The House of the Spirits

  As soon as the book was off the presses, Nicolás cradled it lovingly in his arms, recovered his hyena smile, put on decent clothes, and announced that the time had come to bring The Truth to those of his generation who remained shrouded in darkness. Esteban Trueba reminded him that he was not welcome to use the house as an academy and warned him that he would not tolerate his putting pagan ideas into Alba’s head, much less teaching her his fakir’s tricks. Nicolás went off to preach at the cafeteria in the university, where he acquired an impressive number of followers for his classes in spiritual and respiratory exercise. He spent his free time riding his motorcycle and teaching his niece how to conquer pain and other weaknesses of the flesh. His method consisted of identifying whatever made her frightened. The child, who had a certain inclination for the macabre, would concentrate according to her uncle’s instructions until she was able to visualize her mother’s death as if it were really happening. She saw her chalk-white and cold, her beautiful purple eyes shut, lying in her coffin. She heard the weeping of the family. She saw the silent procession of friends file in, leave their calling cards on a tray, and walk out with bowed heads. She smelled the flowers and heard the neighing of the plumed horses of the funeral carriage. She felt how her feet hurt in her new mourning shoes. She imagined her loneliness, her abandonment, her orphanhood. Her uncle helped her think of all these things without crying, and taught her to relax and not resist the pain so that it would pass through her without stopping. Other times, Alba would squeeze a finger in the door and learn to withstand the burning pain without complaint. If she managed to get through an entire week without crying, overcoming all the tests Nicolás imposed, she won a prize, which almost always consisted of a motorcycle ride at breakneck speed—an unforgettable experience. Once they wound up in the middle of a herd of cows that were going toward the stable, along a road on the edge of the city where Nicolás had taken his niece as her reward. She would always remember the heavy animals, their slowness, their filthy tails hitting her in the face, the smell of dung, the horns grazing her, and the terrible sensation of emptiness in her stomach, of fantastic vertigo, of incredible excitement, a mixture of passionate curiosity and terror that she only felt again in a few fleeting moments of her life.

  Esteban Trueba, who had always found it difficult to express his emotions and had had no access to tenderness ever since his relationship with Clara had deteriorated, transferred all his finest sentiments to Alba. The child meant more to him than his own children ever had. Every morning, still in her pajamas, she went to her grandfather’s room. She entered without knocking and climbed into his bed. He would pretend to wake up with a start, even though he was actually expecting her, and growled that she should not disturb him and that she should go back to her room and let him sleep. Alba tickled him until, apparently defeated, he permitted her to look for the chocolate he always had hidden for her. Alba knew all his hiding places and her grandfather always used them in the exact same order, but so as not to disappoint him she spent a long time looking, and when she found it she shrieked with joy. Esteban never knew that his granddaughter hated chocolate and that she ate it only out of love for him. Those morning games satisfied the senator’s need for human contact. The rest of the day he was busy with the Congress, the club, playing golf, his business, and his political meetings. Twice a year he went to Tres Marías with his granddaughter for two or three weeks. They both returned looking tanned, happier, and fatter. There they distilled a homemade brandy that was used as a drink, to light the stove, to disinfect wounds, and to kill cockroaches; they pompously called it “vodka.” At the end of his life, when his ninety years had turned him into a twisted, fragile tree, Esteban Trueba would recall those moments with his granddaughter as the happiest of his whole existence. Alba too remembered the complicity of those trips to the country holding on to her grandfather’s hand, the jaunts behind him in the saddle of his horse, the sunsets in the vast pastures, the long nights beside the living-room fireplace telling ghost stories and drawing pictures.

