Nicolás was as pretty as a girl. He had inherited his mother’s delicate, transparent skin, and was small, astute, and fleet-footed as a fox. He was blindingly intelligent, and effortlessly surpassed his brother in everything they undertook together. He had invented a game to torture him with: he would take the opposing side on any argument, and would argue so well and so persuasively that he always ended convincing Jaime that he was wrong, forcing him to admit his error.
“Are you sure I’m right?” Nicolás would finally ask his brother.
“Yes, you’re right,” Jaime would grudgingly admit with a rectitude that prevented him from arguing in bad faith.
“Good!” Nicolás would exclaim. “Because now I’m going to prove that you’re right and I’m wrong. I’m going to give you the arguments you would have given me if you were smarter.”
Jaime would lose patience and start beating up his brother but he would quickly regret it, because he was much stronger than Nicolás and his own strength made him feel guilty. At school, Nicolás used his intelligence to pester others, and whenever he found himself faced with a violent situation he would call in his brother to defend him while he egged him on from behind. Jaime got used to standing in for Nicolás, and it seemed perfectly normal to him to be punished instead of his brother, to do his homework, and cover up his lies. Apart from girls, Nicolás’s primary interest in that period of his life was to cultivate Clara’s capacity for predicting the future. He bought books about secret societies, about horoscopes, and anything that had to do with the supernatural. That year he also took to exposing miracles. He bought a popular edition of The Lives of the Saints and spent the summer looking for ordinary explanations of the most extraordinary spiritual feats. His mother made fun of him.
“If you can’t understand how the telephone works,” she would say, “how do you expect to understand miracles?”
Nicolás’s interest in supernatural things had begun a few years earlier. On the weekends when he was allowed to leave his boarding school, he would visit the three Mora sisters in their old mill to study various occult sciences. But it soon became abundantly clear that he had not the slightest talent for clairvoyance or telekinesis, and he was forced to be content with the mechanics of astrological charts, tarot cards, and the I Ching. And since one thing always leads to another, at the house of the Mora sisters he met a beautiful young woman named Amanda, somewhat older than himself, who initiated him into yogic meditation and acupuncture, sciences that Nicolás later used to treat rheumatism and other minor pains, which was more than his brother would be able to do with traditional medicine after seven years of school. But that was all much later. That summer he was twenty-one and he was bored in the country. His brother kept close watch to prevent him from giving the girls a hard time, for Jaime had proclaimed himself the protector of the maidenly virtues of Tres Marías; despite this, Nicolás managed to seduce almost all the adolescent girls around, using acts of gallantry never seen before in those parts. The rest of his time Nicolás spent investigating miracles, trying to learn the tricks his mother used to move saltcellars with her mind, and writing passionate stanzas to Amanda, who sent them back by return mail, corrected and improved, without deterring her admirer in the least.
* * *
Old Pedro García died a few days before the Presidential elections. The nation was convulsed by the campaign; special trains crossed the country from north to south, the candidates appearing at the rear with their retinue of proselytes, greeting everyone exactly the same way, promising exactly the same things, festooned with banners and roaring with a choral society and loudspeakers that shattered the tranquil landscape and stunned the cattle. The old man had lived so long that he was nothing more than a pile of glass bones covered by a yellow skin. His face was a latticework of wrinkles. He clacked as he walked, rattling like a pair of castanets, and since he had no teeth he was forced to eat baby food. Though he was blind and deaf, he never failed to recognize things and his memory of the past and the immediate present was remarkable. He died sitting in his wicker chair at dusk. He liked to sit in the doorway of his little house and feel the sun go down, which he could sense from the subtle change in temperature, the sounds in the courtyard, the haste of the cooks, and the silence of the hens. It was there that death found him. At his feet was his great-grandson Esteban García, who was by that time almost ten, driving a nail through the eyes of a chicken. He was the son of Esteban García, the only bastard offspring of the patrón named for him. No one knew his origin, or the reason he had that name, except himself, because his grandmother, Pancha García, had managed before she died to poison his childhood with the story that if only his father had been born in place of Blanca, Jaime, or Nicolás, he would have inherited Tres Marías, and could even have been President of the Republic if he wanted. In that part of the country, which was littered with illegitimate children and even legitimate ones who had never met their fathers, he was probably the only one to grow up hating his last name. He hated Esteban Trueba, his seduced grandmother, his bastard father, and his own inexorable peasant fate. Esteban Trueba did not treat him any differently from any of the other children around the property. He was simply one more in the pile of creatures who sang the national anthem in the schoolhouse and stood in line to receive their Christmas presents. Trueba had forgotten all about Pancha García and the fact that he had had a child with her, much less the sullen little grandson who despised him but watched him from afar to imitate his gestures and his speech. The child would lie awake at night imagining all sorts of dreadful illnesses and accidents that could put an end to the life of the patrón and his children so that he could inherit the property. Tres Marías would become his kingdom. He nursed these fantasies throughout his life, even long after it was evident that he would receive nothing by way of inheritance. He always reproached Trueba for the dark existence he had forged for him, and he felt constantly punished, even in the days when he had reached the height of his power and had them all in his fist.
