The House of the Spirits

by Isabel Allende

  Nana and Férula despised each other. They squabbled over the children’s affection and fought for the right to care for Clara in her rantings and ravings; their silent, continuous war was conducted in the kitchens, the courtyards, the hallways, but never near Clara, because the two of them had agreed to spare her that particular anguish. Férula had come to love Clara with a jealous passion that resembled that of a demanding husband more than it did that of a sister-in-law. With time she lost her prudence and began to let her adoration show in many ways that did not go unobserved by Esteban. Whenever he returned from the country, Férula would manage to persuade him that Clara was in what she called “one of her bad spells,” so that he could not sleep in the same bed with her and would enter her room rarely, and then only briefly. She would buttress her argument with recommendations from Dr. Cuevas, which later, when he was asked point-blank, turned out to have been made up. She found a thousand ways to come between the husband and wife and, if all else failed, she would encourage the children to beg their father to take them on an outing, their mother to read them a book, or both parents to watch over them because they had a fever or to play with them. “Poor things,” she would say. “They need their father and their mother. They spend the whole day with that ignorant old woman who fills their heads with outmoded ideas; she’s making them into imbeciles with her superstition. What we should do with Nana is put her away. People say the Handmaidens of God have a marvelous asylum for old housekeepers. They treat them like real ladies. They don’t have to work, there’s good food—that’s the most humane thing we could do. Poor Nana, she’s all used up.” Without being able to pinpoint the cause, Esteban began to feel uncomfortable in his own house. His wife had grown increasingly remote, strange, and inaccessible. There was no way for him to reach her, not even with presents. His timid show of affection did not work, nor did the unbridled passion that always overcame him in her presence. In all that time his love for her had grown to the point where it had become an obsession. He wanted Clara to think of nothing but him, and he could not bear for her to have a life outside that did not include him. He wanted her to tell him everything and to own nothing he had not given her with his own two hands. He wanted her to be completely dependent.

  But reality was different. Clara seemed to be flying in an airplane, like her Uncle Marcos, unmoored from land, seeking God through Tibetan sciences, consulting spirits with a three-legged table that gave little jolts—two for yes, three for no—deciphering messages from other worlds that could even give her the forecast for rain. Once they announced that there was a hidden treasure beneath the chimney. First she had the wall knocked down and then, when it was not found, the staircase and half of the main sitting room. Still nothing. Finally it turned out that the spirit, confused by the architectural alterations she had made to the house, was unable to detect that the hiding place of the gold doubloons was not in the Trueba mansion but across the street at the house of the Ugartes, who refused to demolish their dining room because they did not believe the story about the Spanish ghost. Clara was incapable of braiding Blanca’s hair for school, a task she entrusted to Férula or Nana, but she had a wonderful relationship with her based on the same principles as the relationship she had had with Nívea. They told each other stories, read the magic books from the enchanted trunks, consulted family portraits, told anecdotes about uncles who let fly great amounts of wind, and others, blind, who fell like gargoyles from poplar trees; they went out to look at the cordillera and count the clouds, and spoke in a made-up language with no t’s and with r’s instead of l’s, so that they sounded just like the man in the Chinese laundry. Meanwhile, Jaime and Nicolás were growing up apart from the feminine dyad, adhering to the then common belief that “we have to become men.” The twins grew strong and cruel in the games typical of their age. They chased lizards to slice off their tails, mice to make them run races, and butterflies to wipe the powder from their wings; then, when they were older, they punched and kicked each other on instructions from that Chinese laundryman, who was ahead of his time and had been the first to introduce the country to the millennial practice of the martial arts. But no one had paid any attention when he demonstrated how he could split bricks in two with his hand and had tried to open his own academy, so he had ended up washing other people’s clothes. Years later, the twins put the finishing touches on their manhood by escaping from school and diving into the empty lot behind the garbage dump, where they traded some of their mother’s silverware for a few minutes of forbidden love with an enormous woman who cradled both of them in breasts like those of a Dutch cow, drowning them in the soft wetness of her armpits, crushing them with her elephantine thighs and sending them both to heaven with the dark, hot, juicy cavern of her sex. But that was not until much later, and Clara never knew about it, so she could not write it in her notebooks that bore witness to life, for me to read one day. I found out from other sources.

  Clara had no interest in domestic matters. She wandered from one room to the next without ever being the least surprised to find everything in perfect order and sparklingly clean. She sat down to eat without ever wondering who had cooked the food or where it had come from, just as she was oblivious to the person serving it. She forgot the names of the servants and even of her own children, yet she always managed to be present, like a cheerful, beneficent spirit, at whose slightest footfall clocks began to wind themselves. She dressed in white, because she had decided that it was the only color that did not change her aura, in simple dresses that Férula made for her on the sewing machine and that she preferred to the ruffled, sequined gowns her husband bought with the aim of showing her off in the latest fashions.

