House on the Lagoon

by Rosario Ferré

  Ignacio’s favorite bottle was the one he designed for Parfait Amour, a delicious liqueur of purplish hue that made one think of poison, and which was concocted at Mendizabal’s plant from a French concentrate. Ignacio considered this liqueur well named, since love was a poison and purple should be its color, and he designed a spectacular bottle for it—elliptical in shape and with a hollow at its center, which was just how one felt in the throes of unrequited love.

  Six months after Ignacio began to work at Mendizabal, Quintín and I were having breakfast at the apartment—it must have been around six in the morning—when the doorbell rang. It was Mr. Domenech, and from the expression on his face we both knew what had happened.

  “It’s your mother,” he told Quintín. “She died of a heart attack last night. They didn’t want you to know until today, when everything is ready for the wake.” Quintín and I got dressed and hurried to the house on the lagoon. Rebecca had promised Quintín that the will she had drawn up with his lawyer would be her last, but he couldn’t be sure she had kept her word. He had contacted a number of lawyers in the city, asking to be alerted if his mother made a new will. But the minute he got to the house he knew Rebecca had dodged his net. Patria and Libertad themselves opened the door. Mr. Purcell, the family’s new lawyer, stood by their side.

  Rebecca’s open coffin was in the living room. Quintín and I walked in alone; his sisters and Mr. Purcell went out on the terrace, so we would have some privacy. No one else was there. It was seven in the morning, and people hadn’t started arriving to pay their respects. Quintín stood looking at his mother, his chest heaving as if something were stifling him. “She’s beautiful, isn’t she?” he said, his eyes full of tears. “Her face is as delicate as ever; it looks as if it had been carved on a Grecian urn.” And he bent and kissed Rebecca on the forehead with his eyes closed.

  I have to admit I didn’t cry when I saw Rebecca in her coffin. There had been so many Rebeccas, she had played so many roles in her life—the Queen of the Antilles, the would-be poet and dancer, the political rebel, the defender of the Independentista ideal, the feminist stamp collector searching for stamps with the initials RF (for Rebecca Francisca and République Française), the religious fanatic, the obedient rebel, the perfect Hausfrau, the jealous wife, the spendthrift socialite, the unforgiving mother—that I couldn’t help thinking this was just another of her metamorphoses. I couldn’t believe she was dead.

  The following afternoon, when we all came back from the cemetery, we sat around the living-room table in front of the lawyer, exactly as we had done after Buenaventura’s funeral, and Mr. Purcell read Rebecca’s will aloud. She had left each of her children an equal number of shares in Mendizabal & Company, and the shareholders were to elect a new president.

  “I think it’s the fair thing to do, don’t you agree?” Libertad asked Quintín when Mr. Purcell finished. “This way, we’ll all have a say in the company’s future.” Quintín stared, pale with anger, and escorted me out of the house.

  27

  Quintín’s Odyssey

  A MONTH AFTER REBECCA’S will was read, the family was supposed to convene at Mendizabal & Company for a shareholders’ meeting to choose the new president. Patria and Libertad approached Ignacio a few days beforehand and told him they wanted to vote for him, but Ignacio begged them not to. He trusted Quintín’s judgment and was content to go on working as he had been, taking care of the promotional side of the business. He wanted peace, he said. Quintín was the older brother and it was right that he should be president.

  Patria and Libertad insisted. They were convinced Quintín was a skinflint; the company’s situation wasn’t as bad as he said. Quintín wanted to save and reinvest every penny in Mendizabal & Company, and they were expected to make great sacrifices. But that just wasn’t right.

  “I have two children and a baby and they need a lot of attention,” Patria said. “I couldn’t possibly do without my three nannies. Can you see me washing shit off diapers? You know how our parents brought us up, Ignacio; it’s not my fault if I have such a sensitive nose!”

  Juan and Calixto’s father had passed away in Spain and had left them two important titles: Count of Valderrama and Duke of Medina del Campo, which his sons had to lay claim to before any of his nephews did. But it would cost them ten thousand dollars each to do so. When Patria and Libertad heard about the titles, they were ecstatic. To be married to a count and a duke was beyond their expectations, and they immediately went ahead and purchased the titles for their husbands.

