House on the Lagoon

by Rosario Ferré

  The black insurrection of Saint-Domingue at the beginning of the nineteenth century had kept Puerto Rico in constant fear of slave revolt. Saint-Domingue had been burned to a cinder, and practically no sugar was being produced there. This had caused sugar production to increase on the other islands, and many new slaves had been brought to the plantations. By the middle of the nineteenth century, the black slave population in Puerto Rico totaled almost one-fourth of the inhabitants. The neighboring St. John and St. Croix had had horrendous slave insurrections and became floating torches, their white populations mercilessly slaughtered with sugarcane machetes.

  Slaves from Angola, Kongo, and Ndongo shared fundamental beliefs and language, part of a rich culture. They had their own religion, and their chieftains were spiritual leaders whose duty was to look out for their people. They believed in Mbanza Kongo, a mythical city of ivory minarets surrounded by a forest of date palms, with an underground river flowing beneath the city. The river separated the world of the living from the world of the dead, and was both a passage and a barrier. In Mbanza, each tribe had its own street and the inhabitants lived in peaceful coexistence; the fields of corn, wheat, and cereal around it belonged to everyone. The duty of every Angolan chieftain was to turn his own village into a Mbanza Kongo.

  Bernabé had been chieftain of his tribe, and when he first arrived in Guayama, he couldn’t understand why all the land on the island belonged to a few white hacendados dressed in white linen suits, with panama hats on their heads, when the rest of the population lived in abject poverty. Nor could he understand why he was baptized into a religion where God was called Jesus, when he had always prayed to Yemayá, Ogún, and Elegguá, whose powerful spirits had guided him, helping him heal the people of his tribe. But what had really overwhelmed him was that he was forbidden to speak Bantu with the other Angolans and Kongos living in La Quemada.

  Bernabé, like the rest of the adult bozal slaves recently arrived from Angola, spoke Bantu. But if anyone was caught speaking it, even if he was speaking only to himself, he would be punished with fifty lashes. Bernabé had a terrible time accepting this. One’s tongue was so deeply ingrained, more so even than one’s religion or tribal pride; it was like a root that went deep into one’s body and no one knew exactly where it ended. It was attached to one’s throat, to one’s neck, to one’s stomach, even to one’s heart.

  Bernabé was as black as midnight, and he was very intelligent. Five years after his arrival there was a false rumor that Spain had granted freedom to the slaves in its colonies but that the news was being kept from distant towns like Guayama, which were cut off from the rest of the world. Bernabé got wind of the rumor and began to organize a rebellion, swearing that if freedom wasn’t granted to them the slaves of La Quemada would fight to the death. He spoke secretly in Bantu with the other bozales and was able to plan an uprising without any of the criollo slaves—many of whom were loyal to their master finding out about it.

  The uprising was to take place on New Year’s Day, the only time slaves were allowed to leave the hacienda and celebrate in the town square, where they danced the bomba to the rhythm of African drums. Bernabé had organized his men into three groups. One group would go to the square to dance the bomba in front of the Casa del Rey, which served as an armory—where the Spanish militia kept its rifles and swords. This would create a diversion, so the militia wouldn’t notice anything was amiss. The second would set fire to the cane fields nearest to La Quemada, on the outskirts of town. And the third would be lying in wait behind the shrubs of sea grape by the road, to intercept the people of the hacienda, who on that morning would all be in church. When they came out of Mass the fire would be going full blast and they would run back to La Quemada. The slaves would ambush them. Bernabé had given orders that they were to take Monsieur Pellot and his family prisoner, without harming them. The Pellots would serve as hostages until the slaves got the mayor to declare officially that they were free. By that time, the bomba dancers would have stormed the armory and taken the rifles of the Spanish detachment, to give the abductors of the Pellot family the necessary support.

  Bernabé crouched silently behind the sea grape shrubs, trying to make himself invisible. He had seen the first wisps of smoke rising like black strands of hair against the blue of the sky, when Conchita, Monsieur Pellot’s twenty-year-old daughter, came galloping up the road on her mahogany-colored mare. Evidently she had overslept and her family had left her behind. She woke and saw the fire and was on her way to warn the family. But she didn’t get more than a mile from the town. The slaves sprang on her like cats and made her a prisoner; but her horse got away.

