After the business of my inheritance was concluded, and Doña Soledad went back to sleep, I went with my grandmother to Caitríona’s house to meet Patrick myself. Rosario and Francisco remained at the Casa de Pilatos. My brother found conversation with me easier. He was close to my grandmother, and this too helped. It also allowed Father and Caitríona to speak together in private. It was then that they were able to tell each other all that had happened to them since their separation. She wept when she told him about her decision to marry Carlos. Father listened calmly as she described the situation, the arrangement they had, and how Carlos had become more conservative and severe since his father’s death, since becoming a grandee of Spain, since being accepted and esteemed at court in Madrid. She said he still wanted her to produce a male heir for him, but that she did not wish to be with him in that way ever again. She told Father about Hermenegildo, how the nobleman from Granada had married a woman who also put up with her husband’s nature.
Then she had the governess fetch her daughter, Carlota, who was eight years old, a gaunt little girl with chestnut hair. Father lifted her up and made jokes with her, and this too made Caitríona weep. I watched them from the corner of my eye and saw what a handsome couple they made, and I struggled to remember when the three of us had been together in Venice, in Greece, in Egypt, and in India. I wondered what might happen. It was clear that Father and Rosario also had strong feelings for each other. After so many years of living without any romance in his life, of having to resort to women in brothels, he was now confronted with two very beautiful and engaging ladies whom he had been strongly attached to, in relationships that had been interrupted rather than ended.
All of us took the midday meal together in the Casa de Pilatos: Father and I, Caitríona and Patrick and little Carlota, Rosario and Francisco, and my grandmother Inmaculada, who sat where Doña Soledad would have. Conversation was strained at first, until Francisco asked Father what the Duke of Medina-Sidonia had been like.
“Surely your mother has told you about him,” Father replied.
“She has told me what she wished to. But I would like to hear about him from you, who were so close to him,” Francisco said, looking very handsome that day. I could see that Patrick looked up to him. I hoped that the fact that Francisco in turn looked up to Father might prove helpful in opening my brother’s heart some more. Father may have sensed it too, for he went on to regale us all with amusing and moving anecdotes regarding the duke. I suspect it was also a way for him to begin feeling his way back into the reality of Spain.
After finishing the meal with some fruit, the group went off to the garden to sip infusions of herbs. I stayed behind with my grandmother Inmaculada. It was the first time we were alone together.
“Seeing you here before me,” she said, “it is as if you have descended from heaven. I never saw you after you were born.”
“Why was that?” I asked her. I hoped she could tell from my tone that it was not an accusation.
“We disapproved,” she said, and then hesitated. “I was going to say my husband especially, but that is not true. Both of us were ashamed of your mother, and ashamed of you. She already had a child, a son and heir, with the man she had married.”
“The husband who impregnated her by force,” I said. “The one who cut off my father’s finger and broke my father’s hands. The one she never loved.”
These words did come out of me as an accusation. But I said it quietly, as a simple statement of fact.
“The one your father killed,” she agreed in a tone similar to mine. “She did love Julian, at first. That was his name. She loved him at the very beginning, when she was very young and eager to marry him.”
“Nevertheless,” I said, choosing to ignore this, “I’m glad he’s dead.”
She looked down.
“As am I,” she said.
“You were ashamed because your daughter fell in love with a Japanese man, and had a child out of wedlock.”
“It was a terrible scandal,” she said. “You must try and imagine it. I do not know how these things are tolerated in Japan, but here they are considered mortal sins. Neither my husband nor I were brought up to condone such a thing.”
“And yet your aunt did condone it, or accepted it,” I said, “the woman I am named for, a woman very high on your social scale.”
“Yes,” she said. “And I regret what I did. This is what I wish for you to know. I regret it. I didn’t at first. I held on to my spite and to my prejudices for a time, for far too long a time. To tell you the absolute truth, I did not recognize how terrible my sin was, until my husband and grandson died, and I was left alone in the world. It was only then that I missed my daughter. It was only then that I realized how terrible I had been to her, how I had wished for her to be as unhappy in her marriage as I had been in mine. I realized how jealous and contemptuous of her I had been at seeing her so happy with your father. When she died after giving birth to you, I convinced myself it was because God wished to punish her. Over time I came to hate myself for it.”
A silence ensued, and then she said something else.
“You look like her.”
“Who?” I said, knowing full well who she meant.
“Your mother.”
“I also look like my father,” I said.
“You are very beautiful,” she said. “You must know that.”
“I am a half-breed,” I said, “and a bastard.”
“You are my granddaughter,” she said, trying her best to win me. “You are my flesh and blood. You are all I have left of the daughter I brought into this world, and then treated so selfishly before losing her. And now you are here. I can reach out and touch you. I wish for us to get along. I do not want to lose you. I want to try and treat you the way I should have treated her.”
I took her hand. It seemed a natural thing to do. It surprised her. I could see she was not accustomed to being touched.
“Then again,” I said, “if you had treated her better, perhaps she would have married someone else, perhaps she would never have met or fallen in love with my father. So, in a way, I have you to thank for my existence.”
