Esteban was weak-willed, and when his parents introduced him to Marina Lampedusa, he broke off his engagement to Blanca de Montenegro. Marina was a second cousin of his who lived in Sabana Verde, a town near Guayamés, and he felt comfortable with her. Marina was shy—almost mousy—and had an ordinary personality. Her family wasn’t half as well off as Blanca’s. Marina’s father was a physics professor at Sabana Verde’s public high school, but the family was an old, respectable one. After Esteban broke up with Blanca, he was surprised to discover how unhappy he felt, but never having been passionate about anything, he thought he had eaten something that didn’t agree with him. He purged himself with castor oil and felt much better. He married Marina a few months later, and when a baby boy was born to them, he was named Valentín.
Blanca de Montenegro was terribly depressed when Esteban jilted her, but she didn’t confide her feelings to anyone. As though her own disappointment weren’t enough, she had to bear her father’s constant criticism. He was furious at her for having lost “the best catch in Guayamés.” He was sure Blanca would never get married, he said; she was as insipid as a glass of milk. She was always going around with a book in her hand and had never learned how to be coy or to flirt with boys. Blanca felt so bad she stopped reading and spent her days lying on her bed staring at the stuccoed ceiling.
Then, what Blanca’s family called “her accident” occurred. There was an old almond tree in the Montenegros’ garden, and every March its leaves turned blood-red and fell like large brittle handkerchiefs over Doña Ester de Montenegro’s roses. Manuel, the gardener’s son, was called to the house to help his father sweep them into a pile and set it on fire. Manuel was olive-skinned, green-eyed, and very athletic. He liked to swim in the bay and had crossed it several times just before dawn when the sea was the color of hammered pewter and rippled with small waves.
Blanca loved to watch the almond leaves burning; their smell was intoxicatingly sweet, like the smell of the nuts themselves. Blanca and Manuel had been friends for years, ever since they were children. Whenever he came to the house to help his father sweep leaves or weed the lawn she came out in her straw hat and sandals to help him. When the rose bushes had aphids that had to be eliminated, Manuel showed her how to mix arsenic with an organic compound. They both wore gloves and poured the white powder in a circular trench dug around each bush, later washing their hands thoroughly and changing their clothes.
That afternoon Manuel’s father told him to rake and burn the leaves in the garden and went off to fix a leaky faucet in Doña Ester’s bathroom. Manuel was sixteen. He had helped his father with the chore many times. He took off his shirt, poured gasoline on the leaves, and then lit them with a match. Perspiration made his skin gleam like burnished mahogany as he raked the leaves onto the lighted mound. Blanca de Montenegro was standing just behind him, dressed in a white cotton frock with a bit of lace at the hem. She looked at Manuel’s muscular back and compared it with Esteban’s puny torso. She wondered why she had been so in love with Esteban in the first place and why she had thought him the handsomest man on earth. “Why don’t you have hair on your chest?” she asked Manuel, giggling. “Other men’s chests are covered with it, and it makes them look like apes.”
“I don’t know,” Manuel answered. “I guess hair is supposed to protect white skin from the sun. I’m already dark-skinned; I don’t need hair.”
“Why don’t you jump over the burning leaves, then?” Blanca went on teasing. “The sun is made of fire; this little one here shouldn’t bother you.” Then Blanca leaned forward and kissed him on the lips. Manuel was so surprised he turned around and leapt right into the flames, or rather, being an athlete, he jumped over them and landed on the other side. Blanca jumped after him, tripped, and fell on the pyre. Manuel pulled her out and smothered the flames with his hands. Blanca lay there quietly, smoke still curling from the hem of her dress. Then she looked into Manuel’s green eyes. “Please take me away from this house,” she said.
They eloped a few weeks later and went to live together in a bungalow near the Emajaguas River. They were both minors and knew they couldn’t get married without their parents’ permission. Manuel’s parents helped them out as well as they could. Manuel’s father, Felipe, was the best gardener in Guayamés and he had a lot of clients; he offered his son a steady job. After a few months, it was evident that Blanca was pregnant. Don Hipólito had cut Blanca off completely, but Doña Ester secretly sent her small amounts of money and helped the young couple survive.
