The House of Impossible Loves (8 page)

“This time we’re talking about my death.”

“But it’s the same bones and the same witch’s eyesight!”

“Read the bones and tell me if my death is near! Whether or not I believe you is up to me.”

Spring light streamed in through the window. Clara sat cross-legged on the bed, opened the sack, and spilled the bones on the sheets as she thought of her Andalusian lover.

“The skull tells me death is not ready for you yet,” the old woman predicted.

“When? When will it come?”

“You have many years of life left, but you won’t reach old age.”

“Then he’ll be back before I’m as ugly and wrinkled as you.”

The Laguna witch put the bones back into the sack and left the room. Clara brushed her hair as she stared out at the daisies.

Death came instead for the Laguna witch late one night that spring. She had been reading the future and repairing a hymen in one of the noblemen’s homes. On her way back to Scarlet Manor, she ventured out of the empty roadside ditch and onto the dark road itself and the sound of chirping crickets surged. Suddenly, a speeding cart ran right over her. A client found her on his way home after an amorous session and a serving of Bernarda’s stew. He lifted the old woman into the back of his cart, laying her down with his hoe, scythe, and shovel. The woman’s teeth were bloodstained, a trickle of pink spit running down her neck toward her heart. Her good eye was closed; her blind eye shone like a marble. Her crushed hands gripped her treasured sack. The cart was filled with wheat, millet, and flour.

“Let go of the sack,” the man said.

The old witch shook her head and sucked her lips. She tried to speak.

“Don’t say a word. I’ll go get your daughter.” The man returned to Scarlet Manor.

“Back for more?” Tomasa asked when he opened the door.

“Tell the owner, tell Clara. Her mother’s in my cart, half-dead.”

Tomasa found her mistress in the kitchen, eating a meal of potatoes and rabbit, recovering after a long night of revenge.

“I think they’ve killed your mother,” Tomasa said.

Clara ran a hand over her lips, wiping away a bit of gravy.

“A bad weed never dies,” she murmured.

Clara met the man in the clay-tiled entryway and followed him out to his cart. She was wearing a long satin dressing gown and a pair of Moorish pants. The wee hours were fresh, with crickets still chirping.

“Madre?”

The old woman’s head was resting on a bag of flour.

“Church, church,” she croaked.

“But what happened to her?”

“Looks like she was hit by a cart,” the man replied.

“Church,” the Laguna witch insisted.

“I’ll take you.”

Clara climbed into the cart and ripped the sack of bones from her mother’s hands.

“Up and down these roads with this filthy cat! I knew it would kill you.”

“No,” the old woman protested.

The cart clattered over the stones that early morning.

“Why does she want to go to the church? Shouldn’t we take her to the doctor or the apothecary?” the client asked.

Wiping the spit from her lips with a broken hand, the witch muttered the word
cursed
followed by the word
death
.

“Cursed women only go to church when they’re about to die.”

Her mother nodded as bloody vomit filled her mouth behind her teeth.

“Hurry!”

The man snapped the reins. Flour inside the man’s cart puffed up into a pale cloud. The town’s cobblestone streets shined brilliantly with dew, and the sound of hooves echoed against the mildewed stone façades. The town square opened up before them, free of fog. The cart came to a halt in front of the church. Clara climbed out and banged away on the big wooden doors. She cried for Padre Imperio, cold splinters shredding her knuckles.

The priest woke in his spartan room next to the sacristy. He was dreaming about Clara Laguna, salvation in her golden eyes, when he heard the voice in his dream, and banging on the door. Wearing the same gray pajamas he wore in his seminary days, he shuffled along in slippers one of his parishioners had given him, his hair disheveled, his sleep-filled eyes unfocused, his cassock hanging open in place of a robe, and his red scar vivid across his throat, and opened one door. The first rays of light shot in like a lance, followed by Clara in her harem clothes, and the man carrying the Laguna witch’s battered body.

“She’s dying, Father, she’s dying!” Clara clapped her hands on the priest’s chest, the first time she had ever touched him. She snatched them back and formed two fists.

Padre Imperio blushed.

“Lay her on a pew, by the altar.”

Spring air slipped through cracks in the windows. You could hear the Castilian caballeros rolling over in their graves.

“What happened?”

