House on the Lagoon

by Rosario Ferré

  As more and more voters lined up behind statehood, the atmosphere in San Juan grew volatile; disputes took place everywhere. Our current governor, Rodrigo Escalante, was a white-maned politician who spoke in favor of statehood with the hysterical fervor of an Evangelical minister. Governor Escalante was nicknamed the Silver Cock by his enemies, and he had taken the insult as his trademark. He spoke English with a thick Spanish accent and had a white American rooster brought to all his political rallies. He announced that if statehood should win by 51 percent The Star-Spangled Banner would be our national anthem and the American flag our flag.

  Governor Escalante was famous for his strict measures against dissenters. He thought it was his duty to impose discipline on the land, so voting would take place in an atmosphere of law and order. When a strike broke out at the University of Puerto Rico, he sent in paratroopers, and several students were killed. El Machete, the Independentista newspaper, went up in flames one night, but no one was caught or punished for it. The police made a list of all citizens with Independentista leanings, identifying them as subversives despite the fact that the Independence Party was recognized legally and would take part in the referendum. Having an Independentista come to one’s house for a visit was dangerous; it put one on the list as a sympathizer. Homes, telephones, and cars of Independentistas were bugged. Every once in a while, a band of brigands would surround one of their houses at night and beat whoever tried to leave or go inside. In August, three months before the plebiscite was to take place, Coral convinced Manuel to join the AK 47. We found out about it later from the reports of the private detective Quintín had hired to keep track of Manuel’s activities.

  The AK 47 held study sessions in the slum, in a shack near Alwilda’s. Manuel and Coral began to go to them regularly in the evening. Most of the members were young and very serious about their studies. They had to learn Chairman Mao’s Red Book by heart, read and discuss Karl Marx’s Das Kapital, as well as Albizu Campos’s incendiary speeches. Manuel was a slow reader and had a hard time sitting still for so many hours, trying to understand those boring texts, but with Coral by his side helping him, he eventually made progress.

  They also studied civil and economic reports which detailed the island’s soaring rate of drug abuse, twenty percent unemployment rate, thriving black market, illicit minimum wage, and the shameful condition of public schools and municipal hospitals. In the AK 47’s opinion, these ills were the result of the island’s colonial status, which led to a confused sense of identity and a lack of self-respect.

  The impending plebiscite was the moment for the AK 47 to show that the spirit of independence wasn’t dead on the island, that there were still people who shared in its dream. Puerto Rico should be a socialist republic, loosely structured on the Cuban model. For the past twelve years, the country had been politically split almost down the middle. Fear kept it balanced on the edge of a knife. Voting by halves, after all, was a way of not making up one’s mind. Fear of what, Manuel asked the AK 47. Fear of choosing a definite path, they said, of leaving the collective schizophrenia behind. The confusion as to whether we were Puerto Rican or American, whether we should speak Spanish or English, had gotten the better of us and turned our will to mush. That was why, when election time came around, half the country voted for statehood and half for commonwealth or independence—the country could not make up its mind what it wanted to be. Now that there was finally going to be a plebiscite, it was the duty of the AK 47 to give the country a definitive push, so it would find the courage to vote for independence.

  When Manuel and Coral heard these arguments, they were convinced the AK 47 was right. They threw themselves feverishly into their work: they raised money, helped organize strikes, sold El Machete on street corners, waving it above their heads like a flag as they forged their way on foot through traffic.

  They wanted an island where everyone could be free—from drugs, from ignorance, from poverty—where no one would sleep in beds with embroidered linen sheets and pillows of swan feathers like those in the house on the lagoon, while others had no sheets at all. And even more important, they wanted a country where waving one’s flag and singing one’s national anthem was not a crime, where one could confidently fall asleep with the windows open and no one would batter down one’s door. And as everything was fair in love and war, the members of the AK 47 told them, and they professed a true love for their country and for the proletariat to which they now belonged, all methods were valid to reach their goal. Manuel and Coral thoroughly approved.

  When the AK 47 found out that Manuel was the great-grandson of Chief of Police Arístides Arrigoitia and the son of Quintín Mendizabal, the millionaire owner of Gourmet Imports, they asked him to contribute to their cause. After all, the Mendizabal family had benefited more than most from the unequal distribution of wealth on the island. The house on the lagoon was a virtual myth in Las Minas. Everyone had heard about its terrace of .22-karat gold mosaics where people danced and laughed until the wee hours of the morning, and about the dark cellar where the servants lived. It was his duty to donate generously. Manuel told them he didn’t have any money, that he had quarreled with his father and had been kicked out of the house, but they wouldn’t believe him. Manuel felt guilty and tried to raise as much money as possible. He sold his fishing tackle, his camera, his stamp collection, even his blue Vespa, and gave them the proceeds, but they only laughed at him and said it wasn’t enough.

  The AK 47 then asked him to invite Willie to their study sessions. If Manuel couldn’t contribute money, he could at least bring a collaborator to the cause. His brother was smart; they would soon find a way to get him to help them. Manuel sent Willie a message through Perla to come to Alwilda’s house; he needed to talk to him. Willie was happy to go, being eager to see his brother. Together they went to several meetings.

