She might let months go by without collecting my salary, then, pleading or threatening, suddenly show up to ask to borrow money. You are mistreating my little girl—she’s stunted and skinny, and everyone tells me that the patrón can’t keep his hands off her. That’s not what I like to hear, they call that corruption of minors. Whenever she came to the house, I ran and hid in the coffin. Adamant, the spinster would refuse to raise my wages and would tell my madrina that the next time she bothered her she would call the police. They know you, they know all about you. You should be grateful that I’ve taken the girl off your hands. If it weren’t for me, she would be as dead as your two-headed baboon. The situation became intolerable, and finally one day the patrona lost her patience and fired me.
Leaving Elvira was very difficult. We had been together for more than three years; she had given me affection and I had filled her head with romantic stories. We had helped each other and shared our laughter. Sleeping in the same bed and playing funeral in the same coffin, we had formed an enduring friendship that protected us from loneliness and the harshness of a servant’s life. Elvira swore never to forget me, and visited me when she could, somehow managing to find out where I was. She would show up like a kindly abuela, always with a bottle of guayaba syrup, or lollipops she had bought in the market. Our affection needed no words, and we would just sit and look at each other the way we used to before I was taken away. Elvira would ask me for a long story to last till the next visit. And so we saw each other for a time, until a twist of fate caused us to lose track of each other.
* * *
That was when I began moving from one house to another. My madrina was constantly seeking new employers, each time demanding more money—but no one was disposed to pay decent wages, considering that many girls my age asked for no salary at all, only their keep. I lost count of, and now cannot remember, all the places I worked, except a few that are impossible to forget, like the house of the lady of the stone-hard porcelana, whose art served me well in later years in an unusual adventure.
This lady was a widow who had been born in Yugoslavia. She spoke a halting Spanish, but her cooking skills were inspired. She had discovered a recipe for a Universal Matter, as she modestly called her mixture of wet newspapers, unmilled flour, and dental cement, which she kneaded into a grayish dough that was malleable while moist but rock-hard when it dried. She could imitate any substance except the transparency of glass or the vitreous humor of the eye. She would mix up a batch, wrap it in a wet cloth, and keep it in her refrigerator until she needed it. It could be molded like clay or rolled as thin as silk, cut, given different textures, or folded in any way desired. Once it was dry and hard, she sealed it with varnish and then painted it to resemble wood, metal, cloth, fruit, marble, human skin—any substance she wanted. Her home was a showroom for the possibilities of this miraculous material: a Coromandel screen in the entry; four musketeers dressed in velvet and lace, swords unsheathed, presiding over the living room; an elephant decorated in the Indian manner serving as a telephone table; a Roman frieze at the head of her bed. One of the rooms had been transformed into a pharaoh’s tomb: the doors were trimmed with mortuary bas-reliefs; the lamps were black panthers with light bulbs for eyes; the table imitated a burnished sarcophagus with incrustations of false lapis lazuli; and the ashtrays reproduced the serene and eternal form of the Sphinx, with a depression in the back for crushing out cigarettes. I would tiptoe through that museum terrified that I would break something with the feather duster, or that one of the figures would come to life and I would be wounded by a musketeer’s sword, the elephant’s tusk, or the panther’s claws. That was where my fascination with the culture of ancient Egypt was born, and my horror of bread dough. The Yugoslavian patrona sowed in my heart a lasting suspicion of inanimate objects, and ever since I must touch things to know whether they are what they seem, or Universal Matter. In the months I worked there, I became her apprentice, but I had the good fortune not to become addicted to her art. Porcelana is a dangerous temptation, because once its secrets are known, nothing stands in the way of the artist’s copying everything imaginable, constructing a world of lies, and getting lost in it.
