The Vineyard

by Maria Duenas

  “I need to talk to you.”

  “How could you be so foolhardy as to come here?”

  From behind the door they heard the shrill barks of a little dog demanding to be let in.

  “Don’t worry, I’ve just seen your husband leaving the house.”

  “But . . . but . . . for the love of God, have you lost your mind?”

  A fist rapped on the other side of the wooden panel and a man’s voice rang out: one of the household slaves, he thought. The man asked his mistress whether everything was all right. The dog barked again.

  “If you refuse to listen to me now, name a place and I will meet you there, but I need to speak with you urgently.”

  Attempting to calm herself, she gave a couple of anxious sighs as her scantily clad bosom rose and fell.

  “In La Alameda de Paula. At midday. Now please leave.”

  The splendid boulevard overlooking the bay was all but deserted; she had made a wise choice. After sundown, when the heat had abated, it would fill up with couples, families, soldiers, officers, young Spaniards newly disembarked in search of a fortune and pretty Creole girls old enough to woo. At midday, however, only a few solitary figures were scattered along the promenade.

  He waited for her, elbows propped on the fanciful iron balustrade separating land from sea, tiny waves lapping at his feet. She arrived by trap, more than half an hour late, her image of a well-dressed woman having been restored: her face powdered, her hair gathered up, and the heavy fabric of her canary-yellow dress spread out on either side of the seat, leaving the lace trim on the hem of her skirts a few inches from the floor. On her lap, a silk ribbon between its ears, sat the little dog that had barked like a devil outside the door of the room where they had spent a few minutes together.

  For Carola Gorostiza, in common with the ladies from her adopted city as well as many of her own Mexican countrywomen, to allow her silk slippers to touch the dusty ground when stepping out of a carriage onto a public thoroughfare was almost as irreverent an act as standing naked before a cathedral altar. And so, after the vehicle came to a halt, she dismissed her driver with a gesture and did not move from the trap.

  Mauro remained standing, on guard.

  “Do me the honor of never coming to my house again. Ever.”

  This was her greeting.

  Larrea didn’t mince his words, either.

  “Have you considered the proposition I put to you at the theater?”

  Instead of replying yes or no, Gustavo Zayas’s wife posed another direct question, in the brisk tone that reminded him of the countess.

  “How did you fare at Novás’s store?”

  “The meeting was merely informative.”

  “Am I to understand from this that you’re thinking about it?”

  Carola Gorostiza was cold and calculating, and he needed to keep his nerve. He instantly went back to the subject that interested him.

  “Have you considered my offer of investing in the refrigerated vessel?” he repeated.

  She paused for a few moments before replying as she ran her fingers through the lapdog’s thick fur. Fondling the animal’s head, she gazed at Larrea with those dark, inscrutable eyes, which weren’t exactly beautiful but oozed a steely determination.

  “Yes and no.”

  “Do you mind being more precise?”

  “I’m willing to accept your offer of a partnership, Señor Larrea. I agree to combining our capital for our mutual benefit.”

  “But?”

  “But not in the business you are proposing.”

  “Which, I can assure you, is an extremely profitable one.”

  “That may well be, but I prefer the other . . .” She cast a sidelong glance at her driver, a slender mulatto clad in a crimson dress coat and stovepipe hat, seated on a stone bench a short distance off, finishing his cigar. “I wish to invest my money in the ebony trade. Only then will I go into business with you.”

  “Firstly, allow me to explain, Señora.”

  Her reply rang out like a cannon shot from El Morro.

  “No.”

  A pox on the goddamned Gorostiza family, and on that villain Novás! A stream of abuse more befitting the coarse language of miners than a man of his standing passed through Mauro’s head. As the waves gently lapped against the rocks and his mouth remained in a firm line, he shook his head slowly from left to right, from right to left, then back again. I won’t do it.

  “Why not?” she asked with a hint of disdainful surprise. “Why do you refuse to take part in this venture with me? My money is worth no less in one business than in the other.”

  “Because it displeases me. Because—”

  A bitter laugh rose from her bejeweled throat. She had chosen aquamarines that morning.

  “Don’t tell me you are another of those lily-livered abolitionists, Larrea. I believed you to be a man of fewer prejudices, my friend, with all your elegance and seeming self-possession. I see now that appearances can be deceptive.”

  He chose to ignore her remark and instead to employ all his powers of persuasion in the matter that really interested him.

  “Permit me to go into more detail about the business I am proposing: we have little time before they embark.”

  She sighed, evidently irritated, then clicked her tongue to emphasize her vexation. The little lapdog seemed to bark in agreement as its mistress’s ample bosom rose and fell.

  “I thought that in Mexico and Cuba everyone spoke the same language. Do you genuinely not understand the meaning of the word ‘no’?”

  He took a deep breath, hoping the sea air would lend him the patience he sorely needed.

  “All I ask is that you reconsider,” he insisted, adopting a neutral tone to conceal his anxiety.

