Lilia's Secret (27 page)

‘What's he doing here?' Ramiro asked me.

‘Bill has as much right to be here as I do.'

Ramiro shook his finger in the air. ‘If he comes I do not.' He turned away.

I stepped around to face him. ‘You're not going to win this one, Ramiro. None of us will go away and leave you in peace until we know. So either you talk to us now or we stay.'

Ramiro looked at me without blinking, then sighed and led us out of the main street. He made a few more turns. Finally we arrived at a narrow cobbled street in the poorer part of town.

‘Is this your house?' I asked.

‘Nope,' he said, winking. ‘It belongs to the sparkle on the sink.'

‘The sparkle on the sink', whoever that was, was not home. It didn't worry Ramiro. We followed the maid through the house into a small, square courtyard filled with light. In a way it reminded me of Lilia's courtyard, but without the grandeur. As we sat down around a table that had been tiled in blues and greens I tried to figure why it made me think of Lilia's. Then I realised that it was the differences that stood out, not
the similarities. The view I had of Lilia's garden was from the sides. If you'd seen it from the centre and put in a table and chairs you'd have this garden. I looked for the place where the vision bush at Lilia's might be. There it was. ‘Who lives here?' I demanded.

Ramiro held up his hand. ‘All in good time,' he said. He pulled a small silver flask from his pocket.

‘If we could trouble you for some glasses,' he said to the young girl. She scuttled away.

Ramiro undid the top of the bottle and sniffed at it. He smiled in appreciation.

‘Good tequila, nothing so fine as good tequila.'

The girl came back with four glasses. She settled them before us with four small chinks and withdrew. Ramiro looked right at home. He poured the liquid into the glasses, except for the one in front of Bill, smiling at the glug, glug sound.

‘To Lilia de Las Flores,' he toasted.

I exchanged my glass with Bill's.

‘Are you going to talk to us now?' Andrés asked.

Ramiro lifted one eyebrow and nodded graciously. He tossed the contents of his glass down his throat, goggled his eyes and smiled benignly, as if Andrés had commented on the weather.

‘You have more pink now,' Ramiro said to me. Andrés translated quietly for Bill. ‘Much righter for you,' Ramiro went on. ‘He's your grand passion.' He shrugged his shoulders. ‘I'm glad to see that you took my advice and didn't throw it away.'

Ramiro looked at Andrés. ‘You, however, are one crazy guy. Then again I can understand the passion for a powerful, beautiful woman.'

‘I'm not that,' I frowned.

‘Oh you,' Ramiro said. ‘You're only beginning to know what you are.' He dismissed me with a wave of his hand in a gesture with which I had become familiar. I was about to spit something half-formed out of my mouth when Ramiro stopped me with the palm of his hand.

‘Let me tell you something about passion,' he said. ‘Lilia's passion. Unfortunately, it wasn't me, as you know,' he gestured towards me. ‘She had two grand passions and they emptied her out. She was so dry after them that her insides cracked.

‘The first one was your great-grandfather,' Ramiro nodded at Andrés. ‘Arrogant Spaniard dog.' He sighed. ‘But let us not dwell on him, he didn't deserve our attention when he was alive, let alone now.' Ramiro crossed himself and kissed the knuckle of his index finger. ‘At least,' he paused, ‘let's hope the bastard is dead.

‘Her second grand passion …' he looked at us for a long moment. ‘Her second grand passion was her daughter-in-law,' Ramiro nodded at Andrés. ‘The beautiful Amalia. El Tigre's first wife.'

I squeezed Andrés's hand again, and tried to keep the excitement off my face. I could see Bill lifting the glass to his lips in order to do the same. Andrés was the calm one, staring straight at Ramiro as he continued to translate.

‘She had a daughter, but we don't know what happened to her. Perhaps the Spaniard took the girl with him when he left. We do know Lilia wasn't overly attached to her son. She fed and clothed him and when he grew up they were good in business together. They both had razor-sharp minds. When you apply minds like those to drugs and running prostitutes you end up with a goldmine. So between them their goldmine
swelled and swelled. But when El Tigre met Amalia, Lilia flowed softer.