When a baby boy was born to her, instead of feeling happy, Blanca felt even more despondent. The more she looked at the child, the stranger he seemed to her. He was neither white like the Montenegros nor dark like the Sánchezes; he was café con leche—coffee with milk. It was as if someone had mixed everything up inside him. She hated to hear him cry, but she couldn’t pick him up from his crib to make him stop.
Blanca thought that maybe if the baby was baptized she could accept him. She took him to the priest in Guayamés but he said he couldn’t baptize a child born out of wedlock. When she asked him to hear her confession, the priest refused because “to live in adultery is to live with one’s heart full of worms.” Blanca couldn’t take it anymore. That afternoon when Manuel came back from work he found her lying on the bed, her mouth full of arsenic and a glass of water next to her bed. The baby was at Manuel’s mother’s house. Blanca had left him there that morning on her way back from church.
Don Esteban was grieved when he heard the news, and he sent a wreath of white roses with a purple ribbon to Blanca de Montenegro’s wake. Don Hipólito offered to take his grandson, Manuel Felipe, into his house and bring him up as his own son. Some weeks after Blanca’s suicide he drove to the Sánchezes’ cottage in his navy-blue Packard to meet the baby. Manuel brought him out so Don Hipólito could see him, but he wouldn’t let the baby’s grandfather hold him. “I can bring my son up by myself,” Manuel Sánchez said proudly. “I don’t want a cent of your tobacco money.”
With the small stipend his grandmother sent him on the sly, Manuel Felipe studied accounting and became a CPA. He married a local girl who had worked ten years as a maid to get her degree at the local secretarial school, and they had a daughter, whom they named Blanca. Manuel Felipe was crazy about her; he worked twelve hours a day six days a week, and on Saturdays did twelve hours of overtime so his daughter would have everything.
Manuel Felipe was a member of Guayamés’s Partido Democrático Institucional. He came up slowly and surely through its ranks, until he became secretary of the Bureau of Tax Returns. He was an honest public servant; he truly believed that a nation’s resources should belong to the people and not to a privileged few.
Manuel Felipe’s behavior with Don Hipólito de Montenegro gave him a lot of credibility within the party. He set an example for how to treat the rich; he hadn’t accepted a penny of Don Hipólito’s money and had sent him packing. His daughter was brought up humbly, like most of the people in Guayamés, but with a solid education at the public high school. Several years later, when the government expropriated Don Hipólito’s waterfront warehouse because the wharf needed to be enlarged, Don Hipólito visited Manuel Felipe at his cottage on the riverbank. The government had paid him a pittance for his property, Don Hipólito said. He had had to take out a loan to buy a second warehouse on the outskirts of town to store his tobacco, and he needed a government subsidy until he could pay the bank back. But Manuel Felipe shook his head. “It would look like nepotism,” he said. “If we weren’t so closely related, I might have been able to help you, but it’s impossible.” And Don Hipólito lost his warehouse and went bankrupt.
Don Esteban trembled when he remembered the story, which came flashing through his mind as he sat in Manuel Felipe’s office. Tía Artemisa didn’t know anything about Blanca de Montenegro or about her father, Don Hipólito. Don Esteban had never told her about them.
“Pleased to meet you,” Tía Artemisa said, offering her snow-wh
ite hand over the top of Manuel Felipe’s desk when the secretary stopped jotting down numbers for a moment to turn a page. Manuel Felipe had no alternative but to shake it. He sat back in his chair and smiled, folding his hands over his ample chest. He was dressed in a khaki shirt and pants. “My friend Don Esteban de la Rosa here is in a bind,” Tía Artemisa said cordially. “As you know, the price of sugarcane has hit rock bottom, and Don Esteban hasn’t been able to pay his taxes. He wants to sell some of his farms to meet the government’s requirements, but they’ve been invaded by squatters and he can’t get the people to move out. Maybe you could help Don Esteban get the squatters out, so he can pay his taxes.” Tía Artemisa’s voice was smooth. She sat on her chair holding her hourglass figure gracefully, as if posing for a portrait in Vogue.
