House on the Lagoon (39 page)

I took the baby from Petra’s arms and looked at it more closely. He was tiny and as delicate as a bird, with gray-green eyes that were barely open. His skin wasn’t light, but it wasn’t black, either; it was closer to buckwheat honey. Obviously he wasn’t more than twenty-four hours old. “If it’s Carmelina’s baby, we should send word to Alwilda to come and get him. We can’t keep him at the house, and Alwilda is his grandmother. Or maybe one of Petra’s relatives from Las Minas can take care of him,” I said.

Petra got up from her chair and demanded I give the baby back to her. She had been ailing the past few months and at times her mind didn’t seem quite sound. I didn’t want to upset her. But I didn’t give her back the baby, he snuggled so peacefully in my arms.

Petra called me to a corner of the room. “Carmelina told me a secret before she left,” she whispered. “She was raped the day of the picnic at Lucumí Beach, and that’s why she disappeared so mysteriously.”

She was so flustered I could hardly make sense of what she was saying. Lately, Petra had been making up fantastic stories—once she swore she had seen a two-headed chick break out of an egg, the heads furiously pecking at each other; another time, she had hung half a dozen red handkerchiefs from the mangrove bushes, calling to Elegguá to ward off the evil spirit that had been moaning there all night. No one paid attention to her stories. But this baby was different. It was real, and I couldn’t get over my amazement that it was in the house. “Such a beautiful baby,” I said, caressing his velvety-brown cheeks. “He looks a lot like Carmelina, except for his eyes. But they’ll change from hazel-green to brown later, of course—that’s what usually happens with mulatto babies.”

Petra began to weep bitterly. “Carmelina was too proud for her own good!” she said. “Otherwise, she wouldn’t have been so bold as to have this baby, but would have boiled rue leaves to get rid of it.” Seeing her so upset, I began to worry. Something must have happened at the picnic—maybe Carmelina had been raped, after all. “I’m going to find out what this is all about right now. You and I are going to have a talk with Quintín,” I said to Petra.

I went up the stairs with the baby in my arms, and Petra followed behind. Quintín was in the study, reading the evening paper. We went in and closed the door behind us. He was sitting on the green leather couch, drinking a glass of red wine. “Meet Carmelina’s baby,” I said, laughing, as I showed him the child. “Do you know what Petra is saying? That you’re the baby’s father, because his eyes are the same color as yours!” I had meant it as a joke, but Quintín turned pale and dropped his glass.

The wine spilled on the beige carpet and an ominous red stain spread at his feet. “I can’t believe you’re Buenaventura’s son!” Petra told Quintín angrily. “It was your duty to care for my great-granddaughter Carmelina, but you took advantage and raped her the day of the picnic on Lucumí Beach.” Quintín cringed, without admitting or denying anything. “Is what Petra says true?” I demanded.

“Yes, Isabel,” he said softly. “The devil put Carmelina before me. She asked me to swim out to the mangroves and I couldn’t resist the temptation. It started out as a game, and it was over before I realized what I’d done. I know I have no right to ask you to forgive me, but I’ll do what I can to bring the child up as my son.” Appeased by what Quintín had said, Petra went silently back to the cellar with the child in her arms. I followed, slamming the study door behind me.

“Carmelina will leave the island,” Petra assured me. “You have nothing to worry about. But I want you to know it wasn’t her fault. Carmelina has the god of fire smoldering in her cunt.”

For days afterwards, I felt as if someone had died. My only consolation was that Abby would never know what had happened; she probably would have put a gun to Quintín’s head. Whenever I saw Quintín now, I felt myself stiffen and walked by as if there was nobody there. He was contrite to the point of being sheepish. At dinnertime he kept swearing he loved me and promised he would never be unfaithful again. After all, Abuelo Vicenzo had had his flings too, he said. And Abuela Gabriela hadn’t stopped loving him or left the house in Río Negro because of it. She had pardoned him. Couldn’t I do the same?

Strangely enough, it wasn’t Quintín’s betrayal which hurt me the most, but what I had done to myself. Soon after Quintín said he didn’t want any more children, I went to my gynecologist and asked to be sterilized. Quintín signed the necessary documents and the following week I went into the hospital. The operation was simple; my tubes were tied and I was out in a day.

