“He laid me on the ground and pumped the water out of my lungs. The minute he touched me, the positive current of the universe began to course through me. A week later, Tom came to Emajaguas to meet Mother. ‘Lakhmé and I love each other,’ he told her, ‘and we want to get married before my ship sails. I’d like you to give us your blessing.’
“Valeria saw us holding hands and felt her heart grow heavy.
“‘There’s nothing we can do with our lives except live them,’ she said, shaking her head resignedly. ‘If this man makes you happy, go ahead and marry him, Lakhmé. But please wait until he comes back from the war. Do you want to be a widow at twenty?’
“‘But he may never come back, Mother,’ I begged. ‘And then I’ll never have known love.’ So I kissed and hugged Mother and ran out of the house with my handsome marine to find a judge.
“Tom shipped out the following day, and for the next year he sailed the Pacific aboard a navy destroyer. He was at the battles of the Coral Sea and Midway, took part in the landing at Guadalcanal, and returned to the island when the war was over. He looked more like a god than ever as he walked through Emajaguas’s door. He was still in uniform and his chest gleamed with campaign ribbons and medals, his officer’s cap sitting jauntily on his head. When he saw me, he picked me up like a feather and kissed me on the mouth. It was the happiest day of my life.
“Mother gave us a wedding present of fifty thousand dollars, which was part of the money from the sale of La Constanza, the farm Father had singled out for me before he died. Tom and I bought a bungalow in the hills behind Guayamés with part of the money and we lived in seventh heaven for a few years.
“Tom was the perfect American husband. He was gentle and kind, he never touched alcohol or looked at other women, and he didn’t mind helping with the housework. He dried the dishes and took out the garbage after dinner every night. But because of the severe wounds he had suffered in combat during his stint in the Pacific he couldn’t hold a job. His nerves were shattered, and three years after we were married we had spent practically all our money on medical treatments. Then disaster struck. Tom had a massive heart attack and keeled over as he was working in the vegetable garden. I couldn’t move him and there was no one in the house to help. I ran to the telephone to call Mother, and Urbano drove up the hill to our bungalow with the speed of lightning. But by the time we got to the hospital, my poor Tom was dead.
“Valeria invited me to travel to Spain with her, to take my mind off Tom. In Madrid I met Rodrigo de Zelaya, a swarthy-looking Spaniard who was ambassador to Morocco. Rodrigo was very handsome and he loved to swagger around Madrid in his riding habit—jodhpurs, boots, suede jacket, and all. The only thing odd about him was the nail on his right little finger, which was three inches long. Rodrigo used it to stir the perfumed Arabian coffee in his demitasse every morning.
“I met Rodrigo at a fox hunt at Villaviciosa, a cortijo on the outskirts of Madrid that belonged to a cousin of the king of Spain. I arrived dressed in a fashionable red hunting jacket, riding whip in hand, and English leather boots to my knees. ‘Do you really know how to ride?’ Rodrigo asked when he saw me so elegantly dressed. ‘Of course I do,’ I said confidently. ‘My father taught me how.’ And I easily mounted the black stallion he was holding for me, which was pawing the ground restlessly.
“I did know how to ride the delicate, small-framed paso fino horses of the central Plata. All you had to do was sit back in the western saddle and enjoy yourself. You could even drink a glass of champagne without spilling a drop as you rode through the cane fields, because they were as smooth as velvet and on level terrain. But I had never used an English saddle, much less in the Spanish countryside. I didn’t have the faintest idea how to post, how to pivot my weight on my knees or lean forward to urge the horse into a canter. No sooner did I get into the saddle of the huge Spanish stallion than it sensed my insecurity and galloped across the plain like all hell. I hung on for dear life, but the beast was impossible to control. Rodrigo finally caught up with me. He made me get off my horse and had me climb onto his. I sat on the rump and held on to his waist, and the positive current of the universe began to course through me again. When Rodrigo asked me to marry him a few weeks later, I said yes.
