Of Love and Other Demons
Page 14
Then Bernarda opened her heart so that he could see what was there in the light of day. She told him how her father had sent her to him, using the pretext of herrings and pickles, how they had deceived him with the old ruse of reading his palm, how they had decided she would violate him when he played the innocent, and how they had planned the cold, certain move of conceiving Sierva María and trapping him for life. The only thing he had to thank her for was that she did not have the heart to take the final step planned with her father, which was to pour laudanum in his soup so they would not have to suffer his presence.
‘I put the noose around my own neck,’ she said. ‘But I’m not sorry. It was too much to expect that on top of everything else I’d have to love that poor premature creature, or you, when you’ve been the cause of my misfortunes.’
But the final step in her degradation had been the loss of Judas Iscariote. Searching for him in other men, she had given herself over to unrestrained fornication with the slaves on the plantation, something she had always thought repugnant before daring it for the first time. She chose them in crews and dispatched them one by one on the paths between the canebrakes until the fermented honey and the cacao tablets shattered her beauty, and she became swollen and ugly, and they did not have the courage to take on so much body. Then she began to pay. At first with trinkets for the younger ones, according to their looks and size, and in the end with pure gold for anyone she could find. By the time she discovered that they were fleeing in droves to San Basilio de Palenque to escape her insatiable craving, it was too late.
‘Then I learned that I would have been capable of hacking them to pieces with a machete,’ she said, not shedding a tear. ‘And not only them but you and the girl, and my skinflint of a father, and everyone else who turned my life to shit. But I was no longer in any condition to kill anybody.’
They sat in silence, watching night fall over the brambles. A flock of distant animals could be heard on the horizon, and a woman’s inconsolable voice calling them by name, one by one, until it was dark. The Marquis sighed.
‘I see now that I have nothing to thank you for.’
He stood without haste, put the chair back in its place, and left the way he had come, not saying goodbye and not carrying a light. All that remained of him – a skeleton eaten away by turkey buzzards – was found two summers later on a path leading nowhere.
Martina Laborde had spent that entire morning embroidering in order to complete a piece that had taken longer than expected. She had her midday meal in Sierva María’s cell, and then went to her own cell for a siesta. In the afternoon, as she was finishing the last stitches, she spoke to the girl with unusual sadness.
‘If you ever leave this prison, or if I leave first, always remember me,’ she said. ‘It will be my only glory.’
Sierva María did not understand until the following day, when she was awakened by the warder shouting that Martina was not in her cell. They searched every corner of the convent and could not find a trace of her except for a note, written in her flowery hand, which Sierva María discovered under her pillow: I will pray three times a day that the two of you will be very happy.
She was still overwhelmed by surprise when the Abbess came in with the vicar and other reverend sisters of her infantry, and a squad of guards armed with muskets. She stretched out a choleric hand to strike Sierva María and shouted: ‘You are an accomplice and you will be punished.’
The girl raised her free hand with a determination that stopped the Abbess in her tracks.
‘I saw them leave,’ she said.
The Abbess was stunned.
‘She was not alone?’
‘There were six of them,’ said Sierva María.
It did not seem possible, and even less so that they could leave by the terrace, whose only point of egress was the fortified courtyard. ‘They had bat’s wings,’ said Sierva María, flapping her arms. ‘They spread them on the terrace, and then they carried her away, flying, flying, to the other side of the ocean.’ The captain of the patrol crossed himself in fear and fell to his knees.
‘Hail Mary Most Pure,’ he said.
‘Conceived without sin,’ they all said in a chorus.
It was a perfect escape, planned by Martina in absolute secrecy and down to the smallest detail, ever since she had discovered that Cayetano was spending his nights in the convent. The only thing she did not foresee, or did not care about, was the need to close the sewer entrance from the inside to avoid arousing suspicion. Those who investigated the escape found the tunnel open, explored it, learned the truth, and sealed both ends without delay. Sierva María was forced to move to a locked cell in the pavilion of those interred in life. That night, beneath a splendid moon, Cayetano tore his hands trying to break through the seal on the tunnel.
Driven by a demented force, he ran to find the Marquis. He pushed open the main door without knocking and entered the deserted house, whose interior light was the same as the light in the street, for the brilliant moon made the whitewashed walls seem transparent. Clean and neat, the furnishings in place, flowers in the urns: everything was perfect in the abandoned house. The groan of the hinges aroused the mastiffs, but Dulce Olivia silenced them with a martial command. Cayetano saw her in the green shadows of the courtyard, beautiful, phosphorescent, wearing the tunic of a marquise, her hair adorned by fresh camellias with a frenzied scent, and he raised his hand to form a cross with his index finger and thumb.
‘In the name of God: Who are you?’ he asked.
‘A soul in torment,’ she said. ‘And you?’
‘I am Cayetano Delaura,’ he said, ‘and I have come on bended knee to beg the Señor Marquis to listen to me for a moment.’
Dulce Olivia’s eyes flashed in anger.
‘The Señor Marquis is not interested in listening to a scoundrel,’ she said.
‘And who are you to speak with so much command?’
‘I am the queen of this house,’ she said.
