Zorro

by Isabel Allende

  They dropped anchor near Pueblo de los Angeles and readied their assault. In this case, the brigantine’s cannons were useless; the shot would not reach that target. They disembarked in launches, knives between their teeth and swords in hand, like a horde of demons. Halfway to town they came across the de la Vega hacienda. The large adobe house, with its red roof tiles and purple bougainvillea creeping up the walls, its orange grove, its unmistakable air of prosperity and peace, was irresistible to those rough sailors, who for months had seen nothing but mossy water, wormy biscuits, and smelly dried beef. In vain their captain bawled that their objective was the town; his men rushed toward the hacienda, kicking aside dogs and shooting point-blank a pair of Indian gardeners who had the bad luck to get in their way.

  Alejandro de la Vega was in Mexico City at the time, buying furniture more graceful than the crude pieces in his home, gold velvet for drapes, heavy silver for the table, place settings of English china, and crystal glasses from Austria. He hoped to impress Regina with these queenly gifts, to see whether she would give up her Indian ways and return to the European refinement he wanted for his family. His business affairs were thriving, and for the first time he could treat himself to living in the way a man of his breeding deserved. He had no way to suspect that as he was bargaining over the price of Turkish rugs, thirty-six soulless pirates were invading his home.

  Regina was awakened by the furor of the dogs’ barking. Her room was in a small tower, the only bold feature in the low profile of the house.

  Through her window, which had neither drapes nor shutters, she could see the timid light of early morning streaking the sky with orange. She threw a shawl around her shoulders and went out on the balcony in her bare feet to see what was disturbing the dogs, just as the first marauders forced open the wooden gate of the garden. It never occurred to her that they were pirates she had never seen one in the flesh but she didn’t stop to identify them. Diego, who at ten still shared his mother’s bed when his father wasn’t there, saw her race by in her nightgown. As she flew past,

  Regina seized a well-kept sword and a dagger that had been hanging on the wall since her husband left his military career behind, and ran down the stairway yelling for the servants. Diego leaped out of bed and followed her. The doors of the house were oak, and in the absence of Alejandro de la Vega they had been bolted from the inside with an iron bar. The pirates’ rush was stopped by that invulnerable obstacle, and that gave Regina time to hand out the firearms stored in big chests and prepare a defense. Diego, still not completely awake, found himself watching a woman who looked only vaguely familiar to him. In seconds, his mother had been transformed into Daughter-of-Wolf. Her hair was standing on end and the ferocious gleam in her eyes gave her the look of a woman possessed; her jaw was set and her lips drawn back, and she was foaming at the mouth like a rabid dog. Toypurnia barked orders to the servants in the Indian tongue, and was brandishing a sword in one hand and a dagger in the other when the shutters that protected the windows on the main floor gave way and the first pirates spilled into the house. Even over the clamor of the assault, Diego heard a cry, more jubilation than terror, issue from the earth, course through his mother’s body, and shake the walls of the house. The sight of that woman barely covered by the thin cloth of a nightgown rushing to meet them and wielding two weapons with a strength impossible in someone her size shocked the pirates for a second or two. In that time, the servants fired their weapons. Two pillagers fell face forward, and a third staggered, but there was no time to reload; another dozen were already swarming through the windows. Diego picked up a heavy iron candlestick and ran to his mother’s defense as she retreated toward the big hall. She had lost the sword and was holding the dagger in both hands, swinging blindly against the vandals closing in on her. Diego thrust the candlestick between the legs of one man, throwing him to the floor, but before he could club him, a brutal kick to his chest slammed him against the wall. He never knew how long he lay there, befuddled, because later versions of the attack were contradictory. Some said it lasted for hours, but others said that within a few minutes the pirates had killed or wounded everyone in their path, destroyed what they couldn’t carry, and before they continued on to Los Angeles set fire to the furniture.