  Deaf to his pleas, she turned her head haughtily toward the bay.

  “If you change your mind, Señora, I’ll be at my guesthouse all afternoon, awaiting your final answer.”

  “I doubt you’ll receive it,” she hissed without looking at him.

  “Even so, you know where to find me.”

  He doffed his hat, marking the end of the conversation, then walked off along La Alameda. Carola Gorostiza remained perched on the trap, face set in a grimace, eyes stubbornly fixed on the brigantines’ masts and the unfurled sails of the schooners.

  Depending upon her decision, as though hanging from a thread as fine as that of a spider, Mauro Larrea would either succeed in making money with a minimum of dignity, or continue to stare into the abyss.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  The guests started to rise from the table after lunch, heading for the rocking chairs on the balcony. Two dark-skinned girls carried dishes containing the remains of stuffed turkey and rice pudding out to the kitchen. Both were young and beautiful, with slender naked arms and generous smiles, and wore brightly colored scarves gracefully wrapped about their heads like turbans.

  However, neither of them brought a message for him or for Doña Caridad: he had heard nothing from Carola Gorostiza since their meeting hours earlier.

  “It amazes me, Don Mauro, how much you get around after only such a short time here in Havana.”

  Accustomed by now to Doña Caridad’s indiscretions, he limited himself to murmuring something under his breath, and put down his napkin as he made to rise from the table.

  “Not just dances and the theater,” she continued undeterred, “but late-night trysts as well.”

  He shot her a look sharp enough to cut a lemon in two. Despite this, he decided to remain seated even though he had been about to get up. Very well, he seemed to say to her. Carry on, Doña Caridad; speak your mind. After all, I have little left to lose.

  She played for time, issuing needless orders to the slave girls until the last diners had left.

  As soon as they were alone he blurted out: “I
confess to being surprised by your apparent interest in my affairs, Señora.”

  “Not in any profound way, I assure you; gossip soon reaches me when one of my guests ventures onto treacherous ground.”

  “Whether it reaches you or not, I don’t think what I do outside your establishment is any of your business. Or is it?”

  “No, Señor, it isn’t. You’re absolutely right. However, since you do me the honor of remaining seated at my table, allow me to take up a little more of your time . . .”

  She paused for dramatic effect, her lips curving into a smile as sweet as it was false.

  “. . . So that not only do I get to know a bit more about you, but you also learn about me,” she added.

  Go to hell, he was tempted to retort, sensing this was a trap. But he didn’t move a muscle.

  “I am a quadroon,” she went on. “From Guanajay, daughter of a Canary Islander from La Gomera and a slave woman from the San Rafael sugar plantation. Quadroon means a quarter Negro; that’s to say, my father was white and my mother was a mulatta. A beautiful mulatta she was, the daughter of a black girl just arrived from Gallinas, impregnated at the age of thirteen by the master of the house, who was fifty-two. He took her by the waist while she was out chopping cane; lifted her up like a feather, she was so slight. Eight months later my mother was born. Since the planter had no children because his wife was barren as a desert, they decided to keep her, as you might a straw doll. And to prevent her little black mother, my grandmother, from becoming attached to the child, they sent her to a different plantation. There, unable to see her own daughter grow up, she became increasingly rebellious until finally, at age seventeen, she took to the hills. Do you know what becomes of slaves that take to the hills, Señor Larrea?”

  “I’d be lying if I said I did.”

  Nor had it occurred to him that Doña Caridad, whose skin was the same color as his, had African blood in her veins. Although, now that he looked closely, some of her features might have given him a clue: the texture of her hair, the breadth of her nose.

  Mauro Larrea continued to sit at the table, cleared by now of plates and cutlery, listening to the proprietress of the guesthouse with feigned indifference.

  “Three possible fates await a runaway slave—or cimarrón, as they are called here, in case you didn’t know that, either: they are slaves who dare to escape from their masters, who demand sixteen hours’ hard labor each day in exchange for a few plantains, a morsel of yucca, and some scraps of dried meat. Would you like to know what those three fates are, Señor?”

  “Of course; tell me if you wish.”

  “The lucky ones reach Havana, or some other port, where they manage to get passage on a boat sailing for anywhere in the Americas where slavery has been abolished and they can live freely. Or they are caught and subjected to the usual punishments: locked away for a month in the darkest corner of a hut; whipped to the point of losing consciousness . . .”

  “And the third?”

  “They are torn apart by dogs—hunting dogs specially trained to track, and often kill, cimarrónes. Would you like to know which fate befell my grandmother?”

  “Please.”

  “So would I. Alas, no one found out. Ever.”

  The two of them sat alone around the tablecloth, Doña Caridad at the head and Larrea to one side, his back to the white awning that kept out the sunlight and screened them from the courtyard. For a while, all was quiet. The two young slave girls were washing the dishes, the guests dozing amid the vines and bougainvillea.

