The House of Impossible Loves

by Cristina Lopez Barrio

  But on that first Sunday, as the new parish priest stood in the pulpit, his sermon was not about the coming harvest of wheat and rye. Instead, spreading his arms wide, like an eagle soaring over mountain peaks, he regaled the congregation with a sermon on the glory of the Spanish Empire, of witnessing the devil’s trickery in a land surrounded by turquoise water that evil hoped to drown. Expectations surrounding this new cleric were high, and the church was filled to capacity. Even the shepherds had come down from their pastures to hear the young priest with a face the color of café con leche. By the end of Mass, many parishioners felt their eyes brimming with tears without knowing exactly why—they had not understood a word of the sermon, confusing the devil with mosquitoes. Others left uncertain who the Spanish troops were fighting, or who in fact wanted to steal the empire from them. That feverish sermon was repeated on subsequent Sundays with just as many parishioners in attendance, squeezed into the pews. A censer swung from one side of the church to the other, incense masking the smell of sheep and other odors exuded by the faithful as the sermon grew more heated, with its battles in far-off, crocodile-infested lands where the sun caused faith to boil. If anything was clear to the townspeople after those first few sermons, it was that this dark-eyed young man in the oversized cassock knew how to reach straight into the hearts of his listeners, though they understood not a word. His name was Juan Antonio Escabel de Castro, but they began to call him Padre Imperio, a name he bore proudly for the rest of his life.

  All of the commotion surrounding the priest’s arrival and his sermons deflected attention from the rekindled affair between Clara Laguna and the Andalusian. Whenever the old women saw him stride by, they gave only a moment’s thought to whether he could break the curse by marrying the Laguna girl and making her happy. Their minds immediately returned to Padre Imperio’s tropical crocodiles—no doubt the devil incarnate—devouring not only crabs but the fists and legs of Spaniards.

  One night when the landowner went to the tavern for dinner, La Colorá offered him only mushrooms sautéed with egg and had no more to say than “I guess we’ll see what you’re willing to give up for a pretty woman now.”

  Clara was one of very few women in town that fall of 1898 whose life was not affected by Padre Imperio’s sermons. Not exactly welcomed at church by the women in veils and mantillas, she and her mother did not go to Sunday Mass. Besides, the Laguna witch had taught her daughter that a cursed woman sets foot on hallowed ground only when the taste of death is on her lips. Clara, who barely believed in God, cared not at all. If she felt like praying, she would recite the only prayer she knew, wherever she was, to God or the town’s patron saint, Saint Pantolomina of the Flowers, a martyr with irises in her blond hair who was put to death by quartering.

  Clara’s relationship with the Andalusian kept her busy enough. They rode out through forests and flocks in between his hunts, making love wherever they chose. She adored the feeling of his hands, inhaling his persistent salty aroma in the yard surrounding the estate, under the pergola with the last of the roses. Late one afternoon, after their pleasure, he asked her why she never went to church to hear the priest’s sermons; though their meaning was somewhat obscure, they were fascinating nevertheless.

  “I can go with you this Sunday, if you like,” Clara replied, picturing herself walking into church in her Sunday best, her cursed arm entwined in his. She also imagined her dress was white and they were walking to the altar, where two rings and blessings awaited, her family’s curse barred at the door, shaking with fury.

  The Andalusian, who had pictured the same thing, minus the wedding, knew he had gone too far. It was one thing to be seen walking with Clara in the street or on horseback in the woods and hills, quite another to be seen taking her arm in church.

  “I think you should go with your mother.”

  “Yes, or maybe the best thing to do is not go at all, or go with whoever I want.”

  Clara walked away from him. A liquid cold surged through her bones as tears pricked like knives and the taste of blood filled her mouth, making her queasy. She recognized the symptoms her mother had described more than once: the symptoms of the curse, the first pain inflicted, announcing the corrosion of more to come.

