The House of Impossible Loves (33 page)

At six o’clock in the morning, Santiago woke with lips raw from the dementia of fever, love, and rain, but the space beside him in bed was empty. His naked reality shattered when he called out to his grandmother in the light and shadow of what he thought was dawn. He heard no reply. Suddenly, he sat up. A whiff of smoke was drifting into the room, choking him. He went to the window, and the dream he thought he was living became a nightmare. The stable was on fire, a fire so big it threatened to devour the clouds.

Santiago’s eyes clouded with fear. He searched for Olvido in every room on the second floor, calling out to her, his soul shouting itself hoarse. He did not find her. The silence became black smoke creeping in through every crevice. He went down the stairs two by two, stumbling at the bottom, falling onto clay tiles, skinning his knees. He ignored the scrapes and limped to the door, tried to open it, but it was locked from outside. He ran as best as he could to the kitchen, clicked the deadbolt on the door into the garden, filigrees of blood shining on the lettuce and squash. He heard the loud crackle of stable walls, the whinnying of the horse that someone had freed from its stall and was trotting through the yard, its mane inflamed by the wind. It crisscrossed in front of Santiago as he stumbled toward the heart of the fire, as if ordered to stop him from reaching the flames. The boy dodged it and moved forward as his skin boiled, became charred by the smoke.

Near the stable doors he recognized Olvido’s robe and slippers in a pile on the grass, as if she had wanted to offer herself naked to death. He picked them up and held them to his chest. Four sheep ran past, having escaped from the corral; Santiago watched them and their apocalyptic bleating disappear. The stable walls fell in a burst of fire, and he sat hard on the ground, staying there until firefighters arrived with their sirens to stop the house, the rose garden, the woodlands, from burning.

For days, wrapped in the blanket they had thrown around his shoulders, finding not the slimmest ray of moonlight to extinguish the fire in his dreams, he watched the entire town parade before his grief, offering condolences, staring into the grave where the most beautiful woman in the world must lie. For all that they searched, no body, not a single scorched bone could be found. Padre Rafael gave him food and water, cleaned the grief from his wounds, watched over him at night, waiting patiently for Santiago to be ready to come and live with him.

There was now not a single Laguna woman left to be saved, just a young man sitting on soft earth.

“T
HEY SAY THAT
a long, long time ago, a young man named Esaín challenged the sea, chaining him to a eucalyptus tree for one hundred days. They say that from a long, long time before that, there was an alliance between the sea and the men of a great town. Every August full moon, the town chief would set a fisherman’s clothes on the golden beach. The sea would arrive in a giant wave after midnight, soak the clothes, and assume human form. Stuffed into flannel pants and a puffy, white shirt, he would walk through the streets and squares; he would drink the wine from any barrel he passed and lay with the most beautiful women. With the first rays of dawn, he would return to the beach and shed those magic clothes, his body, still drunk on wine and flesh, dissolving into a wave. In exchange, the sea had given people the gift of tears to be cried whenever they were sad—for nothing alleviated misfortune like tears—and a promise to respect the lives of all fishermen.

“One tragic year, the town chief died and was succeeded by Esaín, his firstborn son. He was a brave young man, known since youth for his skill and strength in hand-to-hand combat, as well as his noble heart. Esaín had a younger sister. When their father died, already orphaned of their mother, Esaín had to take care of her. The girl had a name pronounced differently in four separate languages and, at just eleven years of age, was possessed of unparalleled beauty and a voice that could bewitch the mermaids themselves. In the primitive light of dawn, she would go to the golden beach to sing and dance on its dunes, bells on her ankles and ribbons on her wrists. The sea would watch her through its waves—her svelte figure, dark hair in the breeze like a pirate flag—listen to her laugh, listen to her dream with dark eyes that never left him. In the evenings, when the girl returned home to a stone house surrounded by eucalyptus trees high on a hill, the tide would leave the beach, traverse the streets and squares to arrive at her door like a thin, silent tongue, climb the wall to peer in the window and watch her sleep curled in her bed. The townspeople knew it was the first time the sea had ever fallen in love. Knowing this, Esaín feared that, when dressed as a man, the sea would possess his sister, take her to his depths, and he would never see her again. And so, when the August full moon came, he left a vagabond’s rags on the beach. As always, shielded by the moon, the sea soaked the clothes, but his body remained liquid and cold. Furious at this betrayal shattering their alliance, he flooded houses, streets, and fields in a tempest, asking the townsmen with a frothy throat why such deceit after centuries of living in peace. Fearing for their lives, they confessed who was to blame and where he lived but refused to say any more in case the sea’s fury were to grow and destroy them in his waves.