“I think she was hit by a cart. I found her on the side of the road as I was leaving . . .” The man stared down at the floor. “Forgive me, Father.”

“No time for that now. Has she seen the doctor?”

“No. She asked me to bring her here,” Clara replied.

Padre Imperio knelt beside the dying woman and ran a hand over her hair. The woman opened her one good eye, murmuring the priest’s name. He brought his ear to her bloodstained lips, listened to her soft words. The priest buttoned his cassock, went to the sacristy, and returned a moment later with a stole around his neck and the tray of holy oils. He made the sign of the cross over the old woman’s face and gave her last rites. The smell of sorcery she had brought into the room disappeared, giving way to the aroma of blessed oil.

Clara would never forget Padre Imperio’s hands tracing a cross in the air, his tenderness in anointing the oil, the faith on his tanned face, the devotion on his lips reciting words in Latin.

“Come. She wants to tell you something.”

When Clara’s mother saw her daughter’s face, she closed her eye. Clara leaned close to her lips and took her by the hand. The old woman whispered a few last words as her soul began to take flight. She squeezed Clara’s hand and died.

Beyond the church windows, the sun stretched across the sky in tones of orange and gold.

“She’s gone,” Clara said, resting a cheek on her mother’s chest.

Padre Imperio stared, fascinated by her chestnut hair fanned out over her back, smooth in the sunlight, but he did not touch it.

“Don’t be afraid,” he said, consoling her. “Your mother went in peace.”

“I’m not afraid for her but for me.” Clara lifted her head. She was crying.

“But you still have your daughter. Manuela, isn’t that right?”

“She’s the cause of my misfortune. Her father would have returned if it weren’t for her.”

“The sun’s up now,” the client interrupted. “I’d best get to work.”

“Please take Clara home.”

“Don’t ask me to do that, Padre. You must understand, I can’t, in broad daylight, and right through town? Look how she’s dressed,” the man protested, pointing to Clara’s Moorish pants visible under her dressing gown.

“Go! I’ll walk home,” Clara said.

The man hurried out of the church, climbed into his cart with its flour sacks now stained red, and left for his farm.

Morning came to rest on the pew where the corpse lay; it came to rest in Padre Imperio’s eyes and in Clara’s tears. The priest removed his stole. Clara rose unsteadily to her feet.

“Thank you.”

“No need. I’m simply Christ’s servant.” He smiled.

“I’ll be back to sit vigil.”

“I’ll take care of the paperwork.”

“Yes, you know I can’t read, not even the Bible you sent. Come read it to me again soon. Goodbye, Padre.”

“Wait. You can’t go out like that. I’ll loan you the charwoman’s clothes. They’re not very elegant, but at least you won’t be out in public in your nightdress.”

The priest led Clara to a small broom closet where a rough skirt and white blouse were hanging on a hook.

“Take your time,” he said, closing the door.

Clara listened to his footsteps recede.

A short while later she found Padre Imperio kneeling in the side chapel dedicated to Saint Pantolomina of the Flowers. He had covered the old woman’s corpse with a blanket and put on his priest’s collar.

“I won’t bother you any longer. I’ll be on my way now.”

Padre Imperio turned to look at Clara. The clothes were too big, but her hair was still loose, her eyes the same.

“Wait. Take my mule. I’ll come for her another day.”

Clara crossed the town square on Padre Imperio’s mule and continued down the narrow streets to the gravel road. A few townspeople spied her with her silk dressing gown and harem pants tucked under her arm, her hair loose. Before long the old women in black shawls all heard how that vixen left the church on the priest’s mule, wearing his charwoman’s clothes, how the Laguna witch lay dead on a pew, run over by a cart. Before long they heard that this was not the priest’s first contact with that cursed family: his mule had been seen tied to the gate at Scarlet Manor on more than one occasion. The townspeople, who had adored him from the very first day, began to look at him with suspicion. After all, he was a man under that cassock, a young man just turned thirty. The rumors only intensified when the Laguna witch was buried in the cemetery of cypress trees and magpies one morning. Clara attended with the girls from Scarlet Manor, Padre Imperio officiating in Latin with his holy water. But not one local came, even though the old woman had read their futures in the bones of the cat, repaired their daughters’ hymens, and cured their evil eye for years. They wondered why that Laguna—who had never set foot in church until the hour of her death, a witch of all things—should be given a Christian burial. They wondered whether the daughter had asked, and the priest could not refuse. Padre Imperio, however, was simply complying with the deceased’s wishes. “Give me my last rites,” she had said, “then bury me in hallowed ground so I can rot in peace.”