‘She would arrive at church holding Amalia's hand. We would all watch, because she sat in the front pew, of course, and she would pat Amalia's hand or stroke her hair back from her eyes.

‘Amalia was a lovely girl, possibly even an angel. She was solicitous of her mother-in-law. Made her special sauces, rubbed her temples when she had a headache. Those were good years for Lilia. Her colours started to come back warmly.'

I remembered what Juan had said to me about Lilia brushing a woman's hair.

‘Lilia delivered Amalia's first child, your father, Javier,' Ramiro nodded at Andrés. ‘That softened her even more. She was human. It was as if she was growing back into her younger self before our eyes; before the Spaniard had stolen her heart and her lungs.' Ramiro rolled his eyes.

‘Unfortunately, El Tigre took over more of the business. He had a different “vision”, you might say. Stories of cruelty began to filter back to us. He cut off this one's ears, and pulled out that one's nails. He stayed away more and more, hiding in the hills with his bandit friends. Those hills were the same ones that had protected Lilia and the other revolutionaries – a terrible irony.

‘By the time Amalia was pregnant with her second son, Juan, Lilia was anxious, and she was right to be anxious. Amalia was such a good girl and really didn't deserve a man like El Tigre. Towards the end of her pregnancy she was so pale she was almost a ghost already.

‘But Lilia was able to bring the boy safely into the world. He was a sickly, cryie baby who wanted more attention than
his mother was well enough to give. But they both pulled through.

‘Amalia was never the same though. She loved those boys but she was delicate. Her colours came through as if they were under a veil of gauze. El Tigre was all but banned from the house. He used to come once a month with Lilia's share of the business takings. Amalia would stay in her room with her boys, and sit well back from the window. The poor thing just faded away.

‘Lilia never forgave her son for Amalia's death. Nobody said for sure what it was from but I believe Lilia thought it was because of a broken heart. The poor girl just stopped breathing.

‘That's a grand passion gone wrong.' Ramiro put up a warning finger.

‘I think Lilia went a little insane. Very muddy colours, very dark.' He shook his head. ‘Once, when I was hiding in the tree, I saw her balled up on her bed. It was shocking.' Ramiro's voice had dropped to a whisper. ‘She was rocking. I could hear her saying, “Why do I endure?” over and over. I think she was jealous that Amalia could die.

‘The only thing I could do was to bear witness. To bear witness and not say a word.'

Ramiro put his hands to his face. Andrés, Bill and I looked at each other, eyes round. But before we could do anything the old man had begun to talk through his hands.

‘She cursed the devil. She told me one day it must have been the devil's doing, because no God would cast her aside and force her to go on living without her heart. It was terrible, terrible.' Ramiro's hands were shaking.

He lifted his head and his cheeks and hands were wet. ‘Can you imagine what it means to see the one you love contorted
with a pain for which there is no end, only endurance? She was so strong she endured. It was her curse.'

For the first time I felt sorry for Ramiro.

‘You've carried her pain,' I said. ‘It is something to be capable of love like that.'

‘Thank you for trying,' Ramiro said. ‘But this is my curse. In some ways I open my arms to death so that I can lay it down, but in more ways I can't let go of her pain, because to do so would be to let go of her and I won't do that. Death would be unendurable without her.

‘While I was in that tree watching her, she did something terrible. She went to a chest at the far end of the room and took out her mother's quilt. She fluffed it out and lay it on the bed, wrapping herself in it.'

‘Why is that bad?' Andrés asked.

‘The quilt is cursed,' Ramiro said. ‘Her blind mother made it after Lilia's father was tortured and murdered by government soldiers. It has all that pain in it. Those who lie in it go back to the deepest point of pain in their life and relive it as if it were happening again, every inch of the way. She kept moaning, “Lilia, Lilia.”' Ramiro looked at us directly again. ‘You see, the deepest point of pain for her was her own life. She was mourning herself.'

‘When I visited Lilia on her deathbed all those years later she was still lying under it. What a punishment, every night,' Ramiro thumped the table. ‘Every night to relive that grief afresh. Who does that unless they're mad?'