  When Diego regained consciousness, the ruffians were still running through the house looking for loot, and smoke from the fire was drifting into the room. Despite the tremendous pain in his chest, which left him gasping for breath, Diego got to his feet and stumbled forward, coughing and calling his mother. He found her beneath the large table in the great hall, with her batiste gown soaked in blood, but lucid and with open eyes. “Hide, son!” she ordered in a strong voice, and promptly fainted. Diego took her arms and with a superhuman effort, considering the broken ribs, tugged her to the fireplace. He managed to open the secret door that only he and Bernardo knew existed, and dragged her into the tunnel. He closed the false door from the other side and sat there in the dark with his mother’s head in his lap, whispering, “Mama, Mama,” and weeping and praying to God and the spirits of her tribe not to let her die.

  Bernardo, too, was in bed when the pirates attacked. He slept in his mother’s room in the servants’ quarters at the opposite end of the hacienda. Their space was larger than the windowless cells of the other domestic workers because it was also used as the ironing room, a task that Ana never delegated. Alejandro de la Vega demanded that his tucked shirt fronts be perfect, and she took pride in ironing them personally. Aside from the narrow bed with its straw mattress, and a battered chest in which they kept their few belongings, the room was furnished with a long worktable and a metal container for the coals that heated the irons, along with a pair of enormous baskets of clean wash that Ana planned to iron the next day. The floor was dirt; a wool serape served as a door; light and air entered through two small windows. Bernardo had not been awakened by the yells of the pirates or by the shots on the far side of the house, only when Ana shook him. He thought the earth was quaking, as it had before, but his mother gave him no time to speculate; she grabbed his arm, swept him up with the strength of a tornado, and in one stride was across the room. With a brutal shove she stuffed him inside one of the large baskets. “Whatever happens, don’t move. You hear me?” Ana’s tone was so forbidding that it seemed to Bernardo that she was speaking to him with a hidden loathing. He had never seen her agitated. His mother’s sweet nature was legend; she was always quiet and content, even though she had few reasons to be happy. She devoted herself exclusively to the task of adoring her son and serving her patrones, in line with her humble existence and with no resentment in her heart. In that moment, however, the last she would ever share with Bernardo, she was hard as ice. She took a handful of clothing and covered the boy, pushing him down in the basket. From there, wrapped in the white shadows of the clothing, choked with terror and the smell of starch, Bernardo heard the cries, cursing, and loud laughter of the men who surged into the room where Ana was waiting with death already inscribed upon her forehead, ready to distract the men for as long it took to keep them from finding her son.

  The pirates were in a rush, and one look around told them that there was nothing of value in that servant’s room. Maybe they would just have glanced in and turned away, but there stood that brown-skinned woman, arms akimbo, defying them with suicidal determination: round Indian face, midnight black mantle of hair, generous hips, and firm breasts. For a year and four months they had been roving the seas without the consolation of even looking at a woman. For an instant they thought they were seeing a mirage, like so many that had tormented them on the high seas, but then Ana’s sweet scent enveloped them and they forgot their hurry. They tore off the rough penitent’s gown that covered her body and threw themselves on her. Ana did not struggle.

  She bore in dead silence everything they wanted to do to her. When she fell, her head was so close to Bernardo’s basket that he could count, one by one, his mother’s faint sighs eclipsed by the brutish panting of
her assaulters.

  At no moment did the boy move beneath the pile of clothes that covered him; there, paralyzed with horror, he lived the torture of his mother.

  He was curled up in the basket, his mind a blank, sweating bile, shaken with nausea. After an eternity, he became aware of a deathly silence and the smell of smoke. He waited until he couldn’t wait any longer because he was choking, then quietly called Ana. No answer. He called a couple of times more; still nothing. Finally he dared peek out.

  Clouds of smoke were billowing through the doorway, but as yet there was no fire. Numb from tension and immobility, Bernardo had to struggle to climb out of the basket. He saw his mother where the men had forced her to the floor, naked, her long black hair spread out like a fan on the ground and her neck slit from ear to ear. The boy sat down beside her and took her hand, calm, and silent. He would not speak again for many years.

  That was how they found him, mute and stained with his mother’s blood, hours later when the pirates were already back at sea. The town of Pueblo de los Angeles was putting out fires and counting its dead. No one thought of going to see what had happened at the de la Vega hacienda until Padre Mendoza, struck by a premonition so vivid that he could not ignore it, went with half a dozen neophytes to take charge.

