The House of Impossible Loves

by Cristina Lopez Barrio

  But Manuela had no time to worry: in order to consolidate her new social position, she was organizing a tea at Scarlet Manor for the town’s elite. The mayor’s wife, the pharmacist’s wife, the lawyer’s wife, the wife of the largest landowner, and the widow of a notary from the city, along with others of lesser lineage, would repay her donation to the new school. Manuela bought sky-blue cards that smelled of ink and had Olvido write the invitations. She then placed them in matching blue envelopes and dropped them in the respective mailboxes, her hopes as high as those of a girl throwing her first birthday party. Manuela would offer the house specialties—boiled coffee and cinnamon cake—served in fine china cups and on silver trays. A week before the event, Manuela began ironing the Lagartera lace tablecloth, one of many presents the diplomat gave Clara Laguna during the brothel years. That Saturday morning, Manuela spread it on the table, setting it with silver platters piled high with slices of cake, the fine china coffeepot and cups. Then she scrubbed the house from top to bottom.

  “Sit, please, ladies. Make yourselves at home. Mrs. Mayor, you sit here; it’ll be better for your back.” Manuela drank a cup of coffee in one gulp. “Yes, thank you, the yard is lovely.” She drank another. “No, that was years ago.” She ate three slices of cinnamon cake. “We no longer practice the profession. We are ladies now, like you.” Her hands shook. She went to the kitchen for more coffee, pouring herself another cup. “A broken heart made my mother turn to prostitution.” She shot back another cup, patted the corners of her mouth with a napkin. “I burned everything to purify this Christian home.” She smoothed her hair pulled into a bun at the back of her neck. “Semen! Semen in the garden!” She nervously chewed a roll. “Never! Why, that’s just malicious gossip!” She ate. She drank. “My daughter will be an aristocrat, you’ll see . . .”

  At six o’clock, just as the tea was about to start, a severe case of black diarrhea confined Manuela to the bathroom. It was Olvido who answered the door as servants delivered notes of apology from their mistresses, unable to attend due to an unforeseen indisposition: the mayor’s wife, rheumatism; the lawyer’s wife, toothache; the widow, a migraine; the pharmacist’s wife, colic; the landowner’s wife, cold sweats; not to mention the paltry complaints from those of lesser descent.

  Manuela would forever associate this affront with the smell of coffee grounds in her feces. She considered asking the mayor to refund her money but at the last minute was afraid that would close the door on a respectable social life forever. Maybe I was rash, she thought; my mother’s sins were many, and it’ll take time to expiate them all. Besides, it wouldn’t be seemly to demand the money now. There are other ways to repay such a slight.

  Two days later, the pharmacist’s wife was found dead on a group of rocks in the forest. Clutched in her hands were the stalks of rosemary she had gathered for her husband’s masterly potions. Her throat was split by a wet, red smile, and a section of her bowel lay sizzling in the sun.

  The Civil Guard immediately suspected the Republican soldiers hiding in the hills to escape jail or the firing squad. One of them must have dared come into town, seeking food or medicine, and been startled by the pharmacist’s wife, slitting her throat to keep her quiet. What the Civil Guard could not explain was the viciousness of the attack, her belly torn open.

  “People are hungry,” mumbled one of the guards in charge.

  “And it’s only going to get worse,” another replied.

  They sent for reinforcements and organized a search of the hills crowning the town. The operation lasted two days. On the last night the guards came into the square dragging a man in handcuffs. He had a beard of moss and lichen, the strength of the countryside set in the wrinkles on his forehead. The prisoner denied any involvement in the murder. The guards tried to get him to reveal where his companions were hiding. The man ran a hand over his beard and spit on the floor. The next day orders arrived from headquarters: either the man revealed the whereabouts of his cohorts, or he would be executed.

  Three shots rang out along the road just as the first stars began to shine. Esteban hid among the pines and ferns to see whether the prisoner was his cousin. He wanted to warn him when he first heard what the guards were planning, but his mother locked him in the cellar, shouting, “They’re not going to kill another one of mine!” The man fell forward onto the ground; he was one of the soldiers who had been hiding with Esteban’s cousin. He opened his eyes just before death, and the last thing he saw was the face of the boy who had pretended to march with a defeated rifle. The murder case was closed.

