by Maria Duenas
To embrace him, burst out laughing, give him one long, endless kiss. Or at least, that is how he interpreted what she was longing to do. In a vain attempt to disguise the rush of warmth surging inside him, he downed the rest of the brandy.
In the end, however, what the deceitful wife of the rich wine merchant did was to repress her desires and behave with moderation. As if copying the name of the vineyard, Soledad Montalvo recovered her temperate disposition and kept her emotions under control.
“I still have a long way to go, Mauro. This was only one battle in the lengthy war against my husband’s eldest son. But I would never have won it without you.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Day had dawned no more than half an hour earlier, and Mauro was already finished tying his cravat and was about to don his blue frock coat. Unable to sleep, he had decided to spend the day in Cádiz. He needed to get away, to put some distance between them. To think.
Santos Huesos poked his head around the door.
“There’s someone to see you at the entrance, patrón.”
“Who?”
“It’s better if you come.”
What if it were Zarco, the land agent? A stab of anxiety helped spur him on down the stairs.
He was mistaken: it was a couple he did not recognize. Obviously humble and of uncertain age: anywhere between sixty and the end of life. Skinny as rakes, the skin on their faces and hands furrowed by many years of hard work. The woman was wearing rough petticoats and a brown cloth shawl, and had her white hair done up in a bun. The man had on a pair of homespun cotton trousers with a woolen sash around his waist. On seeing Mauro, they both dipped their heads as a mark of respect.
“A good day to you. What may I do for you?”
With strong Andalusian accents, they introduced themselves as former servants at the mansion. They said they had come to pay their respects to the new owner. A tear ran down the old woman’s wrinkled cheek as she spoke of the deceased Luisito Montalvo. Then she wiped her nose.
“We’re also here to see if we can help the young master in any way.”
Larrea guessed they must be referring to him. A “young master” at the age of forty-seven. But on that misty morning he had no desire to laugh.
“Thank you, but the fact is I am here only for a short time; I do not intend to stay any longer than necessary.”
“That’s no problem: just as we arrived, we can go away again on the breeze whenever you wish. Angustias here is a wonderful cook, and I do whatever I am told to, Your Honor. Our children are off our hands, and it’s always good to have something to add to the pot.”
Larrea rubbed his chin thoughtfully. It meant more expenditure and less intimacy. But it was true they could do with somebody to wash their clothes and prepare some food other than the hunks of meat Santos Huesos roasted on a fire in a corner of the rear courtyard, as if they were still in the Mexican mountains or in one of the old mining camps. Somebody to see who was coming or looking in from the street, and who could give them a hand to do up this ruin of a house. You live like a savage, Sol Claydon had told him. And she wasn’t far wrong.
“Well, now, Santos, what do you think?” he said, raising his voice to talk over his shoulder. His servant was nowhere to be seen, but Larrea knew he was somewhere close by, listening like a shadow from some corner or other.
“Well, I suppose we could do with a little bit of help, patrón.”
Larrea thought it over for a few more moments.
“All right, you can stay. You’ll receive your orders from this man, Santos Huesos Quevedo Calderón,” he said, slapping the shoulder of his servant, who had appeared as if by magic. “He’ll tell you what there is to be done.”
The newcomers—Angustias and Simón—lowered their heads again as a token of gratitude. They glanced out of the corners of their eyes at the Chicimeca Indian. Although they could not appreciate the irony of his literary surnames, they realized this was the first time in their lives that they had ever seen an Indian, observing his long hair, poncho, and ever-ready knife. And, to top it all, the husband muttered under his breath, he is going to give us orders.
Mauro Larrea walked off toward El Ejido and entered the station from Plaza de la Madre de Dios; he had decided to travel by train. In Mexico, despite many plans and concessions, the railway was not yet a reality. In Cuba it did exist, especially to transport sugar from the plantations in the countryside to the coast, from where it could be shipped to the rest of the world. However, during his brief stay on the island, he had not had occasion to travel in this new invention. As a result, at any other stage of his life, this short voyage of discovery would have filled his mind with ideas as he avidly sniffed out a profitable opportunity to introduce it in the New World. On that morning, though, all he did was observe the comings and goings of the not-very-numerous passengers, and the infinitely greater number of wine barrels being transported from the Jerez cellars to the sea.
Ensconced in a first-class carriage, he reached the port of Trocadero, and from there traveled to the city of Cádiz on a steamship. The railroad was said to be only the third to exist in Spain, and it was five years since it had opened, with its four locomotives hauling freight wagons and passengers. The arrival of this important sign of progress was celebrated in Jerez with a great official act in the station, and a good handful of popular celebrations as well: musical bands in the bullfight arena, cockfights organized in the streets, a performance of Verdi’s Il Trovatore in the theater, and two thousand loaves of bread distributed to the poor of the town. On that day, even in the prison and the lunatic asylum they had a feast.
The first thing Mauro did when he reached Cádiz was to dispatch his mail. In fits and starts, he had managed to write to Mariana and Andrade. He wrote to his daughter with a knot in his stomach as he recalled that Elvira had lost her life as a result of childbirth. He wished Mariana strength and courage to bring her baby into the world. To his agent, he wrote what as usual were no more than half-truths: I’m on the brink of a wonderful transaction that will put an end to all our problems, I’ll be back soon, we’ll pay Tadeo Carrús in time, we’ll see Nico married in style, we’ll get things back to normal.