“Rodrigo had lived in Morocco for ten years, and he had adopted many Arab customs. He had embraced the Muslim religion and asked me if I minded marrying him in a Muslim ceremony. We would get married in Rabat, he said, since mosques were forbidden in Spain. I thought it all marvelously exciting but Valeria was worried. ‘Your fiance reminds me of a one-clawed hawk. Once you go off with him to Rabat, you’ll be in his clutches. Why don’t you get to know him better in Madrid before you get married?’ But I couldn’t wait.
“Mother sailed back home full of foreboding. When she arrived in Guayamés, she sold another of my bonds and sent me a hundred thousand dollars through a bank transfer, four trunks full of clothes by ship, and all my jewelry by diplomatic valise. I deposited the money in a joint account in Rabat and gave Rodrigo a checkbook so we could both draw against it.
“At first I had a wonderful time. We lived in a beautiful palace made of blue mosaics, with Moorish gardens and fountains like murmuring mirrors—something out of the Thousand and One Nights. Rodrigo was a very good lover, and we made love almost every night. Arabs are experts in the art of sexual pleasure. He taught me dozens of secrets: he put mint leaves in my navel, jasmine leaves in my hair, ylang-ylang blossoms on my breasts, vanilla beans in my vagina, and then would smell and lick my body from head to toe. He had a young boy sit behind my bedroom’s masrabella, the filigreed screen, and play the zither for us, while another boy caressed our naked bodies with a peacock feather as we lay in bed. Rodrigo’s penis was large, like an ivory minaret capped by a pink dome, and I enjoyed myself enormously pretending I was its muezzin. I’d climb up on it and sing praises to Allah at least twice a day.
“But Rodrigo had one problem: he never talked to me. The Muslim religion discouraged conversation between husband and wife, and after a while I began to grow bored. I had been used to talking to my poor Tom all day and especially at night, after we made love. But with Rodrigo conversation consisted strictly of groans and sighs.
“I decided I would amuse myself alone, to take my mind off things. There was a wonderful bazaar in Rabat and I could visit it and buy beautiful silks and damasks that I could send to Paris to be made into gowns. But when I said I wanted to go shopping, Rodrigo told me I couldn’t. A servant would go to the bazaar instead, and the merchants would bring the rolls of fabric to our house. He wanted me to wear a head scarf that covered half my face, as well as an awful ankle-length raincoat, every time I walked in the streets. I was incensed. I wasn’t going to go around like a tapada, walking three steps behind my husband. I wasn’t a Muslim and there was no way I was going to be made to behave as one.
“I determined not to pay attention to Rodrigo’s orders. I began to see some of the European women I had met at the embassy parties, and in the afternoons we’d get together at the bar at the Hilton, which was near our house, to have a few cocktails and talk. But whenever I walked out the door in one of my designer dresses on my way to the hotel, people turned around and said shocking things to me.
“‘If you go on behaving this way, you’ll destroy my reputation as an ambassador,’ Rodrigo protested angrily. ‘I’ve lived in Rabat for ten years and I respect Arab customs. The Koran sums it up very clearly: if women aren’t covered, it’s like giving a man salt to eat and then denying him water. And besides, women are much more attractive when they go around with their faces veiled.’
“I was getting angry, too, but I pretended nothing was amiss.
“‘And why is that?’ I asked, smiling coyly.
“‘A woman’s face is like her cunt—it belongs to her husband. She doesn’t go around showing it to other men.’
“I burst out laughing”—and my cousins and I did, too, when we heard this part of Tía Lakhmé’s
story. “Of course I refused to put on a scarf or a veil, and Rodrigo and I had a violent argument.
“Another time Rodrigo invited several sheikhs to dinner at our house, and before the guests arrived he cautioned me: ‘I know you’re left-handed, Lakhmé, but when we sit down to eat on the dining room cushions remember to always use your right hand. Arabs use the left hand only for “unmentionable occupations.”’
“‘And what are those?’ I asked innocently.
“‘They use it to wipe themselves when they go to the toilet,’ Rodrigo answered with a straight face. ‘And to beat rebellious wives.’
“Again I burst out laughing”—and we did too, in Tía Lakhmé’s silk-lined boudoir far away from Rabat and the fear she must have felt. “That evening I had a ball eating couscous with only my left hand from the huge hammered-bronze tray the waiters laid at my feet.