  “Are you going to tell me the moral of this story, Doña Caridad, or must I work it out for myself?”

  “Who said anything about a moral, Don Mauro?” she retorted, a hint of mockery in her voice.

  He could have picked that moment to tell her to go to hell. But she spoke first.

  “It was merely an episode I wished to relate to you, one of many. To show you how slaves outside the city live: those in sugar estates, on coffee and tobacco plantations. Those you do not see.”

  “And you have done so, for which I am grateful. May I retire to my room now, or do you have any more lessons in morality to impart?”

  “Would you like your coffee to be served here at the table?”

  Despite his outward composure, Larrea felt a twinge of unease in his gut. Best make himself scarce.

  “I’d prefer to retire, if you’ll excuse me,” he said rising at last. “All this coffee is starting to disagree with me.”

  He was already on his feet, one hand leaning on the back of his chair, when he contemplated her once more. She was no longer young, nor was she beautiful, although she might once have been. Now, well into her fifties, her waist had thickened, she had deep, coal-black shadows under her eyes, and her cheeks had started to sag. And yet she was mature, serene, possessed of the natural wisdom of one who has met people from all walks of life. Two decades earlier, she had turned the villa her former lover left her into an exclusive guesthouse, and by now Caridad Cervera was more than accustomed to holding her own in an argument, even into the small hours.

  Without thinking about it, Mauro Larrea sat down again.

  “Since you know so much about me and appear eager to instruct me regarding the shadier side of my business, perhaps you could help me shed some light on another matter.”

  “Naturally, if I’m able.”

  “Don Gustavo Zayas and his wife.”

  The corner of her mouth twisted in a mocking grin.

  “Who are you more interested in, him or her?”

  “Both. Either.”

  She gave a soft, silent laugh.

  “You don’t fool me, Don Mauro.”

  “Far be it from me to even try.”

  “If the husband were the object of your inquiry, you wouldn’t have taken the opportunity this morning to sneak in to see his wife after he had left his house.”

  This time it was Doña Caridad’s turn to rise, limping over to the nearby sideboard. Damned gossipmonger, he thought as he watched her. Scarcely a few hours had passed since he had ventured into the Zayases’ residence and she already knew about it: her network of informers must extend to every corner of the city.

  Returning to the table with two small tumblers and a carafe of rum, she sat down again.

  “You can pour. Courtesy of the house.”

  He obeyed, filling both glasses. One for her and one for him.

  “I know the couple,” she said at last. “Everybody knows everybody in Havana. Only by sight, mind you, not to greet them; we aren’t acquaintances. But, yes, I know who they are.”

  “Tell me, then.”

  “A married couple like any other. With their ups and downs. The usual thing.”

  She raised her glass and took a tiny sip of the strong liquor. He followed suit, taking a larger swig. Then he waited for her to go on, convinced she would reveal more than these platitudes.

  “They have no heirs.”

  “That I already know.”

  “But they have a reputation.”

  “For what exactly, might I ask?”

  “Her, for being difficult and extravagant: you only have to look at her to see that money slips through her fingers like water. Perhaps she is independently wealthy; I have no idea.”

  He did. Only too well. But he was careful not to share that information with Doña Caridad.

  “What about him?”

  “He has a reputation for being rather volatile, both in his ventures and his finances, but that’s nothing new over here. People have arrived empty-handed from mainland Spain and within five years have built business empires, while the heads of wealthy Creole families have fallen by the wayside and lost everything in the blink of an eye.”

  Five years to make a fortune: an eternity. But, as Andrade had told him when they parted company in Veracruz, he needn’t buil
d an empire; he had only to make enough to pull himself from the quagmire, to start breathing again.

  However, at the moment they were discussing the Zayas couple. He would do well to keep focused.

  “So tell me, Doña Caridad, what is their current financial situation?”

  Her lips curled again in a half smile.

  “How much money do they have? My knowledge doesn’t extend that far. All I know is what I see in the street, and what my friends tell me when they come visiting. As you’ve seen for yourself, they are invited to the best houses: he with his appearance of a man of substance, she dressed to the nines by the extremely expensive Mademoiselle Minett. And never without her bichon.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Her bichon, the little dog she takes with her everywhere.”

  “I see.”

  “However, certain recent events concerning the couple have become common knowledge, so it wouldn’t be an indiscretion for me to tell you about them . . .”

  She raised her glass to her lips and took a second sip.

  “In fact, truth be told, this is merely one of many such incidents that occur on this unpredictable island, where everything changes depending on which way the wind blows. Do you follow me, Don Mauro?”

  “Of course, dear lady.”

  Doña Caridad gave him a knowing look. She could go on.

  “They came into an inheritance recently. Some properties, or so I heard.”

  Another pause.

  “In Andalusia, apparently.”

  Frustrated at receiving the information in dribs and drabs, Larrea refilled his glass.

  “Do you know who they inherited from?”