The House of Impossible Loves

by Cristina Lopez Barrio

  Since she did not dare burn the girls who worked for her—though she did relish the thought of such sacrifice—Manuela gave them each a stack of bills and told them to go practice the profession elsewhere.

  The Galician woman, who had acted as madam over the last year, believed she was safe from this inquisitorial cleansing. She was wrong. Early one morning, as she ate breakfast in the kitchen, Manuela announced in her northern accent that she, too, must leave.

  “But I’ve nowhere to go. I don’t even remember the way back to the sea. This was my home, here, with you . . .”

  “I’ll pay you enough to jog your memory. Just go. My daughter and I are respectable now.”

  That night the Galician woman took a rope and hanged herself from the chestnut tree. Her body swung there until morning, like a censer perfuming the town with the eucalyptus exuded by her dead heart. Manuela buried her in the very center of the labyrinthine rose garden. Only she knew which winding paths led there: she did not want to share that grave or that place with anyone. There, multi-hued roses climbed up and over one another, creating a tower. The sun shone down on the earth, and Manuela felt at peace.

  Bernarda was the only one to stay on at Scarlet Manor. Manuela was afraid to evict her for fear she’d hang herself from the chestnut tree, too. The town would accuse her of filling the streets with the smell of a horse stable.

  When Padre Imperio heard news of the brothel’s demise, he cried uncontrollably. Kneeling before Christ on the cross, he thanked God while lamenting, between snuffles and tears, that this destruction came too late. As he pounded his chest to stop his heart from aching with memories, he heard the clatter of uneven floor tiles. Someone had come up behind him.

  “It’s done, Father. I burned everything evil in Scarlet Manor.”

  The priest turned to find Manuela. He studied her carefully—her hair, her eyes, her lips, her slim frame—but could see not the slightest resemblance to Clara Laguna.

  “Why are you staring? It’s me, Manuela. Don’t you recognize me?”

  Not even her voice resembled her mother’s. Clara’s had been deep but beautifully melodious; Manuela’s was rough, like Bernarda’s grunts.

  “You did what you had to, my child,” Padre Imperio replied.

  “Can I come to Mass now like the town nobles and respectable families?”

  “God’s house is always open, especially to those who need it most,” the priest confirmed as he crossed himself.

  Manuela Laguna’s final act of purification was completed when she met with a lawyer with an office on the main street who’d recently arrived from Segovia. His business was inheritance law, wealth and estate management. Around forty, he had an air of modernity; the black automobile he drove was the envy of all. A man familiar with the region, who had sampled the Eastern pleasures of Scarlet Manor more than once, he was not of the opinion that money was in any way tied to morality and so agreed to represent Manuela. He would manage the fortune her mother had amassed, a fortune he invested in bonds and real estate far from the locals’ forked tongues. The Laguna riches, and his own—for he kept a generous share of the profits—soon grew to a sizeable beast.

  Manuela now decided to renovate Scarlet Manor. Decency should feel at home if it were to stay, she thought. She painted the smoke-scarred exterior a soft red and the shutters white. She decorated the bedrooms and parlor with flowered cornice moldings, bought a clawfoot tub for the bathroom, and installed a linen closet in the entryway. The only piece of furniture to survive the brothel massacre was the big iron bed, with the purple canopy and wool mattress that had witnessed her mother’s carnal exploits, her own birth, and that of her daughter, Olvido. Keeping it was the closest Manuela had ever come to nostalgia.

  7

  EVERY SUNDAY THE Castilian town woke to the sound of church bells that announced the start of a day dedicated to God and rest. The doves that filled the bell tower stirred and took flight when the man they called “el Tolón” summoned the faithful to Mass, as he stood on piles of bird droppings. The smell of toasted bread, homemade soap, and freshly washed clothes began to flow through the streets and over the fields. Mass started at ten, but Padre Imperio opened the heavy doors at nine-thirty to silently let in parishioners—the rich in their veils, mantillas, and flannel, the poor in their patches and corduroy. The town square would empty, bereft of gossip, mules, and screeching children as the sound of the fountain with its three spouts lulled dogs to sleep, lying in ditches, their snouts pointed skyward. And yet, on that last Sunday in May, as the Republican flag flapped outside the town hall, a neoclassical building across from the church, the square was still full when the priest closed the wooden doors. Peasants and day laborers were protesting in their work clothes, demanding better pay and land reform.