  Libertad was upset with Quintín because he wanted Calixto to sell Serenata, a beautiful black Arab mare he had just purchased from General Trujillo in Santo Domingo for twenty thousand dollars. Of the two Osorio brothers, Calixto had had the most difficulty adapting to life on the island, and he had often told Libertad that he wanted to go back to Spain. In despair, Libertad asked her mother to lend her some money so that Calixto could buy a few paso fino horses, because he loved to ride. Rebecca complied and Calixto bought himself a stable with six horses, on the outskirts of San Juan. For the first time since he arrived in Puerto Rico, Calixto was happy and hadn’t mentioned going back to Europe again.

  “If Quintín is president and Calixto has to sell Serenata, he’ll leave the island and it will break my heart,” Libertad said to Ignacio. “You must accept the position, so he’ll stay.”

  When Ignacio heard Patria and Libertad’s arguments, he felt sorry for them. It was foolish to spend all that money on nannies, titles, and horses, but he thought things could be worked out if each side was willing to give a little. Perhaps two nannies instead of three, and four horses instead of six, would do it. The money that was saved could be reinvested in the company. Sometimes Quintín was too demanding, instead of doing things step-by-step. Even so, Ignacio didn’t want to be president; he didn’t want to fight with his brother. Patria and Libertad refused to accept his decision, however. They begged Ignacio to think it over.

  On the day of the meeting, the whole family—Patria, Libertad, Ignacio, and Quintín—met at La Puntilla, and sat around the heavy oak conference table in Buenaventura’s office. Juan, Calixto, and I were also present, but we couldn’t participate in the election. The brothers and sisters were to write the name of their chosen candidate on a piece of paper, fold it, and drop it into Buenaventura’s sombrero Cordobés, the same one he had been wearing when he arrived from Spain. The hat went around the table, and they dropped their votes in it. Then Quintín spilled the papers on the table. He opened them one by one and lay them in front of us: Ignacio had two votes in his favor and Quintín had one. One piece of paper had nothing written on it: Ignacio had abstained from voting.

  “You know you can’t be president, Ignacio,” Quintín said, looking pale. “You studied art appreciation and are used to dealing with beautiful things. I’m the one who has business experience, in addition to the benefit of Buenaventura’s coaching. You’ve admitted you made a mistake in falling in love with Esmeralda Márquez; you almost ruined your good name then. If you accept this absurd nomination, the whole family will be ruined.”

  Ignacio looked at Quintín over his gold-rimmed glasses. Disagreeing with his brother made him perspire, and his glasses kept misting and sliding down his nose. In his heart, he would have preferred to leave everything in Quintín’s hands so he wouldn’t have to worry. But he was uncomfortable with his brother bringing up Esmeralda’s name; what he had said about her had been in the strictest confidence.

  “Don’t listen to him, Ignacio!” Libertad intervened. “Quintín is always making everyone think he’s the only one who can do things right. You know your advertising campaign has been a success, and thanks to you, our products are now selling better than before. You’re just as intelligent as Quintín; I know you can be president!”

  “Esmeralda was one thing, and Mendizabal & Company is another,” Ignacio said to Quintín, straightening up in his chair. “I’ll give the job a try, and see if I’m able to deal w
ith the beautiful and the practical.”

  Quintín was furious with Ignacio, and we left the meeting. I had no idea what he was going to do next; he was so angry he refused to speak to me for two whole days. Then he asked if I could lend him my diamond engagement ring—the one Rebecca had bought us when the first one splintered in two. He needed it for a while, he said, but of course he would return it. Then he pawned it and bought a round-trip ticket to Spain. When I asked him why Spain, he looked at me soberly. “I’m afraid I can’t tell you, Isabel. I have my reasons, but I can’t talk about it now.”

