The House of Impossible Loves
Page 21
The porch had become a vibrant lake, upon which his former masterpiece, now a funereal platform, was floating. He brushed off the crickets and cicadas, could just make out the curve of Olvido’s lips, their vermillion unscathed. But his muse’s eyes were dying beneath the mire. He vomited what had stuck in his throat the night before. It was mid-August. Olvido, I still have you, he thought; real, beautiful. Olvido, I can still watch you while you cook. I can still eat what first grazed your nipples and mouth. I can still follow you down the perfumed twists and turns of the rose garden. I can still . . . He left the porch, running to his muse’s room. Stained with paint and mud, his bare feet left prints on clay tiles that would remain for years to come. Olvido. Pierre wanted to become that name, wanted that name to devour him. Olvido.
The window in Olvido’s room had blown open in the storm, and the yard’s damp breath drifted in. For once that yard had succumbed to the weather. For once it suffered the same misfortune as the town that hated it. Pierre found Olvido in bed, face-down, the sheet swirled around her knees, naked. Hypnotized by the power exhaled by her flesh, he stood staring, as if she were not a woman but an extraordinary, shapely sculpture. He blinked in vain. A flock of birds flew low through the yard. Their chirping caused the narrow abyss between Olvido’s legs to softly stretch. She moaned. Her black mane smudged her face; in between strands were two sleeping eyes, parted lips, cheeks flower pink.
It was then Pierre noticed the scars on her back. From that moment on, he no longer cared that Olvido’s arm was curled lovingly around her pillow, that her neck was damp with the perspiration of dreams. All that existed were those scars coiling along her back, those serpents dead beneath her skin. He moistened his lips and sat on the edge of the bed. He wanted to touch them, kiss them, trace them with his tongue. He reached out and ran a hand over the outline of one crimson scar. Olvido’s body sighed. Suddenly, her thighs began to part and her waist to navigate an invisible sea. Pierre’s touch lay enamored; if only that scar were her heart. Thunder rumbled. Pierre thought the storm was returning. The August rays that minutes earlier had lit up the room were being swallowed. He wished they were winter rays, softer, whiter. A dry leaf blew in the window, traveling on a wind that did not know how to forget. Pierre kissed another scar. The moon that poked out above the clouds was small and pale, ghostlike, but the sky exploded in blue.
Someone pushed the door open. Pierre had left it ajar. Olvido’s flesh ensnared him, leaving him without the strength to close it. What was a doorknob compared with that explosion of skin? he would ask himself years later, crouched in the shadow of Notre-Dame. Margarita Laguna, her hair loose, eyes tempestuous, breasts exhausted from nursing, found Pierre licking her mother’s scars. She watched his tongue move down the one he had chosen as his favorite, shaped like a wave and seemingly brimming with foam. She watched her mother’s naked body reflected in Pierre’s face when he startled, raising his head from that deformed delight, looking at her without fear. Margarita knew she was going to kill him. She cursed in French and moved toward the bed. Olvido woke and said her daughter’s name, feeling a trace of something wet and sticky on her back. Beside her was Pierre Lesac, his lips sparkling. Suddenly it turned cold. Winter settled over Olvido’s heart and hung from her icy legs. Margarita slapped Pierre.
“It’s only art, my love,” the Frenchman replied.
The smell of wax filtered through the room. Margarita’s nostrils flared. She knew he was lying. He loved her mother. He desired her mother.
“Since when?” she screamed, hammering his chest with her fists.
“Ever since I saw her photo. She is an artist’s dream,” Pierre confessed. The taste of her scar still lay on his tongue.
Margarita dropped her fists and fell to her knees. Milk spurted from one nipple, leaving a stain on the carpet. Olvido remembered she had dreamed of pirate ships that night. She stood, wrapped herself in the sheet, and held her daughter. Margarita was rigid, frosty.
“It’s nothing,” Olvido whispered into her hair. “Let’s sunbathe in the honeysuckle clearing today.”
Margarita pushed her away. She had spotted a letter opener on the desk and within seconds was waving it wildly. She aimed for Pierre’s heart but found only his hand. Blood dripped on the carpet.