“The sea immediately recognized the traitor’s house as belonging to the girl he adored, but this time he climbed high on the hill in a roaring wave, tossing bits of algae in the air. Esaín and his sister had run into the eucalyptus forest to escape him. Towering cumulous clouds swirled in the sky, and the moon grew as pale as the face of a dead man. The sea followed them through the woods, trailing seashells, froth, and gasping fish among the treetops. He had no trouble following their trail, for the girl was crying in fear and the sea could smell her tears, made, as they were, of his water. He reached them near a cliff where the forest ended. Esaín hid his sister behind some rocks and came out to confront the monster howling with a hurricane wind.

“‘If you want to be a man, then fight like one,’ Esaín said, tossing the magic clothes he carried into a sack.

“The moon grew even more pale as waves broke against the clothes, submerging them in a foamy crash, and the sea became a stout man with an icy gaze.

“‘Here I am, boy. Now you’ll pay for having kept me from your wine and warm flesh.’

“They dove into a ferocious battle. Even though Esaín was strong and skillful, the sea surpassed him, for his arms held all the power of storms. He threw the young man onto the ground and choked him. That’s when Esaín’s sister came out from her hiding place to stare with dark eyes at the sea. The sea felt love weaken his arms. Esaín flipped him over and held him to the ground.

“‘Dance!’ he ordered his sister.

“The girl danced like she did on the sand at dawn. The sea’s flesh turned fiery. Esaín let go so as not to be burned and ordered his sister to stop. Then he spoke in the language of the trees to a great, ancient eucalyptus, which pulled its roots out of the ground and bound the sea to its trunk. The next morning Esaín circled the sea’s arms and legs with chains, holding him prisoner at the mercy of the sun and the wind.

“The townspeople soon suffered the consequences. As each day passed, the vast surface once occupied by the sea blurring into an ephemeral horizon became a desert where not even a weed could grow. Fishing boats became skeletons of wood and salt, and men lost all memories of their lives as they forgot the taste of fish. Their grief was worse than ever before, with no tears to cry. The town elders grew invisible when a famine as silver as the August moon gripped homes and the hearts that dwelled inside. After one hundred days, men gathered outside Esaín’s house high on the hill and begged him to let the prisoner go. He was suffering the same fate and gave in to their pleas.

“Up on the cliff, Esaín found his sister, dancing and singing around the sea as he cried crusts of salt and his chains grew red hot, singeing his human flesh. For one hundred days, the girl had been the only one to keep the sea alive. She had fed him spoonful by spoonful, offered him drink, protected him from the sun with a straw hat.

“‘Go home,’ Esaín ordered his sister. ‘I’m going to set him free.’

“She slipped into the eucalyptus woods but, rather than obey her brother, hid behind a tree. From there she could watch Esaín remove the chains and the roots release the sea. A late-winter afternoon, warm and weak, hung over the cliff. The sea’s body fell to its knees on the ground, spent. The girl wanted to run to his aid but feared this would anger her brother and stayed hidden behind the minty aroma.

“‘You’re free,’ Esaín said. ‘You can go.’

“‘You will pay dearly for your audacity,’ the sea mumbled, looking at him for the last time as a man.

“The sea shed his pants and white shirt and, when not a thread remained on his skin, dissolved into an immense ocean that dove off the cliff. Esaín thought it was all over but soon heard his sister scream from the woods.

“‘Watch out, Esaín! Behind you! Behind you!’

“He turned and saw that the sea had silently climbed back up the rocks to take his revenge. Esaín jumped into the puffy shirt and flannel pants. Before his sister’s frightened eyes, he became a frothy wave and threw himself off the cliff, with the sea.

“They say the girl ran to the edge and watched as one wave swam in the opposite direction of all the rest. They say that to alleviate his loved one’s sorrows, the sea gave tears back to men, though fishermen never set sail with them. They leave them at home, in the care of their mothers and wives, so the sea cannot track and shipwreck them. But they also say that if, despite this precaution, the sea does find them, a wave will sometimes break on the horizon, pick them up, and carry them safely to shore.”