  Senator Trueba’s relationship with the rest of his family only worsened with time. Once a week, on Saturday, they all dined around the great oak table that had always been in the family and had first belonged to the del Valles; it was the most ancient of antiques, and had been used for laying out the dead, for Spanish dances, and for other unexpected needs. Alba was seated between her grandmother and mother, with a cushion on her chair so that her nose would reach her plate. The child watched the adults in fascination. There was her radiant grandmother, her teeth in place for the occasion, sending messages to her husband through her children or the servants; Jaime flaunting his bad manners by burping after each course and picking his teeth with his little finger to annoy his father; Nicolás with his eyes half closed chewing every bite fifty times; and Blanca chattering about anything she could think of just to create the illusion of a normal meal. Trueba remained relatively silent until his bad temper betrayed him and he began to argue with Jaime about the poor, the elections, the Socialists, and basic principles, or to insult Nicolás for his attempts to launch a balloon and practice acupuncture on Alba, or to punish Blanca with his harsh replies, his indifference, and his useless warnings that she had already ruined her life and that she would never inherit so much as a peso from him. The only one he did not confront was Clara, but, of course, he barely spoke to her. At times Alba caught her grandfather staring at Clara until he turned white and sweet, and looked like an old man they had never seen before. But this happened only rarely; typically, husband and wife ignored each other. Sometimes Senator Trueba lost his temper and screamed so much that he turned red and they had to throw a jugful of cold water in his face so that the fit would pass and his breathing would return to normal.

  This was the period when Blanca’s beauty was at its peak. She had a Moorish, languid, and abundant air about her, which induced repose and trust. She was tall and well endowed, of a rather helpless and tearful temperament that roused men’s ancestral instinct for protection. Her father had no sympathy for her. He never forgave her love for Pedro Tercero García and made sure she did not forget that she was living off his pity. Trueba could not understand how his daughter had so many admirers, for she had none of the disarming gaiety and joviality he liked in women; besides, he felt that no normal man could want to marry a woman of ill health and uncertain civil status who already had a daughter. But Blanca did not seem the least surprised that men were interested in her. She was conscious of her beauty. Nevertheless, when she was with the gentlemen who called on her, she assumed a contradictory attitude, encouraging them with a batting of her Arabian eyes, but keeping them at a prudent distance. As soon as she saw that their intentions were serious, she broke off the relationship with a ferocious refusal. Some of them, those in a better economic position, attempted to win her heart by bribing her daughter. They showered Alba with expensive gifts and dolls with special mechanisms that enabled them to walk, cry, eat, and carry out other typically human feats, stuffed her with cream puffs and took her to the zoo, where the child wept with pity for the poor captive animals, especially the seal, who stirred dreadful omens in her soul. These visits to the zoo holding on to the hand of some conceited spendthrift suitor gave her a lifelong horror of enclosures, walls, cages, and isolation. Of all the contenders, the one who made the greatest progress toward winning Blanca’s hand was the King of the Pressure Cookers. Despite his immense fortune and his peaceful, introspective character, Esteban Trueba detested him because he was circumcised and had a Sephardic nose and kinky hair. With his mocking, hostile attitude, Trueba managed to frighten off this man who had survived a concentration camp, overcome poverty and exile, and triumphed in the ruthless world of commerce. While their romance lasted, the King of the Pressure Cookers would come to call for Blanca and take her out to eat in the most exclusive restaurants; he drove a tiny car with only two seats, tractor tires, and the noise of a turbine under the hood, a unique model in its class, which p
rovoked a rush of curiosity among the neighbors and derogatory remarks from the Trueba family. Ignoring her father’s displeasure and the neighbors’ nosy interest, Blanca would climb up into the vehicle with the majesty of a prime minister, dressed in her one and only black tailored suit and the white silk blouse she wore on all special occasions. Alba would kiss her goodbye and stand in the doorway, her mother’s subtle jasmine perfume clinging to her nostrils and a knot of anxiety lying in her heart. Only her Uncle Nicolás’s training helped her withstand her mother’s outings without tears, because she feared that any day one of the suitors would convince her mother to marry him and Blanca would leave her all alone without a mother. She had decided a long time ago that she did not need a father, much less a stepfather, but that if she lost her mother she would plunge her head into a pail of water until she drowned, just as the cook did with the little kittens the cat gave birth to every four months or so.

  Alba got over her fear that her mother would abandon her when she finally met Pedro Tercero. Her intuition told her that as long as that man existed, no one could win Blanca’s love. It was a summer Sunday. Blanca set Alba’s hair in corkscrew curls with a hot iron that singed her ears. She dressed her in white gloves and black patent-leather shoes and a straw hat with artificial cherries. Her Grandmother Clara laughed aloud when she caught sight of her, but her mother consoled her with two drops of her perfume on her neck.

