The House of Impossible Loves

by Cristina Lopez Barrio

  Some mornings Clara forced her daughter to sit under the purple canopy as she talked about the family curse, the icy misfortune that surged through bones, the tears that stabbed like knives, and the nausea of an empty body now that the soul was gone. She also passed on the Laguna witch’s advice: “A cursed woman must die in church to die in peace,” she said. “And keep a glass of water or wine nearby whenever you speak of curses—it makes a woman thirsty.” But above all Clara taught the girl to wait for the Andalusian landowner. In Clara’s dreams, his olive-black eyes had not aged, his lips had not been circled by wrinkles, and his legs were still firm and proud in riding breeches and boots as he strode through the door at Scarlet Manor.

  “You have to know how to wait to take your revenge,” Clara told her daughter.

  “Yes, wait,” Manuela repeated.

  “In waiting, you learn.”

  “Yes, I’m waiting.”

  And so Manuela Laguna learned to wait, slipping away to the rose garden, imagining the sea in a yard full of petals and centipedes. She waited ten years, until the winter her mother could not get out of bed, syphilis consuming her pustule-ridden flesh.

  When Padre Imperio heard of Clara Laguna’s illness, he mailed her the violet-covered Bible from the past. Bernarda brought the package to Clara in bed, and she tore into it with skeletal fingers.

  “Return it to the priest, but go in through the back door so no one sees you,” Clara ordered. She lay back on her pillow, realizing there were no more tears to cry.

  “As soon as you’re back, I’ll shave you.”

  “Yes, lady.”

  A few weeks later, another parcel arrived in the mail. This one was wrapped in colored paper and plastered with fifty stamps. This time Clara had Manuela open it. Inside was a silver-handled brush and mirror set from her most distinguished client, the diplomat, sent to her from a far-off land.

  “So I can preen in my grave,” Clara remarked, sitting up. “Brush my hair, Manuela. I don’t have the strength.”

  Clara sat staring out the window, offering her now gray mane to her daughter. Streaks of snow slipped down the windowpane. Suddenly, Clara felt a death rattle in her chest, as if someone had thrown earth on her grave. She kneeled in bed, her lips pulled tight as she pounded on the icy glass.

  “Open the window! Open it!” she begged her daughter. “Open it! He has to come. Now!”

  “It’s too cold. Your boils will freeze,” Manuela said.

  “But I have to see him,” Clara moaned. “I’ve waited so long.”

  “You can always wait a little longer, Madre. You taught me a woman has to learn to wait.” Manuela smiled.

  Clara Laguna fell back onto her pillow. She recalled the words her mother whispered in the church just before she died: “Don’t wait anymore. He’ll never return; I saw it in the bones.” Clara recalled the smell of holy oil, of sleepy incense. She recalled Padre Imperio’s faith and his hands tracing crosses. For a moment, she wanted to beg Manuela to find the Saint Pantolomina image behind the canned peaches, then take her in the cart to church, where she could die a cursed woman at Padre Imperio’s side. But a tremendous rage kept her from uttering the words: rage at the fate of the Laguna women; rage at the waiting daisies; rage at a life wasted on a revenge she saw on her deathbed was useless; rage at the Andalusian and the moonlight piercing the oak trees. Clara clung to the window and heard a saeta, smelled olive-soaked curls, and saw a slender young man with tomb-black hair, his boots trampling clumps of daisies. Life slipped through her lips like silt, the cobblestone drive empty of everything but the late afternoon, as the wind howled and the snowflakes swirled.

  As Clara’s body grew cold, it began to exude the smell of oak, an aroma that filled the room and never left.

  It was the Galician woman who prepared the body for burial. No one else would touch that disease-ravaged corpse. According to Clara’s wishes, she was dressed in the outfit she’d worn the first time she and the Andalusian made love. Manuela peered in from the doorway. Her mother had left her a prosperous brothel, a chronic revulsion for all physical contact, and the burden of her revenge. At the age of twenty-four, Manuela was now a wealthy but distant woman.