Standing on a dimly lit stage in a Madrid café, Santiago Laguna listened to the applause. Cigarette smoke swirled around young faces at tables, rising to the ceiling, where fans sliced it to ribbons. “Tell your great-grandmother’s stories to the world,” Padre Rafael had said on his deathbed, patting his hand. “You were born to be an artist.” And Santiago had listened.

During the agonizing months the priest was confined to bed with kidney failure, reduced to the size of a normal man, the only thing that soothed his pain was Manuela Laguna’s stories. Santiago sat by his bedside day and night as the replacement priest, just out of the seminary, kindly set himself up in a little house next door. Padre Rafael insisted on dying in his own bed, and neither his doctor’s recommendation that he be admitted to the hospital nor orders from his ecclesiastic superiors could change his mind. It was shameful enough, the priest thought, to die at seventy-five when men in his family died in their hundreds and women as old as tortoises, without ever going to the hospital in their lives.

The doctor would pay house calls when the priest could no longer stand—much less wreak havoc as in years past. He would listen to the priest’s heart and take his pulse, looking at Santiago with eyes that eliminated any hope. After the doctor left and they were alone, as they had been these last two years, the boy would sit next to Padre Rafael’s bed and tell him a story. The sea bubbled into the parish bedroom, and the priest could sense the irascible Cantabria of his youth, the squawking gulls, the salty breeze, and smell of fish in the market. That first day, Santiago did not tell the end of the story but stopped all of a sudden as tears welled up in memories.

“Go on, I want to know how it ends,” the priest said.

“I don’t know, Padre.”

“Man of God, how can you not know? And if you don’t, then make it up. Just don’t leave me hanging.” He squirmed in pain.

“Easy now, or it’ll only get worse.”

Santiago began to tell him another story, which he also left unfinished, interlaced with another and yet another, none of them finished. Padre Rafael fell asleep, bewildered by all of these storms, fishermen, and mermaids. The next day, after breakfast, when Santiago asked him if he would like to hear another story, the priest said no, not unless it was told from beginning to end.

“I tossed and turned all night, caught up in nightmares, trying to figure out how yesterday’s stories ended.”

His face contorted in a pain that would not be eased by pills.

“I’m sorry, Padre. You see . . . she was the one, my grandmother, you know . . . I would stop just before, and she would tell the end of the story.” He closed his eyes and felt fire in his heart.

“Go pray, my child, go pray.” The priest reached for the boy’s hand and gave it a squeeze.

“I’ll tell you a whole story as soon as I’m back. Rest now, Padre.”

Santiago left the room and headed for the sacristy. There, instead of praying, he drank the last drop of consecrated wine and any unconsecrated he could find. Meanwhile, the priest huffed and puffed to sit up in bed, peed through a tube that terminated in a bag, and writhed in pain, caused not by his illness but by a confession secret that had troubled his soul since the night of the fire.

That day, with his mouth tasting of the bread and cheese he had eaten to disguise any trace of wine, Santiago Laguna told Padre Rafael a complete story. But before the end, he paused for a minute, as if waiting for Olvido’s voice to come back from the deepest recess of death. That silence, which from then on preceded the end of every story, grew shorter as the weeks and months passed but never disappeared entirely. Even after one August night, when Padre Rafael reached up and held the boy’s face in his hands, leaving this world, the bitter taste of an untold secret on his breath, and Santiago began to work as a storyteller, that silence continued to float among the public in cafés and halls, sometimes only for the briefest second it takes to drop a flower on a grave.

Santiago lost his voice after the fire. Days passed as he sat staring at the smoking remains of the stable, petrified by misfortune, leading to an elephantine chill that left him shaking with fever and gibbering insect obscenities for over a week. Padre Rafael, who gave him cough syrup and menthol steam baths, cooled his forehead with a handkerchief soaked in holy water, came to believe the boy would not survive such sorrow at just sixteen years of age. But one day Santiago woke with no fever, and the blond doctor with alopecia assured the priest that the danger had passed. Santiago’s recovery was considered nearly miraculous. Even so, he rose from bed smelling like earth after a rain, an odor that never left him.