The House of Impossible Loves (26 page)

As always, Manuela was the first to rise. That morning she did not have breakfast but went straight into the yard, her feet infected with limestone, her stomach growling. She had to get to the rose garden. The vegetable patch had become a small lake. The water reached midcalf, and her feet sank in the mud with every step. Legions of grasshopper corpses floated in that pond. Manuela scooped a few into the palm of her glove; they were stiff, their little legs bent into their shells. She tossed them back into the watery grave and looked up at the sky. The sun lacked warmth, struggling with the clouds, fighting to impose its rays. When Manuela reached the rose garden, she stopped on one path and fell to her knees. Water rose up to her waist as she cried. The body of a centipede stuck to her arm; she thought she could see its insides through its skin. She squeezed and it disintegrated. She crossed herself, rose, and went toward the center of the rose garden. The sight of skeletal rosebushes was almost too much to bear as colored petals sailed down flooded paths. The old woman was afraid she might find the remains of the Galician woman floating aimlessly, afraid they might slip down a drain and disappear from her life.

That morning no one followed Manuela. She felt every dead insect that bumped into her and clenched her teeth. She did not want to see them. She just wanted to reach the mentholated grave but got lost in the labyrinth. She took a wrong turn, followed a path she had never taken, a forbidden path whose secret only she knew. Desperate, she searched for a centipede. There were grasshopper and cicada corpses bobbing in the sun, as if the canals were tributaries of the Ganges River, but none possessed the amber chill of the insect she yearned for inside. She smeared the remains of the one she’d squashed moments before onto one finger and sucked it greedily. Manuela had never let anyone see her commit this shameful, savage act. Sometimes, after grooming a centipede, she would eat it for the taste of quince it left in her mouth.

Manuela wanted to cry. Before her was the cross she’d bought from the scrap merchant for her mother’s grave. She never wanted Clara Laguna to escape that mound of earth, never wanted anyone to visit her. She never wanted a soul to drop the weight of even one memory on those bones, and that is why she buried her on this secret path. Manuela kneeled down and water once again bathed her waist. Like an accusing finger, a single ray of sun illuminated the letters engraved on one arm of the cross. Manuela retched. She never wanted that name—Clara Laguna—written on that grave. The Galician woman had told her that, if a grave does not bear the name of the deceased, the spirit will not dare leave, for when it wants to return it cannot find its way, remaining forever lost and alone. But there it was in the rust, scrawled in a shaky hand. Someone had written her mother’s name on that iron cross. Though she could not read, Manuela recognized those two words from all the documents at the lawyer’s office, those two words that had outlived her memory:
CLARA LAGUNA
. She kneeled in the mud like a rock, a rock that meandered down rose-filled canals. Her mother’s spirit could wander through the yard, through the house, through the oak grove, and return to that grave marked by her name.

The moisture from the storm only intensified the plague of violets that had assaulted Scarlet Manor in July. Bunches grew on mattress corners, on the whitewashed walls of Manuela’s room, on the staircase banister, on the seascape in Olvido’s room, on the carpet in the parlor, on the purple canopy, on little Santiago’s crib. Scarlet Manor was filled with the smell of wild shoots.

Pierre Lesac woke in a bad mood. He felt like he was waking in his childhood bed at the banker’s house. What if he went down to the kitchen and found toast smeared with plum jam? A colored pencil lay between the fingers of his right hand. It was blue. He tried to suppress the desire consuming him: he wanted to color the walls, the sofas, the tablecloths . . . Pierre Lesac needed to color everything in his path. And if that weren’t enough, a miniature violet had sprouted in the thicket of his masculinity. He locked himself in the bathroom for nearly half an hour. When he opened the door, the pencil was gone from his hand and the violet lay on the tile floor. It was not alone; next to it was a clump of hair and three big drops of pleasure. That had freed him of the burning sensation and weeping blisters, the gargoyles disappearing from his life with the very first stroke. Next he put on his paint-splattered pants and was ready to face what the great storm had done to his canvas.