This patrona’s nerves had been destroyed by the war. She was convinced that invisible enemies were spying on her and planned to harm her, and she built a high wall topped with glass shards all around her property, and kept two loaded pistols in her night table: This city is overrun with thieves and a poor widow must be ready to defend herself—the first intruder who dares enter my house will get a bullet right between the eyes. But the bullets were not to be reserved for robbers alone. The day this country falls into the hands of the Communists, Evita, I will kill you so you won’t suffer at their hands, and then blow my own head off, she said. She treated me with kindness, even a certain tenderness. She worried that I did not eat enough; she bought me a good bed; and every afternoon she invited me into the living room to listen to the serials on the radio: “Let the sonorous pages of the airwaves open before you as we bring to life the emotion and romance of a new chapter of . . .” Sitting side by side, munching crackers between the musketeers and the elephant, we listened to three programs in a row—two love stories and one mystery. I was happy with this patrona, and had a sense of belonging somewhere. Perhaps the only drawback was that the house was located in an isolated neighborhood and it was difficult for Elvira to come and visit. Even so, she tried to come every time she had an afternoon off: I get weary of coming so far, little bird, but I’m more weary when I don’t see you. Every day, I ask God to make you strong and to grant me good health to keep loving you, she told me.
I would have stayed there much longer; my madrina had no reason to complain—she was paid punctually and generously—but a strange incident ended my employment. One windy night about ten o’clock, we heard a prolonged rumbling, something like a drumroll. The widow forgot her pistols; trembling, she locked the shutters, refusing to look out to try to see the source of the racket. The next morning we found four dead cats in the garden, strangled, beheaded, or gutted, and curses scrawled in blood on the wall. I remembered having heard on the radio about similar incidents, attributed to gangs of boys who made a sport of such cruel antics, and I tried to convince the señora that there was no cause for alarm—but in vain. My Yugoslavian patrona, crazed with fear, was determined to escape the country before the Bolsheviks did to her what they had done to the cats.
* * *
“You’re in luck,” my madrina announced. “I’ve got you a job in the house of a Cabinet Minister.”
The patrón turned out to be an insipid type, like most public figures in that time when political life was congealed and any hint of originality could lead to a cellar room where a man awaited with a flower in his buttonhole, reeking of French cologne. By name and fortune my new patrón was a member of the old aristocracy, which guaranteed a certain impunity for his vulgarity, but he had exceeded the bounds of acceptable behavior and even his family had repudiated him. He was fired from his post in the Chancery when he was caught urinating behind the green brocade drapes of the Hall of Heraldry, and dismissed from an embassy for the same reason. That unpleasant habit, however unacceptable in diplomatic protocol, was no impediment to heading a Ministry. His greatest virtues were his capacity for fawning over the General and his talent for passing unnoticed—although years later his name became famous when he fled the country in a private plane and, in the tumult and haste of departure, left behind on the tarmac a suitcase filled with gold, which he did not miss in exile anyway. This paragon lived in a colonial mansion in the center of a shadowy park where ferns grew as large as octopuses and wild orchids clung to the trees. At night red dots glowed in the rank foliage, eyes of gnomes and other garden sprites, or bats swooping low from the rooftops. Divorced, without children or friends, the Minister lived alone in that enchanted place. The house he had inherited from his grandparents was much too large for him and his servants; many rooms
were empty and under lock and key. My imagination took wing when I saw that corridor of locked doors; behind every one I thought I heard whispers, moans, laughter. At first I put my ear to the doors and peeked through the keyholes, but soon I found I did not have to do that to divine the universes hidden there, each with its own laws, time, and inhabitants, safe from the decay and contamination of the everyday world. I gave each room a name that recalled my mother’s tales—Katmandu, Palace of the Bears, Merlin’s Cave—and it took only the slightest effort of imagination to pass through the door and enter the extraordinary stories unfolding on the other side of the walls.
Besides the chauffeurs and bodyguards, who dirtied the parquet floors and stole the liquor, the Minister employed a cook, an aged gardener, a butler, and me. I never learned exactly what I was hired to do or what the financial arrangement was between the patrón and my madrina. I spent most of my time in idleness, exploring the garden, listening to the radio, daydreaming about the sealed rooms, or telling ghost stories to the other servants in exchange for sweets. Only two chores were exclusively mine: shining the Minister’s shoes, and emptying his chamberpot.
