The House of Impossible Loves (7 page)

“Go on and prepare dinner for the men tonight,” Clara ordered when Bernarda returned to the kitchen, her anger subdued. “And stop following me around!”

Bernarda grunted in reply. She plucked a chicken and disemboweled a rabbit, working as close to her mistress as possible, keeping an eye on which ingredients she touched.

The magic smell from the pots Clara’s mother stirred rose up over the gypsum counter where Clara worked, over the table in the middle of the room where Bernarda plucked and skinned the meat for lunch and dinner, intermingling with the whiff of blood, snaking among the ropes of garlic and onion hanging from the wall, through the cupboards, and over the dining room table where clients were served.

When Bernarda was alone, she stuck her hand in the pots, scooped out the ingredients her mistress had touched, and saved them jealously to cook later. Sometimes she went through the bother of replacing them with others that looked the same—but did not bear Clara’s touch—but most often she indulged in her feast without worry. And so potions to cure evil eye suddenly became remedies for a migraine or young love. The old woman’s credibility was being undermined by these alterations, and she could not understand why. Until one day, suspecting the cook’s voracity, she hid behind the door and caught her stealing a pair of frog’s legs. The Laguna witch whipped Bernarda so hard she never stuck her hand in a pot again, and settled instead for licking clean the utensils Clara had used for tomato sauce or porridge.

Another of Clara’s distractions was to oversee the grooming of the three women who now worked for her. The most recent arrival, a shepherd’s daughter from a nearby town, had a habit of sticking tufts of wool behind her ears, receiving clients with ears that stuck out and smelling like a flock of sheep. If it weren’t for her wet nurse’s breasts flapping about in her dressing gown, few would have been willing to lie with her. Before sending her into the parlor, Clara dressed her in negligees and Moorish pants that complemented her skin and hair, and inspected behind her ears. If the girl disobeyed, Clara docked her Sunday pay or cuffed her across the head.

Although the girls were about her own age, Clara rarely spoke to them about anything other than brothel affairs, chores, or tricks of the trade to better satisfy clients. This was her business and her revenge, and there was no room for friendship or chitchat. For that, she met with the dead gentlemen in town once a year. They understood her better than anyone. And yet sometimes she was jealous of the secrets Ludovica and Tomasa shared, wondered what it might be like to have a living friend to share her happiness, dreams, and sorrows.

One day Clara decided to shave Bernarda’s circus beard and sideburns. Though the cook did not have to satisfy clients, when they wandered into the kitchen for a taste of her stews, they were startled to see her tugging on her whiskers in the light and shadow thrown by the lamps. Bernarda squirmed and squealed like a pig at slaughter the morning Ludovica and Tomasa led her to a chair on the back porch, the Laguna witch approaching with a razor, a bowl of water, and a bar of soap.

“Quiet! It’s not like we’re going to slit your throat!” the old woman yelled, rolling her blind eye.

Bernarda calmed the moment Clara appeared, letting her mistress cover her face with a warm cloth, lather it, and shave it as she reveled in the closeness of Clara’s breath and touch.

From that day on, Bernarda would run her hands over her face in search of any hair that would draw near the soft, fragrant skin she adored.

“Lady, lady, lady,” she said, pointing to the fuzz that would offer another ration of her mistress’s time.

“Not yet, Bernarda. When there’s more.”

“Itchy, itchy,” she complained, scratching her cheeks, pouting her lips.

“Then scratch like it’s just another of your many fleas.”

On one of the days she shaved Bernarda on the porch, Clara was struck by her cook’s smell of lonely horse stables. She had smelled it many times before, but that morning it reminded her of her rides with the Andalusian, and she was overcome by nostalgia. The razor trembled in her hands. Without realizing, Clara began to tell Bernarda about that day galloping through the pines, rocks, and beech trees, ending deep in the valley, in the shade of an oak tree, with a wet kiss. The cook shivered at all that talk: Clara wasn’t barking orders and scolding, and her voice was rich with confidence and trust. Bernarda did not know how to swallow those delicious sounds she could neither see nor touch. She had never imagined anything inedible could fill her with such a feeling of glory.

