The House of the Spirits

  “We have to get him out! He’s still alive and he can hear us!” Clara assured them, and that gave them the courage to continue.

  Blanca and Pedro Tercero appeared at first light, unhurt. Clara hurled herself at her daughter and slapped her on the face, but then she embraced her tearfully, relieved to know she was alive and to have her by her side.

  “Your father’s in there!” Clara cried, pointing.

  The young people joined in, and after an hour, when the sun was already shining on that anguished landscape, they lifted the patrón from his tomb. He had so many broken bones that they could not be counted, but he was alive and his eyes were open.

  “We have to take him into town to see a doctor,” said Pedro Segundo.

  They were discussing how to transport him without his bones popping through his skin like a broken bag, when old Pedro García came up; thanks to his blindness and his age, he had survived the earthquake without getting upset. He bent down beside the wounded man, feeling him with his hands, looking with his ancient fingers, until there was not an inch he had not covered or a bone he had not felt.

  “If you move him, he’ll die,” he concluded.

  Esteban Trueba was still conscious and he heard the words quite clearly. He remembered the ant plague and decided that the old man was his only hope.

  “He knows what he’s doing,” he stammered.

  Pedro García had a blanket brought and, between his son and his grandson, they laid the patrón on it, lifted him carefully, and raised him onto an improvised table that they had set up in what was formerly the courtyard but was now no more than a small clearing in that nightmare of debris, animal corpses, crying children, moaning dogs, and praying women. They had rescued a wineskin from among the ruins, which Pedro García divided three ways: a third to wash the injured man’s body, a third for Esteban to drink, and the other third he drank parsimoniously himself before beginning to set Esteban’s bones, one by one, patiently and calmly, pulling here, adjusting there, putting each one back in its proper place, splinting them, wrapping them in strips of sheet to keep them immobile, mumbling litanies to the healing saints, invoking good luck and the Virgin Mary, and putting up with the screams and blasphemies of Esteban Trueba, without ever altering his beatific blind man’s expression. By touch he restored the body so perfectly that the doctors who examined Trueba afterward could not believe such a thing was possible.

  “I wouldn’t even have tried,” said Dr. Cuevas when he heard what had happened.

  The destruction from the earthquake plunged the country into a long period of mourning. It was not enough that the earth shook until everything was flung to the ground; the sea drew back for several miles and returned in a single gigantic wave that sent boats to the top of mountains far from the coast, removed whole villages, roads, and animals, and submerged a number of southern islands more than a foot below the surface. Buildings fell like wounded dinosaurs; others collapsed like a house of cards. The dead numbered in the thousands and there was not a single family that had not lost one of its own. The salt water from the sea ruined the crops, and fires razed whole regions of cities and towns. Finally lava began to flow, and as a crowning punishment, ash fell on the villages close to the volcano. People stopped sleeping in their houses, terrified at the thought that such a disaster could recur, improvising tents in open spaces or sleeping in the middle of squares and streets. Soldiers had to take control of the chaos. They shot anyone they caught stealing, because while the faithful crowded into the churches begging forgiveness for their sins and beseeching God to stay his fury, thieves were running through the ruins slicing off ears with earrings and fingers with rings, not stopping to ascertain whether the victims were dead or only trapped in the cave-in. A wave of germs was unleashed, causing all sorts of epidemics across the country. The rest of the world, too busy with another war, barely noticed that nature had gone berserk in that remote corner of the globe, but even so shiploads of medicine, blankets, food, and building material arrived, all of which disappeared in the mysterious labyrinths of various bureaucracies and were still available for purchase years later, when canned vegetables from the United States and powdered milk from Europe could be bought in the most exclusive stores at the same price as any other gourmet food.

  Esteban Trueba spent four months wrapped in bandages, stiff as a board from splints, patches, and hooks, in a dreadful torment of itching and immobility, and consumed by impatience. His character deteriorated to the point where no one could stand him. Clara stayed in the country to look after him, and when communication was restored and things began to return to order, they sent Blanca to her convent school as a boarder, because her mother could not be responsible for her.

  In the capital, the earthquake caught Nana in her bed, and even though it was not as strong as in the South, the fright killed her just the same. The big house on the corner creaked like a walnut, its walls filled with cracks, and the huge crystal chandelier in the dining room fell to the floor ringing like a thousand bells, breaking to smithereens. Aside from that, the only serious effect was the death of Nana. When the fear of the first moment had passed, the rest of the servants realized that the old woman had not run out into the street with the others. They went in to look for her and found her in her cot, her eyes popped out and the little hair she had left standing on end in sheer terror. Because of the ensuing chaos, they were unable to give her a proper funeral, as she would have wished, and were forced to bury her in a hurry, without speeches or tears. None of the many children she had raised with so much love attended her funeral.

