Eccentric Neighborhood (9 page)

Tía Artemisa stared at Don Esteban in wonderment. She thought of her father, who didn’t believe in credit and paid everyone cash. She simply couldn’t understand how a million dollars could vanish into thin air. But Artemisa didn’t lose her presence of mind. “Don’t worry, Esteban,” she said. “In the past, money was something one made by working hard, producing things with the sweat of one’s brow. Today, however, one has to be very careful because money is not a thing but an idea. If one doesn’t keep it under lock and key, it grows wings and the devil flies away with it. We’ll pray to Jesusito and leave everything in his hands.”

That night Artemisa couldn’t sleep; she lay awake thinking how to help Don Esteban. At four in the morning, when she finally fell asleep, she had a dream. Jesusito appeared to her and told her the story of Saint Francis and Saint Clare. Francis and Clare belonged to the same family of rich merchants from Assisi, in the north of Italy. They loved each other, but they realized their mission in the world was to help the poor and that was much more important than their personal happiness. Each one had founded a religious order—the Franciscan friars and the Poor Clares—and lived by the most ascetic laws. Jesusito wanted Don Esteban to take a vow of poverty, too, and sell everything he owned. With the money, he’d be able to save his old father as well as his good name.

First thing the next morning Artemisa called Don Esteban and told him her dream. Don Esteban said he would do whatever was necessary; he was placing all his worldly goods in Artemisa’s hands.

Next Artemisa called
El Listín Noticioso,
the local newspaper, and placed a classified ad. Don Esteban was holding an auction at his house on Crisótbal Colón Avenue, it said, and everything would be for sale—antiques, Persian rugs, Tiffany lamps, oil paintings, Limoges and Baccarat tableware. The money would be donated to an unidentified charitable cause. Artemisa didn’t feel she was lying: with the crisis the
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Santa Rosa was going through, Don Esteban’s father was certainly a charity cause. Artemisa raised ten thousand dollars from the sale and went on to liquidate what was left in the house without feeling offended when her best friends called at three in the morning to ask her for a discount on some bauble they had liked.

Don Esteban immediately sent the money to Spain; it would tide his father over until he sold the land. He kept only his bed, a table, and a chair, which was a lot more than Saint Francis had after he took his vow of poverty, Artemisa said.

When everything in the house on Crisótbal Colón Avenue was sold, Don Esteban felt surprisingly lighthearted; he didn’t have to look at things that reminded him of Blanca Rosa anymore. At last he felt free of her presence, and perhaps Blanca Rosa’s ghost was also glad to be free of her grandfather’s terrible sorrow, which had gnawed at her all this time.

Tía Artemisa came to visit him and Don Esteban walked through the empty rooms of the house with her. “Thank you for the wonderful idea of the auction,” Don Esteban told Artemisa as they said goodbye. “I needed someone like you to blow away the cobwebs from my heart.” And for the first time since he’d met her, Don Esteban kissed Artemisa, though on the cheek. Artemisa began to think that she was finally getting the upper hand in her struggle with Blanca Rosa’s ghost and that she would be able to pry the girl from her poor grandfather’s heart.

Don Esteban still had his sugarcane farms, and Artemisa asked Don Esteban for the key to his office and began to go there every day. She wanted to find out their location and how much they were worth. Every afternoon at four, after his secretary left, she tiptoed into the building, trying to make herself as unobtrusive as possible, and sat at Don Esteban’s desk. Tall and straight in her yellow cotton dress, her back not touching the chair and her no-nonsense patent-leather flats planted firmly on the ground, Artemisa looked like a sunflower, her attention unflinchingly turned toward the lost gold of Don Esteban’s farms. She began to look for land measurements, surveyors’ plans, deeds of ownership, and other legal documents. Don Esteban was never at the office when Artemisa arrived; he left religiously at three o’clock for the Golden Sands Hotel, where he played a round of golf every afternoon.