The same day I arrived, there was a banquet for ambassadors and politicians. I had never witnessed such preparations. A truck unloaded round tables and gilded chairs; from large chests in the pantry came embroidered tablecloths and from the dining-room sideboards the best china and silverware with the family monogram engraved in gold. The butler handed me a cloth to shine the crystal, and I marveled at the perfect sound when one goblet grazed another and how each shimmered like a rainbow in the light. Masses of roses were delivered and arranged in tall vases in all the rooms. From the armoires flowed gleaming silver trays and carafes; from the kitchen an unending procession of fish and roasts, wines, cheeses from Switzerland, candied fruits, and tortes baked by nuns. Ten white-gloved waiters attended the guests, while I watched from behind the draperies of the grand salon, fascinated with the refinements that furnished a wealth of new material for embellishing my stories. Now I would be able to describe royal feasts, reveling in details I could never have invented, such as musicians in tails playing dance music on the terrace, chestnut-stuffed pheasants crowned with tufts of feathers, roast meat soaked in liqueur and served in a wreath of blue flames. I did not go to bed until the last guest had left. We spent the next day cleaning up, counting the silver, throwing away wilted flowers, and putting everything back in place. I was absorbed into the normal rhythm of the household.
The Minister’s bedchamber was on the second floor, a large room with a huge bed carved with chubby-cheeked angels. The coffered ceiling was a century old, the carpets had been brought from the Orient, the walls were crowded with colonial santos from Quito and Lima and a collection of photographs of the Minister himself in the company of various dignitaries. Before the jacaranda-wood desk stood an antique plush bishop’s armchair with gilt arms and legs and a hole in the seat. There the patrón ensconced himself to satisfy the demands of nature, the end results of which fell into a basin strategically placed beneath the hole. He would sit for hours on that anachronism, writing letters and speeches, reading the newspaper, drinking whisky. When he was through, he rang a bell that resounded through the house like a clap of doom, and I, outraged, climbed the stairs to fetch the vessel, unable to understand why the man could not use the toilet like any normal human being. Don’t ask so many questions, girl—the señor has always been like that, was the butler’s only explanation. After a couple of days I began to feel as if I were drowning; I could not get my breath. I had a perpetual choking sensation, a tickling in my hands and feet, a sheen of cold sweat. Neither the anticipation of witnessing a second banquet nor the fabulous adventures of the locked rooms could rid my mind of that plush chair, the patrón’s expression as he pointed out my duty, or the trip to empty that vessel. On the fifth day when I heard the summons of the bell, I pretended for a while to be deaf, busying myself in the kitchen, but within a few minutes the sound was thundering in my brain. Finally, I started slowly up the stairs, getting more worked up with every step. I entered the luxurious room that stank like a stable, knelt down behind the chair, and removed the basin. With absolute aplomb, as if it were something I did every day, I lifted the receptacle high and emptied it over the head of the Minister of State—with a single motion of the wrist liberating myself from humiliation. For an eternal second the Minister sat motionless, eyes bulging.
“Adios, señor.” I turned on my heel, hurried from the room—in passing bidding farewell to the figures sleeping behind the locked doors—dashed down the stairs, darted past the chauffeurs and bodyguards, ran through the park, and made my escape before the victim could recover from his shock.