  He left for Europe the following week, and for a month I had no idea of his whereabouts. I knew he had flown to Madrid and had stayed at the Puerta del Sol, a small commercial hotel in the center of town, but after that I lost track. I was mad with worry and didn’t know whom to get in touch with. Spanish authorities were notorious for their incompetence, so I telephoned the American consulate in Madrid. They pointed out that there were dozens of missing American citizens in Europe; a month wasn’t enough to request an official search. My husband might simply have decided to take a long vacation by himself. There was nothing I could do; I simply had to wait.

  I still had some income from Mother’s inheritance in Ponce, but I had to be careful with expenses. The economy in Ponce had taken a downward turn and the lease on Mother’s properties, the two houses downtown and a warehouse on the waterfront, had expired. I was having a hard time renting them again. The Union Carbide plant, as well as Corco’s oil refinery, had closed down because of the upsurge in oil prices; electricity was as expensive as liquid gold in those years. I had no access to Quintín’s paycheck, which was waiting for him at the office, so I barely had enough money to survive.

  It had been weeks since I had been to the house on the lagoon. With Rebecca’s death, Patria and Libertad had stopped calling; they hardly missed us and I certainly didn’t miss them. Not having to visit the house was a relief. Now I could stay home as much as I wanted to; I didn’t have to pretend I enjoyed being a socialite. The only thing that worried me was Quintín. I suspected he had fled the island because he couldn’t face Mendizabal & Company. I also worried that once he realized the seriousness of the situation, he might take some drastic action.

  Eventually I received a telegram from Switzerland that put an end to my worries. Quintín was feeling much better and he would be home soon. A letter arrived a few days later, giving me a detailed account of what had happened in the past month. It was quite tender, and after all these years I still have it.

  August 20, 1960

  Bern, Switzerland

  Dear Isabel,

  Please forgive me for all the worry I must have caused you after my sudden departure for Spain, and even worse, for my disappearance after I left Madrid. I realize how inconsiderate this was on my part. You must have been distraught with worry, but at the time I felt so miserable there was nothing else I could do. My family’s ungratefulness hurt me deeply, and I became terribly depressed. I had slaved for them for years, and they weren’t willing to acknowledge what I had done.

  When I arrived in Madrid I realized I had brought very little money, only enough to pay for a week’s stay at the Puerto del Sol. I rented a car, put my bag in it, and drove west for eight hours until I reached Valdeverdeja on the road to Cáceres. The village was almost deserted. Most of the houses had been abandoned; the town had suffered a severe decline in population. The young people no longer want to raise pigs and pasture cattle on the dry, rocky plains of Extremadura. The ham industry has long since died out and the municipality is very poor. The young people all travel north to Madrid or south to Seville and never come back.

  I hadn’t brought the address of my two great-aunts, Angelita and Conchita, but I only had to ask one of the local peasants and he pointed out the Mendizabals’ house. It was an abandoned ramshackle building, very different from the gay whitewashed house with pots of geraniums on the windowsills and a roof of red terra-cotta tiles that Buenaventura had described to me when I was a child. I knocked on the ancient, weather-beaten door and an old woman answered. She had been my aunt’s servant ages ago and now lived in one of the front rooms where the roof didn’t leak. She told me my aunts had passed away long ago, and since there were no descendants, the municipality had expropriated the house.

  I felt my heart tighten as I listened to her. For some absurd reason I had believed I could stay there, find shelter under the same roof where Father had been born. I thanked the old woman and walked despondently to the square, dropped my bag on the pavement, and sat down on the ground, leaning against a tree. I was at the end of my tether; I had no idea where else to go. Then a bell began to toll in the tower of an austere Romanesque church close by. It was made of the same gray granite Buenaventura had imported when he rebuilt the house on the lagoon. He had used it to build the archways of our house, the stone turrets of our roof, even the granite stairway with its bizarre banister of iron spears. He had even had the family pantheon at San Juan Cemetery made of that stone. I got up from the pavement, walked to the church, and slid my hand tenderly over the façade. All of a sudden I felt comforted, almost as if I could draw strength from its steel-gray surface.