  For the rest of that summer, none of the old women in black shawls was seen in the streets, not even when the sun faded quietly into the forest. If they whispered at all, it was before their increasingly miserly stews, with only the flames or a trusted relative to listen to them. The men drank watered-down wine and halfheartedly played cards or dominoes at the tavern. Very few ever stopped to speak in the town square; most hurried through as if pursued by the clatter of their own shoes on the cobblestones. Only on Sundays, before and after church, did the townspeople stop to chat. Manuela Laguna, on the other hand, passed the church doors unafraid and well fed, greeting the town’s elite, demonstrating to herself and others that she bore no grudge.

  It wasn’t until the ghostly fog returned in late October that the old women left their homes and some Republican soldiers descended from the hills. The square filled with petticoats, swords, and frost, and the church with frozen lips. Shielded by a mist so heavy nothing was visible beyond their own hands, the old women and their daughters felt their way to the church, following the tenuous light of a candle. Tired of eating carob and hard rye rolls, there they found a black-market stall offering lentils, oil, and whole wheat bread. They occasionally bartered with one another but more often paid a king’s ransom or traded a rabbit to the boy from one town over making a fortune on black-market goods.

  “Lentils. Delicious lentils,” he whispered from his stall hidden behind the big wooden doors.

  The wind took it upon itself to spread the word through the fog.

  But the old women and their daughters were not the only ones taking advantage of the sins those old souls had committed. Fugitives would come down from the hills under cover of night to doze in dark corners until the square filled with fog, then leap out to embrace a father, mother, or girlfriend offering not only love but often a dried sausage, a loaf of country bread, or socks to protect against the mountain cold.

  Certain unwritten rules were soon established. You would touch the head of anyone you bumped into to make sure there was no tricorne hat. Once you were certain it was not the Civil Guard, you asked the reason for his visit. People thus helped one another find the black-market stall or the relative they were hoping to meet. No one ever gave a real name, using aliases instead. That fog the townspeople had respected for centuries and most had feared became an ally of hunger and love. The dead old souls could no longer purge their sins in peace and sometimes tried to rid the square of intruders, turning their steely wind into gale-force gusts.

  “Enough, you bastards!” could be heard in the thick of those souls. “We’re all outcasts here.”

  Padre Imperio, well aware of all that went on in the fog through the confessions of widows, wives, and mothers, in an act of compassion ordered Tolón to ring the morning bells as late as possible. Some days the square cleared when the sun had already lost its red hue and the priest had to open both church doors to allow the souls back into their tombs, to harbor both fugitives and the black-market boy in the cellars until night, when the dark and cold of October concealed their escape.

  One day after church, when Manuela was distracted, Esteban asked Olvido to meet him under the cover of the fog, but she was afraid there’d not be enough time and her mother would notice.

  Manuela still rose at dawn to begin her chores, just as Bernarda had raised her to do. She tended the garden, took care of the animals, cooked roasts, and made stews. Hunger did not find its
way to Scarlet Manor: Manuela had enough money to buy almost anything, and the garden continued to disobey the seasons. Despite the chill of fall, there was more than enough produce to meet their needs after they had given the required quota to the government official in charge.

  “Come to my room on Thursday night,” Olvido proposed instead. “Wait until midnight, then climb up to my window.”

  Esteban felt a vomit as white as Manuela’s gloves rise in his throat.

  Just past midnight the following Thursday, the moonlight pierced Esteban’s face.

  Olvido was waiting by the open window. Esteban jumped off the sill, and the two embraced.

  “You smell like cedar,” she said, stroking the sawdust behind his ears.

  “I made a cupboard today. And you smell of lemons.” His breath was cold.

  “I made marmalade with my mother.”

  “You’ve grown.” Olvido’s larger, firmer breasts pressed into his chest.

  “My mother says I’m a woman now.”

  “You are.”

  Olvido felt the taste of snow in her mouth. Her hair suddenly fell down her back into his hands, which rested on her bottom.

  “I should have come sooner,” Esteban murmured between kisses. “We’ll never be apart this long again. I’d rather die,” he said as an image of Manuela Laguna’s yellow smile filled his mind.