I did not dare look for my madrina; I had been afraid of her ever since, in the haze of her madness, she had threatened to have me sewed up, too. In a café I asked if I could use the telephone, and I called the house of the bachelor and the spinster to talk with Elvira. I was told she had gone away one morning, carting her coffin in a hired van, and was not coming back. They did not know where she had gone; she had vanished without a word, leaving behind the rest of her belongings. I had the sensation of having lived through this desertion before. I invoked the spirit of my mother to give me courage and, with the manner of someone on her way to an appointment, I started off instinctively toward the center of the city. When I reached the plaza of the Father of the Nation, I almost did not recognize the equestrian statue; it had been cleaned up, and now, instead of being spattered by pigeons and dulled by the verdigris of time, it sparkled with glory. Huberto Naranjo, the nearest thing to a friend I had ever had, was on my mind; I never considered the possibility that he might have forgotten me, or that he might be difficult to find—I had not lived enough to become a pessimist. I sat down on the edge of the fountain where he used to win bets with the tailless fish, and watched the birds and black squirrels and sloths in the trees. By dusk I decided I had waited long enough. I left the fountain and plunged into side streets that had conserved their colonial charm, still untouched by the jackhammers of Italian construction workers. I asked for Naranjo in the shops in the barrio, in the kiosks and cafés where many people knew him—this had been his theater of operations, after all, since he was a young boy. Everyone was pleasant to me, but no one wanted to hazard an answer to my question. I suppose the dictatorship had taught people to keep their mouths shut; you never knew, even a girl in a servant’s apron with a dust rag tucked in her belt could be suspect. Finally one person took pity on me and whispered, Go to the Calle República, he hangs around there at night. At that time the red-light district was only a couple of poorly lighted blocks, innocent in comparison with the small city it was to become, but there were already signs displaying girls wearing the black patch of censorship across naked breasts, streetlamps lighting by-the-hour hotels, discreet brothels, and gambling houses. I remembered I had not eaten, but did not dare ask anyone for help: Better dead than beg, little bird, Elvira had drummed into my head. I found a spot in a dark alley, made a nest behind some cardboard cartons, and immediately fell asleep. I was wakened several hours later by strong fingers digging into my shoulder.
“I hear you’ve been looking for me. What the hell do you want?”
At first I did not recognize him, nor he me. The boy I had known had been left behind long ago. In my eyes Huberto Naranjo was elegant: dark sideburns, oily pompadour, tight pants, cowboy boots, and metal-studded belt. His expression was vaguely arrogant, but in his eyes danced the spark of mischief that nothing in his stormy life could erase. He was barely fifteen, but he looked older because of the way he stood: legs apart, knees slightly bent, head thrown back, a cigarette dangling from his lower lip. I recognized him by his desperado-like bearing; he had walked exactly the same way as a kid in short pants.
“I’m Eva.”
“Who?”
“Eva Luna.”
Huberto Naranjo ran his hand over his hair, stuck
his thumbs in his belt, spit his cigarette to the ground, and peered at me from on high. It was dark where I was and he could not see me very well, but my voice was the same and he caught a glimpse of my eyes in the shadows.
“The one who told stories?”
“Yes.”
He immediately dropped his pose as a tough, and was again the boy who as he told me goodbye one day long ago had been mortified by a kiss on the nose. He knelt on one knee, leaned forward, and grinned as happily as if he had found his lost dog. I smiled, too, still groggy with sleep. We shook hands shyly, two sweating palms; flushed, we looked each other over with growing excitement—Hey, how’ve you been!—until I jumped up, threw my arms around Huberto, and buried my face in his chest, rubbing my cheek against the rock-star shirt and brilliantined collar, while he gulped and clumsily patted my back in consolation.
“I’m a little hungry” was the only thing I could think of to say to keep from bursting into tears.
“Wipe your nose and we’ll get something to eat,” he said, taking out his pocket comb and reshaping his pompadour from memory.
He led me through empty and silent streets to the one run-down bar still open. He pushed open the doors, playing the cowboy, and we found ourselves in the semi-darkness of a room obscured in cigarette smoke. A jukebox was playing sentimental songs while bored customers were killing time at the pool tables or getting drunk at the bar. Naranjo took me by the hand—behind a counter, down a hallway, and into the kitchen. A young mulatto with a large mustache was slicing meat, wielding his knife like a saber.
“Cut this girl a beefsteak, Negro, and make it a big one, you hear? With two eggs, rice, and fried potatoes. I’m paying.”
“Whatever you say, Naranjo. Isn’t this the kid who was going around asking for you? She came by here this afternoon. She your girlfriend?” He grinned, with a wink.