The House of Impossible Loves

by Cristina Lopez Barrio

  In addition to the parlor furniture and fittings, Clara bought several negligees and Moorish outfits used in a performance of Il Seraglio. Their soft, supple shapes captivated her at once. Like flies and worms used to catch trout, they were the perfect bait to reel in the desire of men.

  Just when she had spent her budget, Clara became infatuated with a bed used in a production of Othello, for that play’s final death scene. It was a black iron four-poster with a purple canopy. Far too big to be repeatedly dismantled, it had graced the stage on only a few occasions. So insistent was Clara that she would have it, whatever the cost, the baritone traded it for her country favors. Clara had her second client on top of a trunk in the storeroom, dazzled by a Rigoletto aria. Her third was a lawyer the baritone recommended when Clara no longer had the money to pay for her room at the guesthouse, where she wept all night, remembering her Andalusian lover.

  The next morning Clara set off for the estate. It was not hard to find her fourth client. The young man who unloaded her purchases was easily persuaded to stay and clear the overgrowth, rake the leaves, in exchange for a few days of love and chickpea stew. The blacksmith became her fifth and final barter. In three feverish days, he made Clara a sign that looked like a funeral wreath, engraved in gold with the words WELCOME TO SCARLET MANOR. It was this local client who advertised her new business.

  “The Laguna with the flaxen eyes can be had for a few coins or a sack of rabbits at the estate her lover gave her,” the blacksmith told everyone who came to his shop and those he met at the tavern for a drink or game of cards.

  As far as Clara was concerned, her business was inaugurated the moment the sign was hung over the iron gate. Though most men could not read it, because they couldn’t read anything at all, it was a place for the birds to leave droppings, like the headstones and crosses at graves.

  Outfitted in her negligee and Moorish pants, Clara received locals who had always desired her beauty and youth and now flocked to the brothel without fear: there was no risk of a curse, as this was a simple transaction of the flesh. The men, used as they were to receiving such favors in a stable or granary, or up against a mountain pine, were stunned by the exotic aura created by Clara’s outfit and the parlor where they were made to wait, with its opera curtains and pictures of concubines. Hunters fell victim to these charms as well. The brothel run by a prostitute with golden eyes, bursting out of tulle and satin, became one more reason beyond wild boar and hares to return to the Castilian town year after year.

  The start of Clara’s amorous endeavors that early December of 1898 turned the spotlight away from Padre Imperio’s sermons. All talk of tropical crocodiles, swamps, and jungles crawling with Cuban rebels ceased among the black shawls. The brothel that Clara had opened on her estate, now known as Scarlet Manor, became the primary topic of conversation.

  When Padre Imperio learned of the brothel shortly after it opened, he pictured the Santeria priestess warning him that his destiny was forever linked to the arrival of evil on earth. He put on a cassock sprinkled with holy water and set out for Scarlet Manor. Riding the mule that carried him to the homes of his faithful, scattered throughout the hills, the priest witnessed how the beech trees stood naked to greet travelers, their yellow leaves shed on the earth, their branches swaying in the wind.

  The gate was open. Padre Imperio hitched his mule to one of the iron bars and walked down the cobblestone drive to the door at Scarlet Manor, his ecclesiastical boots trampling the clumps of daisies. Crossing himself first, he knocked on the door. It took several knocks before Clara opened it, yawning, wrapped in a wool shawl.

  “Come in, Padre.”

  “I’ll stay right here.”

  “As you like.”

  The house was damp and dusty inside, and the smell reminded Padre Imperio of sulfur. There was an abandoned look in Clara’s eyes, and a shiver ran through him. He had come to find out whether the devil hid in this house of ill repute.

  “There’s nothing hidden here,” Clara replied. “Not even my revenge.”

  Padre Imperio came with the courage of his stiff priest’s collar, prepared to march straight back to the church for his exorcism tools if necessary, prepared to confront the human face of evil if it had set up residence on Clara’s estate and filled her heart with wicked ideas.

