Larrea, in the meantime, struggled without success to remember their names.
“I tried telling these gentlemen that now wasn’t a good time to speak with you, master,” Angustias mumbled by way of apology. “I said to come back this afternoon. I said this morning we have . . . we have other matters to attend to.”
Had Mauro paused for a few minutes to gather his thoughts, he might have acted differently. But the accumulated pressure got the better of him. Or perhaps it was fatigue. Or his fate, which was already written.
“Get out of here.”
The land agent’s dewlap quivered.
“Look, Don Mauro, these gentlemen are here to close the deal. They’ve brought the money.”
“Out.”
The potential purchaser and his secretary stood contemplating him. What’s going on here? they muttered. What has happened to this gentleman who seemed so genuine and determined?
Zarco’s face had turned bright red, beads of sweat the size of peas glistened on his brow.
“Look here, Don Mauro . . .” he repeated.
Through the fog of his mind he dimly recalled that his man was simply an honest broker whom he himself had hired. But that must have been in a different life. An eternity ago.
The agent drew near, lowering his voice, as though attempting to gain his trust.
“They’re willing to pay what the lady asked,” he said almost in a whisper. “The most favorable transaction that has occurred in these parts in a long while.”
Zarco might as well have been speaking in Aramaic.
“Please leave.”
Without uttering another word, Mauro walked into the courtyard.
“The man must be drunk,” he thought he heard the secretary whisper to his boss. “He looks as if he’s been rolling around in a pigsty.” Those were the last words Mauro heard. And he couldn’t have cared less.
Behind his back, the potential buyer adopted an expression of utter contempt. “These people from the old colonies in America, so eager to break away from the mother country, and look how they’ve turned out. Unstable, frivolous, boastful. They’d be singing a different song if they hadn’t been so rebellious.”
Visibly upset, the portly Zarco mopped his brow with a large handkerchief.
The doctor was the last to speak.
“Go and get some fresh air, my good man, before you suffer a seizure. As for you, my friends, you heard what Señor Larrea said. Please respect his wishes.”
They marched off in a rage, and with them went all his plans and hopes. The money to return to Mexico, salvage his properties, his status, his past; to see Nico married or not. To return with pride and pick up the mantle of the man he had once been. Doubtless, once his mind was less clouded, he would regret his actions. But there was no time for that now; other, more urgent matters were at hand.
“Lock the door, Simón!” Angustias cried shrilly.
Despite her weary, arthritic bones, no sooner had the visitors departed than she leapt up the stairs like a hare, hiking up her skirts and revealing her scrawny calves.
“Hurry, Señores, hurry, hurry . . .”
They ran up the stairs behind her. The aged servant stopped dead in her tracks as she reached the doorway to the former dining room, crossing herself before loudly kissing her thumb and forefinger. Then she stepped aside, allowing them to contemplate the scene.
He was sitting with his back to the door. Upright, in one of chairs at the head of the Montalvos’ magnificent dining table. The same table where lunch had been served at his own wedding, and where he and old Don Matías had signed all their deals over the finest oloroso sherry in the house. The table where his best friends Luis and Jacobo had made him roar with laughter at their japes, and where he had exchanged flirtatious glances with two adolescent beauties, one of whom was to become his wife.
The men entered the room with cautious steps, observing him at first sideways: noble, angular features, aquiline nose, mouth half-open. Like a Norman aristocrat, the doctor had described him. He still boasted a thick head of blond hair streaked with silver; not an ounce of fat on his lanky frame, ill-clad in a rumpled nightshirt. His limp, sinewy hands lay outstretched on the table. They approached slowly, maintaining a respectful silence.
Finally they contemplated him head-on.
Two deep hollows surrounded his eyes. Blue, glassy, wide-open.
His chest was drenched in blood. A triangular shard of glass protruded from his neck.
Both the doctor’s and Larrea’s hearts froze.
Freed from the burden of logic and reason, Edward Claydon, either due to his disturbed mind or in an irrational act of surrender, had taken his own life, severing his jugular with surgical precision.
They stood looking at him for a few long seconds.
“Memento mori,” murmured Ysasi.
He walked over and gently shut Claydon’s eyelids.
Mauro Larrea walked out into the gallery.
Placing his hands on the balustrade, he leaned over until his head was resting on the stone, feeling its coldness. He would have given his life to be able to say a prayer.
By water or by fire I see someone leave, a toothless old Gypsy woman had told him when she read his palm. Was it only a few nights ago? What did it matter? Soledad’s husband had started a terrible fire, then fled to the ramshackle old house where years ago he had been happy, on a path of no return. Where there was no awareness, reason, or fear. Or was there?
Without straightening up, Mauro Larrea rummaged in his pockets for a handkerchief, but all he found were a few scraps of damp, illegible paper. On the front of what had been a letter bearing the name Tadeo Carrús, there was now only a smudge of ink and oil. He crumpled it between his fingers without looking, letting the fragments drop to his feet.
He noticed a hand on his arched back. He hadn’t heard the steps approaching. And then, the doctor’s voice.