  The next Sunday, as usual, neither Clara nor her mother went to church. However, at midday Padre Imperio himself appeared at their door. Slices of stale bread toasted in the fire along with a piece of tallow, some mandrake root, and a pot brewing toads to ward off evil eye. The priest pulled out a handkerchief and pressed it against his nose and mouth.

  “Good Lord above! This house smells of witchcraft!”

  “What it smells of is breakfast and a poor home,” Clara’s mother replied.

  The priest, pale in his black cassock, pressed the handkerchief even harder. A tropical sweat broke out on his brow. The smell of that concoction brought him back, and for a moment he thought he was in a ramshackle hut deep in the jungle, the Santeria priestess sucking on goat bones, smearing a yellowish poultice on his throat.

  “Sit, Padre. You’re as pale as a dead goat,” the Laguna witch said, offering a stool. He refused with a wave of his hand.

  “What they say seems to be true: you practice witchcraft in this house. Now I must know if you invoke the devil as well.” Just then he glanced into a corner of the room and caught Clara Laguna’s startling eyes.

  “The only devil I know is the one I treat in my customers.” The woman’s blind eye crossed, and Padre Imperio felt the need to cross himself.

  “Come to Mass, señora, and bring your daughter. You may be in mortal sin.”

  “You should know we’re cursed, and a cursed woman only goes to church to die. At least that’s what my mother always said.”

  “I’ve been told about your family affliction, and I’m here to tell you the only remedy is chastity. You must not bear children.”

  Clara Laguna’s eyes bore into Padre Imperio. He stuffed his handkerchief into his pocket and quickly said goodbye.

  Having felt the first symptoms of the curse, Clara believed she could follow the priest’s advice and not give herself to the Andalusian. But she was wrong. The more she denied him, the more his desire for her cursed flesh grew. He bought her a bracelet of freshwater pearls and appealed to her heart with verses he sang on one knee under an oak in the moonlight. Clara lost her appetite, the ability to hear or speak until she gave herself to him again in the rose garden on a bed of dried petals and leaves. When she returned home, the Laguna witch said: “You did well. You had no other choice.” She opened Clara’s mouth and inspected her gums, as if she were a horse, then had the girl urinate in a cauldron, added a handful of roots, and put the cauldron on the fire to boil. When the room filled with the sweet smell of entrails, the old witch half closed her blind eye and said: “You’re with child. You conceived in rutting season, over a month ago.”

  It was the time of the fog of the dead souls. An icy wind swept through the plaza. And yet, when Clara Laguna sat on the edge of the fountain, the wind turned warm as it caressed her face, the spirits’ laments mingling with her own. She loved a man she had known for just a year, she told them, and now she was expecting a child. The bells tolled their sad warning, and as the mist began to dissipate, Clara noticed a dark blot outside the church. It was Padre Imperio, splashing holy water. Through what remained of the fog, he saw those amber eyes and crossed himself. No matter how the bell ringer tried to explain the origin of this phenomenon of the fog, Padre Imperio was determined to blame it on Lucifer’s breath.

  “What are you doing here, inhaling these demonic signs?”

  “There’s nothing demonic here, Padre. Only a great sorrow. You’ll get used to it.”

  On the morning of All Souls’ Day, as the townspeople made their pilgrimage up to the cemetery armed with flowers and scouring pads, Clara went with the Andalusian to the oak grove. The day had dawned to a stormy sky, and just when she told him she was pregnant, thunder and lightning erupted and rain fell. Those
still in the cemetery took refuge in family vaults, but all those wide mourning skirts and hats took up space, so a stampede of mourners raced along the ridge to the first porticoes. Meanwhile, Clara and the Andalusian embraced under a magnificent oak tree. As Clara wept, her tears mixed with the rain. He tried to whisper words of comfort, but they were not the ones Clara wanted to hear. He recalled La Colorá’s warning that no man had ever dared break the Laguna curse, and that a mysterious misfortune awaited anyone who tried.

  The rain stopped when there were no more tears for Clara to cry. Still, the sky threatened more storms until night fell and, with frigid bones, she fell asleep alone in her bed.

