She turned to look again through the window.
“Go on.”
She pursed her lips until they went white, refusing to comply.
“Go on,” he repeated.
“It was Luisito who fired it.”
It seemed to him as though the light from the lamp was wavering. What?
“The spoiled child, the poor little sick boy, the youngest of the family,” hissed Carola Gorostiza.
The pieces were coming together, starting to fit.
“Matí and my husband were arguing. They had dropped their shotguns and were shouting and cursing one another like never before. And Little Runt, who never took a weapon when he went hunting with them, grew nervous and tried to intervene. He picked up one of the guns, perhaps only to fire it into the air, or to scare them, or heaven knows why. By the time the closest hunters reached them, Gustavo’s fired shotgun was on the ground, Matí was bleeding to death, and Little Runt was crouched over the warm body in a hysterical fit. My husband tried to explain what had happened, but everything was against him: his shouts and curses had been heard by everyone, and it was his weapon.”
Mauro had no need to insist she go on: she seemed to have decided to pour everything out.
“When he saw the state of his older brother, the dwarf could not or would not say a word. And instead of being seen as the killer he was, he was treated as a second victim. There was never any formal complaint against Gustavo: it was all kept within the family. Until the grandfather put a bag of money in his hand and forced him to go abroad.”
He never thought he was worthy of the inheritance due to him. That was what Manuel Ysasi had told Mauro at the social club when he asked about Luis Montalvo’s chaotic, dissolute life and his lack of interest in the family’s business and properties. At that moment he had not been able to interpret the doctor’s words. But now he could.
“Seeing that you’re pulling words out of me like that tooth-puller on Calle de la Merced, let me tell you something else. Do you want to know why they were arguing?”
“I can imagine, but confirm it for me.”
“Of course. As ever, the great Soledad was at the heart of it. Gustavo was distraught because she had just married the Englishman. He accused his older cousin of not preventing that romance while he was away: at that moment he was living in Seville. He called him a traitor, accused him of being disloyal. Of having collaborated with the old man so that the cousin he had been in love with ever since he could remember turned away from him.”
Carola Gorostiza was in full flow, as if wanting to go on to the finish now that she had started to unravel things.
“Do you know something, Larrea? A lot of water has flowed under the bridge since my husband told me that: when the phantoms would wake him in the early hours, when he was still talking to me and forced himself to pretend he loved me just a little bit, even though the accursed shadow of another woman lived with us constantly. But I never forgot that that was the moment when Gustavo’s life was cut short. That was why I wrote to Luis Montalvo over the years. That was why I welcomed him in our house and plantation like an affectionate relative, telling him my husband was anxious to see him again, when in fact he had not the remotest idea of what I was up to. All I wanted was to revive his spirits, to help his blood course through his veins after carrying the weight of somebody else’s guilt on his shoulders for so long. I thought I could do so by reminding him of the scenes of that happy world his family had expelled him from. His family home, the winery, the vineyards he had known as a child. So first of all I succeeded in tempting Little Runt from Spain so that they could make up. Then, without my husband’s knowledge, I convinced him to change his will. That’s all.”
A sour grimace spread across her face.
“All it cost me were a few fake tears and an unscrupulous notary. You can’t imagine how easy it is for a good-looking woman to change the mind of a dying man with an uneasy conscience.”
Mauro preferred not to dwell on this impudent boast: he had to bring the matter to a close as soon as possible. The Fatous and Soledad were waiting anxiously in the living room; everything was ready. But Mauro, buried up to his neck in the ruins of the Montalvo family, refused to let her leave without fully understanding.
“Continue,” he ordered once more.
“What more do you want to know? Why my husband was so foolish as to stake everything on a game of billiards with you?”
“Exactly.”
“Because I was wrong through and through,” she admitted with a regretful twist of her mouth. “Because his reaction was not what I had expected; because I didn’t manage to give him hope as I had wanted. I thought I could offer him a promising future for both of us: we could sell our properties in Cuba and come to Spain together, start all over again in the land he missed so much. But far from what I was hoping, when Gustavo learned after his cousin’s death that he owned everything, instead of feeling relieved, he fell into his habitual inability to decide. And this only increased when he learned Soledad had returned to Jerez with her husband.”
There were noises outside: the sound of steps, and people arriving. The night was slipping by; someone had come looking for him. But when they heard them talking, whoever it was decided not to interrupt.
“Do you know what was worst, Larrea, what was saddest of all? To confirm that there was no room for me in his intentions; that if in the end he decided to return, he wasn’t going to bring me with him. That was why he made no plans to sell our properties in Cuba, neither the house nor the coffee plantation, so that I could survive on my own, without him. And do you know what he was aiming for by keeping me out of everything?”
She gave him no time to make any suggestion.
“His only aim, his only thought, was to win back Soledad. And to do that he needed something he didn’t have: ready money. Money to return in triumph and not as a failure begging to be forgiven. To return with a project, an optimistic plan: to restore his legacy, to start to rebuild it.”
