“Exonerate? I hardly think that is his purpose. But we will speak of this again. Now sit down for a moment. I’ve been talking to Gavin about you. I want him to show you the store this morning. It is necessary for you to learn as much as you can about what it means to the Cordova family.”
I didn’t like the implication. “Why?” I asked as I sat in the chair beside his desk.
The heavy lids closed over his eyes as though he found it difficult to deal with me. He looked anything but kind.
“The store is part of your heritage. You must learn about it.”
“I’ve heard it called an albatross,” I said, and drummed my fingers lightly on the book Sylvia had loaned me.
Gavin turned from the window. “It’s all of that, if you let it be. But you’re forewarned. All right, Juan—I’ll do as you ask. If Amanda is to go through the store, we’d better start now.”
“One moment, Gavin,” Juan said. “Have you learned anything more about the pre-Columbian head someone put in your room?”
“I didn’t expect to,” Gavin said. “All these happenings are meant to look bad for me, and no one is going to admit anything. I can only count on your trust in me.”
“To a certain extent you may count on it,” Juan said. “To a certain extent. I’m not sure who can be trusted any more. But shortly after I’ve spoken to her, you will take Amanda to the store and introduce her to the best of it. She and CORDOVA may be important to each other.”
I stood up, speaking hastily out of embarrassment. “Of course I’d like to see the store—as a visitor. I’ve known about it since I was a little girl and it has always fascinated me. Isn’t it possible for you to come with us?” I said to my grandfather.
I could hear the weariness of ill health in his voice as he replied. “Not today. Leave us alone for a moment, Gavin. I want to speak with Amanda.”
Gavin went out, but there was an angry glint in his eyes that did not promise well for our tour of the store. He had never been an ally, but this talk of showing me CORDOVA might make him an enemy.
My grandfather beckoned me closer. “I want you to do something for me in the store. I go out very seldom these days, and I have an errand for you. You are to notice one display case in particular while you are in the store. You will find it on the second floor—a tall glass case containing articles of Toledo steel. Locate the cabinet. Look at it so that you can find it again. Do you understand?”
“I don’t understand at all,” I told him. “But I’ll do as you wish.”
“Good. I will explain another time. Now go and join Gavin. But report to me when you return. I want to know what you think of CORDOVA. And—listen to me carefully, Amanda—you are to say nothing to Gavin about the cabinet. Do you hear me?”
“I hear you,” I said. “I’ll do as you wish.”
Some strange relief seemed to wash over him. He smiled at me with a certain air of triumph, as though he had not been sure he could bend me to his will, and was pleased that he had. I suspected that I had been bested in some way I did not understand, that I was being made sly use of. But the matter didn’t seem important, and in this case I would do as he wished.
I went down to the living room where Rosa was busy working and Clarita had disappeared. Gavin waited for me.
“I’ll put this book of Paul Stewart’s and my other things in my room, and get my handbag,” I said, holding up the volume.
Gavin looked at it with distaste. “It’s a good thing your grandfather didn’t notice what you’ve got there. He long ago ordered every copy in the house of that book to be given away or thrown out. He won’t be pleased about your reading it. He doesn’t feel that Stewart did well by Emanuella.”
“Then I shan’t tell him,” I said, and hurried up the stairs to my room.
Now the book interested me all the more, but I had no time for it at the moment. I tossed it down on the bed, glancing quickly at the white rug where the fetish had lain, relieved to find nothing there. I liked that episode less every time I thought of it. But now what mattered was Katy’s package. That could not wait. I ripped open the sealed flap and looked inside. All the envelope contained was a small blue jeweler’s box of the sort that might hold a ring. There was no paper, no message. I pressed the catch and the lid of the box opened. Inside, tucked into the satin slit where a ring might have rested, was a tiny brass key. Nothing else. I had been left a puzzle to which I had no answer, except that I had been told to go to the Rancho de Cordova. There was no time to ponder over this now, since Gavin was waiting, and I was eager to see the store for myself.