‘For the love of God,’ said Delaura. ‘Tell the Marquis that I have come to talk to him about his daughter.’ And with his hand on his heart, he came to the point and said, ‘I am dying of love for her.’
‘One more word and I will turn loose the dogs,’ said Dulce Olivia in indignation, and she pointed to the door, ‘Get out of here.’
The power of her authority was so great that Cayetano backed out of the house in order not to lose sight of her.
On Tuesday, when Abrenuncio entered his cubicle at the hospital, he found Delaura devastated by mortal vigils. He told the doctor about everything, from the real reasons for his punishment to his nights of love in the cell. Abrenuncio was perplexed.
‘I would have imagined anything about you except these extremes of lunacy.’
Cayetano, bewildered in turn, asked, ‘Have you never gone through this?’
‘Never, my son,’ said Abrenuncio. ‘Sex is a talent, and I do not have it.’
Abrenuncio tried to dissuade him. He said that love was an emotion contra natura that condemned two strangers to a base and unhealthy dependence, and the more intense it was, the more ephemeral. But Cayetano did not hear him. He was obsessed with fleeing as far as possible from the oppression of the Christian world.
‘Only the Marquis can help us with regard to the law,’ he said. ‘I wanted to get down on my knees and plead with him, but I did not find him at home.’
‘You never will,’ said Abrenuncio. ‘He heard rumors that you attempted to abuse the girl. And now I see that from a Christian’s point of view, he was not mistaken.’ He looked into Cayetano’s eyes. ‘Aren’t you afraid you will be damned?’
‘I believe I already am, but not by the Holy Spirit,’ said Delaura without alarm. ‘I have always believed He attributes more importance to love than to faith.’
Abrenuncio could not hide the wonder caused in him by this man so recently freed from the shackles of reason. But he made no false promises, above all when the Holy Office loomed.
&nb
sp; ‘You people have a religion of death that fills you with the joy and courage to confront it,’ he said. ‘I do not: I believe the only essential thing is to be alive.’
Cayetano raced to the convent. In the light of day he walked through the service door and crossed the garden, taking no precautions, convinced he had been made invisible through the power of prayer. He climbed to the second floor, walked down a solitary corridor with low ceilings that connected the two sections of the convent, and entered the silent, rarefied world of those interred in life. Without realizing it, he had walked past the new cell where Sierva María wept for him. He had almost reached the prison pavilion when a shout at his back stopped him.
‘Halt!’
He turned and saw a nun with a veil covering her face and a crucifix held high against him. He took a step toward her, but the nun placed Christ between them. ‘Vade retro!’ she shouted.
He heard another voice behind him: ‘Vade retro.’ And then another, and another: ‘Vade retro.’ He turned around several times and realized he was in the middle of a circle of phantasmagoric nuns with veiled faces who brandished their crucifixes and pursued him with their cries:
‘Vade retro, Satana!’
Cayetano had reached the end of his strength. He was handed over to the Holy Office and condemned at a public trial that cast suspicions of heresy over him and provoked disturbances among the populace and controversies in the bosom of the Church. Through a special act of grace, he served his sentence as a nurse at the Amor de Dios Hospital, where he lived many years with his patients, eating and sleeping with them on the ground, and washing in their troughs with water they had used, but never achieving his confessed desire to contract leprosy.
Sierva María waited for him in vain. After three days she stopped eating, in an explosion of rebelliousness that exacerbated the signs of her possession. Shattered by the downfall of Cayetano, by the indecipherable death of Father Aquino, by the public resonance of a misfortune that went beyond his wisdom and his power, the Bishop resumed the exorcism with an energy that was inconceivable, given his condition and his age. This time Sierva María, confined in a straitjacket, her skull shaved by a razor, confronted him with satanic ferocity, speaking in tongues or with the shrieks of infernal birds. On the second day the immense bellowing of maddened cattle could be heard, the earth trembled and it was no longer possible to think that Sierva María was not at the mercy of all the demons of hell. When she returned to her cell, she was given an enema of holy water, which was the French method for expelling any devils that might remain in her belly.
The struggle continued for three more days. Although she had not eaten for a week, Sierva María managed to extricate one leg and kick her heel into the Bishop’s lower abdomen, knocking him to the ground. Only then did they realize she had been able to free herself because her body was so emaciated that the straps no longer confined her. The ensuing outrage made it advisable to interrupt the exorcism – an action favored by the Ecclesiastical Council but opposed by the Bishop.
Sierva María never knew what happened to Cayetano Delaura, why he never came back with his basket of delicacies from the arcades and his insatiable nights. On the twenty-ninth of May, having lost her will to endure any more, she dreamed again of the window looking out on a snow-covered field from which Cayetano Delaura was absent and to which he would never return. In her lap she held a cluster of golden grapes that grew back as soon as she ate them. But this time she pulled them off not one by one but two by two, hardly breathing in her longing to strip the cluster of its last grape. The warder who came in to prepare her for the sixth session of exorcism found her dead of love in her bed, her eyes radiant and her skin like that of a newborn baby. Strands of hair gushed like bubbles as they grew back on her shaved head.
GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ
CHRONICLE OF A DEATH FORETOLD
COLLECTED STORIES
IN EVIL HOUR
INNOCENT ERENDIRA AND OTHER STORIES
LEAF STORM
LIVING TO TELL THE TALE
LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA
MEMORIES OF MY MELANCHOLY WHORES
NEWS OF A KIDNAPPING
NO ONE WRITES TO THE COLONEL
ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE
STRANGE PILGRIMS
THE AUTUMN OF THE PATRIARCH
THE GENERAL IN HIS LABYRINTH
THE STORY OF A SHIPWRECKED SAILOR
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GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ
CHRONICLE OF A DEATH FORETOLD
‘My favourite book by one of the world’s greatest authors. You’re in the hands of a master’ Mariella Frostrup
‘On the day they were going to kill him, Santiago Nasar got up at five-thirty in the morning to wait for the boat the bishop was coming on …’
When newly-wed Ángela Vicario and Bayardo San Román are left to their wedding night, Bayardo discovers that his new wife is no virgin. Disgusted, he returns Ángela to her family home that very night, where her humiliated mother beats her savagely and her two brothers demand to know her violator, whom she names as Santiago Nasar.
As he wakes to thoughts of the previous night’s revelry, Santiago is unaware of the slurs that have been cast against him. But with Ángela’s brothers set on avenging their family honour, soon the whole town knows who they plan to kill, where, when and why.
‘A masterpiece’ Evening Standard
‘A work of high explosiveness – the proper stuff of Nobel prizes. An exceptional novel’ The Times
‘Brilliant writer, brilliant book’ Guardian
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GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ
COLLECTED STORIES
‘The stories are rich and unsettling, confident and eloquent. They are magical’ John Updike
Sweeping through crumbling towns, travelling fairs and windswept ports, Gabriel García Márquez introduces a host of extraordinary characters and communities in his mesmerising tales of everyday life: smugglers, bagpipers, the President and Pope at the funeral of Macondo’s revered matriarch; a very old angel with enormous wings. Teeming with the magical oddities for which his novels are loved, Márquez’s stories are a delight.
‘These stories abound with love affairs, ruined beauty, and magical women. It is essence of Márquez’ Guardian
‘Of all the living authors known to me, only one is undoubtedly touched by genius: Gabriel García Márquez’ Sunday Telegraph
‘Márquez writes in this lyrical, magical language that no one else can do’ Salman Rushdie
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GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ
IN EVIL HOUR
‘A masterly book’ Guardian
‘César Montero was dreaming about elephants. He’d seen them at the movies on Sunday …’
Only moments later, César is led away by police as they clear the crowds away from the man he has just killed.
But César is not the only man to be riled by the rumours being spread in his Colombian hometown – under the cover of darkness, someone creeps through the streets sticking malicious posters to walls and doors. Each night the respectable townsfolk retire to their beds fearful that they will be the subject of the following morning’s lampoons.
As paranoia seeps through the town and the delicate veil of tranquility begins to slip, can the perpetrator be uncovered before accusation and violence leave the inhabitants’ sanity in tatters?
‘In Evil Hour was the book which was to inspire my own career as a novelist. I owe my writing voice to that one book!’ Jim Crace
‘Belongs to the very best of Márquez’s work … Should on no account be missed’ Financial Times
‘A splendid achievement’ The Times
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GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ
INNOCENT ERÉNDIRA AND OTHER STORIES
‘These stories abound with love affairs, ruined beauty, and magical women. It is the essence of Márquez’ Guardian
‘Eréndira was bathing her
grandmother when the wind of misfortune began to blow …’
Whilst her grotesque and demanding grandmother retires to bed, Eréndira still has floors to wash, sheets to iron, and a peacock to feed. The never-ending chores leave the young girl so exhausted that she collapses into bed with the candle still glowing on a nearby table – and is fast asleep when it topples over …
Eight hundred and seventy-two thousand, three hundred and fifteen pesos, her grandmother calculates, is the amount that Eréndira must repay her for the loss of the house. As she is dragged by her grandmother from town to town and hawked to soldiers, smugglers and traders, Eréndira feels herself dying. Can the love of a virgin save the young whore from her hell?
‘It becomes more and more fun to read. It shows what “fabulous” really means’ Time Out
‘Márquez writes in this lyrical, magical language that no-one else can do’ Salman Rushdie
‘One of this century’s most evocative writers’ Anne Tyler
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GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ
LEAF STORM
‘Márquez writes in this lyrical, magical language that no-one else can do’ Salman Rushdie
‘Suddenly, as if a whirlwind had set down roots in the centre of the town, the banana company arrived, pursued by the leaf storm’
As a blizzard of warehouses and amusement parlours and slums descends on the small town of Macondo, the inhabitants reel at the accompanying stench of rubbish that makes their home unrecognizable. When the banana company leaves town as fast as it arrived, all they are left with is a void of decay.
Living in this devastated and soulless wasteland is one last honourable man, the Colonel, who is determined to fulfil a longstanding promise, no matter how unpalatable it may be. With the death of the detested Doctor, he must provide an honourable burial – and incur the wrath of the rest of Macondo, who would rather see the Doctor rot, forgotten and unattended.