  Esteban had bouts of despair because Clara treated him with the same kindness she displayed toward everybody else. She spoke to him in the same cajoling tones she used to address her cats, and was incapable of telling whether he was tired, sad, euphoric, or eager to make love. However, from the color of his rays she knew at a glance whether he was hatching a swindle, and she could defuse one of his tantrums with a few simple, mocking words. It exasperated him that Clara never seemed truly grateful for anything and never seemed to need anything that he could give her. She was as distracted and as smiling in bed as she was in everything else; relaxed and simple, but absent. He knew that her body was his to engage in all the acrobatics he had learned in the books he kept hidden in a corner of his library, but with Clara even the most abominable contortions were like the thrashings of a newborn; it was impossible to spice them up with the salt of evil or the pepper of submission. In a rage, Trueba sometimes reverted to his former sins, rolling with some robust peasant woman in the tall rushes of the riverbank while Clara stayed behind with the children in the city and he had to tend to the hacienda in the country, but instead of relieving him these episodes only left a bitter taste in his mouth. They brought no lasting pleasure, particularly since he knew that if he told his wife about them she would be appalled by his mistreatment of the other woman but not by his infidelity to her. Jealousy, like many other typical human reactions, was simply not part of Clara’s vocabulary. He also went to the Red Lantern a few times, but he stopped going because he could not perform anymore with prostitutes and he had to swallow his humiliation by stammering various excuses: he had drunk too much wine, had eaten too much at lunch, had been walking around with a cold for several days. Nor did he return to Tránsito Soto, because he sensed that she embodied the real danger of addiction. He felt a terrible desire boiling up within him, a fire impossible to quench, a thirst for Clara that would never, even on the longest and most passionate nights, be satisfied. He fell asleep exhausted, his heart on the verge of bursting in his chest, but even in his dreams he was aware that the woman sleeping by his side was not really there: she was in some unknown, other dimension where he could never reach her. At times he would lose his patience and furiously shake her awake, shouting the worst accusations he could think of, but then he would end up weeping in her lap
and begging her forgiveness for his cruelty. Clara understood, but there was nothing she could do. Esteban Trueba’s exaggerated love for her was without a doubt the most powerful emotion of his life, greater by far than his rage and pride. Half a century later, he would still be speaking of it with the same shudder and the same sense of urgency. In his old man’s bed, he would continue to call her name until the day he died.

  Férula’s comments increased Esteban’s anxiety. Every obstacle his sister placed between himself and Clara drove him out of his mind. He even came to hate his own children for taking all their mother’s time. He took Clara on a second honeymoon to the same places where they had spent the first, and on weekend escapades to a hotel, but it was all useless. He was convinced that Férula was entirely to blame, that she had planted an evil seed in his wife to prevent her from loving him, and that she was stealing forbidden kisses that properly belonged to him. He would grow livid with anger when he came upon Férula giving Clara her bath. He grabbed the sponge from her hands, thrust her out of the room, and pulled Clara from the tub practically in midair. He gave her a good shaking and forbade her to let herself be bathed again, because at her age it was a vice, and he dried her off himself, wrapping her in her robe and leading her to the bed, feeling all the while that he was acting like a fool. If Férula tried to serve his wife a cup of chocolate, he grabbed it from her hands on the pretext that she was treating her like an invalid; if she kissed her good night, he pulled her away with a sweep of his hand, saying that it was not right for them to kiss; if she chose the best portions for her from the serving tray, he rose from the table in a temper. Brother and sister became rivals, each scrutinizing the other with eyes full of hatred, concocting fine-edged arguments to disqualify each other in Clara’s eyes, spying on each other, and growing ever more jealous. Esteban stopped going to the country and put Pedro Segundo García in charge of everything, including his imported cows. He stopped going out with his friends, stopped going to the golf course, stopped working, so as to watch his sister day and night and block her path every time she tried to get near Clara. The atmosphere of the house became dense, dark, and unbreathable. Even Nana walked around like someone haunted. The only one who continued completely unaffected was Clara, who in her distraction and innocence had no idea of what was going on.

  Esteban’s and Férula’s hatred for each other took a long time to explode. It began with a concealed uneasiness and a desire to offend each other in small details, but it grew until it filled the house. That summer Esteban had to go to Tres Marías because exactly at harvest time Pedro Segundo García fell off a horse and ended up in the hospital with a cracked skull. As soon as the foreman had recovered, Esteban returned to the city without telling anyone. On the train he felt a terrible foreboding and an unspoken desire that something dramatic should take place, but he did not know that the drama had already begun when he desired it. He arrived back in the city in the middle of the afternoon, but went directly to his club, where he played a few hands of poker and dined, without successfully quelling his anxiety and impatience. During dinner, there was a slight earthquake. The crystal chandeliers swayed with their usual tinkling, but no one so much as looked up. Everyone continued eating and the musicians continued playing without missing a single note, but Esteban Trueba jumped up as if it were an omen. He finished his meal in a hurry, then asked for his check and left.

