The House of the Spirits

by Isabel Allende

  “Watch out, patrón. Don’t start taking the law into your own hands,” they warned me. “Things have changed a lot since the days of the Sánchez brothers.” But I didn’t want to listen. What would the law have done in a case like this? Nothing.

  A couple of weeks went by without incident. I rode out to inspect my lands, paid a few visits to the neighboring haciendas, kept my eye on the tenants. I was convinced they were hiding the boy from me. I raised the amount of the reward and threatened to have the guardsmen dismissed for incompetence, but all to no avail. With each passing hour my anger grew. I began to drink as I never had before, not even when I was a bachelor. I slept badly and dreamt again of Rosa. One night I dreamt I was beating her the way I had Clara, and that her teeth also fell out on the floor. I woke up screaming, but I was all alone, and there was no one to hear me. I was so depressed I even stopped shaving, didn’t change my clothes, and I don’t think I bathed either. Everything I ate tasted sour to me. I had a taste of bile in my mouth. I broke my knuckles banging on the walls, and rode a horse to death galloping off the fury that was eating me alive. No one came near me in those days; the maids’ hands shook when they served my food, which only made me madder.

  One day I was in the hallway smoking a cigarette just before the siesta when a dark little boy appeared in front of me and stood there silently. His name was Esteban García. He was my grandson, but I didn’t know it. Only now, with all the terrible things that happened at his hand, have I learned how we were related. He was also the grandson of Pancha García, a sister of Pedro Segundo, whom I have to admit I don’t remember.

  “What do you want, kid?” I asked him.

  “I know where Pedro Tercero García is,” he told me.

  I gave such a jump that I upset the wicker chair I had been sitting in. I grabbed the boy by the shoulders and shook him.

  “Where? Where is the bastard?” I shouted.

  “Are you going to give me the reward?” the child stammered, frightened to death.

  “Don’t worry,” I answered. “But first I want to be sure that you’re not lying. Let’s go. Take me to where that worm is hiding.”

  I went to get my rifle and we left the house. The child told me we would have to go on horseback, because Pedro Tercero was hidden in the Lebus’s sawmill, several miles from Tres Marías. How could I have failed to think of that? It was a perfect hideout. The Germans’ sawmill was always shut at that time of year, and it was hard to reach from all the main roads.

  “How did you find out that Pedro Tercero García is hiding there?”

  “Everybody knows but you, sir,” he replied.

  We took off at a trot, because in that terrain you couldn’t gallop. The sawmill is set into a mountainside, where a horse can’t go fast. With the effort of the climb, the horses’ hooves struck sparks from the stones. I think the noise of their hooves was the only sound for miles around on that sultry, quiet afternoon. When we came into the forest, the landscape changed and it grew cooler; the trees rose up before us in narrow rows that barely let the sun in. The ground was a soft, reddish carpet into which the horses’ feet gently sank. We were surrounded by silence. The boy rode ahead of me, bareback on his horse, as close to the animal as if they were a single body, and I was behind, taciturn, brooding over my rage. At moments sadness swept over me, stronger than the fury I had been hatching all this time, stronger than the hatred I felt for Pedro Tercero García. It must have been two hours before we glimpsed the low sheds of the sawmill, arranged in a half circle in a clearing in the woods. The smell of wood and pine was so intense that for a moment I was distracted from the business at hand. I was overcome by the landscape, the forest, the silence. But that momentary weakness lasted only a second.

  “Wait here and look after the horses. Don’t move!”