  The earthquake signaled such an important change in the life of the Trueba family that from then on they divided all events into before and after that day. In Tres Marías, Pedro Segundo García once again assumed the post of foreman, since the owner was unable to get out of bed. To him fell the job of organizing the workers, restoring order, and reconstructing the wreckage of the entire property. They began by burying their dead in the graveyard at the foot of the volcano, which had miraculously escaped the wave of lava that had run down the sides of the evil mountain. The new tombs gave a festive air to the pathetic little graveyard, and they planted rows of birches so there would be shade for those who came to visit their dead. They rebuilt the little brick houses one by one, exactly as they were before, along with the stables, the dairy, and the granary. Then they prepared the earth for planting, thankful that the lava and ash had fallen on the other side, sparing the property. Pedro Tercero had to give up his excursions into town because his father needed him to help in the work. He came unwillingly, letting his father know that he was breaking his back to restore the patrón’s wealth while the rest of them would remain as poor as they had been before.

  “That’s the way it’s always been, son. You can’t change the law of God,” his father would reply.

  “Yes, you can, Papa. There are people doing it right now, but we don’t even get the news here. Important things are happening in the world,” Pedro Tercero countered, following up with the speech of the Communist teacher or Father José Dulce María.

  Pedro Segundo did not reply and continued working without pause. He looked the other way when his son, taking advantage of the patrón’s injury, broke the grip of censorship and introduced into Tres Marías the forbidden pamphlets of the unionists, the teacher’s political newspapers, and the strange biblical interpretations of the Spanish priest.

  On orders from Esteban Trueba, his foreman began to reconstruct the main house exactly as it had been before. The old men did not even change the adobe walls for modern bricks, or modify the narrow windows. The only improvement was the addition of hot water in the bathrooms and the replacement of the old wood stove by a kerosene device, to which, however, no cook ever managed to adjust and which ended up in the middle of the courtyard as a plaything for the hens. While the house was being built, they erected a shelter of wooden planks with a zinc roof, where they sett
led Esteban in his sickbed. From there, through a window, he could watch the work progressing and shout his instructions, boiling with rage at his protracted immobility.

  Clara changed enormously during those months. She had to work closely with Pedro Segundo García at the task of saving what they could. For the first time in her life she took charge of material things, without any help, for she could no longer rely on her husband, on Férula, or on Nana. She awoke from a long childhood in which she had always been protected and surrounded by attention and comforts, with no responsibilities. Esteban Trueba became convinced that everything he ate disagreed with him, except what she prepared for him herself, so she spent a good part of the day standing in the kitchen plucking chickens to make invalid soup and kneading bread. She had to be his nurse, washing him with a sponge, changing his bandages, removing his bedpans. Every day, he grew more irate and despotic, ordering her put my pillow here, no, higher up, bring me wine, no, I said white wine, open the window, close it, this hurts, I’m hungry, I’m hot, scratch my shoulder, lower. Clara came to fear him far more than she had when he was a healthy, strong man who disrupted her peaceful life with his scent of the eager male, his hurricane voice, his relentless warfare, and his pompous airs, imposing his will and shattering his whims against the delicate balance she tried to keep between the spirits of the Hereafter and the needy souls of the Here-and-Now. She came to despise him. As soon as his bones knit and he could be moved a little, Esteban felt the torturous desire to embrace her. Every time she stood beside him, he grabbed at her, confusing her, in his invalid’s disturbed state of mind, with the robust peasant women who in his early days had served him in both kitchen and bed. Clara felt that she was too old for that sort of thing. Misfortune had spiritualized her, and age and her lack of love for her husband had led her to think of sex as a rather crude form of amusement that made her joints ache and knocked the furniture around. Within a few hours, the earthquake had brought her face to face with violence, death, and vulgarity and had put her in touch with the basic needs to which she had been oblivious. Her three-legged table and her capacity to read tea leaves were useless in protecting the tenants from epidemics and disorder, the earth from drought and snails, the cows from foot-and-mouth disease, the chickens from distemper, the clothing from moths, her children from abandonment, and her husband from death and his own rage. Clara was tired. She felt alone and confused, and when it came time to make decisions, the only person she could turn to was Pedro Segundo García. That loyal, silent man was always there, within reach of her voice, providing a certain stability in the midst of the catastrophe that had shaken her life. At the end of the afternoon, Clara would often look for him to give him a cup of tea. They sat beneath the eaves in wicker chairs, waiting for night to come and relieve the tension of the day. They watched the darkness fall softly and the first stars begin to twinkle in the sky, listened to the croaking of the frogs, and kept their silence. They had much to say to each other, many problems to resolve, many agreements pending, but they both understood that that half hour spent in silence was a well-deserved reward. They sipped their tea slowly, to make it last, and each thought of the other’s life. They had known each other for more than fifteen years, and had spent their summers in proximity, but in all that time they had exchanged only a handful of sentences. He had seen her as a luminous summer apparition, removed from the brutal demands of the world, different from all other women he had known. Even then, with her hands sunk in the dough or her apron bloody from the chicken to be served at lunch, she struck him as a sort of ghost in the reverberation of the day. Only at dusk, in the calm of those moments shared over a cup of tea, could he see her human side. He had secretly sworn her his loyalty and, like an adolescent, there were times when he fantasized about giving his life for her. He valued her as much as he detested Esteban Trueba.