  “You’re going to meet someone famous,” Blanca said mysteriously as they left the house.

  She took the child to the Japanese Gardens, where she bought her caramel on a stick and a bag of popcorn. They sat down on a bench in the shade, holding hands, surrounded by pigeons that were pecking at the corn.

  She saw him approaching before her mother pointed him out to her. He was wearing a mechanic’s overalls and Franciscan sandals without socks, and he had a huge black beard that reached halfway down his chest. His hair was messy, but he had a magnificent smile, which immediately ranked him in the category of human beings who deserved to be painted into the gigantic fresco in her bedroom.

  The man and the little girl looked at each other, recognizing themselves in the other’s eyes.

  “This is Pedro Tercero, the singer. You’ve heard him on the radio,” her mother said.

  Alba held out her hand and he squeezed it with his left one. Then she noticed that he was missing several fingers on his right hand, but he explained that he could play the guitar anyway, because there is always a way to do what you want to do. The three of them strolled together through the Japanese Gardens. In midafternoon they took one of the last electric streetcars that still existed in the city and went to have fried fish at a stall in the market. At dusk he escorted them as far as their street. When they said goodbye, Blanca and Pedro Tercero kissed each other on the mouth. It was the first time Alba had seen that in her life, because no one around her was in love.

  From that day on, Blanca began going out alone every weekend. She said she was going to visit some distant cousins. Esteban Trueba got furious with her and threatened to expel her from his house, but Blanca was unyielding. She left her daughter with Clara and took the bus, carrying a clown’s valise covered with flowers.

  “I promise you I’m not getting married and that I’ll be back tomorrow night,” she would say to Alba when she said goodbye.

  Alba liked to sit with the cook at siesta time, listening to popular singing on the radio, especially the songs of the man she had met in the Japanese Gardens. One day Senator Trueba entered the pantry and when he heard the voice on the radio he attacked the machine, smashing it with his cane until it was a pile of twisted wires and loose knobs, before the frightened eyes of his granddaughter, who could not understand her grandfather’s sudden fit. The next day, Clara bought another radio so Alba could listen to Pedro Tercero whenever she felt like it, and old Trueba pretended not to notice.

  That was still the era of the King of the Pressure Cookers. Pedro Tercero found out about his existence and had an attack of jealousy that was unwarranted if one compares the influence he had on Blanca with the timid siege of the Jewish merchant. As he had so many other times, he begged Blanca to leave the Trueba house, her father’s ferocious guardianship, and the loneliness of her workshop filled with Mongoloids and leisured ladies, and to go with him once and for all to live out the wild love they had been hiding ever since their childhood. But Blanca could not make up her mind. She knew that if she went with Pedro Tercero she would be banished from her social circle and from the position she had always had, and she also realized that she would never be accepted by Pedro Tercero’s friends or be able to adjust to the modest life of a working-class quarter. Years later, when Alba was old enough to analyze this aspect of her mother’s life, she concluded that she had not gone with Pedro Tercero simply because she did not love him enough, for there was nothing in the Trueba house that he could not have given her. Blanca was a very poor woman. She had money only when Clara gave her some or when she sold one of her crèches. She earned a wretched income, almost every cent of which she spent on doctors because work and necessity had not diminished her capacity for suffering imaginary illnesses; on the contrary, it seemed to be expanding year by year. She managed not to ask her father for anything, so as not to give him the least opportunity to humiliate her. From time to time, Clara and Jaime bought her clothes or gave her something for her basic needs, but usually she could not afford to buy a pair of stockings. Her poverty contrasted with the embroidered dresses and custom-made shoes in which Senator Trueba dressed his granddaughter Alba. Her life was hard. She rose at six every morning, winter and summer. Then, dressed in a rubber apron and wooden clogs, she lit her kiln, prepared her worktables, and pounded the clay for her classes, her arms up to her elbows in the coarse, cold mud. This was why she always had broken nails and cracked skin and why, with time, her fingers grew deformed. At that time of the day she felt inspired, and since there was no one to interrupt her, she could start her day by making extraordinary animals for her crèches. Afterward she had to see to the house, the servants, and the shopping until her classes began. Her pupils were daughters of the best families who had nothing to do and had taken up the fashion of ceramics, which was more elegant than knitting for the poor, as their grandmothers had done.