  Clara’s funeral service and burial were held in the privacy of Scarlet Manor. Despite Padre Imperio’s efforts to have her buried in town, Manuela refused. Her wait was finally over. The brothel and her mother’s remains belonged to her, and she would do with them as she pleased. Bernarda and the three remaining prostitutes carried the coffin on their shoulders, as if it bore a queen. Following Manuela’s instructions, they brought Clara’s body to the wild rose garden, where Manuela had dug a grave. Dirt speckled her eyebrows, her nails, her smile. Silence reigned as the women dropped the coffin into the hole, the sound startling birds into flight. When the cook began to shovel, Manuela turned to search for the olive-black eyes her mother had taught her to wait for from the age of fourteen. He’ll come on the day of my death, if not before, she had repeated over and over again. But the only olive-colored thing Manuela saw was the scarf tied around the Galician’s woman’s sore throat. No man came to that remote rose garden that time, and resentment had twisted into a labyrinth of thorny paths.

  All the while Padre Imperio was on his knees, crying as he prayed in the confessional of the Saint Pantolomina chapel, biting his lips, begging forgiveness for the soul he had not saved. “I didn’t know how,” he lamented, pulling the white hair at his temples. “Or I did,” he tormented himself, “but I was filled with pride. God forgive the pain I felt when she proved indifferent to my words or my presence.” He wept until the sun set, old women in black shawls crowded around the closed confessional, spying on the priest crying as he whispered and clung to his rosary beads. Padre Imperio was too absorbed in his sorrow, this failure as monumental as his mission in the tropics, to notice. He began to age quickly, in his room next to the sacristy, his dreams tormented by a pair of yellow eyes that accompanied him until death.

  After the funeral Manuela packed a suitcase, the excitement of freedom churning in her stomach. She would leave the brothel in the Galician’s hands—she had been in charge of certain chores for the last several years, even though her body had grown fleshy—and go in search of the sea. But before she began her journey to the coast, Manuela headed into the rose garden one foggy winter morning to visit her mother’s grave for the very last time. She had forbidden everyone from going anywhere near that mound of earth bearing nothing more than a simple iron cross without any name. Manuela bought it from a scrap merchant who’d passed by the same day her mother died. She hoped the thorns would devour and obscure Clara Laguna’s grave.

  Manuela walked quickly along the paths. As she drew near, the asphyxiating fog was split by a ray of sunshine that fell directly on the grave, revealing a woman kneeled before Clara Laguna’s tomb. Manuela saw that it was Bernarda, lit up like a saint. In one hand she held fresh tomatoes and in the other a dish of salt, as if she were about to eat. The cook smiled and looked up at Manuela with docile eyes.

  6

  WHEN MANUELA LAGUNA first saw the flat sea on the horizon through the train window, she believed a field had frosted over and taken on a bluish tinge.

  “What about the cows?” she muttered to herself. “They must have left in search of better grazing.”

  But as the train drew closer, Manuela could see the roiling waves, and the stories of her childhood burst in her chest. She pressed her hands and nose to the window, fogging up the glass, not moving until the train entered a tunnel and the view went black. By the time the train exited, the sea had disappeared, giving way to typical Galician country houses surrounded by vegetable gardens and farmland. Manuela sat back on the wooden bench, smoothed the wrinkles from her dress, straightened her spine, and placed her hands demurely on her lap, holding her bag. Her fingerprints, a nose print, even a smear of the outline of her mouth remained on the window. She glanced at them, gripped her bag tighter, and studied the passengers across from he
r, an older woman and her daughter. Manuela smiled despite the stern expression on the woman’s face.

  The train pulled into La Coruña station. Manuela’s hands shook as she picked up her suitcase.

  “Goodbye,” she said to the woman and her daughter. “Have a nice trip.”

  Neither replied but Manuela continued to smile.

  The moment she reached the platform, her legs began to shake, too. She teetered as if her knees were about to shatter beneath her dress. The engine whistle blew, spewing smoke, filling the platform with the smell of coal.

