“And as proof of my trust in him I added: ‘Father once told me never to sell Las Pomarrosas, “because once you sell the land, you can’t start over, because you will have sold your heart.” But since I’m starting over with you and I’m leaving Emajaguas, I want you to sell the farm. That way I’ll be putting my heart in your hands.’
“The wedding was to be a small affair, as Valeria didn’t want to spend any money on me. But Lakhmé, Dido, and Artemisa would all be there. And so would my dear Siglinda and Venancio. Aurelio’s father, his three brothers and two sisters would also be present. Aurelio’s mother, Adela Pasamontes, however, couldn’t come to the wedding because she was seriously ill. I asked Mother if the ceremony could be held in the garden. I wanted to spend my last few happy moments with my sisters in the paradise I was leaving.
“The night before the wedding I went to bed early because I wanted to look rested the following day. But as soon as I lay down on the bed, sleep abandoned me completely. Valeria had hung my satin wedding gown on the closet door and laid my Brussels lace veil on a chair nearby. The dress was only faintly visible in the dark and glimmered like a ghost. The veil had settled next to my bed like a cold mist. I looked away and sighed.
“It was four o’clock in the morning and the stars were beginning to fade over the palm grove next to Emajaguas, but I was still awake. I felt like a warrior keeping vigil before battle, my armor laid out at my feet. Just thinking of Aurelio caressing me made me feel faint. Would love be the answer to all my problems, as Siglinda insisted? I kept hearing Father’s voice when he used to take me to the beach to look at sailboats when I was a child: ‘You can be like them when you grow up, Clarissa, as free and happy as the wind.’
“I finally got out of bed, wrapped my Mexican serape around my shoulders, and crept down the stairs and across the garden to the carriage house. I knocked timidly on Miña’s door.
“Miña was putting on her uniform to come down to the house. Urbano had already left; I’d seen him feeding the animals in the cold morning mist at the back of the garden. Miña tied on her apron and began to comb my hair, which was slick and short like a boy’s. Then we sat on the edge of Miña’s bed, huddled next to each other.
“‘I can’t go through with it, Miña,’ I whispered. ‘Aurelio is two years younger than I am, and I’m not sure I’m in love with him. I’m bowing out.’ Miña burst out laughing.
“‘You can’t fool me, Clarissa. That’s just an excuse. You’ve been having second thoughts because you’re thinking of your father. Forget Don Alvaro,’ she said, patting my hand. ‘He’s dead and Aurelio is very much alive. Sure, you have doubts, but it’s not your fault. It’s that little piece of ice that got stuck in your heart when you were born.’
“And then she added, lowering her voice: ‘Aurelio’s a good man. He’ll know how to melt it.’ And she gave me a long hug. A few minutes later we went down the stairs together, and Miña brewed me a strong cup of coffee.
“The wedding took place on the morning of June 3, 1930. Everyone said I was a beautiful bride. I have a photo of Aurelio and me standing by one of the windows, encircled by the train of my gown as if we were standing in the middle of a silken pond. Aurelio is wearing his rented tuxedo and a top hat. We both look very serious, very much aware of the solemnity of the occasion.
“After a short reception and a champagne brindis in the garden, attended only by the closest family members, we changed clothes in separate rooms and ran laughing to the car under a shower of rice. We drove to La Concordia in Aurelio’s convertible Pontiac coupé, which he had named El Pájaro Azul, The Blue Bird of Happiness. From then on, Aurelio was the center of my life.”
TWENTY-ONE
The House on Calle Virtud
“YOUR FATHER, AURELIO, BOUGHT a small house for us in downtown La Concordia, near the train station. It was a middle-class neighborhood where the houses had corrugated tin roofs and stood in small lots so you could smell what your neighbor was cooking through the open windows. Aurelio bought the house with his hard-earned savings. It was made of wood and had a small balcony in front, then a living room, a dining room, and a kitchen, all in a row like carriages on a train; a long, narrow hallway in the middle led to the bedrooms at the back. The furniture was wicker, painted white, and there were lace curtains over all the windows. Aurelio had taken care of every detail.