Artemisa had inherited Grandfather Bartolomeo Boffil’s courage. Once she located the farms, she exchanged her yellow cotton dress for a brown twill riding skirt and her patent-leather flats for a pair of black, scrupulously shined riding boots, got into a jeep with Contreras, Don Esteban’s overseer, and a real estate broker from Guayamés, and the three of them drove out into the countryside. But when they got to the first farm Artemisa’s heart sank: it was overrun by squatters. A shantytown of wooden shacks had sprung up, each house sitting on a piece of land, surrounded by barbed wire, where sugarcane had once grown. And what was worse, on the roof of each shack a flag with a red
jíbaro
wearing a
pava
—the sugarcane workers’ hat—fluttered furiously in the wind, which meant the squatters all sympathized with the Partido Democrático Institucional, which had won the elections four years before.

In Puerto Rico there were two other political parties at the time: the Partido Socialista and the Partido Republicano Incondicional. Artemisa, like everyone else in our family, regarded the Partido Democrático Institucional as dangerous and despised its leader, Fernando Martín. Martín was the son of an hacendado, but to the Rivas de Santillanas he was a traitor and a hypocrite. Martín’s speeches were always about social change. “The island’s political status—statehood, commonwealth, or independence—isn’t really what’s important,” he’d insist. “What matters is to put a dish of rice and beans on everybody’s table.” But of course it was all a lie. It was the old “
Quítate tú pa ponerme yo
”—“Get off the wheel so I can drive”—demagoguery all over again, and no one was going to convince the family otherwise.

Fernando Martín didn’t really want to help the
jíbaros
; he wanted to get power into his own hands. He had taken his party’s motto, “
Pan, tierra, y libertad
”—“Bread, land, and liberty”—from the Mexican Revolution, which meant he was practically a Communist. When Tía Artemisa saw the red
jíbaro
flags flying high from the roofs of the squatters’ shacks, her conviction that Don Esteban should take a vow of poverty and sell everything he had went up in smoke. She was mad as hell.

In Artemisa’s opinion, giving and taking were two very different things. Jesusito approved of giving but he disapproved of taking, and taking something that belonged to your neighbor was a mortal sin. If Don Esteban sold his lands and gave the money to his father or to charity, that was all right. But Artemisa wasn’t going to stand by and let the lazy peasants—egged on by Fernando Martín—take away from Don Esteban lands that his ancestors had struggled to acquire. When Saint Francis and Saint Clare took their vows of poverty, they didn’t cease to belong to the Italian upper class. They were poor, they had sacrificed what they owned in order to attain heaven, but they were still leaders in their society. They had established their own monasteries and had been entrusted by Jesusito to keep order in the world. And even when people from the upper class sold their lands, as her own family had been forced to do, they still exercised that role. The poor couldn’t just walk in and take their place.

No one knew when or how the squatters had arrived on Don Esteban’s farms. At night the countryside was deserted, dark as a wolf’s maw. There was no electricity or running water for miles. But by morning each squatter had a picket fence with a goat tied to it, several chickens and a rooster running around, and a lush vegetable garden in back of the shack.

When Tía Artemisa, the overseer, and the broker drew near the shacks they couldn’t even get out of the jeep. The squatters immediately recognized them and began to throw stones and empty bottles. They had to drive back into town as fast as they could.

“How long has this been going on?” Tía Artemisa asked Contreras in a steady voice, trying not to sound upset.

“For the past two months,” the overseer answered. “Before Miss Blanca Rosa’s death, Don Esteban used to visit his farms regularly,” he said. “But he never supervises them anymore. Three months ago the wire fences began to collapse because of the heavy rains. He didn’t order them repaired, so it was easy for the squatters to move in.”

Once they were near Guayamés, the real estate broker got out of Artemisa’s car and climbed into his, which he had left parked on the outskirts, and drove back to his office. But the overseer sat shamefaced next to Artemisa in the jeep. Contreras was a stocky, hardworking man who had been with Don Esteban for over twenty years. He kept excusing himself. “I’m sorry, ma’am. I should have warned you of what was going on. But I wanted you to see it with your own eyes. I’ve tried to inform Don Esteban of the takeover many times.” Contreras perspired copiously as he spoke and nervously wiped his forehead with the palm of his hand. Tía Artemisa listened patiently.

“You mustn’t worry, ma’am,” Contreras added, looking down at his shoes. “We’re living in difficult times. Many people in Guayamés are going hungry, and since Fernando Martín’s Democrats have begun to accuse the hacendados of paying the laborers too little, the peasants think it’s all right to invade their lands. But of course what Fernando Martín is saying is all a lie.”

