Explosion in a Cathedral, page 7
By now, Sofía was used to spending the long afternoons alone, since Esteban was so frequently out and Carlos was busy with a new diversion, going to the riding school at the Campo de Marte, where a famous horseman gave displays of Spanish equestrian art, spurring the horses to rear up nobly as in statues or to trot by with poise and rhythm, manning the bridle on beasts with manes braided a la Federica, that is to say, in the Portuguese style. Victor continued visiting them at nightfall. Sofía would greet him with questions about the flour shipment from Boston, which never made it into port. “When it arrives,” he would tell her, “I will return to Port-au-Prince with Ogé, who has some business there.” The prospect horrified her, as she feared the reappearance of Esteban’s disease. “Ogé is training disciples here,” Victor told her to ease her mind, but without specifying where he taught these lessons or the view of them taken by the Federation of Doctors, parsimonious in handing out accreditations. He often spoke ill of Don Cosme, an awful tradesman in his opinion: “He’s a gagne-petit, he can’t see past his own nose.” Despite Sofía’s antipathy to everything pertaining to the firm next door, Victor began advising her: no sooner than they were old enough, she and her brother should dismiss the Executor, entrusting their affairs to someone more capable, someone who could make the company prosper. He listed all sorts of new goods that could earn them spectacular profits. “This is exactly as if I were speaking with my blessed father, God rest his soul,” Sofía said, bringing this tiresome discourse to an end, her voice so airy, so false, that even its timbre was sarcastic. Victor laughed a long time; he did this whenever a sudden change of mood interrupted his monologues; and then he recollected his voyages—to Campeche, Marie-Galante, Dominica—listening to himself with evident satisfaction. He evinced a disconcerting blend of vulgarity and distinction. He could pass from the most florid southern verbosity to extreme reticence, depending on the path their discussion took. He seemed to harbor several individuals within him. When he talked of buying and selling, he would gesture like a money changer, his hands transformed into the plates of a scale. Then, concentrated on the reading of a book, he would stiffen, with a tenacious furrowed brow, his eyelids seemingly immobile over his somber eyes, which bored into the pages with determination. When he chose to cook, he transformed into a chef de cuisine, balancing slotted spoons on his forehead, making a toque of the first cloth he could find, drumming on the pots and pans. On some days, his hands were hard and miserly—with that way of closing his fist over his thumb that Sofía found unpleasantly revealing. Other times they were light and agile, caressing the object of his words as if it were a sphere suspended in space. “I’m a commoner,” he would say, as though showing off a blazon. But when he played charades, Sofía noticed his preference for the role of legislator or judge in an ancient tribune. He took it tremendously seriously, perhaps imagining he was a talented actor. More than once, he had insisted on interpreting scenes from the life of Lycurgus, a figure he seemed particularly to admire. Wise in commerce, versed in the methods of Banking and Insurance, a merchant through and through, Victor nonetheless advocated for the redistribution of land and wealth, the adoption of children by the State, the abolition of fortunes, and the introduction of an iron currency, like that of the Spartans, which could not be hoarded. One day, when Esteban felt especially cheerful and hail, he proposed they throw a party to celebrate The Restoration of Normalcy with Regard to Mealtimes. A grand banquet would be held at eight on the dot, with the invitees to arrive from different parts of the house—those farthest from the dining room—just before the final tolling of the bells of the Church of the Holy Spirit. Whoever didn’t appear in time would be subject to assorted penalties. They were all expected to wear something from upstairs in the suit closet. Sofía chose the costume of a Duchess ruined by pawnbrokers, and set to unstitching the overskirt with Rosaura’s help. The episcopal vestments had already lain in Esteban’s room for some time now. Carlos would dress as a Naval Ensign, while Victor donned a magistrate’s toga—“elle me va très bien”—before going to the kitchen to marinate the squabs for the second course. “This way, representatives of the Court, the Church, the Armed Forces, and the Magistracy will be in attendance,” Carlos said. “We’re missing a Diplomat,” Sofía observed. And with a laugh, they agreed to saddle Ogé with the role of Plenipotentiary Ambassador of the Kingdoms of Abyssinia. But Remigio, sent to retrieve him, returned with disconcerting news: the doctor had left early that day and hadn’t returned to his hotel. And a policeman had just been to search his room, with orders to confiscate his books and papers. “I don’t understand,” Victor said. “I don’t understand.” “Might someone have denounced him for illegally practicing medicine?” Carlos asked. “That illegal medicine of his is what cures the sick!” Esteban yelled, appalled . . . Dazed, unsteady, searching anxiously for a hat that failed to appear, Victor hurried off in search of information. “It’s the first time I’ve seen something upset him,” Sofía said, running a handkerchief over her sweaty temples. The heat was sweltering. The air stood paralyzed between the inert curtains, the withered flowers, and the plants that seemed forged from metal. The leaves of the palm trees in the courtyard hung like wrought iron.
