House on the Lagoon

by Rosario Ferré

  PART 7

  The Third House on the Lagoon

  26

  Rebecca’s Revenge

  AFTER BUENAVENTURA’S FUNERAL, the family came back to the house and we all went into the living room to wait for Mr. Domenech, the family executor, who was to read Buenaventura’s testament. Eulodia and Brunilda went into the kitchen to prepare coffee and something light to eat. Everybody was in black: Rebecca, Patria, and Libertad wore black linen dresses with black lace mantillas on their heads; Ignacio, Juan, and Calixto wore dark suits with gray silk ties. As the family sat in a circle in Rebecca’s stiff Louis XVI gilt chairs, I couldn’t help smiling to myself. There was something amusing and at the same time sinister about the family; they reminded me of a flock of ravens sitting on a fence, just as in Hitchcock’s The Birds.

  Rebecca and her daughters carried rosaries in their hands and solemnly recited prayers for Buenaventura’s soul. Rebecca leaned her head against the back of her chair and sighed, closing her eyes. Ignacio sat next to his mother, tenderly holding her hand. Quintín sat next to me without saying a word, mopping his brow with a handkerchief from time to time. He was sad to lose his father, but at the same time I knew part of him was glad. Now Rebecca would finally be free of his boorish ways, and Quintín would be able to take care of her as he had wanted to since childhood.

  Everyone wondered about Buenaventura’s will, which lay unopened in a burgundy leather case on the coffee table. I knew what they were thinking. Whoever got the largest number of shares of Mendizabal & Company would be its next president. Buenaventura’s lawyer finally arrived, kissed Rebecca’s hand, and sat at one end of the room. He had a cup of coffee and chatted for a few moments with the family. When the cups were cleared, he got up from his chair and ceremoniously opened the case. The will was half a page long, and he cleared his throat before reading it aloud: Buenaventura had left everything—the house and all of Mendizabal & Company—to Rebecca.

  Quintín wasn’t surprised. Buenaventura was bound to do just that. The problem was how to deal with his mother in the future, so business could go on as usual at the firm. The expenses at the house had gone on spiraling, and Quintín was very concerned. He had never dared ask Buenaventura about his mysterious source of income, and after Mr. Domenech finished reading the will, he realized there had been no mention of it.

  Quintín had a poor sense of timing, and he chose that moment, with Buenaventura’s body still warm in its grave, to inform Rebecca of the company’s precarious situation. “Do you know where Father’s personal income came from, Mother?” he asked Rebecca, as tactfully as he could. “I see he doesn’t mention any bonds or securities in his will, but he must have had them. Incredible as it may seem, the dividends from Mendizabal & Company aren’t going to be enough to cover the family’s expenses this year; Father’s personal revenues were essential to us.”

  Rebecca was astounded at the question. “Buenaventura had a secret account in a Swiss bank, where he had a large deposit in cash,” she said. “But he never told me the name of the bank. Don’t tell me you didn’t know about it. You’ve always been your father’s pampered son!”

  Quintín had no idea what Rebecca was talking about. It was the first time he had heard anything about a bank account in Switzerland. “He must have told you the account number before he died,” Rebecca said angrily. “There are several million dollars in it!

  Quintín assured her that Buenaventura had never mentioned it, but Rebecca didn’t believe him. “If these funds exist, I’d like to know where they came from, Mother,” Quintín asked, his voice shaking slightly. “Where did Buenaventura get that money?” Rebecca looked at him, the blood drained from her face. “All I know is that once a month your father received a registered envelope from Europe,” she stammered. “At first it came from Germany, later from Spain, and only recently from Switzerland. The envelopes began arriving soon after the Second World War, but I’ve no idea who sent them.”

  “You want to know what I think, Mother?” Quintín said. “It was the payoff the German government made to Father for the military secrets he sold them during the war. And if Buenaventura didn’t tell any of us about it, it was because he wanted to take the secret to the grave with him.”

