Zorro

by Isabel Allende

  “We will become the best swordsmen in the world, Bernardo. Yes, my brother, you heard me right, you will learn what I learn. Oh, you are right, the maestro will not accept you as a student, he is very particular. If he knew that I have one-fourth Indian blood, he would kick me out of his academy. But don’t worry, I intend to teach you everything I learn. The maestro says I lack style. What is that?”

  Manuel Escalante fulfilled his promise to polish Diego’s art, and Diego kept his to pass on those skills to Bernardo. They practiced fencing every day in one of the large, empty salons in the home of Tomas de Romeu, almost always with Isabel present. According to Nuria, that girl had a devilish curiosity about men’s ways, but she covered up Isabel’s antics because she had taken care of her ever since her mother had died at her birth. The brash girl talked Diego and Bernardo into teaching her to handle a fencing epee and to ride astride, as women did in California. With Maestro Escalante’s manual, she spent hours practicing alone before a mirror, under the patient gaze of her sister and Nuria, who were working their cross-stitch embroidery. Diego had a selfish reason for resigning himself to the younger girl’s company: she had convinced him that she could intercede on his behalf with Juliana something she never did do. Bernardo, on the other hand, seemed always pleased to have her around.

  Diego’s milk brother had an equivocal position in the hierarchy of the house, where about eighty people lived, counting servants, employees, secretaries, and “distant cousins,” as the poor relatives that Tomas de Romeu housed under his roof were called. He slept in one of the three rooms placed at Diego’s disposal but did not go into the family salons unless summoned, and he ate in the kitchen. He had no particular responsibilities, and had time left over to wander around the city. He came to know the different faces of boisterous Barcelona, from the castles and mansions of Catalan nobles to the crowded rat-and lice-infested rooms of the lower classes, a hotbed of fights and epidemics; he roamed the ancient section constructed upon Roman ruins, a labyrinth of twisting alleyways scarcely wide enough for a burro to pass through, the popular markets, artisans’ shops, the stalls where Turkish merchants sold baubles and bibelots, and the always bustling docks. Sundays after mass, he lingered to admire the groups dancing delicate sardanas, which to him seemed a perfect reflection of the solidarity, order, and lack of ostentation of the people of Barcelona.

  Like Diego, he learned Catalan; otherwise he could not have understood what was happening around him. Spanish and French were the languages of high society and the government; Latin was used for academic and religious matters, and Catalan for everything else. Bernardo’s silence, and the dignity he conveyed, won the respect of everyone in the de Romeu mansion. The servants, who affectionately called him el Indiano, were not sure whether he was deaf, but they assumed he was, and so spoke freely in front of him, which allowed him to learn many things. Tomas de Romeu was entirely unaware of his existence; for him servants were invisible. Nuria was intrigued by the fact that he was an Indian, the first she had met face to face. Thinking he would not understand her, for the first few days she made monkey faces and gestured theatrically, but when she learned that he wasn’t deaf, she began speaking normally to him. And as soon as she was told that he had been baptized, she began to like him. She had never had a more attentive listener. Convinced that Bernardo could not betray her confidence, she fell into the habit of telling him her dreams, true epic fantasies, and of inviting him to listen to Juliana read aloud at the hour for chocolate. As for Juliana, she addressed him with the same gentleness she exhibited with everyone. She understood that he was not Diego’s servant but his brother, having shared Bernardo’s mother’s milk, but she made no effort to communicate with him because she supposed that they had little to say to one another. Not so with Isabel; Bernardo became her best friend and ally. She learned the Indians’ sign language and how to interpret the inflexions of his flute, though she was never able to participate in the telepathic dialogues Bernardo shared with Diego. It didn’t matter anyway. They didn’t need words; they understood each other perfectly. They came to love each other so much that over the years Isabel became Diego’s rival for second place in Bernardo’s heart. Lightin-the-Night always came first.