“Let’s go.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
September brought his first grape harvest, and with it the winery sprang back to life. Carts bearing the juice from the pressed grapes trundled in and out of gates open day and night; the floor was permanently wet, and the cellar was filled with voices, bodies, and busy feet.
A year had gone by since those Yankee women dressed like crows had arrived at the house in Mexico that had once belonged to him to announce his ruin, setting him on a path toward the unknown. Looking back, he could not help feeling that several centuries had elapsed between then and now.
Despite his initial resistance, it was the countess’s money that had helped him take the first few steps toward reinstating the Montalvo legacy; after all, what the old lady had wanted was to make a profit, and he would give it to her all in good time. Mariana had supported him from afar. Forget about trying to become what you once were. Look toward new horizons. Wherever life takes you, on this side of the world we will be proud of you.
Tadeo Carrús died three days after Larrea failed to pay the first of his four-month installments. Contrary to the moneylender’s wishes, his son, Dimas, far from reducing the house to rubble, had not broken a single tile or pane of glass. To the astonishment of the entire capital, a week after giving his father a miserable burial, he installed himself permanently in former palace of the Count of Regla, with his withered arm and a pack of scrawny hounds.
Mauro Larrea’s link to La Templanza had begun in late fall, amid the vines and within himself. In December he hired workers, in January it was sowing time, in February the days grew longer; March brought showers and in April the green buds started to show. May filled the chalky earth with tender vines, June was the time for pruning, and throughout the summer they raised the vine trellises to air the clusters of fruit and keep them from touching the hot earth. In August they witnessed the miracle of the budding fruit.
Even as his eyes feas
ted on the fields of white hills squared off by the rows of vines, Mauro started to appreciate the different stages and methods of cultivating a vineyard. He began to learn about the different parcels of earth and about clouds, to distinguish between days when the dry heat of the levanter from Africa ruffled the calm of the vines, and those when a benign, humid poniente, rich in sea salt, blew in off the Atlantic. And, in tune with the seasons, hard work, and winds, he also sought advice from those who knew. He listened to old hands, day laborers, and winegrowers. With some he shared tobacco in the taverns, stores, and businesses run by men from the northern mountains. With others he shared a seat beneath the shade of the vines, listening as they mashed gazpacho in a wooden bowl. Occasionally, very occasionally, when he needed answers or was assailed by doubts, he would enjoy piano music and fine cut glass in the tapestried salons of the big wine producers.
The same eyes that for decades had dwelled in darkness became habituated to long hours of harsh sunlight; the hands that had clawed the earth’s entrails for veins of silver now plunged amid the vines to test the fullness of the grapes. A mind filled with myriad ambitions and projects remained focused on a single, precise, tangible objective: to put things right, to begin again.
He purchased an Arab stallion, which he rode on track and road, recovered the strength in his injured arm, grew a thick beard, and adopted a couple of hungry stray dogs. On rare occasions he would stop off at the social club and converse with Manuel Ysasi for a while, but most of the time he lived immersed in an absolute silence, to which he became effortlessly accustomed. After shutting up the mansion on Calle de la Tornería, he made his home in the old ranch at La Templanza vineyard, and in the hot season he would spend many a night sleeping out in the open, beneath the same glittering firmament that in other latitudes also shone on those whom he struggled in vain to forget. Despite this, he learned to live with the different light, air, and moons of this corner of the Old World, to which he never thought he would return.
On the morning before the last day of the grape harvest, Larrea was listening intently to his foreman’s assessment of the quality of the vintage in the noisy cobbled yard, his sleeves rolled up, arms akimbo, hair disheveled from all his labors. Until Don Matías’s former employee, a lithe, elderly fellow whom he had kept on, glanced over Larrea’s shoulder and paused in midsentence. He wheeled around.
Nine months had passed since Soledad had walked out of his life, leaving Jerez. Without her husband, there was no reason for her to hide at the mouth of the Duero River, in Valletta, or in some remote French château. And so she had done the simplest, most sensible thing: she returned to London, to her world. The most natural decision. They did not even manage to say their farewells in those days of sorrow and agitation following Edward Claydon’s demise: all Larrea received by way of good-bye was one of those impersonal notes, edged with black, that she sent to friends and acquaintances alike, thanking them for their condolences. Two or three days later, accompanied by her faithful servants, a multitude of trunks, and her grief, she had upped and left.
Now here she was again, striding toward him with her usual confident gait, glancing from side to side to contemplate the comings and goings of the workers transporting the must and the barrels; life returning to the old winery. The last time he had seen her she was dressed in black from head to toe, a thick veil over her face, at the funeral Mass in the San Marcos church. Gathered around her were her friend Manuel Ysasi and the big wine-producing families of which she had once been a member. He kept his distance from the cortège, a solitary figure standing at the back of the church, his arm in a sling. He spoke to no one, and no sooner had the priest recited the requiescat in pace than he slipped away. In the eyes of the city, thanks to Dr. Ysasi’s maneuvering, the English wine merchant had died in his sleep of natural causes. The demonic word suicide was never uttered. Inés Montalvo was absent at the last farewell; only later did Mauro learn that she had moved to a convent on the central plateau without giving any reason.