  Rebecca pretended not to hear. She thought Quintín was hedging; trying to get her off on the wrong track. Treason was a dangerous subject to discuss publicly, in any case, and so she kept silent.

  A few days later Rebecca asked Quintín to bring her Buenaventura’s bank statements, his personal checkbook, and the company’s account books. She even pored over Buenaventura’s old address book. But the name of the Swiss bank and the secret number of Buenaventura’s account didn’t turn up. Rebecca went with Quintín to the office and had Buenaventura’s safe opened in her presence; she examined all the documents: business shares, bank notes, every single receipt, dusty and yellow with age, of Mendizabal’s transactions. But she couldn’t find the magic number.

  Rebecca went home frustrated. If the account wasn’t found, they would never have access to the deposits in the Swiss bank. And if it remained inactive for a long time—if Quintín truly didn’t know where it was—who knew what might happen to the money? The bank might keep it in trust for years, waiting for someone to claim it, but eventually the Swiss government might confiscate it. This was what had happened with the Czar’s bank account after the Romanoffs’ assassination. The situation was serious indeed, but there was nothing anyone could do.

  The account was never found. A few weeks later Quintín informed Rebecca and his sisters that the family would have to alter its lifestyle. They wouldn’t have to skimp or be uncomfortable; it wasn’t anything like that. They simply couldn’t keep up their extravagant expenses.

  Quintín grew more and more somber as the days went by. He couldn’t lie still in bed at night; he paced up and down the apartment for hours. He was terribly upset; after Buenaventura’s death, he had thought Rebecca would ask for his help and admit he was the only one who could take Buenaventura’s place at the company’s helm. But he was wrong. She had gone to the office and given orders that no decision was to be made at Mendizabal’s without her approval, and that Quintín was to sign no more checks. She also gave instructions that Quintín’s pay was to remain the same—in case he had contemplated giving himself a raise. She had no idea who was going to be the next president of the company, she said, but she certainly knew who was acting president now.

  Buenaventura had always believed in the law of primogeniture. “It’s the firstborn’s right to be president of the family business at the father’s death,” Quintín and I had heard him say more than once. “It says so in the Bible, and God should have punished Rebecca for deceiving Isaac! In Spain we still abide by that law; the eldest son always inherits the titles.”

  Rebecca fumed. “Inheritances should be distributed equally among all siblings,” she retorted angrily. “That’s the only way to prevent the vendetta’s knife from turning up buried in one’s front door.”

  Buenaventura and Rebecca often argued like that about Mendizabal & Company in front of the family, as if Quintín and Ignacio were made of stone.

  Ignacio was a senior that year at Florida State; he came home to attend his father’s funeral. He stayed a few days longer, and tried to calm everybody down when the Swiss account didn’t turn up.

  When he heard of his mother’s meddling at the office, he laughed and took it all as a joke. “Don’t worry, Quintín,” he said. “You’re the only person capable of keeping the family business afloat, and one day I’ll let you manage my shares. I think you should be president.” But Quintín was deeply worried. That evening he complained bitterly to me about Rebecca’s attitude.

  A few days after Buenaventura’s will was read, Quintín went to the house on the lagoon and asked to see Rebecca in private. They retired into the study. Quintín’s hair was tousled and his shirt rumpled. He was at the end of his wits.

  “You know I’m the only one who c
an take charge of the family business, Mother,” he said to her with a touch of desperation. “Don’t pretend you can be president, because you can’t; you’ll only ruin us. I promise I’ll go on working for you for the same salary I’m drawing now. I’m sure that, with discipline and order, the company will pull through. But I want you to draw up a will leaving me enough shares so that I’ll be Mendizabal’s next president when you die. That way you’ll be doing Father’s bidding and at the same time you’ll be assuring the company’s future. If you refuse, Isabel and I will be on the next plane to Boston tomorrow—I still have some property I inherited from Grandmother Madeleine—and you’ll have to fend for yourselves.”

  It had all been a bluff, but Rebecca believed him. The next day Mr. Domenech was called to the house and Rebecca’s will was drawn up in front of Quintín.