  “Can I take your bags, señorita?” a porter asked.

  “Not yet. Thank you.”

  Through the smell of burning coal, Manuela sensed a thick, salty aroma that stuck to her skin and knew at once he had come to greet her. She sat on a wooden station bench, suitcase on the ground beside her, and inhaled the humid breeze he sent. Around her, porters carried bags, women helped children onto train cars, men helped women, family members embraced, and lovers stared into each other’s eyes. No one but Manuela was aware of the smell of the sea. It was noon on a gray day, and frothy clouds dotted the sky.

  Manuela Laguna found a hotel near the port. It was small, inexpensive but clean—although at times the tarry smell of sailors lingered in the hallway. She had chosen this particular hotel because of its covered patio with a stone balustrade right across from the beach. There were tables and chairs where guests could read the paper or play cards, even when it rained. Manuela spent every afternoon there even though it was early February. The weather seemed warmer than where she came from, and she did not mind the dewiness; quite the opposite—she liked to feel it on her skin and in her bones for what it really was: the sea’s icy, penetrating breath. Manuela’s adolescence had taught her that love was uncomfortable, painful even, and her destiny as a Laguna woman was to suffer for love, that her soul would shatter, even though hers was already frozen.

  At first she stared at the sea for hours, distinguishing the blue and green tones, listening to the sound of the waves. A staircase led down from the patio onto the street and the beach just across the way. Some days, even if the sun had already set, she would walk over, her boots sinking into white sand, salty wind whipping across her smile. Seagulls cawed in the sky, spiraling down to catch fish. Manuela envied them.

  “You think you’re the only ones who can touch it,” she growled through her teeth.

  One day she ventured down to the water. Waves crashed, soaking her boots and the hem of her wool dress. Manuela crouched down and touched and sniffed them, licked her fingers and savored the taste of the sea.

  In the mornings Manuela wandered through the port, among the fishing boats. She liked to watch the women mend nets and unload the fish pouring out of them, with their glistening scales and deep-sea smell. She envied the fish, too, even though they were dead, their eyes blank, and she was alive to gut, scale, and cook them as she pleased. More than anything else, Manuela missed cooking alongside Bernarda. One afternoon, overcome by homesickness, she headed into the hotel kitchen, where she found the owner busily preparing a dish of red sea bream.

  “Can I help?” Manuela asked, staring longingly at provisions scattered over the marble-topped table.

  The owner studied her for a moment, this young woman who had been there for over a month and never spoke to a soul, this dark-eyed girl, plain and unattractive, wearing coarse country dresses and old-fashioned wool hats.

  “I used to cook at home, far away from here, and . . .” Manuela began in her Galician accent.

  “You’re homesick,” the woman said. “But you’re from here or your parents were—it’s clear from your accent.”

  “No, no. I just lived with someone from Galicia. If you have chicken, I could fry it with onions.”

  “I do, but I was going to use it in a stew.”

  “Then let me make it for you. I make a delicious clay-pot stew.”

  Manuela put on an apron. She plucked and cut the chicken with a dexterity that surprised the owner.

  In spring Manuela began collecting shells and any other object the sea wished to give her. She kept them in boxes in her wardrobe, and at night, after her walk along the beach, she liked to sort them by color, size, and taste. She continued to befriend insects, too, trapping cockroaches in the hall and giving them perfumed baths.

  One day, as she was walking through the streets near the port, Manuela came upon a store that sold wool and sewing supplies. She bought a petit point pattern of a rose and began working on it in the afternoons as she sat on the patio, listening to news the sea brought her. When she was finished, she bought one with a boat design, then another, until embroidery became a routine part of her life.

  Summer arrived and with it bathers in swimsuits, children playing in the sand. Manuela was jealous of those who went into the sea, swam and leaped in the waves. She would watch from the hotel patio, annoyed by the racket, the shouting, the joy. More than one young man approached as she embroidered or walked through the port, wanting to talk or flirt with her, but Manuela was uniformly rude to them all. She had had enough of men forever.

