The House of Impossible Loves

by Cristina Lopez Barrio

  When Padre Imperio’s funeral was over, August cooled with a sudden rain that turned to hail overnight. Hunger grew more acute in stomachs as the townspeople wept to the pounding of ice pellets, unsure whether their grief was over the loss of that magnificent man or the misery of this time of weevils and brown bread. The boy with the black-market stand was seen jumping over the cemetery wall when the moon rose; it was even rumored that fugitives came down from the hills, taking advantage of the dark and the bad weather to say goodbye to the priest who offered a safe haven from the Civil Guard in the church basement. Rarely in the week after his death was Padre Imperio’s grave unattended. The Sunday faithful went during the day, the outlaws at night. Until, that is, the Civil Guard set up watch; then only magpies sought the shade of the headstone when the hail stopped and August returned, leaving the policemen no choice but to go back to the station without a single prisoner, just star-flecked tricorne hats.

  The constant coming and going in the cemetery prevented Olvido from visiting Esteban in the grave next to his father’s. BELOVED SON AND BROTHER, REST IN PEACE, read the epitaph engraved on a headstone sticking up from the earth like an ornamental comb. When the undertaker locked the gate at six o’clock, Olvido and her daughter slipped out of their hiding spot in a nobleman’s vault. At first the magpies squawked, nearly tearing their beaks apart, trying to warn the undertaker, who lived in a hut not far away, of this intruder. Olvido threw stones at their wings until they came to tolerate her. After closing, they flew up and down the cemetery paths in search of shiny objects dropped by grief-stricken mourners, while Olvido sat on her lover’s grave, earth warmed by decomposing kisses. She rested her head on the tombstone, stretched out her legs, and read Saint John of the Cross out loud in the cool of the spirits, while Margarita raked dirt into little piles she then knocked over. Sometimes Olvido would stop reading and play with her daughter; at seventeen, she herself was still a child. The grave was piled with little mounds harboring memories. One held the smell of sawdust from behind Esteban’s ears, another their icy embraces beneath the giant oaks.

  When evening nodded off and the cemetery filled with the sounds of nightfall, the bones of the dead sparkled in the ossuary like giant fireflies, headstones glowed purple, and cypress shadows roamed the paths with their lances. Olvido lay on the grave, one cheek against the earth, and told Esteban about Margarita’s new teeth and the stews she made as she thought of him; in tears, she swore she would never forget him. Only when Margarita complained of hunger, demanded her dinner, did Olvido sweep the grave smooth and replace the bunches of flowers so as not to be discovered. Under cover of darkness, she jumped the lowest part of the wall with her daughter holding tight to her neck. Once, outside the church, Esteban’s sister threatened to tear Olvido’s hair out if she ever discovered Olvido was disturbing her brother’s grave at night.

  “You are nothing to him, not you or your bastard,” she snapped, peering at the child as her mother looked on from a distance, wringing a black handkerchief.

  But Olvido could not stay away from Esteban’s grave. That ground whispering memories is what kept her alive—that dirt, the love she bore for her daughter, and the revenge she inherited. She would not let Manuela Laguna forget what she did to Esteban. Even so, after countless sleepless nights watching over her daughter, Olvido began to consider leaving Scarlet Manor and that town. In the wee hours, recalling Padre Imperio’s words as he sat on his mule, Olvido sometimes packed their clothes into a dusty old suitcase she found in the attic, then unpacked them again in the morning as she watched her mother eat gizzards for breakfast. As long as we’re here, Olvido thought, she’ll be reminded that her dreams will never come true. We are the face of her failure.

  Later in the evening, her youth trembled as she hid in the vault, waiting for six o’clock. Margarita napped on her eternally frozen stone as a mountain breeze carried the fresh smell of pine and fern.

