Of Love and Other Demons (3 page)

The truth was that as
soon as he learned who she was and saw the interior of the house, he re-established his slave’s reserve. But when Bernarda had stopped waiting for him and slept in a nightgown and bolted the door, he came in through the window. The air in her room, rarefied by the ammoniac odor of his sweat, woke her. She heard the heavy breathing of a minotaur searching for her in the darkness, she felt the sultry
heat of his body on top of her, his hands of prey grasping the neck of her nightgown and ripping it down the middle while his husky voice intoned in her ear, ‘Whore, whore.’ From that night on, Bernarda knew there was nothing else she wanted to do for the rest of her life.

She was mad about him. At night they would go to the dances in the slum districts, he dressed as a gentleman in a frock coat
and round hat, which Bernarda bought to please him, and she in a variety of disguises at first, and then with her face unmasked. She showered him with the gold of chains, rings and bracelets and studded his teeth with diamonds. She thought she would die when she learned he took every woman who crossed his path to bed but in the end she settled for whatever was left over. It was during this time
that Dominga de Adviento walked
into Bernarda’s bedroom at siesta, thinking she was at the sugar plantation, and found the two of them naked, making love on the floor. The slave woman stood with her hand on the latch, more confused than surprised.

‘Don’t just stand there like a corpse,’ Bernarda shouted. ‘Either get out or get down here with us.’

Dominga de Adviento left with a slam of the door
that sounded to Bernarda like a slap in the face. That night she summoned her and threatened the most atrocious punishments if she said anything about what she had seen. ‘Don’t worry, white lady,’ said the slave. ‘You can forbid whatever you like, and I’ll obey.’ And she concluded, ‘The trouble is you can’t forbid what I think.’

If the Marquis did know anything, he was very good at pretending
not to. After all, Sierva María was the only thing he still had in common with his wife, and he thought of Sierva María not as his daughter but as hers alone. And Bernarda did not think of the girl at all. She had put her so far out of her mind that when she returned from one of her extended stays at the sugar plantation, Bernarda mistook her for someone else because she had grown and changed so
much. She called for her, examined her, questioned her about her life, but could not get her to say a single word.

‘You’re just like your father,’ she said. ‘A freak.’

Their attitudes had not changed on the day the Marquis returned from the Amor de Dios Hospital and announced to Bernarda his resolve to take up the reins of the household with a warlike hand. There was something frenetic in his
urgency that left Bernarda speechless.

His
first action was to return to the girl the bedroom that had belonged to her grandmother the Marquise, and that had been hers until Bernarda sent her to sleep with the slaves. Beneath the dust its former splendor remained intact: the imperial bed that the servants thought was gold because of the brilliance of its copper; the mosquito netting made of bridal
tulle, the rich hangings of passementerie, the alabaster washstand and numerous bottles of perfumes and cosmetics lined in martial order on the dressing table; the portable chamber pot, the porcelain spittoon and vomitory, the entire illusory world that the old woman crippled by rheumatism had dreamed for the daughter she never had and the granddaughter she never saw.

While the slave women resurrected
the bedroom, the Marquis went about imposing his will on the house. He drove away the slaves dozing in the shade of the arcades, and threatened beatings and slaves’ prison for any who ever again relieved themselves in the corners or gambled in the rooms that had been closed off. These were not new decrees. They had been followed with far greater rigor when Bernarda gave the orders and Dominga
de Adviento carried them out, and the Marquis took public delight in his historic declaration: ‘In my house I do not say, I obey.’ But when Bernarda succumbed to the quick-sands of cacao, and Dominga de Adviento died, the slaves slipped back into the house with great stealth, first the women with their children to help in small tasks, and then the men without work, searching out the coolness
of the corridors. Terrified by the specter of ruin, Bernarda ordered them to earn their keep by begging in the streets. In one of her crises she decided to free them all except for
two or three house servants, but the Marquis opposed the idea with an illogical argument: ‘If they are going to die of hunger, it is better for them to die here and not among strangers.’

