The House of the Spirits

by Isabel Allende

  One day, Clara had a bolt installed on her bedroom door and after that she never let me in her bed again, except when I forced myself on her and when to have said no would have meant the end of our marriage. At first I thought that she had one of those strange ailments women get from time to time, or else her menopause, but when it persisted for several weeks I decided we’d better have a talk. She calmly explained that our marriage had deteriorated and that she had lost her natural inclination for the pleasures of the flesh. She had concluded that if we had nothing to say to each other, we would also be unable to share a bed, and she seemed surprised that I could spend all day being furious at her and then wish to spend the night making love. I tried to make her see that in this respect men and women are very different, and that despite all my bad habits I still adored her, but it was no use. At the time, I was in better shape than she was even with my accident and though she was much younger. I had lost weight as I got older and I didn’t have an ounce of fat on me. I was as strong and as healthy as I’d been as a young man. I could spend the whole day horseback riding, sleep anywhere, and eat anything I felt like without having to worry about my bladder, my liver, or any of the other organs people talk about incessantly. I’ll admit, my bones ached. On chilly evenings or humid nights, the pain in the bones that had been crushed in the earthquake became so unbearable that I would have to bite my pillow to keep people from hearing my screams. When I couldn’t take another minute, I knocked back a big swig of brandy and two aspirins, but it didn’t help. The funny part of it is that although my sexuality had got more selective over time, I was almost as easily aroused as in my youth. I liked looking at women; I still do. It’s an aesthetic pleasure, almost spiritual. But only Clara awakened any real desire in me, because through all the years of life together we had learned to know each other, and we each had the exact geography of the other at our fingertips. She knew exactly where my most sensitive places were, and she could tell me exactly what I wanted to hear. At an age when most men are bored with their wives and need the stimulation of other women, I was convinced that only with Clara could I make love the way I had on my honeymoon: tirelessly. I wasn’t tempted to look for anyone else.

  I remember starting to hound her as soon as the sun went down. In the evenings she would sit and write and I’d pretend to be sucking on my pipe, but actually I was looking at her from the corner of my eye. As soon as she began getting ready to go to bed—she would clean her pen and shut her notebooks—I’d begin. I limped out to the bathroom, spruced myself up, and put on the plush ecclesiastic dressing gown I had bought to seduce her in, but she never seemed to notice. Then I pressed my ear to the door and waited. When I heard her coming down the hall, I jumped out ahead of her. I tried everything from showering her with praise and gifts to threatening to knock down her door and beat her to a pulp, but none of these effects was enough to bridge the gap between us. I suppose it was useless for me to expect her to forget my sour temper of the daytime with all sorts of amorous attentions in the evening. Clara eluded me with that distracted attitude of hers I came to despise. I can’t understand what it was about her that attracted me so much. She was a middle-aged woman, without a trace of flirtatiousness, who walked with a slight shuffle and had lost the unwarranted gaiety that had made her so appealing in her youth. Clara was neither affectionate nor seductive with me. I’m convinced she didn’t love me. There was no reason for me to desire her so outrageously and to let myself get so carried away by her refusal. But I couldn’t help it. Her slightest gesture, her faint scent of fresh laundry and soap, the light in her eyes and the grace of her delicate neck crowned with untamable curls—I loved everything about her. Her fragility made me feel the most unbearable tenderness toward her. I wanted to protect her, to clasp her in my arms, to make her laugh like in the old days; I wanted to sleep with her beside me, her head on my shoulder, her legs tucked under mine, so small and warm, so vulnerable and precious, with her hand on my chest. At times I would decide I was going to punish her by feigning indifference, but after a few days I gave up because she seemed more relaxed when I ignored her. I drilled a hole in the bathroom wall so I could watch her naked, but it got me so excited I decided to plaster it over. To hurt her feelings, I pretended I was going to the Red Lantern, but all she said was that it was a lot better than raping peasant girls, which surprised me, because I didn’t think she knew about that. As a result of her comments, I tried rape again, just to see if it would get a rise out of her, but time and the earthquake had taken their toll on my virility. I no longer had the strength to grab a sturdy peasant girl by the waist and swing her up onto my saddle, much less rip her clothes off and enter her against her will. I was of an age when you need help and tenderness if you’re going to make love. I was old, damn it.

  * * *

  He was the only one to notice that he was shrinking. He could tell from his clothes. It was not just that things fit loosely; his sleeves and his pant legs were suddenly too long. He asked Blanca to fix his clothing on her sewing machine, on the pretext that he had lost some weight, but he wondered whether old Pedro García had set his bones backward and whether that’s why he was shrinking. But he did not tell a soul, just as he never talked about his pain, because it was a matter of pride.