The child noticed that something in the old man had changed. He went up to him and touched him, and the whole body swayed. Pedro García fell to the ground like a bag of bones. His eyes were covered by the milky film that had slowly screened out all light over the course of a quarter century. Esteban García picked up his nail and was just about to stick it in his grandfather’s eye when Blanca arrived and shoved him away, never suspecting that this evil, darkskinned creature was her nephew and that he would one day be the instrument of a tragedy that would befall her family.
“Oh God, he’s dead,” she sobbed, leaning over the body of the old man who had filled her childhood with stories and protected her clandestine love affair.
Old Pedro García was buried following a three-day wake for which, on instructions from Esteban Trueba, no expense was spared. They placed his body in a coffin of rough pine and laid him out in his Sunday suit, the same one he had worn at his wedding and whenever he went to vote or lined up for his fifty pesos at Christmas. They dressed him in his one white shirt, which was very loose around the neck because he had shrunk with age, and his mourning tie, with a red carnation in his lapel, as on all festive occasions. They held his jaw in place with a handkerchief and placed his black hat on his head, because he had repeatedly declared that he wanted to take it off when he said hello to God. He had no shoes, so Clara took a pair that belonged to Esteban Trueba, for everyone to see that he would not go barefoot to heaven.
Jean de Satigny was excited about the funeral. He showed up with a camera and tripod he had extracted from his belongings, and took so many portraits of the dead man that his relatives were afraid he might steal his soul, so they destroyed the plates. The wake was attended by peasants from throughout the region, because over the course of his century-long lifetime Pedro García had become related to many of the local farmers. The curandera arrived along with several Indians from her tribe, who began to weep for the deceased when she gave the order,
and did not stop until the reveling was over three days later. People gathered outside the old man’s house to drink wine, play the guitar, and keep an eye on the steers that were being roasted. Two priests on bicycles also arrived to bless the mortal remains of Pedro García and oversee the funeral rites. One of them was a rubicund giant with a strong Spanish accent, Father José Dulce María, whose name was familiar to Esteban Trueba. He was just about to forbid him to set foot on the property when Clara convinced him that this was hardly the time to place his political enmities before the peasants’ Christian fervor. “At least he’ll bring a little order to matters of the spirit,” she said. So in the end Esteban Trueba welcomed him and invited him to stay in the house with his lay brother, who did not open his mouth and kept his eyes on the ground, his head bowed, and his hands joined. The patrón was moved by the death of the old man who had saved the crops from the plague of ants, and his life as well, and he wanted everyone to remember this funeral as a major event.
The priests assembled the tenants and the visitors in the little schoolhouse to read through the forgotten gospels and say a mass for the eternal rest of the soul of Pedro García. Afterward they withdrew to the room that had been reserved for them in the main house, while everybody else resumed the rowdy celebration that had been interrupted by their arrival. That night Blanca waited for the guitars and the Indians’ lament to quiet down and for everyone to go to bed before she jumped out her bedroom window and took off in her usual direction, protected by the shadows. She continued to do so for the next three nights, until the priests departed. Everyone except her parents knew that Blanca was meeting one of them down by the river. It was Pedro Tercero García, who hadn’t wanted to miss his grandfather’s funeral and took advantage of the borrowed cassock to harangue the workers house by house, explaining that the coming elections were their chance to shake off the yoke under which they had always lived. They listened in surprise and confusion. For them, time was measured in seasons, and thought by generations. They were slow and cautious. Only the very young ones, those who had radios and listened to the news, those who sometimes went to town and talked with the union men, were able to follow his train of thought. The others listened to him because he was the hero the owners were after, but they were convinced that he was talking nonsense.