VII.
Shortly after seven, Victor returned. He’d learned nothing of Ogé’s whereabouts, but believed he’d been taken prisoner. Or perhaps the accusation had reached him—what the accusation was, he couldn’t say—and he’d managed to reach a friend’s house where he could hide out for a time. The report was correct: the police had searched his room, taking away his papers, his books, and the suitcases containing his personal effects. “Tomorrow we’ll see what can be done,” he said, then mentioning something he’d heard on the way back, which people were talking of outside: that night, a hurricane would strike the city. An official warning had been issued. There was great commotion on the docks. The sailors were talking about a cyclone, and taking emergency measures to save their ships. People were hoarding supplies of candles and food, and everyone was nailing planks over windows and doors. Unshaken by what they’d heard, Carlos and Esteban went for hammers and nails. The Cyclone—named in singular, because there never was more than one that did serious damage—was something all the town’s residents expected. If it changed course and missed them this time, it was sure to return the following year. What mattered was knowing whether it would hit the city directly, tearing off roofs, shattering church windows, and sinking ships, or would instead veer away and lay waste to the fields. For the island’s inhabitants, the Cyclone was looked upon as a fearsome celestial reality that would eventually descend upon all. Every province, every town, every village harbored the memory of a cyclone that had seemed destined for it. The most one could hope for was that it would sweep through quickly without causing too much harm. “Ce sont de bien charmants pays,” Victor complained, reinforcing the shutters of one of the windows facing the street, recalling that Saint-Domingue was likewise acquainted with this yearly threat . . . A sudden, brutal storm sent tremors through the air. Water fell on the foliage in the courtyard, vertical and dense, with such ferocity that it knocked the soil from the planters. “Here she comes,” said Victor. A vast roar blanketed the house, enveloped it, conjuring in unison the distinct tones of the roof, the window slats, the skylights, with water falling in sheets or droplets; water crashed, plunging from the sky, vomited by a gargoyle, swallowed by the channel of a gutter. Then came a truce, warmer, its silence denser than it had been in the first part of the night. The second rains—the second admonition—came more belligerent than the first, this time accompanied by irregular bolts of lightning that clustered together in a sustained charge. Victor stepped out on the gallery over the courtyard, where the wind passed overhead without stopping or descending, borne forward by the force that had brought it there—whirling back on itself, tautening, its revolutions more powerful—from the far Gulf of Mexico or the Sargasso Sea. With a mariner’s knack, Victor tasted the rainwater: “Salty. From the sea. Pas de doute.” He made a resigned gesture that said the coming hours would be trying, went to look for bottles of wine, glasses, and biscuits, and settled into an armchair, surrounded with books. They arranged lamps and candles that each wind burst threatened to snuff out. “Better to stay awake,” the Frenchman said, “a door might blow open or a window crack.” A pile of boards and carpentry tools were still near to hand. Invited to share the shelter of the salon, Remigio and Rosaura joined together in a prayer, with reiterated pleas to Saint Barbara . . . It was just after midnight when the full force of the hurricane swept the city. An immense roar rose up, and with it clamor and destruction. Objects rolled through the street. Others flew over the bell towers. Splintered beams dropped from the sky, shop signs, roof tiles, panes of glass, broken branches, lamps, barrels, riggings. Unimaginable knocking came at every door. Buffet after buffet shattered the windows. The houses shook from the foundations to the ceilings, groans emerging from their timbers. And then a torrent of putrid, muddy water flowed from the stables, the back lot, the kitchen, the street, erupted into the courtyard, clogging its drains with a mess of horse manure, ashes, refuse, and dead leaves. Victor shouted to alert them and rolled up the large rug in the salon. After throwing it onto one of the upper steps of the stairway, he walked toward the flood, which was rising by the minute, and had penetrated past the thresholds of the dining room and bedrooms. Hastily, Sofía, Esteban, and Carlos lifted what they could, piling everything on sideboards, tables, commodes, and armoires. “No!” Victor shouted. “Over there!” And stepping knee-deep into the fetor, he opened the door that led to the storehouse. It too was flooded, and much of the merchandise was afloat, passing softly through the light of the lamp. Shouting, issuing commands, putting order to their efforts, Victor pointed to what should be salvaged, setting the men and the mulatta to work. Bundles of perishables, sections of cloth, bunches of feathers, items of value were thrown over the piles of sacks, where the water wouldn’t reach them. “The furniture can be repaired,” Victor shouted. “This we can stand to lose.” Once it was clear the others understood and were taking care of the most pressing things, Victor returned to the house, where Sofía was curled up