“Enough, darling. Enough!” Olvido tried to wrest the letter opener from her daughter’s hand.
Margarita smashed the handle into her mother’s temple. Olvido brought a hand to the wound and felt the whisper of blood, like she had on that frigid night.
“Enough, darling. Enough!” she repeated.
But Margarita was struggling with Pierre by the open window.
Olvido wanted to go to them, protect them from the abyss that had swallowed Esteban, but there was no time. Margarita pushed and Pierre fell out.
“Don’t look!” Olvido begged her daughter. “You’ll remember that sight forever, even in your dreams.”
There came the ghostly howl of a wolf, and Margarita hurled herself into the yard.
Silence and the caustic smell of tragedy filled the room. Olvido hid her face in her hands. Her life was being torn in two along that pious crease in her forehead when someone stroked her hair. The touch was rough and smelled sweetly of ivy. Olvido raised her eyes to confront death’s desire, give in to it, but instead saw the silhouette of a man as tall and thin as a church steeple. It was Pierre Lesac. He had managed to grab the wooden trellis and climb back into her room. Olvido raced to the window.
“No,” Pierre said. “Not her.”
Margarita Laguna lay on her father’s memory, her skull smashed on a rock.
15
OLVIDO LAGUNA WALKED down a muddy path through the pine grove. Dressed in black, she was wearing thick stockings, a dress secured at the neck with a safety pin, and a veil over her hair. She hurried along toward town, sure of her sorrow. It was Sunday morning, and the smell of rain still hung in the air. Countless dead ants and grasshoppers floated in puddles, and the surviving squirrels dozed on tree branches. Olvido walked on without stopping. Every now and then she would coo to Santiago in her arms. He was hungry for a breast; he missed the heat of skin perfumed by new motherhood and the heart that beat beneath it. Manuela wanted to wring the last harvest from that now dead chest but did not dare, afraid Olvido would discover her, accuse her of defiling Margarita’s body; afraid her bones would then smell of lavender; afraid of losing her great-grandson.
On the horizon, the town’s first roofs and church bell could be seen. Olvido began to walk faster. The baby started to cry. She knew what he needed and stopped to unbutton her dress. As she offered her breast to her grandson, she heard the same enormous magpie caw as the day Pierre Lesac arrived. She felt Santiago’s lips tugging on her nipple. She closed her eyes. It was Margarita in her arms. It was her daughter sucking on memory, and her insides drowned in happiness lost. A gust of passionate wind rustled the treetops. Santiago had stopped crying. His grandmother’s breast gave no milk, but it did harbor the taste that led to his birth.
After buttoning her dress, Olvido resumed walking. The smell of damp plaster, rain-soaked clothing, and furniture permeated the town. No one toasted fresh bread, and no one wore clean clothes or washed with fragrant soaps. The church bells rang nine times, misfortune hauling on the ropes as the new Tolón slept off the flood. There would be no Mass that Sunday; their Christ lay dying under a rotted beam. The church was a jumble of mantles, candles, and piles of rubble dripping water. Padre Rafael was in the sacristy, mourning the loss of his public address system. Anyone who wanted to receive Communion that morning would have to go to the neighboring town, where heaven’s tide had left the church unscathed.
Olvido walked down a narrow street and came into the town square. There was no one, the only sound coming from the fountain spouts. All of the dogs had fled. Donkeys dreamed of storms in flooded stables. She left the center of town and headed into a neighborhood of humble dwellings. One old woman was sweeping water out her door. Olvi
do Laguna’s mourning collided with her own. The woman set down the bucket and hurried up the street to tell her friends that one of the wicked Lagunas had shrouded herself in black, covering up her shamelessness and beauty.
Olvido soon came to a filthy porch where petunia pots had cracked in two. She rapped on the door.
“Come in,” a sad voice said.