“The only luxury we had at Calle Virtud was the Bechstein grand piano Aurelio bought with money from the sale of Las Pomarrosas. The farm brought three hundred thousand dollars, and the piano cost ten thousand. Aurelio put the rest of the money in the bank in my name, and ten years later, he invested the rest to help build the Star Cement plant. It was definitely a good business deal.
“The piano was so large it looked like a whale aboard a rowboat. To get it inside, Aurelio had to have our front door taken off its hinges. The piano took up most of the living room, so that there was nowhere left to sit down. It was an extraordinary object, totally out of place at Calle Virtud. But Aurelio loved it. Whenever he played it, music flooded the whole house.”
“When I first arrived in La Concordia and stepped out of the Pontiac I felt faint. The heat of La Concordia was like a slap in the face. Aurelio had to help me up the steps. ‘I’ll get you something cool to drink; lie down for a while and you’ll feel better. Our bedroom has a nice window that opens onto the back patio, which is shaded by a beautiful mango tree that rustles when there’s a breeze, as if it were raining.’
“I did as Aurelio suggested and went into the bedroom. Aurelio followed with my two white leather suitcases. Then he went into the kitchen to make me a lemonade, but when he came back with the iced drink in his hand he found me sitting on the edge of the four-poster bed with my suitcases still closed. The gabled tin roof had trapped the heat under the attic and the room was an oven. ‘I can’t possibly stay here,’ I said, about to burst out crying. ‘The heat is stifling, but I’m freezing—I’ll never be able to sleep. Please take me back to Emajaguas.’ I was bathed in sweat and shaking all over.
“Miña had told Aurelio about my sickness just before the wedding; how, when I was born, I had come back from the hospital with a tiny splinter of ice lodged in my heart and Miña had had to carry me around the house strapped to her chest for a month until I finally grew warm. It was a strange story and it had worried Aurelio, but in his usual gallant manner he pretended nothing was amiss. He didn’t say anything to me.
“‘Why don’t you let me play something on the piano for you? It’ll make you feel better before we drive back to Emajaguas,’ he suggested. And he went into the living room, sat down on the piano bench, and opened the lid. ‘Come and sit next to me, Clarissa,’ he called. I stepped out of the bedroom shivering and sat next to my handsome young husband. He began to play Beethoven’s Appassionata sonata. The music was so beautiful and Aurelio played so well that I gradually forgot I was cold. I calmed down and stopped shivering. When Aurelio finished playing he began to kiss me. He was a very good lover. He had delicate, almost feminine hands, which were as sensitive when he caressed my body as when he caressed the piano’s ivory keys. Soon the little piece of ice that was stuck at the center of my heart began to melt. We went into the bedroom and made love on the four-poster bed. It was as if a tidal wave of music swept me away.”
PART IV
THE VERNET FAMILY SAGA
WHEN I WAS YOUNGER I could remember anything, whether it had happened or not; but my faculties are decaying now and soon I shall be so I cannot remember any but the things that never happened.
—The Autobiography of Mark Twain
TWENTY-TWO
Sailing Down the Caribbean
SANTIAGO VERNET OFTEN TALKED to his children about his mother, and they enjoyed his stories. Elvira Zequeira was a rebel and a revolutionary who often hid mambises—black rebel soldiers—in her house at Santiago de Cuba. Elvira had a twin brother named Roque Zequeira, whose best friend was Henri Vernet. Roque met Henri in Paris. They bot
h had studied engineering at the Ecole des Ponts et des Chaussées, and when they graduated in 1875, Roque suggested that Henri come to the island to try his fortune.
Henri was from the South of France and he came from peasant stock. He was born in Saint-Savinien, a drowsy little town on the bank of the Charente, where marshes abound and dozens of channels flow like arteries down the walls of a heart. Henri went to Paris to study engineering on a government scholarship because his father had been killed at the end of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870. It was an unfortunate accident; a truce had been reached and Charles Vernet’s battalion was already marching home when a musket ball ricocheted off a tree and hit him in the back of the head.