“Don Esteban,” Tía Artemisa said, clearing her throat, “has a heart of gold. It’s not his fault that the price of sugar has fallen drastically in the world market in the last six months. When he has to pay his workers two dollars a week instead of three, it’s because he has no alternative, not because he wants to.” And Contreras sheepishly agreed with everything Tía Artemisa said.

Artemisa dropped the overseer off at the
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Santa Rosa’s clapboard offices and drove the jeep to Don Esteban’s house on Crisótbal Colón Avenue. She was furious at him for being so irresponsible and letting the farm’s wire fences fall into disrepair. She didn’t care that people stared at her as she braked the jeep violently in front of the porticoed mansion and got out. She ran up the marble steps, still wearing her long riding skirt and her black riding boots.

“A mob of Fernando Martín’s squatters has invaded your farms,” she told Don Esteban angrily as soon as she walked in. “They’ve settled on them like locusts. And all because you let yourself get so depressed after Blanca Rosa’s death.” Don Esteban hung his head despondently and didn’t answer. But when he saw Artemisa turn around to leave, he said, “We might as well let them stay, dear. The Bureau of Tax Returns called this morning to say they’re about to expropriate the farms because I haven’t paid my taxes in over a year. But you mustn’t blame Blanca Rosa; it’s not the poor angel’s fault.”

“Let them keep the farms?” Artemisa retorted, her face flushed with anger. “You must be out of your mind. You may
give
away the land if you want to, but you must never let them take it away from you. People in Guayamés won’t respect you. They’ll look at you like you’re a chicken that doesn’t mind being plucked.”

The following day Artemisa called the police station in Guayamés and reported that hundreds of squatters had invaded Don Esteban’s farms; would they please send a patrol over and remove them by force? The police officer who took the call laughed. The new laws put into effect by the Partido Democrático Institucional protected the squatters, even if their houses were built on privately owned land. Don Esteban would have to get a lawyer and a court order to force the squatters to leave peacefully.

Over the following week Artemisa visited the farms one by one in her jeep and counted the shacks from afar: there were two hundred and five. Then she called Don Esteban’s lawyer and made an appointment. She went to see him and asked the best way to get rid of the squatters. The lawyer answered that an order of eviction would have to be prepared for each squatter and would have to be served by an officer of the law. Each eviction notice would cost Don Esteban a hundred dollars. But if he didn’t act, the squatters had the right to lay official claim to the lands after five years of living on them.

Artemisa was on the verge of desperation. She kept repeating that since Fernando Martín’s Democrats had come into power the world had been turned upside down. She wouldn’t be surprised if rivers began to run uphill and pigeons began to shoot at guns. She put on a black lace mantilla and went to the cathedral, where the family had its own private chapel. Artemisa lit a candle and knelt before the altar. A few minutes later she heard Jesusito speak to her in the semidarkness: “You mustn’t despair, my daughter. Things are not as bad as they seem. This last reversal you’re telling me about may be just what Esteban needs because it will help him get free of Blanca Rosa’s ghost.”

Artemisa crossed herself and felt much better. She went to Don Esteban and told him what the lawyer had said. The evictions would cost him over twenty thousand dollars, and he didn’t have that kind of money. But she had an idea and was going to try to make it work. They would visit the Bureau of Tax Returns together, but he must let her do all the talking.

The next day they drove there in Don Esteban’s jet-black Buick, with a uniformed chauffeur at the wheel. The bureau was located in the old Spanish Casino, which had closed down a few years earlier when it was taken over by the Partido Democrático Institucional and turned into an office building. It had marble floors and twelve-foot ceilings, but the furniture—the marble consoles, gilded mirrors, and red velvet chairs—had all disappeared.

As soon as they were ushered in, Don Esteban asked which tax official had been assigned to them. The secretary himself, Manuel Felipe Sánchez de Montenegro, would see them, he was told. Don Esteban shivered when he heard the name. Manuel Felipe Sánchez de Montenegro was known among the hacendados as “the bulldog of Guayamés.” Sugar, tobacco, coffee—it didn’t matter what kind of plantation you owned; if you didn’t pay your taxes to the penny, you soon had Manuel Felipe’s bulldozers at the door. In a matter of hours the farm’s crop would be razed to the ground and a sign reading “Government Property” would be nailed to the nearest tree.