The House of the Spirits (16 page)

“But it looks as if they really appreciate you here, Tránsito. They told me you're the best in the house.”

“I am. But this business would fall on its face if not for me, because I work like a horse. The rest of the girls are like a bunch of dishrags. All we get now are old men; it's not the way it used to be. We ought to modernize the whole business, bring in civil servants, who have nothing to do in the middle of the day, and young people, and students. We ought to get better furnishings, liven the place up, and clean it. Clean the whole place! That way the customers would feel more trusting and they wouldn't go around worrying about catching some venereal disease, right? This place is a pigsty. They never clean. Look, pick up the pillow and I guarantee you a tick will come hopping out. I've told the madam, but she doesn't listen. She doesn't have a head for business.”

“And you do?”

“Of course,
patrón
! I have a million ideas for improving the Christopher Columbus. I bring enthusiasm to this profession. I'm not like those girls who go around complaining all the time and blaming their bad luck when things go wrong. Can't you see how far I've come? I'm the best now. If I put my mind to it, I could have the best house in the country. I guarantee you.”

I was enjoying myself. I could really appreciate her, because I had stared at ambition so many times in the mirror when I was shaving in the mornings that I was able to recognize whenever I encountered it in others.

“I think that's an excellent idea, Tránsito,” I told her. “Why don't you open your own business? I'll advance you the money,” I said, fascinated at the idea of broadening my commercial interests in that direction. I must have really been drunk!

“No thanks,
patrón
,” Tránsito replied, caressing her snake with a lacquered fingernail. “There's no point in trading one capitalist for another. The thing to do is form a cooperative and tell the madam to go to hell. Haven't you ever heard of that? You better be careful. If your tenants set up a cooperative, you'd really be finished. What I want is a whores' cooperative. Or whores and fags, to make it more encompassing. We'll lay out everything, the money and the work. What do we need a
patrón
for?”

We made love with a violence and ferocity I had almost forgotten after so much sailing in the ship of the gentle blue silk sea. In that chaos of sheets and pillows, clasped in the living knot of desire, screwed into each other to the point of fainting, I felt I was twenty again, and happy to be holding in my arms this bold, swarthy woman who didn't fall apart when you got on top of her, a strong mare you could ride on without giving it a second thought, who didn't make your hands feel heavy, your voice hard, your feet gigantic, or your beard too scratchy, but someone like yourself, who could take a string of bad words in her ear and didn't need to be rocked with tender arguments or coaxed with flattery. Afterward, sleepy and happy, I rested awhile by her side, admiring the solid curve of her hips and the shudder of her snake.

“We'll see each other again, Tránsito,” I told her, giving her a tip.

“That's what I said before,
patrón.
Remember?” she replied with a final flip of her serpent.

The truth was I had no intention of ever seeing her again. In fact I planned to forget all about her.

I wouldn't have mentioned this episode if Tránsito Soto hadn't played such an important role in my life a long time later, because, as I said earlier, I'm not a man for whores. But this story could not have been written if she hadn't intervened to rescue us and, in the process, our memories.

*  *  *

A few days later, while Dr. Cuevas was making preparations before opening Clara's belly up again, Severo and Nívea del Valle died, leaving behind numerous children and forty-seven living grandchildren. Clara found out in a dream before everybody else, but she told no one except Férula, who managed to calm her down by explaining that pregnancy produces a state of jumpiness in which bad dreams frequently occur. She redoubled her attentions, rubbing Clara's stomach with sweet almond oil to keep her from getting stretch marks, and her breasts with honey so her nipples would not split. She fed her powdered eggshell so her milk would be good and her teeth strong, and recited the prayers of Bethlehem for a healthy delivery. Two days after her dream, Esteban Trueba came home earlier than was his custom, pale and disheveled, grabbed his sister Férula by the arm, and led her into the library.

“My in-laws were killed in an accident,” he told her curtly. “I don't want Clara to find out until after she's given birth. We have to build a wall of censorship around her: no newspapers, no radio, no visitors—nothing! Keep an eye on the servants and make sure no one tells her.”