He did not adhere to these
easy formulas when Sierva María was bitten by the dog. He granted certain powers to the slave who seemed to have the greatest authority and be the most trustworthy and gave him instructions so harsh they shocked even Bernarda. Just after dark, when the house was in order for the first time since the death of Dominga de Adviento, he found Sierva María in the slave shack along with half a dozen young
black women who were sleeping in hammocks criss-crossed at different levels. He woke them all to announce the rules of the new regime.

‘From this day forward the girl lives in the house,’ he said. ‘And let it be known here and throughout the kingdom: she has only one family, and that family is white.’

The girl resisted when he tried to carry her in his arms to the bedroom, and he had to make
her understand that a masculine order governed the world. Once they were in her grandmother’s room, he replaced her slave’s burlap chemise with a nightdress but could not make her say a word. Bernarda watched them from the door: the Marquis sitting on the bed and struggling with the buttons on the nightgown, which would not pass through the new buttonholes, and the girl standing in front of him and
regarding him with an impassive expression. Bernarda could not restrain herself.

‘Why don’t you two get married?’ she mocked. And since the Marquis ignored her, she added, ‘Not a bad
little business: You could breed American-born marquises with chicken feet and sell them to the circus.’

Something had changed in her as well. Despite the ferocity of her laughter, her face seemed less bitter, and
at the bottom of her faithlessness lay a sediment of compassion that the Marquis did not see. As soon as he heard her leave, he said to the girl, ‘She is a sow.’

He thought he detected a spark of interest. ‘Do you know what a sow is?’ he asked, eager for a reply. Sierva María did not grant him one. She allowed herself to be laid down on the bed, she allowed her head to be settled on the feather
pillows, she allowed herself to be covered to the knees by the fine linen sheet fragrant with the scent of the cedar chest, and she did not bestow upon him the charity of a single glance. He felt a tremor of conscience. ‘Do you pray before you sleep?’

The girl did not even look at him. Accustomed to a hammock, she curled into the fetal position and fell asleep without saying good night. The Marquis
closed the mosquito netting with the greatest care so that the bats would not drain her blood as she slept. It was almost ten, and the chorus of madwomen was intolerable in the house redeemed by the expulsion of the slaves.

The Marquis set loose the mastiffs, and they raced to the grandmother’s bedroom and sniffed at the cracks in the doors, panting and yelping. The Marquis scratched their heads
with his fingertips and calmed them with the good news: ‘It is Sierva, she will be living with us from now on.’

His sleep was brief and restless because the madwomen sang until two. The first thing he did when he woke with the roosters was to go to the girl’s room, but she was not
there. He found her in the shack with the slave women. The one sleeping closest to her woke with a start.

‘She came
by herself, Señor,’ she said before he could ask the question. ‘I didn’t even know.’

The Marquis knew it was true. He asked which of them had been with Sierva María when the dog bit her. The only mulatta, whose name was Caridad del Cobre, identified herself, trembling with fear. The Marquis reassured her.

‘Take charge of her as if you were Dominga de Adviento,’ he said.

He explained her duties.
He warned her not to let the girl out of her sight for an instant and to treat her with affection and understanding but not to pamper her. Most important of all, she was not to cross the thornbush fence he would place between the slave-yard and the rest of the house. In the morning when she awoke and at night before she went to sleep she was to give him a full report without his having to ask
for it.

‘Be careful what you do and how you do it,’ he concluded. ‘You will be the only one responsible for seeing that these orders of mine are carried out.’

At seven in the morning, after returning the dogs to their cages, the Marquis went to Abrenuncio’s house. The doctor came to the door in person, for he had no slaves or servants. The Marquis himself uttered the reproach he believed he
deserved.

‘This is no hour for a visit,’ he said.

The doctor, grateful for the horse he had just received, opened his heart. He led him through the courtyard to a shed, all that remained of an old smithy except a ruined
forge. The handsome two-year-old sorrel, far from familiar surroundings, seemed restless. Abrenuncio soothed the animal with pats on the cheek while he whispered empty promises
in Latin into its ear.

The Marquis told him that the dead horse had been buried in the former garden of the Amor de Dios Hospital, which had been consecrated as a cemetery for the wealthy during the cholera plague. Abrenuncio thanked him for his excessive kindness. As they spoke, he noticed that his visitor stood at a certain distance. The Marquis confessed that he had never had the courage to
ride.