‘So you think Lilia went mad?' I asked.

‘Is there another conclusion?'

The woman planted her stubby body behind the vacant chair. ‘Why are you here? And why did you bring the gringos? You think I'm going to talk to them because you want me to?' She shook her head from side to side, her brown eyes fierce. ‘I won't give you all of the Doña, old man.'

She fidgeted with her grey, worn hair tied in a bun at the back of her neck.

‘Sit down, woman,' Ramiro said. ‘Always sharp with that tongue. I want to introduce you to someone.' He gestured towards Andrés. ‘This is Lilia's de Las Flores's great-grandson.'

The woman grabbed the back of the chair to steady herself and stared at Andrés, nodding. She moved towards him and put her weary-looking hands on her face, then on his. It was a gesture so tender that I wanted to cry. Andrés didn't react for a moment, and when he did, he did the exact opposite of what I expected. He reached up and placed his own hands over hers, and there they were, trapped in a moment of time together, communing in some other language.

Andrés got up and guided her to the chair and sat her down. ‘Your name is not Amalia, is it?' he asked gently.

She kept her eyes on his and shook her head. ‘I am Dolores. Never as good as Amalia.'

Ramiro was grinning like a mad monkey.

‘I didn't think any of you would come back,' the woman said, talking to Andrés. ‘There was only pain for you here. What brings you?'

‘My wife,' Andrés said. ‘I came to find my wife.'

‘It's always the woman who shows the way.' She smiled at me and held out her hand. ‘Pleased to meet you.'

I introduced her to Bill and, although she was gracious, you could see she was anxious to get back to Andrés.

‘I knew your grandfather,' she said.

‘Don't be so modest,' Ramiro broke in. ‘You were married to El Tigre.'

Dolores turned to face him and he shrank back an inch. She pointed her finger. ‘The only reason I am letting a mangy dog like you stay is because I know you'll die soon and maybe then you'll let that poor woman go.'

He put his hands up in surrender and pretended to zip his mouth closed.

‘Never his wife, you know that.' She closed her eyes for a moment and then turned her head and yelled out. A few seconds later a girl appeared. Dolores asked her to bring
pico de gallo
and crackers.

She turned back and patted Andrés's hand. ‘We must talk of your family.' She looked at Andrés expectantly.

He held up his hands. ‘I'm not sure where to start …' he said. He looked at me. ‘What was my father like as a child? Was El Tigre kind to him?'

‘I never met your father.' Dolores shrugged. ‘And I don't
suppose “El Tigre”,' she spat out the name, ‘was kind to anyone.' She seemed to have withdrawn for a moment.

‘Tell us about you,' I prompted. ‘How did you get involved with El Tigre?'

‘A good question,' she said, smiling. ‘I don't have an intelligent answer. I knew of Doña de Las Flores a long time before I met her. Everybody did. As a small girl I used to make the sign of the cross if I saw her on the other side of the street. Sometimes if I were naughty my mother would threaten to give me to her.

‘That was well before I had anything to do with her son, El Tigre. Sure, I knew of him, but he was much older than me. As I grew up I had my eyes on boys my own age. And that is where I should have kept them. But he was so very handsome with his green eyes, and he was for some people back then a kind of folk hero. Also, more importantly, he had a lot of money. I was young and silly. He could have anybody he wanted, but his eyes fell on me, and you know what happens when a rich, charming man looks at a simple plain girl?' Dolores looked at Andrés and me. ‘She looks back.

‘It was in the square at Santa Lucia's festival. The sky was filled with stars. There was magic that night, but I didn't know at the time it was bad magic. I had just turned fifteen and I wasn't pretty. Not like some of my girlfriends standing chatting with me as we eyed off the boys. I was finishing a
churro
. I licked my fingers and suddenly he was there and he licked the last one. It should have been disgusting to me but I thought myself so grown-up. The
bandidos
suddenly surrounded us and I was proud that he had chosen me. This was years after Amalia had gone, of course.'

