by Maria Duenas
“We were never partners, you merely invested in my projects hoping for an ample return on your money. Which is more or less what I’m asking you to do again now. And as you’re still baying for my blood, I know you won’t refuse.”
The old man’s wizened face took on a skeptical look.
“I hear you’ve done remarkably well for yourself, Spaniard.”
“You know this business as well as I do,” Larrea replied impassively. “It has its ups and downs.”
“It has its ups and downs . . .” the moneylender repeated sardonically, trailing off until only the intermittent whistling of his lungs could be heard.
A sliver of morning seeped in through a crack in the shutters. The light sharpened the contours, adding to the lamentable aspect of the setting.
This time there was no attempt at laughter.
“And what will you pledge in return for my money?”
“The deed to my house.”
As he spoke, Mauro Larrea raised his hand to his chest. He retrieved the documents from among his clothes and placed them on the table.
Tadeo Carrús inflated his bony chest with a sharp intake of breath, as if to muster his strength.
“You must be in one hell of a tight spot, you sonofabitch, if you’re prepared to wager your finest possession in this way. I know perfectly well what that former palace of the goddamned Count of Regla is worth. Although you weren’t aware of it, I’ve kept track of you over the years.”
Larrea had suspected as much, but didn’t wish to give the moneylender the pleasure of saying so, and let him continue.
“I know where you live, the circles you move in, and how you invested your money. I know you married your little Mariana off well and that you’re engineering another favorable alliance for your boy.”
“I have no time for this,” Larrea interrupted abruptly. He didn’t wish to hear the old man talking about his children, or to discover what if anything he knew about his last failed business venture.
“Why the hurry, if I may ask?”
“I have to go.”
“Where?”
As if I knew myself, Larrea thought sarcastically, but replied:
“That’s none of your business.”
Tadeo Carrús’s mouth twisted into a rapacious grin.
“Everything about you concerns me now. What other reason did you have for coming?”
“I need the sum specified in the document. If I fail to pay back the amount to you by the date we establish, the house is yours. With all its contents.”
“What if you succeed?”
“I’ll refund the entire loan, together with the interest we agree on today.”
“I usually charge my clients fifty percent, but in your case I’m prepared to make an exception.”
“How much?”
“As it’s you, a hundred percent.”
A rotten miser from the day he was born, Larrea reflected. What were you thinking, that time would have turned him into a saint? He knew Carrús couldn’t resist now having him once more in his clutches.
“I accept.”
A pair of invisible hands seemed to be tying a thick rope around his neck.
“Then let’s talk about the repayments,” the moneylender went on. “I usually allow twelve months.”
“All right.”
“But in your case I’ll make an exception.”
“You tell me.”
“I want the money in three installments.”
“I’d prefer to pay it all at the end.”
“But I don’t. I want a third of the money four months from today, another third in eight months’ time, and the final payment in a year.”
Larrea could feel the imaginary rope tighten around his jugular, threatening to strangle him.
“I accept.”
The dogs barked excitedly in the distance.
Thus ended the nastiest deal Larrea had ever made. The old swindler was now in possession of the deed to his last remaining property. In exchange, in two dirty leather saddlebags, he took away with him enough money to pay off his most pressing debts and to take the first steps toward a tentative resurrection. How and where, he did not yet know. As for the longer-term consequences that ruinous agreement might lead to, he preferred not to contemplate them just yet.
No sooner had they signed the contract than Larrea slapped his thigh vigorously.
“All right, then,” he announced, gathering up his cape and hat. “You’ll hear from me in four months’ time.”
He had almost reached the door when the wheezing voice blasted him from behind.
“You were nothing but a dirt-poor Spaniard with gold fever, like all those other fools from the goddamned mother country.”
Larrea responded without turning.
“It was my legitimate right, wasn’t it?”
“You’d never have gotten anywhere without me. I even fed you and your kids when all you had to eat was a handful of beans.”
Patience, he told himself. Don’t listen to him. He’s just the same heartless scoundrel he always was. You have what you came for, don’t waste another second. Get out of here.
But he couldn’t stop himself.
“All you ever wanted, you old devil,” he retorted, turning slowly around, “was to keep me in your debt forever, the way you had dozens of other miserable wretches, all your life. You offered loans at exorbitant rates, exploited and cheated, demanded absolute loyalty, while all you did was suck our blood like a parasite. Especially mine, because I made you richer than all the others. That’s why you fought to stop me setting up on my own.”
“You betrayed me, you sonofabitch.”
Larrea walked back to the table, slammed his fists onto it, and leaned forward until he was only inches away from the old man’s face. The stench that reached him was putrid, but he barely noticed it.
“We were never partners or friends, and I disliked you as much as you disliked me. So stop throwing these pathetic accusations at me and make your peace with God and your fellow men in what little time you have left on this earth.”
The old man shot him a black look, seething with rage.
“I’m not dying, if that’s what you think. I’ve lived for over ten years with these diseased lungs, much to everyone’s astonishment, starting with my useless son and ending with you. Although don’t imagine that I’d care much if the grim reaper came for me at this stage of the game.”