Manuel Felipe looked squarely at Don Esteban. “And why doesn’t Don Esteban de la Rosa say anything?” he asked. “I don’t understand why Miss Rivas de Santillana is doing all the talking, since it’s his farms we’re discussing.”
Don Esteban signaled to the black band on his arm. “My granddaughter died recently, sir,” he apologized. “She was only sixteen. I’m afraid my mind hasn’t been as clear as it should be since that awful day. That’s why I’ve asked Miss Rivas de Santillana here to explain my situation. I agree with everything she said.”
“I’m sorry to hear about your granddaughter. What was her name?”
“Blanca de la Rosa, sir. And she was the most beautiful girl in Guayamés.”
“That couldn’t be, sir,” Manuel Felipe said, smiling, “because the most beautiful girl in Guayamés was and still is my daughter, Blanca Sánchez.” And Manuel Felipe took a photograph from his desk and turned it around so Don Esteban could see it.
Don Esteban felt his heart ball into a fist. Blanca Sánchez looked just like Blanca de Montenegro, his old love. She had her grandmother’s silver-blond hair and delicate features, and her smile was just as perfect. “You lost your Blanca, but I still have mine,” Manuel Felipe said, shaking his head sadly. “Life has odd ways of getting even, doesn’t it, Don Esteban?” Don Esteban realized Manuel Felipe knew all about him.
Tía Artemisa couldn’t understand what they were talking about. “Is that your daughter?” she asked the secretary amiably. “She’s very pretty. Has she made her debut yet? Because a cousin of mine was recently elected president of the Shooting Club and the cotillion balls there are extraordinary events. If you’d like me to, I could suggest your daughter as a candidate for this year’s coming-out party.” But neither the secretary nor Don Esteban was listening to her chatter.
“I know exactly why you’ve come, Don Esteban. I have the report right here. You mustn’t worry about anything,” Manuel Felipe said, picking up a sheaf of papers from his desk. “I promise that by tomorrow you’ll get the squatters out and be able to sell your farms.” And he stood up to shake Don Esteban’s hand.
The next day Don Esteban awoke feeling ill and couldn’t get out of bed. Tía Artemisa put on her riding boots, climbed back into her jeep, and drove out to Don Esteban’s farms, but this time a government marshal went with her. She gave each squatter a little bottle of holy water, a color portrait of the Virgin of Charity, a scapular with Jesusito painted on it, and an order of arrest for any trespasser who didn’t get off Don Esteban’s land in twenty-four hours. The invaders left one by one, and a few weeks later Don Esteban could finally sell his land.
Tía Artemisa was exultant, but her happiness didn’t last very long. Don Esteban had a heart attack and passed away six months later. In his will he left the central Santa Rosa, as well as all his land, to Blanca Sánchez, Manuel Felipe’s sixteen-year-old daughter. The day after the funeral Artemisa received a small box in the mail, wrapped in brown paper and tied with a string, together with a handwritten note. The note was from Don Esteban, thanking her for everything she had done in Blanca Rosa’s name and excusing himself for never having asked for her hand. Inside the box was the three-carat perfect solitaire, in memory of what might have been. Artemisa took the ring out of the box and solemnly put it on.
And that’s why Tía Artemisa always dressed in widow’s weeds and wore a diamond solitaire on her finger until the day she died.
ELEVEN
The Venus of the Family
IN TÍA LAKHMÉ’S OPINION, a beautiful dress was just as valid a work of art as a sculpture or a painting, because fashion had to do with imagination as well as with style. In fact, fashion was the truest of all the arts, precisely because it was so perishable. “A beautiful dress is like a butterfly,” she’d say to Abuela Valeria when she wanted to buy a new gown. “It glitters in the sun for a few minutes, and then it’s blown away by the wind. La mode, c’est la mort.” And if Abuela Valeria complained that the dress was too expensive and that Lakhmé already had three new ones in her closet, she would kiss and embrace her and tell her: “We have the money, Mother, why shouldn’t we spend it? Are we going to take it with us to the grave?
