled up in their bed of mud along the river’s edge. He caressed the scars on her back through her blouse, she his strong carpenter’s chest, until their passion defied winter and they were half-dressed, shivering with cold and with love, under Esteban’s coat. As the blood-red veil of dawn arrived, their bodies, exhausted by snow and inexperience, came together in the first position.

They practiced nine of the positions from January through the middle of March. They lit a fire underneath a giant oak and wrapped themselves in a blanket. They smelled each other, kissed to melt their frozen loins. The grass beneath them was dead and the river frozen, but their desire was like a chronic cold.

One afternoon, after they practiced position number ten, Esteban made a decision without talking to Olvido. He thought about it all day at work, amid sneezes and feverish chills. As the sun sank into the pines, he hung up his hammer and his saw; he washed his face and his armpits, wiping away any sawdust that might affect his image; he changed out of his dirty clothes, into a clean shirt inherited from his father and a new sweater knit by his mother, and he headed to Scarlet Manor. Along the way, he recalled the day Manuela Laguna invited him in to try that stew. He could taste the herbs that had tortured him afterward, could hear his father’s deep, aromatic voice begging him to run far, far away from that cursed house and the women who lived there. Esteban picked up a sharp rock, slipping it into his pocket.

Manuela Laguna was eviscerating a chicken at the big kitchen table when Esteban knocked on the front door.

“Good evening, señora.”

Her cotton gloves dripped blood.

“Do I know you, young man?” She studied his face.

“Yes, señora.” Blood splashed onto clay tiles. “A few years ago you invited me in to taste one of your stews. I’m the schoolmaster’s son.”

“I see that now. How could I forget those eyes? You’ve grown . . . But what do you want?”

“Well . . . Forgive the late hour . . .” Esteban stuttered, reaching into his pocket to grip the stone. “I just got off work, and I’ve come to ask for your daughter’s hand.”

Manuela narrowed her eyes.

“And what is your job?” A scarlet puddle oozed over the clay tile floor toward the boy. “Are you deaf?”

“I . . .” Esteban felt the rock in his hand. “I’m seventeen years old and a carpenter’s apprentice. But when Olvido and I marry, we’ll move to the city and I’ll study to become a teacher.”

“So you want to follow in your father’s footsteps, become as worthless as he.”

“My father was an honorable man who died for his country!” The taste of that stew began to fill his mouth.

“What do you know about his death! You were just a miserable child. You still are!”

“You’re wrong. I’m a man and I love your daughter.” Esteban formed a fist around the rock.

“Don’t be ridiculous . . . you love my daughter. You’ve never even seen her face. All you want is the fortune she’ll inherit one day.” A tuft of Manuela’s hair fell into the puddle of chicken blood.

“That’s a lie. I’ve even seen her naked. More than once. You should know we’ve practiced those positions in that book of your mother’s. That’s how well I know her!” Esteban let go of the rock as the confession slid from his throat.

“Listen to me, boy, if you don’t go back to where you came from right now, I’ll rip out your guts. I should have done it the first time you were here.” Manuela’s white cotton gloves shone in the moonlight.

Esteban fled toward the pine forest, tasting his father’s warning like that very first time.

In the half-light of the entryway, Manuela pulled out the cane for beating rugs. The smell of lavender wafted up to Olvido’s room. Drowsy with fever, she did not hear the knock on the door or the conversation between her lover and her mother. Olvido saw the face of the moon through the window. Manuela burst in and caned her, then examined her hymen with a magnifying glass, as closely as if she were an entomologist.

“I’ll get a folk healer to restore it. This would be much easier if the Laguna witch were still alive. But you were born a whore like your grandmother. You will not leave this house until you are twenty! As for that depraved sex fiend who came to ask for your hand, to rub what you’ve done in my face, I will rip his insides out.”

Anyone else would have stayed away, but Esteban was too enamored and returned. The night had grown steely, with only a few stars. He climbed up the trellis to the window; he did not notice the moon hanging itself with its own white rays. Kneeling on the sill, he rapped on the glass as a star plummeted to its death behind him. Olvido heard something but hesitated. The wind was blowing, the wooden shutters bashing into Esteban. “Olvido! Olvido!” The girl recognized her name. She let Esteban in, then slapped him across the face.