But his good intentions were shattered by the strength of Clara's premonitions. That night she dreamt that her parents were walking through a field of onions and that Nívea had no head, so she knew exactly what had happened without needing to read about it or hear it on the radio. She woke up very agitated and asked Férula to help her dress because she had to go find her mother's head. Férula ran to Esteban and he called Dr. Cuevas, who, even at the risk of harming the twins, gave her a potion for madness that should have put her to sleep for two days but that had not the slightest effect on her.

Señor and Señora del Valle had died exactly as Clara dreamed, and exactly as Nívea, joking, had frequently announced that they would die.

“One of these days we're going to kill ourselves in this damned machine,” she would say, pointing at her husband's ancient Sunbeam.

From his youth Severo del Valle had had a weakness for modern inventions. The automobile was no exception. In a time when everybody else still traveled by foot, by horse-drawn carriage, or by bicycle, he bought the first car to arrive in the country, which was on display as a curiosity in a downtown shopwindow. It was a mechanical wonder that moved at the suicidal speed of fifteen or even twenty kilometers an hour, to the astonishment of the pedestrians and the curses of those who were splattered with mud or covered with dust as it went by. At first people fought it as a public hazard. Eminent scientists explained in the newspaper that the human organism was not made to withstand moving about at twenty kilometers an hour and that the new ingredient called gasoline could catch fire and cause a chain reaction that would consume the entire city. Even the Church became involved. Father Restrepo, who had kept a watchful eye on the del Valle family ever since the disturbing affair with Clara that Holy Thursday during mass, became the self-proclaimed guardian of morality and railed in his Galician accent against the “amicis rerum novarum,” the friends of new things such as these satanic machines, which he compared to the chariot of fire in which the prophet Elias disappeared on his way to heaven. But Severo ignored the scandal and in a short time several other gentlemen followed his example, until the sight of an automobile ceased to be such a novelty. He used it for more than ten years, refusing to change models when the city swelled with modern cars that were more efficient and safer, for the same reason that his wife refused to get rid of the dray horses until they died peacefully of old age. Inside, the Sunbeam had lace curtains and two glass vases, which Nívea kept full of fresh-cut flowers. It was lined with polished wood and Russian leather and its bronze hardware gleamed like gold. Despite its British origin, it had been baptized with the very Indian name of Covadonga. It was perfect, to tell the truth, except that its brakes never worked very well. Still, Severo was proud of his mechanical abilities. He took the car apart several times trying to fix it and then he entrusted it to the Big Cuckold, an Italian mechanic who was the best in the country. He had acquired his nickname from a tragedy that had cast its shadow over his life. People said that his wife, sick and tired of betraying him without his noticing, abandoned him one stormy night, and before she left him she took a bunch of rams' horns she had got at the butcher's and tied them to the points of the fence around his garage. The next day, when the Italian arrived at work, he found a knot of children and neighbors making fun of him. That scene, however, in no way undermined his professional reputation, although he too was unable to fix Covadonga's brakes. Severo opted for traveling with a large rock in his car. Whenever he parked on an incline, one passenger would hold his foot on the brake and another would jump out quickly and place the stone in front of the wheels. This system usually worked, but on that fatal Sunday, appointed by destiny to be their last, it did not. The del Valles motored out into the suburbs as they always did on a clear day. Suddenly the brakes gave out completely, and before Nívea could jump out with the rock or Severo could alter its course, the car took off downhill. Severo tried to swerve and then he tried to stop, but the devil had taken charge of the machine, which flew out of control and smashed into a cart loaded with construction iron. One of the plates came through the windshield and decapitated Nívea. It was a clean cut. Her head shot out of the car and, despite a search by the police, the forest rangers, and a swarm of neighbors who searched for it with bloodhounds, after two days they had failed to find any trace of it. By the third day, the bodies had begun to stink and they had to be buried incomplete in a magnificent funeral that was attended by the whole del Valle tribe and an incredible number of friends and acquaintances, not to mention the delegations of women who went to pay their last respects to the remains of Nívea, who was considered the first feminist in the country. Her enemies said of her that if she had lost her head during her lifetime there was no reason why she should find it in death. Clara, locked in her house, surrounded by the servants who took care of her, with Férula as her guard, and drugged by Dr. Cuevas, did not attend. Out of consideration for everyone who had tried to spare her this additional suffering, she said nothing that would indicate she knew about the hair-raising affair of the lost head. But once the funeral was over and life appeared to return to normal again, Clara convinced Férula to go with her to look for it, and there was no use in her sister-in-law's giving her more pills and potions, because she was firm in her determination. Defeated, Férula understood that it was no longer possible to say that the image of the lost head was a bad dream, and that it would be best if she helped Clara with her plans before her anxiety completely unhinged her. They waited for Esteban Trueba to leave the house. Férula helped her dress and called for a hired carriage. Clara's instructions to the driver were rather imprecise.