  I dismounted. The boy took the reins and I began to walk in a crouch, my rifle in my hands. I didn’t feel my sixty years or the pain in my old crushed bones. I was propelled forward by the thought of revenge. A frail column of smoke was rising from the roof of one of the sheds, and I saw a horse tied to the door. I deduced that that was where Pedro Tercero must be hiding, so I headed toward that shed. My teeth were chattering with impatience. I had decided not to kill him with the first shot, because that would be too quick and all my pleasure would be gone in only a minute. I had waited so long for this moment that I wanted to savor it, but I also didn’t want to give him a chance to escape. He was much younger than I, and if I didn’t take him by surprise I was done for. My shirt was soaked with sweat and was clinging to my body. A veil had descended over my eyes, but I felt twenty years old and had the strength of a bull. I crept silently into the shed, my heart pounding like a drum. I found myself inside a large warehouse whose floor was covered with sawdust. There were huge stacks of wood, and some machines covered with green canvas to protect them from the dust. I continued inching forward, hiding behind the woodpiles, until suddenly I saw him. Pedro Tercero García was stretched out on the floor, his head on a folded blanket. He was sound asleep. Next to him was a small fire and a crock for boiling water. I stopped short, taken aback, and stared at him with all the hatred in the world, trying to fix in my memory forever that dark face with the almost childlike features, on which the beard looked like part of a disguise, and I could not understand what my daughter had seen in that ordinary-looking longhair. He must have been about twenty-five, but asleep he looked like a boy. I had to make an enormous effort to stop the shaking in my hands and teeth. I raised my gun and took a few steps forward. I was so close to him that I could have blown his head off without even aiming, but I decided to wait a few seconds for my pulse to quiet down. That moment was my downfall. I believe the habit of hiding must have sharpened Pedro Tercero García’s hearing, and instinct told him that he was in danger. In a split second he must have waked up, but his eyes remained closed. He alerted all his muscles and concentrated all his energy into a single unbelievable leap that left him standing three feet away from where my bullet landed. I had no chance to aim again, for he crouched down, picked up a piece of wood, and hurled it at me, striking my gun, which flew out of my hand. I remember feeling a wave of panic at being suddenly unarmed, but then I realized that he was more scared than I was. We looked at each other in silence, panting, each awaiting the next move of the other. Then I saw the axe. It was so close to me that I could reach it by hardly extending my arm, which is what I did without a second thought. I took the axe and, with a wild scream that rose from my guts, I rushed forward, prepared to rip him down the middle with a single stroke. The axe gleamed in the air and fell on Pedro Tercero Garcia. A shower of blood hit me in the face.

  At the very last second he raised his arms to stop the axe and the edge of the tool sliced off three fingers of his right hand. The force of the blow thrust me forward and I fell on my knees. He held his hand to his chest and ran out the door, leaping over the woodpiles and the logs on the floor. He reached his horse, jumped into the saddle, and disappeared with a terrifying scream into the shadows of the pine trees. He left a trail of blood behind him.

  I remained on all fours, crouching and gasping for breath. It took me several minutes to calm down and realize that I hadn’t killed him. My first reaction was one of relief, because the feel of his warm blood on my face had quickly taken the edge off my hatred, and I had to make a real effort to remember how badly I had wanted to kill him to explain the violence that was suffocating me, making my chest nearly burst, my ears buzz, and my eyes cloud over. I opened my mouth in desperation, trying to get some air into my lungs, and managed to rise to my feet, but I began to shake. I took two steps and then I fell, landing on top of a pile of boards, sick to my stomach and unable to catch my breath. I thought I was going to faint. My heart was leaping in my chest like a machine gone wild. A long time must have passed. I don’t know. Finally I looked up. I rose to my feet again and picked up my gun.

  The child Esteban Gar
cía was by my side, staring at me silently. He had picked up the sliced-off fingers and was holding them like a bouquet of bloody asparagus. I couldn’t keep from retching then. My mouth filled with saliva, and I vomited all over my boots while the boy smiled impassively.

  “Drop that, you filthy brat!” I shouted, striking him in the hand.

  The fingers fell onto the sawdust, staining it red.

  I picked up my gun and walked trembling toward the door. The cool evening air and the overwhelming scent of pine hit me in the face, bringing me back to reality. I inhaled eagerly, gulping the air. With great difficulty I made my way to my horse. My whole body ached and my hands were numb. The boy followed me.

