The House of Impossible Loves (28 page)

“Just let him die. He’s no good for anything anymore.” Manuela was dozing in front of the fire.

“If only the phone worked . . . But this damn snow has knocked out everything.”

Even Clara Laguna’s daisies had frozen on the cobblestone drive.

“Go on if you want, dear. I’ll look after our little treasure.”

Olvido wrapped a shawl around her shoulders and headed for the pine forest but soon realized she would never make it. A frigid wind buffeted her every step. If the horse gets worse, I’ll use the hunting rifle from the attic to put it out of its misery, she thought as she turned for home. Her lips were covered in snow, and her teeth chattered.

The clay-tiled entryway lay in shadow, a shadow tainted by a sweet perfume that reminded Olvido of her childhood. The linen cupboard doors were open, the lavender sachets out of place.

“Madre? Madre!”

Manuela Laguna appeared in the hallway, lit by the glow of the fire. She looked at her daughter and wanted to smile. Rising up out of her mother’s glove, Olvido saw the cane.

“You couldn’t get there in this foul weather, could you, dear?”

“Did you cane him, Madre? Did you dare cane him?”

After years of being locked up with the tablecloths, sheets, and towels, the cane skeleton glowed happily in its master’s claw.

“I had no choice. His penmanship was sloppy, and he knows he has to apply himself if he’s to be our savior,” the old woman replied with a smile, baring yellow teeth.

“Where is he?”

“He went to his room to redo the part he did poorly. Don’t worry, dear. He’ll learn soon enough.”

Santiago’s was the guest room where Pierre Lesac had stayed at Scarlet Manor. It was smaller than Olvido’s and much smaller than Clara Laguna’s, but it got more hours of sun. Olvido found the boy on his stomach in bed, writing in his lined notebook.

“That’s enough homework for today. You’ve worked hard,” she said, stroking his hair.

“But I have to practice so Bisabuela won’t get mad again. Tomorrow morning, I’ll show her this page I just finished. It’s nice and neat.”

“Don’t worry about your penmanship, sweetheart. It doesn’t matter if it’s messy.”

Olvido had lifted Santiago onto her lap and was rocking him like a baby.

“It matters to Bisabuela.”

“I’ll take care of your great-grandmother. I’ll make sure she won’t ever get mad at you again,” Olvido assured the boy, kissing him on the forehead.

“So, she won’t cane me?”

“No, she won’t ever be able to cane you again. I promise.”

Heavy snow fell from a moonless sky. Olvido led Santiago to her room, where she treated the welts on his back. Wind hammered the bricked-up window, the onslaught bringing back the memory of death on icy moss.

That night Santiago fell asleep in his grandmother’s bed as she told him a story. Insomnia then took over Olvido’s body and mind. Eyes wide open, she delighted in the warmth of her grandson’s breath. Hours passed. Hours filled with shadows. Just before dawn, Olvido thought she saw a face from the past in the bricks. It was a face she had seen at church. Dark, proud, with gray eyes, that face belonged to Esteban’s father. Little by little, the smell of a dish Olvido recognized filtered through the room. “Tripe with herbs and garlic,” she murmured. It was a recipe Manuela adored. Olvido could taste the strong flavor of entrails seasoned with rosemary, thyme, and garlic. She protected Santiago, still asleep, shielding him from the phantom stew and the face of the schoolmaster floating in the bricks, until the first ray of sun forced it out through the gap. Olvido wondered why that man appeared to her. According to her mother, he refused to admit her to school. She wondered, too, how he knew that recipe and why he would remind her of it with his presence. Manuela made that dish often, but the first time was when Esteban was still a boy and had just buried his father. Manuela invited him in to try it. He ate several bites before running out.

The snow had stopped. A bright winter morning illuminated Scarlet Manor, but the strong wind that had blown all night continued to shred the daisies and roses.

Manuela woke in her room with its damp whitewash and got out of bed feeling more sprightly than she had for days, maybe even months or years. Her gloved hands shook less than usual. Clearly, being reunited with the cane was good for her health. She did not open her window and so did not see the fistful of black petals that traveled on the wind and came to rest on her windowsill. She put on her dressing gown and headed into the kitchen. She would tell Olvido she wanted gizzards with garlic for breakfast.

