Explosion in a Cathedral, page 29
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Surrounded by palm trees and coffee plants, the home of Jorge’s parents was a sort of Roman palace, with high Doric columns framing verandas adorned with porcelain plates, antique vases, mosaics from Talavera, and flowerpots abounding with begonias. The salons, the archways of the main courtyard, the dining rooms could have easily accommodated a hundred people. At all hours, fires burned in the hearths, and they spent their days nibbling on inexhaustible delicacies, breakfasting, lunching, and snacking, with a cup of chocolate or a glass of sherry eternally at hand. It was marvelous to contemplate, amid the pomegranate trees, bougainvillea, and vegetation wound in creeping vines, the statues of white marble that adorned the gardens. Pomona and Diana the Huntress watched over a natural reservoir, tapestried in ferns and eddoes, in the opening of a stream. Long avenues shadowed by almond trees, locusts, and royal palms grew dim in the distant verdure, where the mystery of an Italian pergola of climbing roses revealed itself, or a tiny Greek temple raised to shelter a mythical goddess, or a labyrinth of box shrubs, pleasant to ramble through when the shadows of twilight stretched forth. The masters of the house, ever attentive to the comfort of their guests, kept generally to themselves. The old principles of Spanish colonial hospitality left all free to do as they pleased, and while some took to the roads on horseback, others went hunting or walking, and the rest dispersed, one with a chessboard, one with a book, across the vastness of the parks. A bell hanging in a high tower set the rhythms of daily life, calling to dinners or gatherings whoever wished to attend. After the long evening meal that ended in the chill of ten o’ clock, strands of lamps were lit along the esplanade behind the house, and a concert would begin, with thirty negro musicians and a German conductor, a former violinist with the orchestra in Mannheim. Beneath a starry sky—so starry it appeared saturated—they heard the grave overture to a symphony by Haydn, or the instruments vaulted into a gay allegro by Stamitz or Cannabich. At times, with the participation of those invitees who could sing, they put on a Telemann operetta or Pergolesi’s The Maid Turned Mistress. And so time passed, in those last days of a Century of Light that seemed, because of all that had occurred, to have drawn on for more than three hundred years. “How wonderful life is,” Sofía said. “And yet, behind those trees lies something intolerable.” She pointed toward the row of tall cypresses rising like greenish black obelisks over the surrounding vegetation, which hid another world of shacks where the slaves would sometimes bang their drums, evoking a remote hailstorm. “I feel the same as you,” Esteban replied. “But we are not strong enough to change things. Even with a grant of Plenary Powers, others failed in the attempt . . .” On the evening of December 24, while some rushed to ready things for Christmas, making certain that the turkeys were roasted gold in the ovens and the perfume of the sauces had grown pungent, Esteban and Sofía walked to the edge of the estate, to the monumental gateway, to wait for Carlos and Jorge, who would not be long in coming. They took shelter from a sudden storm in one of the pergolas, which glowed with newly bloomed poinsettias. The rain lifted aromas from the ground, distilling essences from the leaves that had fallen on the roads. “For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; The flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come,” murmured Esteban, citing a biblical text he recalled from his readings as an adolescent. Then the epiphany occurred. He felt rescued, restored to himself, by a euphoric revelation: now you understand Everything. You know what it was that was ripening within you all those years. You look at her face and understand the one thing you ought to have understood, you who were so ardent in the pursuit of truths that surpassed your understanding. It was her, the first woman you knew, the mother you embraced in place of the one you never met. She is the woman who revealed to you the lavish tenderness of Woman watching over your