  Manuela had attended Sunday Mass ever since she burned the brothel luxuries and received Padre Imperio’s blessing—despite Clara’s warning that a cursed woman only ever went to church on her deathbed. Manuela rode into town on a cart pulled by a black horse without a name. She dressed in dark clothing, blouses that throttled her neck, wide skirts, shawls knitted in solitude by her gloved hands. She was not yet thirty-two, but her face had aged—her eyes dull, her cheeks sunken, her lips scored by deep lines. No one, especially no one who had known her mother, could fathom why Manuela Laguna was so ugly. To top it off, she was losing her one charm, her Andalusian hair. Whenever she traveled by cart, mangy clumps would fall out and sail on the wind. Every now and then—and no one could ever explain why—they would appear on top of the maroon Bible on the church altar, floating in the mayor’s breakfast bowl or the pharmacist’s expertly prepared medicines.

  That Sunday, Olvido Laguna went to church for the very first time. She had just turned six and had left Scarlet Manor on only a few occasions. Manuela kept her hidden away, washing her face with insect-infused water, scrubbing it with honeysuckle root and pig bristle, but none of those remedies worked, nor did any other Manuela invented. The child’s inexplicable beauty, which her mother strove to eradicate with miracle potions, scouring, and poultices, was not only immune to it all but grew even more intense. The girl would wake up even prettier after these artisanal exfoliations, her skin even softer, her cheekbones more luminous, her lips more attractive with their blood-red curves, her eyes an even purer, more brilliant blue. Olvido’s beauty was exceptionally disobedient.

  After every failure, Manuela locked herself in her room and wailed with an adolescent fury. Sometimes she cried from morning until afternoon, and when her daughter softly rapped her knuckles against the door, she was startled that the girl was still alive. Manuela thought Olvido would suddenly die—no one could survive the burden of such beauty. The very thought of losing her daughter infuriated Manuela. She wanted to see her married to a rich, honorable man and bear children unencumbered by the Laguna name. Manuela believed this was the only way to earn the townspeople’s respect, and until that day arrived, Olvido must live. After that, it didn’t matter if her daughter died. After all, how dare she be more beautiful than her grandmother, the whore with the golden eyes?

  On this Sunday, Olvido was wearing a new dress, thick wool herringbone. It swathed her from chin to heel as spring pricked at her skin underneath. What bothered Olvido even more than the welts that rose up from her incessant scratching was the blindness her mother imposed. On the way to town she could not see the rockrose in flower or squirrels jumping from branch to branch because a hat with an enormous brim covered her eyes.

  When they arrived at church, Manuela helped her daughter out of the cart and smoothed her wrinkled dress before leading her into the shadow of the open doorway. Olvido walked into that place of worship and sat with her mother in one of the back pews, the townspeople’s glances reeking with disdain. The Laguna family sins necessitated this distant pew. Sitting still on the hard wood, free of her tyrannical hat at last (Manuela had been forced to take it off out of respect for God), the girl watched candle flames flicker for the spirits
of the dead, choosing to believe those little lights were fairies. She smiled at them, avoiding her mother’s strained yellow grin, and dared to make a few wishes: Dear luminous fairies, please let someone play with me, let my mother’s cane break and my father be rid of his fleas. Her hands interlaced, Olvido held her breath after every wish.