When earth covered the coffin, Padre Imperio offered Clara his sympathies. He took her hand and shook it. She felt her skin grow warm. They both blushed.

“Don’t come back to Scarlet Manor, Padre. People talk in this town. I’ll have Bernarda bring your mule back tomorrow.”

“Close your business. Bring your daughter to be baptized and come to church on Sundays.”

“I already told you: I’m committed to my revenge, my abandonment.”

“And I told you I will do whatever it takes to save you.”

“Save yourself, Padre. You need it more than I. Just leave me be.”

Clara Laguna walked down the path past headstones and crosses, in tears, determined to never see Padre Imperio again.

On orders from her mistress, Bernarda carried the blackened pots, the thread for repairing hymens, the sack containing the bones of a cat, and jars of magic ingredients up to the attic. The townspeople and brothel girls forgot all about them as layers of dust grew on top of Clara’s mother’s possessions. They forgot, too, about the investigation into the death of the Laguna witch after the Civil Guard tried for weeks to find out who was driving the cart that hit her, without any luck. But Clara was never able to forget her mother’s things or the night she was killed. From then on, she dedicated herself to the brothel and awaiting her lover’s return. She arranged the girls’ amorous encounters, looked after distinguished clients waiting in the parlor, offering red wine and games of hearts, and supervised Bernarda’s dinners. By now the only clients she allowed into her canopy bed were the elite sent by the baritone—for they demanded the charms of the prostitute with the golden eyes—or any man whose features or smell reminded her of the Andalusian.

Clara tried not to think about Padre Imperio. Whispers about his visits to Scarlet Manor and what happened the day the Laguna witch was killed died down after consecutive Sundays, when the priest recaptured the hearts of his parishioners. The old women in black veils lining the pews still did not understand his sermons, in which pastors set off for hills in search of sheep to be saved from wolves. And yet such verbiage, fired up by faith, always made their eyes brim with tears. The congregation quivered as they followed that flock, eating dry bread and cheese, tormented by lightning, shivering from cold and the tricks beasts played, forging through undergrowth that burned in fiery flames. The censer swung from side to side, Sunday after Sunday, its sweet smell impregnating the old women’s veils, the rich women’s lace mantillas. After Mass they murmured, “He wouldn’t have left his mule in plain sight if he’d been doing anything wrong. Surely he would have hidden it. He was demanding she close the brothel, but she refused—that’s how brazen the cursed Laguna is.”

Clara bought a dapple-gray horse and cart she used to ride into town. Whenever she and Padre Imperio crossed paths, she would look away, lashing the animal’s back with the reins, the Saint Pantolomina of the Flowers card pulsing inside her bra.

One morning in early summer, Clara had Bernarda return the priest’s violet-colored Bible. Pigeons were roosting in the bell tower, and old women escaped the heat inside their whitewashed houses. Holding little Manuela on her hip, the cook went into the church through the back door, which opened onto the cemetery hill, and handed the priest his Bible wrapped in brown paper. Padre Imperio asked her to wait on a pew while he went to the sacristy.

“Why?” Bernarda grunted, shrugging her shoulders.

“You’ll see. I know why you’ve brought the child.”

Padre Imperio returned wearing his tunic, a jug of holy water in his hand.

“Give me the girl.”

Bernarda resisted with a growl.

“I’m not going to hurt her, woman!”

The priest took Manuela in his arms, walked over to the baptismal font, and poured holy water over her head.

When Bernarda arrived back at Scarlet Manor, Clara was waiting in the kitchen.

“Did he pour water on the girl?” Clara asked.

“Water, water,” the cook repeated, passing a hand over her dark hair.

“Good. At least he got some of what he wanted,” Clara muttered. “No more niceties. It’s time for me to get on with my revenge.”

Clara pulled the Saint Pantolomina card out of her bra and tossed it behind cans of peaches in the pantry. She looked down at her daughter. Manuela was now a year old, and her eyes had grown even darker.