Juan was right—it was a part of my heritage, whether I liked it or not, and it would tell me more about the Cordovas. Gavin was clearly reluctant to be my guide, and I found myself regretting that. He mustn’t become my enemy. If he didn’t so obviously disapprove of me, he might have helped me when it came to the things I wanted to know. I might even have told him of Paul Stewart’s effort to put some pressure on me to remember what had happened at the time of my mother’s death. But I couldn’t do that unless I broke through the barrier Gavin held against me.
For the first time, I wondered if that was possible. In spite of the way Juan’s words had antagonized him, perhaps, as he showed me about the store, I could find a way to allay the suspicions he held against me, whatever they were. I needed a friend badly, and I went downstairs to join him with a new intent in me, a new purpose.
VII
CORDOVA fronted spaciously on a street that branched off from the plaza. I saw that only a portion of its glass windows had been photographed in that ad I had long ago torn from a magazine. The wide store front was impressive, and there was an elegance, a luxury about the windows with their exotic treasures discreetly displayed.
Gavin opened a glass door and let me precede him into the shop. It was an old building, and I had an immediate sense of great space, high ceilings that lost themselves in upper gloom, of polished counters and wall shelves that followed long aisles to the rear of the store, all handsomely arranged to attract the eye and tempt those who might appreciate the beautiful and unusual.
Daylight penetrated only a little way past the front windows, and the vast interior was illumined by artificial lighting. Inside, visitors moved about decorously, and women behind the counters waited on customers with grave courtesy. A hush that shut off traffic sounds from outdoors gave the shop an aura of restrained and almost awesome dignity. It was not a place in which boisterous behavior would be tolerated, any more than such behavior would be endured in a museum. Juan had apparently made an elaborate effort to turn CORDOVA into a shrine for the rare objects he worshiped. I found the effect a little oppressive and somehow it made me feel irreverent, contrary.
“Does anyone ever laugh in here?” I asked Gavin.
Apparently he had been waiting for my first reaction, and I had surprised him. His smile came slowly.
“So you aren’t going to be intimidated, after all?”
I stood before an ancient Spanish chest with heavily carved drawers and wrought-iron pulls. On top of it stood a bowl of beaten brass from Guyana, and several carved trays and boxes made of rare Paraguayan woods, all labeled with discreet small signs.
“It’s not that I don’t appreciate all these beautiful things,” I said, “but I can’t help thinking of what Eleanor said about CORDOVA—that it was always put above the human beings connected with it. So that now, when I’m here, I have a feeling of resistance to its—well to its smothering perfection.”
Gavin reached past me to touch the surface of an exquisitely carved bowl. “The man who made this knew how to laugh. He was close to the earth, perhaps ignorant, by our standards, but he could create beauty with his hands. Juan knows nothing about him. He has always been interested in the product, not the man, except as the artist can be used. For the purist, that may be the way to look at it.”
“But you’re interested in the artist apart from his art?”
“Yes—perhaps because I’
ve traveled a lot and come to know some of the people who sell us their work. It’s not disembodied for me, since I care about the craftsman who is alive and working today. A good many of the things we carry here have men and women behind them who live in Spain and Mexico, or in the South and Central American countries. I’ve come to know some of their families and a good deal about their personal skills and talents. When my father used to go abroad for Juan, he always looked for sources, instead of dealing with some middleman. I’ve done the same thing. Craftwork is a living thing.”
His head with its thick crest of fair hair was held high, so he could look all about him, and his gray eyes saw more than mere objects, wherever he looked. I liked him better for his explanation, and my brief sense of irreverence faded.
We moved on past a rug with a Kachina design in brown and white and black, displayed against a nearby wall, and I paused before a Mexican sunburst mirror next to it, looking at Gavin behind me in the round of glass. For the first time since I had met him, he seemed alive and concerned, instead of being far away and always on guard. It was interesting to see his eyes take on warmth and excitement when he was involved in the things he cared about. Perhaps this was the man I had sensed in that moment when I had first seen him and felt that breath-stopping attraction I couldn’t quite shake off.
