The News from Paraguay Page 3
“Bad luck,” Marie, who was watching, said, “like when a bird flies inside a house, it means someone is going to die.”
“You are worse than Doña Iñes always talking about death,” Ella answered her.
Gonzalo winked at Marie. “I’ll cook it for your supper.” Already he had begun to filet the flying fish.
9 NOVEMBER 1854
What a relief to walk on dry land again. I had hoped to bring Mathilde ashore—I’ve named the mare after Princess Mathilde—and exercise her a little, but the tide was too low and the sailors could not get Mathilde to walk down the steep gangplank. The more they tried the more agitated Mathilde became, she reared and bucked in fright, so that I feared Mathilde would break her leg. Instead, she managed to kick one of the sailors in the head. To make matters worse, Doña Iñes, who happened to be on deck at the time, was seized with hysterics. The poor woman is afraid of everything—men, horses, she is afraid of her own shadow probably. Afterward I insisted on walking Mathilde around the deck myself for a few minutes to calm her before she was put back down in her stall. Poor Mathilde, she has a nasty sore on her shoulder from rubbing against the stall door.
When at last we got ashore we visited the Marquis de Sonzal’s beautiful gardens. I told Franco how I’ve never seen so many flowers: heliotropes, camellias, hydrangeas, fuchsias, amaryllis, jasmine, roses growing together in such profusion and Franco said: “Wait until you see the flowers in Paraguay!” Later, when I saw a palm tree that was over 100 feet tall and remarked on it to Franco, Franco again said: “Wait!”
We took tea at the French consul’s house. The consul then insisted on taking Franco to look at the colors Lord Nelson lost in the battle of Santa Cruz—the colors, he said, were kept inside a nearby church. I told him that I would prefer to stay in the house and rest, which I did. Franco was in exceptionally high spirits when he returned. “A pity you didn’t come with us,” he said, “in addition to Lord Nelson’s colors, we saw Lord Nelson’s arm!”
When the Tacuari crossed the tropic of Cancer, the wind died down and it grew hot and still. The sea appeared motionless, no wave or ripple marred its flat surface.
“The horse latitudes,” the captain explained to Franco. “Named for when, in the old days, they used to ship horses to the West Indies and the ships were becalmed for so long they had to throw the horses overboard.”
When Franco repeated what Captain Ribera had said, Ella said, “If they threw Mathilde overboard, I would go overboard with her!”
Franco put his arm around Ella. “I would not let you.”
Sometimes, before visiting Ella in her cabin, Franco masturbated. It gave him more time with her. He could sit next to Ella on the overstuffed little sofa, one leg crossed on top of the other, and talk. He and Ella talked in French, a language that was not native to either one of them, although, sometimes, to express himself more naturally or more accurately, Franco spoke in Spanish and Ella answered him in English, but no matter what language they spoke to each other in, they managed to make themselves understood.
Franco described his family to Ella. First his father, Carlos Antonio Lopez.
“I was never close to my father but I respect him. My father is a very learned man, a lawyer. When I was growing up, I hardly saw him, he stayed locked up in his office, reading all day, reading all night as well. When the dictator Francia died, my father was made part of a ruling consulate, then he was elected president for a ten-year term; he has since been reelected. No man in Paraguay works harder than my father.” Franco paused. “He has opened up the country, brought in foreigners, stimulated commerce, renewed our ties with Rome—” Franco shrugged. “More important, he has abolished slavery in Paraguay.”
“And your mother?” Ella asked.
“My mother, Doña Juaña, is very ambitious. She is of Spanish descent and she considers her family vastly superior to my father’s. She is right, it is. Her family is also much richer. As for my sisters,” Franco continued, “they are fat and lazy. Rafaela especially. At least Inocencia takes an interest in something other than the food she puts into her mouth. She collects parrots, parrots from all over the Americas. She must have hundreds, which she keeps in an aviary in her house in Asunción.”
“Your sisters won’t like me,” Ella predicted.
