•
Until one day he read, literally, a different page. It was a letter from Italy: his cousin Rosa was informing him of the death of her father, Don Luigi Cellini, the distant uncle that Don Salvatore had so despised. Rosa had been left destitute and with a young child, for her husband, one Lucas Settembrini, had abandoned her years before. She asked Silvio to receive her at the hacienda, promising to take up as little room as possible and to do any work required of her.
If old man Salvatore hadn’t already been dead, he would have exploded in rage upon reading this letter. To think he had crushed his own soul for forty years so that in the end his property would harbor and support the family of that bully, Luigi. But these were not the considerations that made Silvio postpone his response; rather, it was his own apprehensions about having relatives living in the house. He would have to say goodbye to his bachelor life; he would have to shave, change out of his pajamas, eat properly, et cetera. But, as he didn’t know what excuse to give when denying his cousin’s request, he decided to lie and tell her that he was going to sell the hacienda and embark on a long journey around the world, which would end—for this seemed to be a fitting finale to his tall tale—in a monastery in the Far East, where he could spend the rest of his life in meditation.
Once he had decided how he would respond, he picked up his cousin’s letter to find the address, and reread it. Only at the end of the missive did he notice something that made him tremble, as if in a reverie: his cousin signed her name Rosa Eleonora Settembrini. What was so special about this signature? He had no need to rack his brains: her initials spelled the word res.
Silvio wavered, bewildered, not knowing if he should give importance to his discovery and carry his inquiries further. Might he finally be in possession of the true meaning of the sign? He had pursued so many avenues followed by so many disappointments! Finally, he decided once again to submit to chance, and he answered the letter in the affirmative, sending, moreover, and as his cousin had requested, the money for the journey.
•
The Settembrinis arrived in Tarma three months later, having traveled on a cargo ship that stopped at every port in the world. Silvio had set up two upstairs bedrooms in a separate wing for their use. The two appeared at El Rosedal unannounced, with Lavander, the machinist, who on rare occasions used his truck as a taxi. Silvio was spending the afternoon in a lounge chair on the veranda and stroking his reddish beard, tormented by one of the many problems his insipid life offered him: should he or shouldn’t he sell one of his studs to Don Armando Santa Lucía? They had just entered the gateway and stopped in the dirt courtyard, followed by Lavander carrying their luggage, when Silvio, impelled by an irrepressible urge, stood up, looked out, then leaned against the wood banister so as not to fall.
It was not his cousin or, of course, Lavander, who had rattled him but rather the sight of his niece, standing apart from the others and admiring the old mansion, her head tilted a bit to one side. This secret realm of his, this decrepit and wild kingdom, was finally welcoming its princess. Such a figure as hers could have come only from a celestial hierarchy, where replicas and fakes are impossible.
Roxana was fifteen years old. Silvio discovered in amazement that his Italian, not spoken since his mother died, was in perfect working order, as if it had been held in reserve since then, destined to become, in keeping with the circumstances, a sacred language. His cousin Rosa, despite her promise otherwise, took over the entire hacienda, house and land, from the very first day. Embittered and worn down by poverty and her husband’s abandonment, she realized that El Rosedal was bigger than her village in Tyrol, that here one could own more than one hundred cows, and she devoted herself with vindictive passion to its management. One of the first things she ordered was the repair of Silvio’s teeth—for he formed part of the hacienda—as well as all the broken glass on the veranda. Silvio never again saw dirty shirts tossed on the floor, cans with spoiled milk in the passageways, or piles of peaches under the trees being devoured by flies. El Rosedal began to produce cheeses and jams and, emerging from its stagnation, entered a new era of prosperity.
Roxana had turned fifteen on the ship, and it seemed as if she kept turning fifteen and would never stop turning fifteen. Silvio hated night and sleep because he saw it as time taken away from contemplating his niece. From the moment he opened his eyes, he was on his feet, begging Etelvina Pumari to bring the whitest milk, the freshest eggs, the warmest bread, and the sweetest honey for Roxana’s breakfast. When, in the mornings, she accompanied him on his daily walk through the orchard, he would enter the realm of the ineffable. Everything she touched shimmered, every word she uttered became memorable, her old dresses were jewels in the crown, wherever she passed were left traces of an preternatural event and the perfume of a visitation from the divine.
Silvio’s enchantment redoubled when he discovered that Roxana’s middle name was Elena, and because her last name was Settembrini, her initials also spelled RES, a word now charged with so much meaning. Everything became perfectly clear: he was reaping the rewards for his sleepless nights, had finally deciphered the enigma of the garden. One night, out of sheer joy, he played an entire violin concerto by Beethoven for Roxana, without skipping a single note; he took care to ride his horse well, dyed the right side of his hair black, and memorized Rubén Darío’s longest poems, all while Rosa became more and more entrenched in the management of the hacienda, with the assistance of the disconcerted tribe of Pumaris, which allowed her cousin to take delight in the education of her daughter.