  “I don’t need an exorcism, Padre, just a loaf of bread. No one will sell to me, and I haven’t had time to bake.”

  “Despite your cat’s eyes, the bad habit they say you have of speaking with the dead and the profession you have chosen, willingly or unwillingly, I am here to save you, whatever the cost, from the devil or yourself,” he said with all the sternness he had learned in the tropics.

  Padre Imperio walked back down the cobblestone drive, got onto his mule, and left for town.

  Clara Laguna did not want her mother to live with her—not, that is, until the weight of her household obligations and loneliness made her change her mind. She couldn’t please clients in the big canopy bed and attend to those arriving in the meantime. If she left the front door closed, men piled up in the frosty night; if she left it open, they wandered through the house, coming to stand in the doorway and spy on their neighbors, or into the pantry to eat the few provisions Clara managed to store. Nor did she have time to tend to the lettuce she planted next to the tomatoes and squash; to clean the parlor and her bedroom of the mud tracked in on her clients’ boots, their gobs of spit and tufts of mule hair; to prepare meals, buy supplies, and sweep the leaves from the drive being inundated by daisies.

  Late one afternoon, as she stood on the second-floor balcony, Clara realized she could never live alone in that brothel and bury her memories. Even the sight of the lonely moths awaiting death was a torment. She missed the odor of her mother’s potions, missed helping her butcher small animals and repair hymens. She missed the rattle of cat bones in the rigid sack. She even missed milking the goat each morning. And yet she blamed the Laguna witch for her misfortune, for passing along her cursed inheritance.

  That evening, Clara wanted to rid herself of any affection she might feel toward her mother or the child growing inside that would carry on their name. As she watched the moon disappear behind the clouds, she cried for love lost, for orange blossoms and olives, for saetas, for a revenge that now tasted of other men. Clara found no solace in the cold mountain air, in the icy stillness that caused her bones to ache. It was only when, instead of stars, she saw a pair of black eyes shining in the night that her pain subsided. Clara took in the air and closed the balcony doors. Those eyes belonged to Padre Imperio.

  The next morning she set out for her mother’s house. The sky was white, as if it held all of the snow that had yet to fall over the town that autumn. It was mid-December, that month of frozen streams and struggling to keep warm. Clara found her mother in bed. She hadn’t seen her since the day she told her she was opening a brothel upon her return from the city. Hearing her daughter arrive, the old woman sat up. Her blind eye was closed, the black one watchful. Clara saw how much thinner and older she looked.

  “Did you stop eating?”

  “I’ll soon have no choice. Just look at your poor mother! Yesterday I had to kill one of the hens. But don’t you worry, you just enjoy your mansion.”

  When her daughter began receiving locals, the witch’s own business suffered. The cat bones had not been out of their sack for days. This was how the women in town—who most required her divination—settled the score for their husbands, brothers, and sons letting off steam with Clara in her house done up like a castle. All orders to repair hymens or prepare potions against evil eye ceased. Only the occasional hunter, unaware of their collective revenge, dared buy an amulet. If things continued this way, it was quite possible she would not be able to pay her rent at the end of the month.

  “Gather up the remaining animals and come with me.”

  “It’s about time you reconsidered. Your pigheadedness in becoming a whore is ruining my business.”

 
“Then come help me with mine. I suspect it’s going to do very well.”

  “It could do even better if you listen to me. You need more girls. I’ll take care of finding them. After all, in a few months, when you start to show, you won’t be able to receive them.”

  They gathered up cooking and stew pots, jars of magic ingredients and kitchenware, the three remaining hens and the goat. They piled it all into a rickety cart and set out for Scarlet Manor.