Making an effort, and I could tell it was an effort, she covered our two hands with her other hand.
“What an odd way to look at life,” she said. But she uttered it merely to say something. What most occupied her attention at that moment, I think, was the sensation of having my hand between hers.
“I have not descended from the heavens,” I said. “I have come on a most extraordinary journey, back from Japan where I left another grandmother behind.”
“I know,” she said. “It is a miracle I thank God for. I celebrate it.”
“I have already been disappointed by one grandmother,” I said. “I would like for us to do better.”
“We shall, dear,” she said. “I will see to it. What happened with your father’s mother in Japan?”
I told her the story of where and how we lived. I placed emphasis on the splendor of Date Masamune’s castle, so that she would not think me intimidated by my newfound wealth in Sevilla. I described the evolution of my relationship with Mizuki, how much she had meant to me when I was little, how secure and loved she made me feel, how well she had educated me in the manners of the emperor’s court, and then, as I grew older, how she changed, culminating with the horrible tale of how she had been implicated in the cruel demise of Yokiko. Doña Inmaculada listened carefully, patiently, and then said the following.
“Perhaps you’ve got it wrong, Soledad,” she said—for she would never call me by my Japanese name. “It sounds to me like your Japanese grandmother saved your life, and quite intentionally.”
“How do you mean?” I asked.
“If she had not poisoned this other woman,” she said, “your father would not have left. She knew it would ruin her bond with the person she most cared for in this world: your father. She knew it would result in his taking you away from her. It freed you, and freed your
father. It provided the impetus for him to bring you back here in time, before your life there would have changed irrevocably. I think she did what she did because of her love for you, and that it must have been an enormous sacrifice.”
I had never considered what happened in this light. Neither had Father. I began to weep at the thought it might be true. Mizuki had, in pure Buddhist fashion, let go of her most beloved attachments, liberating me and Father both before entering the nunnery, her life all but over. She, who had been the great beauty of Sendai. I was seized with a necessity to tell her that I understood, to tell her how well the stratagem had worked, to tell her that we had survived the journey. I needed to tell her how sorry I was for not seeing it, until my mother’s mother saw it for me. Even though I could never forgive her for Yokiko’s death, I needed to tell her how grateful I was to her for having taken such good care of me. I resolved to write it down in a letter and to beg Kurt Vanderhooven, when next I saw him, to try and see that it might reach her before she died.
– XXXII –
Doña Soledad was eager for me to visit my mother’s grave. Father was not prepared to return there yet, but he encouraged me to go if I wished. He told me it would make him feel good to know I had reached the place where I was born, an estate that would one day be mine. When Caitríona offered to accompany me, he seemed to waver in his resolve. But in the end, seeing as how she was still married—to my uncle no less—he returned to Sanlúcar with Rosario and Francisco. Doña Inmaculada remained with Doña Soledad in Sevilla. As a gesture to please my great-aunt, I changed into one of the finer dresses I had acquired in Amsterdam. It was made from thick silk dyed the color of eggplant. When I came into Doña Soledad’s bedroom to say goodbye, my grandmother Inmaculada put her hand to her mouth in shock and said, “How beautiful you look. For a moment I thought you were Guada.”
Doña Soledad held out her hand for me to take.
“Very beautiful indeed,” she said. “But there’s no need for you to dress this way for me.”
“I thought it might please you,” I said.
“It is you that pleases me,” she said, “no matter what you choose to wear or call yourself.”
I could see the comment irked my grandmother somewhat, and I suspected Doña Soledad had made a point of saying it in her presence. I kissed her hand.
“Thank you,” I said. And then I bowed to her and said it again in Japanese, “Arigato.”
She insisted that Caitríona and I take her finest carriage. It was large and painted sky blue with gold trimmings. Inside the seats were covered in navy velvet and the rounded ceiling was adorned with cherubs, depicting the Virgin Mary’s ascension into heaven. Four spirited horses pulled it, and a footman in livery rode at the back. The driver, Narciso, well on in years, had been in Doña Soledad’s service since his childhood. He wore thick corduroy breeches and a brown greatcoat.
The journey was beautiful and relatively smooth. Rains had replenished the rivers and brooks. Wet leaves littered the roadsides, and some of the trees were bare. But there were vast expanses of olive groves, and the grass covering fallow farmland was a vibrant green. On the first part of the trip, Caitríona and I sat next to each other with Carlota between us. My brother Patrick sat opposite, next to Carlota’s governess. He pretended to study the scenery but kept stealing glances at me whenever he thought me distracted. His presence inhibited his mother and me from broaching topics we were eager to discuss. He was glum and still confused, no doubt, by our intrusion into his world. His unhappiness expressed itself through complaints about having nothing to do at La Moratalla.
“Nonsense,” Caitríona said, peeved and disappointed at his refusal to show me a better side of his nature. “You’ve been there countless times, and always enjoy it.”
“That is not true,” he said. But he looked down as he said it, embarrassed, knowing that he was lying.
“Why are you being so difficult?” Caitríona asked him, plainly frustrated. “What is your sister to make of you?