After that, he wandered through the streets of the city: from the quays to the Puerta de la Caleta, from the cathedral to Parque Genovés. All the time he was turning over and over in his mind what he did and did not want to think about: the reckless way in which, egged on by Sol Claydon, he had broken all the most elementary rules of common sense and legality.
He bought writing paper at a printer’s in Calle del Sacramento, and ate cuttlefish with potatoes that he was served in a store on the Plazuela del Carbón. He washed it down with two glasses of pale dry wine, sniffing it beforehand in the way he had seen the notary, the doctor, and even Soledad herself do. The sharp smell brought back memories of the deserted, silent Montalvo winery, the creaking sound of the rusty weathervane on the roof of the house of vines out at La Templanza. He recalled the silhouette of a disconcerting woman sitting beside him in an old straw-bottomed chair, staring at an ocean of white earth and tangled vines as she impassively proposed to him the most outlandish of all the extraordinary things that life had thrown at him. You damned idiot, he growled to himself as he dropped a few coins on the counter. Then he went outside again and breathed in a lungful of sea air.
The distance he had put between Jerez and Cádiz had been of little use: his mind was still troubled and his questions still went unanswered. Tired of wandering around aimlessly, he made up his mind to return, but first proposed to visit Antonio Fatou in his house on Calle de la Verónica to round off the day by exchanging words with another human being.
“My dear Mauro,” his affable young host greeted him as soon as he heard of his arrival, “what a pleasure to see you here with us again. And what a coincidence.”
Mauro frowned. A coincidence? Nothing that happened
to him of late had been by pure chance. Seeing his reaction, Fatou took it as a query and hastened to offer him an explanation.
“In fact, Genaro told me only a little while ago that someone had been here asking after you. Another lady, apparently.” He was about to nod his head knowingly, as if to say How lucky you are to have so many ladies pursuing you, but the stern frown on Mauro Larrea’s face led him to change his mind.
“The same one who was here before?”
“I haven’t the slightest idea. Wait, and we’ll find out.”
The ancient butler came wearily into the office, racked with coughs as usual.
“Don Antonio says someone came looking for me, Genaro. Tell me about her, please.”
“A lady, Don Mauro. She left not an hour ago.”
Larrea repeated his question: “The same one as the last time?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Did she leave her card?”
“She wouldn’t hear of it, even though I asked her.”
“Did she at least offer her name or say what she wanted with me?”
“Not a word.”
“Did you give her my new address?”
“No, sir, because I don’t know it and master Antonio was not here.”
Lacking any further information, Fatou sent the butler back to his duties, telling him to have two cups of coffee brought. The two men talked briefly about nothing in particular until the miner, calculating the time he would need to take the steamer and then the train back to Jerez, said good-bye.
He had only taken a dozen steps along Calle de la Verónica when he decided to return. This time, however, he did not go into the offices looking for their owner but slipped inside the gate, where he found the person he wanted.
“I forgot to ask you, Genaro . . .” he said, plunging his hand into his frock coat pocket and pulling out a splendid Vueltabajo cigar. “That lady who came asking for me: What was she like, exactly?”
Before the old man could open his mouth, the cigar, from the box that Calafat had given Larrea before he embarked in Havana, was already lying snug in the butler’s piqué vest.
“A good-looking woman she was, sir. Elegant and with jet-black hair.”
“How did she speak?”
“Differently.”
His hacking cough silenced him for a few seconds until finally he was able to add: “For my part, I think she came from the Americas, like you, or somewhere of the sort.”
Larrea strode down to the quay intending to cross to Trocadero as soon as possible, but he was too late: he came to a halt, breathing heavily, and with hands on hips watched as a boat sailed off, catching the last of the sunlight. “Goddamned rotten luck,” he said, not caring if anybody heard him. It might have been a trick his own fantasy was playing on him, but among the passengers on the deck of the steamer he thought he made out a familiar silhouette seated on a small trunk.
He took the next steamer; by the time he reached Jerez, night had fallen. No sooner were his footsteps resounding in the entrance of the mansion on Calle de la Tornería than he called out gruffly: “Santos!”
“At your orders, patrón,” replied his servant from some dark corner among the arcades on the first-floor gallery.
“Did we have another visit?”
“Well, I’d be inclined to say we did, Don Mauro.”
Finding out his new address would not have been particularly difficult for anyone: after all, his appearance as a returned Indiano fallen from the skies and his link to Luisito Montalvo had made of him the most newsworthy thing to have happened in Jerez in recent days.
“Spit it out, then.”
But his servant’s answer was not what he had been expecting.
“The fat old man who is in charge of the sale wants to see you tomorrow morning. In the Café de la Paz on Calle Larga. At ten o’clock.”
Larrea felt as if he were receiving another blow to the stomach.
“What else did he say?”
“That was all, but I think that maybe he’s already found us a buyer.”