He raised his eyes toward the dark-skinned Virgin, his lungs rattling like a pair of snakes.
“But just to be on the safe side, I vow by all that’s holy to say three Hail Marys every night to see you groveling in the mud before they lay me in my grave.”
The silence congealed.
“If in four months from today you aren’t here with the first payment, Mauro Larrea, I won’t hold on to your palace. No,” he paused, gasping for breath, rallying his strength. “I’ll raze it to the ground. I’ll dynamite it from top to bottom, the way you did those caves when you were no more than an ignorant ruffian. And if it’s the last thing I do, I’ll stand in the middle of Calle San Felipe Neri to watch your house collapse, wall by wall, and with it your name and what’s left of your reputation.”
Tadeo Carrús’s loathsome threats floated in one ear and out the other. Four months. That was what remained imprinted, as though with a branding iron, on Mauro Larrea’s brain. Four months to find a way out. Four months, like four explosions resounding in his head, as he walked away from that piece of human refuse, mounted his horse, and set off on his return journey toward whatever lay in store for him.
It was already dark by the time he crossed the threshold of his own home and called out to Santos Huesos.
“See to the horse, and tell Laureano to have the coach ready in ten minutes.”
Without
stopping, he strode across the huge courtyard on his way to the kitchens, shouting for water. Sensing their master’s mood, the flustered servants hurriedly obeyed. “Come on, stir yourselves,” he urged them. “Fetch the buckets and bring up clean towels.”
Although his aching body cried out for rest, he had no time to languish in the tub. Water, soap, and a sponge were what he needed. He furiously scrubbed away the thick coating of dust and sweat that stuck to his skin, then directed the straight razor along his cheeks and jaw. In quick succession he patted his face dry, tamed his unruly locks, and slipped into his shirt and trousers. Buttons, collar, shiny leather shoes. He finished knotting his tie in the passageway and pulled on his tailcoat as he reached the stairs.
A short while later, as Laureano, the coachman, pulled up the carriage amid the clamor outside the Gran Teatro Vergara, Mauro Larrea straightened his cuffs, smoothed his lapels, and ran his fingers once more through his still-damp hair. His return to the present, to the excitement of an opening performance, required his full attention: greetings he had to reciprocate, names he had to recall. His objective was to be seen and not to arouse suspicion.
He strode into the foyer tall and erect, impeccable in his tailcoat, purposefully adopting a vaguely supercilious air. He ran the gamut of polite gestures with seeming ease: exchanging courtesies with statesmen and budding politicians, brisk handshakes with the titled, the moneyed, those with potential or social standing. Amid the dense smoke of the splendid foyer was the usual diverse mixture of prominent people. The descendants of Creole elites who had split away from old Spain hobnobbed with nouveau riche entrepreneurs. Scattered among them was a plethora of decorated military men, dark-eyed beauties whose cleavages were bathed in buttermilk, and a large contingent of diplomats and high-ranking civil servants.
After clapping the shoulders of the men who really mattered, Larrea politely kissed the gloved hands of a number of ladies who were smoking cigarettes as they chatted animatedly, festooned with pearls, silks, and feathers. And as though his world were still spinning on the same axis, the once wealthy mining tycoon behaved exactly as was expected of him: no differently from any other evening among the elite of Mexico City’s society. Nobody of course realized that each step he took required a monumental effort.
“At last, my dear Mauro, where have you been hiding?”
He just had time to add another layer of affectation to his charade.
“Too many engagements and invitations, you know how it is . . .” he replied, giving the new arrival a hearty embrace. “How are you, Alonso? How are you all?”
“Fine, fine, still waiting . . . although the convention that frowns upon expectant mothers attending social gatherings is something of an ordeal for Mariana.”
The two men chuckled, and if the laughter of the son of the Condesa de Colima was genuine, Larrea’s appeared no less so. He would rather die than reveal even a hint of his concern to his daughter’s husband. He knew that when he was eventually forced to explain she would be discreet, but all in good time, he reflected.
Two other men with whom Larrea had once done business came over at this point, putting an end to their private conversation. The four men broached various topics until Alonso was called over to another group; then the governor of Zacatecas approached Mauro Larrea, followed by the Venezuelan ambassador, the minister for law and justice, and soon afterward a widow from Jalisco swathed in crimson silk, who for months had been pursuing him whenever their paths crossed. Time slipped by as they spoke of political scandals and their concerns for the incomprehensible fate of the nation. At last the ushers began to announce that the performance was about to begin.
As he made his way to his box, Larrea continued to greet this and that person, searching for an appropriate phrase or timely compliment for each of them. Then the lights went down, the conductor raised his baton, and the theater filled with the strains of the orchestra.
Four months, he said to himself once more.
Concealed now amid the dramatic overture to Rigoletto, he could finally let down his guard.
CHAPTER FOUR
He stopped off at Andrade’s house opposite the Santa Brígida Church to spoil his early morning coffee.
“If you’ve decided to string yourself up like that, there’s little I can do” was his agent’s curt reply. “I just hope you won’t regret it.”