Manuela found her daughter cleaning the hunting rifle that lived in the attic. For a moment, she thought Olvido might aim it at her, rip her chest apart with a single shot. She felt lightheaded, as if she were falling into her grave.

“I just killed the horse.” Olvido said.

“I didn’t hear the shot.”

“I held the gun to its head.”

“It was a good-for-nothing old hack. It’s better off dead.”

“Yes, since he wasn’t good for anything, he’s much better off dead.” Olvido looked into her mother’s dark eyes.

“I want gizzards for breakfast.” Manuela blinked in anger.

“We don’t have any. I’ll make toast with olive oil. And for lunch, tripe with herbs and garlic. I know you love that dish.”

A gust of wind blew the kitchen window open, and a whirl of black petals surrounded Manuela.

“This storm is killing my roses!” she cried, batting the petals away. “It’s the first year they’ve succumbed to the wind and the snow.”

“Yes, it’s been a long, hard winter. Not everything will survive.”

Olvido closed the window. The petals fell to the floor at Manuela’s feet.

“Do we have fresh tripe for you to cook today?”

“No, but I’ll get some at the farm next to the veterinarian’s. That way, if I see him, I can ask him to take the carcass away.”

“Good.” Manuela rubbed her gloved hands together. “Hurry home, and make the stew good and tasty. That recipe brings back memories. By the way, are you going to take our little man with you?”

“Yes. A bit of sun will do him good.”

“You spoil him too much. But yesterday he learned that in this house, you have to work hard.” Manuela rapped her knuckles on the wooden table where years before she had massacred chickens.

It was nearly noon by the time Olvido and Santiago returned from buying the tripe. As they walked into the house, the boy smelled the perfume of his beating filtering through the linen cupboard latticework.

“Don’t worry. It all ends today.”

“What ends, Abuela?”

“The lavender, sweetheart. The lavender.”

They began to prepare lunch. Together they washed the tripe, their fingers touching under the running water. Together they cut the onions, studying the bright drops sparkling in their identical eyes, the fresh herbs and garlic. Together they mixed the ingredients in a clay pot they handed over to the flames on the stove.

Once the stew was ready, Olvido served three bowls, filling one more than the others and taking it into the pantry. Santiago could hear the clink of porcelain and glass. His grandmother was searching among the bottles he was not allowed to touch, bottles out of reach to a nine-year-old boy. The wait for what was to come dragged on. He ran a hand over the butcher’s block, got caught up in the irreparably rough touch, the grooves left by a knife. Clouds filled the sky. It would rain soon. Olvido came out of the pantry, a white powder on her cheeks. Her hands shook. Santiago hurried to take the bowl before she spilled it and wiped her face with a cloth.

“I hope it tastes as good as it smells,” Manuela said when the boy walked into the dining room with the steaming bowl.

“I’m sure it will, Bisabuela.”

He sat next to the old woman and, smiling, cut the tripe, smothering it in sauce before bringing it to her lips. After lunch, Manuela told him a story as he looked into her eyes, waiting for the silence.

As it grew dark, a spray of black petals pelted the window in vain. The crackle of the fire slowly swallowed Manuela Laguna’s voice. Her hands no longer shook. The memory of a dead adolescent vanished from her stomach and chest, as if, in this final moment, all was forgiven. She took off a glove and caressed her great-grandson’s face, flushed by the wait, until her voice disappeared in a whisper of eucalyptus. The only noise was the sound of the fire clearing its throat. Santiago thought: It’s done. A trickle of poison, as blue as the sea in one of her tales, spilled from Manuela Laguna’s mouth, ran down her neck.

The next day Olvido walked to the Civil Guard station to report that she had found her mother dead. An autopsy was performed, determining the cause of death to be an overdose of the prescription painkillers she took for her arthritis. They also found traces of laudanum and rose fertilizer in her stomach, but no authority wanted to investigate the case any further. According to the official report, these had been ingested accidentally. No one cared who killed the old whore who for years sashayed around town, putting on airs. No one cared if the Lagunas destroyed one another. Besides, when her great-grandson was born, Manuela had amended her will, and the town would inherit a sum of money to build a sports complex to be named after Santiago Laguna. The mayor wanted the case closed to receive those funds posthaste. All he cared about was exactly how fat the municipal coffers would be and how to keep that damned name off a public building.

