by Maria Duenas
Waiting before they gave Fatou their own slanted version of the story, they listened first to what he had to say.
“This is certainly a rather unpleasant situation. And as you can imagine, it has put me in a very difficult position. This lady is making very serious accusations against you, Mauro.”
He was using Larrea’s first name again: that was a good sign. But it was of little use against the veritable cannonade that Fatou fired point-blank at him immediately afterward.
“Keeping her imprisoned against her will. Unlawful appropriation of goods and properties belonging to her husband. Underhanded use of wills and testaments. Illicit deals conducted in houses of ill repute. Even slave trading.”
God almighty. That madwoman had even thrown the brothel at El Manglar and the abominable deals done by Novás the crockery seller into the mix. Mauro could sense Soledad stiffen but preferred not to look directly at her.
“I trust you did not give the slightest credence to her claims.”
“I should dearly like not to have to call your honesty into question, my friend, but there are numerous facts that go against you, and not all of them are insubstantial.”
“Did the lady in question also tell you what she hoped to achieve by these absurd allegations?”
“For the moment, she has asked me to accompany her tomorrow to present a complaint against you at the court.”
Mauro snorted incredulously.
“I imagine you have no intention of doing so.”
“I don’t yet know, Señor Larrea.” It did not escape Mauro’s notice that Fatou had returned to using his surname. “I don’t yet know.”
Footsteps could be heard; the door that Fatou had closed as a precaution burst open without anybody knocking to request entry.
Her dress was a discreet vanilla color, with a much less revealing neckline than she usually wore. Her black hair, often loose and adorned with flowers, ringlets, and other embellishments, was now pulled back in a tight chignon. The only thing that had not changed were those eyes of hers, which he already knew so well: burning like two candle flames, a sign of her determination to commit any barbarity.
She dominated the scene in a carefully prepared role. A role he had not been expecting and that therefore caught him unawares: that of the distraught victim. You cunning vixen, he muttered under his breath.
She did not greet him, as though she had not seen him.
“Good evening, madam,” she said from the threshold after studying Sol closely for a few moments. “I suppose you must be Soledad.”
“We have already met, even if you don’t remember it,” Sol replied calmly. “You fainted in my house soon after you arrived. I was looking after you for quite some time. I put rosemary alcohol compresses on your wrists and rubbed your temples with jimson oil.”
Paulita, Fatou’s young wife, was struggling to push past to get into the room, but Carola Gorostiza would not budge.
“I doubt very much that I fainted by chance,” said the Mexican woman, finally stepping inside the room with the look of a much-maligned heroine. “I think it’s more likely that you somehow caused it with the intention of keeping me there. Then you shut me up in that filthy room. But as you can see, much good it did you.”
She sat down in one of the armchairs with a regal air. Mauro Larrea stared at her in astonishment. He had been mentally preparing to meet the Carola Gorostiza he had always known: haughty, tough, arrogant. Someone to confront openly, face-to-face, in a shouting match if need be. If that had been the case, he had no doubt he would have come out on top. But Zayas’s wife had had more than enough time to work out her strategy and, of all those available to her, she had chosen the least predictable and perhaps the most intelligent. To pretend she was a martyr, the poor little victim: a grandiose display of hypocrisy that if he was not careful could allow her to win hands down.
As an unconscious reaction he stood up, possibly anticipating that being on his feet would help make what he was about to say more convincing. As if a simple posture could withstand the devastating armory she had at her disposal.
“Do you really believe, my friends, that I, a prosperous mine owner in whom your Cuban agent Don Julián Calafat placed his complete confidence, could have been capable of—”
“Capable of the worst villainy,” she interjected.
“Capable of carrying out such abuses with a lady I hardly know, who has pursued me across the Atlantic for no good reason, and who in fact is the younger sister of my own son’s future father-in-law?”
“My gullible brother has no idea what kind of family he is getting mixed up with if he allows his daughter to marry somebody of your kind.”
The Fatou couple had been having lunch when the arrival of a weeping stranger was announced. She was begging for help, using as pretext not only her family connections with the Calafats in Cuba but even with the banker’s wife and daughters, with whom she claimed to move among the cream of Havana society. She was fleeing Mauro Larrea, she gasped between sobs. From that soulless brute, that savage. And she provided details about him that made the couple hesitate. Didn’t it seem odd to them that he should come from the Americas simply to sell some properties he wasn’t even familiar with? Didn’t it seem suspicious that he should rid himself of them without even knowing what they consisted of? By the time the miner came looking for her several hours later, she had the gentle wife in her pocket and the husband teetering, unsure of where he stood.
“Do you know, dear friends,” she said now, “what this individual is hiding beneath his smooth exterior and fine suits? One of the biggest swindlers ever seen on the island of Cuba. A ruined adventurer, an unscrupulous manipulator, a . . . a . . .”
Mauro muttered, “For the love of God” as he stroked his old scar.
“He scoured the streets of Havana looking for any opportunity to lay his hands on some cash. He tried to get money out of me behind my husband’s back for a very dubious business venture. Then he inveigled him into risking his inheritance on a game of billiards.”