Once I got home, I realized what I’d done and felt miserable. I was now barren
because
of Quintín. Rebecca was able to conceive Jacob when she was beyond all hope, but I wouldn’t have such luck. Yet God was now giving me a second chance—Carmelina’s baby, whom I could raise as my own son. That’s when I began to see things in a different light.

That very afternoon I gave Quintín back the Mendizabals’ heavy gold signet ring, as well as my wedding band, and moved to the guest room. “‘Love is the only antidote to violence,’ you once said to me on the veranda at Aurora Street. And now, instead of love, there’s treachery. Three weeks have gone by and the baby’s eyes are still hazel green. I think that’s proof enough he’s your son.” And I added bitterly: “If I sue for divorce on the grounds of adultery, and it’s proven, the court will rule in my favor and I’ll take Manuel away from you. But if you adopt Carmelina’s child legally and give him your last name, I’m willing to stay on at the house.” Quintín agreed to my conditions; he knew I would make good my threat.

We let out the rumor in Alamares that we wanted a second child, and since I hadn’t been able to get pregnant again, we’d decided to adopt a baby in the United States. Two weeks after Carmelina left the house, we made a trip to New York, taking the baby with us to have him examined at Children’s Hospital and make sure he was in good health. When we came back, we told everyone we had adopted him, even in front of Petra—and she went along with the story.

Quintín was wary of Petra. Now that we had adopted her great-great-grandchild, he thought, anything was possible: she might demand that we buy her a home or expect us to help out Willie’s relatives in Las Minas, who kept coming to the house by the dozen every afternoon, asking to see “the beautiful new baby.” They brought him all sorts of extraordinary gifts: an ebony calabash full of whispering seeds, an ivory ring with rare feathers which whirled noiselessly from the top of his crib, a tortoiseshell comb which was supposed to prevent him from ever growing bald. I, for my part, preferred to face reality and made Petra swear she would never tell anyone the truth, especially Willie. Petra was dignity itself and promised she would say nothing.

We had a christening party for our son at the house on the lagoon. He was baptized William Alexander Mendizabal Monfort by the bishop himself at San Juan’s Cathedral, and after the ceremony we invited all our friends to come and see him. Whatever Quintín intended, we ended up doing the right thing. It was a wonderful feeling.

Petra was beside herself with pride. She took the baby out of his crib whenever she had the chance and paraded him up and down Ponce de León Avenue, pushing the baby carriage herself. She wouldn’t let anyone else wash and iron Willie’s clothes, and she hung a tiny
azabache
fist from the gold chain on his neck with the tiny gold cross we had put on it. “It’s only a good-luck charm,” she reassured Quintín when he asked her about it. “Elegguá’s
Figa
will protect him from the evil eye, and death will be powerless against him.” Quintín went to Mass and Holy Communion daily, so he took the charm off and gave it back to her. “The only eye Willie has to fear is God the Father’s, Petra,” he said solemnly. “He sees all our actions and that’s why, when we do something wrong, we must face the consequences.” But Petra fastened the
azabache
with a safety pin to the underside of Willie’s shirt, so Quintín didn’t see it.

Manuel was Buenaventura’s grandchild and Petra cared for him very much; but in Willie she saw her own ancestors. There were no African descendants living in the neighborhood of Alamares; blacks were never seen in church, at the Roxy or the Metro, much less in the drawing rooms of the well-to-do. And this was a terrible thing for Petra to accept; she had always been proud of being an Avilés. So when she saw Willie in the Mendizabals’ bronze crib, and saw that Quintín and I didn’t mind it when her Avilés relatives came and brought the child magnificent presents, a sense of optimism began to well up in her.

We put Willie’s crib in the room next to his brother’s, and at Quintín’s suggestion we bought him exactly the same furniture—an English dresser, an Italian lamp that looked like a red mushroom, navy-blue wall-to-wall carpeting, curtains with tiny sailboats on them—the best that was available. When the boys were old enough, Quintín bought them Schwinn bicycles for Christmas—one red and one blue—skates, electric trains. We dressed them both in seersucker suits from Best and Co. We sent them to the same private school in Alamares. Later they were both accepted at Boston University, but Willie chose instead to attend Pratt Institute in New York. Everything Manuel had, Willie had to have, too. That way, the possibility that one would feel favored over the other when they grew up would be avoided.

