In the Name of Salome

by Julia Alvarez

  I couldn’t believe that Pancho was asking for poetry at a time like this. “Pancho,” I said, looking straight at his eyes, “Do you understand how ill I am?”

  He nodded slowly, but I could see that the reality of what I was saying was not sinking in.

  “I often think of that incident you spoke of in one of your letters,” Pancho went on, his voice thick with emotion. It was the first time he had referred to any of our correspondence. “The one where you told how your students apologized for your sacrifice of poetry for them. I feel I owe you an apology as well, Salomé. Had it not been for me and your children, you would have continued on that immortal path.”

  “Ay Pancho,” I said, shaking my head. “My children are the only immortality I want.”

  Pancho was looking intently at me, as if he were cutting away layer after layer of pretense to get to the truth of what I really felt. “But you might have been Quintana. You might have been Gallego,” he appealed.

  “Instead I am Salomé, whom no one else could be.”

  He kissed me sweetly on my forehead, the tip of my nose, my chin. “I, for one, am so very glad of that.”

  Later, I heard him, washing his hands at one of his many sinks.

  THOSE THREE MONTHS AWAY were a glorious, sunny blur. We—the children and Tivisita and I—stayed in a small house rented for us by my old friend Dubeau, who had taught at la Normal and at my own instituto. When Lilís began persecuting Hostos’s disciples, Dubeau and his wife Zenona moved north to the seaside town of Puerto Plata and opened a little school. They didn’t even name it, so as not to bring official attention on their endeavor. Positivism had become an underground activity.

  We heard rumors of all the preparations going on in the capital for the Columbus celebrations. Dubeau guessed the fanfare was Lilís’s way of distracting attention from the coming elections and the many opponents who had to be got out of the way before voting day. And so, as the Niña, Pinta, and Santa María replicas sent by Spain entered our harbor, they floated on the sea along with the bodies of Lilís’s enemies. Their canon blasts drowned out the gunshots of the execution squads in Azua, where Don Eugenio’s supporters were being massacred left and right.

  In our sleepy, seaside town, all that seemed unreal. We woke early, walked barefoot on the sand, picking up shells, each one more perfect than the next. By the time we got back to our small palm-wood house, my skirt was full of treasures. Soon, every one of my dresses had a faded lap and a stained hem. The sea breezes blew away the infection in my chest. The lapping of the waves soothed my spirit. My lungs began to heal and my heart to mend.

  From the capital, Pancho sent loving and frequent missives as if he were making up for all his long silences and his cool communications from France. He had moved us to the new house, a “palace,” he called it. He wanted to know if the children would like a monkey, as he had been made a very good offer by one of his patients, an organ grinder. Most definitely not, I wrote back. With a full household and a school below, I had enough to manage. “If you are going to get a monkey, why not a bear and a goat as well?” I added to lighten my refusal.

  Looking out at that ocean, I felt inspired, and for the first time in two years, I picked up my pen and wrote, not one, but two poems. The first was in my old style, the cry of the mariner sighting land, “¡Tierra!” Hope and expectation at last fulfilled. The other poem, “Fe,” was much quieter, the mariners mid-ocean, tossed by storms, needing the faith to continue with no sign of land ahead.

  I sent both poems to Pancho, and of course, he chose “¡Tierra!” to read at the concluding celebration. If I am to believe Pancho’s account of that evening, my poem was well received. At the end of the ceremonies at the Teatro Republicano, Pancho stood and recited it, hand tucked in his frock coat no doubt, and using that slight French accent he refused to lose. The great apostle Martí, and the great general Máximo Gómez, and the incomparable Meriño, and the next president Marchena (Pancho’s superlatives!) had all been visibly moved. Even Martí took out his handkerchief. Pancho swore it was the power of my poetry, but I imagine the apostle was thinking of his own dear Cuba from which he had been exiled now for so many years.

  “¡Mi musa, mi esposa, mi amor, mi tierra!” Pancho closed.