“None of that is true,” he refuted.
“He dragged him to a house of ill repute in a neighborhood full of riffraff. He used trickery to fleece him of all his money and then embarked as quickly as possible for Spain before anyone could stop him.”
He planted himself in front of her. He could not allow her to sink her teeth into his dignity like a starving vixen, dragging him through the dust without letting go.
“Would you care to stop spouting all this nonsense?”
“And if I followed him here from Cuba,” Carola Gorostiza went on, “it was solely to demand that he return to me what is lawfully ours.”
The miner drew a deep breath, anxious as a cornered beast. He could not let her get away with this, but losing his temper would only confirm her claims.
“All the deeds to the properties are in my name, confirmed by a notary public,” he said firmly. “Never at any moment for any reason or in any way did I commit the slightest illegal act. I did not even betray any moral code, something I am not sure you can claim. You should know, my friends . . .”
Before getting started on his accusations, he glanced quickly around the room. The young couple were witnessing everything wide-eyed, bewildered and terrified at this bitter struggle that threatened to spatter the carpets, curtains, and wallpaper with its mud. This was predictable: it would have been strange if the Fatous had not been astonished by this fierce row more suited to a dockside tavern than to that respectable Cádiz residence where the word scandal had never had any place.
But what he could not figure out was the reaction of the third witness. What was Soledad’s viewpoint? To his amazement, he could not see what he had been expecting on the face of his closest ally. She had not moved: she was still sitting upright, shoulders stiff, hardly shifting since they had arrived. It was her big eyes that had changed. A ch
ange he immediately noticed. A shadow of suspicion, a wary look, was threatening to replace what until that moment had been a rock-solid complicity.
Mauro Larrea’s priorities changed in an instant. His worst fears suddenly ceased to worry him: the probability of having to face a Spanish court, the threat of being ruined for the rest of his life, even the foul Tadeo Carrús and his accursed threats. All this became of secondary importance, replaced by a far more urgent and important task: to recover a trust that had been broken.
His muscles tensed; his jaw hardened as he gritted his teeth. His voice resounded through the room, and even the windows seemed to shake.
“That’s enough! You must proceed as you see fit, Señora Gorostiza,” he continued firmly. “And let it be resolved by whoever has the authority to do so. Make a formal accusation against me, present a judge with the evidence you have, and I will determine how to defend myself. But I demand you cease calling my integrity into question.”
A tense, prolonged silence took hold of the room. It was torn apart by the voice of Zayas’s wife, as sharp as a barber’s razor.
“Excuse me, but no.” Little by little she was abandoning her role as the outraged martyr and returning to her natural self. “It’s nowhere near over yet, sir; I still have a lot more to say about you. A lot that nobody here is aware of, but which I’ll make it my business to report. Your negotiations with the crockery seller on Calle de la Obrapía, for example. You all should know that this ignoble wretch here was dealing with a slave trafficker in order to obtain rich profits from the despicable trade in African flesh.”
Not even the fact that Mauro had not answered all her accusations could prevent the Gorostiza woman from spreading her filthy gossip. She clearly intended not only to recuperate her husband’s inheritance but to seek revenge for the way she had been treated in Jerez.
“He arrived in Havana without a penny to his name, unable even to hire a carriage, as decent people there,” she went on feverishly. Her hair was coming loose from its neat chignon, her cheeks were aflame, and her generous bust was straining at the neckline. “He intruded in balls where no one knew him; he lived in the house of a quadroon who had been the lover of a Spaniard and with whom he shared glasses of rum and heaven knows what else.”
As she continued spewing her poison into the air, the world came to a standstill for Mauro Larrea. All he was interested in was one person’s reaction.
He silently tried to convey the only thing that mattered to him at that moment.
Don’t doubt me, Soledad.
It was then that she decided to intervene.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
“Well, now, I think that this lamentable spectacle has gone on far too long.”
“What are you talking about, you hussy? What is it you dare say about me? Because I’m not going to admit a thing, you can count on that. This man has not been the only source of my misfortune, because long before he came into my life, you were already there.”
Carola Gorostiza screamed this at the top of her voice: her nerves were finally getting the better of her. The long, sleepless night before she could escape, the days she had spent shut in, her anxiousness. As all of this rose to the surface, the role of a submissive victim burst like a soap bubble.
A tense silence descended on the room once more.
“None of this would have happened if you hadn’t always been on my husband’s mind. If Gustavo hadn’t been so afraid of meeting you again, he would never have allowed himself to be robbed of his inheritance.”
Mauro Larrea’s mind flew back to La Chucha’s turquoise room: images and moments piled on top of each other. Zayas risking his return to Spain with a cue and three balls, deciding his destiny on the outcome of a game of billiards with a stranger. Fighting to defeat him while at the same time wishing to lose; obsessed with a woman he had not seen for more than twenty years but who ever since he had crossed the ocean he had not stopped pining for. A strange way to behave: to let chance have the last word. If he had won, he could have returned with money and a position to a place he had been expelled from following the drama he himself had caused: a return to face the living and the dead. A return to Soledad. If he lost and did not gain the amount he needed to return in a viable position, he handed over the family properties to his adversary and washed his hands forever of his forebears’ house, vineyard, and winery. Of guilt and the past. And, above all, of her. It was truly a strange way to decide things. All or nothing. Like someone risking the future on a suicidal game of heads or tails.