  When the men came to install a telephone, the house still had a long way to go before it could be lived in. Esteban Trueba had been fighting to get one for four years, and they delivered it just when he did not even have a roof to protect it from inclement weather. The apparatus did not last very long, but it was useful for calling the twins and listening to them talk as if they were in another galaxy, amid the deafening roar and the interruptions of the operator in town, who participated in their conversations. By telephone they learned that Blanca was ill and that the nuns did not want to be responsible for her. She had a persistent cough and frequent attacks of fever. The dread of tuberculosis was in every home then, because there was not a family that had not lost one of its members to consumption, so Clara decided to go and fetch her. The same day Clara was leaving, Esteban Trueba smashed the phone to bits with his cane because it was ringing and though he shouted that he was coming, that it should be still, the machine continued ringing, and in a fit of rage he fell on top of it, showering it with blows and in the process breaking the clavicle that old Pedro García had taken so much trouble to restore.

  * * *

  It was the first time Clara had ever traveled by herself. She had made the same trip year after year, but always inattentively because there was someone else to worry about the mundane details while she dreamily watched the landscape out the window. Pedro Segundo García took her to the station and helped her to her seat. When she said goodbye, she leaned over, kissed him gently on the cheek, and smiled. He pressed his hand to his face to protect that fleeting kiss and he did not smile, because he was filled with sadness.

  Guided more by her intuition than by her knowledge of things or by logic, Clara managed to reach her daughter’s school without mishap. The Mother Superior received her in her spartan office, where there was an immense, bloody Christ on the wall and an incongruous spray of red roses on the table.

  “We’ve sent for the doctor, Señora Trueba,” she said. “There’s nothing wrong with the child’s lungs, but nevertheless you’d better take her. The country air will do her good. We simply can’t assume responsibility for her. I’m sure you understand.”

  The nun rang a little bell and Blanca appeared in the doorway. She looked thinner and paler, with violet rings around her eyes that would have been enough to startle any mother, but Clara quickly understood that her daughter’s illness was not in her body, but in her soul. The hideous gray uniform made her look much younger than she really was, despite the fact that her womanly curves showed through the design. Blanca was surprised to see her mother, whom she remembered as a lighthearted, absentminded angel dressed in white, transformed into an efficient woman with callused hands and two deep lines at the corners of her mouth.

  They went to see the twins at school. It was the first time they had all been together since the earthquake, and they were surprised to find that the only part of the country unscathed by the disaster was that ancient institution, where the event had been ignored completely. The country’s ten thousand dead had gone unmourned and uneulogized while the boys went on singing English songs and playing cricket, moved only by reports that reached them, three weeks late, from the British Isles. The women were astonished to discover that these two boys whose veins flowed with Moorish and Spanish blood, and who were born in the farthest depths of the Americas, now spoke Spanish with an Oxford accent, and that the only emotion they were capable of expressing was surprise, raising their left eyebrows. They had nothing in common with the two energetic, lice-infested boys who spent their summers in the country. “I hope all that Anglo-Saxon phlegm doesn’t turn you into morons,” Clara said as she bade her sons goodbye.

  The death of Nana, who despite her age was in charge of the big house on the corner when the owners were away, sent the remaining servants into disarray. Without her vigilance, they neglected their duties and began to spend their time in an orgy of siestas and gossip, while the plants went dry for lack of watering and spiders filled the dusty corners of the house. The deterioration was so obvious that Clara decided to shut the house and dismiss everyone. Then she and Blanca set about the task of cov
ering all the furniture in sheets and blanketing the house with mothballs. One by one they opened the bird cages, and the sky filled with parakeets, canaries, lovebirds, and finches, which flew around in circles, blinded by their sudden freedom, and finally took off in every direction. Blanca noticed that in the course of all these chores not a single ghost appeared from behind the curtains, not a single Rosicrucian arrived on a tip from his sixth sense, nor did any starving poet come running in summoned by necessity. Her mother seemed to have become an ordinary down-to-earth woman.

  “You’ve changed, Mama,” Blanca said.

  “It’s not me who’s changed,” her mother replied. “It’s the world.”

  Before they left, they went to Nana’s room in the servants’ quarters. Clara opened her drawers, removed the cardboard suitcase that the good woman had used for fifty years, and went through her wardrobe. There was just a handful of clothing, a few old sandals, and boxes of every shape and size tied with bits of ribbon or elastic, in which she kept engraved announcements of First Communions and baptisms, locks of hair, fingernails, discolored photographs, and a few pairs of well-worn baby shoes. They were her souvenirs of all the del Valle and Trueba children she had cradled in her arms. Under the bed they found a bundle that contained the costumes Nana had used to frighten Clara in her years of silence. Seated on the cot with these treasures in her lap, Clara wept for a long time for this woman who had devoted her entire life to making that of others more agreeable, and who had died alone.

  “After trying so hard to frighten me to death, she’s the one who died of fright,” Clara observed.

  They had the body transferred to the del Valle family tomb, in the Catholic cemetery, because they knew she would not have liked being buried among Protestants and Jews and that in death she would have wanted to remain side by side with those she had served in life. They placed a spray of flowers by her grave and left for the station, where they would catch the train back to Tres Marías.