  Rebecca ignored Quintín’s advice, however. She went on spending thousands of dollars on clothes, jewelry, and expensive furniture. Patria and Libertad couldn’t care less about what Quintín had said; they simply pretended they hadn’t heard. The shopping trips, the presents to their husbands and friends, the train of nannies for the babies—all went on as before. Ignacio went back to school and forgot about the whole thing. Money gushed out of the house on the lagoon as if from an open faucet. Before the year was over, Quintín had to take a large loan from the bank, and soon Mendizabal & Company was seriously in debt.

  The one thing Rebecca did economize on was the servants’ salaries. One day she called Petra up to the house. Petra had been forbidden to set foot in it since the day Buenaventura had died, and we hardly saw her anymore. Rebecca was in the study, trying to make sense of all the unpaid receipts that were piled up around her on the desk. She told Petra that now, with Buenaventura gone, the family couldn’t go on paying the same salaries as before. Her daughters, nieces, and nephews would receive half of what they had been earning. Those who didn’t accept would have to go back to Las Minas. Petra didn’t say anything; she just bowed her head and went silently back to the cellar.

  That same evening she announced the news to the servants from her high-backed chair, surrounded by green Cobras smoking on the floor. It was a hot night. Quintín and I were on our way out for a boat ride on the lagoon, and the strange scene impressed us both. Many of the servants were crying and singing praises to Buenaventura as they knelt around Petra. Listening, we learned that Buenaventura had been very generous with the people from Las Minas. Often he had sent Petra there with money to help out, without telling anyone.

  Rebecca wanted Petra to leave, but she didn’t dare kick her out because she knew the other servants would leave as well. Since Buenaventura’s death, servants had to go directly to Rebecca for their orders and she often bullied and intimidated them. If they got sick and couldn’t work, the day’s wage was deducted from their pay. When Buenaventura was alive, Petra had always counted the family’s Reed and Barton sterling silver at the end of the day, and no pieces had ever been missing. But now Rebecca did it herself, because she didn’t trust anyone, and every week she discovered a fork or a spoon missing. She would fly into a rage, a police officer would come to the house and search through the servants’ rooms in the cellar, but nothing was ever found.

  Rebecca was convinced Quintín was mismanaging the business; in her opinion, he had no commercial abilities at all. The sales he managed to make weren’t due to his skills. Mendizabal’s products were so good, she thought, that they sold themselves; the Mendizabal wines and gourmet foods were still the best on the island. Rebecca said as much to Quintín in public, which embarrassed him terribly. Quintín was still trying to win his mother over. He worked like a slave all through that year and was paid a pittance. He bore all the responsibility and made all the decisions but took no credit for anything. Every Sunday morning he went to the house with a basketful of goodies from Mendizabal—smoked salmon, pâté, Swiss chocolates—which he left for Rebecca on the dining-room table. But she never thanked him.

  Rebecca’s preference for Ignacio had been a thorn in Quintín’s side since childhood, and the situation grew more painful when Ignacio came back to live at the house. In December of 1959, Ignacio graduated from Florida State University with a degree in art appreciation. The day he unpacked, Rebecca offered to send him on a trip to Europe as a graduation present.

  “He can’t go on a pleasure trip now, Mother,” Quintín said, soberly shaking his head. “There’s too much work at the office. With Buenaventura gone, I need all the help I can get.” Rebecca was upset; it was as if she believed money grew on trees.

  Ignacio loved it when Rebecca pampered him. He had forgiven her for having insulted Doña Ermelinda and for not allowing him to court Esmeralda Márquez; and Rebecca wanted to make it up to him. Now that Petra couldn’t make Ignacio her delicious desserts (she was forbidden to go into the kitchen)—the guava meringues, heaven’s bacon, and rice-and-coconut milk he loved—Rebecca made them for him herself. Ignacio seemed reconciled to his fate as a bachelor. He had an active social life; he went out with friends and was always joking and making people laugh, but I thought he was sad. He reminded me of someone looking at the world through the wrong end of a telescope; it was as if he saw everything upside down.