‘Horses frighten me as much as chickens do,’ he said.

‘That is too bad, because lack of communication with horses has impeded human progress,’ said Abrenuncio. ‘If we ever broke down the barriers, we could produce the centaur.’

The interior of the house, illuminated by two windows open to the great sea, was arranged with the excessive fastidiousness of a confirmed bachelor. The atmosphere
was permeated with a fragrance of balms, which encouraged belief in the efficacy of medicine. There was a neat and ordered desk and a glass case containing porcelain flasks labeled in Latin. The curative harp, covered by golden dust, was relegated to a corner. Most notable were the books, many of them in Latin, with ornate spines. They were behind glass doors and on open shelves, or arranged
with great care on the floor, and the physician walked the narrow paper canyons with the ease of a rhinoceros among the roses. The Marquis was amazed at the number of volumes.

‘All knowledge must be in this room,’ he said.

‘Books are worthless,’ Abrenuncio said with good
humor. ‘Life has helped me cure the diseases that other doctors cause with their medicines.’

He removed a sleeping cat from
the large armchair, which was his, so that the Marquis could sit down. He served him a herbal brew that he prepared on his alchemist’s burner and spoke about his medical experiences, until he realized that the Marquis had lost interest. It was true: in a sudden movement he had stood and turned his back, looking through the window at the ill-tempered sea. At last, with his back still turned, he
found the courage to begin.

‘Doctor,’ he murmured.

Abrenuncio had not expected him to speak.

‘Hmm?’

‘Protected by medical confidentiality, and only for your information, I confess that what they say is true,’ said the Marquis in a solemn tone. ‘The rabid dog also bit my daughter.’

He looked at the doctor and saw a soul at peace.

‘I know,’ said the doctor. ‘And I suppose that is why you have
come here so early.’

‘It is,’ said the Marquis. And he repeated the question he had already asked about the rabies victim in the hospital: ‘What can we do?’

Instead of his brutal response of the previous day, Abrenuncio asked to see Sierva María. That was what the Marquis had come to request. And so they were in agreement, and the carriage was waiting for them at the door.

When they reached
the house the Marquis found Bernarda seated at her dressing table, arranging her hair for no one, with the coquetry of those distant years when
they made love for the last time, and which he had erased from memory. The room was saturated with the springtime fragrance of her soaps. She saw her husband in the mirror and said without acerbity, ‘Who are we to go around giving away horses as presents?’

The Marquis evaded the question. He picked up her everyday tunic from the unmade bed, threw it over Bernarda and with no compassion ordered, ‘Get dressed, the doctor is here.’

‘God help me,’ she said.

‘Not for you, although you are in dire need of one,’ he said. ‘He has come to see the girl.’

‘It won’t do her any good,’ Bernarda said. ‘She’ll either die or she won’t: there’s no other possibility.’
But curiosity got the better of her. ‘Who is he?’

‘Abrenuncio,’ said the Marquis.

Bernarda was appalled. She preferred to die just as she was, alone and naked, rather than to place her honor in, the hands of a grasping Jew. He had been her parents’ doctor, and they had repudiated him because he divulged the condition of his patients in order to glorify his diagnoses. The Marquis confronted her.

‘Although you do not wish it, and although I wish it even less, you are her mother,’ he said. ‘On the basis of that sacred right, I ask you to consent to the examination.’

‘As far as I’m concerned, you can all do whatever you want,’ said Bernarda. ‘I’m a dead woman.’

Contrary to expectations, the girl submitted without fuss to a meticulous exploration of her body, displaying the same curiosity
she might have shown toward a wind-up toy.

‘Doctors
see with their hands,’ Abrenuncio told her.

Amused, the girl smiled at him for the first time.

The signs of her good health were plain to see, for despite her forlorn air she had a well-proportioned body covered by an almost invisible golden down and showing the first buds of an auspicious flowering. Her teeth were perfect, her eyes clear-sighted,
her feet calm, her hands adroit, and each strand of hair was the prelude to a long life. She answered his subtle questions with good humor and a great deal of authority, and one would have had to know her very well to realize that none of her replies was true. She tensed only when the physician discovered the tiny scar on her ankle. Abrenuncio demonstrated his astuteness: ‘Did you fall?’