Olvido prepared a funeral fit for a queen. She had a carriage sent from the city, pulled by two sorrels with plumes rising from their heads, cinches with silk tassels, and manes braided with silver thread. The mahogany coffin with Manuela Laguna’s remains paraded through town behind the municipal band as musicians puffed a requiem on trumpets and saxophones. Dogs poked their noses out of the ditch and old men jabbed the sky with their canes as the cortège passed. Once it reached the square, the procession circled the fountain with its three spouts as church bells rang, honoring the memory of the departed. A blond boy, the son of a town councilor, then appeared on a city hall balcony to read the eulogy to all the onlookers who had filled the square, wondering what those words might mean.

At noon the funeral cortège made its way up the hill to the cemetery. Wearing a mauve brocade cloak, Padre Rafael strode through the graveyard to the pounding of drums and the rattle of bones. Holding the silver vessel, he quietly sprinkled holy water on the coffin. Two altar boys attended, as well as the mayor, the pharmacist, and other illustrious members of society. Olvido even hired mourners from neighboring towns, dressed in black, to wail themselves hoarse and tear their hair before Manuela’s grave, as if she had been loved.

As they lowered the mahogany coffin into the hole and earth fell on it like rain, a mason began to erect a pink marble mausoleum.

Once everyone left the cemetery, Olvido laid a handful of eucalyptus leaves on her mother’s grave. Another afternoon of snow was visible on the horizon.

T
HANKS TO MANUELA LAGUNA
, Santiago grew up believing he was born under the halo of the chosen. At the age of seven, after catechism class with Padre Rafael one day, he nearly drowned in the river that crossed the oak grove. Convinced of his messianic gifts, he wanted to show Olvido he could walk on the dark water. But the autumn wind thrashed the trees’ firm stance, and the boy sank before resurfacing and paddling to shore, thankfully only a few feet away.

“If you dare try anything like that again, you will not be allowed to cook with me,” his grandmother warned once he was safe and panting on the moss. “Being a Laguna boy is extraordinary, but that’s as far as it goes.”

Even though Olvido did not believe her grandson possessed any divine attributes, over the years she did come to suspect a miracle: Santiago was blessed with a wide range of talents that would eventually redeem the family’s social standing. His friendship with Padre Rafael from the age of two helped him achieve what at first appeared to be his destiny. The priest had a soft spot for the blue-eyed boy who was never scared of the commotion caused by his movements, the drumroll of the earth, the shaking of trees. While other children burst into tears and hid behind their mothers’ legs, terrorized by the giant ruddy-faced figure, Santiago would smile and tug on his cassock, babbling incomprehensibly. Momentarily reconciled with the anger he felt toward the uproar of his own body, the priest would crouch down and offer a caress, his hand completely engulfing the little boy’s face.

When Santiago turned eight, Padre Rafael happened to hear him sing and discovered an angelic voice. With nary a thought for curses—such a golden voice could never be sullied—he dressed the boy in a white tunic and sent him onto the altar dais to sing the Gloria and the Ave Maria, to the delight of his parishioners. The first few Sundays, the old women in black veils crossed themselves when they looked at that boy burdened by his grandmother’s beauty. They squirmed in the pews as if bitten by ants, and the phlegm of bitterness stuck in their craws. But the celestial melody he intoned tempered their bile and memories of disgrace. Within a few Sundays, they were moved by his songs. Some even smiled at him after church, while others patted him on the back in congratulations. The only woman who did not succumb to Santiago’s voice was his aunt, Esteban’s sister. She wrung her hands, narrowed her gaze to cast evil eye on her nephew, swore into her veil, and spat insults.

During Holy Week, with a purple cord around his waist and a face contorted by the fervor of suffering, the boy sang a
saeta.
Padre Rafael’s eyes filled with tears, and the hair on the parishioners’ arms stood on end, straight through their lightweight wool clothing. After Mass, in the sacristy, the priest wrapped the boy in a hug, and Santiago felt all the air squeezed out of his chest.

“Where did this talent come from, you little Castilian devil?” Padre Rafael asked, ruffling his hair.

“I don’t know, Padre.”

No one in town remembered that Santiago was the great-great-grandson of that Andalusian hunter who mesmerized Clara Laguna with folk songs and
saetas
.