The porch had become a vibrant lake, upon which his former masterpiece, now a funereal platform, was floating. He brushed off the crickets and cicadas, could just make out the curve of Olvido’s lips, their vermillion unscathed. But his muse’s eyes were dying beneath the mire. He vomited what had stuck in his throat the night before. It was mid-August. Olvido, I still have you, he thought; real, beautiful. Olvido, I can still watch you while you cook. I can still eat what first grazed your nipples and mouth. I can still follow you down the perfumed twists and turns of the rose garden. I can still . . . He left the porch, running to his muse’s room. Stained with paint and mud, his bare feet left prints on clay tiles that would remain for years to come. Olvido. Pierre wanted to become that name, wanted that name to devour him. Olvido.

The window in Olvido’s room had blown open in the storm, and the yard’s damp breath drifted in. For once that yard had succumbed to the weather. For once it suffered the same misfortune as the town that hated it. Pierre found Olvido in bed, face-down, the sheet swirled around her knees, naked. Hypnotized by the power exhaled by her flesh, he stood staring, as if she were not a woman but an extraordinary, shapely sculpture. He blinked in vain. A flock of birds flew low through the yard. Their chirping caused the narrow abyss between Olvido’s legs to softly stretch. She moaned. Her black mane smudged her face; in between strands were two sleeping eyes, parted lips, cheeks flower pink.

It was then Pierre noticed the scars on her back. From that moment on, he no longer cared that Olvido’s arm was curled lovingly around her pillow, that her neck was damp with the perspiration of dreams. All that existed were those scars coiling along her back, those serpents dead beneath her skin. He moistened his lips and sat on the edge of the bed. He wanted to touch them, kiss them, trace them with his tongue. He reached out and ran a hand over the outline of one crimson scar. Olvido’s body sighed. Suddenly, her thighs began to part and her waist to navigate an invisible sea. Pierre’s touch lay enamored; if only that scar were her heart. Thunder rumbled. Pierre thought the storm was returning. The August rays that minutes earlier had lit up the room were being swallowed. He wished they were winter rays, softer, whiter. A dry leaf blew in the window, traveling on a wind that did not know how to forget. Pierre kissed another scar. The moon that poked out above the clouds was small and pale, ghostlike, but the sky exploded in blue.

Someone pushed the door open. Pierre had left it ajar. Olvido’s flesh ensnared him, leaving him without the strength to close it. What was a doorknob compared with that explosion of skin? he would ask himself years later, crouched in the shadow of Notre-Dame. Margarita Laguna, her hair loose, eyes tempestuous, breasts exhausted from nursing, found Pierre licking her mother’s scars. She watched his tongue move down the one he had chosen as his favorite, shaped like a wave and seemingly brimming with foam. She watched her mother’s naked body reflected in Pierre’s face when he startled, raising his head from that deformed delight, looking at her without fear. Margarita knew she was going to kill him. She cursed in French and moved toward the bed. Olvido woke and said her daughter’s name, feeling a trace of something wet and sticky on her back. Beside her was Pierre Lesac, his lips sparkling. Suddenly it turned cold. Winter settled over Olvido’s heart and hung from her icy legs. Margarita slapped Pierre.

“It’s only art, my love,” the Frenchman replied.

The smell of wax filtered through the room. Margarita’s nostrils flared. She knew he was lying. He loved her mother. He desired her mother.

“Since when?” she screamed, hammering his chest with her fists.

“Ever since I saw her photo. She is an artist’s dream,” Pierre confessed. The taste of her scar still lay on his tongue.

Margarita dropped her fists and fell to her knees. Milk spurted from one nipple, leaving a stain on the carpet. Olvido remembered she had dreamed of pirate ships that night. She stood, wrapped herself in the sheet, and held her daughter. Margarita was rigid, frosty.

“It’s nothing,” Olvido whispered into her hair. “Let’s sunbathe in the honeysuckle clearing today.”

Margarita pushed her away. She had spotted a letter opener on the desk and within seconds was waving it wildly. She aimed for Pierre’s heart but found only his hand. Blood dripped on the carpet.

“Enough, darling. Enough!” Olvido tried to wrest the letter opener from her daughter’s hand.

Margarita smashed the handle into her mother’s temple. Olvido brought a hand to the wound and felt the whisper of blood, like she had on that frigid night.

“Enough, darling. Enough!” she repeated.

But Margarita was struggling with Pierre by the open window.

Olvido wanted to go to them, protect them from the abyss that had swallowed Esteban, but there was no time. Margarita pushed and Pierre fell out.