sleepless nights, pitying your sufferings and calming you with caresses at dawn. She is the sister who knew the successive forms of your body as only an impossible lover who grew up alongside you could. Esteban laid his head on a shoulder seemingly made of his own flesh and burst into sobs so deep, so rending, that Sofía, bewildered, took him in her arms, kissed his forehead, his cheeks, drew him toward her. His anxious, thirsty lips looked greedily for hers. Pushing his face with her hands, she wriggled away quickly and stood up in front of him, watching his reactions like a person observing the movements of an enemy. Esteban looked at her, wounded and inert, but with such ardor in his eyes that the woman, feeling looked upon as a woman, took another step back. Now he spoke to her, spoke to her of what he had just grasped, what he had discovered in himself. In a voice nothing like the voice of before, he uttered a series of unprecedented, unacceptable words, which, far from moving her, had about them the hollow resonance of commonplaces. Uncertain what to do, what to say, she was ashamed, almost, at having to suffer through that monologue of fevered confessions that mentioned trivial deceptions in the bedroom, unfulfilled cravings, the obscure hopes that had brought the visitor back from arid lands to the place of his departure. “Enough!” shouted Sofía, rage painted across her face. A different woman, perhaps, might find some interest in listening to this. But in her intransigence, it all sounded false, counterfeit. And as the other spoke faster, she kept shouting Enough! raising the diapason to conclusive, decisive, unimpeachable intonations. A silence rife with anguish followed. Their bodies both throbbed from within, as though they had emerged from some trying endeavor. “You’ve ruined everything; you’ve destroyed everything,” she said. And now Sofía broke into tears, running off beneath the rain. Night fell over his prone body. Nothing would be as it was before. What had burst from him in that moment of crisis would erect an unbreachable wall of distrust, reticent silences, harsh looks, and he would be incapable of bearing it. Better to leave, he thought, abandon the family, but he knew he lacked the energy to do so. The times were so hazardous that the traveler setting forth could expect the worst, as in the days of the Middle Ages. And Esteban knew well the tedium the word adventure could conceal . . . The rain stopped. Lights and costumes filled the hedges. Pastors arrived, millers with flour-dusted faces, negroes who weren’t negroes, old ladies played by twelve-year-olds, people bearded and with cardboard crowns, shaking rattles, cowbells, tambourines, and castanets. In chorus, the little girls sang:
Here comes the dowager
With alms for the poor.
She tells us be grateful
When we ask for more.
Oh green of the grapevines,
Oh flowers adored,
God bless Mother Mary
And Jesus our Lord.
Behind the pots of bougainvillea, the house shimmered with candelabras, lamps, and Venetian chandeliers. They would all wait together till midnight, surrounded by trays of punch. Twelve bell strokes from the belfry, and each would swallow the ritual twelve grapes. Then there would be the interminable supper, prolonged in table talk, with hazelnuts and almonds cracked in nutcrackers. Tonight, the negro orchestra would present new waltzes, after getting their roles the night before and practicing them since early morning. Esteban yearned to flee the festivities, the children harassing him, the servants calling him by name, entreating him to play some game or drink the wines and liquors that had raised such laughter in the lighted doorways. He heard the mincing trot of horses. Riding in the box seat of the mud-spattered carriage, Remigio appeared at the end of the avenue. But the carriage itself was empty. Stopping to speak with Esteban, Remigio informed him that Jorge had lost consciousness and was lying in bed, victim of an epidemic now laying waste to the city—the epidemic thought responsible for innumerable deaths on the battlefields of Europe. Its foul miasmas had arrived on the Russian ships that had recently docked, bearing incomparable merchandise they traded for the tropical fruits so beloved of the rich gentlemen of Saint Petersburg.
XXXVIII.