  When the riderless horse arrived at the church, the people of the town summoned the militia, marched to La Quemada, and were able to put out the fire. The revolt was aborted. Nothing happened to Conchita Pellot. The bomba dancers never had the chance to attack the armory, and the slaves were herded back to the hacienda and locked up in their quarters. With the help of the becerrillos, the fierce hunting dogs trained to follow a slave’s scent, the conspirators were rounded up. Five of them received a hundred lashes each; but Bernabé, the leader, was sentenced to a special punishment, as an example for the rest.

  Petra hadn’t been born yet, but her mother told her the story of what happened to her grandfather on that day, and Petra passed it on to us. The Sunday following the attempted revolt, all the slaves of La Quemada were brought to Guayama’s town square. His Excellency the Governor-General traveled all the way from San Juan to be present. His golden throne was brought from the capital in a mule cart and set under a huge laurel tree in the plaza, right in front of the whitewashed colonial church. Bernabé was brought out to the square after the special Mass celebrated in honor of the governor. They had tied his arms behind his back with rope, and his legs were secured to a post that had been thrust deep into the ground, so that he couldn’t move. Everybody waited. The governor was served coffee and sweet cakes on a silver tray passed around by a Spanish orderly as he conversed with the mayor, the parish priest, and the Pellot family. The other hacendados and their wives strolled around, elegantly dressed, wearing hats and gloves, delighted to have the island’s most powerful magistrate in town. A local guitar trio played a zarabanda under the trees and everyone was in a festive mood. Nobody paid any attention to Bernabé, who watched the spectacle with flashing eyes. In his tribe a man’s execution was a solemn affair; no one would have dared to play music, eat sweet cakes, or make small talk. He was tense, but he wanted to die with dignity. He had refused to eat or drink in the last twenty-four hours, so as not to soil the clean clothes his wife had brought to prison for him.

  Strangely enough, no firing squad or drummer was in sight. The slaves murmured restlessly under the trees, kept in line by the militiamen, who were there to protect the governor. All of a sudden Bernabé saw Pietri, the town barber, carrying his black instrument case and flanked by two Spanish soldiers in uniform. An aide walked by his side, holding a red-hot iron rod. Bernabé realized what was going to happen and strained desperately at his bindings, moving his head up and down like a strapped bull. When the barber opened his bag and took out his scalpel, Bernabé let out such a howl that the governor dropped his coffee cup on his lap and the Spanish orderly overturned his silver tray. “Olorún, ka kó koi bé!” Bernabé cried, looking straight up into the sun as he prayed to his gods to be merciful. One of the soldiers hit him on the head with a club and he passed out. The barber then pried his mouth open with a wooden spoon and sliced his tongue off, cauterizing the wound with the red-hot iron. So said Petra’s mother.

  Buenaventura liked to visit his clients, the owners of the small grocery stores that were supplied merchandise by Mendizabal & Co., and during one of these trips he had a stupid accident. He had driven all the way to Guayama, on the southeastern tip of the island, and when he reached the outskirts he felt the need to relieve himself. It had been a long trip, almost three hours up the winding mountain roads, and he preferred
to urinate behind some bushes rather than enter one of the establishments in town for that purpose. But as he stepped out of his car he twisted his right ankle.

  At first he didn’t pay any attention and strolled half a kilometer up the road to stretch his legs, but his foot began to swell, until it looked like an eggplant. He saw a stream cascading down the side of the hill to the left of the road, sat down on a large rock, and took off his shoe and sock. He was bathing his foot in the cool waters when Petra walked by. She knelt in front of him and, without a word, took some yaraná leaves from her pocket, wrapped his foot in them, and had him dip it in the stream again. Then she got up and went on down the road. A few minutes later Buenaventura could stand as if nothing had happened. He walked back to his Rolls-Royce, got in, and ordered the chauffeur to drive back to San Juan. The next day he sent the car to Guayama with orders to find the tall black medicine woman and bring her to him.