“This way we can square away the most urgent debts, and I can take whatever’s left and invest it.”
“I suppose what’s done is done,” his friend concluded. He decided to channel his fury into something more constructive. “Let’s get to work, then. We’ll begin by emptying the estate at Tacubaya; it’s far enough away from the city for us to do so inconspicuously. The furniture and fittings will fetch a tidy sum. When we’ve finished, I’ll have a quiet word with Ramón Antequera, the banker. I’ll explain that we’re no longer able to make the payments and that the property now belongs to him. He’s a discreet fellow, he’ll know how to deal with the matter without making tongues wag.”
A few hours later, two faithful servants pushed along a massive chest of drawers while Santos Huesos guided them toward a cart stationed in the circular driveway. A double wardrobe and four oak bedsteads had already been loaded onto it, while on the ground waiting to join them was a full set of studded leather dining chairs that in their day had seated eighteen guests.
At a distance both nearby and yet removed from these domestic activities, Mauro Larrea had just informed his daughter of the sad news. Financial ruin, departure, quest, an uncertain destination—these were the words that remained floating in the air. Mariana understood.
He had called for her on his way back from Andrade’s, sending a message ahead to ask her to be ready. Together they had traveled in the coach to their holiday residence, and were now conversing beneath a pergola in the large front garden.
“What are we going to do about Nico?”
Mariana’s first response was a question enveloped in a whisper. She was concerned for her brother, the third element of the uneven number to which their family had been reduced the day he was born back in Spain when puerperal fever snatched the life of the young woman who until then had been their rock: Elvira, the mother of Mariana and Nicolás, and Mauro Larrea’s steadfast companion. He would give her name to his first mine a few years after her death, and would hear that name echo in his mind when he lay awake at night, until with time it faded and finally disappeared. Elvira, the daughter of a Castilian farm laborer who never accepted her becoming pregnant by the illegitimate grandson of a Basque blacksmith, or marrying that young lad at dawn without any witnesses, or living with him until her dying breath in a miserable foundry on a dirt track at the outskirts of their village in Castile.
“Keep it from him, of course.”
Safeguarding Nicolás had always been the watchword between father and daughter: protecting the motherless child, fragile as a bird. That was why Mariana had grown up fast; there was no choice. She was nimble as a hare, plucky and sensible the way only someone could be who had spent her fourth birthday among the cargo, rats, and stevedores in the port of Bordeaux, cradling her brother in her arms while her father carried their meager belongings in two bundles. At a time when tensions between Spain and Mexico were running high, the family was about to board a dilapidated French vessel that went by the romantic if somewhat ironical name of La Belle Étoile, transporting iron from the Basque country and wine from La Gironde. And yet there was nothing romantic about the arduous seventy-nine days it took them to cross the Atlantic, oblivious to the fate that awaited them. Life’s vagaries, together with enthusiastic reports from a handful of Welsh miners they met at the Mexican port of Tampico, made them head inland for Guanajuato. That was where they would get started.
By the age of seven, Mariana was already in charge of looking after the miserable gray adobe shack they lived in close to La Valenciana mining camp.
Each day she prepared their simple meal in the communal kitchen, alongside much older girls. When they or one of the miners’ wives offered to keep an eye on little Nico, she would hurry across to the school, where she learned to join up letters and, more importantly, to add and subtract, so that the owner of the grocery store, an old Spaniard from Aragon, would be unable to cheat her out of the housekeeping money her father gave her every Saturday.
Eighteen months later, they gathered up their possessions once again and moved farther west to Real de Catorce, lured by the second rush of silver fever that had broken out in that far-flung mountainous region. Exactly a month after they arrived, Mauro Larrea went missing for four days and four nights, trapped in the bowels of Las Tres Lunas mine, his hand crushed between two rocks, up to his neck in water. Of the twenty-seven men working hundreds of feet belowground when the massive explosion occurred, only five survived to see the light of day. Mauro Larrea was one of them. The others were hauled to the surface, bare chests adorned with scapulars and medals of the Blessed Virgin that had failed to protect them, the tendons in their necks bulging, their bluish faces wearing the contorted features of the drowned.
The catastrophe meant Las Tres Lunas was shut down, its ropes cut, according to the industry term. From then on, the mine remained in the collective memory as an accursed place that nobody would risk exploiting. However, Larrea never forgot that its depths were rife with the finest silver, even though for the time being any thought of resurrecting the place that had almost taken his life was out of the question.
What he gained from that terrible ordeal was a steely determination to change his destiny. He refused to continue being a simple mine worker and decided to take the plunge. Rumors were flying about rich seams being struck in the middle of nowhere; more and more shafts were being dug, and hopes were running high. So he ventured blindly into setting up his own modest enterprise. Advance me the money I need to start excavating, to buy mules and hire a few men, and we will split the raw minerals I find like this, half and half, he would say, revealing a gray clod in his calloused palm and blowing on it until it shimmered. That was the offer he bandied about in the canteens and bars among the encampments, at every crossroads or tiny hamlet. Then he would add: