Eccentric Neighborhood (6 page)

My cousins and I stood at the back of the room gaping at Abuela’s livid face, terrified by the strange sound that was coming from deep inside her throat. She was the first dying person we had ever seen.

Abuela was propped up on her pillows with her eyes closed, and after a while she seemed to fall into a deep sleep. Dido, Lakhmé, and Siglinda talked to one another in whispers, thankful that she had been given morphine; that way she would pass away in peace. All of a sudden, however, a priest walked into the room. He was wearing a black cassock buttoned to the neck and was followed by three attendant nuns. Artemisa had brought them; she wanted the priest to give Abuela absolution and the sacrament of extreme unction. The four of them pushed their way into the room unceremoniously and made everyone stand back. It was hot, and a sour odor of perspiration wafted from their rustling black robes.

As soon as the priest approached the bed with his little jar of holy oil, his salts, and a sprinkler of
agua bendita
in his hand, Valeria became conscious and looked up at him wide-eyed. Everybody was surprised.

“Valeria Boffil, in the name of God, can you hear me?” the priest asked in a loud voice, standing before her, ready to asperse holy water on her body. I began to tremble.

“Yes,” Abuela Valeria answered clearly.

“Do you know you’re dying? Do you accept the will of God?”

“Yes,” Valeria answered. “I’m dying. And I accept His will.”

“And do you repent of all your sins before you go unto His presence?”

Abuela Valeria stared at the priest without blinking. “What sins?” she asked defiantly. And before the priest could give her absolution, she gave up the ghost.

W
RITING A MEMOIR IS
the same as making an appointment with the dead. A meeting of ghosts takes place, a series of familiar décors passes by, where those absent repeat the same gestures over and over, as they patiently await their turn to be explained.

—
JUAN GOYTISOLO
,
Coto Vedado

T
ÍA DIDO WAS SHY
and unassuming, and Mother always teased her, telling her she had a violet’s timid soul. When she was in elementary school she often forgot her own name, and when the teacher called on her she got so nervous she left a little pool of water wherever she was standing. The teacher, sure that Dido had peed on purpose, pulled her by the ear and ordered her to write her name on the blackboard a dozen times. Dido obeyed but she continued to be painfully shy. That’s why everyone at Emajaguas was surprised at the change that came over her when she met Antonio Torres.

They met in 1925, when Dido was a junior at the University of Puerto Rico in Río Piedras, during the Fiesta de la Lengua, the annual celebration honoring the Spanish language. The most promising young poets studying at the university were invited to recite their poems in the auditorium, and, after much hesitating, Tía Dido decided to take part. Her literature professor was enthusiastic about her talent. If she went on writing, he told her, she might become an accomplished poet.

Tía Dido wrote every night until dawn; she believed literature was two percent talent and ninety-eight percent hard work. During the day she was always scribbling poetry—on used envelopes, parking tickets, even on the backs of blank checks. She would be sitting in her car waiting for the light to change when a poem would come drifting in through the window. The cars behind would start to honk, their drivers shaking their fists at her, doors slamming, but Dido wouldn’t budge until she had written it down.

Tía Dido’s poems were as fragile and delicate as she herself was. Abuelo Alvaro had some of them published in a slender volume bound in elegant antelope skin. He chose an esoteric publishing house in Antofagasta, Chile, because his daughter’s anonymity was very precious to him. The fifteen copies that were printed were distributed strictly among family members. But Clarissa secretly mailed a copy to the jury just before the Fiesta de la Lengua, and the book won first prize.

Tía Dido was ecstatic. She went to the festival wearing a flounced yellow skirt with a black lace mantilla held high over her head with a tortoiseshell comb. Clarissa went with her—they were both studying at the university at the time—and Dido was wonderful. She appeared on stage and recited her poem, which was in the style of Juan Ramón Jiménez, her favorite Spanish poet; it began: “The moon trembled against my window, begging to be let in, pursued by a thousand dogs that licked at its golden sheen.”

Antonio Torres sat in the audience. He had gone to the festival because he felt homesick and thought he might meet other Spaniards there. When he saw Dido dressed like a Spanish
maja
, he waited until she came down from the stage and approached her. He took his Montecristo cigar out of his mouth and bent to kiss her hand. “Antonio Torres Moreno,
para servirle
,” he said politely. “Your poem was very beautiful, Miss Santillana. Someday I’ll have to introduce you to Juan Ramón Jiménez. He’s a childhood friend of mine. We’re both from Moguer, a little town in the south of Spain.” Dido forgot all about Clarissa and went off with Antonio. Mother returned to her dormitory alone.