  Petra became Buenaventura’s personal servant. She took care of his clothes, polished his shoes, cooked him special dishes, and would have kissed the ground he walked on had he asked her to. She worshipped him like a god. Buenaventura came from a family of warriors like her grandfather, and if he had been born in Angola he would also have been a chieftain. Petra was very poor; the terrible punishment her grandfather had received had been a curse on his descendants. The Avilés family had the reputation of being a rebellious lot. Petra knew she wasn’t worth anything, but she meant one day to have Buenaventura’s heart.

  Petra settled herself in the cellar, where she built an altar to Elegguá, her favorite saint, behind the door of her room. Elegguá was so powerful he was known among blacks on the island as “He who is more than God.” He was a strange idol—I saw him many times when I went down to the cellar of the house on the lagoon. He looked like a peeled coconut; with a coconut’s dark brown skin, two knobs in place of eyes, and a small stem at the top of the head, which Petra rubbed with her finger whenever she asked him to do something for her. An unsmoked cigar, a red ball, and a large conch shell were always on the floor next to him. The tobacco and the red ball were to please Elegguá—he was a man and he liked to smoke cigars, but he was also a little boy and liked to play with toys. The conch shell was to speak with the dead. Through it Petra spoke with her ancestors, and it was from them she gleaned her medicinal wisdom.

  Rebecca assigned the bulk of the household chores to Petra—the cooking, cleaning, and laundering. When Quintín was born, Petra served as midwife. When the birth pains commenced, Rebecca panicked. She was twenty-seven and was sure she was going to die in labor. She lay in bed screaming, “I can’t do it! I can’t! The baby’s head is too large, it will never come out!” Petra went to her room and rubbed Elegguá’s head. Then she went back upstairs, knelt by Rebecca’s bed, and gently massaged her belly with coconut oil for the next twenty-four hours, repeating the words “Olorún, ka kó koi bé!” until the baby found its way out of Rebecca’s womb.

  Quintín was born in November of 1928. He was born before Rebecca’s pregnancy reached full-term—he was an eight-month baby—and as she managed to hide her swollen abdomen under layers of silk gauze, his birth went almost unnoticed. Petra brought her niece Eulodia—her first relative to come to the house on the lagoon from the slum across the mangrove swamp—to take care of the baby and be its wet nurse. Most of the time Quintín’s crib stayed in the kitchen, which was in the cellar. Quintín got used to playing on the cool earthen floor of the servants’ quarters.

  Two weeks after his birth, Rebecca went back to her artist friends, without even spending half of the forty days devoted to San Gerardo in bed. She was soon totally involved in her dancing and other creative pursuits and for the next seven years led an intense artistic life.

  Rebecca liked to dance for her friends on Pavel’s golden terrace. One day one of her friends brought a copy of Salomé, Oscar Wilde’s drama, to the literary salon. They read it aloud and found it extraordinary, and one of them translated it into Spanish. Then they decided to act it out on the terrace one evening. It was a risky decision. Buenaventura would be having guests of his own that night, and they might stop by. But Rebecca was adamant. She was determined to be true to her artistic vocation, as she had promised Pavel, and announced that she would play Salomé herself, and do the Dance of the Seven Veils.

  She visited a famous couturier, who designed a beautiful costume for her, and she went to see a local coppersmith, who took her measurements and made her a special bustier. Two golden goblets would cover her breasts, which she would remove at the end of the performance and use to pour water from the lagoon on St. John the Baptist’s severed head—a wooden sculpture an art collector had agreed to lend them. It was supposed to be a literary joke as well as a statement, a kind of local baptism of San Juan’s revered patron saint by the members of the salon.

  The day of the performance, everything went according to plan. When the moment arrived, Rebecca appeared onstage and began her dance. She took off each of her seven veils and was almost stark naked, except for the golden goblets, when Buenaventura’s Rolls-Royce arrived in front of the house and he walked up the stairs with several of his friends. When he saw Rebecca, he didn’t say a word. He simply took off his cordovan belt, livid with rage, and flogged her until she fell unconscious to the floor.