He recalled seeing her at the ball in Casilda Barrón’s house, asking for his complicity in the midst of the luxurious vegetation in the garden, all the time shooting nervous glances toward the ballroom.
“That was why I was so anxious he had no knowledge of what you were bringing me from Mexico: because that was all he needed to take the final step. Capital to return to Spain in triumph, not as a failure. To show his worth to her, and abandon me.”
Tears, this time real ones, began to roll down her cheeks.
“And why bring me into your machinations, if I may ask?”
The combination of bitter tears and a cynical grimace was as incongruous and as obviously sincere as the story that had been pouring out of her.
“That was my big mistake. To bring you into this by inventing all that nonsense about your supposed affection for me; that was a stupid idea. All I wanted was to give Gustavo a different kind of concern, to see if at least he reacted when his public dignity as a husband was called into question.”
Her expression became even more bitter.
“But the only thing I managed to do was hand him the rope he needed to hang himself.”
At last. At last it all made sense to the miner. Now the pieces were recognizable and had their place in this complex game of lies and truths, passions, defeats, plots, and frustrated loves that neither the years nor the oceans had succeeded in eclipsing.
All he needed to know was there in front of him. And there was no time for anything more.
“I’d like to be able to respond to what you’ve said, Señora, but considering everything we need to deal with urgently, I think it would be best for you to start getting ready.”
She looked out over the balcony once more.
“I’ve nothing more to say anyway. You have already swept away my future, just as Soledad Montalvo ruined my present for so many decades. Th
e two of you can be satisfied.”
Mauro left, intending to head for the living room, still dazed from what he had heard. He had to act quickly. Ready? Let’s go, he was going to tell Fatou; he would have time to think things over later on. But he found his way was blocked: something was curled up on the floor in the dim light of the corridor. A skirt spread out on the floorboards, a back leaning against the wall. Head sunk in her shoulders, arms folded to protect herself. The sound of the soft crying of another woman. Soledad.
So it had been her footsteps he had heard outside while Carola Gorostiza was vomiting her pent-up agonies. She was the one coming to tell him they had to hurry up, and who had come to a halt outside the door when she heard the brutal revelations from her cousin’s wife.
Now, curled up in a ball like an orphan beset by nightmares, she was weeping for all she had not known of the past. For the guilt of others, and her own. For what had been hidden from her, for all the lies. For bygone days, happy or heart-rending, depending on which year and which moment. For those who were no longer there, and for all she had lost along the way.
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
When they arrived, the port was dark and silent, filled with ships moored by thick cables to the bollards, sails furled on their masts, with no sign of life. Schooners and feluccas rocking on the nocturnal waves, sloops and fishing boats quietly asleep. There was almost no sign of the usual piles of crates, barrels, and bundles from all over the world, nor of the noisy stevedores, or the carriages and crowds of people who every day came and went through the Puerta del Mar. Only the sound of the water beating dully against the hulks of the ships and the stone walls of the quay.
Fatou, Mauro Larrea, and his servant accompanied the women in the rowboat out to the salt ship. Paulita stayed at home, preparing egg punch, she said, for when they came back with dampness in their bones.
Soledad watched their silhouettes depart from behind a shutter in a room on the main floor of the Fatou house. Mauro Larrea had picked her up from the floor, holding her close, and had taken her to a nearby room, struggling hard not to be overwhelmed by the demands of his body and his feelings, trying to act with a clear head and icy reason. I’ll take care of everything, then I’ll be back, he whispered in her ear. She nodded her agreement.
She did not say a word to Carola Gorostiza; there was no time. Or possibly there was nothing to say. What sense did it make now to send any message to Gustavo through his wife? How could a few hasty words possibly erase twenty years of unjustified guilt, more than two decades of a bitterness as terrible as it was unjust. That was why Soledad decided to remain in the room as they left, the tips of her fingers pressed against the windowpanes and her eyes brimming with tears. How could she say good-bye to the woman who, despite the bonds of matrimony and the long years of living together, had never succeeded in displacing her in the heart of a man who, at another time and in another place, she had not succeeded in dismissing, either.
Dignified and composed, Carola Gorostiza did not open her mouth during the short crossing. Trinidad said next to nothing, either, seeming resigned to her situation, while Santos Huesos spent the whole time staring at the silver lights of the city.
If, when they boarded the old cargo ship, Carola suspected this was not a place for a lady of her stature, she concealed her feelings behind a distant scorn. She simply said a curt good evening to the captain and demanded that her belongings be transferred immediately to her cabin. It was only when she found herself shut in a room that despite the efforts of the Fatou couple was still oppressive and cramped that her cry of anger could be heard up on deck.
He was about to rid himself of a burden that weighed like a leaden sack on his shoulders, and yet Mauro Larrea’s sense of relief was mixed with a contradictory emotion. Ever since he had used threats to drag the most intimate secrets out of her, something had changed in his view of this woman who, with her scheming and lies, had turned his life upside down. He still saw the woman who at first light would begin her return to the New World, the woman behind the game of billiards that had completely altered his destiny, as a twisted, deceitful, and selfish person. Now, however, he knew that behind her behavior was hidden something that until now he had not even suspected, something beyond the mere desire for gain that he had at first imagined. To a certain extent that redeemed and humanized her, and left him slightly disconcerted: the desperate need to feel herself loved by a husband whom he now saw differently, with painful splinters in his heart.