I could see that Andrés wanted to interrupt, but I stayed him with my hand.

‘Of course, when my parents found out my mother cried and screamed, and my father yelled and beat me. I was so starry-eyed that I went out into the hills and wandered about until two men grabbed hold of me and took me to his cave camp.

‘You can imagine the response I got. I think once he'd seen me in the hard light of day he realised that I was no prize and, worse, that the short fuck against the wall was back to haunt him.

‘I justified his behaviour away. He was a man on a mission, he couldn't be held back by a woman, et cetera, that's why he had said all those things. What else could I do? I couldn't go home.

‘He let me sleep with him that night and I believed it was just the shock, and that he would be nicer once he got used to the idea.

‘The next morning he was looking in the mirror he had propped on a ledge in the cave. I came up behind him and put my arms around his waist. He instinctively spun around and whacked my face. He was immediately sorry, but that was just the beginning. All I can say is that I was young – only fifteen – and it didn't seem unusual to me because my father had beaten me only the day before.'

The door opened and a girl brought in the plates. We all fell quiet. I smiled at her, but she kept her eyes down. That was a thing I hated about Mexico – the people who were paid to serve acted subservient. She went out again and came back with the
pico de gallo
and crackers. Dolores waved her away
when the girl went to set down a bowl in front of her. ‘Are you following, Bill?' I asked, taking advantage of the interruption. ‘Thanks to your husband,' he said, with his charming smile.

‘So, I stayed,' Dolores went on. ‘And I was pregnant very soon and my belly grew. I rubbed and rubbed that small swelling, and smiled and smiled. One night I grabbed his hand as he went to leave the camp fire. We were alone; I had waited for five days to get him alone. He pulled his hand away, annoyed that I'd taken that liberty. “You have a son here,” I said proudly, taking his hand back and putting it on my belly.

‘He grabbed his hand away a second time. “I already have two sons. They mean nothing to me. Why would I care about yours?”

‘That was the moment my eyes opened to what kind of man he was. But I didn't care, I had my baby.

‘We lived rough, sometimes in huts, but mostly in the caves in the mountains, so good food was hard to get. I always made sure I ate well though, and that infuriated El Tigre because a woman was supposed to wait until the man had eaten his fill before she feasted on his scraps. I suggested that we use some of all that money he had, not for drinking sprees in town, but on a proper house. He snarled at me then, telling me how stupid I was to ever think he could live in a proper house; he was an outlaw. I tried to argue with him, saying that drugs didn't make him an outlaw.

‘I mean,' she said to Andrés, ‘back then everybody was involved one way or another.

‘Anyway, he said I was no good to him anymore because I was so big. I didn't even care when he started sleeping with girls in the town.'

Andrés and I were squeezing each other's hands under the table. Bill watched Dolores.

‘I was very scared,' she continued, ‘very young, and was about to have my first baby. I tried to talk to him about getting help to deliver the baby, but he always batted me away. I couldn't go home. I tried to talk to some of the other men too, but I had no friends among them.

‘I don't even want to go back to those nights, how desperate the birthing was. The pain wound me around itself and cursed and cursed through me and the baby didn't come. At first I howled and screamed but after a night and a day I started to float away on the ocean of pain. El Tigre came in every now and then and just stood there. One time I called out to him to shoot me, and he came into the cave with his gun. I begged him to do it, but the gun stayed in its halter and he turned his back and strode away.

‘I blacked out soon after. When I came to there was somebody else in the cave. My eyes were closed and I couldn't get them open. The first thing I knew about Doña de Las Flores was the touch of her hands. They were hard and calloused but filled with heat. The heat was like warm honey and the honey ran through my veins. Those hands kneaded my belly and between my thighs. She gave me something disgusting to drink, but I tried to get it down and stop myself from gagging because I believed she was an angel sent down by God to come and fetch me home. But the pains would come and I couldn't stop lashing about and I spilt the liquid from the cup many times. In the end somebody held me down.

‘I drifted off after that and let the pain lift and dump me as if it had nothing to do with me. I felt her massaging me from
top to bottom. I heard her singing. Her voice was rich and low and sent waves of light through me. She was singing my baby out.