  In the spring, when the air in the city smelled of ocean and flowers, strolling groups of students came out to fill the night with music; be smitten suitors offered their serenades, watched from a distance by French soldiers, because even that innocent diversion might mask sinister designs on the part of the guerrillas. Diego practiced songs on his mandolin, but it would have been ridiculous to plant himself beneath Juliana’s window and serenade her when he lived in the same house. He tried to accompany her after-dinner harp concerts, but she was a true virtuoso, and he was so clumsy on his instrument like Isabel on the harpsichord that they left their audience with migraines. The best he could do was entertain Juliana with the magic tricks he’d learned from Galileo Tempesta, added to and perfected during months of practice. The day he stood before her prepared to swallow Tempesta’s Moroccan dagger, Juliana felt faint and nearly fell, while Isabel examined the weapon, looking for the spring that hid the blade in the haft. Nuria, outraged, warned Diego that if he tried a cheap sorcerer’s trick like that again in the presence of her girls, she herself would stick that Turk’s knife down his gullet. In the first weeks Diego was in the house, the woman had declared an unvoiced war of nerves with him; somehow she had found out that he was a mestizo. It seemed the last straw that her master would take a youth into the bosom of the family who did not have pure Spanish blood, and as if that weren’t enough, one who had the brass to fall in love with Juliana.

  However, as soon as Diego set his mind to it, he won the chaperone’s dried-up heart with little attentions: flowers, marzipan, a print of some saint. Although she continued to answer him with grumbles and sarcasm, she could not help but laugh trying to hide it when he did something clownish like climb up on the roof and threaten to jump headfirst if she didn’t make him some pastries.

  One night Diego had to suffer through a serenade Rafael Moncada, accompanied by several musicians, gave beneath Juliana’s window. To his chagrin, Diego learned that not only did his rival have a seductive tenor voice, but more impressive yet, he sang in Italian. He tried to make Moncada look ridiculous to Juliana, but his strategy failed; for the first time she seemed charmed by Moncada’s attention. She felt conflicting emotions when she was around her suitor, a mixture of instinctive distrust and cautious curiosity. When he was present, she felt bothered and naked, but she was also attracted by the self-confidence he exuded. She did not like the scornful and cruel expressions she sometimes glimpsed on his face, a look that did not correspond with how generous he was when he distributed coins among the beggars after mass. Whatever her feelings, her admirer was twenty-three years old and had been courting her for some months; soon she would have to give him an answer. Moncada was wealthy, he came from an impeccable family, and he made a good impression on everyone except her sister Isabel, who detested him without hiding or explaining it. There were solid arguments in favor of his suit; Juliana held back only because of an inexplicable presentiment of disaster. In the meantime, Moncada continued his siege with delicacy, fearful that the least pressure would frighten her. They saw one another at church, at concerts and plays, during the paseos in the parks and streets. He often sent her gifts and tender notes, but nothing compromising. He had not succeeded in being invited to Tomas de Romeu’s home or in getting his aunt Eulalia de Callis to include the de Romeus among her guests. His aunt had stated with her habitual firmness that Juliana was a very bad choice: “Her father is a traitor, a lover of the French and all their ways, and that family has no rank, no fortune nothing to offer,” was her jewel-hard judgment. But Moncada had had his eye on Juliana for a long time; he had watched her blossom and had determined that she was the only woman worthy of him. He thought that with time Eulalia would yield before Juliana’s undeniable virtues; it was all a question of manip
ulating the matter diplomatically. He was not disposed to give Juliana up, and certainly not his inheritance, but he never doubted he could have both.

  Rafael Moncada was too old to be serenading and too proud for that kind of exhibitionism, but he found a way to do it with humor. When Juliana came out on her balcony that night, she saw him costumed as a Florentine prince with a lute in his hands, all brocade and silk from head to toe, his doublet trimmed with otter and his hat with ostrich plumes. Several servants were holding elegant crystal lanterns to illuminate him, and at his side the musicians, attired as operetta pages, strummed melodic chords on their instruments. The crowning effect, however, was undoubtedly Moncada’s extraordinary voice. Hidden behind a curtain, Diego burned with humiliation, knowing that Juliana was on her balcony comparing Moncada’s magnificent warbling with the hesitant mandolin he had tried to impress her with. He was muttering curses when Bernardo came and signaled him to follow and bring his sword. His brother led him to the servants’ floor where Diego had never been, even though he had lived in that house nearly a year and from there through a service gate to the street. Hugging the wall, they arrived unseen at the place where his rival had stationed himself to thrill Juliana with his ballads in Italian. Bernardo pointed to a portal behind Moncada, and Diego’s fury melted into diabolic glee: it was not Moncada singing, but another man hidden in the shadows.