  We returned to Tres Marías, groping our way in the dark, which fell quickly once the sun had set. The trees made it difficult to advance; the horses tripped on the stones and brush; branches whipped us in the face. I was in another world, confused and terrified at my own violence, grateful that Pedro Tercero had escaped, because I knew that if he had fallen to the floor I would have continued striking with the axe till I killed him, destroyed him, cut him into little pieces with the same determination that had made me want to shoot him between the eyes.

  I know what people say about me. Among other things they say that I’ve killed several men. They’ve accused me of murdering some peasants. It isn’t true. If it were, I wouldn’t mind admitting it, because at my age you can say those things with impunity. I don’t have long to go before I’ll be in the ground. I’ve never killed anyone, and the closest I came to doing so was the day I picked up an axe and threw myself on Pedro Tercero García.

  It was night when we got home. I eased down from the horse and walked toward the terrace. I had completely forgotten about the little boy who had accompanied me, because the whole trip back he hadn’t said a word, so I was surprised to feel him tugging at my sleeve.

  “Now can I have the reward, sir?” he asked.

  I sent him packing with a slap.

  “There’s no reward for traitors!” I snarled. “And furthermore, I forbid you to tell anyone about what happened! You understand?”

  I entered the house and went directly to the liquor cabinet. The brandy burned my throat and restored a bit of warmth to my body. Then I lay down on the sofa, breathing hard. My heart was still throbbing and I felt dizzy. With the back of my hand I wiped off the tears that were running down my cheeks.

  Outside, Esteban García stood before the bolted door. Like me, he was weeping with rage.

  — SEVEN —

  THE BROTHERS

  Clara and Blanca arrived in the city looking like disaster victims. Both had swollen faces, eyes red from crying, and rumpled clothes from the long train ride. Blanca, weaker than her mother although she was taller, younger, and heavier, sighed when she was awake and sobbed while she slept, in an uninterrupted lament that had begun the day of the beating. But Clara had no patience with misfortune, so when they reached the big house on the corner, which was as empty and lugubrious as a mausoleum, she decided that there had been enough weeping and moaning and that the time had come to bring some joy into their lives. She insisted that her daughter help her in hiring new servants, opening the shutters, removing the sheets that had been draped over the furniture and lampshades, unlocking the padlocks on the doors, shaking off the dust, and letting in light and air. They were in the middle of doing all this when the unmistakable aroma of wild violets invaded the house, alerting them to the arrival of the three Mora sisters, who, whether out of telepathy or sheer affection, had come to visit. Their happy chatter, cold compresses, spiritual counsel, and personal charm restored the bruised bodies and grieving souls of both mother and daughter.

  “We’ll have to buy some new birds,” Clara said, looking out the window at the empty cages and at the weed-choked garden where the statues of the Olympian gods stood naked and covered with pigeon droppings.

  “I don’t understand how you can think about birds when you don’t even have your teeth, Mama,” said Blanca, who was still not used to her mother’s new, toothless expression.

  Clara saw to everything. Within two weeks the cages were filled with new birds and she had ordered a porcelain bridge that could be attached to her remaining molars, but the thing turned out to be so uncomfortable that she preferred wearing her denture on a ribbon around her neck. She put it in only to eat and, on occasion, for social gatherings. Clara brought life back to the house. She ordered the cook to keep a stove always lit and told her she should be prepared to feed a large number of guests at a moment’s notice. She knew why she said it. Within a few days her spiritualist friends, the Rosicrucians, the Theosophists, the acupuncturists, the telepathists, the rainmakers, the peripatetics, the Seventh-Day Adventists, and the hungry or otherwise needy artists began to appear—all those who had habitually been part of Clara’s court. Clara reigned over them like a small, happy, toothless queen. It was then that she began her first serious attempts to communicate with extraterrestrial beings and that, as she herself noted, she began to have her first doubts regarding the spiritual messages she received from the pendulum and the three-legged table. She often said that perhaps it was not the souls of the dead, wandering in another dimension, but rather beings from other planets who were trying to establish a relationship with earthlings but who, because they were made of an intangible matter, could easily be confused with souls. That scientific explanation enchanted Nicolás, but it did not enjoy the same reception with the Mora sisters, who were extremely conservative.