“Rodrigo was so incensed that when the guests left he took away my passport and my checkbook and forbade me to leave the house. From then on he screened all my letters and telephone calls and wouldn’t give me any money at all. He had me followed everywhere by one of his servants and threatened to beat me up if I talked to anyone about my plight.
“The following Saturday was the maid’s day off, so when the telephone rang, I answered it myself. It was Dido; she had arrived in Rabat with Antonio the week before, but every time she had called, the maid had said I was out. I asked them to come to the house for tea. We sat around talking on the red silk cushions of the living room, but Rodrigo was there also and I acted as if nothing were wrong. When Dido and Antonio were about to go I slipped a note into Dido’s hand telling her what was happening: Rodrigo had kidnapped me; I was his prisoner and desperately needed their help. They should be at a certain address the next morning in a rented Land Rover to pick me up. We had to be very careful: under Muslim law, if Rodrigo caught me trying to leave the country without his permission he could have me thrown in jail.
“On Sunday morning I pulled on my gardening jumper and tennis shoes and discreetly put all my jewelry in my pockets. When Rodrigo left for the office I told the servant at the door I was going to prune my rose bushes at the back of the garden, and I climbed over the garden wall. Dido and Antonio picked me up at the appointed place not far from the house. Antonio was at the wheel and he didn’t lose a minute. He drove the Land Rover south at full speed and soon we were deep in the Sahara desert. We didn’t stop until we reached Mauritania.
“I arrived in Emajaguas a week later without a cent to my name but with all my jewels in my pocket. Valeria was so relieved to see me she didn’t mind when I told her I hadn’t been able to take my money out of the bank. ‘Money’s here today and gone tomorrow, dear, you mustn’t worry,’ Valeria said, comforting me. ‘There’s a remedy for everything in this world except death.’ I was so relieved to be back home, I didn’t shed a single tear for handsome Rodrigo de Zelaya.
“I married my third husband, Edward Milton, in 1957 in a huge wedding at the Guayamés cathedral. I had married Tom Randolph before a judge and my marriage to Rodrigo had been a Muslim ceremony, so neither of these counted in the eyes of the Catholic Church. Now I could have a true religious ceremony, with all the trimmings.
“I told Mother I wanted to have a veil ten yards long and a wedding dress with a train all the way from the street to the altar. I wanted this to be a true marriage. Valeria was glad I was finally going to be a proper bride. She went to the bank, took out the last fifty thousand dollars I had left in my account, and gave us the money as a wedding present.
“Edward Milton was a Presbyterian, but he agreed to be baptized and married in a Catholic church. He was of British descent and loved to brag that had his father stayed in London he would have had the right to sit in the House of Lords. I met him at a reception the British consul held at his house; all my old friends from Guayamés’s best society had been invited. Having been married to an American who loved to live in the mountains and to a Spaniard who was half barbarian and had sequestered me in Rabat, I wanted very badly to return to the civilized world. Single women had a very limited social life in Guayamés. But once I married Edward I’d be invited to my friends’ homes and be able to attend all their parties. Most important of all, I’d have an opportunity to wear beautiful clothes again.
“As soon as we got married, Edward bought a Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud and had a uniformed chauffeur drive us around town. He had a liveried butler—the first one in the history of Guayamés—open the door of our house, and I had a maid and a cook. Edward had his nails manicured and varnished by a beautician who visited our home every morning with a little wicker basket hanging from her arm, something truly unheard of in the machista culture of the island.
“Edward had studied at Oxford for a year and spoke English with a British accent. We often gave parties at home, but few of my friends came. Nobody liked Edward because he was so stiff and uppity. He had been born on a tobacco plantation near Raleigh, North Carolina, and was so wrapped up in himself he reminded everyone of a cigar. He never learned to speak a word of Spanish and the minute he walked in the door everyone had to start speaking English because it was bad manners to leave Edward out in the cold and he would immediately let you know that. If someone dared rattle on in the barbaric vernacular, Edward would start to criticize Puerto Rican men, the way they swore under their breath every time they had to wear a jacket and tie or the way they insisted that ‘a man’s dignity was in his balls.’
“Making love with Edward was something of a disappointment. He wasn’t tender, like my darling Tom, and he wasn’t exotic and erotically exciting like Rodrigo. His penis was like a cheap Flor de Oro cigar, the kind you can buy for five cents at any corner store on the island. And sometimes it got as prickly as an armadillo’s. He couldn’t stand it when I told him when and where to caress me so I could feel pleasure. He got very upset because he thought I was ordering him around.
“Edward invested our money in La Cacica, a small cigar plant in Caguana, which had a two-hundred-acre tobacco farm and a rundown shed where tobacco leaves were hung out to dry in the sun. He was completely confident because he had learned a lot about the tobacco industry in Raleigh. He discovered that Puerto Rican tobacco leaves were among the tastiest in the world. They were exported to Cuba and rolled there as gut leaves in the Montecristos and Partagás, although the Cuban tobacco manufacturers never acknowledged where the exquisite taste of their most expensive cigars came from.
“But what Edward enjoyed the most about his cigar business was the tabaqueras, the beautiful young women of Caguana who came to work every day in the factory. Processing the tobacco leaves was a difficult, delicate chore traditionally done by women. The tabaqueras first had to despalar, or break the stems off the leaves, then deshilar, or rip out the delicate veins, and finally spread the leaves out on their naked thighs to iron them out with their hands before they were hung to dry. Eventually their legs ended up as dark and perfumed as the tobacco leaves.
“Edward loved to smoke cigars, and that was probably the reason he was so attracted to the tabaqueras. He couldn’t resist making love to them, because each time he buried his face in their perfumed thighs, he felt the same pleasure as when he was smoking a Puerto Rican cigar. Caguana is a secluded little valley outside San Juan and Edward didn’t return until dusk, so unfortunately I didn’t find out about this side of his business until much later.
“When I married Edward I expected him to be a haven for me, someone I could depend on for the rest of my life. I believed him when he swore he was a man of means, and when I visited the Milton family estate in Raleigh before we were married I was impressed. They lived in a turreted Victorian mansion on Main Street. But Edward had so many brothers and sisters that when his parents died the estate hardly paid him any money at all. After we were married, we had to depend solely on my income.
“In Puerto Rico, Edward’s profits from La Cacica weren’t enough to cover his expenses, let alone mine. After the Cuban Rev
olution in 1959 it became harder and harder to export Puerto Rican tobacco to Cuba, and finally the embargo stopped commerce completely between the two islands. Shipping rates went up drastically, as all products from the island had to be transported on U.S. freighters. I couldn’t believe it when Edward told me he had to close down La Cacica. We were ruined and would have to live practically puffing on air.
“Edward sold the Rolls-Royce and got rid of the chauffeur and butler. I had to get rid of the maid and do the housework myself. My beautiful almond-shaped nails were the first thing to go, and my fingers turned into ugly stubs. I couldn’t buy stylish clothes anymore. I couldn’t even afford to go to the beauty salon; I had to fix my own hair. It was impossible to go on living like that.
“I packed my beautiful clothes in several trunks, put my checkbook and my jewels in my purse, and went back to live at Emajaguas with Mother. I left Edward the Gorham silver service, the Lenox porcelain set, and the Val Saint-Lambert glassware we had received as wedding gifts. And I would have left him much more in exchange for my freedom, because if I couldn’t live for style, I couldn’t live at all.
“Guayamés society is Catholic, apostolic, and Roman, and divorce isn’t tolerated. I knew that if I divorced Edward I’d be cut off from the social scene completely and would never be invited to another important gathering again. I had no alternative but to try to have the marriage annulled.
“I wrote a letter to Rome asking the Vatican for information about annulments, but I never got an answer. So I went to see the parish priest in Guayamés. I told him about Edward’s infidelities and how he preferred making love to the tabaqueras rather than to me. ‘I want to have my marriage annulled and I don’t know how to go about it,’ I told Father Gregorio, sobbing quietly behind the confessional’s red velvet curtain.
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