Tía Lakhmé was so beautiful she could have been a Hollywood star, and maybe that’s why she was so unhappy. There’s something about perfect beauty that puts people at its mercy; one doesn’t want to disturb it or ask anything of it; it’s a privilege just to be able to bask in its light.
Lakhmé was tall and willowy. She had red hair and curly eyelashes like Rita Hayworth’s and the silky long legs of Marlene Dietrich. She wore only clothes by exclusive designers, such as Harvey Bering, Ceil Chapman, and Christian Dior, and she always made it a point to have her silk evening shoes dyed the same shade as her gown, whether it was ruby-red, sapphire-blue, or emerald-green.
Abuelo Alvaro died in 1926, when Lakhmé was only three, but Abuela Valeria didn’t worry about her. Lakhmé was so beautiful Valeria was sure that one day she was going to marry a millionaire. When Tía Siglinda and Clarissa got married and left Emajaguas, Valeria gave their room to Lakhmé. She had it exquisitely decorated in white satin because she always saw Lakhmé as a future bride. It had white satin drapes, and the bed displayed a white satin bedspread under which Lakhmé shipped out every night to a world of dreams. Her dressing table had a three-paneled beveled mirror that surrounded her in its embrace; whenever she looked at herself in it she saw her perfect profile repeated in the distance ad infinitum.
Everybody at Emajaguas was a little bit in awe of Tía Lakhmé. She was always invited to the best parties and got to dance with the most sought-after partners, but she was terribly choosy and wasn’t easily satisfied. Nobody dared find fault with her, although thanks to her perfect sense of taste, there were few opportunities to do so. Only Aurelio had the nerve to criticize her, and then strictly in jest. “You needn’t be so proud of your good looks, Lakhmé,” Aurelio would say. “Remember, you’re the youngest one in the family, and as such, you’re its tail end. And you know what hides under the tail.”
When we were teenagers, my female cousins and I all wanted to follow Tía Lakhmé’s example, but when we grew up and saw how many times Lakhmé got married, left the family home, and came back to Emajaguas like a plucked chicken after each divorce, we stopped wanting to be like her. Lakhmé was the perpetual bride, forever stranded on Emajaguas’s shores.
Entering Tía Lakhmé’s room was like entering a fashion boutique. We would try on her evening gowns and beg her to get rid of this one or that one because it looked fanée and was already a year old. I hated wearing my elder cousins’ hand-me-downs, but I loved wearing Tía Lakhmé’s. They made me feel like Cinderella dressed in her fairy godmother’s clothes.
Like all but one of my aunts, Tía Lakhmé had attended the University of Puerto Rico. She had studied liberal arts for two years and always had books in her room, but I never saw her read any of them. Clarissa was forever poring over her books of agriculture, history, and sociology. Tía Dido’s room was full of poetry books, and Tía Artemisa’s reminded one of a sacristy, with prayer books lying all over the place. But in Tía Lakhmé’s room, books served a very different purpose.
“I caught my first husband,” Tía Lakhmé told us once, “when I was nineteen years old, and I was sure I had found my mate for life. It was 1942, and Tom Randolph was a first lieutenant in the marines, the handsomest man I had ever met. I fell in love with him at the pool at the officers’ club in Guayamés. He was over six feet tall and looked just like Johnny Weissmuller.
“Our meeting was the result of an accident that was almost tragic. I didn’t know how to swim, but it was terribly hot and the pool at the officers’ club looked very enticing, so I decided to cool off at the shallow end. But the pool’s bottom was slippery and it slanted abruptly; before I knew it I was sliding down with nothing to grab on to. Soon the water was over my head and my hands were the only thing above it. I tried to keep calm and walk back up, but I kept slipping toward the deep end. Then I panicked. I was sure I was going to drown. I looked around as if in a dream, my eyes wide open, staring at my own death. When I couldn’t hold my breath any longer, I began to swallow tons of water. All of a sudden someone dived into the pool and came swimming toward me. He whisked me up in his arms and brought me to the surface in a second.
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