  Across the island on the north coast, we gathered that very night in the small parlor of our seaside cottage. Dubeau read some poems; my boys read their little compositions; then I surprised everyone by reciting my new poem, “Faith.” The lamplight shone on the faces of my children and my dear friends. In the distance I could hear the waves coming in and out, in and out—all the applause I wanted. When I had finished, I felt elated: not once during my reading had I broken down coughing.

  The rest cure had worked. I had come through the storm. Faith!

  BACK AT THE CAPITAL, everything seemed changed. Electricity had arrived, and at night the city was lit up as if it were day. The Carousel Americano set itself up in the central square, and for one mota you could go round and round and round for five minutes until you could hardly stand you were so dizzy. It was probably an appropriate state to be in with elections coming.

  The large, two-story house we had leased stood at the center of the city. The day we arrived, I looked out from an upstairs window at the sea and then down at the courtyard below. A small creature with a collar and rope tied to a guava tree gazed up at me. “Pancho!” I called out to him.

  He shrugged helplessly. “The organ grinder died. The monkey didn’t want to leave.”

  “I’ll make him want to leave,” I declared, but I had already lost the battle. The boys, spying this magnificent pet, cried out, “A monkey! A monkey!” and dashed downstairs to welcome it.

  I was too pleased with our new quarters to let anything spoil my homecoming. The house was quite grand, with a Spanish-tile roof and iron grillwork at each one of its five balconies. We used the first floor for the instituto and the second for our living quarters. The sisters Bobadilla would have been proud of the appearance of my instituto, if not of what was going on inside—little girls learning to read and write.

  The school had doubled in size, which was a good thing. With Pancho’s few patients, we depended on what income the instituto provided to pay our debts. And there were many of them. Although Pancho had received a government scholarship, he had borrowed considerably from Cosme Batlle in order to help finance his Parisian studies and purchase his equipment. As it turned out, he had also incurred added personal expenses, of which I will not speak.

  Even with the instituto flourishing and enrollments increasing every day, we gave out so many scholarships that we could never quite make ends meet. Then, too, the Ayuntamiento was always in arrears in paying us our monthly stipend, a sum considerably reduced from what they had originally promised. When we found out that they were paying double the amount per student to San Luis Gonzaga and Escuela Central, it became quite clear what was happening. The regime wanted to shut us down, quietly, by bankruptcy.

  But Salomé had come back from Puerto Plata strong and plucky. I felt up to the hard work of rebuilding my patria, girl by girl. Everyone noticed my nice color, the weight I had put on. Pancho’s eyes no longer wandered to the pretty Lauranzón girls, at least not in my presence. Needless to say, with my health regained, his importuning recommenced.

  It came down to a simple detail: there were not two wings to the new house in which we could keep our separate quarters. In fact, upon my return to the capital, I found that Pancho had moved us both into the same bedroom. Even so, I insisted that the porters deposit my things in a small sitting room beside the boys’ bedroom. They helped me unfold my narrow pallet next to a casement window that looked out at the sea.

  “Salomé, you’ll be warmer in the back bedroom with me,” he noted, too ashamed to plead his own needs. Winter was coming, he reminded me, and the nights would be cooler, especially now that we lived closer to the sea.

  “Cool weather is better for my health,” I argued.

 
; “But you are cured,” Pancho pleaded.

  “My lungs are cured,” I agreed.

  I was angry at myself, for in truth, I wanted to forgive him. But much as I promised myself to let go my stubbornness, my rage would rise up like a wall between us. Suddenly, I would think of how Pancho had lied to me, of his numerous excuses for not returning home, of his explanations of why he needed more money. Or I would imagine Mlle. Chrittia with her curly reddish hair and grayish sort of eyes—I had coaxed that much information from Fran. I remembered how I had sent her gifts we could ill afford in gratitude for taking care of “my boys.” Indeed! I was furious at Pancho, furious at Mlle. Chrittia, furious at myself.

  Perhaps if Pancho had persisted, I would have ceded sooner. But he was preoccupied, as I soon was, with the bloodbath taking place before our very eyes.