  Manuel and Willie sat next to each other at the study sessions and read from the red book of Mao Tse-tung’s thoughts. Manuel took it all very seriously—too seriously, Willie thought. The group never played music or made small talk. What was worse, they never smiled—they seemed to be always frowning. Willie noticed that when Manuel read aloud from Mao his voice trembled and he lowered his head in reverence; it was as if Manuel were praying. But Willie didn’t say anything. He was glad to share in what Manuel was doing, so he could see him more often. And basically he agreed that there were many social and economic evils on the island. The oligarchy, his family included, had too much money; they lived in palaces and all of them had second homes—in Vail, Colorado; in Stowe, Vermont—while the poor lived in slums.

  Willie was a fast learner. He soon had all the information he needed at the tips of his fingers and he began to write short notices for El Machete, book reviews and articles pointing out social ills. One day, the group’s leader said he wanted to talk to him in private. He asked if Willie would work for the AK 47 full-time, writing ads for the Independentista Party’s campaign. “With the plebiscite only three months away, we need all the help we can get to further our cause,” the leader said. “We can’t pay you for your work, but you’ll be earning points toward the future. Maybe someday we’ll be able to return the favor, when we get rid of all the traitors in power.” Willie declined the offer. If he worked full-time for them, he would have to stop painting, and he couldn’t do that. He was working on some important canvases right now which he hoped to take back with him to Pratt after the summer vacation was over.

  The leader of the AK 47 didn’t take Willie’s refusal kindly. At the next meeting he publicly denounced him. His paintings were self-indulgent; all Willie wanted was to convey hedonist pleasure. When the country was in such dire need of artists to denounce the political morass, it was shameful to refuse.

  Willie expected Manuel to speak up, but Manuel just sat there, staring stolidly at him. He didn’t say a word. Willie got angry and left the room, slamming the door behind him, and motored back to the house alone in the Boston Whaler. That was the last time he w
ent to an AK 47 meeting or tried to contact Manuel.

  38

  The Strike at Gourmet Imports

  AFTER HIS FIGHT WITH MANUEL, Quintín began to have trouble sleeping again. He was often up all night wandering around the house in the dark. But if I got up and went looking for him or tried to get him to come back to bed, he got very angry. He would stand for hours before Giuseppe Ribera’s painting of St. Andrew nailed to the cross, praying to him aloud. “I know every man is crucified at the end of his life, but I didn’t know it would happen to me so soon. I’ve worked like a slave for Manuel, and now he’s betrayed me.”

  Manuel had left his job at Gourmet Imports and news reached us through Petra that he was still living in Alwilda’s house. Quintín’s private detective followed him everywhere and found out he did all sorts of chores for the AK 47, even cooking, and cleaning Party headquarters. It was as if Manuel had become their ward. But what bothered Quintín most was the rumor in Alamares, the Casa de España, and other social circles of San Juan, that our son had become a radical Independentista.

  Manuel was twenty-one; he had the right to be what he wanted and live as he wished. But his silence was like a knife in my heart. Not a word, not a call in more than three months; we could have died and he wouldn’t have known. “If you love someone, you must learn to give him up,” I heard Petra say once after Carmelina left for New York. Now I had to give up Manuel. “But that doesn’t mean we’ve lost him,” Petra added. “He’ll turn up when we least expect it.”

  “The AK 47 is a very dangerous organization,” the private detective told us. “They’re terrorists, and the police have been after them for some time. They’re simply waiting for the right opportunity to force Manuel to do something risky, and then he’s going to have to face the consequences.” Soon after that, we received an anonymous letter, warning us to leave Manuel alone if we cared at all for our safety.

  Quintín was incensed and ordered the surveillance of Manuel intensified. Several agents from the local police force, in addition to the private detective, followed him everywhere. Thanks to his Grandfather Arístides, Quintín still had many friends at headquarters. Quintín was also worried about Gourmet Imports. He was afraid that if something happened to him, Gourmet Imports, as well as our house and the valuable collection of paintings, would fall into the hands of the terrorist organization that had gotten hold of our son.

  The day after we received the threatening letter, just before he left for the office Quintín told me he was thinking of making a new will. He wanted to leave his money to a foundation, which would manage his holdings until Manuel came to his senses. If Manuel never did, the foundation would keep everything. “And what about Willie?” I asked. “He doesn’t have anything to do with any of this. It’s not right for him to be left out of our inheritance, and have to pay for Manuel’s folly.” But Quintín insisted. “I can’t leave a fortune to Willie if Manuel isn’t going to inherit anything,” he said. “Especially since I can’t be sure Willie is my son.” I couldn’t believe Quintín would go ahead with such an unfair plan.