None of our friends in San Juan would have dared do what we did, to adopt a mulatto child as our own and give him our last name. Whenever we walked into one of San Juan’s elegant restaurants with Willie, or if we spent the day with him at the Berwind Country Club, even when we went to the Casals Festival or to the opera at Bellas Artes, people would turn around and stare. We gave San Juan society more to talk about than all the love scandals of the past decade put together. But I didn’t care. Was it Abby’s defiant spirit that had come to haunt me in middle age? Was it a whim to bring out into the open a thorn which had been buried deep in my heart since Esmeralda Márquez, my best friend, was spurned by the Mendizabals because she was part black? Was it seeing Willie so frail and vulnerable, with his green eyes shining in his beautiful nut-brown face? Whatever it was, I felt better than I had in years.

When I saw that Quintín was going out of his way to be fair with his two sons, my heart went out to him. A year after Willie arrived at the house on the lagoon, we were reconciled. I moved back to our room, and we shared the same bed again.

I
T WAS LATE AUGUST;
summer was coming to an end. Quintín hadn’t been feeling well for some time. He complained of pains in his chest, and he went to a specialist for a thorough examination. The cardiologist did an electrocardiogram and told him his blood pressure was sky-high. He was suffering from angina pectoris; he had to take better care of himself. Drugs were prescribed which Quintín would have to take for the rest of his life. He had to exercise every day, couldn’t have salt, and had to avoid undue stress if he wanted to live. He knew he would have to give up reading Isabel’s manuscript, and he was crestfallen.

He’d never thought he would die early. He was only in his fifties; he still hadn’t attained all his goals. He went to church more often, though he did not go to confession or Holy Communion. He believed it was important to be part of a spiritual congregation, even if he was a freethinker at heart. All religions were good, he felt, if they helped you overcome the trials you faced in this world. But he didn’t think Catholicism was better than any other religion. Religions were important because they helped you live in harmony with yourself, not because they might reinforce a belief in immortality. Quintín didn’t believe in the immortality of the soul, anyway, only in the positive energy of the universe. And this positive energy was what permitted scientists, historians, artists, to create their great works. But he had never been able to create anything, and he feared that when he died his memory would be erased from the face of the earth. This made him feel sad and dejected.

Isabel went to Mass with him once in a while, but he knew her religion was only skin-deep. She prayed with her lips, she didn’t pray with her heart. She knelt next to him on the cathedral’s mahogany bench and played with her rosary’s crystal beads, as her eyes roamed lazily under the dusty archways of the cathedral, looking for an open window to gaze out of. Who was she praying to, Quintín wondered, Jesus or Elegguá? Since she had fallen under Petra’s influence, he couldn’t be sure what his wife believed in.

Pain changed everything; it made you look at the world in a different light. Gourmet Imports didn’t seem so important to Quintín any longer. He had begun to think more about his art collection. If he could never be an artist, at least he had managed to put together a magnificent collection of works of art. Maybe he still had time to turn the house on the lagoon into a museum, into a shrine of art. That way, he would always be remembered, and so would his family, as the founders and donors of the Mendizabal Museum. The house on the lagoon, Pavel’s masterpiece, was a landmark on the island. To turn it into a museum would be relatively easy. All he had to do was start proceedings to create the Quintín Mendizabal Foundation, which would make it all possible after his death.

Once he hit on this solution, Quintín immediately felt better. But he didn’t want to lose the attention Isabel had begun to lavish on him after the doctor’s diagnosis, so he masked his newfound feeling of well-being. Isabel had ordered Georgina and Victoria to cook Quintín salt-free meals, and she now did the shopping at the supermarket herself. She insisted on getting up at six every morning to walk briskly with him around the lagoon. Quintín was very grateful
—
but he didn’t completely trust her.

One night he could hold out no longer, and went into the study to look for Isabel’s manuscript. There were four new chapters since he had last searched for it. He sat with them on his lap for a long time, trying to decide what to do. He felt miserable. Not knowing what Isabel had written made him feel as if he were sinking into the mangrove swamp, as if he were losing his grip on reality. But he didn’t dare read the new chapters. He put them back unread in the secret compartment.