At any rate, it made no sense to keep going over the reasons and the consequences of everything that had happened between Carola Gorostiza and him since he met her at that ball in Havana’s El Cerro. Now that she was installed in her less-than-luxury cabin, there was only one thing left for him to do. And so, while Fatou and the captain were finalizing details on the bridge, Mauro Larrea called Santos Huesos aside. His servant pretended not to have heard him and remained seated on a coil of rope in the prow of the ship. Mauro called him again, but again there was no response. He took six steps toward the Indian, grasped him by the arm, and forced him to his feet.
“Will you listen to me, you rogue?”
They were standing in front of one another, both with their legs spread wide even though the sea was completely calm on that night. The servant refused to raise his eyes.
“Look at me, Santos.”
Instead, he peered beyond him at the black waters.
“Look at me.”
In all the long years they had known each other, Santos had never refused an order from his patrón. Except this once.
“Is it really so hard for you to leave me even a moment’s peace?” his servant asked.
“So much the worse for you if you don’t want to hear that the lady kept her promise.”
At this, Santos raised his gleaming eyes.
“The girl is free,” said the miner, feeling for the sheet of paper in the inside pocket of his frock coat. “I’m going to give the captain the document; he will make sure it reaches Don Julián Calafat.”
In the name of Almighty God, amen. May it be known that I, Carola Gorostiza y Arellano de Zayas, in full possession of my faculties at the time of composing this document, declare to be free of any subjection, captivity, or servitude, María de la Santísima Trinidad Cumbá, who has no other family name. I grant this freedom gladly and without financial reward so that she may as a free person enjoy all her rights and desires.
This was what Mauro had forced her to write at the desk in her room: the emancipation of the young girl that so troubled Santos Huesos.
“When you are ready, Mauro.” Fatou’s voice behind them prevented Santos from giving any reply.
“Run and tell Trinidad that she must fly to the banker’s house as soon as they dock in Havana,” Mauro added, lowering his voice. “As soon as he reads this document, he’ll know what to do.”
His stunned servant did not know what to say.
“We’ll arrange for you two to meet again when the moment comes,” said Mauro, clapping him on the back as if to rouse him from his stupor. “Now hurry, and let’s get off this ship.”
They were not expecting anyone to be waiting for them on the dockside, but from the rowboat they spied a dark silhouette carrying a lantern. As they drew closer, they saw it was a youth. A porter hoping for one last load that night, a street urchin or a lover contemplating the bay as he sighed over his unrequited love; nothing to do with them, surely. But as they were about to disembark, they heard him call to them.
“Does one of you gentlemen go by the name of Larrea?”
“Your servant,” said Mauro as he stepped on to dry land.
“They say you’re wanted at the Cuatro Naciones Inn. As quickly as possible.”
He had no need to ask why: something must have gone wrong between Ysasi and the Englishman.
“We’ll say good-bye here for now, my friend,” he said,
extending a rapid hand toward Fatou. “I’m immensely grateful for all your generosity.”
“Perhaps I could go with you . . .”
“I’ve taken advantage of you far too much already; I had better let you return home. But, please, would you mind informing Señora Claydon where I’ve gone? And now I beg you to excuse me; I’m afraid this may be no trifling matter.”
“This way, Señor,” said the youth impatiently, waving the lantern. He had been told to accompany them to the inn as rapidly as he could, and he did not want to lose his promised sovereign. The miner strode after him, followed by the still-bemused Santos Huesos.
They left the port, taking Calle del Rosario and then El Tinte alley, seeing no one apart from the occasional poor soul in rags sleeping in a doorway. But they didn’t reach the inn: they were stopped by someone who emerged from among the fig and palm trees in the middle of Plaza de Mina.
“Here,” said Ysasi, holding out a coin for the boy. “Give us the lantern and be on your way.”
They waited until he had been swallowed up by the shadows.
“He’s leaving. He’s found a boat to take him to Bristol.”
Mauro knew the doctor was referring to Alan Claydon. And he knew this was disastrous news, because it meant that in eight days, ten at most, the stepson would be in London, poisoning the family affairs yet again. By then, Sol and Edward would barely have had time to seek refuge.
“I brought him from Jerez. He was convinced I was helping him to get to Gibraltar, but unfortunately in the dining room of the inn we ran into three Englishmen, three sherry importers from Bristol who were celebrating their last night in Spain with a hearty dinner. They were seated a few tables from us and were talking of barrels and gallons of oloroso and amontillado, of the excellent deals they had done, of qualities and prices, how keen they were to get it all on the market as soon as they could.”
“And Claydon heard them.”
“Not only that, he went over and started talking to them.”