  In the distance, at the altar, Padre Imperio spread his arms like the eagle he once was and recited from memory the Spanish Empire sermons that gave him his name when he first arrived from the colonies, full of the furor of youth. The church filled once more with Caribbean seas, ambushes amid coconut palms and tobacco plants, and swampy deaths. The devil reappeared in the form of a bayonet, a mosquito, a burning sun, and raging fevers. The old parishioners grew as emotional as ever, though some were still unsure after thirty years what it all meant. Others wept because they finally understood. Not even the young parishioners were immune to the glory and fear sparkling in the priest’s dark pupils. They did not know the story behind his name, but tears still sprang from their eyes. Some of the girls suspected Padre Imperio was a distant relative of Imperio Argentina, the star of La hermana San Sulpicio, a film they had seen when the summer cinema came to town a few years earlier.

  Padre Imperio wiped the sweat from his brow with a linen handkerchief, his white hair glowing like a halo, and crossed himself when he realized some of the pews were empty, that the church was not bursting with faith and the smell of sheep as it had the century before. He lowered his arms. There was no need for the censer to swing from side to side, leaving a perfumed wake among the faithful’s prayers. He set his hands on the maroon Bible and sighed.

  When it came time to sing the Gloria, Manuela Laguna joined in until all the others heard her and grew silent, a frosty insult rippling through the church. The song eventually returned to the parishioners’ lips, but it was now an arctic hymn that would have turned Christ’s lips blue. Padre Imperio then offered Communion, but Manuela stayed where she was; there was much to repent before she dared fall in line.

  When Mass was over, Olvido was burdened by the weight of her hat once again. She did, however, take advantage of the spectacle before them—day laborers and peasants demanding their rights, chanting ¡Viva! for the new republic. She folded back the brim of her hat and smiled at a few people. Only one person smiled back, a boy playing between the adults’ legs. It was the schoolmaster’s youngest child. He was seven years old, had a cowlick of brown hair at the base of his neck, gray eyes, a dimpled chin, and plump lips. He curled up the corners of his mouth for Olvido to see, and she remembered that image forever.

  “What are you doing? What do you think you’re doing?” Manuela had just discovered her daughter’s beaming face. “Never smile at strangers!” She squeezed the girl’s thin arm. “Let’s go home, where I’ll teach you to behave like a respectable child!”

  The two of them climbed into the cart. Restless, the black horse whinnied. The schoolmaster, a lean man with ash-colored eyes, stared. Manuela nodded, but he did not return the greeting. It’s still too soon to forgive the Laguna women their carnal shame, she thought as she seized the reins, but one day they would acknowledge her. She lashed the animal’s back. The horse’s smell always made her hungry; she would make chicken in egg and almond sauce.

  Olvido played with the memory of that gray-eyed boy as her mother raced home. Springtime accosted them as they came close to Scarlet Manor: bees buzzing, fields of poppy and bellflower, the breeze laden with pollen. Manuela took Olvido’s hat off only when they reached the iron gate with its funeral bow.

  “Get down and open it.”

  They heard a dog barking.

  “I’ll never smile at a stranger again. I promise, Madre.”

  Manuela gripped the reins with gloved hands.

  “Be quiet. Wait for me inside.”

  Olvido walked down the drive worn by the force of Clara Laguna’s gaze and waited in the entryway. She leaned against the linen cupboard, the smell of lavender sachets hidden between sheets and towels slipping out through the latticework doors.

  When Manuela came in, she pulled out the cane used to beat rugs.

  “Take off your dress. I don’t want to soil it.”

  Olvido undid the buttons and the zipper along one side. “This child will cleanse the memory of this family,” Manuela muttered as she studied the slight figure stepping out of her daughter’s dress. “And if I need to cane her senseless to make that happen, then that is God’s will.” She brought the cane down on the girl’s back. The sun perched high in the afternoon sky, its light mingling with the sound of tender young bones bearing the brunt of the lashes.

  Once the cane was back in its bed of clean linen and lavender sachets, the smell of rain washed through the pine trees, and Olvido ran into the yard, to “her father,” who lived among the hydrangea and morning glories. The girl liked to pretend a curse had turned her father into the scrawny black flea-bitten dog who frequented the yard.

  “Papi, Papi! Look what I brought you!” Olvido pulled two slices of cinnamon cake and some chorizo out of a little pouch.