Ignoring Ella, Franco went on, “My brothers, Venancio and Benigno, are younger. Venancio considers himself quite the dandy; Benigno, my mother’s favorite, is an inveterate gambler but he is the clever one. I don’t trust either one of them. But enough about my family.” Franco got up from the overstuffed sofa; he took off his boots, he began to undress. He could never resist Ella for long. Better yet, he did not tire of her. In bed, there was something unyielding about Ella, something withheld that was a challenge to Franco. A challenge he liked. Also, the sea air became Ella. She had never looked lovelier; her Irish complexion had never been more flawless.
At midday, Marie had no shadow. The sun was directly overhead and no matter where she stood on deck, there was nothing. It made her feel weightless. Tentatively, she twirled her skirt and took a couple of dance steps; a polka tune had begun to spin round and round in her head. In the galley doorway, she could see the whites of Gonzalo’s eyes shining, watching her; she did not care. The tune was getting louder, livelier. Lifting her arms in the air, Marie sprang higher and wider to the insistent music in her head and spun herself quickly out of Gonzalo’s sight.
Every Saturday night, in her village of Sens, the local band played in the town square; Marie and her sister danced together, they did not dance with the men. The men were rude and smelled of wine and if one tried to grab Marie by the waist and make her dance with him, Marie said, “No.” Marie was a good dancer and she was not afraid to say no. But when Ella asked Marie to come with her to this new country, Marie said yes, and now she was afraid.
He did not care about the wooden harp—the precious harp made from cedar wood with thirty-six gut strings he had worked hard to buy. Luckily it was the harp and not he that Franco had tossed overboard into the sea. Food for the fish—God forbid—and hadn’t he seen some strange fish, large whales and sea turtles poking their ugly heads out of the water? Justo José crossed himself again. If ever he got home, Justo José would, he swore—swore on his departed mother’s head, God bless her soul—recite a thousand…no, five thousand, ten thousand—what did he care as long as he got home safe and sound?—Hail Marys, exactly the way the good missionaries had taught his forebears, and not only would he recite the Hail Marys, Justo José promised, but he would walk all the stations of the cross. He would walk them on his knees.
When they crossed the line, Captain Ribera, as was his habit, placed a hair across the lens of the telescope. Franco was not fooled; after all, had he not crossed the equator once before? Looking through the glass, Ella was not fooled either.
“It’s a trick,” she said, “the equator is an imaginary circle.”
Doña Iñes was sitting on deck reading a book; Captain Ribera went over and asked if she wanted to have a look.
Squinting through the glass, Doña Iñes cried, “I see Him!”
“See who?” The captain frowned. All around, he saw nothing but water.
“Jesù,” Doña Iñes whispered, before she fainted and fell, hitting her head hard on the wood deck.
Later, the sky turned dark. Captain Ribera ordered the skylights and hatches shut and fastened in anticipation of the squall. Except for the foresail and jib, he had the sails lowered. With the engines on, the heat below in the airless cabins was intense—worse than inside a furnace, Ella complained—forcing the passengers to come back on deck. At last it began to rain, first big drops of warm rain, then the wind picked up and the ship began to roll.
“A warning, I know.” Doña Iñes’s face was the color of dough.
Marie did not answer her. She was throwing up to windward, her vomit blowing back on her dress.
The sea was black, the waves, large arching ones, were veined an
d capped with foam. The booms swinging, the spars creaking, the ship bucked its way through the heavy sea: first landing heavily in a trough, as if to rest for a moment, before another wave broke over its bow, sending water rushing and swirling on the deck and forcing the passengers down below; then pitching up again.
Franco was inside the deckhouse with the pilot. His legs braced against a mahogany console, he rode the lurching ship as if it were an unruly horse. He was chewing on a cigar—in the wind, the cigar had gone out. He was less afraid of the bad weather than he was of the sea. A bolt of lightning lit up the sky and Franco, anticipating the accompanying thunderclap, shouted to the pilot, “I know for a fact that lightning strikes Paraguay ten times more often than it does any other country.” The storm made him feel expansive and Franco liked noises—the boom of cannons, the bang of musketry, the clang of metal hitting metal. “When I was a little boy,” Franco went on, but, occupied holding the ship on a steady course, the pilot was not listening to him, “my nurse, an old Indian woman, told me that thunder is like a lost dog looking for a place in the sky to sleep and growling.”