Henri’s mother made great sacrifices to send him to study in Paris; she waited for him in Saint-Savinien with her five children. She had high hopes for Henri. She was sure that, with his help, the family would finally pull itself out of poverty. But when Henri graduated, he couldn’t resist the temptation to sail with Roque to America. He had nightmares of returning to the marshes of the Charente, where no one was ever in a hurry and barges floated lazily down the river laden with cabbages and artichokes. Henri had gotten used to life in Paris; the air sparked with activity and minds were razor-sharp. When Roque invited him to go to America, Henri agreed. Someday he would come back with a lot of money to help out his mother and little brothers.
They sailed to Santiago de Cuba together. Henri stayed in Roque’s house. There Roque introduced him to his sister. “She’s a little hummingbird,” Roque said, picking Elvira up by the waist. “But watch out. When she wants you to do something you’d better do it or else find the lowest window to jump out of the house.” Elvira looked at Henri’s Sèvres-blue eyes and long, brown curls tied in a ponytail and fell in love with him. The fact that Henri was a soldier’s son made it difficult for him to express his feelings, and it was Elvira who asked him to marry her. He said yes, and soon Santiago Vernet—Abuelo Chaguito—was on his way. He was born in 1879.
Roque and Elvira Zequeira were orphans; their parents had died within months of each other in a boating accident off Punta Santiago, the southernmost tip of Cuba—or so Chaguito used to say. The children inherited the large, rambling house on the outskirts of town. After he married Elvira, Henri moved in, and the three young people helped one another out in every way. Henri and Roque pooled their savings and, making use of their newly acquired engineering abilities, built the city’s first commercial ice plant, Vernet Ice, which had its own electric generator—also the town’s first. Santiago was the capital of Oriente, Cuba’s richest province and the hub of much of its commercial activity. There were forty sugar haciendas in the outskirts; tobacco, cacao, and coffee flourished in the nearby Sierra Maestra. The city had magnificent homes and people gave extravagant parties all the time, so ice was a sought-after commodity.
Vernet Ice was a success from the start; delivery carts came by the dozen every hour to pick up blocks of ice that would be wrapped in hemp sacks and carried to private homes and businesses all over the city. Temperatures in Santiago could reach a hundred degrees in the shade. But once Vernet Ice was in business, people insisted, it was never as hot as before.
Henri had inherited the Vernets’ bad luck. Once a short circuit cut off the plant’s generator and Henri called out to Roque to go to the front of the building and pull the disconnect lever down. Then he went to the basement to try to fix the problem. Elvira had dropped Chaguito off at the plant while she went shopping, and he skipped down the stairs behind his father. It was dark and Henri had to light their way with a gas lamp.
Roque did as he was told. He pulled the lever down and then stood by the switch waiting for Henri to call again from the basement. Henri searched around by the light of the lamp and found a bare wire in one of the generator’s cables; the frayed part needed to be cut and the cable connected again. “This is where the problem is,” he told Chaguito, showing him the mat of wires inside the frayed cover. “We have to cut and repair the cable.”
But upstairs one of the carts heavily laden with ice suddenly rolled out of the warehouse gate. There was a lot of traffic on the avenue, and the gatekeeper yelled, “Go ahead!” to the driver to let him know he could ride out. Roque mistook the driver’s voice for Henri’s and pushed the lever up. Henri landed three feet from his small son.
When he heard Henri cry out, Roque ran to the basement but in his haste forgot to pull the lever down. His friend was lying on the ground, his hands still stuck to the cable, and he was shaking violently. Roque was about to grab him by the arm to pull him away when Henri cried out, his eyes bulging, “Don’t touch me! You’ll only double the charge and kill us both! Turn the switch off!” Roque flew upstairs again, but by the time he returned, Henri was dead. Chaguito stood helplessly by, watching the smoke come out of his father’s long brown curls.
When Elvira was told of the accident, she fell to the ground in a faint. Roque was overwhelmed as well. He felt responsible for Henri’s death and kept seeing the terrified look in his brother-in-law’s eyes as Henri struggled to free himself from the cable. Elvira tried to console him. “Some people are born under a good-luck star and others are born under an evil one,” she said. “The Vernets belong to the second category. You mustn’t blame yourself for what happened, Roque. Given his family history, Henri would probably have died young anyway.”