  The idea of giving classes for mongoloids had come about by chance. One day an old friend of Clara’s came to Senator Trueba’s house with her grandson, a fat, soft teenager with the round face of a docile moon and an expression of unchanging tenderness in his tiny Oriental eyes. He was fifteen, but Alba realized he was like a baby. Clara asked her granddaughter to take the boy out to play in the garden and make sure he did not soil his clothes, drown in the fountain, eat dirt, or play with his fly. Alba quickly tired of watching him, and when she saw it was impossible to communicate with him in any coherent language, she took him to the ceramic studio, where Blanca, to keep him amused, tied an apron around him to protect him from stains and water and placed a ball of clay in his hands. The boy played with it for more than three hours, shaping a number of crude figures that he took to show his grandmother. This lady, who had practically forgotten he was with her, was utterly delighted; thus the idea was born that ceramics was good for mongoloids. Blanca ended up giving classes to a group of children who came to her studio every Thursday afternoon. They were delivered by truck and escorted by two nuns in starched white coifs, who sat in the garden drinking chocolate with Clara and discussing the virtues of cross-stitching and the hierarchy of sin, while Blanca and her daughter taught the children how to fashion worms, balls, squashed dogs, and misshapen vases. At the end of the year the nuns organized an exhibition and a party, and the dreadful works of art were sold for charity. Blanca and Alba had quickly understood that the children worked much better when they felt loved, and that the only way to communicate with them was through affection. They learned to hug them, kiss them, and fondle them until they wound up genuinely loving them.
Alba waited all week for the truck with the retarded children to come, and she jumped with glee when they ran to hug her. But those Thursdays wore them out. Alba fell asleep exhausted, the sweet Asiatic faces of the children spinning in her mind, and Blanca invariably had a migraine. After the nuns left, their herd of mongoloids in hand and their white wings aflutter, Blanca hugged her daughter passionately, covered her face with kisses, and told her they should thank God that she was normal. For this reason, Alba grew up thinking that normality was a gift from heaven. She discussed it with her grandmother.

  “In almost every family there’s a fool or a crazy person,” Clara assured her while she concentrated on her knitting—in all those years she had not learned to knit without looking. “You can’t always see them, because they’re kept out of sight as if they were something to be ashamed of. They’re locked up in the back room so visitors won’t see them. But actually there’s nothing to be ashamed of. They’re God’s creatures too.”

  “But there’s no one like that in our family, Grandmother,” Alba replied.

  “No. Here the madness was divided up equally, and there was nothing left over for us to have our own lunatic.”

  This was how her conversations with Clara went, and why, for Alba, the most important person in the house and the strongest presence in her life was her grandmother. She was the motor that drove the magic universe that was the rear section of the big house on the corner, where Alba spent her first seven years in complete freedom. She grew accustomed to her grandmother’s eccentricities. She was not surprised, for example, to see her moving around the room in a trance, seated in an armchair with her legs tucked under her, pulled by an invisible force. She followed her on her pilgrimages to hospitals and almshouses, where Clara tried to track down her needy flock; she even learned, using four-ply wool and enormous needles, to knit the sweaters her Uncle Jaime gave away after he had worn them once, just so she could see her grandmother’s toothless smile while she squinted at the stitches. Clara frequently used her to send messages to Esteban, which earned her the nickname “carrier pigeon.” The little girl also took part in the Friday sessions, during which the three-legged table jumped in broad daylight without the aid of any special tricks, known form of energy, or outside leverage, as well as the literary soirées where she mingled with the acclaimed masters and a varying group of timid unknown artists whom Clara encouraged. In those days a large number of guests ate and drank in the big house on the corner. Almost all the most important people in the country took turns living there, or at least attending the spiritualist meetings, the cultural discussions, and the social gatherings. Among them was the Poet—years later considered the greatest of the century and translated into all the known languages on earth—on whose knees Alba often sat, little suspecting that one day she would walk behind his casket, with a bunch of bloody carnations in her hand, between two rows of machine guns.