When the storm had subsided, Franco left the deckhouse and went below to find Ella. Her cabin was empty. “Ella!” he called. Now, Franco was afraid. “Ella!”
In the hold, Mathilde whinnied nervously; each time the ship rolled, she was flung against a wall. Ella opened the stall door and went in. Squeezing herself inside the manger for support and holding the mare by the halter, she stroked and spoke to the horse in a gentle and soothing voice: Mathilde, my darling, wait until you see the green fields we will gallop on. Mathilde, my dear, fields so green and grand you have no idea, fields so green and grand you cannot imagine them in your wildest horse dreams. Ella thought she was talking about Paraguay but she was thinking of Ireland.
Franco never looked back. He did not look back at the women he had loved briefly or the women he had slept with—nor did he ever give a backward glance to the one woman he did not get to sleep with, Carmencita Cordal. From the moment he saw light-skinned, graceful Carmencita, he had wanted her but Carmencita refused Franco; worse, she called him “an Indian pig.” But Franco got his revenge—albeit a bitter revenge. The story went like this: Carmencita was about to marry handsome Carlos Decoud—the Decoud family, like the Cordal family, was an old aristocratic Spanish family and a part of the privileged Spanish aristocracy Franco’s mother belonged to from which Franco felt excluded. Carlos’s brother, Juan Decoud, had been sent to Buenos Ayres by Franco’s father, the president, to deposit some money there for future use; unfortunately, on the way, Juan gambled away most of the money and, too frightened to admit his mistake, fled to Europe with what was left. Furious and to retaliate, Don Carlos Antonio Lopez ordered his son Franco to arrest Carlos, the brother. When Franco went to do so, Carlos Decoud and Carmencita Cordal were celebrating their engagement at a ball in their honor, they were dancing together. In her happiness, Carmencita looked even lovelier and again Franco made advances to her, suggesting that if she accepted them he would be disposed to treat her fiancé leniently, but again Carmencita rebuffed Franco. This time she called him “a fat Indian pig!” Franco not only arrested Carlos Decoud but had him shot. He had the bloody corpse thrown in front of the Cordals’ house for Carmencita to see. When she saw Carlos’s corpse, Carmencita ripped out her long hair, tore the flesh on her face, she stopped eating. Even if Franco could have had Carmencita then, he would not have wanted her.
Marie had a nightmare—a dream that started out well enough before it turned bad. In the dream, Marie was walking down the rue du Bac, in Paris; ahead of her was the fruit merchant—she recognized his broad back, the way he held his head—and although Marie kept walking faster the fruit merchant too walked faster and she could never quite catch up to him. After a while, in the dream, frustrated, Marie called out to him—a name she could not remember but which she knew for certain was his name—and when the fruit merchant finally turned around it was not the fruit merchant after all but the beggar woman with half the face and Marie woke up. The cabin was hot and she was sweating; then she heard a strange sound. In her berth, Marie lay still and listened. The sound came from underneath her—a kind of muffled moan. When her eyes had adjusted to the darkness, Marie peered down through the space between the two berths. Doña Iñes was lying on her back, naked, her hands working in between her legs.
22 NOVEMBER 1854
I swear to God none of the nuns in the convent can hold a candle to Doña Iñes! How she crosses herself all the time, like a tic. And how she makes me repeat and repeat: “Sin arrimo y con arrimo” until I have rolled my Rs properly—arrrrrimo! (Franco, I notice, does not roll his Rs, and when I asked Doña Iñes, she said Franco spoke low Spanish!) Useless to tell her that I need to learn practical phrases: “I am happy to be in your beautiful country.” “What a lovely dress you are wearing!” “No, thank you, I have eaten enough oranges.” When I asked Marie, Marie shrugged her shoulders and twirled her finger on her forehead. But enough about Doña Iñes. Captain Ribera assures me that we shall see the coast of South America within the next two days. What a relief and perhaps, at long last, I will be able to eat a proper meal and digest it properly. Franco is so impatient, he stands all day on deck scanning the horizon and smoking his cigars. I swear he must have smoked a hundred cigars by now. I too am curious to see this new land that I have heard so much about and where Franco has promised me I will be happy (and where he also promised to build me a palace—a pink marble palace filled with gold!).