  The country was getting ready for the Presidential elections. At a dinner of conservative politicians in town, Esteban Trueba made the acquaintance of Count Jean de Satigny. He wore kidskin shoes and jackets of raw linen, did not perspire the way other mortals did, smelled of English cologne, and was always perfectly tanned from his habit of knocking a ball through a little hoop with a stick in the midday sun; when he spoke, he drew out the final syllables of words and swallowed his r’s. He was the only man Esteban had ever met who polished his fingernails and put blue eyewash in his eyes. He had calling cards with his family crest on them and respected all the known rules of urbanity as well as some of his own invention, such as eating artichokes with tongs, which provoked general stupefaction. Men made fun of him behind his back, but it was soon clear that they were imitating his elegance, his kidskin shoes, his indifference, and his civilized manner. The title of count put him on a different footing from the other immigrants who had arrived from Central Europe fleeing the plagues of the preceding century, from Spain escaping the war, from the Middle East with their Turkish bazaars, and from Armenia with their typical food and their trinkets. The Count de Satigny did not have to work for a living, as he let everyone know. His chinchilla business was just a hobby.

  Esteban Trueba had seen chinchillas prowling on his land. He had shot at them to keep them from devouring his crops, but it had never occurred to him that those insignificant rodents could be turned into ladies’ coats. Jean de Satigny was looking for a partner to put up the capital, the work, and the stock houses; someone who would run all the risks and divide the profits fifty-fifty. Esteban Trueba was no adventurer, but the French count had the winged grace and ingenuity to seduce him, so he spent many sleepless nights mulling over the idea of the chinchilla farm and working out the figures. Meanwhile, Monsieur de Satigny spent long periods at Tres Marías as an honored guest. He played with his little ball in the noonday sun, drank enormous quantities of unsweetened melon juice, and delicately poked around Blanca’s ceramics. He even suggested that she export her work to other places, where there was a guaranteed market for indigenous crafts. Blanca tried to disabuse him of his error, explaining that neither she nor her work contained a drop of Indian blood, but the language barrier prevented him from understanding her point of view. The count was a social acquisition for the Trueba family; from the moment he arrived at the hacienda, they were showered with invitations to neighboring properties, to meetings with the local political authorities, and to all the cultural and social events in the area. People wanted to get close to the Frenchman, hoping that some of his refinement would rub off on them. Young girls sighed at the thought of meeting him and mothers longing to have him as their son-in-law foug
ht for the honor of having the family as their guest. Men envied Esteban Trueba, who had been chosen for the chinchilla farm. Clara was the only one who was not impressed by him or carried away by his manner of peeling an orange with a knife and fork, never touching it with his fingers, and cutting the peel in the shape of a flower, or by his skill at quoting poets and philosophers in his native language. Clara had to ask his name every time she saw him and was always disconcerted to find him in his silk robe in the bathroom of her house. But Blanca enjoyed herself with him and was glad for a chance to dress up in her finest clothes, arrange her hair especially for him, and set the table with the English china and the silver candlesticks.

  “At least he’s civilizing us,” she said.

  Esteban Trueba was less impressed by the nobleman’s bragging than he was by the chinchillas. He wondered why in God’s name he had not thought of tanning their skins himself, instead of wasting so much time raising all those stupid chickens that died of diarrhea at the drop of a hat, and all those cows that had to chew through acres of pasture and a whole box of vitamins for one lousy quart of milk and were always covered with shit and flies. But Clara and Pedro Segundo García did not share Esteban’s enthusiasm for the rodents, she for humanitarian reasons, since she thought it was horrendous to raise them just so you could skin them, and he because he had never heard of keeping rats in special houses.

  One night the count went out to smoke one of his Oriental cigarettes, specially imported from Lebanon—wherever that was, as Trueba always said—and to inhale the scent of the flowers, which rose in great mouthfuls from the garden, filling every room in the house. He walked up and down the terrace, taking in the expanse of the land around the house, sighing aloud at the thought of that exuberant nature which could assemble, in the most godforsaken country on the planet, mountains and sea, valleys and sky-scraping peaks, rivers of crystalline water, and a peaceful fauna that allowed you to wander tranquilly without having to worry about poisonous snakes or starving beasts. And, completing his idea of perfection, there were no resentful Negroes or wild Indians. He was fed up with traveling through exotic countries selling shark-fin aphrodisiacs, ginseng to cure all ills, carved Eskimo statues, stuffed Amazonian piranhas, and chinchillas for ladies’ coats. He was thirty-eight years old, at least that is what he admitted to, and he felt that he had finally found paradise on earth, where he could settle into some sort of easygoing business with a few ingenuous partners. He sat down on a log to smoke in the darkness. Suddenly he saw a shadow moving. For a fleeting second he thought it might be a thief, but then he discounted that, because robbers in a place like this were as unlikely as wild animals. He approached cautiously and saw that it was Blanca, who was letting her legs out the window and slipping down the wall like a cat, falling noiselessly onto the hydrangeas below. She was dressed like a man, because by now the dogs knew her and she no longer needed to go naked. Jean de Satigny observed her walk off under the eaves of the house and in the shadow of the trees; he was going to follow her, but then he thought better of it. He was frightened of the dogs, and he realized that he did not need to follow her to know where a young girl would be going who escaped through her bedroom window in the dead of night. But he was worried, because what he had just seen jeopardized the scheme he had in mind.

  The next day the count asked for Blanca Trueba’s hand in marriage. Esteban, who had not had a chance to get to know his daughter, mistook her placid amiability and her eagerness to set the table with the silver candlesticks for love. He was delighted that his daughter, so bored and in such bad health, should have managed to land the most sought-after bachelor in the area. What could he have seen in her? he wondered, taken aback. He told the count that he would have to discuss it with his daughter, but that he was sure there would be no objection and that, as for himself, he was overjoyed to welcome him into his family. He summoned his daughter, who was giving a geography class in the school, and locked himself in his office with her. Five minutes later the door swung open and the count saw the young girl exit with her cheeks aflame. She shot him a murderous look and turned her face away. Someone less tenacious would have packed his bags and gone to stay in the only hotel in town, but the count told Esteban that he was sure of winning the girl’s love if they only gave him enough time. Esteban Trueba told him he was welcome to stay in Tres Marías for as long as he thought necessary. Blanca said nothing, but from that day on she refused to join them at the table and missed no opportunity to make the Frenchman feel unwanted. She put away her party dresses and the silver candlesticks and carefully avoided him. She told her father that if he ever mentioned marriage again, she would take the first train out of town and return to her convent as a novice.

  “You’ll change your mind!” Esteban Trueba roared.

  “I doubt it,” she replied.

  The arrival of the twins at Tres Marías that year was a great relief. They brought a gust of freshness and vitality to the oppressed atmosphere of the hacienda. Neither of the two brothers appreciated the Frenchman’s charms, despite his discreet attempts to win their favor. Jaime and Nicolás made fun of his fine manners, his effeminate shoes, and his foreign name, but Jean de Satigny did not seem to mind. His good humor disarmed them in the end, and they wound up spending the remainder of the summer on good terms. They even joined forces with him to lure Blanca out of her determined obstinacy.

  “You’re already twenty-four, sister. Do you want to end up saying rosaries for the poor?”

  They tried to convince her to cut her hair and copy the dresses that were all the rage in the fashion magazines, but she had no interest in those exotic styles, which would not have had a prayer of surviving the dustbowl of the countryside.

  The twins were so different they did not even look like brothers. Jaime was tall, robust, timid, and studious. Since his school required it, he had managed to develop an athletic build in gym, but he viewed sports as a dull and useless pastime. He could not understand how Jean de Satigny could spend the whole morning hitting a ball with a stick just to knock it through a metal hoop when it was so much easier to put it in with your hand. Jaime had various strange habits that became evident around that time and grew more pronounced over the course of his life. He did not like anyone to breathe too close to him, shake his hand, ask him personal questions, ask to borrow books, or write him letters. This made his dealings with people difficult, but it did not isolate him, because within five minutes of meeting him it was clear that, despite his peevish attitude, he was generous and candid and had a tremendous capacity for kindness, which he tried in vain to cover up because it embarrassed him. He was much more interested in others than he let on, and it was easy to move him. The tenants of Tres Marías called him “the little patrón,” and he was the one they turned to whenever they needed something. Jaime would listen to them without saying a word, respond in monosyllables, and then turn his back on them, but he would not rest until he had solved their problem. He was unsociable, and his mother said that even as a child he would not let anybody touch him. From the time he was a little boy he had had outlandish habits. He would take his clothes off and give them to someone else. Affection and the expression of emotions struck him as signs of inferiority. Only with animals did he relax his exaggerated modesty; he rolled on the ground with them, ran his hands over them, fed them directly in the mouth, and slept curled up with the dogs. He would do the same with very young children, provided no one was watching; when there were other people around, he preferred to play the strong, solitary man. His twelve years of British schooling had failed to give him spleen, which was considered a gentleman’s most attractive trait. He was incorrigibly sentimental. This was why he had become interested in politics and decided not to be a lawyer, as his father wished, but a doctor who would help the needy, as his mother, who knew him better, had suggested. Jaime had played with Pedro Tercero García throughout his childhood, but not until that year did he come to admire him. Blanca had to forgo tw
o of their meetings by the river in order for the young men to meet. They talked of justice, of equality, of the peasant movement and of Socialism, while Blanca listened with impatience, wishing they would hurry up and finish their discussion so she could be alone with her lover. This friendship linked the two boys until death, without Esteban Trueba’s ever finding out.