  The only one to ever discover Olvido in the cemetery was Padre Rafael, who stayed on after his predecessor’s funeral. The old women in black shawls called him Padre Gigante. Not only was he big and broad-shouldered—his cassocks had to be made to size—but he was also exceptionally tall. Of Basque origin, with blue eyes and blond hair, Padre Rafael nearly fell from the pulpit during his first Sunday sermon, when the floorboards cracked under his beast-of-burden weight. The floor had to be reinforced with a steel plate, and even then, many a Sunday parishioner paid more attention to the possibility of his skull cracking on the tile floor, as the wood groaned and nails worked their way out, than to his quiet sermons. But Padre Rafael’s sermons and his nature were the only quiet things about him. In every other respect his time on earth was a cacophony of noise and tremors. Fields, cobblestones, and floors shook with his steps. He was never able to go anywhere without an elephantine thunder announcing his presence, as if the very earth echoed every footfall. The day he walked into church to officiate at Padre Imperio’s funeral, more than one parishioner thought an earthquake was coming. The maroon Bible shook on the altar, along with the host in the ciborium and the mourning rosettes on the pews; even the wine swirled in circles, all harbingers of telluric energy.

  Although they tried, the townspeople never got used to the laborious rattle that followed Padre Rafael wherever he went.

  “Here comes the giant,” the old women would say in the street as their few remaining teeth swung from their gums.

  “Here he comes,” they said as they hid in their homes during those difficult times, hurrying to keep clay stew pots from falling off shelves.

  Once they were sure the pulpit would hold the priest’s weight and the town would not shake as if an earthquake were happening, the parishioners began to miss Padre Imperio’s lively sermons, especially those who’d listened to them for years and now nodded off to the all too calm, clear words of Padre Rafael.

  The ruckus that accompanied Padre Rafael contrasted sharply with his affable nature. He was a slow, practical man who loved science and abhorred all physical exercise. Not once did he venture into the hills on Padre Imperio’s mule—it could not have withstood his weight—to give last rites to shepherds or parishioners who lived outside town. When autumn came and the fog of spirits returned, Tolón rang the morning bells precisely on time and the church doors remained closed. The priest thought such legends were nothing but a meteorological phenomenon, and the boy offering black-market goods, the old women bartering lentils, and the fugitives seeking the embraces of loved ones were forced to find somewhere else to hide when the noblemen’s souls disappeared.

  The day Padre Rafael came to the cemetery after six o’clock, his steps caused seismic waves that shook graves, rattling the bones of the dead in their coffins and creating a sinister clatter that tarnished the evening. Playing in the dirt on her father’s grave, Margarita Laguna began to cry inconsolably. Cypress trees swayed, magpies flapped off course, headstones wobbled. Olvido recognized the priest in that thunder, picked up her daughter, and fled to the vault. But guided by Margarita’s cries, the priest stood before them in no time at all.

  “The cemetery is closed, señorita,” he said, stonefaced.

  “We brought flowers to a family member and lost track of time. It’s a good thing you found us.”

  “The desecration of a grave, young lady, is a terrible thing.” The priest had seen the dirt under Olvido’s nails.

  “Her father is buried here,” Olvido replied, stroking her daughter’s hair.

  Margarita had stopped crying and was studying Padre Rafael with wide, wet eyes.

  “Her father’s remains belong to God and the earth now. I do not want to see you here after hours again, or I will have to call the police.”

  Padre Rafael walked them to the gate, then returned to investigate the rain damage to several vault roofs, not realizing his own presence might be more destructive.

  For some time following Padre Rafael’s warning, Olvido stayed out of the cemetery after the undertaker locked the gates.
But her need to be close to Esteban forced her to return, despite her fear of being arrested and having her daughter left in the care of Manuela Laguna. That idea was so horrific that she limited her furtive visits to once a month.

  As Margarita grew, so did Manuela’s hate for her. When the girl turned six, Olvido was so exhausted by insomnia and worry that she decided it was time for her daughter to go. She was school age, anyway, and Olvido worried the local children would be as mean to Margarita as they had been to her. It made no difference that the new school was built thanks to a donation from her mother; their family was still cursed, still carried the stench of dishonor. To execute her plans, Olvido asked the lawyer who managed the Laguna estate for help. By now he took his drives around town and the countryside in a brand-new silver car with a horn that startled the donkeys and gave chickens the runs.