“Don’t look!” Olvido begged her daughter. “You’ll remember that sight forever, even in your dreams.”

There came the ghostly howl of a wolf, and Margarita hurled herself into the yard.

Silence and the caustic smell of tragedy filled the room. Olvido hid her face in her hands. Her life was being torn in two along that pious crease in her forehead when someone stroked her hair. The touch was rough and smelled sweetly of ivy. Olvido raised her eyes to confront death’s desire, give in to it, but instead saw the silhouette of a man as tall and thin as a church steeple. It was Pierre Lesac. He had managed to grab the wooden trellis and climb back into her room. Olvido raced to the window.

“No,” Pierre said. “Not her.”

Margarita Laguna lay on her father’s memory, her skull smashed on a rock.

O
LVIDO LAGUNA WALKED
down a muddy path through the pine grove. Dressed in black, she was wearing thick stockings, a dress secured at the neck with a safety pin, and a veil over her hair. She hurried along toward town, sure of her sorrow. It was Sunday morning, and the smell of rain still hung in the air. Countless dead ants and grasshoppers floated in puddles, and the surviving squirrels dozed on tree branches. Olvido walked on without stopping. Every now and then she would coo to Santiago in her arms. He was hungry for a breast; he missed the heat of skin perfumed by new motherhood and the heart that beat beneath it. Manuela wanted to wring the last harvest from that now dead chest but did not dare, afraid Olvido would discover her, accuse her of defiling Margarita’s body; afraid her bones would then smell of lavender; afraid of losing her great-grandson.

On the horizon, the town’s first roofs and church bell could be seen. Olvido began to walk faster. The baby started to cry. She knew what he needed and stopped to unbutton her dress. As she offered her breast to her grandson, she heard the same enormous magpie caw as the day Pierre Lesac arrived. She felt Santiago’s lips tugging on her nipple. She closed her eyes. It was Margarita in her arms. It was her daughter sucking on memory, and her insides drowned in happiness lost. A gust of passionate wind rustled the treetops. Santiago had stopped crying. His grandmother’s breast gave no milk, but it did harbor the taste that led to his birth.

After buttoning her dress, Olvido resumed walking. The smell of damp plaster, rain-soaked clothing, and furniture permeated the town. No one toasted fresh bread, and no one wore clean clothes or washed with fragrant soaps. The church bells rang nine times, misfortune hauling on the ropes as the new Tolón slept off the flood. There would be no Mass that Sunday; their Christ lay dying under a rotted beam. The church was a jumble of mantles, candles, and piles of rubble dripping water. Padre Rafael was in the sacristy, mourning the loss of his public address system. Anyone who wanted to receive Communion that morning would have to go to the neighboring town, where heaven’s tide had left the church unscathed.

Olvido walked down a narrow street and came into the town square. There was no one, the only sound coming from the fountain spouts. All of the dogs had fled. Donkeys dreamed of storms in flooded stables. She left the center of town and headed into a neighborhood of humble dwellings. One old woman was sweeping water out her door. Olvido Laguna’s mourning collided with her own. The woman set down the bucket and hurried up the street to tell her friends that one of the wicked Lagunas had shrouded herself in black, covering up her shamelessness and beauty.

Olvido soon came to a filthy porch where petunia pots had cracked in two. She rapped on the door.

“Come in,” a sad voice said.

The room was silent. It reeked of winter, although it was August. There was hardly any furniture: a round table covered in an oilcloth, two wicker chairs, a threadbare sofa, and a coal stove. On top of the table was a heap of socks and stockings. Behind it, the balding head of an old woman, glasses perched on her nose. She did not bother to look up; she did not care who was there. She kept her head down, mending. For years her life had been nothing but a row of perfect stitches. Water had seeped into the room and rose up to the old woman’s ankles.

“Leave your stockings on the table and come back the day after tomorrow—or tomorrow, if you like. With no Mass, I’ll work all day . . .”

“I haven’t brought anything to mend. I’ve come to talk to you about a grave.”

The old woman took off her glasses. Olvido Laguna was easy to recognize under the modesty of that veil; the blue eyes and beauty that had killed her young son were just as vivid as ever. The woman wanted to tell her to leave the house they were forced into after her husband was murdered, but she was intrigued by Olvido’s state of mourning.