By the time Mauro Larrea saw the land agent’s bulky body coming toward him, he had already read El Guadalete from start to finish, had allowed a painstaking bootblack to shine his shoes, and was on his third coffee of the morning. Once again he had risen at first light, pondering what Amador Zarco might have to say, and unable to dismiss from his mind the worrying image that had persisted ever since the previous evening in Cádiz: the sight of a figure moving away from him on a steamship across the waves of the bay.
“A good day to you, the Lord be praised, Don Mauro.” The newcomer immediately dropped his hat onto a nearby chair and sat opposite the miner.
“Pleased to see you,” was Larrea’s curt response.
“Today seems rather cooler, doesn’t it? As the saying goes: from All Souls to Christmas, winter comes to pass. Although, as my poor mother, peace be with her, used to remark, you shouldn’t pay too much attention to sayings.”
Mauro drummed his fingers on the marble tabletop to convey to the other man to get on with it once and for all. Faced with his obvious impatience, the portly agent no longer beat about the bush.
“I don’t want to celebrate too soon, but we may just be in luck and have something interesting in view.”
At that precise moment they were interrupted by a young waiter.
“Here’s your special coffee, Don Amador.”
He placed a bottle alongside the cup.
“God bless you, my boy.” The lad had hardly turned away from them when the agent continued: “Some people from Madrid have already half promised to make a big purchase in Sanlúcar. They’ve been looking around here for a couple of months now.”
While he was talking, Zarco took the cork from the bottle and, to Mauro’s amazement, poured a splash into his coffee.
“It’s brandy, not wine,” Zarco pointed out.
Mauro waved his hand impatiently. You can ruin your coffee however you see fit, my friend. But now do me the favor of getting on with it.
“I’ve tempted them with your properties, and they have taken the bait.”
“How many of them are there?”
The small porcelain cup was almost hidden between Zarco’s pudgy fingers as he raised it to his mouth. He emptied it in one swallow.
“Two of them: one who’s putting up the money and the other who is his adviser. In other words, someone who’s stinking rich and his secretary,” he said, replacing his cup on its saucer. “They haven’t the faintest idea about vineyards or wine, but they do know that the market is growing by the day and are willing to invest.”
He looked at Mauro appealingly.
“It’s not going to be easy, I can tell you that now. They’ve almost committed themselves to the other agreement, and there’s no lack of offers, and so in the remote possibility that your properties should interest them, they’re bound to drive a hard bargain. But we lose nothing by trying, don’t you think?”
Amador Zarco had nothing more to say, and fell silent because there wasn’t much more he knew. His commission was still at 20 percent, and so he was just as eager as Larrea was to make the sale quickly and advantageously.
They left the café together after agreeing to meet again as soon as Zarco found out when the interested parties would reach Jerez. As they were saying their farewells in the doorway, Mauro Larrea spied Santos Huesos among the passersby on Calle Larga.
Seeing him in the distance, this was possibly the first time he realized how incongruous his faithful servant looked in this part of Andalusia, where there was no shortage of dark skins from exposure to the sun or from several centuries of the presence of the Moors. But nobody there had the Mexican Indian’s bronze-colored skin, or his dark, shoulder-length hair, or his build. No one dressed like him, either, with a scarf knotted around his head under
his hat, and his ever-present brightly colored poncho. He had been with Larrea for fifteen years, ever since he was a lanky, bright youngster who slipped through the galleries of the mines as agilely as a snake.
Larrea finished saying good-bye to the land agent. Momentarily concerned at what news his servant might be bringing, he stood and waited for him to approach.
“What’s the problem, Santos?”
“Someone is looking for you.”
He took a deep, anxious breath, looking from side to side. The daily bustle of people and the sound of their voices. The house fronts, the orange trees. Jerez.
“A lady you know?”
“Well, yes and no,” Santos replied, handing him a small envelope.
On this occasion, perhaps due to haste, it had no seal. Recognizing the handwriting, Mauro tore it open. I beg you to come to my residence as quickly as possible. Instead of a signature, two initials: S. C.
Sol Claydon wanted to see him urgently. What did you expect, you idiot, that your recklessness would have no consequences? That your mistake would go unpunished? Amid the morning hubbub he could not tell whether the furious voice of recrimination was his agent Andrade’s or his own.
“Fine, Santos, I’ve got the message. But you must remain alert, because we might be getting another visit. If we do, make the person wait in the courtyard—don’t let them into the house. And don’t take a single chair out; they’re to wait, that’s all.”
With that, he strode off, but paused as he came to the beginning of Calle Lancería. He remembered he had something pending, something that with everything that had been going on in recent days had slipped his mind. And despite Soledad’s urgent plea, he decided to resolve it at once. It would take him no time at all, and it was better to get it over and done with to avoid any more serious problems.
He looked around and saw the half-open door of a narrow apartment building. He peered inside: no one in sight. For the time it would take him, this would do. He stopped a young boy, pointed out the notary Don Senén Blanco’s office, and gave him a coin and instructions. Three minutes later Angulo, the gossipy clerk who had first taken him to the mansion on Calle de la Tornería, still wearing his percaline cuffs, stepped curiously into the dark entrance where Mauro was waiting for him.