The room was silent. It reeked of winter, although it was August. There was hardly any furniture: a round table covered in an oilcloth, two wicker chairs, a threadbare sofa, and a coal stove. On top of the table was a heap of socks and stockings. Behind it, the balding head of an old woman, glasses perched on her nose. She did not bother to look up; she did not care who was there. She kept her head down, mending. For years her life had been nothing but a row of perfect stitches. Water had seeped into the room and rose up to the old woman’s ankles.
“Leave your stockings on the table and come back the day after tomorrow—or tomorrow, if you like. With no Mass, I’ll work all day . . .”
“I haven’t brought anything to mend. I’ve come to talk to you about a grave.”
The old woman took off her glasses. Olvido Laguna was easy to recognize under the modesty of that veil; the blue eyes and beauty that had killed her young son were just as vivid as ever. The woman wanted to tell her to leave the house they were forced into after her husband was murdered, but she was intrigued by Olvido’s state of mourning.
“Who needs a grave?” she asked.
“Your granddaughter.”
“I never had a granddaughter.” Her voice turned vicious. “You’re mistaken.”
“Her name was Margarita Laguna, and as you well know, she had your son’s eyes.”
The old woman chewed on her lip.
“What’ve you got there?”
“Your great-grandson. His name is Santiago. Santiago Laguna.”
“I know. Manuela made sure to announce it all over town, as if an heir to the throne had been born. But we’re not interested in a relationship with you, no matter how rich you are.” Her hands and lips trembled; her voice was a sharp thorn. “Everyone knows where he came from . . .”
“Would you like to see him?” Olvido held out the baby.
An infant’s sigh was heard.
“Bring him closer. I just want to see whether your kind actually gave birth to a boy.”
Light shone in through the dirty window.
“Better let me hold him. Can’t tell anything if I don’t actually touch him.”
The old woman took Santiago in her arms, and he gave a sleepy smile. Her heart felt the weight of soft bones, the warmth of newborn skin, the caress of talcum powder.
“I’ve come to ask whether I can bury my daughter with Esteban. She should be near her father.”
“Don’t even dream of it,” came a harsh, unrecognizable voice.
Olvido turned. It was Esteban’s sister. She had aged since the day her small, bony frame supported her mother’s grief over that gaping hole in the cemetery.
“You will not bury your bastard with my brother.” She strode through the room as if a lake were not covering the floor. “And let me tell you something else: if I hear you’ve spent one more night on Esteban’s grave, eating flowers, like a savage, you’ll have to deal with more than me. I’ll have you locked up—in prison or an insane asylum.”
“If you want me to beg, I will,” Olvido replied.
“Take your mourning and your new bastard, and get out of my house.”
The old woman’s cheeks burned as her eyes pleaded with her daughter.
“Return the baby, Madre. He’s got nothing to do with you.”
Olvido took Santiago from her two old arms.
“Let me see him for a minute.” Esteban’s sister took the baby’s face in a hand wounded by pinpricks and frostbite. “If it weren’t for your age, I’d swear he was yours,” she spat. “He’s got your demonic eyes.”
Even though it was Sunday, the lawyer had the mortician come from the city to repair Margarita Laguna’s disfigured face. They had laid her out in the dining room, in a white coffin with a bleeding Christ on the lid.
“Get me the plot as close to Esteban’s as possible,” Olvido begged the lawyer. “That way my daughter won’t feel so alone. Cost is no issue.”
Manuela nodded when the lawyer looked to her for approval.
“She’ll be buried where you want, don’t worry,” he replied, regretting the veil, the safety pin, and the thick stockings on the woman he desired.
Olvido sat next to the coffin, watching how that man from the city used brushes and creams to erase the truth of Margarita’s death from her face. Behind Olvido stood Pierre Lesac. No one noticed, but he had painted a dagger on the coffin.
When night fell, and the lawyer and the mortician left Scarlet Manor, Olvido locked herself in her room and bricked up the window both Esteban and her daughter had fallen from. Never again would the sun shine in that room with its seascape; never again would her dead loved ones peer in from that outline on the moss. That room would forever remain in shadows, despair eventually filtering out through the gap she left between two bricks.
They had to wait three more days before Margarita could be buried. The cemetery had flooded, and inscriptions and bones drifted through the neighborhood. The ground was too soft to hold the recently departed.