  Flames had burned the furniture and licked some of the beams, but the house was sound, and by the time he arrived the fire was burning itself out. The assault left a balance of several wounded and five dead, including Ana, whom they found just as her murderers had left her.

  “God help us!” Padre Mendoza exclaimed when he came upon that tragedy.

  He covered Ana’s body with a blanket and picked Bernardo up in his strong arms. The child was petrified, his eyes staring and his face frozen in a spasm that locked his jaws. “Where are Regina and Diego?” the missionary asked, but Bernardo gave no sign of hearing. The priest left the boy in the hands of an Indian servant, who cuddled him in her lap, rocking him like a baby as she sang a mournful song in her native tongue, while Padre Mendoza went through the house, searching for the missing.

  Time passed without change in the tunnel; because there was no daylight, it was impossible to judge time in that eternal darkness.

  Diego could not tell what was going on in the house because he couldn’t hear sounds or smell the smoke of the fire. He waited without knowing what he was waiting for, while Regina slipped in and out of consciousness, drained. Inconsolable, fearing he would disturb his mother, the boy sat motionless despite the nearly unbearable prickling in his legs and the dagger like stab in his chest every time he drew a breath. From time to time he would be overcome by fatigue, but he would immediately awaken, sunk in darkness and dizzy with pain. He felt as if he were freezing, and several times he tried to flex his arms, but he would sink back into a hopeless languor and start to nod again, floating in a cottony fog. This semiconscious state lasted most of the day, until finally Regina moaned and moved. That startled him awake. Knowing that his mother was alive gave him new life; a wave of happiness swept over him, and he bent to cover her face with delirious kisses. With infinite care, Diego lifted her head, which had turned to marble, and lowered it gently to the ground. After several minutes of trying to move his legs, he was able to crawl off and look for the candles that he and Bernardo had stored in their ongoing quest for okahue. He heard his grandmother’s voice asking in her Indian tongue what the five essential virtues were, but the only one he could remember was courage.

  Regina opened her eyes to the light of a candle, and found herself in a cave with her son. She didn’t have the strength to ask what had happened, or to console him with lies; she merely indicated that he should rip her gown and use it to bandage the wound in her chest. With trembling fingers, Diego did as she directed, and found that his mother had a deep knife wound below the collarbone. Not knowing what else to do, he simply waited.

  “My life is draining away, Diego, you must go for help,” Regina murmured after a while.

  The boy estimated that if he went through the caves to the beach, from there he could run for help without being seen, but it would take time.

  On an impulse, he decided that it was worth the risk to peek through the door in the fireplace and see what the situation was in the house.

  The opening was well disguised behind the high stack of logs in the fireplace and he could look out without being seen, even if someone was in the great room.

  The first thing that greeted him when he cracked open the false door was a blast of smoke and the acrid odor of scorched wood. At first it drove him back, but then he realized that the smoke would hide him.

  Silent as a cat, he slipped through the secret door and crouched behind the logs. The rug and several chairs were smoking, the oil of Saint Anthony was completely destroyed, and the walls and ceiling beams were blackened, but the flames had died down. There was an abnormal quiet in the house, and he assumed that no one was there, which gave him the courage to come out. Cautiously he felt his way along the walls, eyes tearing from the smoke, and, one by one, went through the rooms on the main floor. He had no idea what had happened, whether everyone was dead or whether they had escaped. The entry hall looked like the aftermath of a shipwreck, and he saw blood, but the bodies of the men he himself had seen fall early that morning were no longer there.

  Confused by doubts, he thought he must be caught in a terrifying nightmare, one he would be awakened from by the sound of Ana’s affectionate voice calling him for breakfast. He continued exploring in the direction of the servants’ rooms, choked by the gray fog of the fire, which jumped out at him when he opened a door or turned a corner.

  He remembered his mother, who would surely die without help, and decided that he had nothing to lose. Forgetting all caution, he started running back down endless corridors, almost blindly, until he crashed into a solid body and two powerful arms that locked around him.