  The next day the young Andalusian made inquiries in town and then boarded the afternoon coach to the provincial capital, five hours away. He took his two servants but left several trunks of clothing and rifles at the inn. He returned four days later, traces of exhaustion etched on his face, and immediately set out on foot for Clara’s, a leather case under his arm. He found her in the streambed garden. She had been waiting and hoping, and the moment she saw him, her chest burned with pride—and hope.

  “I thought you’d left for Andalusia without saying goodbye.”

  “I leave the day after tomorrow. My lands need me. But first I want you to come to the estate with me.”

  “Why?”

  “I’ll tell you when we’re there.”

  They walked in silence along the gravel road that crossed the pine forest until they came to the high iron gate. The biting cold flushed their faces.

  “This time we’ll go in the proper way.”

  The Andalusian took out a key and unlocked the gate. The hinges creaked as it opened. Clara stepped onto the cobblestone drive that led to the door and knew she had walked it in her dreams as daisies sprouted in her hair.

  “You’ll earn a living here,” the young landowner announced.

  “All I want is to be with you.”

  “I bought you this property. It’s for you and the baby.”

  “Then it will be a girl.”

  He handed her the case he carried under his arm.

  “What’s this?”

  “The deeds. Everything is in your name. There’s a bit of money as well, to help you get started. I went to the city and arranged everything. As I said, I leave the day after tomorrow, but I’ll be back when the child is born.”

  “I dreamed of living here, but only if it were with you.”

  “I swear I’ll be back to see what God has sent us, boy or girl. And I look forward to seeing you as a proud owner here.”

  “And will you marry me?”

  “No, Clara. I will never marry you; that was never my intention. You’re a beautiful girl, but I can’t love you like a woman of my class and position. Your mother practices witchcraft and divines the future in the bones of a cat. And you, little one, you can’t even write your own name. How could I present you in society? I would grow tired of you, and you would come to hate me. You’re like that precious yellow rose in what is now your garden: it took time to fade, but in the end it did and now it’s gone. Do you understand what I’m trying to say?”

  “I understand. I’m not as ignorant as you think. But you promise you’ll return?”

  “I do.”

  “Then I will wait for you.”

  Before the landowner set out on the evening coach with his servants and trunks, he and Clara said goodbye in the oak grove. The last rays of sun were sinking into the river when Clara heard the horse’s hooves pounding against the earth as she sat on the moss, waiting. That galloping beat reverberated in her belly, and her bones turned to ice. The Andalusian dismounted, handsome as ever, and carved a heart with their names and an arrow on a hollow trunk as he repeated his promise to return. He kissed her on the lips, climbed back onto his horse, and trotted off slowly, following the riverbank.

  The wind carried the sound of church bells announcing seven o’clock Mass. Cloaked in the shadow of an oak, Clara Laguna knew her love would forever smell of that tree and cursed God. In the distance, she watched her lover’s silhouette wind along the river. He would marry a woman other than her, a woman with beauty marks and stiff flounces, a woman who could write not only her first and last names but love letters as well. Clara cried so hard imagining this rival that the moment her eyes dried, her belly, then her vagina, which had known such passion only to have it snatched away, began to weep, too. She spent the night outdoors, lying in frost-filmed oak leaves. She returned home in the morning, woke her mother, and begged her to predict whether the Andalusian would keep his promise to return.

  “He won’t ever be back,” the Laguna witch foretold in a voice still heavy with sleep. “I see it clearly in the ribs.”

  “Why do you lie to me, Madre? Why?” Clara pounded her fist on the table. A rib bone and the thread for repairing hymens went flying.

  “What did you expect, Clara, even more from a rich man? You set your sights too high. I guess I didn’t teach you as well as I thought. You are carrying a girl, and your lover has abandoned you. You’re cursed.”

  “I refuse to be cursed! I will not suffer from it! He’ll return. He promised, and he has never broken a promise. But when he does return, he will be the one to suffer.”

  “You can’t refuse the cards you’re dealt, stubborn girl!”