“If the patrón finds out we’re voting Socialist, we’re done for,” they said.
“There’s no way he can know! The ballots are secret,” the false priest argued back.
“That’s what you think,” replied his father, Pedro Segundo. “They say they’re secret, but afterward they always know exactly who we voted for. Besides, if your party wins they’ll throw us out. We’ll lose our jobs. I’ve always lived here. What would I do?”
“They can’t throw you all out, because the owner loses more than you do if you go!” countered Pedro Tercero.
“It makes no difference who we vote for—they always win anyway.”
“They change the ballots,” said Blanca, who was at the meeting, sitting on the ground among the peasants.
“This time they can’t,” said Pedro Tercero. “We’ll be sending people from the party to watch the polling places and make sure they seal the ballot boxes.”
But the peasants did not trust him. Experience had taught them that in the end the fox always eats the hens, despite the subversive ballads that were traveling from mouth to mouth preaching just the opposite. Therefore, when a train came through carrying the new candidate of the Socialist Party, a charismatic, nearsighted doctor who could move huge crowds with his passionate speeches, they watched him from the station, observed in turn by the owners, who formed a fence around them, armed with shotguns and clubs. They listened respectfully to what the candidate had to say, but they were afraid to make the least gesture of greeting—except for a few farmhands who, armed with picks and shovels, rushed to surround him and cheered until they were hoarse, because they had nothing to lose. They were nomads who wandered the countryside without regular work, without families, without masters, and without fear.
Shortly after the death and memorable interment of Pedro García, Blanca began to lose her apple-colored freshness and to suffer from a natural fatigue that was not the result of holding her breath and from morning nausea that was not the result of drinking heated brine. She thought it was from eating too much food; it was the season of golden peaches, apricots, and young corn cooked with basil in clay casseroles. It was the season for making marmalade and jam for winter. But neither fasting, camomile, purgatives, nor rest could cure her. She lost her enthusiasm for the school, the infirmary, and even her ceramic crèches. She grew weak and somnolent, could spend hours lying in the shade looking up at the sun, uninterested in anything else. The only activity she kept up were her nocturnal escapes out the window when she had a rendezvous with Pedro Tercero down by the river.
Jean de Satigny, who had not admitted defeat in his romantic siege, observed her closely. Out of discretion, he had spent several periods in the hotel in town and made a few brief journeys to the capital, from which he would return weighed down with brochures about chinchillas, their hutches, their feeding, their sicknesses, their reproductive habits, the method for tanning their skins, and everything else that had to do with those tiny beasts who were destined to be converted into stoles. The count spent most of the summer as a guest at Tres Marías. He was a delightful visitor—well educated, lighthearted, and calm. He always had a friendly word on the tip of his tongue and was as ready to celebrate the cooking as he was to entertain his hosts by playing the piano in the sitting room, where his execution of the Chopin nocturnes rivaled Clara’s. He was an inexhaustible source of anecdotes. He woke up late in the morning and devoted an hour or two to the care of his own person. First he would do his exercises and run around the house, oblivious to the taunts of the hardy peasants looking on. Next he would soak himself in a hot bath, and then he would take his time selecting his clothing for every occasion in the day. This last activity was a wasted one, because no one appreciated his elegance and often the only thing he achieved with his British riding outfits, his velvet jackets, and his Tyrolean hats with their little feathers was that Clara, with the best intentions, would offer him clothing more appropriate for the country. Jean did not lose his good humor. He accepted the ironic smiles of the owner of the house, Blanca’s grimaces, and the perennial distraction of Clara, who, even after a year, was still asking him his name. He knew how to prepare a few French dishes, perfectly seasoned and magnificently presented, which were his contribution whenever there were guests for dinner. It was the first time any of them had seen a man interested in cooking, but they supposed it must be a European custom and did not dare make fun of him for fear of seeming ignorant. Besides the material on chinchillas, he also brought from the capital the popular wartime booklets that had been created to propagate the image of the heroic soldier, and sentimental novels he had bought for Blanca. In after-dinner conversation, he sometimes referred, in a tone of utter boredom, to summers spent with the European nobility in the castles of Liechtenstein or the Côte d’Azur. He never missed an opportunity to say how happy he was to have traded all that for the enchantment of America. Blanca would ask him why he had not chosen the Caribbean, or at least a country with mulattas, coconut palms, and drums if what he was after was the exotic, but he maintained that there was no place on earth as pleasant as this half-forgotten country at the end of the earth. The Frenchman never spoke of his private life, except to slip in certain subtle hints that would enable an astute observer to recognize his splendid past, his incalculable fortune, and his noble origins. There was no consensus on his civil status, his age, his family, or the region of France he came from. Clara felt that so much mystery was dangerous and tried to penetrate it with her tarot cards, but Jean would not permit his fortune to be told or the lines of his hands to be read. Nor did they know his astrological sign.