  Quintín was seven years old. He got out of bed when he heard music, and he wandered out into the living room, which opened onto the terrace. It was dark, but he saw everything. His mother’s naked body remained etched in his mind all his life. When Quintín told me this story on the veranda of the house on Aurora Street many years later, his voice shook with emotion. Rebecca’s dance had been a strange ceremony; her purple veils fell to the floor one by one, until a single streak of gauze covered her golden pubis. Quintín was both fascinated and terrified by what he saw.

  It took Rebecca several weeks to recover. When she was finally able to get up from bed and join the family at dinner, she hardly dared look at her husband. She sat there like a broken doll, dressed in one of her flowing gauze gowns, and wouldn’t say a word. Quintín didn’t look at her; when he kissed her good night he had to close his eyes, because he was scared to see her bruises up close. Buenaventura was convinced Pavel was to blame for the whole situation. “It’s all his fault she behaved so shockingly,” he would grumble when he saw Rebecca so silent and withdrawn. “If she hadn’t known him, she wouldn’t have lost touch with reality. I had to give her a lesson to make her come down to earth.”

  When Buenaventura got together with his cronies at the Spanish Casino’s bar, he would say to them over sherry and aperitifs: “Pavel may be dead and gone, but his house is still breeding fantasies around us like Anopheles mosquitoes. If Rebecca goes mad, it will be his fault; everyone knows his buildings are jinxed and the owners end up in an asylum. But I’m not going to let that happen to us. My aunts brought me up in Valdeverdeja to be a hardworking squire, even if that meant learning how to turn hogs into hams and knead bread out of stones.”

  Buenaventura was worried for other reasons, too. The Spanish Civil War had broken out in July of 1936. Sales were slow. Merchandise from Spain—the wines, olives, and white asparagus which made up a good part of Mendizabal’s staples—began to grow scarce. Moreover, he had many friends among General Francisco Franco’s Nationalist forces, who had invaded Spain from Morocco and were fighting to overthrow the Republic. He had heard that many of the artists in Spain were sympathetic to the Republic: Picasso, Pablo Casals, the poet García Lorca, and he vilified them every time he had the chance. He was convinced that Rebecca’s artist friends were socialists and perhaps even Communists. It didn’t matter that Rebecca repeatedly pointed out that her friends were the sons and daughters of some of the richest families on the island. Buenaventura still saw them as dangerous, because now all art to him was dangerous.

  One day he came home for lunch, and as he sat with Rebecca at the table in Pavel’s beautiful dining room, he looked around reproachfully. “W
e need to get rid of all this useless bric-a-brac,” he said loudly, taking in at a single gesture the stained-glass lamp hanging from the ceiling, the lotus water goblets on the table, and the silver wine cooler on the buffet. “Tear it all down and let fresh air and sunlight into these rooms. This house is too dark, and only vermin like to breed in twilight.” When the servants brought him a tray of partridges stuffed with French plums, he refused to eat them. He ordered Petra to go back to his aunts’ hearty recipes, like pig’s feet stewed with chickpeas, or white-bean fabadas with stewed chorizos, which made one think straight and not lose one’s bearings.

  A few days later Buenaventura made his threats come true. He moved Rebecca and Quintín to a hotel, called in a demolition crew, and had Pavel’s house razed to the ground. In twenty-four hours the Tiffany-glass windows and pearl-shell skylights were shattered to pieces, and Rebecca’s mosaic rainbow was ground to bits. In place of the old house, Buenaventura built a Spanish Revival mansion with granite turrets, bare brick floors, and a forbidding granite stairway with a banister made of iron spears. From the ceiling in the entrance hall he hung his pièce de résistance, a spiked wooden wheel that had been used to torture the Moors during the Spanish Conquest, which he ordered made into a lamp. The construction went quickly, and the family was able to move into the new house in less than a year.

  “I want us to have more children, and they must grow up strong and healthy,” Buenaventura announced to Rebecca once they had moved in. “From now on, everyone in this house will get up at daybreak, take a cold shower before going to Mass, and work for his keep.” Rebecca laughed to herself. It had taken her eleven years to get pregnant with Quintín, and she doubted very much that she would have any more children. But Petra began to give her brews to drink, and they were very effective. She soon found that she was pregnant again, and was surprisingly submissive.