  Olvido saw the lawyer for the first time just after Margarita was born. He arrived unannounced at Scarlet Manor, with urgent business for Manuela. Olvido opened the door in a flowered dressing gown that could not contain her milk-filled breasts, her hair grazing her shoulders, her eyes stormy and blue. From then on, the lawyer besieged her with letters declaring his admiration, his wish that they meet in secret. He sent gifts—bouquets of daisies and roses, coral necklaces, silver thimbles—and showed up at Scarlet Manor with any excuse to delight in the goddess-like attributes that had charmed him so. Olvido did not reply to a single letter, returned all of his gifts, and ignored him whenever he came. However, on her daughter’s sixth birthday, praying to God for rain, enough to flood the world, she sat down and wrote the following letter:

  Dear Sir,

  Please advise my mother that I will be sending my daughter, Margarita Laguna, to a boarding school in the capital, where she will remain all year long except for Christmas and summer vacations. I would also ask you to help choose a school where my daughter will receive a decent education.

  Yours sincerely,

  OLVIDO LAGUNA

  The lawyer, now a stooped man in his sixties, received the letter first thing in the morning a few days later. His maid set it on the silver tray with his breakfast. Having devoured a piece of garlic toast drizzled with oil, he absent-mindedly read the return address. Instinct brought his hand to his groin, staining his silk robe. He huffed angrily and choked on the smell of garlic.

  “Get this peasant fare out of here, and bring me buttered toast and marmalade!” he shouted at his maid.

  Spellbound, he turned back to the fine handwriting in the letter. He thought of the color blue, hips like a mountain stream, breasts like big, ripe figs . . . His hand went back to his groin, staining his robe yet again.

  A few hours later, dressed in an alpaca suit, he wrote Olvido a note to say he would be pleased to comply with her request, yours with affection, honor, and humility, the undersigned—on gold-embossed letterhead.

  The boarding school the lawyer chose for the youngest Laguna was run by Augustinian nuns on the outskirts of Madrid. He told Man­uela the news at one of their Thursday meetings. She rubbed her white gloves together and smiled: not seeing her granddaughter’s gray eyes and distancing Olvido from the shame of being an unwed mother was the best she could hope for at this point. But Manuela still wished to one day regain control over her daughter, and this seemed like a unique opportunity.

  “I’m glad you approve of the arrangements I made.”

  The lawyer, too, was celebrating Margarita’s departure. He pictured the young mother naked on satin sheets, with nothing but gratitude and time to spare.

  Because the lawyer had complied so completely and expeditiously with that request, from then on, any time Manuela and Olvido had something important to say to each other, they did so through him. He read Manuela the letters from her daughter and, when she spat a reply, asked Olvido to come to his office in town—always at the end of the day and always through the back door—so as to have the pleasure, my dear friend, of advising you in person of your mother’s wishes, yours always, affectionately, honored to be of service, the undersigned—on gold-embossed letterhead. P.S. I devotedly adore you . . .

  From behind a mahogany desk, strangled by a white shirt and Italian tie, the lawyer recited Manuela’s decisions to Olvido as if they were verses from Don Juan Tenorio, condensed desire sweating from his bald head and nose.

  “My dearest Olvido.” He pulled open a drawer. “Please accept this modest gift.” A leather case was placed on the desk.

  “You’ve done more than enough for me already.” Olvido’s eyes darkened.

  The lawyer stood from his large Spanish armchair and came to place a fleshy hand, speckled with age, on her exquisite forearm.

  “Ask anything of me, my dear. Just ask. I only wish to please you . . .” he whispered.

  “If you would be so kind as to divert some of my mother’s funds into an account in my name, I would be forever grateful. After all, I am of age now.” Olvido’s lips grazed his ear.

  “But my dear, you must understand that—”

  Olvido continued her ardent, whispered plea.