  One August evening Manuela set off on one of her walks along the beach, going almost as far as the port. Her slight shadow reflected on the sand. She was carrying her boots, her feet bare to step on the moon. It was humid. She could hear men singing as they stumbled out of a bar. The songs were in a foreign language. Sailors, she thought. Fishing boats from around the world moored in the port, the crew getting drunk before setting out again. The songs grew louder; Manuela knew the sailors were on the beach now. The songs became whistles and shouts. She could make out a few flushed faces, a shiny cap soaked with grease. She hitched up her dress and walked into the sea so he could protect her.

  Manuela woke up in a sterile hospital room, in one of several metal beds lined up like the old women in her native town.

  “How are you?” a flat voice asked. “Is there someone we can contact?”

  Manuela shook her head no.

  “It’s over now. You’ll be fine.”

  Manuela still had the taste of the sea in her mouth and sand in her teeth.

  The hotel owner came to visit. They had grown close working together in the kitchen. The girl’s a marvelous cook, the woman thought. I should hire her, but after what happened, she’ll likely be scared and want to go home.

  “Feeling better?” the woman asked, running a hand over Manuela’s forehead. “I hear they were Norwegians off a boat moored here.”

  “Who?”

  She recoiled at the tarry smell of the hotel wafting from the woman’s dress.

  Another day, strange men came to visit, asking questions she had no idea how to answer. They kept saying: “You were so lucky. You almost drowned!”

  When she was discharged a week later, a smiling, bespectacled doctor said: “Now, you learn to swim. If not, no more diving into the sea, you hear? Promise me.” He held out his hand.

  Manuela stared at the man’s skin, then asked for some gloves.

  “What for?”

  “To wear.”

  Manuela left the hospital wearing a pair of the gloves nurses used when tending to burn victims. At a store in town, she replaced them with white cotton gloves. Then, at an art gallery, she bought an oil painting of a calm sea, a boat, and seagulls.

  The hotel owner was happy to see her. Manuela had dark circles under her eyes and bluish lips, as if the sea remained inside her permanently, using her body as a host.

  “Would you like to stay and work in the kitchen? I’d pay you a small wage, and the room would be free. What do you say?”

  Manuela accepted the offer. She cooked with her gloves on, never taking them off. She had to buy four or five pair on account of how quickly they soiled. The owner wanted her to take them off when she butchered chickens or rabbits—it wasn’t good to be seen walking down the hall with blood-soaked gloves—but she didn’t dare ask.

  Manuela resumed her afternoons on the patio
, embroidering petit point as she stared out at the sea. But never again did she go onto the beach at night.

  One morning in late fall, when her dresses had grown too tight, Manuela left without a word, just as she had come, saying goodbye to no one, not even to the salty breeze that followed her to the station.

  As inscrutable as ever, Manuela returned to Scarlet Manor. She had acquired two new features: the white cotton gloves she would wear until she died and a growing belly that settled between expanding hips. A few months later, Manuela collapsed on the bed with the purple canopy and, as her mother had done years before, called out to a now more healthy-looking Bernarda.

  “Get between my legs and pull the baby out like you would a lamb!”

  The cook grunted, spit on her hands, and rubbed them together.

  At sundown, Manuela gave birth to an otherworldly little girl she named Olvido. The old women in town whispered about the provenance of a name that meant “forget,” but they never learned whether it was chosen out of a desire to erase some event from her past or simply on a whim.

  After Olvido was born, Manuela decided to dedicate her life and her daughter’s to achieving one goal: the Laguna women were to become decent and garner the town’s respect, something they had never had. Her first act was to light a sacrificial bonfire in the yard at Scarlet Manor. She burned the opera sofas, the silk damask curtains, the pictures of harem concubines, the garters, the satin dressing gowns, the Il Seraglio negligees and Moorish pants. She burned any potential reminder of the manor’s past as an opulent brothel, and she did it before the eyes and noses of the town. They needed to understand that the era of Laguna whores died in those purifying flames.