The house stank of sickness. Even from the doorway, the scent of mustard and linseed in the distant kitchens could be felt in the throat. Tisanes and poultices, potions and oil of camphor, came and went down the hallways and over the stairs, with trays loaded with waters of mallow and lily to cool the skin of a man who, in the grips of a tenacious fever, rambled deliriously now and then. After a rushed, despondent journey home, with scarcely a word exchanged between them, Sofía and Esteban had found Jorge in grave condition. His was not an isolated case. Half the city had been laid low by an epidemic whose consequences were often fatal. When he saw his wife, the sick man looked at her with debilitated eyes, grabbing her hands as if to find in them salvation. The doors to his room were closed off from breezes, and the atmosphere was suffocating and dense, smelling of pharmaceutical vapors, alcohol, and wax; the candles stayed lit because Jorge was oppressed by the intimation that if he fell asleep in the dark, he would never reawaken. Sofía bundled him, lulled him to sleep, put a vinegar compress on his burning forehead, and went to the warehouse so Carlos could tell her in detail what treatment the doctors recommended; but they knew little about how to combat the previously unknown disease . . . And they entered the New Century amid insomnia and vigils, days of waiting and days of despair—in which, as though called to by mysterious voices, cassocks appeared in the tiled hallways, offering to bring miraculous icons and relics. The furnishings of the upper floor were covered in prescriptions and medicine bottles and half-burned wicks for cupping. Wounded but serene, Sofía remained at her husband’s bedstead, unmindful of the oft-repeated warning that the illness was highly contagious. Rubbing herself with aromatic lotions and keeping a clove in her mouth, she otherwise did nothing to protect herself, and attended to the ailing man with a solicitude and gentleness that reminded Esteban of his adolescence, when asthma had tormented him. Now Sofía’s solicitude—perhaps an unconscious glimmer of the maternal sentiment—took another man as its object, and the sight of it grew increasingly painful for Esteban, who longed more than ever for the days of a Paradise Lost—as lost now as it was neglected when he might have recognized the rarity of his fortune but had instead—because it was the stuff of habit—looked upon it as his right. Night after night Sofía stayed awake in her armchair, eventually drowsing, but so softly that Jorge’s least sigh would wake her. At times she left the room with an expression of extraordinary grief: “He’s raving,” she’d say, bursting into tears. But her fortitude would return when she saw his faculties restored, how he clung to life with unexpected energy, protesting with vitality at the jabbing pains in his ribs, proclaiming that death would not defeat him. In his fleeting moments of reprieve, he worked on projects for the future: No, a man couldn’t waste the best years of his youth trapped between the walls of a company. Humanity wasn’t born for that. No sooner than his convalescence was over, the two of them would travel overseas; they’d take the trips they’d always spoken of. They’d go to Spain; they’d go to Italy; he would recover his strength in the temperate climes of Sicily. They would leave forever this insalubrious island, where the people were prone to epidemics like those that ravaged Europe centuries before. Learning of these plans, Esteban felt a stinging anguish at the thought that they were practicable, and that he might well find himself bereft of the lone justification for his present existence, which lacked all ambition, ideals, or inclinations. The extent of his disappointment was clear to him when he had to receive those visitors come at all hours to see the sick man. No one interested him. He remained aloof from all conversations. Particularly when the visitors were novice philanthropists from the Androgynous Lodge his family had founded and he had obstinately refused to set foot in since returning to Havana. The ideas he had left behind reached him once more in a setting where everything seemed contrived to gainsay them. Those who just yesterday had purchased more negroes to work the soil of their haciendas took pity now on the fate of the slaves. Those who nurtured corruption in the shadows, who profited by it, now condemned the corruption of the colonial government. Those who would happily have wrangled for a title from the Hand of the King began now to speak of independence. Common now among the prosperous here was that same cast of mind that had led so many aristocrats in Europe to build their own gallows. Forty years after the fact, they were reading the books that had sparked a revolution, and were discredited by that same revolution when it turned down unforeseen paths . . . After three weeks, there was reason for hope for the afflicted. Not that he had improved. But he seemed as though frozen in a vulnerable state at the far end of suffering which for others would have terminated soon in death. The doctors, now more knowledgeable after observing numerous cases, had chosen to apply a treatment similar to that