Silvio made grandiose plans: to found and finance a university in Tarma, with a pleiad of richly compensated professors, so that Roxana could be the only student; to send her measurements to dressmakers in Paris so that they could regularly send her their most expensive designs; to hire a world-renowned chef and assign him the express mission of inventing a new dish for his niece every day; to invite the Pope for every religious holiday to celebrate Mass in the hacienda’s chapel. Naturally, however, he had to adapt these plans to the modesty of his resources and instead hired a Spanish teacher and a singing teacher, sent for her dresses to be made by a local spinster, and told Basilia Pumari to wear an apron and bonnet when she was serving meals, which spoiled her indigenous beauty and made her look utterly ridiculous.
•
At a certain point, mold began to grow around the edges of this period of bliss. Silvio noticed that sometimes Roxana would stifle a yawn behind her hand while he was talking to her or that her eyes would focus on a spot that did not correspond to his own presence. Silvio had already recounted to her ten times everything about his childhood and youth, embellishing it with the imagination of a Persian storyteller, and during long, endless evenings he had played all the music that had been written for the violin since the Renaissance. Roxana, for her part, already knew the entire hacienda by heart. There was no nook or cranny into which she had not introduced her graceful and curious nature; she was incapable of getting lost in the garden’s labyrinth, she bestowed upon every tree in the orchard a glance of recognition, every bend in the river preserved the imprint of her footsteps, and the eucalyptus trees in the forest had adopted her as their deity.
But there was still one thing Roxana did not know: the word hidden in the rose garden. Silvio had never spoken to her about it, for it was his most precious secret, and anyone who wanted to discover it had to, like he, pass through all the trials of initiation. Roxana, however, was becoming more and more distracted, her spirit seemed to be trying to escape from the bounds of the estate, so he decided to regain her attention by setting her on the trail of this riddle. One day he told her that there was something at the hacienda that she would never find. Her curiosity piqued, Roxana resumed her wanderings, searching for what was hidden. Silvio had given her no further clues, so she didn’t know if it was a treasure, a sacred animal, or a tree of wisdom. Wherever she went, she seemed to turn on lights in invisible rooms, and Silvio followed somberly behind h
er, switching them off.
After a while of not finding anything, she began to get irritated and demanded he give her more information; when Silvio refused, she became angry and told him he was a bad man and that she no longer loved him. Silvio was deeply hurt and didn’t know what to do. That was when Rosa emerged from the shadows and administered the death blow.
•
Rosa had managed to impose her order on the hacienda, thereby concluding the first stage of her mission. That coveted estate, more prosperous than ever, would belong to them outright when Silvio disappeared. But there were other, larger estates in the Tarma region. During her frequent trips into town, she had had plenty of occasion to find out about and even visit properties with thousands of head of livestock. To possess them, she had one incomparable tool: Roxana.
On the other side, the landowners of Tarma were sensing that the girl’s presence might just be their dreamed-of opportunity to finally obtain possession of El Rosedal. Roxana had never stepped foot in Tarma, captivated as she was by the charms of the hacienda and Silvio’s attentions, but news of her and her beauty had come to them through her teachers.
Thus, contrary but converging interests were simultaneously set in motion, with nuptials as their petty goal, an indication that Roxana’s removal from her uncle’s realm would eventually come to pass.
All of this coincided with St. Anne’s Festival and Roxana’s sixteenth birthday. Rosa insisted that it was time for the girl to be presented to the world, and right around the same time a delegation of landowners paid a visit to El Rosedal to request that Silvio host the festival. More than an honor, this was a mark of status, one all the gentlemen wished for, but it also meant organizing large and expensive celebrations for the participation of the entire community.
Silvio said why not, perhaps this was the way to amuse Roxana, bring back the sparkle to her eyes that was fading by the day, as well as her delight at living at El Rosedal.
So he decided to combine his niece’s birthday celebration and the festival and organize one big party, and he threw himself into the preparations for an entire month as if it were the most momentous event of his life. He had the courtyard leveled and fixed, the façade painted, flowerpots placed under the arcade, the veranda decorated with lanterns, the garden paths cleaned, and the orchard cleared of fallen fruit and leaves. In addition, he hired some Chinese firework makers, a dance group from Acobamba, other musicians from Huancayo, and a team of experts in the art of pachamanca, who would cook an array of cows, pigs, mutton, chickens, guinea pigs, and pigeons, as well as all the regional vegetables and legumes, buried in the ground with hot stones. As for the bar, he gave the Hotel Bolívar of Tarma carte blanche to provide local and imported beverages.
The party went down in the annals of provincial history. Before noon, the guests were starting to arrive from the four corners of the world. Some came by automobile, but most rode in on richly saddled horses, furnished with harnesses and stirrups of embossed silver. The men wore their traditional dress: calfskin boots, velveteen breeches, a leather or cloth jacket, a scarf tied around the neck, a felt hat, and, slung over their shoulders, a poncho, folded in thirds, made of vicuña so finely woven that the entire garment could be pulled through a wedding ring. The women were divided into Amazonian warriors and civilians, depending on whether they were married to landowners or civil servants. In total, there were some five hundred guests, for Silvio had invited landowners from as far away as Juaja, Junín, and Chanchamayo. Out of these five hundred people, at least half were the sons of landowners. Nobody knew where so many of them had come from. Dressed just like their fathers, but in brighter colors, and almost all arriving on spirited mounts, they immediately congregated in what seemed like a noisy corral of strutting roosters, each one more handsome and magnificent than the next.
