“Then what is she, a witch?” A smile tugged at Lola’s lips.
There was no humor in Juan’s voice. “I don’t think so, although others do. I was referring to her sneaky way of doing things. Maybe underhanded is a better word.”
“We used to call her the pit viper, so ‘sneaky’ sounds better.”
“This isn’t a joke. She was seen more than once talking with Rudolfo in the orchard, and I once saw her coming out of Rudolfo’s rooms. And there may be worse—much worse. Don’t underestimate Jacoba; she’s cunning and ruthless.”
It might be superstition and tall tales, but it still made Lola shudder and hold Yousef a little tighter.
XI. March, 1912: Lola Age 18
A soft wave of sadness passed over Lola as she watched Yousef’s dark curls bent over his blocks and Estela playing with the old dolls that had sat on her own bed for years. How Mehmet would have adored watching his children grow up. Lola would always feel pain at his loss, but she had the children to love and her work to keep her occupied. When she had asked her father if she could be helpful, she had been unprepared for the enthusiasm of his reaction. Now she was working in the office of the distillery again taking care of the books for the plantation.
“Mama, look how pretty the dolly is in her new dress.”
“Such a pretty dolly for such a pretty girl,” said Lola, hugging her daughter.
“Such a pretty bastard,” said Estela sweetly.
“What? Estela, where did you hear that?”
“Hear what?”
“What you just said—about such a pretty…”
Estela laughed. “Abuela Jacoba says I’m such a pretty bastard, but you said such a pretty girl. You got it wrong.”
Lola drew Estela to her and hugged her tight. “No, Sweetheart, I said it right. You are such a pretty girl. I don’t ever want to hear the other word again. It’s not a nice word and ladies don’t say that.” Lola winced inwardly as she heard the once hated words come out of her mouth.
“Why does Abuela Jacoba say it?”
“Sometimes old people forget what is proper. Besides, Jacoba’s not really your grandmother. Your real grandmother died when I was a little girl. She was very beautiful.”
“If Abuela Jacoba isn’t my grandmother, why do I call her Grandmother Jacoba?”
“Because it pleases her, and nice people do things to make others happy, like when I tickle you because it makes you laugh.” Estela was soon squealing in glee as her mother pretended to attack her. Yousef came running to get in on the fun.
After the evening meal Lola sipped her coffee and declined the liqueur. The conversational demands on Lola were minimal, and she waited for her father to indicate they should retire to the library for their daily business discussion. Lola enjoyed her evenings with her father, but she knew that Jacoba deeply resented not being included in their evening talks.
The set of her father’s shoulders relaxed as they closed the library door, and he began their nightly “business meeting” with his ritual question, “How were things at the distillery today?” She gave a short report, knowing he was not listening.
Enrique poured himself a drink and sat in the big chair across from her, extending his legs in front of him and staring at the toes of his boots. He looked tired and his boots lacked the high polish she always associated with him. It saddened her to see him taking less care of his appearance. She did not look forward to this conversation.
“Father, I realized this morning that I’m now quite at peace. I still mourn Mehmet, but I’m no longer tormented by his loss.”
“You’ll always mourn him on some level, but I’m glad you’re more peaceful.”
“I want to thank you for giving me a haven in which to heal, but it’s time I returned to the city.”
“Lola,” he began, “God graced me with beautiful intelligent daughters. Beauty and brains are a rare and priceless combination. You, however, have the extra spark of curiosity, a love of learning that sets you apart.” He swallowed the last of the whiskey in his glass and sat up straight. “I’m glad to have you back in my life.”
Lola felt a lump in her throat. In the months she had been back, this was the first time he had even alluded to the fact that she had ever left. What she heard in his simple statement was not an apology, and she knew it was not meant to be one—yet it voiced a world of regret and sadness. Now that she had children of her own, she knew how much her father’s decision must have cost him.
“Papa, please don’t make this more difficult. I have to go.”
“You just said you were at peace here. Rosa, Dolores and Pilar adore your children, and Jacoba seems to like the idea of being the grandmother. You’ve brought the house back to life. Why do you want to leave?” The lump in her throat grew painfully large, but Juan’s words echoed in her mind.
“I just told you. I’m ready to face the world again.”
“Let’s not beat around the bush. We both know you wouldn’t have started doing the accounting again if you were planning to leave so soon.”
Lola had not intended to say anything to her father that could be seen as an attack on his wife, but she changed her mind. She owed him an honest answer. She reported what Estela had said. “I can’t protect her from this while we live in the same house.” Emotions that would once have been hidden flowed across Enrique’s face. Lola felt an echo of his pain and sorrow.
“I will speak to Jacoba.”
“Please, Papa, don’t let her know what I said.”
“Are you afraid of Jacoba?”
Lola looked down, not willing to meet her father’s steady gaze. Her father was silent for a minute, and Lola worried that he was going to press her for an answer.
“Very well,” said Enrique, “I’ll get a girl from the village to help with the children.”
“Thank you.” She would find a way to isolate her children from Jacoba.