Soledad had now exchanged her grim widow’s weeds for a pale gray chintz dress with buttons down the front; on her head there was no black veil but a simple yet elegant hat. As they stood facing each other, their bodies maintained a seemly distance. Her hand clutched the ivory handle of her parasol while he stood motionless even as a knot appeared in his stomach and the blood coursed through his veins as though driven by a mallet.
To avoid being overwhelmed by the memory of this woman at every turn, to prevent the piercing nostalgia, and to find some reprieve from her absence, Larrea had simply immersed himself in work. Twelve, thirteen, fourteen hours until he dropped like a deadweight at day’s end. To cease probing his mind in search of the times they had spent together; to stop imagining what it would have been like to warm each other on winter nights or to make love to her slowly beneath an open window in springtime.
“A glorious harvest this year, I’ve heard.”
So it seems, he could have retorted. And although the winds have brought great miracles, as you taught me, I struggled to cooperate as I played my part. After recklessly telling the Madrid buyers to go to hell, I accepted that I had lost everything I left behind in Mexico, and decided not to return there. But if you ask me why, I fear I have no answer. Perhaps it was due to sheer cowardice, to avoid confronting the man I had once been. Or the thrill of facing a fresh challenge when I believed all my battles were lost. Or because I did not wish to leave this land where always, lingering in each sound and smell, I find your presence.
“Welcome, Soledad” was all he said.
She glanced around her again, appreciating the busy clamor.
“How reassuring to see this again.”
Larrea also gazed over the surroundings. Both were trying to buy time, but one of them had to take the first step. He did.
“I trust that everything turned out for the best.”
She shrugged with that natural grace of hers. The same eyes, like a beautiful foal, the same cheekbones and slender arms. The only difference he noticed were her fingers; one in particular. The ring finger on her left hand was bare: the two rings confirming her attachment were missing.
“I had to deal with some heavy losses, but I finally succeeded in untangling my web of lies and deceptions before Alan returned from Havana. Following which, I decided to narrow my options and concentrate solely on sherry.”
He nodded sympathetically, although this wasn’t exactly what interested him most. How are you, Sol? How does it feel to be back? How has it been living without me all these months?
“Otherwise, I am relatively well,” she went on, as if reading his thoughts. “The business and my lively daughters keep me busy; they help me to bear the absence of the dead and the living.”
He lowered his head, running a grubby hand over the back of his head and neck, wondering whether he might be one of those absences.
“That beard suits you,” she went on, changing her tone and the direction of the conversation. “But you still look like a savage.”
He perceived the characteristic twist of irony at the corners of her mouth, although she was right: his face, arms, and chest, weathered by a life in the vineyards beneath the unforgiving sun, bore witness to the fact. His half-open shirt, the close-fitting trousers he wore to give him freedom of movement, and his old boots caked in mud scarcely gave him the look of a landed gentleman.
“May I steal a minute of your time, brother . . .”
A bald older man wearing gold-rimmed spectacles approached hurriedly, eyes fixed on a bundle of papers. He was about to say something when he caught sight of her:
“Excuse me, Señora,” he said, startled. “Forgive the intrusion.”
“Please, there’s no need to apologize,” she said politely as she let him kiss her hand.
So, it’s her, thought Elías Andrade, contemplating Soledad with the utmost discretion. And she’s back. Blasted women. Now I’
m beginning to understand.
He disappeared after a minute on the pretext of some urgent task or other.
“My agent and friend,” Larrea explained as they watched him go. “He sailed across the ocean to try to persuade me to return, and since his mission failed, he is staying here with me for a while.”
“What about your son and Santos Huesos? Did either of them come back?”
“Nico is still in Paris; he came to see me recently before going on to Seville in search of some baroque paintings for a client. Contrary to my gloomy predictions, he is doing well. He has gone into partnership with an old acquaintance of mine in the antiques business and has fallen in and out of love for the umpteenth time. As for Santos, he ended up settling in Cienfuegos. He married Trinidad and they have brought a child into the world; I would wager it was conceived in our good doctor’s house.”
Her feminine laughter rang out like a bell amid the virile voices and manly bodies, the loud activity and sweat. Then she changed her tone and direction once more.
“Have you had news of Gustavo and his wife?”
“Not directly, although Calafat, my Cuban contact, tells me they are still together. Going from one event to the next. Surviving.”
She paused for an instant, as though hesitating.
“I wrote to my cousin,” she said at last. “A lengthy missive, asking his forgiveness in my name and in memory of our forebears.”
“And?”
“He never replied.”
Silence descended on them once more as the workers busily fulfilled their tasks. And the shadow of a man with watery eyes arose between them, the same one who had built castles in the air that the cruel winds of fate had blown away ruthlessly; the one who had clung to a billiard cue in a final, reckless attempt to find a final, reckless solution with no way back.