  He screamed with fright and the pain of the broken ribs, felt a surge of nausea, and nearly fainted. “Diego! God be praised!” He heard the huge voice of Padre Mendoza and smelled his musty old cassock; he felt the priest’s scratchy beard against his forehead, and then, like the child he still was, he let go and began crying and vomiting.

  Padre Mendoza had sent the survivors to the San Gabriel mission.

  The only explanation he could come up with for the absence of Regina and her son was that they had been kidnapped by the pirates, although nothing like that had ever been heard of in their part of the world. He knew that in other places they took captives for ransom or to sell as slaves, but that had never happened on this remote American shore. He did not know how he would give the terrible news to Alejandro de la Vega. Aided by the two other Franciscans who lived at the mission, he had done everything he could to bind up wounds and console the other victims of the raid. The next day he would have to go to Pueblo de los Angeles, where the heavy burden of burying the dead awaited him, and make an inventory of the destruction. He was wrung out, but he felt so uneasy that he could not go with the others to the mission; he needed to stay and go through the house one more time. That is what he was doing when Diego collided with him.

  Regina survived, thanks to the fact that Padre Mendoza wrapped her in blankets, put her in his carriage, and drove to the mission. There wasn’t time to summon White Owl; the deep wound was bleeding profusely and Regina was growing weaker before their eyes. By candlelight, the missionaries gave her a pint of rum, washed the wound, and with pliers used for twisting wire removed the tip of the pirate’s dagger, which had broken off in Regina’s clavicle. They cauterized the wound with white-hot iron, as Regina clenched a stick between her teeth, as she had when giving birth to Diego. Her son covered his ears to blot out her choked moans, crushed with guilt and shame at having wasted in a childish prank the sleeping potion that could have saved his mother such torment. Her pain was his punishment for having stolen the magic medicine.

  When they took off Diego’s shirt, his skin was purple from his neck
to his groin. Padre Mendoza was sure that the vicious kick had broken several ribs, and he himself fashioned a leather corset reinforced with lengths of cane to stabilize them. The boy couldn’t stoop down or lift his arms, but thanks to the corset, within a few weeks he could breathe normally. Bernardo, on the other hand, did not recover from his injuries; they were much more serious than Diego’s. He spent several days in the same frozen state that Padre Mendoza had found him in, staring straight ahead with his teeth clenched so tight that the priest had to use the funnel to feed Bernardo a little mush. The boy attended the collective funeral of the pirates’ victims, and without a single tear watched as the coffin containing his mother’s body was lowered into a hole in the ground. By the time people began to notice that Bernardo hadn’t spoken for weeks, Diego, who had been with his friend day and night, not leaving him for an instant, had already accepted that he might never speak again. The Indians said that he had swallowed his tongue. Padre Mendoza began by forcing him to gargle with honey and wine from the mass; then he painted his throat with borax, put warm poultices around his throat, and gave him ground beetles to eat. When none of these improvised remedies for muteness worked, he decided to take drastic measures and try exorcism. He had never been called on to expel demons, and did not feel qualified for so difficult an undertaking, even though he knew the procedure. There was no one else for leagues around, however, who could do it. To find an exorcist authorized by the Inquisition, they would have to travel to Mexico City, and in all truth, the missionary did not think it was worth the effort. To prepare, he diligently studied the pertinent texts and fasted for two days; then he locked himself inside the church with Bernardo to go head to head with Satan. To no avail. Defeated, Padre Mendoza concluded that the trauma had shocked the poor boy senseless, and gave up. He delegated the nuisance of the funnel to a neophyte and went about his responsibilities. His time was absorbed by his duties at the mission, by the spiritual task of helping Pueblo de los Angeles recover from its misfortunes, and by the bureaucratic details his superiors in Mexico City demanded of him always the most burdensome part of his ministry. By the time White Owl showed up at the mission to take Bernardo to her village, everyone else had given up on him, branding him as a hopeless idiot. The missionary turned him over to her because he didn’t know what else to do, though he was confident that the medicine woman’s magic could not achieve a cure where exorcism had failed. Diego was dying to go with his milk brother, but he didn’t have the heart to leave his mother, who was still in convalescence, and besides, Padre Mendoza had forbidden him to ride while he was still wearing the corset. For the first time since they’d been born, the boys were separated.