Two days later Marta came to Lola’s office at the distillery. Marta had done very well at the village school, and she had helped raise her younger siblings when her mother got sick. Lola liked her at once. In her weekly letter to Enriqueta, Lola said it would be nice to have a woman to talk to sometimes. Their older sisters had been neither friendly nor welcoming. Juan left a long letter for Enriqueta at the station every week and brought the shorter answers. Enriqueta’s letters were full of amusing anecdotes about Blanca, and news of their friends. The dressmaking clientele was growing, and they now had another girl living with them who did the laundry, cleaning, and some cooking. Concha was doing more and more sewing.
One day when Lola returned from work, Rosa told her there would be a guest at dinner and El Patrón wanted the children to join them. Lola dressed Estela in a freshly starched dress while Marta valiantly tried to get Yousef to stand still long enough to get his hair under control. Lola laughingly allowed Marta to pile her long hair on top of her head. She led her children to the drawing room with a feeling of anticipation. Guests were rare on the plantation.
“Lola, may I present James Atkins?” Lola extended her hand to the thin carefully dressed man whose face showed he spent much time in the sun, but without tanning. “Señor Atkins, this is my youngest daughter, Señora Osman.” As he bowed formally over her hand, she noticed that his light hair blended into gray on the sides. “Señor Atkins will be staying in the apartment above the distillery for a while.”
Then Jacoba made her entrance, and Lola’s teeth clenched as she recognized her mother’s ruby necklace accentuated by a low-cut dress. Dinner was announced and the guest offered his arm to Lola as they moved toward the dining room.
“Where are you from, Señor Atkins?” asked Lola.
“I’m from England, but I’ve been living in Central and South America for many years and I’m probably more at home here than I would be in England after such a long absence.”
“What brought you to Peru?”
“I’m an engineer. I came to South America to work on the Panama Canal.” Lola was thrilled
to meet someone who had actually worked on the famous project. “Have you heard of it?” he asked, mildly surprised.
“Of course,” laughed Lola. “We live a rather isolated life, but we’re still in touch with the world beyond. I read the newspapers every week when my father is through with them. Strange that we haven’t heard that work on the Canal is finished.”
“It isn’t, but my role with it finished some time ago. Now I’m what I call an itinerate engineer. I’ve been involved in road building in Ecuador, and I’ve worked on private rail lines in Colombia and Ecuador.”
“Which is why he’s here,” said Enrique. “Now if you ladies will excuse us, we’ll retire to the library.” He rose and James followed suit.
The next morning, Lola looked up from her work when a man’s voice said, “Good morning, Señora Osman.” James tipped his hat. “I look forward to seeing you and your lovely children again at dinner this evening.”
“Yes, Señor Atkins, we’ll be there.” He nodded, leaving with a quick stride.
Lola continued her work with a smile on her face. It was nice to have someone new to relieve the tedium of the evening conversation.
“Does your wife mind when you go on extended business trips, Señor Atkins?” Lola asked that evening at dinner.
“Unfortunately, I never married. My work has always taken too much of my time and energy for me to think about settling down to have a family.”
“That is unfortunate.”
“And what about you? Is your husband away on business?”
“My husband did a great deal of travelling until…” Lola’s words caught in her throat. She swallowed, blinked, and continued, “…until his ship went down in a storm.”
“I’m so sorry, Señora, how insensitive of me to ask.” Lola protested that he had no way of knowing that she was a widow, but he was quiet for the remainder of the meal. Three days later Enrique sent word that the children could eat upstairs with Marta. That piqued Lola’s curiosity, but it was not until the coffee was served that her father cleared his throat for attention.
“I’m pleased to announce that Señor Atkins has completed his initial survey and decided my project to construct a private rail line connecting us with the city is feasible.”
Lola was astonished. “A private railroad?”
“Why would we want a railroad?” asked Jacoba. “It would cost a fortune and what would we do with it? Anyone who wants to visit us either comes in a carriage or on horseback. It sounds ridiculous.”
“Do we produce enough to justify a train?” asked Lola.
Enrique ignored his wife’s comment and looked at Lola. “You’re right; we don’t send enough to the city to justify a train—now. However, Victoria also sends produce to market, and so do Amelia and Ernestina, and so does every landowner between here and the city.” He sat back with a smile on his face.
“But if everyone used the train, all the produce would go to the market the same day. Won’t that put too much on the market and make the price too low?” she asked. “And how do you know they’d want a train? Jacoba’s probably right that it’ll be frightfully expensive.”
“You’re asking the right questions, Lola, but you’re not thinking big enough. If we get a carload of goods to the city in the morning, we can attach it to a larger train, and it’ll be in Lima the same day—still fresh. We can leave the local market to the small farmers. We have many hectares of unused land we could cultivate once we are no longer dependent on the local market. That was why I started the distillery—to have something that could be shipped long distances. Now my liqueur is not only distributed throughout South America, but in Europe and North America as well.”
“Not to be contrary, Father, but why can’t we just load our goods on a train when we take them to the city? I still don’t understand.”
“It’s all about time. Trains to Lima don’t stay at our station long enough for us to load our goods. With our own car, we merely switch it to another train and it’s on its way before we could even reach town with a wagon.”