  At the sight of such treats the dog’s eyes sparkled and his snout grew wet, and he crept toward the girl wagging a tattered tail.

  “Oh, Papi, I missed you,” Olvido said, hugging him around the neck as he licked her face. “That tickles!” She opened her little hands and the dog gobbled up the treats, then she petted his head. “It’s good, isn’t it, Papi? You have to eat if you want to get better.”

  The dog licked her with a desperate love.

  “Now rest for a while on your bed of leaves, and your fleas will soon be gone. I asked some fairies in church to get rid of them. Bye, Papi. I’m going to play with my friend.”

  Olvido walked away from the dog’s dark eyes. She wandered through the tomatoes, lettuce, and squash in the garden, her back stinging all the way. The sun hid behind a raft of clouds as Olvido walked into the clearing surrounded by lush honeysuckle. It began to rain.

  “Hi,” she greeted the bushiest plant. “What do you want to play?” she asked.

  There was a whisper of leaves and stalks rustling.

  “You always want to play that.”

  Olvido picked up a long vine and began to jump rope. It started to rain harder, the water soothing her burning back.

  “When I’m bigger, I’m going to learn magic and undo the spell that bewitched you and my papi. Then you’ll have hands and feet again, and blond, blond hair that I’ll braid for you.” Her brow was damp and her shoes sank into rain-soaked earth.

  Olvido returned home when the smell of chicken in egg and almond sauce filled the garden. Manuela had been preparing dishes from her childhood ever since Bernarda died a few months earlier in an accident in the stable. One morning, after finishing her chores, the cook decided to hide away among bags of alfalfa to suck on her greatest treasure: a scrap of Clara Laguna’s shroud. The black horse inhaled the odor she emanated, mistaking it for a mare in heat. He rammed the stall door until it opened, then he shot out and kicked the bags of alfalfa in glee. Bernarda’s skull shattered at the first strike, her brains lying naked on their yellow hiding spot, the scrap of shroud between her lips. They buried her at the cemetery in town. “After all, she never practiced the profession, and her simple nature shielded her from sin,” Padre Imperio declared. It was winter, and snow streamed from the sky. The pine forest and hills around the graveyard reeked of mare for weeks.

  Manuela moved down to Bernarda’s room, next to the pantry, the room where she was raised. The smell of whitewashed walls and fresh provisions was comforting. She kept the straight razor her mother had used to shave the cook, which Bernarda continued to use in memory of her mistress. You could have been with me much longer, Manuela thought as she lightly fried the pieces of chicken, but you always did prefer her over me.

  After lunch, Olvido went to her room on the second floor for a siesta, wishing time would speed up to her favorite part of the day. After dinner, she and her mother woul
d sit in the parlor, in front of the fire, and Manuela would tell stories. Her voice lost its gruffness as she spoke of the sea, of beaches and cliffs. Although every now and then she would glare at Olvido and snap: “I did it for you.”

  “Did what, Madre?”

  “Asked her to leave.”

  “Who?”

  “She should have understood and never hung herself from the chestnut tree.”

  “Who did that, Madre?”

  “Be quiet. You’ll make it up to me.”

  Manuela would fill the fireplace with logs once more and recite another story to keep the flame alive.

  Olvido grew up with Mass, her mother’s stories, savory chicken dishes, remedies, and beatings. Manuela was sure her plans for her daughter would come to pass, but one thing did worry her: Olvido was illiterate. For several years Manuela tried to get her into school. Every September she put on her plainest dress and headed through town. The rows of women who had taken their mothers’ place were now split into two camps. Their whispers had grown silent; they kept an eye out for traces of treasonous behavior instead. Whenever Manuela passed, they would simply look her up and down and purse their lips.

  The school was a two-story ancestral home with mildewed walls and a vine-covered roof littered with cat feces—it was their favorite place to mate, screeching in a flood of moonlight.

  “Your daughter doesn’t need an education. No doubt she’ll practice the same lowly profession as you, and there’s no need to be literate for that,” the schoolmaster said to Manuela Laguna year after year, his gray eyes flashing.