“Go straight. I'll tell you the route,” she said, guided by her instincts for seeing what was invisible.

They left the city and came into the open country where the houses were far apart and the hills and gentle valleys began. At Clara's command they turned onto a service road and continued among birches and onion fields until she ordered the driver to pull up along a clump of underbrush.

“It's here,” she said.

“But that's impossible! We're much too far from where the accident occurred!” said Férula.

“It's here!” Clara insisted, getting out of the car with difficulty, holding up her enormous belly. She was followed by her sister-in-law, who was muttering prayers, and by the driver, who did not have the foggiest idea of the purpose of their trip. She tried to make her way through the brush, but the twins made it impossible.

“Do me a favor, señor,” she said to the driver. “Step through here and hand me that woman's head you'll see lying on the ground.”

He inched his way beneath the thorny brush until he came upon Nívea's head, which looked like a lonely melon. He picked it up by the hair and took it with him, crawling on all fours. While the man leaned against a tree and vomited, Férula and Clara cleaned the dirt and pebbles that had got into Nívea's ears, nose, and mouth, and arranged her hair, which had become rather unkempt, but they were unable to close her eyes. They wrapped the head in a shawl and returned to the car.

“Hurry, señor,” Clara told the driver. “I think I'm giving birth!”

They arrived at the house just in time to get the mother into bed. Férula fluttered about with all the necessary preparations while a servant went to fetch Dr. Cuevas and the midwife. With the bouncing of the car, the emotions of the past few days, and the doctor's potions, Clara had acquired a skill at giving birth that she did not have the first time around. She clenched her teeth, grabbed on to the mizzen and foremast of the sailboat, and gave herself fully to the task of bringing forth onto the calm blue silken sea the twins Jaime and Nicolás, who came sailing out under the gaze of their grandmother staring open-eyed at them from the bureau. Férula grabbed each of them by the lock of wet hair at their napes and helped to pull them out with the experience she had acquired watching the birth of colts and calves at Tres Marías. Before the doctor and midwife could arrive, she hid Nívea's head beneath the bed, to avoid having to invent awkward explanations. When they finally arrived, there was precious little for them to do, because the mother was resting comfortably and the babies, as tiny as seven-month-olds but with all their parts and in good condition, were sleeping in the arms of their debilitated aunt.

Nívea's head became a problem, because there was no place to put it where it would not be seen. Finally, Férula wrapped it in a cloth and placed it in a leather hatbox. They discussed the possibility of giving it a proper burial, but it would have required interminable paperwork to have the tomb unsealed in order to include the missing part. Besides, there would have been an uproar if word had got out about how Clara had found the head where the bloodhounds had failed. Esteban Trueba, ever fearful of public ridicule, opted for a solution that would not provide material for malicious tongues, because he knew that his wife's strange behavior was the target of local gossips. It had gone beyond Clara's skill at moving objects without touching them and at predicting the impossible. Someone had uncovered the story of Clara's childhood muteness and the curse of Father Restrepo—that saintly man who the Church was hoping would become the first in the country to attain beatitude. The two years in Tres Marías had helped to quell the rumors, and people had begun to forget, but Trueba knew that it would take a mere trifle, such as the affair of his mother-in-law's head, for the whispers to start up again. For this reason, and not out of neglect, as was later said, the hatbox was stowed away in the basement, where it awaited a more propitious moment to be given a Christian burial.