on a divan, sobbing with terror. The water stood palm-deep around her. Victor picked her up, carried her to her room, and laid her on the bed. “Don’t move. I’ll take care of the furniture.” And he began running up and down, up and down, with tapestries, folding screens, stools, chairs, and anything else that could be salvaged. By now, the water reached his knees. Then a rumbling sound augured collapse, and a wing of the roof hurled its tiles into the courtyard like a fistful of playing cards. A mountain of rubbish and broken crockery blocked the door to the storehouse. Sofía, peeking over the parapet, shouted in fear. Victor climbed back up, a chest of trinkets in hand. After pushing the young woman firmly into her room, he collapsed, breathless, into an armchair: “I can do no more.” And to calm the girl, who begged him for succor, he said the worst part of the cyclone was over; the others were safe in the storehouse atop the mounds of sacks; there was nothing to be done now but to wait till dawn. Most importantly, the doors and windows hadn’t given. It wouldn’t be the first time that sturdy manse had survived a hurricane. Adopting a cheerful tone, he told Sofía she looked, quite frankly, repulsive in that dress soiled with filthy water, those muddy leggings, her damp, unkempt mane speckled with dead leaves. Sofía went to her dressing table and soon returned in her nightgown, after running a comb through her hair. Outside, the ramming of the cyclone splintered into gusts of wind, some frail, others brutal, but increasingly sporadic. What now was falling from the sky was like a fog of water with the scent of sea. The racket of things pushed, dragged, rolled, cast down from up high now diminished. “The best thing would be to sleep,” Victor told Sofía, bringing her a glass of fortified wine. And with astonishing aplomb, he removed his shirt and stood there bare-chested. “Not even if you were my husband,” Sofía thought, turning toward the wall. She was going to say something, but sleep muddled her words . . . She awoke with a start—it was already night—with the impression that someone lay at her side. An arm was resting over her waist. And that arm squeezed and cinched and weighed more and more. She was baffled, unsure what to think: after the horror she had been through, it was pleasant to feel protected, enveloped, sheltered by the warmth of another being. She was about to fall asleep again when she shivered, realizing the situation was unacceptable. Turning, her body encountered the nakedness of another body. A nervous explosion jolted through her, and she struck him with her fists, her elbows, her knees, hoping to scratch, to wound, keeping at bay that unfamiliar pulsing in her entrails. The other’s hands grasped at her wrists; a pernicious breath heated her ears, speaking strange words to her in the darkness. They were bound, knotted, mingled in struggle, and the man failed to get the advantage. Driven by an unknown, titanic force radiating from her vulnerable interior, the woman turned tense and hard, tried to hurt him, never allowing him to pull her toward him or knead her flesh. At last, he gave in, announcing his defeat with a dry laugh that hardly concealed his irritation. But the woman wasn’t done struggling, and the protest and recriminations she voiced revealed a shocking capacity to humiliate, to strike where it hurt most. The bed was now lighter by the weight of one body. Walking through the room, the man begged in a puling tone that she not be stern with him. He excused himself, and his justifications stunned the young woman now listening to him, who was doubly victorious, having never suspected a man so consummate and mature, so energetic and self-assured, could ever consider her a lady—her, for whom the years of childhood were still so present. Her flesh was out of danger for the moment, but Sofía felt a perhaps graver danger pulling at her: the danger that the voice alluding to her as it spoke, at times with agonizing sweetness, from within the shadows, was opening to her the doors of an unknown world. That night, adolescent games had ended. Words took on a new weight. What had happened—what hadn’t happened—would adopt enormous dimensions. The door creaked and there materialized, over the lights of a greenish dawn, a human form withdrawing slowly, dragging its legs as if in defeat. Sofía remained alone, throbbing, bewildered, unquiet, with the feeling of emerging from a horrifying ordeal. Her skin had a strange scent that she couldn’t rid herself of, perhaps real, perhaps imaginary: a dark, animal aroma, which in some way was her own. The light brightened her room. Next to her, in the shadows, lingered a presence that had left behind the imprint of its body. The girl began making the bed, slapping it on both sides to fluff the feathers in the counterpane. Once done, she felt humiliated; that must be how the whores made their beds down there in El Arsenal after they’d lain with a stranger. Or broken, corrupted virgins when they woke after their wedding night. This was the worst of it: the sprucing up, smoothing out, which had a kind of complicity, of acquiescence about it; a shameful restoration, the secret gesture of a lover eager to erase the disorder left behind by an embrace. Sofía lay back down, so weary in defeat that when Carlos found her sobbing, she was too deeply asleep for his calls to wake her. “Leave her,” Esteban said, “she needs to be alone.”