  Férula, who usually had her nerves well under control, had never got used to earthquakes. She had conquered her fear of the ghosts Clara would invoke and the mice in the countryside, but earthquakes shook her to her bones and long after they had passed she was still trembling. That night she had not yet gone to bed, and she came running into Clara’s room. Clara had drunk her evening tea and was sleeping peacefully. In search of a little company and warmth, Férula climbed into bed beside her, careful not to wake her up and whispering silent prayers so that the tremors would not become a full-blown quake. Esteban Trueba found her there. He entered the house as silently as a thief, went up to Clara’s room without turning on the lights, and appeared like a tornado before the two sleeping women, who thought he was in Tres Marías. He leaned over his sister with the same rage he would have felt if she were his wife’s seducer. He pulled her from the bed, dragged her down the hall, pushed her down the stairs, and thrust her into the library while Clara shouted from her bedroom doorway, not understanding what was going on. Alone with Férula, Esteban vented all his fury as an unhappy husband, shouting things at her he never should have said, calling her everything from a dyke to a whore and accusing her of perverting his wife with her spinster caresses and of driving her crazy, distracted, mute, and spiritualist with her arsenal of lesbian arts. He accused her of taking her pleasure with Clara while he was away, and of besmirching the names of the children, the honor of the house, and the memory of their dear departed mother, and told her he was sick and tired of her evil tricks and that he was throwing her out of the house. She should leave immediately and he never wanted to set eyes on her again. He forbade her to come near his wife and children and promised that she would never want for money; as long as he lived, he would see to it that she had enough to live on decently, as he had once promised her, but that if he ever caught her prowling around his family he would kill her on the spot, and she should get that through her head. “I swear to you in the name of our mother that I’ll kill you!”

  “I set my curse on you, Esteban!” Férula shouted back. “You will always be alone! Your body and soul will shrivel up and you’ll die like a dog!”

  And she left the big house on the corner forever, dressed only in her nightgown, taking nothing with her.

  The next day, Esteban Trueba went to see Father Antonio and told him what had happened, without going into detail. The priest listened passively, with the bland expression of one who has heard it all before.

  “What do you want from me, my son?” he asked when Esteban had finished speaking.

  “That once a month you make sure my sister receives a certain envelope I’m going to deliver to you. I don’t want her to have any financial worries. And I must explain that I’m not doing this out of kindness but because of a promise.”

  Father Antonio took the first envelope with a sigh and sketched the sign of benediction with his hands, but Esteban had already turned to leave. He gave Clara no explanation of what had come between his sister and himself. He told her he had thrown her out of the house and that he strictly forbade her to mention his sister’s name in his presence, suggesting that if she had a shred of decency she would also refrain from mentioning it behind his back. He had all Férula’s clothing and any objects that might serve as reminders of her removed from the house and resolved that as far as he was concerned his sister was dead.

  Clara understood that there was no point in asking any questions. She went to the sewing room to look for her pendulum. Then she spread a map of the city on the floor and held the pendulum a foot and a half above it, waiting for the oscillations to tell her her sister-in-law’s address, but after trying all afternoon she realized that the system would not work unless Férula had a fixed address. The pendulum having failed, she went out to look for her by carriage, hoping that her instinct would guide her in her search, but that method also was unsuccessful. She consulted her three-legged table, but no spiritual guide showed up to lead her through the city to Férula. She called her with her mind and consulted her tarot cards, but it was all to no avail. Finally she decided to resort to more traditional techniques. She began to look for her through friends and by asking the various delivery men who came to the house and might have come across her, but no one had seen a trace of her. Eventually her investigation led her to Father Antonio’s door.

  “Don’t look for her,” the priest told her. “She doesn’t want to see you.”

  Clara realized that that was why none of her infallible methods of divining had worked.

  “The Mora sisters were right,” sh
e said to herself. “You can’t find someone who doesn’t want to be found.”

  * * *

  Esteban Trueba entered a very prosperous period. His business deals seemed to have been touched by a magic wand. He felt pleased with life, and he was rich, just as he had once set out to be. He had acquired the concessions for other mines, was exporting fruit to foreign countries, had founded a construction firm, and Tres Marías, which had greatly expanded, was now the best hacienda in the area. He had been untouched by the economic crisis that convulsed the rest of the country. In the northern provinces, the collapse of the nitrate fields had left thousands of workers destitute. Hungry tribes of unemployed workers and their families—women, children, and old people—had taken to the roads in search of work and, as they approached the capital, were slowly forming a belt of misery around it. They settled in any way they could, under planks of wood and pieces of cardboard, in the midst of garbage and despair. They wandered the streets begging for a chance to work, but there were no jobs and slowly but surely the rugged workers, thin with hunger, shrunken with cold, ragged and desolate, stopped asking for work and asked for alms instead. The city filled with beggars, and then with thieves. Never had there been such terrible frosts as there were that year. There was snow in the capital city, an unaccustomed spectacle that remained on the front page of all the newspapers, touted as a festive decoration, while in the impoverished shantytowns on the city’s outskirts the blue, frozen bodies of small children were discovered every morning. There was not enough charity for so many poor, defenseless people.