  Their desire slipped through the pine forest, triggering the green-tinged bells, which began to play an angelic melody, just as they did after Mass. Padre Imperio startled awake. Who but the devil’s minions could be ringing those bells, announcing their master’s arrival? Several townspeople, wrapped in blankets and with sleep in their eyes, came into the street, plodding along underneath the stars, shuffling to the church. They hammered on the doors, demanding that the Glorias and hallelujahs stop. A pair of policemen from the Civil Guard came armed with rifles, fearing a Republican Army fugitive was ringing those bells, inciting rebellion. The priest opened both wooden doors with three scapulars around his neck, mistaking the guards and his parishioners for Satan’s soldiers.

  “Who’s ringing those bells, Father, and why?” the Civil Guard corporal demanded.

  “An envoy of the devil himself,” Padre Imperio replied.

  “We’ll see about that.”

  “It must be the wind. It’s really quite strong,” the other guard mused. “And the bells. They’re old and run-down. We’ll take them down tomorrow.”

  “Not a word about what we’ve seen here!” the corporal ordered Padre Imperio.

  Esteban returned home a little before dawn, and the town fell quiet. That morning, not a single inhabitant could properly perform his job, and it was decided at a special town hall meeting to melt the bells to make a statue of General Franco.

  Esteban returned to Olvido’s room every Thursday night. He had never cared about the curse on the Laguna family and the misfortune foretold for any man who dared break it—not when he was a boy and could not understand, certainly not now as a young man nearly sixteen years of age. Olvido would never suffer for love, he told himself, because I will never abandon her. Her family’s disgrace means nothing to me. I will marry her. I will marry the Laguna with the hats, as she’s known. Not even her mother’s gloves can make me change my mind.

  After leaving the carpenter’s shop, Esteban crouched among the pine and beech trees until midnight. He trembled with fear and impatience, sometimes spitting a frothy, salty liquid like the sea. At the first cry of an owl, he would come out of hiding, leap over the breach in the stone wall, and climb the trellis. Olvido would be waiting by candlelight to read verses by Saint John of the Cross. (“O night that has united / the Lover with his beloved, / transforming the beloved in her Lover.”) The new church bells, which Padre Imperio subjected to three days of exorcisms and novenas before they were hung, never again rang as they kissed. Meanwhile, Manuela Laguna snored in her first-floor bedroom. Though still not that old, Manuela suffered from arthritis and, every evening at dinner, splashed laudanum into her wine to ease the pain and allow her to sleep.

  Olvido told Esteban that after the tea fiasco, though she swore she was over it, her mother killed more chickens than ever to placate her anger. She would march into the kitchen during midafternoon and pluck them alive. The birds’ shrieks swarmed through the rooms like ghosts until Manuela deigned to wring their necks. She did not even cook them then, but stayed to savor the taste of death.

  One afternoon in early January of 1941, fleeing the hens’ torment, Olvido disobeyed her mother and slipped into the loveliest room in all of Scarlet Manor. It had not been used since the death of Clara Laguna, that woman neither Manuela nor the townspeople could or would forget. The door creaked as it opened, and Olvido held her breath. Wrapped in half-light stood the great iron bed, still hung with the disheveled purple canopy that had danced to the beat of her grandmother’s revenge. The room did not smell of sex or seclusion; it did not smell of cobwebs or mothballs. Every corner of the room exuded an aroma it took Olvido a moment to identify. Only when the wind escaped from the yard and the door blew shut did she realize the smell was oak.

  Olvido crept over to admire the blue arabesque washbasin. It was there that Clara Laguna had washed away her tears for the Andalusian landowner. It was there, too, that Bernarda had washed Olvido’s newborn body. A terrified squawk rose up to that room, and dusk hurtled toward the window like a knife to a chicken’s neck. Olvido walked over to her grandmother’s dressing table. A silver-handled brush and mirror sat on a yellowed lace doily. The metal shone enticingly. Olvido picked up the brush and began to pull it through her long tresses. No one had ever described Clara Laguna’s face, but Olvido saw it reflected in the oval mirror: chestnut hair sprouting daisies and golden eyes turned to stone. Olvido continued to brush her hair. The whisper of a river could be heard in the walls, and Olvido’s stomach cramped. That was not just any river, she suddenly knew, but the river running through the oak grove. A voice ordered her to go there with Esteban, for nowhere else on earth was as perfect for lovemaking.