  Not long after the Laguna witch moved into the brothel, news came of Spain’s defeat in the war against the Cuban rebels and the United States, and with it the loss of the few remaining lands belonging to the empire. Cuba, the Philippines, and Puerto Rico would now be held by the Americans. Shaken by the misfortune, Padre Imperio climbed into the pulpit that Sunday, spread his arms like an eagle, and sermonized on the evils of sugar, which came primarily from Cuba, forbidding its consumption in coffee and sweets, calling on the faithful to protest in the bitterness of defeat. As Mass ended, the first snow began to fall and autumn became winter at last. The streets, the square, the church and fountain, the cemetery on the hill, the fields all around, the pine forests, the mountains, and the banks of the Duero River were covered in a layer of powdery snow. Padre Imperio recognized the devil’s dirty trick, sending a dusting of Cuban sugar to humiliate him. He locked himself in the sacristy, tormented by the sight of white caps softening mountain peaks. The entire town suddenly plunged into the eternity of winter and refused to come out until freezing nights turned the snow hard, and men and animals alike had soiled it with their comings and goings. When the snow was just snow again, Padre Imperio went on walks to free his mind of his memories of dead soldiers piling up in the Caribbean. He wished the townspeople would stop calling him Padre Imperio, but no one ever remembered to call him Juan Antonio, and habit overcame his preference.

  News of Spain’s defeat and the priest’s sugar prohibition distracted the townspeople from the scandal when two more women arrived at Scarlet Manor. At the tavern, men played cards and bet on national politics and what charms these new girls might provide. All whispering in doorways stopped, the old women’s tongues silenced by the snow, the bitter desserts and coffee.

  Clara’s mother had always considered herself a practical woman who could make the best of a lost cause, such as the curse that tormented her family. And so, when she realized her daughter would not renounce her crazy plan for revenge, she decided to take full advantage of it. She recruited two girls from the neighboring town. Their names were Tomasa and Ludovica. They were poor but beautiful, and they were willing to work for a warm bed, three meals a day, and a few coins to spend on Sunday, their one day off a week. Their services were soon prized by the growing clientele, though not as highly as Clara’s.

  Every day coaches and carriages rumbled along the gravel road connecting nearby towns and the provincial capital. Many a traveler would stop at the brothel by chance or drawn by its increasing fame. There they would rest from their journey, spending a day of passion under the purple canopy or in the beds Clara had rescued from the attic for the new prostitutes.

  In the wee hours on the last day of the year, a girl with a deformed nose slipped into the Scarlet Manor’s kitchen without anyone noticing, entering through a door that someone had forgotten to bolt. Clara’s mother was in the parlor, which had been decorated with streamers for the holidays, serving clients as they waited their turn upstairs. She poured mulled wine and read the fortunes of those who asked, throwing the cat bones to see the fate of their crops or businesses in the coming year. The smell of wood burning in the large hearth took the chill off the wait and the prophecies. Every now and then, a long moan of victory or the creak of an old bed about to collapse came from the second floor.

  Cold and hungry, the girl with the deformed nose had taken a tomato from the garden, but its frozen flesh nearly chipped her tooth. She stole into the kitchen without a thought for any consequences beyond her own well-being. The light of two oil lamps flickered. On a table in the middle of the room she found a jug of steaming wine and several glasses. She took several gulps before her throat began to burn and the bits of frost on her eyebrows, whiskers, and chin started to melt.

  The girl could hear voices in the parlor but paid no attention; she had just spied two rabbits a client brought as payment. After biting into an onion, two cloves of garlic, and a loaf of bread, she skinned and butchered the animals, licking the blood off her fingers. She lit the iron stove, set a pot on top, and began to prepare a stew. No one noticed her presence until a delicious aroma wafted into the parlor, silencing the noise from the waiting, the wine, and the prophecies.

  Clara’s mother hurried into the kitchen, followed by a few clients whose appetites had been whetted by the magnificent smell. There they found the girl between the shadows, stirring the pot as if nothing were out of the ordinary. They startled at the sight of her. Apart from her deformed nose, the girl’s face was bruised, her eyes mad, her short, dark hair giving way to wide sideburns ending in a modest beard. The Laguna witch did not recognize her from town. She asked the girl who she was and what she was doing in that kitchen. A stream of grunts and half-words spewed from her mouth. All they could decipher was that her name was Bernarda and she was making rabbit stew. In a wretched, velvet dress and boots with holes plugged by ice, she fell to her knees, covering her head with her arms, when Clara’s mother approached.