  “Yes, Olvido, my dear. I cannot deny you any longer. Yes, I will help. Your daughter will want for nothing. Yes, I know you know how to repay me.” A trickle of drool fell onto his lapel. Then, as if she were yelling from a cave, his wife’s voice called him to dinner.

  The boarding school run by Augustinian nuns was housed in a small stone palace with pointed windows that had belonged to King Philip II’s secretary. It stood alone on a hill, and its silhouette from the road below looked like that of a medieval abbey. It was surrounded by a wall where daisies, cotton thistle, and clumps of lilac grew, where neighborhood dogs came to howl and mate after night fell. The main door—which the nuns closed from midafternoon until after matins—was spiked with square nails, like a torture device. The grounds behind the wall were large and sunny. There was a rose garden and a vegetable plot out back where tomatoes, lettuce, and shallots grew. There was also a grassy meadow with weeping willows where the girls skipped rope or sewed in the melancholy shade of the trees, as well as a dirt field for hopscotch and relay races.

  From the very first day, the grounds inside the wall were Marga­rita Laguna’s favorite place. She would wander out at recess to inhale the fragrances that took her back to Scarlet Manor. But when autumn came and the grounds fell silent with nary a flower, she knew for the first time what it was to be sad. Margarita had to wait until spring—through afternoons of rain and lined notebooks—to smell those memories again.

  Margarita celebrated the return of the poppies, geraniums, and hydrangea in April by pulling off her gray skirt and navy blue sweater to lie naked in the meadow by the willows. Before her classmates found and taunted her, before a nun in a wimple bent to cover her with the rough sacristy blanket the cats used to sharpen their claws, Margarita Laguna felt like she was home, her eyes closed, the sun playing on her skin. The wimpled nun led her down a hall past snickers and insults to see the headmistress. Such indecent behavior was a serious breach of discipline; do it again and she would be expelled.

  The next morning, when Margarita felt the sun’s caress and inhaled the flowers’ perfume, she had to stifle the desire to strip naked and lie on damp earth. She spent all day scratching as her body was suffocated by clothes, but by nightfall she had an idea. The nuns had forbidden her to take off her uniform but said nothing about her underclothes. From then on, Margarita Laguna decided not to wear panties again. Her pubis would grow free, at the mercy of the wind and sun that found their way there, mocking her uniform.

  Margarita Laguna came home to Scarlet Manor for the summer. Olvido waited at the train station, a few miles from town, to meet her. The lawyer had chosen a suitable matron to chaperone the girl on the trip. Margarita jumped from the first-class car, ran down the platform and into her mother’s arms. The chestnut hair she inherited from Clara Laguna was pulled into two braids, and her gray eyes sparkled at being back in the land where her father lay. The locomotive belched s
moke. Men in green Civil Guard uniforms appeared, there to inspect any basket or suitcase considered suspicious, in search of black-market foods.

  “I missed you so much!” Olvido was crying.

  The suitable matron stepped down with Margarita’s suitcase, which did not raise suspicion among the guards, recounted the details of the trip to Olvido, and sat on a bench to wait for the next train back to the city.

  “Mamá, Mamá, can I sunbathe naked this summer?”

  “In the honeysuckle clearing, the way you like to, yes.”

  “Good!” Margarita clapped. “At school they don’t let me.”

  “No, at school you should never do that. Only at home.”

  “I know. At first I was sad, but then I realized I could go without panties under my uniform, and no one ever found out,” she replied, lifting her skirt just a little. One firm, pink cheek flashed on the platform.

  “You little rebel,” Olvido said with a smile. “Just like your father. She told him not to come back, but he did.”

  “Back where, Mamá? Who told him not to?”

  “Stories of the past, my darling.”

  “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.” Margarita walked along, holding her mother’s hand. “How is Abuela?”

  “In more pain every day. Her arthritis is very bad.”

  “Ar-thri-tis. That’s a hard word. Do you think she’ll speak to me this year?”

  They left the train station. A flock of swallows crossed the sky. The old cart was waiting with the dapple-gray horse that had replaced the black one, dead of old age.