“Are you and my grandfather at odds about the store?” I asked.
At once his guard was up again. “I work for him,” he said curtly, and moved on to a table graced by an intricate wrought-iron candelabrum, with fine Indian pottery arranged around it. Against the wall beyond leaned a stack of great, carved doors of Spanish colonial design, such as I had already seen at the Cordovas’ and the Stewarts’.
“Those doors are made in the city,” Gavin said. “They’re known everywhere as Santa Fe doors.”
He was again the guide Juan had instructed him to be, and I had lost my tenuous contact. I could only follow as he turned down the next aisle and paused before a cabinet with a glass front. A sign indicated that these objects belonged to pre-Columbian times and were being loaned to the store for exhibit. There were bits of stone, shards of pottery, and ornamentation from ancient buildings. One piece was a stone head with bulging, exaggerated features, broken off at the neck, but otherwise intact.
“Is that the head that disappeared?” I asked.
“Yes—the one I’m supposed to have stolen.”
“Why would anyone play such a trick on you?”
He gave me a distant glance. “It’s hardly your concern.”
Prickling indignation swept me and I would not be intimidated by Gavin Brand either. “Grandfather seemed to think that everything about CORDOVA was my concern.”
“Why?”
“I suppose because I’m one of the family and should know about such things. What else? Surely Grandfather doesn’t believe in any robbery when it comes to that stone head, does he?”
“There was a robbery. Someone took the head out of this locked case. Someone who had access to the key that’s kept in the store.”
He moved away, indifferent to what I might believe, continuing our tour of the first floor. Now and then he paused to explain something casually, or stopped to point out some article with an admiration that shone through his indifference toward me. I felt increasingly resentful of his attitude. All his barriers were up, and my wish to break through them was obviously futile. Yet I didn’t want to accept this as final defeat.
We reached the back of the store and a corner where articles of woven grass were displayed. The scent of the grasses was fragrant and all pervading. There was no one about back here, and when Gavin would have moved on, I stopped him.
“Please let me apologize for that ridiculous remark I made when we first met. It was stupid, but I wish you wouldn’t go on holding it against me.”
At least his look focused on me, though he seemed surprised. “I’d forgotten all about it. It was never important.”
“Then why must you—” I began, but he broke in on my words, suddenly willing to be frank.
“Juan brought you out here to use you, and you’re stepping right into his trap. I suppose it will serve you to step into it, but you might as well know that I’ll oppose you all the way. There are prior rights.”
I stared at him in outrage, so furious I couldn’t speak. I didn’t understand his talk about traps or about my willingness to be used. Too angry to answer him, I moved on to the next display, unable to examine it calmly.
“The better things are upstairs.” He was my impersonal guide again, grimly doing his duty. “A good deal of what we show down here is for the tourist trade. Or else it consists of imported objects that Santa Feans buy.”
There was a strong smell of leather as we walked through a section given over to Spanish leather goods—belts and pocketbooks, and even boots and saddles. Near the front of the store, a wide flight of stairs rose toward the floor above, and I mounted them beside Gavin, still seething. But at least I remembered Juan’s words—that it was up here I would find the cabinet of Toledo steel, the case he had instructed me to notice for some reason he hadn’t explained. I would take care of my mission as soon as I could, and then I would turn my back on Gavin and the store.
At the head of the stairs a glass-enclosed ceramic flamenco dancer waited to greet us, and beyond her the floor turned into a museum of fine arts and crafts. Here much of what was displayed was fabulously expensive, exquisitely wrought. This was CORDOVA, restrained in its presentation of superb workmanship, less crowded than the floor below, yet stamped somehow with the same arrogant confidence that characterized Juan Cordova. There was no entreaty to buy, for here that function seemed a privilege. For the first time, I began to sense the element of proud family that ruled both the store and the Cordovas.