“I see...”
“The other question you asked was about the landowners wanting a train. That’s where you ladies come into the plan.” Jacoba’s face lost its petulant expression, and she smiled expectantly. Lola was wary. “We’ll start with your sisters. We’ll invite their families for a dinner next week to present the plan to them and get their support. The next step will be to convince the other landowners.
“Jacoba, will you arrange the dinner? Make it Saturday so they can attend mass with us before leaving the next morning.
“Lola, make sure there are rooms ready for them to stay overnight.” Lola breathed a sigh of relief. She would not have to work with Jacoba. Getting the rooms ready was easy; she just had to tell Rosa and Marta.
Enrique pushed his chair back and asked Lola to join the men in the library. There was a large chart of the area on the table. The boundaries of various landholdings were drawn, and the names of the owners were printed neatly on each parcel.
Atkins’s finger followed a dark line across the map as he spoke. “This is the least expensive way to run the track. It runs parallel to the existing road and minimizes the need to clear additional land. I assume there’s an agreement already in place that gives access to the road and perhaps that could be widened to include the tracks.”
“Why does it stop here, at the edge of our property?” asked Lola. “That’s a long way from the producing fields and the distillery, so we still need to load wagons and load and unload everything twice.”
“The distillery’s too close to the house and the stables. The train would be too noisy and unsightly any closer.”
Lola studied the map a few more minutes. “How much difference would it make if the tracks ran from this bend in the road to Amelia’s instead? Of all the things marketed by the family, the pigs are the most trouble to get to market. The pigs are pretty far from her house because no matter how clean they keep them there is still a smell and they’re noisy, too.” She saw her father staring at her. “I’m sorry, it’s none of my business, but I remember hearing about problems getting the pigs to market, and Amelia’s husband has a reputation for being hard to convince when it comes to spending money. It might make it easier for him if he could run the pigs up a chute right into the train.”
“The distance is the same,” admitted James. “If you like, I can look at the terrain tomorrow and give you an opinion.”
“She has a good point,” said Enrique. “The rail would have a reason to end there instead of just being far away from everything.” He smiled at Lola.
“I asked you to join us this evening for a far different reason, but this was a great idea. It’s also related to your other job for the Saturday dinner. James and I’ll bring the men here after the dinner, but I want you to talk to Victoria and Amelia. If you convince your sisters, they’ll tip the scales.”
Lola nodded. “I’ll try.”
“The main reason I wanted you here is to help hammer out a detailed statement of costs and benefits that we can present to the others. We need concrete facts and figures before we present the plan.”
James gave several sheets of paper to Enrique. “I have a list of fairly standard costs for a hundred meters of track, so we just need to make the adjustments for the distance. I also have approximate costs of a lot of the equipment and other things you’ll need.” Lola sat at a small table with fresh paper and made notes. The three of them worked steadily with an easy interchange of ideas until Lola began to yawn.
The next morning James hesitated at the door to Lola’s office. She smiled and gave him a cheery greeting.
“I’m sorry about keeping you up so late last night,” he said.
Lola laughed. “We were all so engrossed that we forgot the time.”
James smiled. “I enjoyed working with you last night. You were impressive with the numbers, and you asked very good questions.”
“Thank you, Señor Atkins.”
<
br /> “James.”
“Thank you, James. I look forward to helping in any way I can.”
“It would be my pleasure, Señora,” said James as he turned to leave.
“And please, call me Lola.” That evening she asked James to tell her about the Panama Canal. He warmed to the topic at once. Enrique asked questions, and even Jacoba listened with interest.
“Did you know that the idea of a canal was first proposed in the 1500s? Amazing, isn’t it? Of course, there was no way they would have had the ability to do the actual construction; the sheer scale of the canal locks would have overwhelmed the technology of the times. The Panama Canal is only half as long as the Suez Canal, but it was much more complicated to build.
“Working on the Canal is the most momentous thing that has happened in my life—and probably the most momentous thing that will ever happen to me. How many engineers get a chance to work on a project of that scale?” James stopped talking and looked at Enrique. “Of course, building roads and rail lines is also exciting because I’m creating a project out of nothing but raw land. On the Canal I was a mere cog in the wheel, but in my present work, I’m the essential element that drives the project through to success.”
Enrique laughed. “I’m sure working on the Canal gave you valuable experience that you bring to new projects. How did your work go today? Is the new route that Lola proposed feasible?”
It looked to Lola as though a storm cloud passed over Jacoba’s face. “Lola’s determining the route of the rail?” she asked.
“Of course not,” said Lola. “That’s between the landowner and the engineer. I merely mentioned problems of getting different products to the train. I write down what they tell me to as they do the planning.”
“That’s far from all you do,” said James. Lola wanted to kick him under the table.
“Is the new route feasible?” repeated her father, drawing the attention away from her. Lola tried not to meet anyone’s eyes for the remainder of the meal.
“Possibly,” said James. “I was able to get through with difficulty today. I didn’t see anything to prevent us from going that way, but I need more time before I can give a definitive answer.”
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