VIII.
The day brightened slowly, the light dawdling behind the hour, over a roofless city full of rubble and residue, reduced to the skeleton of bare beams. Nothing remained of the homes of the poor but rough-hewn corner posts with rickety wooden floors suspended over mud flats, like stage settings for misery. Acquiescent families picked through the few things left to them—the grandmother rocking faintly in a wicker rocker; the pregnant wife fearing her pains would come to her amid the devastation; the tubercular or asthmatic child wrapped in blankets on the raised edge of the platform, like a fairground actor after the end of the show. The masts of sunken sailboats rose from the filthy waters of the harbor among capsized boats floating aimlessly in clusters. The corpse of the odd sailor washed up occasionally on the shore, hands tangled in a bundle of cords. In El Arsenal, the cyclone had swept in low, scattering the timbers of half-built ships, bursting the thin walls of the taverns and dance halls. The streets were muddy moats. Some of the old palaces, despite their thick masonry walls, had been bowed by the wind, sacrificing their doors and transom windows to the hurricane, which once inside had ravaged from within, leveling porticoes and facades. The furnishings of a famous woodwright’s shop—San José Pequeño’s, near the docks—had been carried off by the wind, landing in a field outside the city walls, past the orchards, where hundreds of palm trees lay in flooded creeks like the shafts of ancient columns toppled by an earthquake. And yet, despite the magnitude of the disaster, the people, used to periodic visitations from that scourge they viewed as a preordained convulsion of the Tropics, set immediately to sealing, repairing, plastering, diligent as insects. Water covered everything; everything smelled of water; everything got water on one’s hands. Drying, baling, draining the water however possible, was the order of the day for all. And in mid-afternoon, once they’d finished restoring their own homes, the carpenters, masons, glazers, and locksmiths offered their services to the others. When Sofía emerged from her torpor, laborers brought by Remigio were in all parts of the house, some covering what was left of the roof with new tiles while others dragged out the rubble lining the courtyard. Mortar, plaster, beams borne on shoulders came and went across the halls and galleries, while Carlos and Esteban, walking from the storehouse to their home, made an inventory of damaged furniture and spoiled merchandise. In the salon, Victor, dressed in a suit of Carlos’s too small for his frame, had a pained expression as he paged through the company’s books. When he saw Sofía, he sank his face into his hands, pretending he hadn’t noticed her. The young woman walked on dutifully to the kitchen and pantries, where Rosaura, who hadn’t yet slept, was pulling pots, pans, and utensils from the mud already hardening on the floor. Sofía seemed baffled by her toil, by that singular event that had disorganized all that was organized, introducing again in every room a chaos like that which had reigned before. That afternoon, new Leaning Towers, new Druids’ Ways were born, new winding mountain passes between boxes, furnishings, unhung curtains, rolled rugs on the tops of the cupboards—but the odor was not the odor of earlier days. And the incomparable nature, the violence of an event that had torn everyone from their habits and routines, aggravated the endless contradictory sorrows Sofía felt upon waking when she remembered the events of the night before. That formed part of the vast disorder in the city, became part of the scenography of the cataclysm. But one thing stood out past the breached walls, the ruined belfries, the sunken ships: she had been desired. That was so strange, so unexpected, so unsettling, that she couldn’t admit the reality of it. In mere hours, she’d begun to shed her adolescence, sensing that her flesh had ripened in the presence of a man’s cravings. He had seen her as a Woman, before she had seen herself as a Woman—when she could not yet imagine others would concede her the status of Woman. “I’m a Woman,” she murmured, offended and, as it were, confounded by an enormous weight placed on her shoulders, looking at herself in the mirror as one looks at another, dissenting, vexed by some doing of fate, finding herself long and ungainly, feeble, with her narrow hips, her skinny arms, her asymmetrical breasts, which for the first time made her feel contempt for her own body. She had departed from a path free of dangers to reach another, fraught with disparities between real and reflected image, and setting forth on it would demand she pass through paroxysms and vertigo . . . Soon night fell. The workers left, and a vast silence—the silence of ruin and mourning—overtook the castigated city. Exhausted, Sofía, Esteban, and Carlos went to sleep after a meager meal of cold meat, where they’d said little apart from a few remarks about the damage caused by the cyclone. Victor, self-absorbed, pressing figures with his thumbnail into the tablecloth—adding, subtracting, erasing—asked to stay late in the salon; better yet, until tomorrow. The streets were impassable. There were likely marauders out, brigands engaged in their nocturnal vocation. Moreover, he seemed very occupied with finishing his review of the books. “I believe I’ve come up with something that could interest you all a great deal,” he said. “Tomorrow, we’ll talk.”