“I could never belong to all this,” I said impulsively. “It would try to dominate and rule, wouldn’t it? It would have to be possessive. You’d have to give your life for it.”
Gavin glanced at me with mild curiosity. “I didn’t expect you to understand that.”
I thought with resentment that what he expected of me had little concern with reality. But in spite of the effect the store might exert upon me, I was quickly lost to the rich fare it presented on every hand. The artist in me was beguiled in spite of myself.
Hand-embroidered shawls from Spain were glorious and I stopped to finger silken fringe and study the design of great, embroidered blossoms. This was like painting on silk. Brilliant blankets and rebozos and ponchos from Bolivia caught my eyes as I moved on, only to be drawn along to the next display of a stunning suede jacket from Argentina.
“There’s nothing machine-made here,” Gavin informed me. “Behind everything you see there’s a craftsman or a woman talented at design and needlework.” His tone had warmed again, though not toward me. “Juan has let me have my hand up here, and none of these things are confined in a museum. Because we can sell them, we help to keep these crafts alive and their creators productive.”
The anger he could so quickly arouse in me was dying. I could understand the importance of finding the artist a market, and I touched with respect an inlaid box of exquisite woods from French Guiana.
“Even though it’s possessive, CORDOVA is more than I thought,” I said. “Sylvia Stewart called it the beast that ruled the family. And I can see the enormous amount of effort and expense that must go into keeping it alive. But perhaps it’s worth it.”
“It’s worth it if we keep our feet on the ground and don’t get lost in clouds of antiquity, which is what Juan, more and more, seems to want. He buys museum pieces he would never sell. He gets carried away by the idea of collecting and displaying, instead of selling. But this isn’t a musty museum—it is something to keep men and women earning and productive, to preserve skills that might be lost. It must be kept alive—not allowed to die in the dust of a mere collection.”
There was a passion in this man—a love for hand-wrought beauty, but also a belief in
the worker behind it that I found myself relishing.
“What will happen to the store when Juan dies?” I asked.
He answered me curtly. “Eleanor will inherit it. That’s the way his will reads.”
“What about Clarita?”
“She’s taken care of in other ways. Though I don’t think Juan has ever been fair to Clarita, considering all the work she’s put into the store. She used to manage this entire floor and she knows CORDOVA as Eleanor never will.”
“Another one who’s given her life to it? Perhaps CORDOVA is omnivorous like Juan. What will Eleanor do with it, if she inherits?”
“That remains to be seen. She’ll hardly be possessed by it.” His tone was dry.
“But of course you’ll continue to manage it, buy for it?”
“There’s no guarantee of that.”
“If Eleanor has any sense—”
His look told me that once more this was none of my business, and I broke off. I could see how there might well be some sort of war going on under the surface in Juan Cordova’s house.
We walked on past other displays, but I was beginning to feel sated, as one does sometimes in a museum. There was too much to see, too much to absorb. If it was possible, I would come back here again. I wanted more, but not now, and I wondered with a certain self-distrust if I too was beginning to be possessed by the store’s power to absorb the Cordovas.
As I passed a shelf, my eye was caught by a carving done in some reddish-brown wood and I stopped to look at it more closely. It was about eight inches high—the head of an Indian woman with wide cheekbones, a nose with flared nostrils, and a generous mouth. The lines were swift and modern, suggesting, rather than expressing, detail. I took it in my hands and felt the smooth grain of the wood like satin under my fingers.
“How beautiful!” I said. “Where did this come from?”
Gavin thawed a little. “A woodcarver in Taxco did that. He’s part Indian and supremely gifted. The only trouble, from our viewpoint, is that he carves very few pieces. He doesn’t care about money, and he’ll work only when the vision comes to him and he can produce something superb.”
The Turquoise Mask Page 10
