Chapter 11
Asturias
October 1914
Mercedes and ten-year-old Pilar shared a love of chestnuts. In the autumn, the spiny pods covered the Asturian hillsides. Their favourite spot was about a thirty-minute walk from Las Cepas, where the chestnuts piled a foot deep under the boughs of two grand old trees. Two weeks before she departed for the U.S., Mercedes took Pilar on one last expedition.
“So, you’re really leaving us, Aunt Mercedes?” Pilar asked as they carefully pried open the pods and added another handful of the mahogany coloured chestnuts to their bulging bag. The girl had been quiet and withdrawn all day.
“You shouldn’t think of it that way, Pilar,” Mercedes replied. She had wondered whether her niece would open up about how she felt. She did not want to force it from her like a chestnut from its thorny husk. Pilar had not said a word about Mercedes leaving since she sat the children down in the kitchen and told them, as if not verbalizing it would make it go away.
“How else can I think of it?” Pilar said without looking up from her pile of pods. “You’re going to America, and we’ll be here.”
“That’s true. But when you say I’m ‘leaving’ you, that makes it sound like it’s against you, and it’s not.”
Pilar plunked another chestnut into the sack.
“I’ve married Antonio,” Mercedes said, “as your mother married your father. But his work is in America, so I have to go there to be with him. I wish so much that I could stay here, but I can’t right now.”
Pilar shrugged her shoulders and shucked another chestnut. “Do you love Antonio more than you do us?” she asked eventually.
“Oh, of course, not, Pilar.” Mercedes put her hand on the girl’s back and nudged her around to face her. “I love you and your brothers and your parents more than any other people on this Earth. You especially. If I have a daughter, I want her to be just like you.”
Mercedes was not exaggerating or saying this only to comfort her niece. She loved Antonio Ribas, but it was different. Their relationship contained an element of necessity. They were like two castaways washed up on a beach who had only each other for building a new life. With her brother and his family, Mercedes felt only unconditional, abiding love and acceptance. It was not possible, she imagined, that she could love and care about her own daughter any more deeply than she did Pilar.
“But you have me!” Pilar said. She threw the chestnut burr in her hand to the ground. “We have each other. Why do you have to leave and go have a daughter and live on the other side of the ocean?” Tears filling her eyes, Pilar cried: “I’ll never see you again!” She jumped up and started running into the woods.
“Pilar! Pilar!” Mercedes shouted, leaping to her feet and taking after her. She quickly overtook her niece. “Pilar, stop!” she said, more sharply than she intended, when the girl kept flailing and trying to escape Mercedes’ grasp.
Pilar was not listening. The suffocating panic had seized her. The repressed frustration and fear, now uncoiled, overwhelmed her consciousness. The more Mercedes tried to restrain her, the harder she struggled and the louder she squealed. It was like trying to subdue a terrified deer.
Mercedes finally took Pilar by the shoulders, pushed her to the ground and lay on top of her. Pilar kicked and beat the ground and her aunt with her fists. But Mercedes pressed herself more firmly on Pilar’s slender body, limiting as much of her movement as possible. She said softly, over and over: “Come back, my sweet girl. Come back, my sweet girl. Come back, my sweet girl.”
Slowly, Pilar began to relax. The crazed look faded from her eyes. She lay still with Mercedes in the dry leaves on the forest floor, breathing deeply.
“There, there, my sweet girl,” Mercedes said. She released Pilar’s shoulders and stroked her hair. “It’s okay. You’re safe.”
Pilar had been tumbling into these fits with greater frequency and severity over the past two years. Mercedes was the only person who could calm her and bring her back. As they lay quietly on the ground, Mercedes wondered what would happen when the storm came over Pilar, and she was no longer here.
María knew her only daughter was troubled, but she was so swamped by her work on the farm and tending to the other children— a fourth had come the year before—that she did not have the time or patience Pilar needed. And empathy for what he saw as a weakness of character was not among Antonio González Conde’s many admirable qualities. He possessed a surfeit of compassion for his sister because she had been treated so poorly. But he could not comprehend why his daughter was so often glum and difficult, when all she had known was affection.
That left Mercedes as Pilar’s only anchor. It had loomed over her decision about whether to marry Antonio Ribas and go to the United States. She believed that the move would not be permanent, that they would return one day to Spain. But when? For how many years would she stay over there? And how could fragile Pilar manage alone? In the end, Mercedes’ need for a family of her own trumped the responsibility she felt for her niece, but just barely.
Once, during one of their long walks along the coastal bluffs, Antonio Ribas had led Mercedes down a steep trail, through thick tufts of straw-coloured grass and thorn bushes, to a little cove. There were hundreds of similar spots along the ragged Asturian coast, but this one had seemed to call out to him the first time he saw it from high up on the trail.
Antonio told Mercedes it was one of his favourite places to sit and think, surrounded on three sides by the towering crags and with the ceaseless churning of the surf at his feet. As each wave receded, the tumbling beach stones rattled like marbles being rolled down a hill in a tin.
Antonio had gone down to the water’s edge and examined the stones. He dug around, picked one up, looked at it, discarded it, picked up another. Over and over. After several minutes, he returned to where Mercedes was sitting. He handed her a smooth, thin oblong stone about three-quarters of an inch long. It was black with a narrow vein of white running around its center from side to side. She had never been without it since. Every time she squeezed it tightly in her hand, she immediately felt a sense of calm and peace fill her chest, as if some vast, universal spirit was flwing into her from the stone.