  Lilís had announced that he would, in fact, run for president. Immediately, all the candidates wisely dropped out. All, that is, except Don Eugenio. Pancho confided that he and Rodolfo had urged Don Eugenio, not only to resign his candidacy, but to take the first ship out of the country. But Don Eugenio believed himself invulnerable. “Not a good sign in a future leader,” Pancho admitted. His waning enthusiasm for Don Eugenio saved Pancho in the end. When Marchena’s inner circle began to be rounded up, Lilís’s spies knew that Pancho was no longer one of them.

  The eve of election night, Pancho and Federico went out to size up the mood in the city. I waited in my narrow bed, unable to sleep until I heard the welcome sounds of Pancho coming home. For days, I had been feeling a slight feverishness that made me dread the return of my illness. But I had not had a recurrence of the horrid cough. I was still holding on to faith—faith that this was nothing but a touch of my old asthma.

  I don’t know which I heard first—the shots or the steps in the entryway. I sat up, and throwing my shawl over my shoulders, I rushed to the front of the house. I found Pancho at the top of the stairs, trying to catch his breath. The city was coming undone.

  “I want you and the children to go to your mother’s first thing in the morning,” he said firmly.

  “It’s you who must go away, Pancho. You must take the first ship out, I don’t care where. Haiti, Cuba, Curaçao, Puerto Rico, France.” Rather than risk a hair on his head coming to harm, I would rather send him back to the other woman. Love was stronger than anything else in the world. I had not known until this moment that I was capable of it.

  When Pancho reached for me, I did not turn away. He led me down the hall, past the boys’ bedroom, past the room with its narrow pallet I had been using as my own, and into his room and the large four-poster with the marriage coverlet I smoothed out every morning when I made his bed.

  He slept soundly in my arms that night, but I lay awake, unable to sleep. The room was cold. I could hear the winter sea crashing against the malecón. Downstairs, the monkey whimpered to be let in. Some time close to dawn, fighting erupted. Gunshots drowned out my bouts of coughing. I lay there, knowing that my hopes for my patria—and for myself—were lost. No matter how much Pancho denied it, I had the signs of consumption, the remissions, the relapses, the fevers, the shortness of breath. The only symptom I had been spared so far was coughing up blood.

  Hour after hour, as the dark room slowly became light, I could see all that was coming: Marchena dead, the Lauranzóns forced into exile, Pancho himself forced to flee, the instituto’s doors closed, my children without a settled home. And I could not catch my breath. No, I could not catch my breath. I could not for the life of me catch my breath.

  SEVEN

  Reply

  Santiago de Cuba, 1909

  ANY MINUTE NOW, Camila expects the carriage to come up the last hill into full view, her father sitting beside her aunt Mon, her parasol cocked to the angle of the sun. They will have ridden up through town from the dockyards, her father pointing out this house and that house where the best poet in all of Cuba lives, or the most accomplished flutist, or the kindest doña who cooks the finest pasteles. Camila rolls her eyes just thinking about her father’s excesses of enthusiasm.

  “Camila dear, are they here?” Tivisita has come into the front room where Papancho has set up his office and library. Camila takes a deep breath before she replies in as even a tone as she can manage, “Not yet. The boat was not due until ten, after all.” It is that “after all” that gets her in trouble. Were her father here, he would observe in a voice full of tenderness for Tivisita, “That is no way to speak to your stepmother, Camila.”

  Her stepmother says nothing, and Camila does not turn to face her, hoping she will get the hint and leave. There must be one room in this house where Camila can get away from the madness of this new family. Recently, they have all been trying her patience—from the baby Rodolfo, cute as he is; to the pink pig, Teddy, to the bear that should be called Teddy but is called Christopher Columbus. It is an embarrassment to have her friends come over and step in bear poopoo or endure the parrot Paco’s crude remarks, even if they are spoken in English. After three years of occupation, everyone in Cuba knows what Remember the Maine, the hell with Spain! means, or Bottoms up! or Stick it where the sun never shines! These jibes are especially embarrassing when her beautiful friend Guarina Lora, whose family is one of the oldest and finest in Cuba, is visiting the house.