  Blanca lived wholly apart from all these doubts. To her, beings from other planets belonged in the same category as souls, and therefore she could not fathom her mother’s passionate interest in identifying them. She was very busy with the house, because Clara had once more turned her back on all the household chores, claiming that she had never had an aptitude for them. Keeping up the big house on the corner required an army of servants, and her mother’s entourage forced them to maintain twenty-four-hour shifts in the kitchen. Grains and grasses had to be prepared for some, vegetables and raw fish for others, fruit and sour milk for the three Mora sisters, and succulent meat dishes, desserts, and other poisons for Jaime and Nicolás, who had insatiable appetites and still had not developed their own favorite dishes. In time, both of them would know hunger: Jaime out of solidarity with the poor, and Nicolás to purify his soul. But in those days they were still two robust youngsters eager to enjoy life’s pleasures.

  Jaime had begun at the university and Nicolás was wandering about in search of his destiny. They owned a prehistoric car, which they had bought with the proceeds from the silver platters they had stolen from their parents’ house. They called it Covadonga, in memory of their del Valle grandparents. Covadonga had been taken apart and put back together with other pieces so many times that it barely ran. It moved with a deafening roar from its rusty motor, spewing smoke and bolts from its exhaust pipe. The brothers shared it solomonically: on even days it belonged to Jaime, and on odd to Nicolás.

  Clara was very happy to be living with her sons and was determined to establish a friendly relationship with them. She had had very little contact with them when they were small, and in her haste to see them “become men,” she had lost the best hours with her sons and been forced to keep all her tender feelings to herself. Now that they had attained adult proportions and were finally grown, she could give herself the pleasure of spoiling them as she should have when they were small, but it was too late, for the twins had been raised without her caresses, and they no longer needed them. Clara realized that her sons did not belong to her. She did not lose her head over this or her optimistic frame of mind. She accepted the young men as they were and was prepared to enjoy their company without expecting anything in return.

  Blanca, however, grumbled because her brothers had transformed the house into a pigsty. In their wake they left a trail of destruction, damage, and noise. The young woman was gaining
weight before everybody’s eyes and daily grew more languid and ill-tempered. Jaime noticed his sister’s belly and went to see his mother.

  “Mama, I think Blanca’s pregnant,” he said without beating around the bush.

  “I thought so myself, dear,” his mother said, sighing.

  Blanca did not deny it, and once the news was confirmed, Clara wrote it down in her notebooks that bore witness to life. Nicolás raised his eyes from his study of Chinese horoscopes and suggested that they ought to tell their father, because within a few more weeks it would be impossible to conceal the matter and everybody would find out.

  “I’ll never tell who the father is!” Blanca said with determination.

  “I’m not talking about the father of the child, I’m talking about our father,” said her brother. “Papa has the right to hear it from us, before someone else tells him.”

  “Send a telegram to the countryside,” Clara suggested sadly. She realized that when Esteban Trueba found out, Blanca’s baby would become a tragedy.

  Nicolás composed the message with the same cryptographic spirit he employed in writing poems to Amanda, so that the local telegraph operator would not understand the message and start spreading gossip: “Blanca expecting send instructions. Stop.” Esteban Trueba was as mystified as the telegraph operator, and was forced to call his family in the city to understand what they had meant. It fell to Jaime to explain the matter, and he added that the pregnancy was so advanced that there was nothing to be done. There was a long, terrible silence at the other end of the phone, and then his father hung up the receiver. In Tres Marías, livid with anger and surprise, Esteban Trueba picked up his cane and destroyed his telephone for the second time. It had never crossed his mind that a daughter of his could commit such a monstrous folly. Knowing who the father was, it took him only a fraction of a second to regret he had not shot him in the head when he had the chance. He knew that the scandal would be the same whether she gave birth to a bastard child or married the son of a peasant: society would condemn her in either case.