Elvira was deeply concerned about her son. One night she came to Roque’s room and knocked on his door. “We’ve both lost Henri, and nobody can bring him back. But we still have each other and shouldn’t be bitter about it. I need you to help me look after Chaguito. He hasn’t said a single word since Henri passed away. His teachers have threatened to expel him from school if he doesn’t come out of his obstinate silence.”
Roque agreed to try to help his nephew. In true Vernet fashion, the boy hadn’t shed a single tear since his father’s death, and Roque felt sorry for him. Chaguito was good with numbers, and to learn mathematics one didn’t need to talk. If Chaguito didn’t want to speak it was his business, but he could certainly count. Roque went up to the attic, opened an old trunk, and took out Henri’s books of electrical engineering from the Ecole des Ponts et des Chaussées. He brought them down and opened them on the dining room table. Chaguito drew near and stared at them in fascination. They were all in French, and at first Roque thought this would make it impossible for Chaguito to understand them. But he was wrong. Soon Chaguito knew all there was to know about algebra, geometry, trigonometry, physics, and electrical and mechanical design, and along the way he had also learned to read French.
Years passed and in 1895, when Chaguito was a young man of sixteen, the War of Independence was raging in Cuba. José Martí was killed during a suicide charge at Dos Ríos, and the Zequeiras were incensed by his death. One time Roque took a potshot at a Spanish officer from a second-floor window of their house. Roque escaped but the house was ransacked, and the piano in the living room turned out to be full of bandages and cotton swabs. The Zequeiras’ home was a nursing station for wounded revolutionaries. Elvira, Roque, and Chaguito all went to jail but were set free six months later, during a lull in the war.
When they returned to the house, Roque found an order to present himself for military service at the conscription office in Santiago de Cuba. He left the city and went into hiding in the manigua, the wild brush country near the town. Elvira hid her son in the attic. Chaguito was now seventeen and would soon be eligible for conscription. In spite of his small stature, he could only sit there; the ceiling was too low for him to stand. Late at night he crept downstairs to have a hot meal and be with his mother. All kinds of insects stung him—spiders, scorpions, and gnats—and his eyes were so swollen they looked like slits, but he had inherited Henri’s military stoicism and endured his discomfort without complaint.
Elvira was very religious, and she made an altar in the attic where Chaguito could pray to the Virgen de la Caridad del Cobre, the patron saint of Cuba. He could light c
andles in the dark for the Virgin and watch the small red flames waver like hopeful flags around him. But Chaguito didn’t pray. He slept with his back to the Virgin and swore that he’d make the family’s bad luck change.
After a month Chaguito couldn’t stand lying in the dark anymore. He was about to escape and join the mambises in the bush when his uncle Roque turned up at the house. Roque told Elvira that an electrical engineer was needed in Puerto Rico. The job was in La Concordia and involved mounting some new evaporators at the Siboney, a mill on the outskirts of town. His friends had passed on the information and were waiting for him outside the house. They were going to try to smuggle him off the island that very night.
“Take Chaguito with you, Roque, I beg you,” Elvira said, pointing to the attic. “I don’t care if I never see him again. I’d rather know he’s far away and alive than nearby and six feet under.” But when she told Chaguito, he didn’t want to go; he didn’t want to leave Cuba. So Roque and his friends knocked Chaguito out and smuggled him aboard the Alicia Contreras, a cargo steamer bound for Santo Domingo. Chaguito worked in the boiler room and fed coals into the furnace with such fury you would have thought he was feeding the anger that blazed in his heart.
In Santo Domingo the ship picked up a load of oranges, bananas, and green plantains, then sailed on to Puerto Rico. Chaguito and his uncle spent two weeks on a diet of bananas and oranges but arrived safe and sound at their destination.
TWENTY-THREE
Chaguito Arrives at La Concordia
“LOOK AT THOSE GACHUPINES marching up and down the square!” Chaguito exclaimed to his uncle Roque the day they arrived in La Concordia. He saw the Regimiento de Cazadores de la Patria—the Regiment of Hunters of the Fatherland—performing their military maneuvers in the Plaza de las Delicias. “They’re an elegant-looking lot, but I bet they don’t exactly hunt boar or fox!”
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