  Olvido proposed this to Esteban during one of their clandestine meetings. Now that the snow had come, he said, the river would be covered in a cap of ice as brittle as burnt sugar and the wind would buffet their love until it froze. “I’ll take a blanket and hold you even tighter,” Olvido assured him, pressing her lips to his. Lost in her kiss, Esteban began to think it might be a good idea to meet in the oak grove, far from Manuela Laguna. He would rather be taken by the sweet pins and needles of snow than by that woman’s bloody gloves.

  At midnight the following Thursday, Olvido climbed down the trellis into the yard. She ran past the wilting squash and avoided the roses—for their perfumed tongues told Manuela everything that happened nearby—crossed the honeysuckle clearing, and jumped through the breach in the stone wall. Esteban was waiting for her in the pine forest.

  “Can’t we just stay here, Olvido?”

  “Let’s go to the oak grove, please.”

  Hand in hand, they walked to the hill a dapple-gray horse had climbed one stormy morning carrying the Andalusian and Clara Laguna. From up there, the oak trees seemed to have been swallowed by the valley. The night air was heavy and humid, and the moonlight plunged into the river, scattering like silver droppings.

  Esteban leaned into the trunk of an oak tree carved with an old heart. He held Olvido, caressing her neck with his lips. Inexplicably, he suddenly had the urge to sing a saeta and Olvido wanted to twist his hair, which suddenly gave off an odor of olive oil, around her fingers.

  “Tomorrow I’ll hunt partridge and give them to you so you can stew them in sauce,” he said.

  “I’ll make the dish more delicious than anything you’ve ever tasted.”

  A cold breeze brushed their foreheads, their lips, their cheeks. The grass crunched as if someone were walking on it.

  “Is someone watching us?” Esteban asked.

  “Who?”

  “Your mother?”

&n
bsp; Olvido peered into the dark between tree trunks.

  “Something’s moving over there,” she said, pointing to a shadow. “It looks like a woman.”

  “Let’s go back to the pine forest.” The boy trembled as he thought he saw bloody gloves reflected on the river.

  “No, wait.” Olvido was struck by a cramp like the one she’d felt the previous day in Clara Laguna’s bedroom. Her eyes turned yellow and her tongue bore the taste of a secret grave. “I’ll go up to the attic tomorrow and find the chest engraved with your name.”

  “What attic? What chest?” Esteban stared at her in fear.

  She gave no reply but walked to the river, shedding her clothes: first her coat, then her sweater, her blouse, until she was wearing only her bra.

  “Olvido! Come back! You’ll catch cold!”

  Esteban looked at his beloved’s naked back, saw the white skin, the scars left by the thrashing of a cane. When he caught up to Olvido at the river’s edge, she seemed disoriented. He handed her her clothes, and the blue slowly returned to her eyes. She shivered as she dressed.

  “Does she still hit you?” Esteban asked.

  “Sometimes. But now when she does, I think of you and it hurts much less.”

  That was the first time Esteban considered killing Manuela Laguna. He would smash her skull with a rock until his hands ached.

  9

  THE ATTIC WAS FILLED with junk organized according to the whims of nostalgia. A mountain of white porcelain bedpans teetered in one corner. They were used by the prostitutes who lived at Scarlet Manor all those years ago, but only Manuela Laguna knew why these pans, joyfully corroded by urine, had survived the death of the brothel. To the right was always the smell of gunpowder. Propped against the ruins of a French-style chest of drawers, the hunting rifle continued to weep its victories. It had been there since the Andalusian gave Clara Laguna the estate, but no one knew to whom it belonged, how old it was, or how many it had killed. Across from the chest of drawers were shelves with pots the Laguna witch used to brew her potions to cure evil eye. On the back of one shelf were mummified letters the landowner had written Clara, some of which she used years later to try and lure him back. Also surviving the dust on the shelves were the rigid sack containing the bones of a cat, the thread for repairing hymens, and a few jars of magic ingredients.