  “Who beat you?” one of the clients asked.

  Still crouching, the girl gestured with hands enlarged from a life of work and muttered something no one could understand.

  “So you ran away because they wallop you, eh?” another client asked.

  The girl, who smelled as if she’d been living in a stable, said not a word.

  “Well, wherever you’re from, it seems you know how to cook. I’ll have some of that rabbit when it’s done,” one of the clients said.

  “So will I,” another agreed.

  “Get up, then, and finish that stew,” Clara’s mother ordered.

  Filled with a joy no one could understand, Bernarda tied a kitchen towel over her eyes and juggled the wooden spoons she’d used to stir the stew. Then she picked up a knife. Everyone watched with bated breath as she minced a clove of garlic, leaving her fingers unscathed. Just as she was about to drop it into the pot, the girl stopped, arched her back as she listened for a moment, then threw the knife at a mouse scurrying toward the pantry, cleaving it square in the belly.

  “Who the devil is this girl?” Clara Laguna had followed the smell of stew to the kitchen.

  The girl removed her blindfold, and the sight of Clara with her golden eyes in an orange negligee, her hair loose and falling below her waist, her pregnancy-enlarged breasts bursting out of the tulle, pierced Bernarda like an arrow through the belly. She picked up onions off the counter and began to juggle as incomprehensible grunts streamed from her mouth until Clara demanded she stop. Bernarda mumbled, “I’m not leaving,” and devoured the onions with a feverish appetite.

  That night, Bernarda repeated “I’m not leaving,” and she stayed until her death. It took two years as brothel cook before anyone in the brothel could make sense of her grunts and mutterings. They learned her father had sold her to a circus on account of her facial hair. It was then clear where she acquired her skill and love of juggling cutlery, fruit, and vegetables. But Bernarda’s skills did not end there: she had an innate sense for food, and her stews became as famous as Clara’s pleasures under the purple canopy, drawing clients who savored a good plate of food before or after lovemaking. Bernarda communicated with the world through her stews more than her mumbles and grumbles.

  She was also exceptionally good with animals, who calmed at the touch of her giant hands. As a result, she looked after not only the kitchen but the corrals and stables. As the brothel grew, so did the number of animals: chickens, sheep, and goats, even a pair of horses that whinnied with pleasure at the whiff of mare exuded by her skin.

  A f
ew years after she arrived, they learned that Bernarda was from Soria and had lost her mother at birth. It was clear she fled the circus because someone had abused her, but it was only then they learned it was the lion tamer who drank and beat her with a stick while tugging on her beard for kicks.

  What they did learn within a few days of her arrival was that Bernarda’s simple nature was a result not of shyness or trauma but of a dreamy head lost in the clouds.

  That night they set her up with a straw mattress on the floor in the room next to the pantry. As she undressed, her odor drifted through the rooms, up the stairs, creeping silently toward Clara Laguna. Clara sensed it in her dreams, and the child in her belly stirred.

  4

  THE YARD AT SCARLET MANOR was bursting with flowers, bees, and grasshoppers. It was the next winter when they began to whisper in town about its refusal to heed the changing weather and seasons. The first sign of this was the daisies that began to sprout between the cobblestones the day Clara set up house. They continued to grow, even during the chill of winter, their robust faces seeding in the snow and dry leaves, taking over the land and Clara’s dreams once again.

  When she was six months pregnant, Clara stopped receiving clients and sent her mother to recruit a replacement as she resigned herself to wait for the child’s birth. She moved her bed under the window, framing it between the iron bars. There she sat with her swollen belly, staring out at the cobblestone drive. She still dreamed of the Andalusian, striding up the drive, singing a folk song to announce his arrival, followed by a saeta to beg her forgiveness. That drive was the first thing Clara saw when she woke, the last thing before she slept, and the vision continued in her dreams. Her hair still smelled of flowers in the morning, just as when she first brought the landowner to see the estate, only the daisies now sprouted in the earth instead of her chestnut strands.