  Diego and Bernardo waited to the end of the serenade. The group broke up and drove off in a pair of coaches as the last servant handed some coins to the real tenor. After making sure that the singer was alone, the youths took him by surprise. He hissed like a serpent and put his hand to the curved knife waiting in his sash, but Diego was faster, and touched the tip of his sword to the substitute’s neck. The man retreated with awesome agility, but Bernardo tripped him and threw him to the ground. He cursed when again he felt the tip of Diego’s rapier pricking his throat. At that hour the only light in the street came from a timid moon and the lamps of the house enough to see that the man was a strong, dark-skinned Gypsy, nothing but pure muscle, sinew, and bone.

  “What the devil do you want of me?” he spit out insolently.

  “Nothing but your name. You may keep that dishonestly earned money.”

  Diego replied.

  “Why do you want my name?”

  “Your name, I say!” Diego demanded, increasing the pressure of the sword tip enough to draw a few drops of blood.

  “Pelayo,” the Gypsy replied.

  Diego dropped his weapon, and the man stepped back and disappeared into the shadows of the street with the stealth and speed of a cat.

  “Let us remember that name, Bernardo. I think that we will run into that ruffian again. I can say nothing of this to Juliana she will think I am acting out of pettiness or jealousy. I must find another way to let her know that the voice is not Moncada’s. Can you think how? Well, when something occurs to you, let me know,” Diego concluded.

  One of the most faithful visitors to the home of Tomas de Romeu was Napoleon’s charge d’affaires in Barcelona, Monsieur Roland Duchamp, known as Le Chevalier. He was the eminence grise behind the visible officialdom, with more influence, it was said, than King Joseph I himself. Since he no longer needed his brother to perpetuate the Bonaparte dynasty, Napoleon had begun withdrawing power from him. Now he had a son, a frail child nicknamed “The Eaglet” and crushed since infancy beneath the title King of Rome. Le Chevalier directed a vast network of spies, who kept him informed about the plans of his enemies even before they had formulated them. He held the rank of ambassador, but in truth everyone up to the highest army officers reported to him.

  His life in Barcelona, where the French were detested, was far from pleasant. The best society ostracized him even though he courted the leading families with balls, receptions, and theater performances, just as he tried to win over the masses by handing out loaves of bread and authorizing bullfights, which had previously been banned. No one wanted to seem loyal to the French. Nobles like Eulalia de Callis were afraid not to greet him, but neither did they accept his invitations.

  Tomas de Romeu, on the other hand, was honored by his friendship, since he admired everything that came from France, from its philosophical ideas and refinement to Napoleon himself, whom he compared to Alexander the Great. He knew that Le Chevalier was in league with the secret police, but he discredited rumors that he was responsible for the torture and executions in La Ciudadela. He could not believe that a person that refined and cultivated would be involved in the barbarities attributed to the military. The two of them discussed art, books, new scientific discoveries, and advances in astronomy, and they commented on the situation of the colonies in America, such as Venezuela, Chile, and others that had declared their independence.

  While the two caballeros shared pleasant hours over their glasses of French cognac and their Cuban cigars, Agnes Duchamp,