  “Oh, yes, I can. Besides, Madre, you have one blind eye and another almost as bad. I don’t trust what you see in that rotten, fly- infested bag of bones. Just listen to this: he gave me the estate and the manor house, for me alone, and money, too!”

  “Oh! I knew he was a good young man, and handsome, too. You chose well.”

  “But you will not set foot on the property that makes you so happy. And you will never get your hands on my money!”

  “Clara, I know what it is to suffer. When lovesickness bites, it sinks its teeth in deep. The day your father abandoned me, he left nothing but tears, misery, and a yellow-eyed girl in my belly. At least this Andalusian left you a wealthy estate. What more can a poor, cursed girl like you ask? Once your aching heart calms, you’ll understand: if your lover bought you a house, there’s no need for him to return.”

  “You’re wrong! I need him to return.”

  “For what, silly girl? To make you suffer even more?”

  “No, Madre. So I can take my revenge.”

  3

  NO ONE EVER KNEW why that spring miracle occurred, but the moment Clara Laguna stepped onto the cobblestone drive that led to the red manor house, daisies like the ones in her dream sprouted in the strips of earth. Unaware, confusing the sound of their birth with the crunch of fallen leaves, Clara walked to the door, obstinate as the foliage smothering the stable, fences, and trough. Seeking refuge from the peasants’ sticks, stray dogs had snuck into the yard through the hole in the stone wall. Their barking shattered the calm in the unkept yard.

  On the main floor was a clay-tiled entryway, a parlor with a large hearth, a kitchen with a back door leading out to rows of wilted tomatoes and squash, a pantry with whitewashed shelves next to a small bedroom smelling of spices and herbs. A staircase corroded by woodworms and draped in cobwebs led from the entryway to the second floor and attic. As Clara climbed the stairs, she noticed moths trapped in the structures of silk, alive and at the mercy of a spider. A bathroom and four bedrooms ran along the second-floor hallway, each with a balcony overlooking the yard. In a corner of the biggest bedroom was a forgotten blue arabesque washbasin on an iron stand. The other rooms were so empty that Clara could hear the echo of her own breath.

  At the end of the hall, the stairway reached farther up into the attic. The stairs were frail and creaked with each of Clara’s steps. At the top, a puff of light came in through a small, moon-shaped window. Several beds were draped in sheets that smelled of rotten lavender. A hunting rifle was propped against a dilapidated French-style chest of drawers. The dust of the forgotten filled Clara’s lungs, and she went back down the stairs. Having decided to move into the
biggest room on the second floor, she lay down on the hardwood and rested her head on her bundled belongings. Though it was only midday, she settled into sleep. She would need all her strength to carry out her revenge. The next morning she would wait for a carriage to take her to the provincial capital. There she would buy everything needed to turn this property into not what her lover hoped it would be, a prosperous estate, but a magnificent brothel.

  Clara’s first trade was with a scrap merchant: an hour of love beneath the pines for four candelabras, one for each corner of the parlor. He became her first client, and was determined to hold tight, forever, to the kindness she’d shown him as he sat perched in his mule-drawn cart.

  Once in the city, Clara Laguna completed her parlor furnishings with two crimson silk-covered sofas, pictures of harem concubines framed in mauve tulle, a carpet depicting the scene of a hunt, and green damask curtains. All this she found in a store that sold the furniture, décor, and props no longer wanted in theater productions because they were old or out of style. The owner, a baritone who had fallen from grace, was entranced by Clara’s rustic beauty in her brown wool Sunday dress, patchwork skirt, shawl as coarse as a donkey’s fur. At first he assumed she was only there to look, drawn in by his grand window display. Her expression was as dazed as that of any peasant seeing the city for the first time: its square filled with people and taverns, its stately buildings and churches, its streets lined with shops and horse-drawn carriages, all unknown in the countryside. But when Clara, determined to have her revenge, explained what she wanted, the baritone offered excellent advice on how to turn her estate into an opulent brothel, attracting men used to yokes, plows, and scythes, as well as the bourgeois, world travelers, and hunters.