Antonio Torres was shorter than Tía Dido and bald, but she was taken with him from the start, mesmerized by his beautiful Spanish. He spoke perfect Castilian, and Tía Dido found listening to him a delight. She couldn’t detect a single mistake. He spoke as if he tasted every word, savoring it to its very marrow. When she listened to Antonio, Dido wanted to become a Spanish word, caressed and licked by his tongue.

He didn’t swallow his final
s
s or garble his
r
s, as Puerto Ricans did. He pronounced his
c
s as precisely as castanets, curling the tip of his tongue against his teeth. Clarissa couldn’t see what Dido found so attractive in Antonio. She looked for other things in men, like good manners.

The day after the reading Antonio went by the Pensionado Católico, the dormitory for out-of-town girls, and asked for Dido. She came down from her room to the reception hall, and he invited her to go for a ride on the trolley to El Morro, the Spanish fort in Old San Juan. The trolley had all its windows open and a soft breeze blew in from the sea as they traveled down Ponce de León Avenue. It was old and uncomfortable, and the seats were made of wooden slats, but neither of them noticed, so entranced were they by each other’s company.

After three months of courting, Antonio knew he should propose marriage to Dido. But he couldn’t bring himself to. In his opinion, Dido had one defect: when she was with other people she was painfully shy; she hardly spoke at all. But when she was with him she couldn’t stop talking, and it was always about poetry. It bored him no end.

Antonio didn’t have anything against poets. In Moguer, he told Dido during one of his visits to Emajaguas, he had many writer friends. But in Spain wives stayed home taking care of their children, and husbands didn’t like their women traipsing about giving poetry readings or publishing poems in which they bared their intimate feelings to the world. What would Antonio’s friends in Moguer say when they heard his wife was a poet? Gossip would roll in waves all the way from the island to the mother country.

Tía Dido was never as liberated as Tía Siglinda, but she was fairly outspoken. One afternoon she told Antonio: “We love each other; why don’t we get married? I’m sure Mother will like you because she likes Spaniards. Even if you have no money you’re bound to make some one day because you’re white and hardworking.”

Antonio hedged. “Let’s get to know each other better before we take that step,” he answered diplomatically. Tía Dido was downcast, but she didn’t let Antonio’s temporizing quench her enthusiasm. Every day she wrote a new poem and added it to her manuscript as the vine adds a grape. Unaware of the negative effect her poetry was having on her sweetheart, she was keener than ever to become a poet.

Six months went by and it was already spring; school was over before the lovers realized it. Dido finished her junior year at the university and came back to Emajaguas. Antonio traveled from San Juan to Guayamés every weekend to see her. But he still hadn’t asked Tía Dido for her hand. Every time he came to visit, Dido would sit with him on the terrace and read him a new poem. But as soon as she began to read, Antonio closed his eyes, and before she was finished he’d be snoring loudly. Clarissa spied on them from the window that opened onto the terrace and had to admit the situation did not look good.

During summer vacation Tía Dido told Valeria, “I’m not going back to the university next semester, Mother. I’m tired of so much studying; I want to take a year off.” Abuela was upset, but Dido was twenty years old; she couldn’t force her to go back. Dido had decided to intensify her marriage campaign. She asked Gela to teach her how to cook and Miña how to wash and iron men’s shirts. She spent hours in the kitchen learning to make chicken with rice, guinea hen stewed in red wine, and
piononos
, ripe plantain pies fried in batter; and every time she ironed one of Tío Alejandro’s shirts, she went around the house showing it to everybody, proudly holding it up on a hanger.

One day Antonio announced that Juan Ramón Jiménez, his poet friend, had come to the island on a visit and that he was bringing him to lunch at Emajaguas the following week. Everybody was terribly excited. He and Juan Ramón would drive from San Juan to Guayamés in the morning, Antonio said, and return to the capital that same day. Tía Dido almost fainted when she heard the news. Juan Ramón was like a god to her; the tiles of Emajaguas’s floor weren’t good enough for him to step on.