  Le Chevalier’s daughter, amused herself reading French novels with Juliana behind the back of Tomas de Romeu, who never would have tolerated such behavior. The girls suffered the torment of the ill-starred love affairs of the characters and sighed with relief at the happy endings. Romanticism was not as yet in vogue in Spain, and before Agnes appeared in her life, Juliana had had access only to a few classic authors in the family library that had been selected by her father for educational purposes. Isabel and Nuria sat in on the readings. Juliana’s younger sister made fun of her books, but did not miss a word, and Nuria sobbed uncontrollably. The girls explained to her that none of those things had really happened, that they were only the lies of the author, but she didn’t believe them. The unhappiness of the characters caused her such distress that the girls changed the plots of the novels so as not to sour her on life. The chaperone did not know how to read, but she had a sacred respect for the printed word. From her wages she bought illustrated booklets of the lives of martyrs, true compilations of savagery that the girls had to read to her again and again. She was sure that each saint was a wretched compatriot tortured by the Moors in Granada. It was pointless to explain to her that the Roman Colosseum was right where its name indicated: in Rome. She was also convinced, like any good Spanish woman, that Christ did not die on the cross for the good of all humanity, but specifically for Spain. To her, the most unforgivable fact about Napoleon and the French was that they were atheists, and after each visit she sprinkled the chair Le Chevalier had sat in with holy water. She attributed her employer’s failure to believe in God to the premature death of his wife, the mother of the girls. She was sure that Don Tomas was suffering through a temporary condition: on his deathbed he would come to his senses and call for a confessor to absolve him of his sins, as everyone did in the end, however much they claimed to be atheists when in good health.

  Agnes was a small girl, smiling and vivacious, with transparent skin, a mischievous glint in her eye, and dimples in her cheeks, knuckles, and elbows. She had matured early because of the novels she’d read, and at an age when other girls still were not allowed out of the house, she lived the life of an adult woman. She accompanied her father to social events wearing the most daring Paris styles. When she attended a ball, she dampened her frock so that the cloth would cling to her body and no one could miss appreciating her rounded buttocks and virginal but bold nipples. Diego caught her eye at their first meeting; during that year he had left the blandness of adolescence behind and had spurted up like a colt: he was as tall as Don Tomas and thanks to the hearty Catalan diet and Nuria’s coddling, he had gained weight something he greatly needed. His features were taking on their definitive form, and at Isabel’s suggestion he was wearing his hair cut to cover his ears. To Agnes he seemed not at all bad. He was exotic, and she could imagine him in the wild lands of the Americas surrounded by submissive, naked Indians. She never tired of questioning him about California, which she confused with a mysterious, steamy island like the one where the ineffable Josephine Bonaparte had been born. Josephine was her ideal, and she tried to imitate her with her dia
phanous dresses and violet scent. Agnes had met the empress in Paris, in Napoleon’s court, when she was a child of ten. While the emperor was off conducting some war, Josephine had honored Le Chevalier Duchamp with a friendship approaching amour. Agnes would always carry the image of that woman in her memory. Though she was neither young nor beautiful, her sinuous walk, her dreamy voice, and her fleeting fragrance made her seem so.

  That had been more than four years ago. Josephine was no longer the empress of France because Napoleon had replaced her with an insipid Austrian princess whose one good point, according to Agnes, was that she had given him a son as if fertility were not too, too vulgar. When Agnes learned that Diego was the sole heir of Alejandro de la Vega, the lord of a ranch the size of a small country, it took little effort for her to imagine herself as the mistress of that fabulous territory. She waited for the opportune moment and whispered to Diego, behind her fan, that he should come visit her so they could talk alone, since in Tomas de Romeu’s home Nuria was always hovering over them. In Paris no one had a chaperone that was the epitome of antiquated customs, she added.

  To seal her invitation, she handed him a lace and linen handkerchief bearing her full name embroidered by the nuns and perfumed with violet.

  Diego did not know what to answer. For a whole week he tried to make Juliana jealous by talking about Agnes and waving her handkerchief in the air, but that ploy backfired when his enchantress offered amiably to help him along in his love life. In addition, Isabel and Nuria teased him unmercifully, so he ended up throwing the handkerchief away.

  Bernardo retrieved it and kept it, faithful to his theory that you never know when something may be useful.

  Diego frequently was in the company of Agnes Duchamp, who had become a faithful visitor to the house. Though she was younger than Juliana, she nevertheless left her behind in exuberance and experience. Had the circumstances been different, Agnes would not have lowered herself to cultivate a friendship with a girl as naive as Juliana, but her father’s situation had closed many doors to her, and she had few friends. Besides, in her favor Juliana had her reputation as a beauty, and although in principle Agnes preferred to avoid competition, she soon realized that the mere name Juliana de Romeu drew men’s interest and that she benefited indirectly. To rid himself of Agnes’s sentimental insinuations, which were increasing in intensity and frequency, Diego tried to change the image the girl had formed of him.