Olvido found a large leaf left over from Palm Sunday in the attic and like a Nubian slave began to fan the body. The August heat was accelerating the decomposition. Accustomed to the presence of death, Manuela Laguna continued her petit point in front of the hearth, while Pierre Lesac spent hours wandering through the house with a clothespin on his nose and a blue pencil in his hand. Hiding in corners, he would murmur prayers in French and stuff himself with sweet peaches to keep the rotten stench of Margarita’s body from sticking to the back of his throat.
On the third night, hot and remorseful, Pierre ran into the yard. He was sorry he had betrayed Margarita but sorrier still that his muse had scorned him ever since. More than once he tried to take her hand or kiss her cheek, whispering apologies and declarations of love, but she rejected his touch, his breath, his words.
Lying on the damp porch, Pierre watched Olvido walk barefoot toward him.
“Go,” she demanded. “Go back to France.”
He was soaking wet, like a shipwrecked sailor.
“Et l’amour?”
“The only woman who loved you is inside a box.”
“Perhaps in time . . .” His right hand ached to hold a pencil.
“Even a thousand years from now, your touch will remind me of my dead daughter. Go. I’ll look after Santiago.”
His shouts and wails reverberated in the garden for hours.
By dawn, the only trace of Pierre Lesac at Scarlet Manor was a colored pencil, a helpless pencil abandoned on the tiles like a motherless child.
Margarita Laguna was buried with the first echoes of evening. She lay naked in the casket, surrounded by honeysuckle flowers. Padre Rafael, with his shaking of earth and spitting of Latin, did not attend; nor did the lawyer, or anyone from town. Only the undertaker was there, in rubber boots, his three teeth chewing a wad of tobacco with each shovelful of earth. When the coffin disappeared from view, Olvido felt a strange warmth on her shoulder and turned to find a cotton glove clutching her grief. It was immaculate, not a drop of chicken blood on it. Olvido held her breath for a moment, savoring this maternal weight. The sun sank into a row of headstones. The sky was cloudless and the heat of August had abated.
At that moment, Scarlet Manor entered an era of peace. Olvido and Manuela sat together on the porch every afternoon. They bought chairs and a table, burning what was left of the old ones after the flood—burning Pierre Lesac’s painting, too. Manuela embroidered while Olvido read poems and tended to Santiago.
“I think fall’s come,” Manuela said one day, after twenty-some years of not speaking to her daughter. “It’s going to be a cool one this year.”
From his mother, Santiago Laguna inherited a passion for lying among the flowers; from his father, an obsession with coloring everything in his path—when he was four, they gave him a blue pencil from France; from his grandmother Olvido, her extraordinary beauty; from his grandfather Esteban, a love of poetry; and from his great-grandmother Manuela, a taste for tales and for death.
Santiago learned to cook from a very young age. He loved being in the kitchen with Olvido, helping her prepare the recipes she invented over years of dreaming about the past. They spent their days handling squash, peppers, any ingredient to be used in their stews. Olvido taught him to love boiling water, the bubbling like a river in spring; the aroma of acorns; the color of ash where chestnuts roasted, for it was the same color as his mother’s and grandfather’s eyes. She taught him that well-trained nipples could become a chef’s best tool and that the family’s most cherished recipe was cinnamon cake, served with boiled coffee. After a day of affection and games, Santiago would sink into the clawfoot tub, where his grandmother would scrub away the flour or oil spattering his body. Sometimes she joined him in the tub, and Santiago would stretch his little feet out and slowly walk them up her skin in a tickle.
At dinnertime, they would sit at the dining room table with Manuela to savor the dishes they had prepared. Manuela no longer cooked; the arthritis in her hands was now complicated by Parkinson’s, and she could not hold a pot without spilling it, peel a potato without skinning a finger. She could barely eat by herself. It was little Santiago who brought food to her mouth with the patience of a saint. Manuela’s ailments resulted in unprecedented longevity in the chicken coop, and the smell of entrails faded from the corners of the kitchen.