The last night on board the Tacuari, Marie chose to sleep on deck in a hammock. The cabin, she told Doña Iñes, was too hot, and she liked looking at the stars—the Southern Cross. The Paraguayan band came up and played softly—without his wooden harp, Justo José hummed the tune along with the rest—and Marie swung back and forth in her hammock in time to the music. As always, Gonzalo sat at the entrance of his galley; tonight, he was mending a shirt; his fat fingers wielded the needle clumsily back and forth through the cloth. Marie watched him for a while, then beckoning to Gonzalo, she motioned that she would finish up the sewing for him.
Franco and Ella watched a faint streak of red on the horizon grow larger; they watched the color of the sea turn from dark blue to green. They watched as a dozen Cape pigeons flew out of nowhere next to the ship and skimmed the waves without appearing to move their wings. “Land ahead,” a sailor high up in the crow’s nest cried out; a few minutes later Franco and Ella saw the lights of the port city of Montevideo blinking ahead. Throwing his cigar into the water, Franco put his arm around Ella. He whispered something in her ear, but because of the wind and the noise of the engine, Ella could not hear—a promise? a declaration of love? in which language? She smiled, she nodded as if she had understood and, taking Franco by the hand, she led him down to her cabin. More likely, she guessed, Franco had said that he wanted Ella to put his pene in her mouth and suck it.
From Montevideo, Captain Ribera had to follow the written instructions from the river pilot, a man named Nuñez. (Nuñez, it was rumored, had contracted typhoid fever from one of the immigrant ships and was too ill and too contagious to come aboard the Tacuari.) The instructions were handwritten and full of misspellings—some words were illegible—often Captain Ribera either had to guess or rely on his instincts in order to navigate the ship up the north side of the Chico Bank of the Río de la Plata:
After leving Montevideo, steer S.W. by compas [illegible word] you run abut 30 miles.
After 30 miles, shift your corse to W.S.W. and run for Point Indio.
After making Point Indio, bring it to ber S.S.W. 8 or 9 miles distant.
Point Indio bering S.S.W. at the expresed [illegible word], steer N.W. by compas and run for the Ortiz Bank.
Less than a year since Captain Rodriguez, Captain Ribera’s first cousin by marriage, had run aground on the Ortiz Bank; the ship had sunk and all aboard were drowned.
5. After making the Ortiz Bank, steer W. by compas until you make
the Points of Santiago and Lara.
6. When 6 or 7 miles of Point Lara, steer W. by N. and you will see [two illegible words] Quilmes or trees on the hills; and by continuing the same corse you will see the steeples of Buenos Ayres, and afterward the vessels in the Outer Roads, and you may steer for them without danger.
“Ah, yes, without danger,” Captain Ribera sighed to himself as he read over the instructions, “that would be good.”
She knew of course. Marie did the laundry—she washed Ella’s nightgowns, her petticoats, her underwear. And although Ella did not show yet—only her waist had thickened—Ella had missed three of her periods already.
Three
BUENOS AYRES
10 DECEMBER 1854
The Hotel de la Paix is situated on Calle Cangallo, a most convenient location, directly across from the Teatro Nacional. After my dinner, I only need dress, cross the street, secure a seat, and, each night, I can enjoy a different performance. The hotel contains 100 apartments that are well ventilated and spacious. Mine consists of a bedroom, a dressing room, a sitting room and a sleeping closet for Marie; we also have a splendid view of the harbor. Doña Iñes has a good-sized room on the first floor of the hotel but no view of the harbor. M. Maréchal, the proprietor, is French and he has been very helpful getting us settled here. I have most of our meals sent up; the food is quite good: mostly we eat beef, which I’ve been told is beneficial for my condition. Spanish, French and English are spoken in the hotel and the groom at the stable where I keep Mathilde is Irish! God bless him!