Everything went according to plan, except the moment Roxana appeared, opening up a rift of silence and astonishment in the throng. Rosa had imagined a theatrical scenario: to carpet the staircase from the veranda and have her descend to the sounds of a Viennese waltz. Silvio thought of something better: have her appear out of the air with the help of a mechanical device or rise out of an enormous cake. But finally he gave up on such baroque inventions, trusting in the majesty of her simple presence. And, indeed, from one moment to the next, Roxana was simply present, and everything else ceased to exist.
A hushed circle gathered around her, but nobody dared take a step forward or speak. Silvio also found it difficult to make the first move, but with great effort he approached the closest lady and introduced her to his niece. The introductions continued, and the din returned. But another, more circumscribed circle formed, this one made up of young men who wanted to try out their gallantry after the introductions. Having fallen in love passionately and in unison, they would have fought it out with blows and lashes if the presence of their parents and the remnants of decorum hadn’t obliged them to show a certain amount of restraint.
After the aperitifs and lunch, the dancing began. Silvio started it off by dancing with Roxana, but his duties as host forced him into the arms of women who took him farther and farther away from the hub of the activity. Out of the corner of his eye he could see that Roxana was being asked to dance by an endless line of aspiring partners, who had set their minds to giving the most brilliant performance of their lives that afternoon. And there were so many, she would never end up meeting them all! The dancing continued, interrupted by toasts, jokes, and speeches until Silvio, his attention divided among the ladies and then among the gentlemen, realized that some time had passed since Roxana had changed partners. And her dance partner was no other than Jorge Santa Lucía, a young agronomist known for the soundness of his constitution, the size of his hacienda, the pleasantness of his character, and the beauty of his sweethearts. Silvio lost sight of them in the swirl, it was growing dark, and he had to give instructions for the lanterns on the veranda to be lit, after which he returned to the courtyard with inquisitive eyes and an uneasy spirit. Roxana was still dancing with her gallant, and on her face he had never seen an expression of such entranced happiness.
He offered yet another toast, danced a number with his cousin Rosa—who coiled herself around his shoulders like a clingy scarf—instructed the fireworks to be set up, and by the time it grew dark, he felt terribly tired and sad. It was, perhaps, the alcohol, which he almost never drank, or the bustle of the festivities, or the excess of food, but the truth is that he retired to the upper floor without anybody noticing or attempting to stop him. Leaning over the banister, sunk in the shadows, he contemplated the party, his party, which was gearing up into a more and more frenetic rhythm as the hours passed. The orchestra was playing furiously, the dancing couples were kicking up the dust, the drinkers crowded around the bar, the dancers from Acobamba dressed in demon costumes were leaping and bounding with mortal daring near the arcade. And Roxana, where was she? He tried to locate her, but in vain. It wasn’t she, or she, or that one over there. Where was the fountain of fire, the seashell in the dark grotto, the double apple of life?
Disheartened, he went to his bedroom, picked up his violin, played a few chords, then went out onto the veranda with his instrument. He paced from one end to the other until he stopped in front of the door that led up to the minaret. It had been years since he’d gone up there. The door was shut with an old lock that he alone knew how to open. After opening it, he laboriously climbed the rotten stairs, holding on to the frayed ropes. When he reached the tiny tiled observatory, he looked down at the rose garden and searched for the figures. He couldn’t make out anything, perhaps because there was not enough light. On one side there shone a bed of white roses; on another, a bed of yellow. Where was the message? What did the message say? At that moment the fireworks began, and they lit up the sky. Red, blue, orange lights exploded, shedding more light on the rose garden than ever before. Silvio again tried to distinguish the old signs, but all he saw was confusion and disorder, a capricious arabesque of h
ues, lines, and corollas. There was no riddle or message in that garden, or in his life. Still, he attempted a new formulation that he improvised on the spot: the letters he once thought he had found corresponded consecutively to numbers and added together equaled his age, fifty years old, the age perhaps at which he should die. But this hypothesis didn’t seem either true or false, and he received it with absolute indifference. In so doing, he felt serene, sovereign. The fireworks were over. The dance began again amid cheers, applause, and singing. It was a splendid night. Picking up his violin, he pressed it against his chin and began to play for nobody amid the uproar. For nobody. And he was certain that he had never played better.
Paris
August 29, 1976
from
FOR SMOKERS ONLY
FOR SMOKERS ONLY
THOUGH I was not a precocious smoker, at a certain point my story and the story of my cigarettes blend into one. I have no clear memory of my apprenticeship, other than the first cigarette I smoked when I was fourteen or fifteen years old. It was a blonde, a Derby, offered to me by a classmate as we were leaving school for the day. I lit it fearfully under the shade of a mulberry tree, and, after taking a few drags, I felt so ill that I spent all afternoon vomiting and vowed I would never repeat the experience.
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