Carola Gorostiza meanwhile began to search in vain for a handkerchief in the cuffs of her dress. Ever attentive, the young Señora Fatou offered her own, which the other proceeded to dab at the corners of her eyes.
“I’ve spent half a lifetime fighting your ghost, Soledad Montalvo. Half a lifetime trying to make Gustavo feel an ounce of what he never ceased feeling for you.”
She addressed Soledad with the stark familiarity of someone revealing the unhappiness of a lengthy marriage starved of affection: the despairing cry of an unloved woman.
Something stirred deep inside Sol Claydon, but she resisted showing it. She sat as still as a caryatid, straight-backed, head held high, and hands folded on her lap. Both her rings were visible: the engagement ring that showed her acceptance of the irrevocable decisions made by the great Don Matías, which had crushed her cousin’s youthful passion, and the one with which she married a foreigner and tore herself away from her sister and her world. Soledad Montalvo remained apparently icy-faced with the other woman’s lament. Even though her heart had crumpled like parchment, she refused to let her reaction peep through the façade of fake indifference.
Finally she spoke, calmly and solemnly.
“I wish it had not come to this, but given the circumstances I’m afraid I must reply to you with painful frankness.”
Her words had the effect of a painter’s brush, splashing a look of intrigue across all their faces.
“As you will have observed during all this time we have allowed Señora de Zayas to speak, her mental health has deteriorated considerably. Fortunately, my cousin has made the whole family aware of this.”
“You and your cousin uniting yet again behind my back!”
Sol pretended not to have heard her, and went on.
“That is the reason why recently, on medical advice, we preferred to keep her in her room. Unfortunately, taking advantage of a momentary lapse by our servants, and driven on by her maniacal fantasies, she decided to leave on her own account. And to come here.”
Unable to believe her ears, Carola Gorostiza tried to leap from her chair. Antonio Fatou immediately stopped her, in a commanding voice he had not previously adopted.
“Be still, Señora Gorostiza. Continue, Señora Claydon, if you please.”
“Dear friends, your guest is suffering from a profound emotional imbalance: a neurosis that transforms her vision of reality, distorting it impulsively and leading her to adopt the kind of extremely wild behavior you have just witnessed.”
“What are you saying, you trollop?” shrieked Carola.
“That is why, and at her husband’s request . . .”
Soledad slid one of her long hands into the bag she still had on her knees. Out of it she took a small brown suede pouch and began emptying its contents with an excruciating lack of haste. The first thing she placed on the marble table was a small glass vial half filled with a cloudy liquid.
“This is a mixture of morphine, chloral hydrate, and potassium bromide,” she explained in a low voice. “It will help relieve her crisis.”
The miner struggled to breathe. Far more than an ingenious ruse or a magnificent challenge like the one she had confronted the possible buyers with in the winery, this was sheer recklessness. On the evening when her stepson had kept them prisoner she had told him that she always carried her husband’s medication with her,
just in case. Now, in an attempt to calm the insane fury of this female hurricane, she was proposing to inject those substances into a completely different organism.
In a rage, Carola Gorostiza finally got up and tried to snatch the vial from her. As though released by the same spring, Mauro Larrea and Antonio Fatou immediately grabbed hold of her arms. She resisted as though possessed by all the devils in hell.
Soledad meanwhile was calmly taking the hypodermic syringe out of the pouch. She fixed a hollow metal needle to it with all the skill of someone who had practical experience in the maneuver.
The two men managed to immobilize Carola on the sofa. Her hair was disheveled, her bosom had almost burst free of her dress, and rage was imprinted on her face like a sailor’s tattoo.
“Could you push up the sleeve of her dress, please,” Sol instructed Paulita. The young wife obeyed timorously.
Soledad went toward the sofa. A couple of big drops of liquid fell from the end of the needle.
“The effect is immediate,” she said in a low, solemn voice. “In twenty or thirty seconds she will be asleep. Paralyzed. Inert.”
The expression of furious defiance on Carola Gorostiza’s face gave way to a terrified grimace.
“She will lose consciousness,” Soledad continued gravely.
Overcome with fear, Carola’s body went limp. She was panting; her lips were two taut white lines. Beads of sweat appeared on her forehead. Soledad had decided to stake everything on this. Even at the cost of dismissing Gustavo’s probably genuine emotions toward her as crazy. Even using the same weapons she had employed to counteract the perverse sickness that had destroyed her husband’s mind and devastated her own life.
“Then she’ll go into a deep, prolonged stupor.”
Bewilderment hung in the air of the room like a dense fog. Fatou’s wife was looking on in complete terror. The two men were tense, awaiting Soledad’s next move.
“That is, unless . . .” Soledad whispered, holding the needle a handbreadth from the arm of the supposed lunatic. She paused for a few moments. “Unless she manages to calm down by herself.”