Mercedes sat up beside Pilar and reached into the pocket of her dress. She withdrew the pebble and gave it to the girl. “This stone has great power, Pilar. Whenever I think that I can’t go on, I hold it, and it gives me strength. You keep it.” It pained Mercedes to give it away, but she believed her niece would need the talisman more than she. “Keep it with you all the time. When you feel yourself sliding into that terrible place, or feel the dark fog coming over you, take it out and squeeze it tight in your hand, and think of me and how much I love you.”
Pilar took the black stone and looked at it closely. “Where does it come from?” she asked.
“From the sea. Many centuries of being tumbled by the waves wore it smooth and round. And just like you, there’s no other in the world exactly like it.”
Pilar clasped the stone in her fist as she threw her arms around Mercedes’ neck and hugged her tightly. “Thank you, Aunt Mercedes. Thank you. I’ll always carry it with me, and I’ll give it back to you when you come home.”
“Yes,” Mercedes said. “You do that. You keep it safe for me, and one day, I promise, I’ll come and get it from you.”
Mercedes stood and pulled Pilar up from the ground. She whirled her around by the wrists until the girl was laughing uncontrollably. Setting Pilar on her feet, Mercedes said: “Now, we still have room in that bag for at least another half-kilo of chestnuts!”
“Chestnuts!” Pilar howled as they ran, hand in hand, back down the hill to the pile of prickly pods.
* * *
Mercedes had no money to pay her passage to the United States. Her husband Antonio could almost cover it if he sent her all his savings and borrowed the remainder from his friend. But she did not want to begin their life together that way. The only meagre asset she owned was her quarter interest in the farm.
Mercedes asked her brother Antonio if he would buy her out. He agreed, reluctantly. He was uncomfortable with the idea of his sister selling her patrimony, even if it was to him. After they had signed the documents, and he gave her the cash, Antonio said: “You should consider this an interest-free loan, with your land as collateral. When you come back, if you wish to return here and make your home with Antonio on Las Cepas, I will sell it back to you for exactly this amount.”
With all her belongings packed in a leather suitcase her brother bought her for a wedding gift, Mercedes began her journey to her new life across the Atlantic: a rickety train along the coast to A Coruña; an old side-wheel steamer from A Coruña to Liverpool; Liverpool to Ellis Island aboard the White Star liner Adriatic. She arrived in New York Harbor on November 14, 1914. Mercedes had never been so happy, and so sad, in her life.
* * *
Clarksburg
24 December 1914
My dear brother and sister-in-law,
I have arrived safe and sound and am happier than I can say to be spending this first Christmas with Antonio. Still, as I sit here in our little apartment waiting for him to return from work, my head is full of images from my thirteen Christmases with you at Las Cepas. I miss you and the children fiercely.
I am not certain how I can balance these competing feelings of elation and loss. They sweep over me in succession. One hour I feel that I can sprout wings and soar. The next, I feel as if I am lying under a slab of stone and cannot lift an arm without great effort. Somehow I will manage it, and I am sure it will improve after I have been here for a while.
What a journey! After banging along in the train for two days to A Coruña, it was a relief to be rocking gently on the sea as I sailed up to England. The weather was perfect, and I was even able to go out on the deck to sit in the sun and gaze at the endless expanse of blue water. I was not as afraid as I expected to be, because it was just so intoxicatingly beautiful.
The Atlantic crossing was not as nice, and I was thankful that my first experience at sea had been so pleasant. We were packed in like livestock on a busy day at Carbayedo, down in the bowels of the ship, and on two of the days and nights the ship was heaved and tossed by awful storms. I spent a lot of time on my knees with my rosary, wondering if I would set foot on land again. It reminded me of the stories you often told us, Antonio, about your passages to Cuba. I pray that when we come back, we will have clear skies the whole way.
It took a full day for me to get processed through Ellis Island. The crowds for Semana Santa in Avilés are nothing compared to the throngs of people disgorging from the ships and filling the yards and quays and the cavernous hall where we were questioned by the immigration agents. I had never felt so small and insignificant or as far away from everything I knew and loved.
And then, New York. It still does not seem real. I do not know how people live there, like ants in a hill or bees in a hive. But it also vibrates with strength and vitality, a giant engine driving an immensely powerful land. I am glad I could see it, but more glad I could leave. Clarksburg is bigger than Avilés, but it feels like a four-house village after New York. Much more to my liking.
Antonio took me down to Graselli last week to see the house he is buying for us. It is only about 20 minutes away on the streetcar. I am happy we will have our own home, and it is a nice, new little house. The town is smoky like Arnao, with the smelter at its center, but it is full of Asturians and Gallegos. That makes me both less homesick and more so. An Avilesino named Daniel—he says he knows you, Antonio—has even opened a place called Belmonte’s Café modeled on Café Colon in Avilés, right down to the big iron frog out front for the ring-toss game.
I will close for now. I did not expect to write so much when I sat down here, and I have to get back to preparing our Christmas dinner! Kisses and hugs to you both and the children, dear Pilar especially. I will eagerly await a letter from you about all that is happening there.
Mercedes González Conde