This was how Clara Laguna found someone with whom to share her sleepless nights, her memories. Bernarda listened adoringly each time her mistress shaved her, the only time Clara felt comfortable enough to share. The cook never interrupted her mistress, but if Clara cried, Bernarda cried, too; if she laughed, Bernarda laughed, too; and if she was angry, Bernarda was angry, too.

“Not a word to anyone, or it’s the whip for you, do you understand?” Clara warned.

“Shhh.” The cook brought a finger to her lips and smiled.

Clara Laguna’s daughter was born in the canopy bed early that month of June 1899. Bernarda, used to helping birth sheep, pulled the baby from her mistress as she bawled in pain and, between pushing and panting, swore revenge. The newborn sucked her little fingers covered in blood and placenta, demonstrating from birth a primitive appetite that would dominate her for the rest of her life. Clara named her Manuela.

The arrival of another Laguna girl was seen in town as proof of the family’s curse. The old women huddled, having exchanged heavy black shawls for lighter ones, delighted over the stigma the girl would carry for having been born in a brothel to a whore, predicting even worse disgrace. The young women wondered aloud whether the father would come back to meet his bastard child, whether they would see him with his curly black hair, rifle slung over his shoulder. The men in the tavern celebrated the news with shots of anisette and cigars; the Laguna with the flaxen eyes had given birth to the girl she deserved and would soon receive them in her ethereal pants and dressing gowns.

Padre Imperio came to Scarlet Manor in the heat of July. If he was to save the mother at all costs, then he must also look out for her daughter, and that began with a Christian baptism. He tied his mule to the gate. From her window, Clara watched him walk his melancholy walk down the cobblestone drive, stomping on the daisies. The high temperatures that baked the region reminded him of the time he spent fighting with his battalion; his faith, the mosquitoes, and the dust reminded him of their defeat and his exile to this town of crude souls. On his last visit to Clara, a few days before she gave birth, he had told her about the Santeria priestess who found him in the jungle and treated him with poultices that he didn’t tell her reminded him of the color of her eyes. He took advantage of her good mood that day to read a few parables from the violet-covered Bible and gave her a holy card featuring Saint Pantolomina of the Flowers, which Clara slipped into her bra, next to her heart.

Suffocated by the severity of his cassock, the priest loosened his collar, revealing his scar. The sun was blinding, and the only stirring of the air came from his speech, as he sat on the stone bench under the chestnut tree, the cicadas trilling.

“I’ll baptize my daughter when her father returns,” Clara said.

Padre Imperio’s dark eyes turned fierce.

“And when might that be?”

“This fall, a few months from now.”

“What if he doesn’t return? What makes you think he will?”

“A promise.”

“Men like him don’t keep promises, Clara. Your lover is never coming back.”

“How dare you say that! Maybe you’re the one who shouldn’t ever come back, you and your sermons and your parables. The only thing that’s going to save me is seeing my revenge in the eyes of the man I still love.”

The priest stood from the scalding bench, his scar a red hangman’s noose. The cicadas trilled even louder.

“Go! I don’t want your salvation to distract me any longer!” Tears and reproach caught in Clara’s throat.

Padre Imperio walked down the drive and mounted his mule.

“Bernarda! Bernarda!” Clara yelled.

The cook was plucking a hen when she heard her mistress call. She dropped the bird and ran into the yard.

“Lady! Lady!”

Padre Imperio’s silhouette moved away down the gravel road. The sun became a mirage, split by a flock of swallows.

Bernarda wiped her bloody hands on her apron, chewed on her lip, and smiled.

“Time for a shave, Bernarda!”

The girl ran a hand over her face but found not a hair along her jawbone or under her chin.

“I don’t care there’s nothing there! Bring the soap and razor.”

When Bernarda returned, she sat on the bench where the priest had sat. Her mistress stood and shaved her clean face until Padre Imperio vanished into the woods.

“He’ll be back,” Clara muttered, “just like that other one.” Then she soaped Bernarda’s face once more and began to tell her about Padre Imperio’s scar, as red as an island snake.