“My half-sister,” he said in an odious tone, pretending to gaze out the window.
After we stopped for a light meal that we had brought with us, I left them to argue below as I, to their surprise, opted to sit up top with the driver. He was disconcerted at first, but after a while I was able to put him at ease. I asked him if he had known my mother.
“I did, madam,” he said. “It was this carriage that brought her, Doña Soledad, a priest, and your grandparents to the river’s edge in Sevilla for her baptism. No one in the nobility had ever done such a thing. Babies were always baptized in the cathedral. The priest was arguing against it the whole time, but Doña Soledad and your grandfather ignored him. Then your mother traveled with me a number of times in her youth, and sat up here with me like you, once or twice. And I brought her along this very same route, from Sevilla to La Moratalla, on her wedding day.”
All of this made a strong impression on me.
“She spent her wedding night at La Moratalla?” I asked.
“Yes, madam,” he said. “And I brought her here as well when she was carrying you. When she came here with her little boy and with your father and Doña Soledad.” He gave out this latter bit of intelligence quickly, as if to deflect my attention from the one before it.
“What were people’s opinions about my father back then,” I said, “and about me?”
“That is not for me to say, madam.”
“What did you think then?”
“I never liked Don Julian,” he said matter-of-factly. “Not many people did. With your father I never exchanged a word. But he always impressed me as a genuine caballero, a real gentleman, even though—”
He realized he was on the verge of saying something that might offend me, and did not finish his thought.
“Even though he was a heathen,” I said, smiling at him.
He saw the smile and was grateful for it.
“Eso,” he said. “I cannot speak for the wealthy and noble families, but people like me respected him for how he behaved.”
“And how about me,” I asked him, “a heathen girl born out of wedlock?”
“Doña Soledad has made you her heir,” he said. “Everyone knows this. It will influence everyone’s opinions, except for the priests. As for whether one’s parents are married or not, it seems a small thing to me. And people always enjoy scandal, no matter what is said in public.”
“You are a wise man, Narciso,” I said.
I could hear mother and son arguing below, and I thought about how odd life was, considering how Caitríona and my father had met, how my own existence had brought them together, how much in love they had once been on the island of Paxos where the boy, my half-brother, had been conceived, all of the trauma everyone had gone through afterward. And now the boy was grown and speaking to her with bitterness as we approached the Andalusian estate where Father had also been so in love with my mother.
“How old is this carriage, Narciso?” I asked.
“I am not good with numbers,” he replied. “It was a wedding gift to Doña Soledad from her parents. It brought her to the cathedral on the day she was married. It brought her to the funerals of her husband, and then her two sons. My father was the driver then. He drove for her until he was too old, and that is when I took over.”
That evening after supper, as my brother sulked off to bed and Caitríona spoke in the kitchen with the staff about our meals and our stay there, I walked through the massive drawing rooms, amazed at the fact that they would someday be mine. I thought about the carriage. It was outside at that hour in the dark. The horses were in the stables. Narciso and the other gentleman had disappeared into some part of the enormous house as yet unknown to me. The carriage had brought my great-aunt to her wedding, ferried my mother to her baptism, transported Mother and Father from Sevilla to La Moratalla when I was in her womb, when all they expected from life was happiness. When not in use, it spent most of its time parked in a long cobblestone entryway adjace
nt to the Casa de Pilatos, as the city swirled about it. With its beautifully shaped doors and golden hinges, its plush seats and tall spoked wheels, it had been there during my entire life, my mother’s life, and almost all of Doña Soledad’s life. The persistence of things, of inanimate objects, obsessed me.
Standing there in that house where my mother and her great-aunt had grown up deep in the Andalusian countryside, I knew that at the very same moment, on the other side of the world, my bedroom in the Sendai Castle existed as well: its sliding doors that smelled of cedar, the floor mats, the sound of the fountain and the crickets from the garden just outside, were just as real as the ones I could hear then. The abandoned river skiffs in North America that we discovered by the gravesite of Fernando de Alarcón were just where we left them, there on that immense and wild continent where Father taught me to survive. The remains of Lonan’s body were as real and existent as the carriage parked outside. Kurt was somewhere in the West Indies. People with their fragile bodies, filled with blood, bones, organs, and fleeting emotions, skittered about from birth to death, surrounded by things and places that stayed put, indifferent. Mizuki was in a monastery somewhere near Kyoto. Doña Inmaculada was at the bedside of Doña Soledad. Mother was buried nearby on the estate somewhere.
***
I was relieved when Caitríona joined me, distracting me from my maudlin meditations. It was good to be with someone alive and youthful. We sat on armchairs in the library, facing a balcony that overlooked the large central fountain that was bathed in moonlight. I expected her to speak of my brother, to try to explain his behavior, or to ask me what it felt like to be in Spain. But Caitríona was Caitríona. She didn’t say anything at first, and when she did, she spoke in English with that Irish lilt in her voice. She took my hand and held it as we sat there, as Inmaculada had done, but in this case the gesture was infinitely more natural.
“I wonder if my mother is still alive,” she said.
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