Dido had the furniture in the sitting room polished and fresh flowers put in vases; she spent a whole week planning the menu. Having heard that Juan Ramón loved seafood, she asked Urbano to have his father-in-law, Triburcio Besosa, bring his best catch to the house. Triburcio brought a basket full of the most exotic shellfish: river prawns, crayfish, lobster. This wasn’t going to be one of Valeria’s spartan meals. Dido was going to prepare a bouillabaisse that would have made even Lady Lent’s face turn purple.

When Juan Ramón Jiménez and Antonio arrived at Emajaguas in Antonio’s blue roadster, the whole family was waiting for them at the door. Aurelio was already Mother’s beau, and he drove up from La Concordia for the occasion; Tía Siglinda and Tío Venancio came from Guayamés. Artemisa, who was still unmarried and living at the house, and two-year-old Lakhmé were also present. Abuelo Alvaro and Abuela Valeria gave the visitors a warm welcome.

Juan Ramón was very aristocratic-looking: he had large, soulful eyes and a high-domed brow. He had very little hair on his head, but he made up for it with a jet-black goatee so meticulously groomed it shone as if it were carved in onyx. He looked like a modern version of one of El Greco’s apostles, and it was easy to imagine the Holy Spirit’s gift of language hovering above his head in a tiny flame. Everyone at Emajaguas had read Juan Ramón’s poems, and the sisters all brought him copies of his books so he could autograph them. His poems were full of the romantic mysticism of Castile, with windswept towns and black-clad women whispering behind latticed windows.

When lunch was finally announced, the poet presided at the head of the table, with the family reverently seated around him. Tía Dido herself brought in the trays of food, helped by Artemisa. When Miña protested, Dido explained that in Spain, when an important guest came for dinner, he was served by the daughters of the house and no servants were allowed into the dining room. In any case, Dido didn’t want Miña to carry the soup tureen to the table. She was afraid Miña might drop it in Juan Ramón Jiménez’s lap, so angry was she at Dido’s leaving the university because of Antonio Torres.

When the steaming tureen was passed around the table and Juan Ramón lifted its lid, he almost swooned from the delicious aroma that wafted out. Juan Ramón served himself a generous portion and then passed the tureen around.

Tía Dido hardly dared look at her idol, who had tucked a napkin around his neck and was attacking the bouillabaisse with gusto, noisily sucking on the prawns and prying the mussels open with his long, almond-shaped nails, then washing it all down with wine. She sat next to Antonio, her head lowered shyly, and delicately sipped at the broth.

Juan Ramón loved oysters, and a veritable duel of shell sucking broke out between Antonio and his friend. Antonio would squirt fresh lemon juice on the live oyster, which curled up the little black flounce of its edge when it sensed the acid, then throw his head back to let the oyster slide down his throat. Juan Ramón would laugh uproariously and immediately do the same. In less than ten minutes, they had downed a dozen oysters each.

The family watched in amazement. They couldn’t believe that such a glutton could be the author of such spiritual poems as “Mariposa de luz” or that he could write about the burning cinders of the soul hovering around the heart of the rose.

When lunch was over, Juan Ramón sat back in his chair, a satisfied look on his face. “My friend Antonio here tells me you’re a poet,” he said to Tía Dido with a condescending smile. “I’d be more than glad to read some of your poems. Would you have a copy of them I could look at?” He really hated to read the work of other writers, but the lunch had been so good he felt it was the least he could do to repay his hosts. Poor Dido got up from the table and, with trembling hands and knees, went to her room to get her poems.

Juan Ramón retired to one of the guest rooms for a nap, taking Dido’s manuscript with him. When he came out an hour later, looking refreshed and ready for the long drive back to San Juan, he returned the poems to Dido. “I’ve written a little something on the last page, to let you know what I think. But please don’t read it until I’m gone,” he told her as he warmly said his good-byes.

Tía Dido took the manuscript from him reverently and didn’t look at it until she went to bed that night. “Your voice is as sweet as a nightingale’s,” Juan Ramón had written on the last page. “But the best nightingales—the true
ruiseñoras
of this world—sing their love songs in secret. I’m sure my friend Antonio will marry you if you do the same.” Tía Dido read Juan Ramón’s advice and cried herself to sleep that night.