Esteban Trueba was not the slightest
bit concerned about any of this. For him it was enough that the count was willing to join him in a game of chess or dominoes, that he was clever and friendly and never asked to borrow money. Ever since Jean de Satigny had begun to visit them, the boredom of the countryside, where after five o’clock in the afternoon there was nothing left to do, had become less oppressive. Besides, he liked the idea that his neighbors envied him for having this distinguished guest at Tres Marías.
Word had got out that Jean was wooing Blanca, but that did not prevent his remaining the favorite of all the matchmaking mothers of the area. As for Blanca, she gradually adjusted to his presence. He was so discreet and gentle that she finally forgot about his proposal; she even thought it might have been some sort of joke on the count’s part. She took the silver candlesticks from the cupboard again, set the table with the English china, and once more wore her city dresses to the family’s late-afternoon gatherings. Jean often invited her into town or asked her to accompany him on his numerous social engagements. On such occasions Clara had to go with them, because Esteban Trueba was unyielding when it came to this: he did not want his daughter to be seen alone with the Frenchman. He would, however, allow them to walk unchaperoned around the property, provided that they did not go too far and that they returned before dark. Clara said that if the point was to protect their daughter’s virginity, that was a lot more dangerous than letting her go to tea at the Uzcategui family hacienda, but Esteban was confident that there was nothing to worry about with Jean, since his intentions were noble enough, and that they only had to watch out for malicious gossips, who could easily destroy their daughter’s reputation. Jean and Blanca’s country walks consolidated their friendship. They did, after all, get along well. They both liked to go horseback riding in the middle of the morning, with a picnic basket and an array of canvas and leather bags containing Jean’s belongings. At every stop the count posed Blanca against the landscape and took her picture, although she put up a certain resistance because she felt rather ridiculous. This feeling was borne out when they saw the developed photographs, where Blanca appeared with a smile that was not her own, standing in an uncomfortable position and with an unhappy look that according to Jean was due to her inability to pose naturally, and according to Blanca to the fact that he forced her to stand all twisted and to hold her breath for endless seconds until the plate had absorbed the image. They usually picked a shady place beneath the trees, where they spread a blanket on the grass and settled in for a few hours. They spoke of Europe, of books, of anecdotes from Blanca’s family, or of Jean’s voyages. She gave him a book by the Poet, and he was so excited by it that he memorized long sections of it and could recite them perfectly. He said it was the best poetry ever written, and that even in French, the language of the arts, there was nothing to compare it to. They never talked about their feelings. Jean was solicitous, but he was not pleading or insistent; if anything, he was fraternal and lighthearted. If he kissed her hand, it was to bid her good night; he did it with a schoolboy look on his face that drained all romanticism from the gesture. If he admired a dress she was wearing, a dish she had prepared, or one of her crèche figures, his tone had an ironic touch to it that allowed her to interpret his words in many ways. If he gathered flowers for her or helped her down from her horse, he did it with a casualness that transformed his chivalry into a simple act of friendship. In any case, just to be on the safe side, every time she had an opportunity Blanca let him know that she would never marry him, not even if her life depended on it. Jean de Satigny would smile his sparkling, seductive smile without saying a word, and Blanca could not help noticing that he was a lot more handsome than Pedro Tercero.