  He was very good at doing watercolors on paper, but he never thought his sketches were beautiful enough. He liked to go walking in Old San Juan at dusk, to paint the ramparts of the city when they are bathed in purple light and seem to melt into the blue of the sea. But if you praised his work he would laugh and dismiss it as of no importance. If a young woman walked up to him at a party and told him she thought art appreciation was an interesting career because it enabled you to live while studying beautiful things, he said that good art was usually a combination of tragic circumstances and hard work. What I found even sadder was his lack of commitment to anything. When you asked Ignacio if he believed in independence for the island, he asked what you believed, and if you said you were for independence, he said he was, too. But five minutes later a Statehooder asked him if he believed in statehood, and he would say he did. Ignacio was so sensitive to disagreement that if you offered him a lemonade and he didn’t want it, he’d drink it anyway; it distressed him to say no. It was as if he were transparent, incapable of having his own opinion about anything or of thinking evil about anyone.

  Ignacio had many artist friends and would often invite them to the house to read poetry or play classical music on the piano, which was wheeled out to the gold-mosaic terrace in the evenings. This was something Rebecca thoroughly enjoyed. On these occasions Ignacio always dressed as if he were going to a vernissage: he wore a white linen suit, had a red silk handkerchief in his vest pocket, and his gold-rimmed glasses—always immaculately clean—shone like polished wafers on his nose. When Rebecca sat down to listen to Ignacio play the piano or recite Pablo Neruda’s love poems, his blond hair blowing in the gentle breeze that rose from the lagoon, she found him the handsomest young man on earth.

  Ignacio wanted to be on good terms with Quintín, though Quintín’s disapproval of his romance with Esmeralda Márquez had left a deep scar. His love for Esmeralda had been all-consuming, and he had acted against his family’s code. But when he tried not to love her, something tore in his heart. More than four years had gone by since Esmeralda’s marriage, however, and he had begun to see things in a different light. One day he confided to Quintín that he, Quintín, had been right to face up to him when he had asked for his help in getting his family to accept Esmeralda. The slap in the face had been a salutary measure; he should never have fallen in love with her; she deprived him of his inner peace.

  Quintín asked Ignacio to lend him a hand at Mendizabal & Company, and Ignacio began to go in regularly. He would arrive early and stay until five, helping to supervise the warehouse. But the sawdust from the wine cases made his asthma worse, so he began to work at the office. He had a meticulous approach to everything. If a crate of champagne was to be delivered to a private club for a wedding, for exa
mple, he would make sure all the bottles were in good condition and had them inspected one by one. If a can of Aranjuez asparagus was slightly swollen or dented, he would have the whole shipment sent back; he didn’t want his customers to get sick. The intricacies of accounting bored him, and giving pep talks to the salesmen exhausted him. But he was interested in designing new labels for Mendizabal’s products, and he spent hours making them more colorful and artistic.

  Ignacio was convinced of the importance of advertising, and he maintained that half the value of a product was in its marketing. He designed a new package for the smoked hams, for example, which were now sold in gold cellophane with red poinsettias on them; the asparagus cans were adorned with an elegant picture of the Plaza de Armas in Old San Juan; and the chorizos and sobreasadas bore a reproduction of Luquillo Beach.

  What Ignacio enjoyed most was designing new, beautiful bottles for after-dinner liqueurs. Liquor concentrates were shipped to Mendizabal & Company from all over the Caribbean, but it was at the Mendizabal plant that they were processed and finally bottled. Mandarin Napoleon essence from Martinique was bottled in a beautiful, crinkly glass container with a green bow on it; guava-berry liqueur from St. Maarten in a guava-pink glass; chocolate-mint liqueur from Grenada in a frosted glass which resembled an after-dinner mint. And Ignacio proudly labeled each and every one of them “Made in Puerto Rico.” Quintín, with his fervent belief in statehood, didn’t like this one bit. But he refrained from mentioning it to his brother, for the sake of family harmony.