  Mon is coming to Santiago de Cuba just to see her, Camila, and no one else. Mon is her special aunt, her godmother, her mother’s only sister—as close to a mother as a person who is not your mother can be. Camila wrote to Mon early in the year, begging her to come for her fifteenth birthday party in April, but her aunt wrote back that travel was difficult for “a fat, old lady like me.” Instead she invited Camila to come spend the summer with her. That caused quite a disagreement in the household. Papancho would not let Camila go away. He said that the climate there would be very bad for her asthma. But Camila could tell this was just an excuse. Her father has never allowed her to go back home for a visit, even though the two islands are only a day away by steamboat. As often as Camila has been allowed to go back, Santo Domingo might as well be Mexico, where her brother Pedro lives now. She has not seen her aunt or her grandmother since Papancho moved the family to Cuba five years ago. This is so unfair.

  She knows from comments between her father and stepmother, comments that are always shushed when she comes into the room, that Ramona does not get along with Papancho. She has no idea why. It is one of those mysteries from the past that no one ever talks about, for fear of upsetting her stepmother. At least that is the way Camila explains it to herself. Why else not tell her the truth of why Tía Ramona so dislikes Papancho? She has a right to know. After all, it is her life that is affected by their bad blood! Of course, she does not say so. In fact, it is only recently that Camila has been admitting any of these dark thoughts to herself, much less anyone else.

  “I really don’t think you should stand by the window. All that dust from the street.” Tivisita’s voice is full of concern, which Camila knows to be false. If Tivisita cared so much about her, she would have allowed Camila to accompany the coach down to the dock to pick up her father and aunt. Hasn’t Papancho always extolled the salutary properties of the seaside air? But no, Tivisita said a ride down to the hot, low-lying city and harbor would be the worst thing for Camila’s lungs. Ever since they moved up to Vista Alegre, Camila has not heard the end of how these breezy hills are going to cure her asthma. God forbid there should be another lung tragedy in the family!

  Well, there is another tragedy in the family even if they cannot see it. She is so unhappy, she can’t stand it. She has written about this only to her brother Pedro, and only in a veiled way, saying she has a friend who has a friend who is melancholy and would like to take his life, and her brother has written back, “Tell him to wait a while. Youth is never easy.” But Pedro has also written to their father asking that Camila be sent to live with him in Mexico City. She knows this because her father has developed the habit of using his letters as bookmarks, an
d Camila has often found herself reading La divina commedia or El Cid or Victor Hugo only to come upon a letter from one of her brothers marking the place where Papancho stopped reading.

  That is how she found out her oldest brother Fran, who seems to have dropped out of the family, killed a man. The letter, written from prison by Fran to their father, explained how the Bordas boy had threatened him first, how the victim got the doctor, and he got the ball and chain. Perusing her father’s copy of La vida es sueño, Camila discovered a letter from Mon, pleading with Papancho for custody of Camila. Even her brother Max seems to have picked up their father’s habit. Recently, Camila discovered that Max fancies her best friend Guarina. Her brother left a half-finished sonnet inside Salomé’s book of poems, perhaps frustrated by his attempts to match their mother’s talent. Reading it, Camila felt a pang of jealousy. Max has no right to worm his way into her special friendship with Guarina.

  Her half brothers burst into the room, calling out, “Camila! Camila!” They are forbidden to enter their father’s study unless an adult is present, and of course, the minute they see their older sister headed for the front of the house, they are in fast pursuit. She has tried scolding and shooing them away, but they throw themselves at the door, begging her not to be so mean.

  Sometimes she wishes she could tuck the whole lot of them back inside their mother, like the Russian dolls that fit inside each other that her father brought back from Paris for her when he was foreign minister. Then she would toss that mamá doll as far away as she can!