‘And finally she did it. There was the cry of a baby. It took me a while to understand that it was mine. That's when I opened my eyes for the first time and saw them both. I saw Doña de Las Flores holding my baby wrapped in the most beautiful white shawl. Some of the birthing blood had stained it with small red flowers.

‘She cleaned my little Carlos-Marta. I called him after her, of course. And then she cleaned me up. I tried to smile at her. She laid my baby beside me, then my eyes were only for my beautiful boy. She left straight after that. I started to be scared once she'd gone because what did I know about babies?

‘A few hours later a girl about my age, Alva, turned up at the cave. La Doña had sent her to help, and she stayed, and we both looked after Carlos and she became my friend.'

Dolores wrung her hands. ‘La Doña never let me say thank you. She would never let me through her front door, nor even look at me if she ever saw me in the street. I sent her a soup I'd made, or a table runner I'd embroidered. She sent them all back without a word. It's such a power – not allowing somebody to say thank you.

‘I tried to get El Tigre to thank her. But he wouldn't even talk to me. It had cost him everything to go and supplicate at his mother's door for her help, having cut off all contact with her the year before.'

‘So I have another uncle?' Andrés asked.

Dolores shook her head. ‘I had my baby and Alva, and I loved him so much. He was chubby and sweet and he smelt like the
honey we used to feed him in his milk. I didn't even care when El Tigre started sleeping with Alva. I didn't have the need for any more yelling and screaming in my life so I didn't complain.'

Dolores stopped talking but I didn't want to pierce the silence and, looking around the table, nobody else seemed to want to either.

‘They were the best days,' she began again, after a while. ‘Carlos was nearly three when it happened.'

Dolores picked and picked at the same piece of invisible lint on the cloth of her chair.

‘He suddenly got a fever and nothing we did brought it down. Alva ran for El Tigre. Both of us begged him to send for his mother. He scowled and cursed but he did it.

‘She was there quickly, within an hour, but Carlos had already lapsed into unconsciousness. She kneaded and prodded and sang and prepared poultices and herbal drinks. We had to lift his head to pour them into his throat. She worked without stopping for water or anything for eight hours, and sometimes tears would pour down her cheeks. I tried to wipe them away but she swatted me.

‘I think she knew all along that she was going to lose that battle, but she never stopped. And then it was dawn and Carlos slipped away.'

Dolores bent over the table. Andrés, Bill and I didn't have any words.

‘Doña de Las Flores picked up her bag and walked away,' Dolores said, her head still bent. ‘From that moment on, I was entirely devoted to her. Even though I was barely talking to El Tigre, I tried to get him to see her more often. See his boys, too.' Dolores lifted her head to nod at Andrés.

‘He told me he was going into the kidnapping business and I knew what that meant. More killing. I didn't mind drug people being killed very much – they were all in the same game – but fathers and mothers and children? So I packed my bag and left. I went down to the village and lived with the nuns for a while, and finally my parents died. All my brothers and sisters were married, so I moved into my parents' house.

‘I kept an eye on La Doña, and never spoke against her when others did. It wasn't until she was very old that she started to soften towards me. Once a week I left something by her door – a flan, some tamales. One day she was sitting on the verandah when I came with some flan for her. She saw me coming but she didn't send me away. So I went back and back and back every day until one day she let me speak to her and tell her how much her help had meant to me. She looked at me then, for the first time, and I went over and held her hand. Imagine my surprise when I saw tears running down her cheek.

‘After that I went quite often and when she became sick I was the one she let plump up her pillows and massage her feet. And she would talk to me. She told me a lot. The weight of it dragged years from me.'

Bill poured a glass of water from the pitcher and slid it across the table to Dolores. She smiled briefly at him.

‘Very touching,' Ramiro sneered. ‘But all this is about you. Surely you have some family secrets to share with your nephew.'

‘But not with you, so close your mouth or I will not allow you to stay.'

Ramiro looked away. ‘Go on,' he muttered. ‘Tell the story how you want.'