Autumn fell, leaving behind a summer of breasts dripping with mother’s milk, the scent of shaving foam, and strolls through the yard. Padre Imperio came back to Scarlet Manor one October afternoon, handing the Laguna witch the Bible with the violet cover, now wrapped in brown paper. He did not ask to see Clara or send any message: this Bible, which no one in the house could read, was offered as an apology, a desire for baptism and reconciliation. The one who did not return was the Andalusian landowner. The beech leaves turned color and fell to the ground, slowly burying Clara’s heart. The bellowing stags returned, mating in the mountains, the sound of horns colliding. I’ll see him any moment, standing on the cobblestone drive, Clara thought. I’ll hear his Andalusian accent any minute. But more leaves fell, the stags grew tired of mating, foals gestated, Clara’s breasts filled and emptied as she fed her daughter, and the entrance to Scarlet Manor remained empty. The hunters returned with their catch of partridge and rabbit, their gunpowder, and their packs of hounds that peed on the fountain in late afternoon. Clara returned to the grove where she’d first made love, to the red earth of the riverbank, to the smell of rain on stiff leaves, to their names carved in a trunk. She went there so often that her skin began to smell of oak. The smoke in the chimneys returned; the fog of the dead, the biting wind, and sad bell tolls all returned as the leaves continued to fall. Only when the branches were bare, awaiting the first snow, did Clara demand that her mother cast a spell to make him return.

“It won’t work,” the old woman warned.

“If you want to live in this house, you’ll try.”

A pot was placed on a stand in the fire, its black belly filled with forget-me-nots, sheep fat, spider legs, a sheaf of the Andalusian’s olive-oil-soaked letters, and dried jasmine, among other things. It simmered for an entire day and took hours to cool enough for Clara to drink. She called to him from her bowels, her liver, and her heart, but the potion rotted inside and he did not return.

The first snowfall blanketed the town. Clara Laguna put on her negligees and Moorish pants, and the canopy danced once again to the rhythm of a revenge that only grew more frenzied the longer she waited. But first she took her daughter to the kitchen in search of Bernarda. She wore a satin dressing gown that left her sheer stockings and garters exposed.

“Shave?” the cook grunted.

Clara shook her head, handing her the girl.

“Make sure she’s fed,” Clara ordered, “and keep her warm. If she dies, I’ll kill you. Do you understand?”

Bernarda stood staring at her, not saying a word. Clara’s dressing gown revealed a glimpse of one breast, and the cook imagined it in her mouth, smeared with garlic and tomato.

“Answer!” her mistress demanded.

Bernarda looked down at the baby, who had begun to cry and kick her in the ribs. She plugged the child’s mouth with a finger coated in chicken blood, and for the first time, Manuela Laguna tasted the sweetness of death.

T
HE FUTURE THE DAISIES
foretold came true that winter of 1900. The yard at Scarlet Manor no longer obeyed the weather or the seasons and settled into eternal spring. Not only did the daisies flower, but so did the hydrangea and morning glories near the chestnut tree, the honeysuckle patch, and the rose garden with its multi-hued buds that opened as wide as a man’s hand. Even the vegetable garden was continually overgrown with legions of tomatoes, lettuce, and squash. Such prodigious fertility, which only increased over the years, gave them something to talk about in town. The old women on stools and their daughters while sewing or standing over pots suspected the reason was as wet as it was shameful: that yard was fertilized with semen. No one in town wanted to forget that Scarlet Manor had become the most famous, most opulent brothel in the entire province. The baritone at the shop where Clara bought her furniture was partly to thank. He sent customers and acquaintances who were passing through, some as elegant as the diplomat who celebrated his return from far-off lands by making love to the prostitute with the golden eyes. Between clients, Clara stood by the bedroom window and stared out at the cobblestone drive.

Winter turned to spring, but it was all the same to Clara and her gardens. The daisies continued to sprout and the Andalusian failed to return. Next autumn, Clara told herself; of that I’m sure. And if not, then the snows will bring him, but I will see him before I die. It was then that she began to worry about her health. So as not to catch a chill that might become pneumonia, she often received clients wearing a wool chemise under her negligee.

“Your newfound modesty will ruin our business,” her mother warned.

“Let me throw the bones to see how long I have to live. I don’t want him to come back only to find my grave.”

“I told you years ago, I saw in the ribs that he’s never coming back. You didn’t believe me then; what’s different now?”