  That same day, after Quintín left for Gourmet Imports, Eulodia came to my room and told me Petra wanted to see me. She was waiting for me in the servants’ parlor—Brambon and her three nieces standing next to her. “I want you to take a message to Quintín, Isabel,” Petra said quietly. “You’ve already lost Manuel because of your husband’s foolishness, and now Quintín is forgetting that, when he ‘adopted’ Willie, he did so because the Avilés family let him adopt him. But Willie belongs to us. If Quintín disinherits him, we’ll tell him who his father is, and you’ll lose both your sons, because Willie will think you’re ashamed of him.” I went upstairs overcome with anxiety, and waited for Quintín to come home, to tell him of Petra’s words.

  Quintín returned early, but I never had a chance to talk to him. He was very upset about an unexpected development at Gourmet Imports. “We’ve never had a labor union before, and all of a sudden Anaconda has gotten hold of Gourmet Imports,” he said angrily as he sat down to dinner. Buenaventura had taught Quintín to screen workers who might become members of the Anaconda or the Black Bear, the two most powerful labor unions on the island. Quintín would interview applicants personally and always had a private detective do a little footwork before he hired anyone. “I’ve told the workers in no ambiguous terms: ‘I won’t have it.’ Now they’re threatening to strike.” He was so angry he kept wielding his dinner knife at an imaginary foe. I didn’t dare tell him about Petra.

  The next day Quintín fired fifty of his employees, half the workforce of Gourmet Imports. He had spies among them, and easily found out who the troublemakers were. But it was too late. Early the next morning—it couldn’t have been later than six o’clock, because we were still in bed—Quintín got a telephone call from one of the guards at the warehouse, telling him a mob was gathering in front of the building. He drove immediately to Old San Juan and found the workers demonstrating in front of the heavy wooden gates, with placards aloft and an elaborate speaker system blaring their propaganda from a pickup truck. The pavement was littered with broken wine and liquor bottles that had been thrown against the building, as well as sausages, smoked hams, and overturned codfish crates. An army of stray dogs was already digging into them. Several of the windows had been broken; stones and debris were everywhere. Quintín telephoned the police, and a squadron of armed men arrived on the scene. They went after the demonstrators with billy clubs and water hoses, scattering them in every direction.

  In four hours the situation was under control, and by five in the afternoon Quintín had returned to the house. He was furious. A stone had grazed his right temple when he had come out of the warehouse earlier in the day. Moreover, an entire sales season would be lost because of the strike. It was only September, but Gourmet Imports had been gearing up for Thanksgiving, which had become almost as important as Christmas on the island. Orders for all kinds of wines, stuffings, chestnuts, and other imported foods were already coming in. But he wouldn’t be able to deliver, because he didn’t have enough workers. He was going to have to put ads in the papers and set up interviews for a whole new workforce. He swore he was going to find out who was responsible for the strike if he had to rake Gourmet Imports with a steel comb.

  That evening—it must have been around ten o’clock—as Quintín lay asleep on the bed with an ice pack on his head—I happened to look out the window and saw to my amazement strikers gathering on Ponce de León Avenue, in front of the house. They had brought their placards and streamers with them and were angrily haranguing a crowd of onlookers with a small portable microphone. Our neighbors—the Berensons, who lived in a porticoed Victorian mansion with elaborate trellises; the Colbergs, who owned the home next to ours, designed by Pavel with a prairie-style veranda in front—came out into the street to see what was going on. I worried what they might think of us. A strike in Alamares was unheard of; whoever had organized this one evidently wasn’t intimidated by the surroundings. People from the working quarters of San Juan—from Barrio Obrero or Las Minas, for example—rarely dared set foot in Alamares, where a police officer was usually very efficient in getting non-residents to move out of the neighborhood. But this time it was different. There must have been at least fifty workers marching up and down the palm-lined avenue as confidently as if they owned it.

  First the Berensons’ maid, then the Colbergs’ nanny and their chauffeur, and finally the neighbors themselves began to congregate on the sidewalk, listening to the gross insults being hurled at Quintín. “Quintín, you pig, you rip off the worker and reap benefits!” “Quintín, you pig, you starve the poor and feed the rich!” My face was stinging with shame; I couldn’t believe what was happening. The strikers circled the street right before our front door, in front of Pavel’s Art Nouveau rainbow, waving Puerto Rican flags and shaking their fists at us. Quintín was sound asleep. The air-conditioning drowned out the commotion outside. A shout from one of the strikers finally rouse
d Quintín, and we ran out into the street together. Willie stood on the sidewalk next to Petra, Eulodia, and Brambon, his face drawn with worry. I called out to him and he joined us. “Go inside and call the police!” Quintín shouted at him, picking up some rocks and throwing them at the demonstrators. But Willie didn’t budge. He stood next to me on the sidewalk as if he had grown roots. The leader, a tall, dark-haired man who was marching in front of the picket line, was chanting: “Quintín, you pig, selling truffles, and mincing your workers to bits.” The strikers had thrown stones at the streetlamps and the street was dark. But we recognized him instantly. It was Manuel.

  “I know how to take care of these scoundrels!” Quintín shouted and disappeared into the house. I thought he was going to get his gun, and I cried out to Willie to stop him. But he had thought of something else. Two black forms streaked out from the back of the house and sprang at the demonstrators. Quintín had let Fausto and Mefistófeles loose.