  Then I remembered that Buenaventura had talked to me once about a monastery near Valdeverdeja where the Conquistadors had been blessed by the monks before they left for the New World. Buenaventura used to visit it periodically—every three or four years—and would spend several days resting there. I got back in the car and drove over the Sierra de

  Guadalupe until I found it. It was the Monastery of the Virgin of Guadalupe, the Virgin of the Conquistadors. I told the monks I was Buenaventura Mendizabal’s son, and they welcomed me with open arms; they said I could stay as long as I wanted. They assigned me to one of their cells and invited me to share their meals with them in the refectory. I was there a week, at the end of which my wounds were almost healed. I felt Father nearer than ever before. I kept hearing his voice in my dreams: “Willpower is the only road to power. If Francisco Pizarro, my ancestor, was able to defeat forty thousand Indians with four hundred soldiers, you shouldn’t be afraid of your present situation, my son, because it’s only three against one.”

  A few days after my arrival, I talked to the prior; I had made up a story to get him to help me. I had come to the monastery in search of spiritual help, I said. I was distraught after Mother’s death, which had come less than two years after Father’s. When I left the island, I had brought barely enough money to live on for a week. I needed a loan for the rest of my trip, and I would pay it back scrupulously the moment I got back home. The prior believed me. He was used to seeing Buenaventura and Rebecca arrive from Madrid in a Bentley limousine when they came to visit, and they had been magnanimous donors to the monastery. That kind of fortune didn’t just vanish into thin air. The prior lent me a thousand dollars, which was just what I needed, and the next day I drove back to Madrid.

  I wired the different wine and food companies that Mendizabal had done business with in Europe over the years, and asked for an interview with their owners. I knew them all by name; I had been corresponding with them for the past four years, since Father had been partially retired, and I had signed all the purchase orders with the title of vice president. I was the administrator of the company, the one who signed the checks, and they recognized my name immediately.

  For two weeks I didn’t eat, sleep, or drink. Once the interviews were set up, I traveled day and night. First I traveled throughout Spain: I took a train to Rioja, to the great wineries of the south; from there to Aranjuez, where our asparagus came from; then to Segovia, where we purchased our sobreasadas and sausages; then on to Barcelona, where our Codorniu champagne is made. After I finished my business in Spain, I flew to France and visited the Count of St.-Emilion near Bordeaux; then to Italy to see the Marquis of Torcello, who has his Bolla distillery near Venice; and finally to Glasgow, where I met with Charles McCann, who sold us Scotch for more than
twenty years. I met confidentially with all of them and explained the family situation. I was Buenaventura Mendizabal’s older son. My mother, Buenaventura’s widow, had died recently, and my sisters and brother had taken over the company. But they didn’t know the first thing about business; in their hands Mendizabal & Company would be ruined in less than a year. I wanted to rescue it and was inviting them to transfer their accounts to me. The new enterprise would be called Gourmet Imports, and in addition to selling their products on the island, as we had always done, we would serve as a link with the United States and would market their products there. With that kind of arrangement, they would maintain the same comfortable incomes they had had—I quoted these easily, as I knew each account by heart—and they wouldn’t have to worry about a thing.

  My interviews were surprisingly successful. In less than a month I had flown all over Europe and I had contracts from fifty-five percent of Father’s old partners in my pocket. I could have added more, but I wanted to leave some to Ignacio, I didn’t want to strangle Mendizabal & Company. Buenaventura was right, Isabel, willpower is the only road to power! The world belongs to those hardy souls who, having Fortune against them, win the struggle for survival by dint of their own efforts.

  I’ll be back home in a week, darling. I’m anxious to see you, so we can celebrate our good luck. I still have your engagement ring in my pocket and will soon put it back on your finger with a renewed vow of love.

  Your loving husband,

  Quintín

  28

  Ignacio’s Martyrdom

  WHEN I FINISHED READING Quintín’s letter, I didn’t know what to think. It was obvious that money was being thrown away at the house on the lagoon, and this seemed to justify Quintín’s decision to strike out on his own. But I still had my doubts as to whether it was the right thing to do. A voice kept whispering in my ear that if Buenaventura had known about Quintín’s leaving Mendizabal & Company, he would have turned over in his grave. Having convinced so many of Buenaventura’s old partners to trust him and join Gourmet Imports was no mean accomplishment, however; I had to admire Quintín for having achieved this feat.