used to combat pneumonia. The mood was hopeful. Then, one afternoon, the knocker thudded against the front door. Esteban and Sofía, peeking over the courtyard railing to see who was calling so noisily, saw Captain Caleb Dexter in his blue frock coat and ceremonial gloves. Unaware that there was a sick man in the house, he had come without notice, as he had before, when the Arrow was moored in the Havana port. Esteban hugged with joy this man whose presence made him relive happy moments from his past. They told the American of Jorge’s state, and after much lamenting, he resolved to fetch a fomentation from his ship whose efficacy had been proven among his men. Sofía tried to dissuade him: Jorge’s skin was so fiery from the poultices that even the mildest ones he could hardly bear. But Caleb Dexter, certain of the value of his remedy, set off, and returned at the hour when the lamps were being lit, bringing unguents and pomades that smelled of corrosives. They laid down a new tablecloth, and the appearance of a stately and voluminous English tureen announced the first hopeful dinner that had taken place beneath their roof for weeks. Jorge was asleep, watched over by a Clarist nun Sofía had called for from the convent. “He’ll survive,” Carlos said. “My heart tells me he’s out of danger.” “May God hear you,” said Sofía, using an unwonted expression that from her lips had the character of a propitiatory spell, and Esteban wondered whether the God she was invoking was the biblical Jehovah, the God of Voltaire, or the Great Architect of the Masons—such was the Confusion of Gods adored in the recently ended Century of Light. Inevitably, Esteban was called upon to retell his travels through the Caribbean: but this time he did it with pleasure and good humor, since the sailor knew the settings of his great adventure. “By the by, the war between France and the United States won’t last much longer,” Caleb Dexter said. “The peace negotiations have already begun.” As for Guadeloupe, perpetual disorder had reigned there since Victor Hugues, unwilling to hand his government to Pelardy and Desfourneaux, had finally been deported by force. Military uprisings were the order of the day, and the erstwhile White Lords had risen from their ashes and were waging war against the New White Lords and reclaiming their former privileges. In the French colonies, there was a general tendency to turn back to the practices of the ancien régime, especially since Victor Hugues had taken up his new post as Agent of the Directory in Cayenne. “You hadn’t heard?” the mariner said, seeing his companions’ stupefaction. For them, Victor Hugues was a man defeated, his career shattered, perhaps a prisoner, perhaps already condemned to death. And now they discovered he had won his battle in Paris and had returned to the Americas a victor, with a new bicorne hat on his head and invested with new powers. When word of it spread—the Yankee said—the wind of terror blew through Guiana. People hurried to the streets, shouting that unspeakable tragedy was in the offing. The deportees in Sinnamary, Kourou, Iracubo, and Conanama, no longer hoping to survive the plagues, prayed, shouted, praised the honor of the Most High, begging to be freed from further sufferings. The collective panic was like the prelude to the coming of the Antichrist. Posters were glued all over Cayenne to make it known that times were different, that the events of Guadeloupe would not be repeated here, and that the new Agent, animated by a generous and just spirit, would do all he could to bring happiness to the colony. (Sic, Esteban said, recognizing the rhetoric of old.) And the tragicomic part of it was that in a show of benevolence, Victor Hugues had arrived in Cayenne with a band standing brazenly on the prow of the ship—in the same place the guillotine had stood when he came to Guadeloupe as a chilling admonition to the populace. They played clanging marches by Gossec, modish tunes from Paris, rustic contra dances for fife and clarinet, just where, six years earlier, the sinister swish of the falling blade had been heard as Monsieur Anse raised and lowered it in the guides. Victor Hugues had come alone, leaving his wife back in France—or perhaps he hadn’t even married: Caleb Dexter didn’t know that for sure, he’d gotten his news in Paramaribo, where the people were apprehensive that the Agent of France was so near. To the astonishment of all, the Agent had proved magnanimous, visiting the deportees, improving their miserable lives a bit, promising many could soon return to their homelands. “The wolf has donned sheep’s clothing,” Esteban said. “A mere political instrument adjusting to the mandates of the day,” Carlos said. “An extraordinary character, despite everything,” Sofía said. Caleb Dexter retired early, as his ship would set sail a bit before dawn: they would talk again in a month, when he would stop in Havana on his way south. They would then celebrate—with very fine bottles—the sick man’s recovery. Esteban accompanied him to the docks, driving the carriage . . . On returning, he found Carlos at the front door to the house. “Go get a doctor,” he said. “Jorge’s suffocating. I’m afraid he won’t make it through the night.”
